Plumbing Owner Grew From $6M to $25M on Sewers (Here’s How)

In this episode, John Wilson is on-site in Chicago with Aizik Zimerman, owner of J.Blanton Plumbing, to break down how one of the fastest-growing plumbing companies in the country built a sewer and drain growth engine. Since buying the $6M Jay Blanton business at the end of 2022, Aizik has scaled it to ~$25M this year and a $30M run rate — and nearly half that growth is coming from sewers. They unpack the investments, the operational build-out, and the marketing + sales system that turned trenchless lining into a repeatable, high-volume profit center.

 Aizik shares the exact playbook behind his “Unclogs for Dogs” offer, why they send salespeople with cameras first (no junior drain tech flip), and how they price lining as the cheaper alternative to excavation to beat inertia and win the market. If you’re trying to add $5–$10M of revenue through drains, improve close rates, or build a trenchless division that actually scales, this episode is a must-listen.

What You’ll Learn

• The 2022 → 2025 growth story: $6M to $25M+ and what changed operationally
• Why Aizik bet big on sewers while competitors stayed HVAC-heavy
• The economics of lining vs. digging: pricing, margins, and why “cheaper lining” wins
• How a $1M+ CapEx investment (UV curing trailers, jetting, prep teams) unlocked volume
  
  

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Host
 John Wilson 

Guest
 Aizik Zimerman

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:37 Business Growth and Structural Changes
• 4:06 Innovative Sewer Solutions and Marketing Strategies
• 24:58 The Importance of Camera Inspections in Home Buying
• 27:38 Comparing HVAC and Drain Industries
• 31:15 Sales Strategies and Market Dynamics

Transcript

 Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I'm your host, John Wilson. Today I am on site with my good friend Isaac Zimmerman, the owner of Jay Blanton Plumbing in Chicago. Welcome to the show and thanks for having me out. Yeah, it's fun to, uh, it's fun to have you here. It's, uh, I texted this to you yesterday, but it's very surreal because Yeah.

I started in the industry and first learned about it by shadowing you and seeing your operation and now. Having you here in this event you're doing is pretty cool. Yeah, we have, I think we're at like 52 registered people that are gonna come out and we'll see, we'll see how many show up, but, uh, 52 registered people coming out, touring the place, having lunch, doing a shop tour, and, uh, having a round table discussion.

So this should be pretty interesting. The other ones we've done have been like, you know, 20 ish. So big group. This should be a lot of fun. Yeah. I'm, I'm super interested to see who, who comes and, uh. Where they're from. So, yeah. And we had a, we did a little pre-dinner yesterday and that was good. Yeah. Had some out of town people come in.

Uh, so it was very fun. Yeah. Awesome. Uh, we did an episode, I mean, was it a year ago? Probably like a year and a half ago. Yeah. And we talked a little bit about the story, so we can link to that in the show notes. So check that out if you're listening. But, uh, today what we're gonna talk about is, and I guess we could do like a rehash.

Yeah. I'm gonna summarize it and you can add some flavor, but. You bought a business in 21 or 22? 22. End of end of 22. Yeah. $6 million Plumbing company. Uh, Jay Blanton. You kept the name and, uh, so at the end of 22, $6 million And now you're, what will you, you're on a run rate for 30, but what are you gonna finish 25 at?

We finished 25. At 25 million. Run rate 30 million of revenue right now. Yeah. Awesome. So yeah, a lot of crazy growth. Uh, I think the last episode we focused a lot on like GMBs and like some really like tactical marketing stuff, which is awesome. Uh, today what we wanted to talk about was like the last year, basically since we talked last, 'cause you guys structurally changed the business drains took a way bigger step forward.

You guys made huge investments, like a million dollars probably into. Lining and jetting and like growing the drain side of the business. So that's what we're gonna focus on today. So last year we did 15. We will close this year at about 25, 30 million run rate. Yeah. Big part of that. Yeah. That's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Fifteens a's a to 30. So is it a hundred percent? Like if I look at ServiceTitan, is it gonna be like, did one month stand out or we're like really like 60 to 70? Like no, it's like 70 every month. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Um, I mean, there's some like. Nothing really declines.

It'll like step go up, step go up. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it's a pretty nice looking revenue chart when you look at it. I, I glanced at it. I glanced at it earlier. I was like, God, that's what it's like to only be plumbing. Yeah. That's what it's like to, to not have seasonality. Yeah. Uh, the only seasons we have are are good seasons.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Pretty much doubled in the last year. And a huge part of that was the, the drain business. And so, I mean, you know this, like, you've grown an immense amount too, like. To constantly find what's the next avenue like, what's gonna get me 5 million, 10 million of revenue. 

Yeah. 

And so for us this last year, it's been a lot of our sewer business and really trying to find like.

A pocket of the industry that we feel like was differentiated. And so for us, you know, most companies in our industry, very HVAC heavy. Mm-hmm. That's the main thing. Secondly, you know, plumbing, um, and a lot of, even these, you know, a hundred to $200 million companies have very small sewer divisions. Yeah.

Like, I can even think of two roughly, nearly $200 million businesses in Chicago that have, um. Maybe they do $5 million of sewers, like very small. 

Yeah. And 

that's about half our business now. 

Yeah. 

And so kind of organically through like people we hired and then kind of just the success of the business has continued to grow.

And then the big thing that we made a big investment into is, is lining. So trenchless pipe replacement. Yeah. For the sewer. Um, and so we went really heavy on technology for this. So we invested in these like UV curing setups. We have three trailers now on actually nearly gonna order our fourth and, uh.

Each rigs, you know, close to $350,000 all in. Mm-hmm. So we've, we've made, yeah, about a million dollars of investment the last year and a half so that we can do these jobs faster, more cost efficient, pass on the savings to the consumer. And so customers are able to basically replace their entire sewer trenchless without having to dig for $12,500, $13,000, whereas digging it would cost $50,000 and make World War II in their yard.

