Full transcript10 chapters · 9,659 words
00:00Told at 10 he’d never graduate, and the teacher who fought
Bob Beall: My implosion started in 2005. Phones were ringing off the hooks. I went out and bought three dump trucks and excavators and put on eight more guys. Okay, looking back at it, I would have not done, not bought three. I would, you know, I hate to say it,
Bob Beall: I would have raised the rates on the work that I had and just done the same amount of work and been more profitable.
Tyler Martin: Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue-collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We’ll dig into their journeys from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line with lessons and grit that pay off big.
Tyler Martin: Here’s your host, the blue-collar CFO, Tyler Martin. Bob Beal has spent about 40 years in plumbing, but his path into the trades was anything but typical. Bob is legally blind, and when he was 10 years old, a school administrator told his parents he would never graduate from public school.
Tyler Martin: He not only graduated, he went on to earn a college degree. He became a plumber, learning much of the trade by feel, and eventually built a career owning and operating plumbing companies. Along the way, he’s built a company, sold it, started over, learned some expensive lessons about what happens when growth gets ahead of the numbers.
Tyler Martin: And at one point, the phones were ringing, so Bob added trucks, equipment, and people quickly. Looking back, he says he would have done it differently, very differently. Instead of chasing more work, he would have raised his prices, taken on less, and focused harder on profitability.
Tyler Martin: In this episode, Bob walks through that experience, how he learned to trade with his visual impairment, what selling his first company taught him, and how he eventually made the transition from plumber to CEO. We also get into how Bob runs the business today,
Tyler Martin: what he’s learned along the way, and the numbers he pays attention to as the company has grown. There’s a ton of experience packed into this one. Let’s get into it with Bob now. Hey, Bob, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How’s it going today?
Bob Beall: Pretty good, pretty good. How about you?
Tyler Martin: Pretty good. I’m really excited to have you. We’re going to do this in two parts. We decided we did a pre-call, and once I started hitting you with all kinds of questions, you said, whoa, man, we’re going to need more than one show. So I’m excited about that. I’d love for you to
Tyler Martin: share with the audience a little bit about yourself. Can you tell us what you do professionally?
Bob Beall: And then I’d love to know a little personal tidbit too. Well, I mean, professionally, I own plumbing companies. I’m a plumber by trade. Been plumber. A couple of years ago, this little girl asked me, I was telling her where cast iron stacks ran. And I was telling
Bob Beall: her where they ran. She says, how do you know? I said, I’ve been doing this a few days. And she goes, looks at me and says, how long? And this was in 24. And I said, well, I hate to tell you, Priscilla, it’s been 40 years. I almost had to pull a calculator out to figure it out.
Bob Beall: It was, you know, I started when I was a junior in high school. It was my first plumbing job I
Tyler Martin: went to with my dad. Wow. What about something on the personal side, Bob, that you could share
Bob Beall: about yourself? I got four kids, three of them, my ex-wife and I adopted, and I got two granddaughters. I got a six-year-old granddaughter and, you know, adopting the kids. And I’ve probably the best personal thing I could talk about, you know, other than the visual impairment. I think we’re
Bob Beall: going to get into that. So, yeah. And I just got my first dog on my own. What kind of dog? St. Bernard.
Tyler Martin: Oh, wow. That’s a huge dog. Is it a puppy? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He’s eight weeks old.
Bob Beall: oh wow you’re in for it don’t they get to be is about 200 pounds they get to well there the guy got this through the breeder he said he’s probably gonna hit 175 180 wow that is a big dog i love big dogs i have we were just talking i have three of my own they’re all they’re all 90 plus pounds
Tyler Martin: but i’ve never i’ve never gone to you know 175 saint bernard’s a big one uh yeah it’s like you know i did some research and i found the most the most passive calm large dog they said he’s Great Dane or St. Bernard. And St. Bernard’s a little more stocky. And I kind of like that.
Bob Beall: I like alignment. I had last thing before we get going here. I had a great dog that had part lab and part Great Dane. And she was probably about 110 pounds. Most beautiful dog. And her personality was so chill. I mean, here’s this big dog. And I don’t think she could even bark or
Tyler Martin: growl if you tried to make her. She was so gentle. Yeah. And I named this one Mellow because he’s
Bob Beall: still come. Yeah, that’s cool. I love that. That’s a good name. Okay, so I want to start somewhat from the beginning. So in the beginning, you know, a principal at age 10 said to you, hey, you’ll never graduate public school. What did you do with that at 10 years old? I want to kind of
Tyler Martin: set the table just to learn more about you. Well, that’s a good story. So what happened was, is, you know, you got to put everything back in perspective. But back in the 70s, they treated people with physical disabilities as if they were mentally challenged,
Tyler Martin: and they kind of lumped you all together. So I went to this special school. It was not my home school. It was like they had a sight-saving class. And the teacher, you go to class, the teacher, five hours a day, and they’re a couple hours a day in the sight-saving class.
Tyler Martin: So this teacher and I got into a small dispute over a library book. And then the next day, my mom and dad and the school and the superintendent, or not superintendent, the school psychologist came with my mom and dad from my homeschool to the school in Ashtabula, Ohio.
Tyler Martin: And the people from the school in Ashtabula said, I’ll never graduate public school. And Mr. Loofboro said, he will graduate from my school. So Mr. Loofboro made sure I graduated. and I went on and got a bachelor’s degree.
