Roger Wakefield—plumbing legend and trades influencer—shares how to become a plumber, grow your brand, and start a successful plumbing business.

Host Andrew Brown sits down one of the most recognized names in the trades industry, Roger Wakefield, to break down how to become a plumber, succeed as an apprentice, and build a powerful personal brand as a trades professional. With millions of views on YouTube and decades of hands-on experience, Roger shares what it really takes to thrive in the skilled trades: from plumbing apprenticeship tips to starting a plumbing business that stands out.

Whether you're just entering the trades or looking to scale your own company, this conversation delivers real-world, no-fluff skilled trades career advice from a leader who's done it all and taught thousands to do the same.

IN THIS EPISODE:

● (00:02:10) – How to Become a Plumber: Roger’s first job with zero plumbing experience

● (00:08:45) – Personal Branding for Tradespeople: Why it’s no longer optional

● (00:19:20) – Plumbing Apprenticeship Tips: Interview tactics that get you hired

● (00:33:10) – Starting a Plumbing Business: Data-driven marketing and strategy

● (00:47:35) – Career Growth in the Trades: From apprentice to owner

● (01:01:00) – Human Skills > Hard Skills: Why soft skills drive trades careers

Key Takeaways:

● You can start your plumbing career with no experience—how to become a plumber is more about mindset than credentials.

● Personal branding for tradespeople builds trust, visibility, and long-term opportunity in the skilled trades industry.

● Use these plumbing apprenticeship tips to stand out in interviews and get hired fast.

● If you're starting a plumbing business, you need to understand pricing, strategy, and your KPIs—or risk failing early.

About the Guest:

Roger Wakefield is a licensed plumber, YouTube creator, keynote speaker, and fierce advocate for trades careers. With over 45 years in the trades industry, he’s helped thousands understand how to become a plumber, launch a plumbing business, and leverage personal branding for tradespeople to grow their reputation and revenue. His content has made a global impact, proving that being a plumber today means much more than just turning wrenches.

Keywords:

How to Become a Plumber, Plumbing Apprenticeship Tips, Skilled Trades Career Advice, Personal Branding for Tradespeople, Starting a Plumbing Business, Skilled Trades, Trades Industry, Roger Wakefield, Andrew Brown, Toolfetch, HVAC, Carpentry, Electricians, Plumbers, Millwrights, Construction, Tradespeople, Craftsmanship, Problem-solving, Creativity, Advocacy, Trades Careers, Contractors, Education, Skilled Trades Advisory Council

Resources:

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerwakefield/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGIMKh92vaL0_Yc0u4GYhHA

Website: https://rogerwakefield.com/

SUPPORT THE SHOW:

If you’re getting value from these episodes and want to help keep the mics on, consider tipping the show here → https://andrewbrowntrades.kit.com/products/toolbox

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I knew nothing about plumbing, but yet I still walked into a plumbing company

and applied for a job and said, look, I want to be a helper, I

want to be an apprentice. I want to be whatever you call it, I work

hard, I'm willing to work hard. And they're like, okay, you

got a job. And I showed up at the job and I started learning.

That's as easy as it can be.

Hi, I'm Andrew Brown. You're listening to the Lost star of the Skilled Trades podcast.

Podcast, a show that shines the spotlight on

careers in the skilled trades that are high paying, honorable,

rewarding and fulfilling. The trades are the backbone of the

economy that keep us running. And without them, our world

would cease to exist.

Today we have a special guest, Roger Wakefield, lead ap.

Welcome, Roger to the show. Andrew. Thank you for having me here,

brother. It is wonderful for you to be here, Roger. You

know, personal branding for your trades business

is almost a non negotiable today. Years ago

in your plumbing business, I remember talking to you about this. You had

said, I just wanted to make the phone ring. And you spent certain amount

of money on a marketing firm and you were sitting in a conference

when someone said, YouTube is the second largest search engine.

How did hearing that change your life, your business?

And who said that to you? Well, the person who said it was Darrell Eves.

He is currently one of my YouTube coaches. The thing about a brand

and building it now as a speaker, and I say as a

speaker, but whenever I'm talking to entrepreneurs and social media people,

I tell them, guys, look, I'm a plumber and I have a 43

page brand book. And they're like, wait, what if you

came to work for me today, Andrew? Or even if I hired you and said,

look, I want you to redo my website, I want you to redo this, I

want you to redo this. And sent you my brand book. You'd be able to

go through it and be like, God, I know his colors, I've got his hex

codes, I know what fonts he likes, I know what. And really it's not just

what fonts I like, because we did research on it and said, look, what

fonts do the best websites use? What colors do the

best websites use? We didn't just copy them, but we went through and looked

at a lot of the top performing sites and decided we're going to build everything

off that because we wanted to use data. We didn't want me to just

say, gee, I want my favorite colors are pink and

Purple. So I'm going to make a pink and purple website that's probably

not going to be the best performing website.

So when I started growing, we knew what brand

we wanted to do. You know, if you remember, back whenever I had Texas Green

Plumbing, I had these same shirts with Texas Green Plumbing on them. I

believed in the logo. I believed in what it stood for. And I

think that as a company owner, you've got to believe in everything you're

doing. And Andrew, you've seen me at events. I wear this

shirt at every event I'm at and I say this shirt. I've got

a lot of them, but I wear this shirt. And if I'm

speaking that day, it's probably a red shirt. If I'm not speaking, it may

be a black shirt, but I normally wear red too, because that's what most people

are used to seeing me in. But I love what I get to do. And

I think building this brand has helped me

become recognizable or more recognizable globally.

I was at a Mastermind conference the other day about

mindset, and so many people come to me and they're like, dude, I know

you from somewhere. And then they look at my shirt and say, oh my gosh,

you helped me fix my toilet or my garbage disposal or whatever it is. So

it's just, it's really neat. And I love what building everything the way I've

done it, I love what it has helped get me to. Well, you're making a

huge impact. But if you can go back X amount of years when

you were running your plumbing company, I mean, could you have

managed to believe that you would be at this

point in the game? Because there's so much that has happened in between. And I

remember watching you years back when you had about 20,000

subs on YouTube and I remember that I was like, wow, okay. And I was

watching, I really enjoyed the videos that you put out. But then all of a

sudden I was like, now he's got a hundred thousand. Like, where'd that come from?