Yeah. 

And so, uh. Kinda like built this like really interesting connection flywheel between like the product and service, which is trenches lining. Yeah. The team that we have that focuses in on it, and we could talk about, we have this whole like setup of the team, of like how we do the in install coordination, prep crews that go out and prep the sewers, then the lining crews that come in.

And then what we've really connected to now is marketing and to make it scalable. Mm-hmm. Tight deadlines, breakdowns, last minute jobs. That is just the life in the trades, and that's why we trust we supply trades.com. They're family owned and with nearly a century in business, they stock thousands of HVAC, plumbing and hydronics parts from brands that you are to use.

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But yeah, so obviously like the biggest thing that people always have problems with or always thinking about leads, like, yeah, okay, sewers, that sounds sexy, even though it's, you know, kind of dirty. It's like, does sound pretty sexy? It's sexy. Have big, you know, your replacements, you're talking 12 to $20,000 sale.

Yeah. 60 plus percent gross margin. Yeah. Um, very, very lucrative. And uh, but the thing is leads, okay, how do I get these leads? Yeah, we've talked a bit about this, the. Traditional industry way, and you know, we're both member of nexstar. Yep. And you know, whether it's nexstar or just best practices, like okay, advertise drain cleaning calls.

Mm-hmm. Do the drain cleaning. Flip that to a, to a salesman. And we very much like turned that on its head in that we don't do, we don't have drain cleaners. We market, uh, essentially like camera inspections and like unclogs. So we have this promotion called, uh, $93 unclogs for dogs. Mm-hmm. So $93 camera inspection, a sewer unclog.

We donate 10 pounds of dog food. That's the dog part. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, uh, but we send, so these calls come in and they, well, the 93, the 93 are free, I think is what that promo is usually called. Yeah. Is that sort of like, we're obviously adapting it, but uh, just to break it down. There's a 93 or free, this is the way the industry does it.

So $93, we will unclog up to 25 feet or something like that. Yeah. Or like you don't pay anything. And obviously very similar to hvac. The whole purpose is to go in and offer options to make it not $93, like eight HVAC is like a $89 tuneup drains his $93 unclogged. So sort of taking that, yeah, it's very similar to that starting point.

Or the sales process massively flips is mm-hmm. The industry norm is run that promotion, send a drain tech who tends to be very junior, like it's an entry level role, so not a skilled salesperson. Go there, try to unclog it. Uh, if it's a main line, you know, a properly functioning sewer shouldn, back up. So the principle of it is that if they're backing up and they're calling you for this, then there's something that needs to be repaired.

So go there, camera it, say, Hey. We need to get someone here to offer you long-term options. And then you have this flipping process where you then bring in the salesman with a camera. So most businesses running it, their initial drain tech has no camera, no way of visualizing it. They flip it to the sales guy.

We don't run that model. So where it really deviates, we send somebody directly to that $93 call. We directly send a salesman with a camera or a diagnostic technician if we, uh, wanna call it that. And so we right away. Run that lead with the salesman and try to sell it. And our reasoning for that, and it's working very well, is that, you know, we view these as the most important calls.

Mm-hmm. We don't want to have a flipping process where we risk that the most untrained people in the business are taking this golden goose egg. Yeah. And needing to properly transport it. Mm-hmm. Um, and secondly. I think that consumers are not so silly and so a lot, it's very easy for them to see through this process of needing to bring in a salesman and having this flip.

So I think it kind of creates even more down in people's minds. 

Yeah, so 

we send somebody, again, this is very different. We don't really use rotting or unclogging machines or whatever, uh, terminology you use in your market. We call it rotting. We just send someone with a camera there and do a diagnostic and see what's going on.

And then we tie that into our lining process where now we can show them on the camera and offer them a solution as preventative liner. 

Mm-hmm. 

That's very cost effective. And so, uh, when consumers weigh it, and a lot of them, like we target in errors that are older homes, a lot of them have done repairs.

Yeah. So when they see that they've done a previous repair for 6,000 for five feet of line, and we can fix all 70 feet for 13,000. They see the visual and see that the sewer is degrading. It like actually tees up a really nice, uh, thing for the customer where it truly does save the customer money. It's powerful for them.

And so we go to these, uh, these marketed leads and we're closing them at 25 to 30% where we're selling replacements. And so the main way we get these leads is we mail and the replacements being the lining, the liner. Yeah. And, uh, I think I'm gonna hit this really quick. I'm curious if it's different in other markets.

Sounds like lining is the low cost option and I think that's important to like hit because in almost every other business it's not. And I think that is how it's supposed to be here. We just, we just didn't do that. Like, again, like Yeah, most people we talk to are like, Hey, you should charge more. For lining then digging because it's, I think the re idea is it's the premium option.

It's trench list. Yeah. You don't have to touch your garden. So there's like the cost of not having to ruin your yard and like replant it, which like there's hard and soft absolute cost to that. So I think that's the mentality of the industry. You're right. Uh, hey, if I ruin your yard should be cheaper than not ruining your yard.

And that makes so much sense when you think about it that way. We just, for whatever reason, flipped it. Like I just had this idea that. What would be a more powerful sales system mm-hmm. Would be to flip this and if I can do these Yeah. I think it makes sense. Like you're coming in at a cheaper price and like as long as think it's acceptable.

Yeah. 

Yeah. And our margin on these are, are 65%, 62, 60 5%. They're very, uh, very good because material cost is very low on them. Yeah. Our technology allows it to be very fast. 

Yeah. 

So we're doing it in a, in a very fast timeframe. And so margin's really good. 

Mm-hmm. 

And it's a no brainer for the customer.

That's why I think they have this like beautiful sales system of like marketing meets the sales system. Mm-hmm. So I talked to a lot of people. What meets appropriate price? Because I, it's price I do want to hit like the price part of it. So one of the benefits of excavation are drains in general. Like one of the attractive things about the drain business, uh, it's high margin.