Bob Beall: Wow. So he was basically in your court. Is that?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, Mr. Lufbrun was still in my court. Him and I actually reconnected a few months ago. We got a mutual friend that I’m a friend with that actually grew up by him. And so him and I were going to Cleveland for a football game.
Tyler Martin: And Joe says to me, do you know Mr. Lufbrun? I says, oh God, yeah. Is he still alive? Yeah, he’s still kicking. He’s 80-some years old. And one day, my buddy Joe and I stopped by and seen him. Great guy. Remembers everything like yesterday.
Tyler Martin: And I gave him a hug. I had to.
06:47Learning to plumb by feel without looking under the sink
Tyler Martin: That’s awesome.
Bob Beall: Now, Bob, was that at the point that you see it as something to overcome and start using it as fuel? Or at what point does it become, hey, I don’t have a disability. I’m going to overcome this?
Tyler Martin: Well, you know, you know, Mr. Luke Burrell back then, again, this was back in 1980 or 79, something like that. He said to my mom and dad, he says, you know, he’s got to know his limitations growing up because there are some things you can’t do.
Tyler Martin: Obviously, I can’t drive, you know, see, you know, got to know my limitations. So I always remember that phrase like yesterday. And, you know, it’s funny. There’s things I try to do, you know, that I struggle to see doing. And, you know, we didn’t have the technology then.
Tyler Martin: You know, with iPads and iPhones today, you can blow up a letter. I mean, they had technology, but it wasn’t like it is today. Right. Okay.
Bob Beall: So your dad pulled you into plumbing. Most guys in the trade, they learn visually, obviously. Watching, pointing, showing, stuff like that. How did you learn the craft being visually impaired?
Tyler Martin: You know, I’ve been asked that question a lot. I bet.
Bob Beall: And my ex-wife said it the best. my ex-wife said that i was the only person that could change a faucet without ever putting my head underneath the sink you know that’s that’s just what i could do i mean and i still can you know nowadays like nowadays sometimes i got to read the instructions because they make all
Bob Beall: kinds of funny connectors that they didn’t make back then but you know back then it was just a basin wrench two supply lines and a couple nuts holding the faucet down and uh you just i guess you just do what you got to do yeah was is it all basically just by feel is that how you yeah yeah
Bob Beall: yeah i mean you know obviously i got to read like if it’s a moen faucet or delta faucet you know i got to see enough to know what i’m feeling you know i never was good at soldering i mean i have i can solder but that’s not it’s not my forte got you know like if we were if i
Bob Beall: did when i did some new construction i’d mark the house out and let somebody else throw the hole because they got to be perfectly straight. I’m a little weak at that. But other than that, I guess you just do it. And then, you know, like I had a great teacher.
Bob Beall: You know, I still teach these kids today. If you do new work, you know, first thing you do is put the toilet flanges in and cut the holes for the tubs and showers. You know, then you plumb from there, you build your Christmas tree
Bob Beall: and take it out the roof.
Tyler Martin: Sorry, Bob. Did that change? Does it change the way you train your own technicians? in terms of how you approach that? Is it more process-driven training because of it? Or how do you train your typical technician now?
Bob Beall: You know, it’s all over the board. Okay. You know, I got some guys, they’ll call me,
09:37Starting B&C for phone book placement, selling it in 2002
Bob Beall: and I got this one young kid that would call me, and I would walk them through how to change a pressure switch on a weld pump. I can’t see to change it, but, you know, I said, marking the cover of the pressure switch is a wiring diagram.
Bob Beall: you know l1 and l2 you know it’s just just what you do yeah okay now i want to talk about bnc plumbing this is gets into the business side of things by the way bob i love your story you have such a great story so bnb plumbing you started from scratch bnc yeah bnc and you ultimately sold
Tyler Martin: it yeah talk to me i’d love to know that story now what i’d love to dig in a little bit here most owners never even build one company and you’ve you’ve done it now twice so i’d love to
Bob Beall: just know let’s start with bnc all right so i graduated high school in 1985 when i worked for my dad for four or five years on and off and i and i spent a couple years at cleveland state i actually tried to wrestle at cleveland state um but wrestling d1’s tough so i met my i i had some
Bob Beall: money saved up and i was broke so i said i got to get a job so i wouldn’t apply for a job and uh the dispatcher her name was carol i ended up needing a driver one night so she offered to drive me around uh and the company that i worked for was going under so i said to carol i said let’s
Bob Beall: start our own and there was already an abc in cleveland i said so and bob and carol and beal and cavanaugh was the names i said let’s just call it bnc that way we could get a good placement in the phone book so we started that in 95 and uh had it for five years and sold in 2002
Bob Beall: uh service master which one of their one of their divisions was ars rescuator so i built that and sold it added to probably 1.6 million seven trucks roughly seven eight trucks you know i learned the money was in the ground but that’s when i learned it and uh that’s pretty good in a nutshell yeah
Bob Beall: i had a no compete clause for three years i worked for them for nine months and i’m part of company a little bit of rough terms, but I was happy to part. And then I bought the Mr. Reuter plumbing
Tyler Martin: in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yeah. And you started, so, so you sold that, you worked with them for nine months. When you say, just cause I feel like there could be a learning lesson here, I don’t want to get into too much details, but what was the lesson that you learned when selling it and
Tyler Martin: then staying on? Was it that they were just doing things a lot differently than you were doing it? Or was there anything in particular that you learned from that and it not working with them?