But you've been working on this. And then just a month or two later it

was 200,000. I mean, I went from like a hundred thousand to

250,000. I want to say overnight it wasn't, but it

felt like it. And I think what it was is we just, we got to

where we were doing things right. And I love what you just said because literally

it was seven years ago this month, matter of fact,

seven years ago this week, that we really started

posting YouTube videos. We had had a couple up there. That's what was

funny. When that guy came out and talked about YouTube being the second largest

search engine in the world, I thought, this guy's stupid. He doesn't even know what

he's talking about. YouTube is just where I store my videos. And

that was Derral Eves. And I have learned so much from him.

And like I said, he's still one of my coaches. But if you'd asked me

that day, Andrew, Roger, where are you going to be in five years? I said,

well, Andrew, I'm going to have a great plumbing company in Dallas, Texas.

We're going to do things right. We're going to be branded, we're going to be

marketed. We're going to be using social media to help

people be more aware of our company. What we specialize in, what

we're good at, why we do things better than most people

do. That's what I would have told you then if you'd have told me seven

years ago today, Roger, one day you'll be in a studio every day

shooting video, talking about plumbing. I'd have said, andrew, brother, I love you,

but what have you been drinking? It ain't gonna happen. I'm a plumber,

and it's completely changed. I do love that you do say, I'm just

a plumber. I love when you say that because you're very humble about

things and, you know, your success, I'm sure, didn't come

easy. But people don't see the behind the scenes. People don't see how much

work goes beyond. Because I remember, you know, when I visited you

and had podcasts, you know, I saw sort of the peak behind the scenes. We

got to talk and it was like, wow, you know, there is a ton of

work that goes into. You can't just show up. You know, you need to have

a strategy. You need to know what videos you need to be scheduled

out ahead of time. Because the amount of content that you put out, you

know, you have to be organized. I think what the audience

would really benefit from, especially somebody who is a

business owner. And it could be plumbing or welding or any trades person.

But how do you get started? Let's say you're afraid to actually be

on camera because a lot of people are. I mean, you and I, like, just

like, camera goes on, smile goes on, lights, like, whatever.

Like, what would you say to those people who are a little bit put

off about putting themselves on social media and having a business?

It's really not hard to do if, you know, just a few simple Things.

And you see, right now, I'm looking straight into my camera

lens. And the reason I do that is when you're watching

me right now, it looks like I'm looking at you, if I'm looking down here,

because this is where your video is. Well, I mean, this is not a very

good look for a viewer, so. And it was so neat because one

of the security people at Brendan Burchard, and like I said,

I was with Brendan Burchard and Ed Mylett the last four days, and one

of the security people, he saw my shirt, and he knew who I was. And

other people had told him, yeah, just talk to Roger. He's got these pens.

So I gave him a pen. And we're standing there talking, waiting on the door

to open. And he says, how do you get comfortable in front of a camera?

And I said, it really. It comes down to three things, and if you'll learn

this, it makes it so easy. But number one, look straight into

the camera lens. A lot of people, whenever they hold up their phones to

shoot a video, they want to look at themselves. And I'm like, no, look at

the green dot over at the side. That's where the camera lens is. Look

at that. I showed him why. Because it's like, either looking here or

imagine the whole time I'm talking to you, I'm looking over here because that's where

the monitor is, and I want to see how pretty my mustache is or whatever

I'm looking at. It's just. It's not a good look. So I told him, look

straight into the camera lens. The next big thing is say the word you.

Because you're only talking to that one viewer that's watching you,

and that's all that you're talking to right now. And I've got

videos with millions of followers or millions of views,

and I still say the word you. Because that one

person that you're looking straight in the eye right here, if you say you,

you're connecting with them, and that's what this is all about.

And then the third big thing is talk to them like they're your best friend.

If I was trying to teach my best friend how to use the remote

control to turn on the tv, I'd say, man, look, just point it right at

it. Up on the top left, there's the power button. Just press that and you're

going to be good. And it's so funny because, Andrew, people come up to me

when they see me, and they're like, look, Roger, what I love about you is

you didn't talk to me like I was stupid. You literally. You just talk

to me like I'm human, and you didn't make me feel stupid when you were

teaching me how to do this stuff. And I thought that was

phenomenal. But I think it's these three things that

make that happen. It's literally just look the camera straight in the eye,

say the word you, and talk to them like they're your best friend.

And it makes it easy to do. I literally used to have signs up

pointing like, hey, look here. Or a name above it, like, hey,

you're talking to. And then underneath it, it was say you. And

those three things there that'll convert so many things over. And it's really funny,

because I was coaching the other night and doing one of my classes, and a

guy asked me. He said the same thing. He said, roger, look, I'm on video

all the time. He says, but when I sat down with you, you

changed the way I did it. Because this guy owns a big

financial investment firm. He's on television all the

time, and he says, whenever you taught

me to look into the eye, say you, and treat them like your best

friend. Our views went up, our calls went

up, everything we did went up. Because people said, oh, my God, I

connected with you. When you were on TV the other night, literally the

first time I sat down to do a podcast with him, and I said the

same thing. Remember, look at the camera. And he'd start talking, and all of a

sudden, he's just turning, staring off into the blue. And he's just talking. I'm like,

whoa, stop, stop. And he looks at me. He's like, what? I said, dude, what

are you doing? He said, well, I'm answering your question. I said,

nobody's over there. Don't look over there. That's the viewer right there.