Mm-hmm. So like our drain businesses are most profitable business unit, uh, I think it's like 68 to 72, like gross margin a month, which is crazy. Yeah. Excavation's high and lining's high. There's hard cost with lining of some amount per foot. I don't really know what it is. Uh, let's say 20. Like for the materials?

For the material? Yeah. Alright, so 20 bucks a foot. And so the way most people think about it is there's like, uh, maybe they sell that for what? 200? Like what do you sell per foot? Uh, 200. But with membership, you end up getting down to like about 180. So the material's about 10%. Okay. That, I mean, that still feels pretty good.

Mm-hmm. What have you, when you've talked to other people, like, I just wanna unpack pricing a little bit 'cause I'm, I'm, I think it's interesting when, when you've talked to other people that are doing lining are like, what are they at 200, 300, 400 foot? Yeah. That's a great question. We are, uh, not only are we like technically the best with the best equipment, but we're one of the cheapest.

And I think we've, like the last two years, I think we're dragging down the market, which people probably hate. But when we started a year and a half, two years ago. Other premium people I would talk to were. Two $7,300 a foot. Yeah. And so we came in. I mean, this is kind of crazy. And we've come up, I was, we were at one point early on at like 1 20, 1 30 a foot.

Yes, I remember you saying, yeah. We were crazy low. And we've steadily actually. Yeah. Like I, I think we were undervaluing ourselves. We So that would be 20% materials. Yeah. Which still is not bad. No, you're still clocking a 50 plus percent gross margin. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's, you have an incredible amount of.

Price you can play with. Yeah. And still make a very high margin. 'cause the material is not expensive. Mm-hmm. Uh, the labor, like we now have these teams on commission anyway. The labor is, is relatively fixed on a percentage basis. Yeah. And, uh, you know, we, we, we hit our sales team for discounts and expensive financing, stuff like that.

Yeah. So we, they can drop their commission. But, but no, it still works out even at, uh. At a 20%, uh, material. So it still is very profitable. So yeah. And I even, like, I go to like nexar conferences, I talk to people. Mm-hmm. And most people I talk to in lining want to be this premium option to digging very expensive and low volume.

And I decided I wanted to be extremely high volume. Mm-hmm. At a good midpoint price point. So even when people shop us. They choose us 'cause they shop us and we're cheaper and we blow them away with our team and technology. Mm-hmm. It's way better. Yeah. So it creates this like super scalable, uh, business model.

Like one thing that me and my team nerd out on is like the, a lot of our leads now, we've become very big on direct mail. 

Mm-hmm. 

So direct mail is about 25% of my leads now, and that's where most of these sewer leads come from. Is these, uh, we send mail, we send, I think this month we're sending close to a hundred thousand pieces of mail.

Mm-hmm. 

And we want to triple that to 300,000. Our limiting factor of sales guys right now. Um, and we're getting about a nine times ROAS on our mail. Mm-hmm. It's very strong. How much of it is because you think other people aren't, aren't doing lining. So I think that. Again, it's very interesting and, and I think there's like a confluence of factors in the industry.

Most of our largest competitors, the most capitalized, biggest companies, some are even bigger than us. 

Mm-hmm. 

They're 80% HVAC businesses. Yeah. 70% HVAC businesses. So all their efforts going on hvac, so do they want to drop millions of dollars in equipment for lining? When it's a tiny part of their business, they're actually shrinking and cutting sewers while we're growing at it.

Yeah. 

So these capitalized people, the best people in the industry are not even wanting to do it. If you're very small, like you can't really afford to do it, and then you have to like take a mix of factors of like, you've gotta have the marketing. You've gotta have the sales process and you've gotta be able to do the operational part.

Like it's not an easy process, like mm-hmm. It's operationally very complex. Like you saw the trailer, I mean, it's a 22 foot trailer. It looks like Breaking Bad has a mm-hmm. Ton of equipment on it. Like you gotta have a very good install team you can trust, you gotta train the heck out of 'em. Um, the sales process is very complicated 'cause we're showing up to people's houses.

They think we're gonna unclog the sewer for $93. 30% of the time we turn that into a 13,000 sale. What happens the other 60 or 70? Are you walking out with absolutely nothing or zero like a jet? No, zero. So our whole process, and I believe this is the right thing for the consumer, I said at the beginning of this conversation, do you ever walk away with 93 or is literally, I hope not.

I mean, sometimes they do, but my preference is please do not charge $93. Yeah. Yeah. Like do not charge anything. It's either we sell a liner or we get nothing. Because, and this is, this is what makes the process work. And our best people have this like embedded in their DNA. Yeah. Which is, if someone has a sewer problem, any sort of cleaning or bandaid solution is wasting money.

Mm-hmm. 

It's truly like they're gonna continue to have issues. A properly functioning sewer shouldn't have issues. And you know, most of the sewer here, old clay pipe, it doesn't get better. It gets worse. 

Mm-hmm. 

And so eventually it gets to the point where it can't be lined. You have to dig it instead of $200 a foot for lining.

Digging is a thousand dollars a foot and disruptive. And so, um, when you tee it up, it's like, it's kind of an urgent situation. Like, we don't know when this pipe's gonna fail, so do you want to gamble with spending more? You wanna just fix it now and have less headaches. So if you really internalize that, that like cleaning the pipe or waiting is bad because you're wasting money, you're paying interest of the problem, then you go in the mindset like either do nothing or line it.

Mm-hmm. And so when we do our sales process, we're educating the customer. Like, there's no such thing as cleaning a pipe, you're. If there's roots in a pipe and you rot it, you're just pulling the roots of the cracks, like what's that gonna do to a clay sewer? It's not good If you hydro jet it better, but there's still holes there.

Roots are gonna grow right back in and all you're doing is, is destabilizing the pipe more. So your most cost effective thing is a customer truly is just to line it and line it before it gets to the point. 'cause once the pipe sags too much or cracks too much, it doesn't have a shape, we can't line it anymore.