Bob Beall: Well, I mean, I guess the lesson I can give your listeners, okay, is if you go to sell a company, make sure you have people that are on your team. You know, have a lawyer, an accountant. You know, I was young. I was 27, 28 years old.
Bob Beall: I was more excited. Well, I was more excited to sell it than I was realizing the no compete clause, realizing, you know, what my obligations were.
12:33Buying Mr. Rooter in Pittsburgh and burning through capital
Bob Beall: Because I sold it on an earn out. you know and if a few years ago i sold another one i sold another mr reuter and uh this time i read my contract in detail and made sure that i could comply with what was my obligations right
Tyler Martin: so when you say non-compete you quickly realize hey i can’t just start something up a block down i’ve i’ve got to figure this out if i want to make a living got it okay that makes a lot of sense what about so what made you decide to go to pittsburgh why pittsburgh and why did you start
Bob Beall: with the franchise? So I had a good friend of mine that owned the Glass Doctor in Cleveland. And he told me, you know, I should buy the Mr. Electric. And I looked at it, you know, I know basic electrical. I’m not an electrician. Okay. And my wife and I looked at buying a daycare and,
Bob Beall: you know, the problem with a daycare center is they cap out because they only allowed so many kids per square feet. So, you know, in this industry, you can buy a truck and add a truck anytime you want and grow the company. And it’s all I knew.
Bob Beall: And what made us go to Pittsburgh is back then, we had a double truck as in the phone book. And the phone book came out here in September or October. And it worked out good because, you know, getting kids in school and starting here, where the Columbus phone, I looked at Columbus, Ohio,
Bob Beall: the phone book didn’t come out until March. So I would have been seven, eight months without any calls. So we came over here and just ran it hard.
Tyler Martin: Got it. Is there anything you learned from selling and then having to start over outside of the non-compete? Was there anything in that that you go that didn’t make it easier? Or just given the franchise already had infrastructure, maybe that in itself made it easier.
Tyler Martin: But were there any takeaways from that?
Bob Beall: Well, you can go through your capital pretty quick. I had some capital from selling. you know and that’s um you know i got myself in trouble later on going through my capital growing too fast i you know had a little implosion um so you know have a good plan
Bob Beall: no plan is a plan to fail you know and i i learned from a guy many years ago you’ve got to have a business plan and you can’t be afraid to revise your business plan and take a look at it every quarter and make sure you’re on your plan too because out think outside things happen i mean
Tyler Martin: you know, it’s just what life brings at you. For sure. Sure. In 2008, like many businesses,
15:03The 2005 implosion, three dump trucks and eight extra guys
Tyler Martin: and I’m kind of jumping around here, I know that was the recession. You hit, you were over leveraged, work slowed down. What did you do to survive? And was there a takeaway there for you in terms of
Bob Beall: cashflow management that you could share? Well, you know, my implosion started in 2005. Phones ringing off the hook. So I went out and bought three dump trucks and excavators and put on eight more guys. Okay, looking back at it, I would have not done not by three.
Bob Beall: I would, you know, I would have, I hate to say it, I would have raised the rates on the work that I had and just done the same amount of work and been more profitable. You know, focused on profitability.
Tyler Martin: Is that a lesson though, Bob, that you’re saying, like that might be a little bit crystal ball stuff. Is that kind of been part of your philosophy at all going forward is like push rates? Is that one of the takeaways from this? Or was that just when you look in hindsight?
Bob Beall: Well, I mean, you know, here’s the deal. I don’t want to be the cheapest guy in town. You know, I want to give quality service. And a lot of people play the price game. And I don’t believe in playing the price game. I believe in pricing for profit.
Bob Beall: I believe in, you know, profit is not a bad word. And it’s, you know, you have to go out there and look profit. And you can’t just, you know, quote unquote, give a job away to get the cash flow. You know, sometimes those are the jobs you try to give away to create the cash flow become your biggest nightmares in the world.
Bob Beall: Right. You know, so I always use a couple of phrases. You know, don’t give it away just to get it. And take care of your customer and do quality work and you’ll be okay.
Tyler Martin: When you go back to that 2008 and cash was really tight, did you have to make some cuts? and how did you decide what to cut and what did you refuse to cut?
Bob Beall: Well, I mean, it slowed down. So obviously I cut the guys that weren’t producing. Sure. You know, you kind of had to evaluate who was producing and who wasn’t producing. And thank goodness that I bought a few rental properties and I leveraged them to get a line of credit from the bank to make it through it.
Tyler Martin: Wow. Okay. And what’s the story there, right? After the recession, you just started to bounce back and did you end up adjusting your pricing? Is that what you ended up doing as you’re coming out of that?
Bob Beall: Yeah, I mean, you know, I’ve probably listened to every guru out there, you know, from, that’s the eight-week-old St. Bernard. That’s his biggest bark. So, you know, I’ve listened to every guru out there, you know. I mean, right now you’ve got Jimmy Hiller and Grant Cardone that are out there teaching.
Bob Beall: And, you know, they’re all about pricing, giving options to the customers. I’m a huge advocate now. I don’t know if you want to get into this now, is I’ve been using Service MVP, Joe Crescera. You know, I’ve actually partnered up with Joe and I’m doing some teaching for him.