It blew his mind. He said, roger, I've been on TV five years. Nobody's ever

told me that. I said, because you're paying to be on their shows. I don't

care. You want to do it right? You want to connect with people, do it

this way. And then we were in coaching the other night when I had my

group in there, and he's literally like, dude, that changed

everything for me. It works. You don't realize if you don't

look in the camera or straight in, people lose a little bit

of, you know, that authenticity goes away. It's just something about

not making full eye contact. It's like talking to someone face to face. But like

looking over here, kind of lose that person. But I like the fact of like

you're talking to that one person. I felt it was weird a

couple years ago when I started doing videos, talking to the camera. Like

you're not talking to anybody, right? You're just talking to a lens. And a lot

of people find that that's very difficult to do to carry

on a conversation. Then I got kind of comfortable with it and just kind of

let it roll. I do feel that being authentic and I see this on

social media quite often, you know, especially like TikTok, these

straight talking videos of talking directly into the camera. It's

not scripted, there's no real editing. I found, at least for

me on a TikTok side has completely blown up my

TikTok account. Before it was all edited, it was all polished and nobody

wouldn't get much views. Now I get millions of views for just being

authentic really goes a long way. You know the thing people

buy from people they know, like and trust. I've always said people buy from

people they know, love, trust, and they're connected

to. If you'll look at that lens, you can connect to people. I

mean, think about it. People will take you on a drive with them. They'll get

up and work out with you. They'll have you on their iPad

or something. I do it whenever I get up and get on the treadmill or

the climber, either one. I've got my iPad in front of me and I'm

watching, I'm listening. But that's me inviting them

to spend time with me. Why do stuff that I want to do while

work out? Why walk? Why do my cardio, whatever it is.

And you can be that person too. So whenever you

learn things like looking at the camera, saying the word you and

talking to them like your best friend, it's like whenever I get on here with

you and me and you've been together in person, this is the same me. I'm

no different. You're no different. This is exactly who we are. But then you see

these people that they walk in, all of a sudden the camera's on. Hey, here

we go, guys, we're gonna do this. And I'm like, dude, what are you doing?

You never act like that. And they're like, yeah, but I want to be powerful,

I want to be bold, I want to jump out there. It's like, dude, just

be you. That's what people love about you. So when you talk

to someone like they're your best friend, I mean, I would never walk to the

homeboy, dude, if you want to turn on the tv, all you got to do

is grab the remote control and do this. And I'd be like, dude, what is

wrong with you? Just be you. And Ed Mylett said

that two days ago. He literally said, look, there's so many people out here

that they want to be somebody else. Even if you're them pretty good, you're never

going to be 100% as good as they are. Just be you. That's what the

world is looking for. Somebody unique, original, that's

real, that can just connect with them. And to me, man, what a way to

do it. And that's what it's all about. You know, it's about being yourself. Because

it's really hard to show up, you know, on camera and just I look, people

play characters and such and, right, they're not really that person in.

In real life. But, you know, I've met you, and you're the same person. It's

not like it's any different. That's why people connect with you. That's why

people connect with me. The feeling of the

impact that's made. And sometimes, and I'm. I don't know if you've kind of gone

through this yourself. You know, sometimes there are days where you're shooting

video, like, why am I doing this? Like, nobody's listening, not making an

impact. But then you get a DM of some

sort. And someone said, you know, I was thinking about going to college, going to

the trades, but guess what? I'm going to go to the trades route because I've

been listening to your videos, but I didn't even know they didn't like my stuff.

They never commented on my stuff. And all of a sudden you're getting that.

You know, someone's telling you that, and it's just. It's an unreal

feeling. You Talked about the DMS. My YouTube coach.

I was with him in Utah two weeks ago, and he says,

roger, you are probably the only person I know that goes to as

many or more conferences a year than I do, because I

go to social media conferences, I go to trades conferences,

I go to business conferences, I go to speaker conferences.

We just hit April 7th. I fly

southwest Airlines. Most of the time. I'm already a list preferred

for 2026 because of the miles and points I've got this

year. And it blows my mind to walk in

these conferences and have grown men walk

up to you, I mean, with tears in their eyes, saying, oh, my God, you

Changed my life. I was working in a fast food restaurant

and I saw your videos and you said, look, you can be a plumber, too.

It's not that hard. Just get in, get the job and learn how to do

it. And these grown men are. I've had grown men come up to me just

crying like, look, you completely changed my life. I'm making

more money than I ever have in my life because I saw a video you

did, and then I started watching you, and it's like, wow. He just keeps

telling me, I can do it. And Andrew, that's the impact that we have on

the world. It's phenomenal. We need more people in the trades

and anybody watching and listening. This video, this

podcast has the same opportunity. Me and you do. I know you

and I know me. We're nothing special. I don't mean anything bad by that.

But we turned on the camera and started telling people, look, this is what it's

like. This is really what it's like. And, man, when you're like that with people,

they'll buy in. They're on board with you. You now have a community.

Like you said. Never thought years ago, that wasn't really the

intent. It was just to put the information out there. We probably

both are not neutral on things. We take one side or the other. I

feel like the vanilla stuff, that if you just put vanilla stuff out, it doesn't

really resonate. And sometimes people are not going to like what you say.

Some people are going to like what you say. There's haters out

there. It's just what it is. And I'm sure you've navigated a bunch just like

I have, but I think that's just a part of the job. I mean, that's

just. You got to field all that type of stuff. Haters are always going to

be there. They're always going to hate you no matter what you do. You know,

I love it when they get in and tell me, you know what? If you

did that on my job, I'd fire you up. So you're like, well, you'd be

stupid because I made companies millions of dollars. But you got to do.

You do whatever you want to do. So I do. I like the controversial

stuff because I'll tell you exactly what I think. You know me. It's not like,

wait, you voted on the other guy? Well, I'm going to unfriend you. I'm never

talking to you again. It's like, okay, why'd you vote on him? I'm

curious why did you vote on this person? Because I voted on this

person and I can tell you why I did. But I'm not going to hate

you. I'm not going to talk bad about you. I'm not going to be. I'm

not going to block you on social media. The world we're in

today is crazy. But still, I don't mind. I have people

tell me all the time, well, this was a stupid comment you made. I'm going

to unsubscribe to you and never watch you again. Okay, You've been

watching me for five years and I made one comment. You think stupid and you're

leaving. Bye. Have fun. I hope you find what you need.

Somebody that's perfect and thinks just like you each and every day.

That way I'll just say, how's your day? Yep. Yep. Mine too. Okay,

we're good again. That's gotta be boring as all get out.

I don't mind talking about what other people say is right. If

it's not, I'm like, no, I don't think it is, y' all, but that's me.

Everybody's gonna critique. You know, I follow somebody, a plumber on

TikTok, I think it's called Boston Plumbing Monster. And

I watch his videos and he gets, you know, in the comments and

what he does, but he's just showing a day in the life and what he

does. And he's really blown up over the last couple years,

but he just rolls with it. It's just part of the job. It's just part

of what it's being on social media. It's not a bad gig.