It's like a cancer. It spread too much. And so the uh, sales process during the camera inspection is, is two hours of educating that customer on the trade-offs of waiting. Why cleaning doesn't do anything. And so it's almost by the end of that process, it's like kind of insane to sell somebody a rotting or a jetting.

'cause you just spend two hours telling them that it's a waste of money. And we tell people, I don't even want your $93. Like, I don't care about your $93. Like, I'm here to help you. If you don't wanna like line your sewer, don't gimme $93. Um, so I coach the guys don't charge $93. Don't, uh, show them the cost of cleaning of a jetting so they can see it as a price comparison.

But don't spend $2,500 cleaning the sewer when you can spend 13,000 fixing it forever. And so much of the industry, even our customers, have been programmed to maintain this shoe every year. So we go to all these customers in these a hundred year old houses. And they're being what I think is scammed by companies in the industry, charging 'em $500,000 a year to just come and, and fake clean the pipe every year.

And then, oh, it's not cleanable anymore. $7,000 spot repair. And that's how the industry is programmed to, that's how every sewer company operates, pretty much. Mm-hmm. So we've kind of flipped this whole model in the way we talk to customers. Um, how do you handle what I think is probably like an obvious problem?

We're saying we're coming out to do a $93 thing and we're basically just not, so like there's the potential for reputational harm. Mm-hmm. Like how do you handle that? Because I would assume that is a lot of pushback. Like if I listen to like craft recordings or whatever. Mm-hmm. I'm assuming that that would come up.

So how's Yeah. No, it's a good point. You'd be surprised It's, uh. Maybe 2% of the calls we get a complaint about. It's very low. Um, because again, like if you, if you go through this process from a point of like empathy with a customer, like, like, first of all, like it's free. I don't want your $93, like this is free.

You're not spending any money. I'm gonna educate you for two hours. Mm-hmm. And its gonna be very educational and you're gonna get so much value out of learning. People are, are, and they, they come out of it. They understand like, okay, I do have a problem. Like you do have a problem. They didn't charge me a dime and now I have a consideration.

Like, do I wanna make this preventative investment or not? 

Mm-hmm. 

And so, uh, I think like the value we do in the two hour process way overcompensates, the $0, we're charging them. It's just their time. Yeah. So it's not that we, we've had a couple of those, like I said, maybe 2%, if someone's really adamant about rotting it and it's safe to rot it, we'll send a, we have one or two people that we can send that will go do the rotting.

Truthfully, when you do the camera inspection, a lot of these pipes, you really honestly should not rod like you, you can actually cause damage, blow out these pipes, make them more fragile. Mm-hmm. So we also tell people that like, you see this gigantic hole on the side of this. Like, do you want me to take this metal?

Pulling, spinning thing and like, put this through this right now. 

Mm-hmm. 

And like if you do, that's like, we'll do it, but if it breaks, like we are not responsible for that. Yeah. This feels, uh, I was thinking about the excavation versus lining and like how to approach price. It feels in a good way, like one day bath style.

Mm-hmm. 

Just as far as I'm like, everyone's trying to aim for this premium thing, but like, at the end of the day. It's bath fitter. Mm-hmm. Like, we're putting a tub over a tub. Right. We're putting a pipe inside a pipe. Right. So it makes sense that a full bath, like, so the consumer's already trained that like, okay, putting a tub over a tub should be cheaper than a full bath replacement.

Mm-hmm. It just should be. 

Yeah. 

Uh, and that's feels like this in a good way, I think because we've already been sort of like trained to do exactly that. Yeah. I, I, I agree with that point you're making, I think the, uh, the biggest headwind is like. What I think the industry, I mentioned it a second ago, what I think the industry has done in like a bullshit way to consumers, a negative way to consumers, which is like, blindly clean this and pay me and pay this company a 500 to a thousand dollars.

Yeah, that's definitely ridiculous. Like we, we've bought, um, we bought people's, like, we bought a couple drain businesses and they were like. They were like, yeah, it's 200 bucks a year. It's like passive income. And I'm like, that's really weird. Like why don't you just like offer them a replacement? Yeah. And for 200 a night, oh, I didn't even know that we could replace this.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a kind of a silly. It was kind of silly and it's half-assed, like mm-hmm. They're not even, like, a lot of 'em are not even cameraing it. So they're taking $700 from you, half-assing the cleaning, and if you were to camera it right after the cleaning, like Yeah. Almost nothing's been done.

Yeah. Because the prices they're charging, like to actually clean it carefully and fully, you could spend six hours cleaning a sewer. 

Yeah. 

And so you're charging somebody four, $500 for six hours of work. Like it doesn't actually make sense. Yeah. So it's actually like the whole industry operates in a way that I think is less ethical than what we're doing.

Yeah. Yeah. So how, uh, how often are you guys jetting right now? So, well here, let's unpack, drain the drain industry really quick, or like the way that it's usually gonna work. So there is, uh, like you call it rotting, we call it, uh, snaking or drilling. Um, but like you're gonna use a metal coiled machine and it's gonna like, wrap around inside a sewer.

Uh, so that's one that's probably like the lowest brow option. The next like option is jetting. So someone's gonna come in and it's like a pressure washer, super high powered pressure washer. Yeah. And it's gonna blow out the issue. Um, then the next is like spot replacement. So like, hey, this is exactly where the issue is, we're gonna solve this problem.

And then finally, full replacement. So that's like the, the layers of, uh, of drain. So how many, like, are you guys frequently jetting? Are you frequently. Doing any, yeah. What are you doing on the maintenance side? I guess non non replacement. How often does that happen? Yeah, so if we go to a call where a customer has a sewer issue or just wants us to like do a camera inspection or do the $93, we do the camera inspection.