Bob Beall: And I love it. I love teaching technicians. And the greatest part is when your technician, you know, you go out there and say, give them six options. And the technician’s like,
18:08Six options instead of just snaking the toilet
Bob Beall: well, they’re not going to take it. They just want the toilet snaked. I says, you don’t know there’s nothing in that toilet. Do you? Can you see in that toilet? You know, and they’re like, no. I says, then pull it and reset it or offer them a new power flush toilet.
Bob Beall: Something, you know, that how old is that toilet? It says the age right in the back of the tank. Well, it’s 18 years old. Okay. So, you know, you know what that rim feels like. Okay. I said, you’re ripping the customer off by not at least offering them a new toilet.
Bob Beall: And that’s, that’s an ongoing lesson. I’m still teaching it. And we talked about this morning at my Monday morning meeting. It’s a, it’s what you have to do. You know, you got to constantly train, train, train. no train, you know, no gain. You have to teach and you have to have an open mind too,
Bob Beall: because times have changed. The plumbing, HVAC, electrical, the resident, the services are high demand because there’s fewer guys getting into it. Everybody wants to sit me on a desk, you know, do IT work. And, you know, the kids don’t want to take work, use a shovel today.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. So going back to this six, you give, is that sometimes you give six options to a customer? Is that what you ask every technician to do every time they’re quoting something?
Bob Beall: Well, that’s what we ask technicians to do. I mean, they’ve all been through the service.
Tyler Martin: Do you know Joe Cricera? Yeah. Oh, yeah. In fact, he’s scheduled to be on my podcast. He’s had to reschedule once. I think he’s scheduled for July. He’s coming up.
Bob Beall: Oh, yeah. Joe and I became pretty good friends and I’m following his system. And it’s a slow process to implement. You know, you kind of got to, you know, like anything, you know, you roll something new in your company, you get 10, 20 percent of the people use it and another 40 percent try it.
Bob Beall: But they don’t try it with a full heartbeat on it and 40 percent refuse to try it. Right. You know, so, you know, you got to get you just got to grow that 10, 20 percent. It’s kind of a fall leader. You know, when that 10 percent guy, you want 10 percent of the guys are doing it, you know, a few more will follow them.
Bob Beall: and then eventually the bottom guys, they’ll starve themselves out and they’ll fall off.
Tyler Martin: Right. What are the biggest challenges you’re finding in going to that, to his methodology? Is it just getting the team, the technicians to consistently think about doing the six or is it pushback that they don’t want to do it? What are the pushback you’re getting?
Bob Beall: You know, the hardest thing about his system is it’s very time consuming. Yeah. You know, it’s three, four weeks, an hour and a half a day, but he’s got some great trainers. okay and you know including myself we you know we like to train and you know you got to follow the
Bob Beall: system and uh that’s probably the biggest challenge to it is the time you know no these guys you know they put eight hours a day in at work and you know they don’t want to put another hour and a half a day in but no train again no train no gain and it’s a vicious cycle you know and you know we put
Bob Beall: we did three classes, put about eight guys through each time. And, you know, this is just
Tyler Martin: my service department. Well, have you, are you seeing any results or any benefits, average ticket price going up? What are, what are you getting out of it so far? Would you say?
Bob Beall: Average ticket price is going up and, you know, technicians are making more money. You know, they get, they get paid a base plus a commission, you know, nothing’s better for them to take home a few hundred dollars more a week for their wife to see, you know, it’s, it makes them happier.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. One thing I don’t want to gloss over because I think it’s such a huge point you made is nobody’s ever come out to fix my toilet, let’s say, for example, and even brought up, hey, maybe it’s just time to get a new one. They’re always fixing whatever the problem is. And I agree with you. I think you’re short selling the consumer sometimes if you don’t even at least give that option.
Tyler Martin: Because I’m kind of a type of guy, if it’s old, even if it still works, there’s a good chance I might replace it. I’m one of those people. I know a lot of people aren’t like that. They’ll use something until it can’t be used anymore.
Tyler Martin: So I feel like that’s it. No, I don’t want to gloss over that because I feel like that’s a big point of the process.
Bob Beall: Well, you know, again, I don’t want to admit how old I am. But when I started this trade back in the 80s and 90s, you know, toilets were all five gallons. Then it went to three and a half gallons. You know, now they’re at 1.6 gallons.
Bob Beall: You know, and now you have flow controls on your aerators. You know, you have to educate the consumer. Okay, how much gas they’ll save with a tankless water heater? How much water they’ll save? You know, at one time I had a breakdown showing them,
Bob Beall: okay, if you flush a toilet four times a day, you’re going to pay for this new power assist toilet in 15 months. And you have a better toilet in your house. You know, you just have to educate the customer. I think that’s a very important thing.
Bob Beall: Right.
Tyler Martin: So, Bob, you’re now currently, I believe, in four territories. I think you have close somewhere around 40 trucks. How do you manage that operationally? Like, how do you keep everyone busy when things slow down without laying people off? Is there any secret sauce there?