I wanted to transition over to. We talked about, obviously,

someone getting into a business and being on social media. But I want to

speak about people who are interested in being a plumber itself.

If somebody is interested working with their hands, wants to be a

plumber, but doesn't know much about being an

apprentice or how to scale up or maybe want to run their

own business one day, what would you kind of say to them? How would you

walk them through the process? If, let's say it's somebody in high school

and they want to start working in the plumbing field. I have this conversation a

lot and, you know, people talk to me about social media and

I'm like, did y' all know that YouTube is the second largest search engine in

the world? Did y' all know it was owned by Google, the largest search engine

in the world? And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why? Okay, Y' all know more

about social media than I did when I started. But look where I'm at. So,

Andrew, let me ask you this. Do you have a toilet anywhere in your house?

Do you have a lavatory, a faucet, kitchen sink,

anything like that? You know as much about plumbing as I did when I

started. I mean, you do. I had that too, but I

knew nothing about plumbing. But yet I still walked into a plumbing company and

applied for a job and said, look, I want to be a helper. I want,

I want to be an apprentice. I want to be whatever you call it. I

work hard, I'm willing to work hard. And they're like, okay,

you got a job. And I showed up at the job and I started learning

that's as easy as it can be. And I've got

a little deal on my YouTube channel, you may have seen it, where I've got

the little free course that asks them, do you want to do

residential or do you want to do commercial? And I explain

what residential and commercial really are. Then I talk to them about do you

want to do service work or do you want to do new construction? And I

explain what those are. And then I ask them, do you want to be union

or do you want to be non union? And I explain what those are. Now,

in each one of these, I give pros and cons of that

particular niche, because you can be any one

of those combinations of things. Luckily for me, in 45 years of

plumbing, I've done it all. I feel like I can talk about any one of

those for hours at a time and never say the

same thing twice. That's what it's all about, is

you don't have to join the union to get in the trades. You don't have

to join a company that's a member of PHCC to get in the

trades, or you don't have to just walk into a plumbing company and apply for

a job. There's multiple ways to get in and if you really want

to do it. And I know that we're talking about plumbing, Andrew, but it's plumbing,

electrical, H vac, carpentry, masonry,

elevators and escalators. Now that's mainly commercial, but those are some of

the highest paying jobs in the nation for tradespeople. So

any of these things are great opportunities. And if you're like, look,

I don't want to go to school every night, I don't want to go to

school two nights a week with the union, okay, then don't join the union. But

if you want to be a Commercial plumber. They're probably going to teach you how

better than an open shop company that has no training

system set up. So there's so many different ways to get in the trades right

now. I've heard some feedback. Well actually for quite a few people

that most companies are looking for experience. So if

somebody's coming out of trade school and they want to start

and they want to get in an apprenticeship,

you know, some of these individuals are saying, well it's,

they're looking for a couple years of experience and I'm not getting any

callbacks or anything like that. What would you say to those individuals? Like

what do you need to do? Do you need to be a little bit more

assertive than just obviously sending a resume in

today versus years ago? How would you get around that?

I teach people how to go through the interview process. In one of my courses,

I sat down with a lady fieldedge, I think does a

conference here in Dallas and I got invited to it. Grant Cardone's

guy, Brandon Dawson was speaking at it and somebody said, hey, you know, you need

to come see this. So I went over there and one of the

people recognized me. They're like, oh my God, you're on YouTube. So the field Edge

people, the lady says, look, can I interview you? I said, sure. And we talked

about this because to me, if I had no service at all, I mean no

experience at all, if I walked into a company and even if I

did have experience, but I can give people with no experience

a leg up because literally if you'll go down and

fill out the application and if you can get into an

interview, you can get the job. Because when you walk into that

interview, if I was being interviewed by you, Andrew, I would walk into the room

and reach down, shake your hands and say, Mr. Brownlock, thank you for the

opportunity. Whether I get the job or not, I just want you to know

I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me, to

interview me and to let me apply for this position. And then you

sat down and you go through the deal where you're pitching me on

how great your company is, how amazing it is, how whatever. And then at

the end when you say so, do you have any questions for me? Well, yes

sir. And you open up your notebook and you say, as a matter of fact,

I do. You mentioned coming to work here would be good for me. Can you

explain to me why would coming to work here be better for

me than going to work for your competition? What is it your

company's gonna do to make me a better plumber. Because

I wanna be a leader in this industry. I want to be a leader at

the companies that I work for, but I also want to be a leader for

my family. And if I'm not getting training, if I'm not getting educated,

I'm not going to grow much. And I understand that. And then let them answer.

Now, if they've already told you how they do their training, how they do everything

like that, don't ask a question they've already answered. But if you ask something like

that, I like to ask another question. It's like, okay, look, if I came

to Word Care and you look back five years from now

and said, that is one of the best hires I ever made,

what would I have done to make you think that and actually listen

to what they say? And then when you. When you're done and they say,

any more questions? No, I'm good, thank you. It's like, okay, you can say, well,

I do have one more question. Based on the questions and answers we've had today,

have I given you enough information to determine if I'm the right person for the

job or not? And if not, can you tell me what I did wrong?

And they're like, no, we've got other people interview, whatever it is. And you get

up and you go over again and say, Mr. Brown again. And you reach out

and you shake their hand. And if there's five people there, you

remember all their names. And you go through this process with each and every one

of them. You say, Mr. Brown, again, I want to say thank you for this

opportunity. I know we've been in here for 30 minutes or so.

I know you're a busy person and running a company like this, it takes a

lot, but I just want to tell you again, thank you so much for the

opportunity. You'll never know how grateful I am for it. And

you start heading out the door and they're like, wait a minute, you're hired.

And I told this lady that. And Andrew, by the time I'm talking, her jaw

is dropped. And she's like. And I'm looking at her and I said, so I

got a question. How many people have you interviewed this year? She said, probably

two dozen. I said, how many did something like that? She said,

none. I said, so what if this person walks in and interviews in front of

you? She said, they're not leaving. They're hired. They've got a job.