Our options will typically be, um, we'll show somebody what'll cost to, we, we're not gonna give you a rotting option, like we don't believe in it. Um, if you really want us to, we'll do it, but like, it's, it's not the right thing to do. So we'll start with a jetting or an advanced cleaning. Like you could do some descaling stuff, but we'll call it, we'll just say jetting.

So we'll start with a 2,500 option. Then we'll show you what a spot repair to dig would cost, and it could be an actual spot repair or we'll call it a theoretical spot repair. And they'll say that's $8,000 and that covers five feet of pipe replacement. So we could do a, a cleaning of this for $2,500. We can replace five feet for $8,000, or we can replace 60 feet trenchless for $13,000.

Mm-hmm. 

And by the way, if you ever have to dig, if you're responsible for the street part, the tap where it connects to the city, and you ever have to dig that it's 25,000. 

Mm-hmm. 

And so this is your line, your sewer line, it's 70 feet, whatever it is. Here are all the parts that are compromised and like a cancel.

They're going out. So you want to spend $2,500 to clean this. Yeah. Which is temporary. Every five foot section you have to dig is $8,000. But if it's in the street, which happens all the time to people, now you're out $25,000. Mm-hmm. Or once and for all for 13,000. Do you wanna just get this done right now?

And so we tee up kind of this like gambling math equation for people. Like, do you want to gamble on $2,500? Do you wanna gamble on $20,000? Mm-hmm. Or do you want peace of mind for 13,000? Because, and then well paying interest of the problem is a good way to paying interest the problem, paying a tax. A lot of people are like, oh, I might sell my home.

Well, guess what? In the state of Illinois you have to disclose and Oh yeah. Own. Oh yeah. That's become like a thing in, that's become a huge thing in Cleveland. It's kind of ridiculous. What? Like ridiculous. In the well sewers. Yeah. It went from like, um. I feel like it's kind of the, the new thing, to be honest, like I remember 10 years ago it was radon.

Like everything was fucking radon This, radon that. 

Yeah. 

And like all the radon companies are shut down now. And so like, maybe we have to be careful with drains, but like, it is definitely sewers. I, I don't think they require cameras, but it, I think it's not far off that you will have to camera every single time.

A huge home inspections at this point always include camera, home inspectors are including it. Yep. Buyers are smart about it. Agents are smart. It's $20,000. I mean, it's a car, like it's literally a car. It's an HVAC system. Yeah. Yeah. It's a huge part of the inspection now. Yeah. If you as a homeowner have had issues, it's on the seller disclosure form for your house.

Yeah. You have to disclose it. So we tell people is, when you go to sell this house, what do you think that's gonna do to the value? And we, we, we actually see this like, you're gonna, you're gonna get penalized at the negotiation table. Yeah. You're gonna get penalized for a bigger amount. Yeah. So again, like, do you want to gamble with that?

Yeah. So you can kind of just like circle the wagons on this wholesale system. Yeah. Where like the smartest thing to do is just to align it right now. 

Mm-hmm. 

And then we have all kinds of financing options, term loans. Yep. No interest, no payment promo loans. Yep. Then we can get it down to, you know, $170 a month.

And so it's, uh, yeah, it's kind of a no brainer. Are you still running your business on pen and paper or a clunky software Field? Pulse is the top rated field service management platform that saves you five to 10 hours a week. It syncs with QuickBooks and it puts scheduling, invoicing, and more all in one place.

Field Pulse users grow 78% a year on average. Book your demo today using the link in the description. And get 15% off an annual plan. Field pulse, a field service management software for those who need more. I think. So the sales process, I'm trying to like equate it to a different industry. I like the idea of the bath fitters comparison.

Is there another industry that you feel like, well, I think about it a lot actually compared to HVAC. Like I, I've thought a lot about, a lot of it's HVAC. It's just, it's HVAC's, not preventative. No. And it's also like. It's harder to tee up kind of like the bad case scenario in HVAC, like mm-hmm. Okay. Your, your thing goes out and then Yeah.

It's cold for a day. So where it differs with hvac, like there's a lot of areas, but first off, HVAC is like, depending on your buying power, 30 to 50% of that job is material. So like you just have less wiggle room. Yeah. Which is amazing. Your ability to sort of sell down is limited with hvac. Like, Hey, I've got this system at $20,000 and I have a cheaper system at 12, and if you don't wanna replace the whole system, you can do this one at five or something.

But like that's different than drains where it might be like, Hey. Yeah. 25, 10. 2,500. Like you have a, you have an option where it's still like a good size something, whereas like hvac, you don't usually have that. And just to be like, uh, really blunt, there's much less competition. I mean, there is just much less competition in Cleveland.

There's like one other company that lines maybe two. So it's just not like a thing versus uh, there's 161 HVAC companies Yeah. That we compete against. So similar equipment. Yeah. Which, yeah, like a box is a box now who installs it and there's a bunch of value add stuff you can dive into. But at the end of the day, it is a, it is a competitive 

mm-hmm.

Uh, field. I've thought about more from like even the sales process though of like. You know, in HVAC, again, similar to nor most trained businesses, it's normal to send a repair technician, a service technician. Yeah. And then flip it to a comfort advisor In that way, it's very similar to hvac. Yes. And so I've thought about it a lot.

Like we turned that on its head and we dropped the drain techs. Yeah. Like why don't more HVAC companies drop the repair tech, service tech first and just send their, and I know some do in like you guys are, have a modified version of this. Well, the, I mean, the reality is they'd get sued. Like that's. They would just straight up get sued.

Companies have done that. And those are the companies that get, like, they're on the news with the attorney General. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm sure there's a few cases. So hvac, there's also like a thing around building val, like the, the, the idea of, and same in the drain business, when you send someone 

mm-hmm. 

Is that repair person, that drain tech.

They're building value in that part so that when someone else comes in, there's already been value built that they're going out to. Yeah. Well, and HVAC. Is people are more aware of hvac. Like HVAC is like a notorious industry. It has a bad rep and frankly, a well deserved bad rep. Right. Um, where. So the consumer knows less, the contractor knows more.