Bob Beall: You know, I guess the secret sauce is you have to just do it. You know, you have to do it. You have to find work. You know, follow up on your estimates. you know get your guys a little more motivated to sell it’s hard it’s hard yeah yeah i mean i mean
Bob Beall: our last month has been challenging really but yeah but you know what you make it through it and i think the biggest thing and that people look at me like that i would say i don’t get nervous i get nervous but i don’t panic you know do i don’t want to lay people off i don’t want to lose
Bob Beall: good people. But if you have to, you have to. I mean, it’s called unemployment insurance for a reason. So if a person has to go use it for six months or three months, it’s not the end of the world. It’s what it’s designed to do. It’s what we pay in a dear cost for them to use, for them to
Tyler Martin: have. Right. So it’s good for you. I really appreciate you sharing this though, in terms of it being a tough month or it’s been a tough month, is that more of like a seasonality thing? Or is that, because I’m hearing different things from different clients that I work with. Some are
Tyler Martin: saying, hey, our weather isn’t as extreme. Hey, we’re not having the natural disasters we had last year. All these different things. What do you kind of attribute to maybe being slower in
Bob Beall: the last month? You know what? I don’t really have any good attributions to it other than it’s just, it’s a cycle yeah okay it’s the cycle it’s funny because 2008 may was when i had the roughest time in the biggest week time you know in may of 2026 was the same thing it was challenging you know
Bob Beall: historically your fourth quarter is our busiest quarter first fourth first third second quarter you know i contributed to you know what people were you know in the northeast and the north people got spring fever they want to go outside go to the pools you know they’re more worried
Bob Beall: about that than they are other plumbing. And, uh, you know, you know, I, I believe fourth quarter is a business because people are lucrative. They spend money. They got Christmas on their mind. They’re not there. They spend money. And also I think it’s climatically driven. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler Martin: That makes sense. Bob, I want to talk about when you go from one truck to let’s say 40. Now you, as an individual have to go from like a plumber, a producing plumber to now CEO. What have you had to personally go through to be able to manage such a larger technician base? And is there any
Tyler Martin: growing or anything that you have had to do to get up to this level that you could share?
25:54Learning to read a P&L during nine months at ARS
Bob Beall: Well, I guess the thing that, you know, to become, to go from a plumber to CEO is you’ve got to educate yourself and you have to try to understand. It was funny, my son and I went out Father’s Day for a, we went out for breakfast and he’s 26. He journeyed in plumber. He works really hard.
Bob Beall: And I gave him a five minute story about how to read a P&L and a balance sheet, you know, and you’ve got to know that you got to be able to read the P&L, you know, you got to know your numbers. So the more you grow, you got to know your numbers
Bob Beall: and it’s all relative four trucks or 40 trucks. Okay. You got to have, you, you got to budget your percentage of advertising, your percentage of material. It’s all relevant and you have to recognize that, but you have to know your numbers. And as going from a producing plumber back in the
Bob Beall: eighties and nineties to so-called a CEO now, I guess that would be the biggest difference.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. At what point did you start to understand financials and know your numbers? Like, did someone take you aside? Did you consciously sign up for something? When did you get comfortable
Bob Beall: and knowing that? So I use a story. I tell people this, it’s not literal, but I always tell people the nine months that I sold and I worked for ARS Rescu Reader, a large corporation. Okay. I’ve used the phrase, I got my MBA. Okay. I didn’t know financial statements. Okay. And
Bob Beall: that’s when, when I learned them, you know, I sat in meetings with general managers, regional managers of, you know, there was one company that was doing, I think a million dollars a week then out of Houston, you know, and I’m sitting in with their managers, you know,
Bob Beall: and we were two and a half million dollar company at that time. And that’s, you just have to learn it. And I ask a lot of questions. I, you know, my accountant is on speed dial still to this day, you know, and you learn phrases like, you know, probably the biggest phrase that I’ve ever learned
Bob Beall: is, you know, the difference of tax is cash. Okay. Or, or you, I learned a phrase, you know, what capitalized means, you know, what section 179 is. And, you know, I constantly read, you know, I constantly read the internet. I, you know, I don’t believe a half the other here read
Bob Beall: on the internet until I call my accountant and ask her if it’s true. You know, it’s, you just, You’ve got to continually educate yourself. And it’s important to know your numbers. And as you know your numbers, you’ll get more comfortable with it.
Tyler Martin: As you said, you have like 40 companies that you work with. What’s the average company spend in advertising? I’m going to guess 12%. Am I close?
Bob Beall: You know, it varies. It’s a good question. You know, somewhere between 5% to 15%. It depends on the client. Some clients spend less because they have a very high referral network or they have some type of base built in, but it’s a wide range.
Bob Beall: What I tend to look at is what’s the return they’re getting. Cause I have, you know, I had one client come to me was spending 18% around there, 18 to 20%. But I would always kind of give him a hard time when I first started working with him
Bob Beall: for the first few months, I’d say, hey, you’re spending so much money. Can you show me like what you’re getting returned for this? He was working with one of these bigger agencies that were, they wanted to spend a lot of money. And it took about three months.
Bob Beall: And finally, one day he came up with a report from ServiceSite, and it was a campaign report. And it turned out, Bob, 90% of his business was coming from his wraps, repeat business, people he’d worked from in the past. Very small percentage of his business was even coming from all this advertising he was buying.
29:28The 7x rule on $100k a month and billboards as marketing
Bob Beall: And so that’s really what I tend to look at is what is it doing anything for you?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I mean, I try to look at, you know, I want a 7X. I spend about $100,000 a month in advertising. I do about 700, 800,000 a month right now consistently. You know, I want to 7x my advertising. That’s the number I live by.