We want real people, but we want people that care. We want people

that aren't just hey, I'm just here for a check. How much money do I

make? How much money do you start me out and when do I get my

first check? Those are questions you should never even worry about. You ask

questions like I'm telling you you're going to get hired and they're going to be

like hey, we need to put him with them because they'll help him

grow. What do you think? Will that work for you? Those little

things? It's even just the soft skills that people don't have

necessarily. It's one thing being a business owner myself and

being on tons of interviews and people have come in, some people don't

even show up on time. That first is a red flag. You're 10 minutes, 15

minutes late. Look, if something happened, you had car trouble, that's fine. But you

show up, you look obviously presentable, you

shake someone's hand, you look em in the eye. I do this with my kids

too. Like I just, I make it a point. And you ask questions. You know,

I've been through interviews where you don't have any questions about the

company or anything about what you're going to be doing day to

day. It leaves an impression on you as person who

is the employer versus the potential employee.

But those soft skills are extremely important. That sometimes

is a miss that some of these kids don't have. And I was thinking

about an example. I was up at the Williamson College

of the Trades about a year, year and a half ago. It's a school that

brings in about 300 kids and it's tuition free and they learn

a trade and they go through three years of schooling. So they

come out with like multiple, multiple offers from

all these big name companies. What I found

walking around there and meeting these kids, each one you

shook their hand, they looked you straight in the eye, they spoke well, they said

Mr. Brown and these are future tradespeople

coming out. But they were taught the soft skills. There's a miss there that I

feel sometimes with the younger generation that they're coming in

and they're let down, like why didn't I get this job? Well one, you didn't

show up on time, two, didn't ask any questions, you didn't look presentable.

You know, how does it gonna feel on the other side like the employer

when they're you know, reading all these things about you. So all those

things are extremely important about showing. It's one thing to note what

you know in sort of whatever trade that you're in, but the other side of

you Know, having those soft skills is extremely important. And I love this. And I

look down for two reasons. Number one, I call it human skills.

Soft skills are great, but we need human to human. And to me, if you

can master that, they say the, the highest paid people in the world are

the people that can make the most money in the world, have the best emotional

intelligence, the eq. If you can learn eq,

not worry about iq, you can do great. But there's one thing that I

teach people also in that course, and I wanted to pull up my notes here.

You've all seen the things, 10 things that require zero talent.

Be on time, make an effort, be high

energy, have a positive attitude, being passionate,

use good body language, be coachable, do

a little extra, be prepared, and have a

strong work ethic. These are things that they don't take

any skill, they don't take any talent. It's easy to

do. A lady here in Dallas called Julie Jones, she's got

a company called Today's Professionals. She'd be great for you to interview.

She used to work for one of the best practice groups.

So she teaches professional etiquette, and she's

worked with some of the biggest plumbing companies in the world and

trained them on how to do things better. So

there's so many things that we can do to grow that don't take

a lot. You know, Brendan Burchard, years ago, I worked with

Brendan for a while, but he used to say, when you look at people,

imagine that they have see me, hear me,

acknowledge me and love me written on their forehead.

And if you treat every person in the world that way, you'll win

the game every day. It is about having a human interaction,

and that's extremely important. And to some degree, I

feel like it's very different today, you know, with the kids on their phone and

just being distracted. And we can go down a whole other path

there. But I do see that quite often. I do think that that kind of

holds kids back, you know, especially when they want to get a particular job. And

they say, why am I not good in these jobs? Well, you need to learn

all these different skills that you may not have learned growing up.

That's in order to really succeed in life,

besides sort of the technical skills. I mean, if you're going to get into plumbing

or any trade, especially in plumbing trade, like residential, you're knocking

on doors, you're going to people's attics. Like, you got to deal with people, right?

I got to talk to people. I, I remember I had, I

Don't know if you know a plumber girl by the name of Plumber Paige?

Paige Knowles. Yeah, she's great. She works for Skills Jam out in

Skills usa, who I'm going to be working with when I'm down there in June.

And, and just listening to her, what she had to go through.

She was telling me about that she was knocking on doors and the

person would open up and would it be, you know, the mom or dad

of the household? Like, wait, wait, wait, you're here to fix our plumbing?

You're like, plumber? Like, I don't understand, like, do you need help with that? And

she's like, no. But she had really good soft skills, really

good human to human interaction. And you could tell that she kind

of was able to, you know, sort of navigate that whole

sort of situation. But again, especially if you run a business and

I'm sure in your own business you have to deal with customers, you have to

deal with issues. And it's not just you go in and you fix something.

You want to take care of your customers, but you've got to be able to

talk to people and communicate properly. The best salespeople are great

communicators. I used to tell people like, I never sell. And

I'm like, but Roger, your ticket averages are higher than everybody else's.

I'm not trying to sell. I walk in, I see the problem. If I walked

in your house and I was looking at

replacing a toilet for you, I would look at it and say,

Mr. Brownlock, we can rebuild this toilet. But this toilet's kind

of old. You see how big that tank is. It's costing you a ton of

water every time you flush it. I would say instead of spending the money to

rebuild this, let's put that money towards investing in a toilet that's

going to save you money. And your toilet's not very

tall and it's the round one. Let's take you into

a comfort. They call it ada Comfort Hot. I'm not

ada, I don't need ada. But I love the comfort hot toilets

and I like the elongated. So here's what we can do.

And I just tell them, look, if you were my sister or my mother,

this is what I would be recommending and that's it. If they don't buy, I

don't care. I want to give them what they want. I want to make them

happy. But I'm the professional in that

situation and if I don't share my professional knowledge with

them about what's even available, I Haven't done them a good service.

And that's all it is, is communicating with your customers, trying

to provide what's best for them. I don't push them in a direction.

If you want me to rebuild it, I'll rebuild it. But you're going to keep

flushing 5 gallons of water down the drain every time you use

it. That adds up. We've got toilets now that'll flush

0.8 gallons of water and you're flushing 5. Just think

about it. And normally they're like, you know what? I like that. Let's go.

You know, another issue that keeps popping up in

really all trades, but I'm just thinking of in the plumbing trade is wages.