And if you go through most like bad reviews of HVAC systems, it's exactly the problem you're just describing. Oh, all they did was come up and try to sell me a system. Yeah. Like the Reddits, you know, the Nextdoor conversations, the Facebook groups, it's all just that. Whereas drains doesn't have the same perception.

Whereas like with hvac, like if I think of like the hyperawareness of someone. If someone's walking in with hvac, a consumer is like a 15 out of 10 hyper aware. Yeah, they're gonna get multiple bids because they don't trust, there's zero industry trust in hvac. And again, some of it's well deserved, uh, because some like people maybe like did well stuff, I don't know.

Whereas for drains, that's just not a thing. Like, it's just absolutely not a thing at all. Like there's. There's trust walking in, there's a lot more trust walking in. So I don't know, but yeah, that part's very different. Yeah, very. I'm sure that's different. Yeah. Yeah. One, one of our big anecdotes this year, I think most people are seeing it, but like, uh, it used to be that most, um, most HVAC companies, like it's the same process where like you have marketed leads, but you also have tech flip leads and tech flip leads are like the easy ones.

Yeah. Like you have higher close rates, usually a better average ticket. Uh, but today in like 2025, the industry's. Taken on a ton of headwinds because of like a variety of factors. The weather was less cooperative. So we have a friend here and he's in LA and the weather, it was a very cold summer in la Yeah.

Like it was the summer that didn't start. Uh, so that was a big part. Um, there was a horrible refrigeration changeover process. Like they literally ran outta refrigerant so people couldn't install systems. It was like selling cars That's wild. With no gas. Like it's wild. It was crazy. That was like a 60 day period where you couldn't even like.

You could sell a $20,000 system and not be able to actually use it, which is obviously a horrible experience. And then the macro of like, Hey, if everything's gonna finance this, it's basically a car. You know, someone just found out they have to buy a car, like $20,000 system. Uh, but debt to income's really high, the consumer's stretched and financing is like getting declined at a higher and higher rate.

Mm-hmm. So, yeah. So HVAC is like up against it. And I think that, uh, drains is like. Necessary. Less competitive. Yeah. It's the same business model where it's like the tech comes in and flips, or in this case doesn't, but like, that's normally how it works. The tech comes in and flips. The average ticket is, what's your average liner?

Ours is like 12. 12 ish? Yeah. Yeah. Our average shoe is 12. Our average HVAC job is 11. 

Yeah. 

So, so, uh, and this is like way higher margin. Yeah. And 70% margin versus like, we fight for every single percentage point on hvac, like. Tooth and nail. Well, and And I think the competition is even more or less developed.

So like, oh yeah. Most HVAC companies are quite intelligent. Well-run sales processes, both professional. Yeah. You're not competing against, this is a joke I think about, and you probably remember this too, 'cause you came in in like 2022 and there were still people being like, yeah, plumbing, HVAC. Like you're competing against people with a fax machine.

Yeah. I'm like, that is not who you're fucking competing against. Yeah. No, that, that's crazy. You are competing against. Real intelligent funded competitors like maybe 10 years ago, like today, that is not, that's not remotely the case. I think that is more true in sewers today, I think. I think it's, they're not fax machines, but they're, uh, again, the industry is run on like people doing more unethical practices.

Doing, uh, just like being more like bootleg, like it's just more bootleg competition than, 

yeah. 

Than, so I think we're coming in with a, it's a dirty business. It's a dirty business, and I think it's like more hillbilly like competition. Um, and so I think we come in like very professional, very transparent, very open 

mm-hmm.

With an offer that I think is legitimately better than other people. We tell people, go ahead and get five quotes. Like, I guarantee you it's not a better quote than ours. Yeah. Like, it's not gonna beat us on price. Well, I think the hyper, like, the part that is the most interesting is the, the price part, because you are literally delivering the, the lowest price probably.

Yeah. Which that value for sure. Yeah. I, I think that's kind of interesting and I think, I mean, it makes sense again, like back to the bath fitters thing, like it makes sense if, if this is, like, if you're not fully digging it up and replacing it, it should probably cost less. Mm-hmm. And like the industry has gone the opposite way and like we've gone the opposite way.

The way that we price is the opposite. Like excavation's the cheap one 'cause we're destroying a yard. But, uh, yeah, you can, and like that like makes sense if you think about it like, oh, I'm not destroying the yard, so I should be able to charge you more. Like I'm creating more value for you. Yes. But for us, we really think we're competing against doing nothing Inertia.

It's like, yeah, I need to bring the price down so that I can get you to Well, and you can bring the price down and I can bring, I think that's probably the most important part is you can bring it. I can, yeah. Because, you know, versus hvac, there's a very hard cost inside hvac, whereas drains, like you could still clip a 70% gross margin and take a 20% discount.

Yeah. Like, that's crazy. Absolutely. Yeah. That's really interesting. What else about the sales process do you think sets it apart? I, I think we dived like very deep into the. Honestly, into the sales process, I think is different. I think, uh. You made, you made a point to me the other day that I think I'm just gonna like, repeat on here.

I'm gonna word it my way, but the sales process is what sets it apart. Mm-hmm. And, and the, so the way that you describe it is, oh, it's our unclogs for Dogs Pro. Yeah. So then what usually people are gonna hone in on is like, what's the promo? Show me the flyer. Show me the flyer, show me, which, I mean, I do wanna see the language would be interesting, but I'll give you a really good example.

Yeah. 

Uh, so like I was, we're thinking about, um, like we have hvac and for us in 2025, HVAC was gonna be like our big investment. So last year, 2024, HVAC grew like 60%. Like it was crazy. Wow. It was tough to keep up with and like, it was like going and like we really won and we were so excited about it. And then.

Uh, this year, like HVAC still grew, but like. We took market share, we grew, we installed more boxes like, you know, we did more jobs. So like, okay. We're really happy about that. And we, we grew like 10% in a year that the industry shrunk. 40. 