Tyler Martin: But I’m slowly trying things. You know, I’ve took on some sponsorships. I’m sponsoring a minor league baseball team this year. You know, I like billboards. But Pittsburgh’s a billboard city. You know, there’s more bridges in the city of Pittsburgh than any other city in the United States.
Tyler Martin: And so people sit on a bridge looking at billboards. Not every city’s like that. it’s a large enough market. I got a good population to pull from, but it’s also a small
Bob Beall: enough market I can afford to advertise here. Yeah. How are you, Bob, when you say you’re getting 7x return, are you having like unique phone numbers that are on those billboards where you could track back that return? Or how do you know generally the return you’re getting?
Tyler Martin: Well, that’s a great question. So what I do, and I haven’t done it for a while, but what I do is I I go into phone calls myself on a Sunday. Okay. And because I want to really hear from my own ears. Okay. Because the girls don’t always click the green button.
Tyler Martin: The campaign’s wrong. We worked for that customer. We already worked for that customer six months ago, but they found us on the internet because we didn’t do a good enough job staying in touch with them. So this one guy said to me one day, he says, he says,
Tyler Martin: it was kind of a good story. He says, yeah, I live right down the road. I see your billboard every day. I says, really? He said, yeah. And then I looked and I says, but you got a number off of Google, sir. He says, well, yeah, I had to look you up, but I see Mr. Reader’s billboard every day.
Tyler Martin: So, you know, basically you have to take that $100,000 a month. If I spend 40 of it on Google, 20 of it on billboards and 40 on miscellaneous other stuff. Okay. So I have a philosophy. And this is the Bob Beal School of Marketing.
Tyler Martin: There’s advertising and there’s marketing. Marketing is any impression that you can make on anybody in the public. I’m talking potential employees to anybody in public, okay? And advertising is having your number there when a customer needs your services. So you’ve got to market so people recognize you.
Tyler Martin: But advertising is you have to be there when they need your number because that particular situation is the advertising on the bill, I’m sorry, the marketing on the billboard generated that phone call. So when they went to Google and found me, it explained everything.
Tyler Martin: So I used to try to track them, billboards and all that. But you know what? I don’t think anymore. Nobody’s driving down the road, writing down your phone number on a billboard. So you know what? If they see Mr. Reuter, okay, we’re good to go.
Tyler Martin: You know, then just got to be present on Google. You know, I’m struggling right now with pay-per-click. Pay-per-click is on its way out to be something of the past. I think so. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I don’t know if you know this or not, but, you know, I don’t want to give all my secrets away, but you could advertise now on ChatGPT.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Have you tried it already? No, I just found out last week you could. Okay. So, you know, I’m going to kind of revamp my budget and get on there. You know, the number one search engine in the world is Google, and number two is YouTube.
Tyler Martin: and I’m hearing that Facebook is number three now. Yeah. You know, people go search stuff on Facebook and I hate to say it, you gotta have good presence and good social media,
33:14Why he pays double for reviews in November and December
Tyler Martin: you know, and also that’s where people get reviews and leave reviews. You know, that’s where they see you. Yeah, yeah.
Bob Beall: How do you, Bob, with four territories, how do you keep the quality and keep every, you know, with different areas, sometimes that’s hard. How do you keep the quality good and just the people so everyone’s kind of given the same level of service in all different territories?
Tyler Martin: Well, again, it’s constantly training. Okay. But, you know, again, we have the technicians get reviews. All right? And I know if we do 100 jobs a week, I’m going to end up with around 25 reviews. I kind of watch that number because if it drops to 20 or 15, 20, or I get some one-star reviews, then I know there’s something issue going on.
Tyler Martin: either the technician needs brought in and retrained or it might be trying to part company.
Bob Beall: So 25% of people that you do jobs for should give reviews. Is that based on your own history
Tyler Martin: or is that a general number that you’ve heard? No, it’s my own history. Okay, got it. Okay,
Bob Beall: wow. I watch it and I watch based on the number of calls my technicians go to. based you know i see how many reviews we get you know and they get paid for it and what’s funny is in november and december we give them double pay i don’t know the exact amount they get like 20 or
Bob Beall: 25 for review so we give them like 50 during november and december everybody wants a little extra money for the holiday my reviews go up so you know it’s just it is what it is it’s human nature and uh it’s here yeah you know you know i had a friend of mine tell me uh in 2000 or 20 or
Bob Beall: 2004 i was i was complaining about spending 35 000 a month in the old pages and he said to me he goes there will be a day you wish you could just write the phone company a check for 35 000
Tyler Martin: and it’s here i wish i could do that yeah yeah so you have your son in the business he’s a journeyman You mentioned your daughters just recently came back to the business. What’s that like having a family run business? What are there’s obviously some pros.
Tyler Martin: There’s probably some cons. What’s some words of wisdom you can give us on a family run business?
Bob Beall: Put a layer between you. OK. You know, both my daughter and my son both work for me, but there’s a layer of managers between me and I let them report to them. You know, we do it. OK, again, my son and I had breakfast yesterday and we talked about excavation and we talked
Bob Beall: about P&Ls, but try not to talk about it at the dinner table. Let them be their own people. I think that’s the most important thing because they don’t live it like we do. I mean, there are some, but they don’t want to live it 24-7. And they’ve seen me grow,
Bob Beall: as they were growing up, they’ve seen me answering the phone 24-7. They don’t want to be that. You know, the times have changed and I respect that.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. I like the Leva. You know, the only thing is sometimes is that hard for the person that’s in between? Because sometimes if you’re managing a family member, the family member feels like they’re an owner. And so it can be a little uncomfortable for the person managing them.