And I see this a lot on TikTok. A lot of people say, well,

I can't make money. I'm looking at the apprentice wages

and I'm making 18 an hour. I can go make $22 an

hour at Chipotle or McDonald's. And then the other side of it is that

I get in and there's, you know, people there who are not

treating me right. I'm kind of being razzed by, you know, some of the older

guys on site. And what do you say to somebody who

says that you can't make money in plumbing? If you go

to work for Chipotle and make 20 bucks an hour,

in two years, you're going to be making about 20 bucks an hour. You may

get a little raise here and there. You may get a 50 cent raise or

a quarter raise or something. They think, man, you're crushing it. But here's the deal.

In plumbing, you can go from $15

an hour to 20 an hour to 21 an hour

in about that same amount of time. If you're willing to learn,

if you're willing to do those 10 things I talked about, you can make

more than that. I know people around here that are still paying apprentices anywhere

from 15 to $20 an hour. Starting out those $15 an

hour apprentices, if they come in and hustle

and do those 10 things I was talking about, man, you're going to get to

20 really, really quick. That's a 33% raise,

and you can get there pretty quick. The union does cost of

living raises every year, and then you get your union raises every

year. And, man, I thought the union was great because about every three or four

months you're getting another. About every four months, you're getting another

$1 52 an hour raise. When I started in

the union, I was making 8, 10 an hour as a journeyman. When

I got out of the union, I was making over 51 an hour as a

director of operations. You can make whatever kind of money you want to make

anywhere. You know, Jim Rohn taught this really well, said that the

company I work for, you know, I can't make any more money here. He says,

wait, what do you mean you can't make any more money? He says, well, here's

how much they pay me. And he said, wait, so they don't pay anybody at

your company more than you? He said, well, yeah, they pay these people. He says,

so why aren't you one of those people? You know, you can grow

and I teach people. You can learn your way up out of anything.

If you don't like your neighborhood you live in, learn your way up. You don't

like the job you have, learn your way up. Do something different. The

only way you're going to make more than $20 at Chipotle is if you become

a manager or something. I think the national average for plumbers right now on the

PayCheck is about 35, almost $40 an hour.

You may start at 15, but you're not going to be there long. In

five years, you're going to double that. It's up to you what you do,

but learn your way up. I feel people get stagnated. Like, I just

feel like I'm in this situation. I'm working for a company. I'm

only making this. But I don't want to better myself in a sense of, like,

either I need to go somewhere else. And sometimes maybe you need to travel

and go somewhere else. That might be the case. But I do see

a lot of people just saying, this is just what it is. Well, take

the bull by the horns and make that change. If

you want to level up, level up your skills, get around people.

You have a mentor of some sort. What is your goal? You know, if you

can get around someone who's been in the field 25, 30 years

and is successful, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Do

what they did, or at least they can help you cut that time in half.

Otherwise, you're just kind of drifting around. I always find that

it's best to get around people who have been there, who have done that.

Otherwise, I feel like it's hard to do it yourself. I like the way you

put that because that's something my son and I talk about a lot. He was

a pipe fitter. And, you know, normally when you go to work at

A new company or they move you to a different job or something like that.

The superintendent will take you and walk you around. And you know, here's so and

so, so and so. Here's so and so. And that's the old grumpy guy. That's

the one you don't want to work with. My son's like, no, that's the one

I want to work with. And they're like, nobody wants to work with him. He

says, no, no, no. He's grumpy because he wants things done his way. And he

knows ways to do it that some of these other people on the job hadn't

even learned yet. That's the one I want to work with. Because if I can

make him happy, I can make anybody happy. And that's exactly the

way he looked at it. And I mean, think about it, Andrew. I'm 61

years old, I've got 45 years experience,

and if you had a choice to work for me, and I'm grumpy, I want

things done my way. I want it done right. You do it wrong, I'm going

to tell you did it wrong. I'm not going to try to bust your

tail about it. But it's not going to be, oh, sweetie,

you messed that up. Let's try again. It's gonna be like, dude, come

on, I told you how to do this. Let's do it right. And when you

look at that, you know you asked that question earlier about kids that want to

get in the trays. Look, these older guys know how hard this work is,

and I kid you not. I used to have a plumber that had a toolbox.

It was three feet long, 12 by 12. He built it all out of like

three quarter inch plywood and had a rope handle going

from one end to the other. We were running sewer lines

every day. But he still had every pipe wrench in

there, every tool he needed to solder water lines in

there. He had every tool he needed in there to do anything on this

job. And we parked, it was in Dallas. We parked about a quarter of a

mile from the job, and he said, grab my toolbox out of the back and

let's go. Because I rode to work with him. So next day I thought, man,

I'm going to be smart when he pulls up by the job site. I said,

hey man, look, why don't you let me out right here? No, no, no. I

don't let my tools out of my sight. We'll drive down there, we'll park, and

you Carry my tools back over. And I'm like, dude. Well, that was part of

learning and growing. And I remember going down to get fittings. He's like, look,

don't wait on the buck hoist. Don't wait on the elevator. Go down the stairs.

And then I go downstairs and I get the fitting, have it on my shoulder.

I'm sitting there waiting for the elevator. They're like, I need to holler down. You

ain't got time to wait on that. Come on. Come on upstairs. It's like, dude,

is there an easy way to do anything? He's like, and really there's

not. Just understand. Those grumpy old men know more than most other

people, and you really can learn a lot from them. Not a bad deal.

It's not a bad deal as long as they're open to help you. And

you should pay it forward. Look, everybody was new at some point, and

you should pay it forward. There's something about that fulfillment, about helping somebody

who really wants to learn. There is that sense. Like, I. I've

helped people just kind of throughout sort of their career. Just, you

know, I'm not looking for anything. But you're hungry and you, you want to learn.

I'm happy to help if I can. It's a great feeling when somebody

really reaches out and wants to help somebody who's much younger who

sees something in them. You could really escalate up

a lot quicker in your career. I like this, Andrew, because one thing that

I've always been taught is, look, show up for your success. You've got to show

up for it. And if you think about it, if I've got a person doing

those 10 things, be coachable, show up with a positive

attitude, be on time, be prepared. If I've got somebody

like that, chances are I'm not going to be busting their tail every day

because they're showing up now. If you come in

and I'm like, hey, I need you to drill those holes for the

anchors, it's like, okay, how do I do that again? Dude, I've showed

you the last two mornings in a row. Do you still not remember? No.