Yeah. 

Wow. So like, fuck. Yeah. Like, all right, we're on one hand. We're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And on the other hand, it's like, plumbing grew 25%. We didn't try that much. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

So we're like, and got it. Like, we clear, like, why are we fighting this fight? Yeah. Um. Poor gasoline and what's burning. Yeah. Yeah. So as, as we're thinking about this, um, I've been like, over the last month, sort of just like unpacking my thoughts on it and, uh, we, what was interesting was, uh, yeah, it's, it like our sales process is flawed for sewers for a couple reasons.

One, I think like cheaper. Lining makes total sense to me, especially like nailing it to that bath fitter's analogy helps. Uh, so that helps me. Uh, but like I, I pulled up, we have drains inside our membership program. We have like 2000 some members and we ran 80 membership drain tuneups. We sold one. Yeah, I got some crazy That's a sales process on that too.

Like that's a pure, like all that is, is us doing like not running a sales process at all. Uh, which was, which was interesting. So I, I think to my. To your point, like it doesn't really matter what the promo is or if it's in the membership or like, none of that really matters. Like we didn't, we got 80 leads and we delivered on one, so 79 times we totally whiffed.

Yeah, no, that, that's a, that's a great point. So like a huge percentage of our sewer business is not. 93 oncologists for dogs. It's also our membership program. Yeah. Which all my maintenance membership techs have cameras. Yeah. Roughly 30 ish percent of maintenance visits. We go to the maintenance tech, flips it to a, a senior sewer person.

Yeah. And 40% of that time we sell a liner. Yeah. So our membership program has now gone from, and, you know, four months ago, five months ago, we had, similar to what you just said, we had zero coming out of our membership program. Now it's at like a. $6 million run rates. Mm-hmm. Of. But we also just weren't even looking.

I mean, when I went to go get that data, no one had it. Yeah. And it was like, okay, well like I already know it's gonna be bad. Like if we're not looking at this, like it's not gonna be bad. For sure. Bad we're not converting like 80% of them. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. But it was funny, like 80 calls and we, we sold once, so 79 times we just like didn't deliver Well and I'll call in like another episode you did like we actually do some bath modeling also.

We won't go there, but Yeah. Uh, you had those Premier Home Pros guys on Yeah. And I've listened to all their stuff quite a bit. Um, and really what they're amazing at and their whole business is essentially their sales process. Actually everything is outsourced except this in-home sales process. Yes. And they've and call center, but Yeah.

Yeah. But like, you know, they buy a lot of leads. Yeah. They subcontract labor Yep. For install, but they've gone so deep on their sales process and the psychology and honing it. Yeah. And yeah, I think there's something like very cool about like when you do one thing. You obsess over it, like you get very good at it.

Yeah. And so they, you know, they're, all of their success is through their sales process. Mm-hmm. Our sewer success, which is, you know, not as, as big as theirs, but, you know, growing very rapidly, you know, doing, you know, we're selling probably $20 million a year of just sewers now. Mm-hmm. Um. Is, uh, is this sales process and like how it connects with all the things we talked about that we do, and if the, the leads can come in through membership flips.

Yep. On maintenances, they can come in through mail. 

Mm-hmm. 

Um, but if you don't have the right sales process, it breaks down. Like, let's take mail for example. We send a hundred thousand letters. 

Yeah. 

Our response rate is only 0.35%. 

Yeah. 

That someone books from the mail. So we send out, so that's 350. Uh, yeah, that sounds right.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so that's the, uh. That's how many leads you get that come from all that mail You saying, get that many leads. Those are the $93 uncalled for dogs leads. 

Yeah. 

Now you're walking into those, your salesmen and only 30% of the time they're gonna sell something. The rest of the time it's a zero.

Yeah. 

Most people in the industry, in sewers are used to these backed up main lines that used sell an 80% clip. Yeah. So now you're taking somebody who's used to selling 80%. Yeah. And you're having them to run a sales process that's 30% and most people can't handle it and they break down. Yeah. So we're actually bringing people in.

This is another differentiated thing. We're hiring HVAC salesmen and teaching them the sewer process. Yeah. To me that makes sense. Um, 'cause it's not very technically complicated. Yeah. And they're used to a more difficult sales process with a lower close rate. Yeah. We're talking and much more competitive.

Like much more competitive. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This would be like candy. So, uh, yeah. So, so that's our number one source actually our, our HVC salesman to, to grow this. It's kinda like a math. Are you posting the job as HVC sales or like how do you post that To attract, um, or like in home, home service sales or, uh, no.

We post as sewer sales, but we write at the top and very big, like you don't have to have any experience. We called outreach to HVC salesmen. Yeah. I'm like, how do you optimize on the HVC salesperson? Message them, like find them on Indeed and send them a message and say, we got something better for you. A little less competitive.

Yeah. Um, car salesman we're looking at too. Yeah. H-V-A-C-I mean, that would hit right now, like there's companies, um, I mean, HVAC is on like multiple years of just g getting like punched in the face. Yeah. But like we have competitors that just, they just laid off all their salespeople last week. Like it's kind of wild.

We are interviewing, it is insane. How many, one to $2 million comfort advisors we are interviewing right now. Mm-hmm. Who yet are in the shitter? They have, they're selling one to $2 million a year. It's on a very small number of leads. Like, we'll interview a, a one to 2 million company advisor, they've only ran a hundred leads in the last year.

Yeah. And, um, they're having to discount a lot 'cause it's very competitive. And then their commission gets whacked. 

Yep. 

So they're, they're selling, you know, one to $2 million, but they're getting 4% commission because their commission's getting whacked down. Yeah. And they're running a lead every two or three days.

Yeah. 