Bob Beall: I’m pretty fortunate with both my kids that are working for me now. They don’t play the last name game. They’re grounded. Yeah, they, you know, they, and especially my 26 year old and my daughter just came back, but my 26 year old, he wants to earn his way.
Bob Beall: He doesn’t want anything because of his last name. Got it.
Tyler Martin: That’s good. That’s important because it can be hard. It can be hard managing a family member just because they do kind of feel a little bit of entitlement.
Bob Beall: Yeah, I’m pretty fortunate. Yeah. My 26 year old doesn’t want it. He actually fights it. You know, it’s funny. I bought him a Milwaukee saw last year for two years ago for Christmas. One of those six, six and a half inch or seven inch cutoff saws.
Bob Beall: Okay. And he looked at me and said, dad, I can’t take that. I says, why? He says, nobody else has one. I says, it’s okay. It’s okay. I says, I’m going to tell you right now, you go use it. And if other guys need one, we’ll buy more.
Bob Beall: Okay. If I find out if it works, if anybody says anything to you, tell them your dad bought it for you for Christmas and you’re just testing it to see if this works you know and that’s you know um my my son uh and I got another young man that’s like a son to me you know that they’ve
Bob Beall: unfortunately they followed my steps they became a Milwaukee tool junkie and uh it’s I’d much rather them uh spend their money on Milwaukee tools than uh doing anything else but it’s still it’s you know, investing in yourself, investing in your trade and educating yourself constantly.
Tyler Martin: It’s important. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. That’s good feedback. Hey, Bob, this is a great point where I want to just wrap up into the last thing and then we’ll go, we’ll do our second one. We have scheduled. The last thing I just want to talk about is just the number is a segment that
Tyler Martin: I do. And I usually pick up one number that’s very important. And you mentioned know your number. So
38:30Cradle to grave, 70 checks for every 100 phone calls
Tyler Martin: I think this is a good, good ending conversation. One number I’ve already got from you is 20, every one job, every one out of four jobs you do, you should get a review. And you’re looking at about 100 jobs a week to complete. So I love that you have those base diagnostics in your head.
Tyler Martin: Is there any other number that really stands out for you that you look at that might be relevant for the audience just to consider in their own business?
Bob Beall: Well, I think the other most important number is you’ve got to look at your book ratio. Okay. You’ve got to be booking 85, 90% of your calls. You know, I use this method that, you know, 10% of the time the phone rings, it’s not,
Bob Beall: it’s that it’s a potential customer. It’s not something we do. They calling us for a dishwasher or something out of our wheelhouse. Okay. So that gives us 90 calls out of a hundred calls, 80 of them. We get to, there’s 10. You don’t make the driveway.
Bob Beall: Somebody else made it there first problem. Fix itself. Uncle Joe came over and fixed it. So 80%. And then out of that, you got to close 80% of those. So your close rate should be right around 64%. And my buddy and I use this system.
Bob Beall: He calls it cradle to grave. Okay. A lot of people talk about their close ratio on average ticket. Well, is your average ticket, does that count estimates? Does that count your dig jobs? What does it count? All right. So my buddy Bob and I, we look at if my phone rings 100 times,
Bob Beall: I need to take 70 checks to the bank. Okay. And we’re running about 64 right now. Okay. Because that you, you can’t close every job. And that’s, those are the numbers that I would probably tell you right now. That’s cradle to grave. You want to be around 65, 70%.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. That’s good stuff. How closely are you looking at those numbers? Like if you have a couple of days where that’s below what you think it should be, are you on those numbers or are you
Bob Beall: looking at it once a month? How quick are you getting feedback on that? I look at the numbers once probably every day somewhat. But I analyze them on a weekly basis, but I make changes on a quarterly basis. A quarterly, a quarter, I mean, there’s a reason the New York Stock Exchange
Bob Beall: reports quarter dividends. A quarter is, it’s 13 weeks. You know, every quarter has 13 weeks in it. So that is your, that is your best benchmark there is. Because otherwise you’ve got five payrolls, one week, one month, four payrolls, one month. Every quarter is as a 544 payrolls. Your quarter’s
Tyler Martin: numbers are your true numbers. Okay. Again, that’s my opinion. And so you’re not making any game time decisions throughout the month. Like if something, if you were super slow for two weeks, you’re not really making any adjustments. You’re going to let that quarter play out. Is that a
Bob Beall: fair statement? I try to. Okay. Okay. Do I ever make some adjustments? Yeah. I might buy a little extra TV or increase my budget with my PPC or something like that a little bit. You know, if we get slammed with ice cold freezes in February, I turn off my PPC. But for the most
Tyler Martin: part, I try to let the quarters run them out. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. So you got two websites, bobistheplumber.com and then Ralbo Tech, Ralbo, R-A-L-B-O-T-E-C-H.com is your new
Bob Beall: thing. Do you want to talk about Robo a little bit? Sure. So what happened was, is, you know, I fought AI. I fought voice agents. I fought it and fought it and fought it. So I realized that if I’m not, if I don’t babysit, that’s a bad phrase, take that out of who’s a red assist.