Really wasn't thinking it was that big a deal. Just show me again. Would you

get grumpy with somebody like that? Maybe. Maybe.

I want people to want to learn. I can't make anybody learn

anything. They've got to show up and want to learn. And that's one thing that

I teach, too, is, look, when somebody shows you how to do something,

remember it's for Your good to remember that way, when you come

in tomorrow, they're like, I'm not sure what I'm going to have you. Do

you want me to grab that drill and start doing the anchors again? You know

what? Yeah, go for it and see what they do. I just want

people to want to. Learn and also be helpful. Just sticking back

on wages for a quick second. Is there a point where you hit a

ceiling being in the field? And if you

do hit a ceiling, what's the next step? If you want to make

more within plumbing, where do you navigate towards?

I think it depends on what kind of company you work for. If you work

for a company that's just straight hourly pay, you'll hit a ceiling. Their price

structure is based on or should be based on. Here's

what it would cost me to hire the best plumber in this town. And there's

a formula that you go through to set your pricing based on that. And if

their pricing is based on that, if they go over that price, then it starts

getting into the profit. It starts getting into the money that the owner should

make. But if he wants to pay you more, he can always raise his

prices more. Now you can't just as an hourly person, say,

hey, look, I want to make a hundred bucks an hour. Although I think that

we're getting there, we're going to be there before long. But I think

that if you're working at a company, there is no way for you to move

up and make more money, go to another company. Because there are companies

out there that do commissions, companies that have

referral bonuses. Like if I show up at a house and I

go up in that attic and look at the water heater, which here in Texas,

for some reason we started putting them in the attic. But if I go up

in there and I see that their air conditioner is like on its last leg,

it sounds like it's straining to put out cold air or warm air. Might say,

hey, you know, I was looking at your air conditioner. It's 30 years

old. We do H Vac too. Would you like me to have somebody come

out and just look at yours, maybe service it or possibly give you

a price for another one? Well, I've worked at companies that you got a 10%

referral fee for doing that. They didn't add 10% to the price. The

owner just said, hey, our plumber sold this. We're going to give him 10%.

So there are ways to make money, but it may not be at the company

that you're at I know h vac people that also do

sales, they make 2, $300,000 a year.

But they are amazing at what they do. And they walk in and they're great

communicators. They have human skills. And they come in, they

sit down and talk and say, look, you know, I took your system apart and

here's some pictures. And look, that doesn't look good because it's not in a brand

new system. And you explain it to them and show it and take them up

there and show them and let them see. So you understand you're breathing the air

that comes through this every day. And as a communicator,

that can be good. But you know, most plumbing companies these days

don't charge enough for what they do. Almost every plumbing company

that I coach, we go and look at their price book. It's like, you can't

pay people this much and be only charging this much.

And when you go through and show them the formula and make it make sense,

they're like, wow, that's why we're losing money every day. Yeah, it's got a lot

to do with it. I'm sure you see this all the time, you know, especially

somebody who's doing business. I want to go back to just being in

the field to make that leap. To be a bit like, all of a sudden

you're like, this had this aha moment. Like, I don't want to work for somebody

else. I want my own business. How does someone make that leap? And

what kind of skillset do you need if you're just in the field working, you

know your stuff. But to make the leap to business

owner, what kind of skill sets do you need to have? Well, first of all,

you gotta be crazy. Think about it. As a company owner, it's the only job

in the world. Will you work 100 hours a week and not get paid

just so you don't have to work 40 hours a week for somebody else and

get paid? I remember one of my best friends, the guy who actually got me

into plumbing, whenever I got ready to open my own company, I called him, said,

man, look, I'm gonna open my own company. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do

this. And he said, get ready to work harder than you've ever worked in your

life. And I thought, dude, you're crazy. I'm opening my own company so I don't

have to work as hard. It's not what it is. You're going to work

harder for at least five years to Try to stay in

business, to keep the doors open, to do things right, to make that

jump. You've got to understand that the buck stops with you.

Everything about that company, every decision is now your decision

and there's nobody else to push it off on. You can hire coaches, you can

hire consultants, you can do things like that. But that is hard to

do. I mean, I've had grown men call me crying. They're like, roger,

we're not going to make payroll, we're not going to make labor. It's like, well,

what are you doing? And you start looking, it's like, well, why'd you do this?

Like, well, man, it just seemed good at the time. Well, your budget didn't tell

you that that was good at the time. And they're like, yeah, but you know,

I just thought if I did this, I could do this, I could do this.

Like, those are not data driven decisions, those are

feeling decisions. I want this new tool, so I'm going to go ahead and

get it. That's not a good way to run a business. You've got to be

able to look at numbers, know your KPIs, possibly join a best

practice group, learn from other people that have been there and done it.

It's hard to do. Do you think that's one of the missteps that you see

when you're working with business owners? KPIs are something and

it blows people's mind. Because I'm at conferences, I speak to business

entrepreneurs, I speak to speakers and coaches and consultants and

all kinds of people. And I always talk about KPIs,

because to me, it doesn't matter if you're doing social media, it doesn't matter if

you're plumbing, electrical, H vac, you've got to know your numbers. There's

a special on TV about a guy in Detroit, Clarence Avant, who is like the

king of Detroit, the King of Motown, the Godfather of Motown I think is

what they actually call him. And he used to teach people, look, know your numbers,

know your value, because if you don't, you're never going to get it.

And if you don't ask for it, well, you, you don't get anything you don't

ask for. So numbers are huge. KPIs, man.

I sleep thinking about KPIs. Yeah, you need to know your numbers. But

yeah, I mean, if you don't ask, you don't get.

Now the tools. Of the trade, you know,

Roger, I could speak to you for the next hour. This has been

an amazing conversation, but in Every episode,

we always ask our guests a tools of the trade.