And so it's, it is very attractive. And so we can, you know, we. Are continuing to hone the sales process and we needed, need to do a better job, obviously, like building out the training program for it and immortalizing it. But, and the way this developed too was like very organic. Like we, we didn't start off with the sales process the way it is.

We started off actually just like marketing the oncology for dogs. 'cause I heard someone else doing it. I was like, okay, this will be drain leads. Like we'll do it. And then we had one of our salesmen that kind of like developed all this process by himself. Like just. To be able to like make something of these calls.

He started like toying with some of these things. 

Mm-hmm. 

And I was talking to him a bunch. You know, I'm very in the weeds of my business, so I'm talking to the sewer salesman a lot about like, well, like what's going on on these calls? Like, what are you doing? What's working, what's not working? And that kind of created this process.

And so now we bring someone new in, we have them do, you know, one to two weeks of ride alongs with people to see this process. And so they can, you know. Basically build this and then we send them to a Nexar class. Yeah. And we kind of just like build this process around this. Yeah. Are you thinking about turning up your marketing in the new year?

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Service Scalers handles everything. They handle setup, management, and strategy, so you can stay focused on running the jobs. Don't wait. Head to service scalers.com and tell them owned and operated, sent you to get started. That was a good deep dive on drains, on lining. I feel like we covered pretty much like the whole thing.

I, I even, I like that we got into some of the economics behind it too. 'cause I feel like that's gonna be like a, i, I think that's gonna come up is like, all right, how much does this actually cost? How much does tip price it for? So I'm just gonna repeat that really quick. Like roughly cost is. $20 a foot of material, there's probably $10 a foot or something of labor.

And uh, then you can figure out the rest. Like, do you sell it for a hundred? Do you sell it for 200, 300, whatever. I don't know what we're selling it for. My guess is like 2 70, 2 80, but like, I'll look once we're done with this, I'm, I'm pretty curious. We have struggled. Selling not, I wouldn't say struggle.

We sell more digs than linings. And it's, I think it's because exactly the approach that we're taking. We're not taking the Bath Fitter approach. We're like, this should be cheaper. Um, well, if I can too. I think the, the other thing people do is they price it higher and then their team skews excavation because they don't get the right equipment.

So it's technically harder. So like to do it in the way we do it, it's because we put so much money, we put so much CapEx. They're like, we can do the replacements. Mm-hmm. The lining, which I think that's probably the most important thing with drains that like we didn't say, it's incredibly expensive. It's incredibly expensive.

I mean, even, uh, yeah. I mean e excavation, like each team is like $150,000 for sure. Uh, like the jet trucks are $150,000. Lining trailers are 200. It's incredibly expensive. It's incredibly expensive. Yeah. Essentially every one of our sewer salesmen almost needs their own 300,000 trailer to support them.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's a shockingly expensive, uh, business, but there's equipment financing out there. Yep. Uh, that pro probably finances all of it or most of it. Uh, we've started doing that more historically. No, we've just cash, we've just cashed it, but we're financing it more now. Yeah. So we can, so like probably three grand a month or something, like that's what septic trucks are, or they used to be for us.

Uh, we haven't bought one in a while, but like, it was a quarter million dollar truck and it's like 3,500 bucks a month. I mean, that's a function of like what down payment and duration you want. Um, I think, uh, you know, we're doing, the ones we're looking at doing are more like money, seeing it for three years, but the hefty down payment.

So, but it just, yeah, it depends what you wanna do. All right. I'm gonna hit the other KPIs real quick 'cause I didn't do that yet. Um, so average tickets roughly 12, we're gonna see three to four appointments a day per sales person. Mm-hmm. We have a 30% close rate. Eight jobs a week. Sound right? Run. Uh, let's say you run, um, 15 and then sell probably, um, four, maybe.

Okay. Uh, so each salesperson, what's that? $2 million is a good, okay. I'd say, I'd say, uh, yeah, two to $3 million is good. All right. 180 grand a month. And then we've got an install crew. You said a one-to-one ratio? Essentially A little. Maybe it's like, um. Point seven ratio, but it's, it's pretty multi days.

Yeah. I would assume that you run into a couple multi days. Yes. I mean we didn't talk about this, but less so 'cause now we built this whole prep department. Yes. That pre goes out and like makes shorter. That makes sense. That makes sense. Alright, so and then each install crew at 0.7, like they're probably a million and a half to two and a half million per crew installed a year.

Two, 2 million. And then we're, we're working to stretch that with prep to get 'em to 3 million. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because that's gonna reduce the investment. You, you will have to bring on less trailers to fulfill the same amount of work. Okay. So now by prepping, we're trying to get a trailer to do two liners in a day.

Yeah. Having someone out go before. Because, uh, half the process of lining is actually cleansing the sewer so that you can Oh, it takes hours. Yeah, it takes hours, like half and you have to do the whole kote and like jet it and yeah, it's an involved process. So we're having people go out ahead. So we have now prep people that will go out and prep two sewers a day.

So they'll go out and do the whole process, measure everything, prep it, cut it. Not, we're not that far yet. But that's even like a whole future state is Could you Yeah. Well I, I went prefab, I went down to Chris, uh, Hoffman's place and they were Prefabbing in office. They had a whole fab room. Yeah. We're, we're, we're exploring that.

That is our feature. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That it makes a lot of sense. And they only had two, uh, like active jets or, um, active, uh, trailers. Uh, yeah, like. Lining lining trailers. Mm-hmm. So, um, I don't know. It was kind of interesting. I don't remember how much they did a year, but it was like 70% margin. Like it's a, it's a machine of a business.

This was awesome, dude. Yeah. Thanks. Uh, yeah. If people want to connect with you, where can they find you? LinkedIn X are my two main platforms. I posted decent amount of content, so feel free to call me dropping bids on the linked dropping videos. Yeah. Awesome. All right, thanks for having us out. Uh, for those who are listening, uh, if you could do us a favor and subscribe or give us a five star review wherever it's you, listen to shows.

Helps my mom know that people like me. Thank you.