Bob Beall: If I don’t monitor my CSR dispatchers to the T, they change, they get lazy, they don’t book because we don’t have somebody. Okay. They don’t gather the customer’s information. So we’ll at least have in our database. So I got frustrated three or four months ago. And so Bob is the plumber,
Bob Beall: all right, is what I call my influencer website. If you go to bobasaplumber.com, scroll down to the bottom, fill out the form, you’ll get some Swake stuff sent to you. That’s my brand. That’s me. Okay. Bob is a plumber. Other than I’m the owner of Mr. Reuter
Bob Beall: plumbing. I don’t do plumbing under Bob is the plumber. So I had a guy that I hired, a Filipino, to do social media for me for Bob is the plumber to help me build a brand, edit videos. I got a lot
Tyler Martin: of cooking videos on YouTube if you go look at Bob is the plumber. I’ll check that out. Yeah.
Bob Beall: So I hired this Filipino to do social media marketing and video editing for me. And I said I told me, Ralph, can you make me a voice agent? He says, oh, yeah, I can make you a voice agent. All right. So overnight, he turned out a voice agent for me.
Bob Beall: So I called the next desk. That’s pretty good. I says, now can you put that information into Service Titan? Oh, he says, we got to get a programmer to do that. So we went up work and we found this programmer. His name’s Abdul.
Bob Beall: He’s from Pakistan. He’s a great, great young guy. and uh so he actually got in with service titan could use their open ai and uh he integrated my voice agent into service type so we’ve picked up seven or eight other clients so rabble tech has three divisions we we put vas uh like you said you’ve had some filipinos work for
Bob Beall: you we place vas for people we monitor them you know we we try to give them the best we can right now we’re interviewing we got two clients that want VAs VA if anybody doesn’t know is a virtual assistant that’s our one of our clients and the second thing is the voice
Bob Beall: agent so we have Abdul we have another program we’re coming on now that is going to build voice agents we’re going to take my voice agent and customize it and I can tell you right now I hope I don’t offend anybody but I believe our voice agent is the best out there I mean
Bob Beall: there are some good companies out there i’m trying not to use any of their names but you know one of them is three thousand dollars a month right well i mean you know ours is 750 a month okay it’s a fraction of the price and it’s very customizable especially if you get on
Bob Beall: the ground form and then the third one is uh we have a few non-myster readers that we work with build websites for them, do social media for them. You know, I take this as a compliment. The guy that does all my IT, he’s an outside person. Okay. We just built his website. Okay.
Bob Beall: And he’s ecstatic with it. So I, you know, he’s, and he just referred to his other clients to us. So, you know, these, these guys out there, these, I hate to say it, these young Filipinos and pakistanians and indias you know these they’re using python they’re building websites so fast
Bob Beall: it’s a whole it’s a game changer it really is that you know so i want to say it’s a hobby but you know we right now we got uh we got seven clients two more coming aboard as soon as we find them vas and uh the 10th potential club 10th client is coming to my shop later this week he
Bob Beall: wants to see some things we do. And not one person I’ve attacked, not one person that I’ve contacted that’s a friend of mine has really said, no, everybody wants a VA because it’s affordable. Okay. And the nice thing about Filipinos, their English is pretty good. The second thing,
Bob Beall: everybody wants voice agents. And I mean, every event you turn around at, there’s four voice agent companies there and you don’t know which way to go everybody’s got a different pitch and why they’re so good i think ours is the best because it’s built by a plumber built by somebody
Bob Beall: in the business okay not physically but i’m the one who controls it sure and then i think social media okay marketing is just it’s just a given so you know those are our three niches i appreciate the opportunity to talk about rabble tech um and you can put my phone number on the screen or you
Bob Beall: know 724-553-8700 and uh call me for either one and i can get you i’ll get you right in touch with the rabotech people i i don’t other than it’s a lot of my friends that have signed up so far i try to stay out of that game i just want like i like i told the guys at rabotech
Bob Beall: is i says if i lose friends over this i’m gonna haunt you so
Tyler Martin: you know i don’t want to lose friends over it yeah i don’t blame you that’s good stuff okay Well, hey, Bob, we’re going to do a part two in the near future. We’ve got a time scheduled. In that part two, as a little hook here, it’s going to be your blueprint.
Tyler Martin: I have some questions around how you’re doing things, getting a little bit deeper into your blueprint of how you’ve been so successful. So I’m excited to have that part two. I’m appreciative to have you on and just be able to share your wisdom and tell your story.
Tyler Martin: So thanks a lot.
Bob Beall: Fantastic. Take care.
Tyler Martin: There were a lot of lessons in this conversation with Bob, but I kept coming back to how his definition of growth has changed over the years. When the phones were ringing, his response was to add trucks, equipment, and people. Looking back, he said he would have raised his prices, taken on less work, and made the
Tyler Martin: work he already had more profitable. I think that’s an important lesson for any growing trades company. More trucks, more employees, and more revenue can all be good things, but every one of them adds cost and growth only works when the financials underneath it can support it.
Tyler Martin: Sometimes the better move isn’t doing more work. It’s making more money on the work you already have. Hey, if you’re trying to get a better handle on profitability, cash flow, or the financial decisions behind your next stage of growth, that’s exactly the kind of work we do at
Tyler Martin: Profit and Grit CFOs. You can learn more at ProfitandGrit.com or feel free to book a free intro call at CFOintroCall.com. As always, thank you so much for listening. Have a great one.
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Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: Profit & Grit CFOs.