What's one piece of advice you can give someone

who is struggling in their plumbing business to

start getting it to grow? I know you touched upon it, but I want to

go a little bit deeper into it. God, there's so many different things that come

to mind. One of my favorites is find a mentor, find a

coach, find a mastermind. Find something that you can get in. And it

doesn't necessarily have to be a best practice group. You could

literally call another electrician, a

roofer, an H vac. And this is, if you're a plumber,

get you a company owner in the other trades,

reach out to them, say, look, I'm wanting to put together a mastermind. I want

to meet once a month, and we meet for about an hour, depending on how

many people's in it. And each month that we talk,

we're going to talk about what you're trying to do, what

you've done right, that's really helped you move the needle,

what problem you're facing right now and what

you really need help with. So there's three people in a group. You say, okay,

20 minutes each. You spend five minutes on each one of those, and

it may be five minutes of just saying, I need help with invoicing. Who can

help me with invoicing? And the other three or the other two get to say,

okay, here's what I use. Here's how we use it. We don't even know what

we don't know. And that was a hard thing for me to learn. I thought,

you know what? I'm a good plumber. I'm really good. I've made these companies

a lot of money as a superintendent, as director of operations.

But when you open your business, you don't even know what you don't know.

And that's not a good position to be in. This is something that I

would recommend to anybody. If you're just starting your own company, maybe your

first coach or mentor is somebody who owns the biggest company in town doing what

you do, they're not going to be afraid of you. If you come in and

say, man, look, I know this sounds weird, but I'd like to talk to you

and see what I need to do to do things right. I did that with

that electrical company. And he said, bring your price book. And I brought it in,

laid it down. He looked at it. So you're not charging enough. I said, well,

my CSR and my office manager, which is my wife at the time well,

they're going to tell me I can't raise prices that nobody will pay. Well, then

you need to get rid of them. You need people that believe in what you

do, believe in what's right. And, and you're not charging enough. I said, how

do you know that? He said, because I do this in Dallas. I know what

it costs to do business in Dallas and you're not charging enough. I'm like,

wow. I actually say this very similar thing, like,

what you don't know hurts you. Getting a mastermind, I think

that's so smart because you're getting around other people that

might not be in the same industry per se. And I'm thinking,

what I do, I'm part of a CEO group called Vistage. And

it's just a nationwide group of CEOs. I have one Wednesday

and I meet with 15 other business owners but in different industries.

And I get my head handed to me each time. I go sometimes and I'm,

I'm totally cool with that because I'm like, damn, I didn't know that. And

then you come away and you're like, wow, I didn't even know that.

Sometimes you just gotta be open and honest and just say, I just, I don't

know. I really don't. Because you don't know. You gotta be a little

bit foolish to be like, I'm going to try to do it

myself and nobody else is going to tell me anything.

But if you're open minded and you take the advice

from the people who are much further ahead of you in

your journey and you just got to listen. But if you're going to be close

minded and you're not going to listen to these different ways of doing

things, you might not get to where you want. So I think sort of the

mastermind, the coaching, getting around all other CEOs or

business owners is extremely valuable. Have you read the

book Think and Grow Rich? It's on my list. I would move it to

the very top. That book has done more for more.

You asked the shark tanks, Damon Johns. I heard him speak

at an event, PHCC event. Damon

John spoke one night and he said, I've read that book

23 times and every time I read it I hear something

new. It talks about the mastermind and how to put it together

and what you do and the way to do it. But I think that that

book right there has probably helped me more than anything. We've

got to become students, we've got to learn. It's the only way you're going to

grow. And unfortunately, most tradespeople, once we get that professional

license in our pocket, we quit learning. Hey, I'm just a plumber. Just let me

go plumb now. And we don't realize that if we continue

to learn, we can continue to grow and we can really do some good

things. So that's a book I recommend to everybody is

Think and Grow Rich. I remember I was actually speaking at an

event in White Fish, Montana, and I

saw a deal on Facebook and it was the Think and Grow Rich, the legacy

movie or whatever. It was about 70 or 90 minutes

and I'm watching it, I'm like, why don't I know these things? And it blew

my mind. I ordered the book right then and I used to carry it

around with me because each of the different chapters talk about different

things. But that is a great book to have on audible to just

listen while you're driving down the road. It's a game changer.

It's on my list now. It's going to be on top of my list. I

appreciate that. And you know, some of these books just are game

changers for yourself. I mean, I have a huge list. But

you have to continue learning, growing,

developing self improvement across the board if you want to get to

where you want to get to in life. Some people don't do that

and you need to do that and you need to be open to really

get to sort of the level you want to, you want to get to.

Roger, if people want to find out more about you, your YouTube channel, where do

they go to find out more information about you? Yeah, it's really funny on YouTube.

Just go to YouTube and search plumbing. You'll find me. Just look for the big

white mustache. If you want to connect with me, I've got my

LinkedIn page, you can find me there. And that's the one I pretty much do

myself. So if you message me, chances are I'll see it.

And if you just want to find out about everything we do, you can go

to rogerwakefield.com and check them out on Saturdays. What time is your live

Saturdays? We've switched it over. We now we've got a second

YouTube channel called the Trade Talks and we go live

every day at 10 o' clock Central Standard Time. And what that is.

Did you ever watch the Pat McAfee show, the sports Guy? Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. He was on ESPN and on YouTube.

Well, we've done that on YouTube. We have about 11

different topics we talk about each day. It may be what's

going on in the world Today website reviews, material,

equipment and technology, mechanical, electrical and plumbing.

We've got different topics that we talk about. We're

talking to some really big sponsors about coming in and doing different segments

and we do that every day. It's on our second YouTube channel called the Trade

Talks. Every day, 10:00 Central standard time. And we talk about

all the trades, not just plumbing, electrical and H

vac. And it's really pretty cool. Yeah, definitely. Check it out. I mean,

Roger's knowledge base and just, you know, just overall

and just your. The impact that you're making. Thank you so much for what

you do and thank you so much for really you're changing people's

lives. So thank you, Andrew. Thank you. I love what you do for the trades

community. Anytime you call, I'm always like, yeah, whatever I can do for you, let

me know. So thank you. I do appreciate what you bring to. The trades

and thank you to our listeners. If you want more valuable insights and

trades related information, head over to andrewbrown.net and join

our Trades Movement newsletter where we advocate for the trades, we share

inspirational stories. Like Roger Wakefield, we provide resources

and you join a passionate trades community. Don't forget

to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss another episode. We'll see you

next time.

Thanks for listening to the lost art of the skilled trades. Visit

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