John Diekel:  One of the most important things is communicating with the community. The previous owner did a fantastic job. He started the business back in 1987 Career Plumbing, HVAC Guy, brilliant mind, fantastic guide. Overall, awesome person but he didn't communicate with the community that he was looking to grow the business. He wanted to stay the size that he was, which I totally respect. So what we've done is let the community know that we're interested in growing and talking to people, not through marketing means, but just through community engagement and then implementing systems, enabling us to scale.

Austin Gray: Hey, welcome back to another episode of the OWNR OPS Podcast. I'm your host, Austin Gray. We talk all about starting and growing local service-based businesses. In this podcast, we drop episodes every Friday, send out a weekly newsletter on Saturdays with a summary of the learning lessons from the podcast.

In this episode, I have John Diekel from Master Plumbing and Heating. Joining me. John spent time at a government contracting company and he learned specifically how to do business and how to lead teams well from the CEO of that company. So he went, took those skills and bought a plumbing and heating company. Stick around, you'll get the full story here and you'll get some insights into how John plans to grow this business. 

John Diekel: One of my assignments in the military was a career broadening assignment called Educational with Industry where I spent a year working for a civilian company in Austin. So I was chief of staff for the owner of Gotham's, but he's also a partner at A B, C and DCVC and a bunch of other venture funds. So during that time we were setting up the Austin location and buying a building that's a couple blocks down from where you're currently sitting and doing a bunch of stuff with Covid. And so during that whole year and a half, I lived in Austin. 

Austin Gray: Sweet. So it was with Gothams? 

John Diekel: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: Interesting. Cause they've actually reached out about some government work.

John Diekel: Yep. 

Austin Gray: In Colorado supposed to be the guy 

John Diekel: Who is it? 

Austin Gray: To go back through my, yeah, I'd have to pull back. Pull that back up. Let's see. He was supposed to come up in snowmobile. Hagen? 

John Diekel: Hagen went to Columbia. He played football there. I remember when Hagen got hired. I, I was early on at Gotham's. I think I was the eighth of that ninth guy there. And then during that time we obviously helped Curative do a bunch of Covid testing sales. I think we did a couple billion dollars in Covid testing sales or something like that. And then after that, Gotham's pivoted more aggressively into the governmental space, specifically for government services in their emergency management field. So we did a lot of like Covid testing, recovery, our Covid monoclonal infusions, some hurricane support contracts in like Louisiana. So we did a bunch of stuff like that. I was getting done there. 

Austin Gray: What sparked the move to Vermont? 

John Diekel: So I'm from the area, actually. I grew up more like 35 minutes from Le Low where the business currently is and we operate out of. So it's good to move back home and gives me a good reason to see family every day. There's not a whole lot of opportunity for economic development in Vermont, which obviously is a systemic problem. Growing a small business and trying to treat people the way they deserve to be treated financially and personally is a good way to try to help out with doing that so buying a small business, growing the business, compensate people the way it's supposed to, allows people like me to have an opportunity here. But it also allows the younger generation in general to have an opportunity here in Vermont. 

Austin Gray: So you bought Master Plumbing and Heating? 

John Diekel: Yeah, I'm the sole equity owner.

Austin Gray: Okay. 

John Diekel: No investors, no nothing. Just my entire life savings. 

Austin Gray: Really? 

John Diekel: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: What year did you decide to buy this business? So this is JD with Master Plumbing and Heating out of Vermont. He decided to buy a business. Why don't you take us back to the start. 

John Diekel: Yeah. Career military guy spent seven years in active duty Before that Air Force Academy graduate specialized in defense contracts during my time in the service, one of my assignments was a career broadening assignment where I spent spent a year with Gothams growing and scaling small businesses in support of government services and went back to the service and taught a lot of those lessons learned from the brilliant minds of Gothams.

So with that learning about how business works, how to treat people, how to operate, how to lead, how to develop, how to mentor, I started to think, I certainly can't do what he does, but maybe I could do this at a smaller level to help people grow and develop. With that, I started to form with the idea of buying a small business.

Of course, the self-funded search fund theme started to blow up back in the late 2010’s, early 2020’s. Right around that time as well. I started to read more about it, started to get more interested and talk to a couple traditional search funds, and without going to business school, I didn't have the credentials to be backed by an investment firm, so.

Continuing down the pathway of self-funded and how, what could I do and how can I negotiate a deal that I can actually afford to buy A small business landed back in Vermont at home. My parents are getting older. All of my siblings have spouses now. My older sister and my older brother both have two girls, so my nieces are all here. So it gives me a reason to be closer to home after a long time of the service. So I spent 11 and a half years away. So getting back to home means a lot to me. Having a team that we can lead, develop, and mentor and grow is everything. 

Austin Gray: I recently got back from launching a land clearing business down in Austin, and this last winter I launched a snow shoveling business alongside Bear Claw. And in both businesses, I've implemented jobber as a way for us to efficiently manage quoting, job schedules, and invoicing, and even collecting online payment. Why? Because it's worked so well for us in Bear Claw and it's saved us a ton of time and headache. So if you are looking for a software that can help you manage the backend of your business, look no further than Jobber, you can visit go.getjobber.com/ownerops O-W-N-R-O-P-S.

Austin Gray: Can you tell us more about the business and kind of just general size of when you ended. 

John Diekel: Absolutely. I bought the business on May 27th, 2023. My first day in the office was May 29th, 2023. It was three weeks after my second deployment. So I got home from deployment, did my two weeks of rest and recovery and in processing back in San Antonio. Flew back home, bought the business, took a month off, so leave to get it going with, uh, my partner in crime, my stepdad, Jeffrey, and we had six or no seven employees at times. Now in 2025 we have 23, so we're moving and grooving, we're growing.

We do plumbing, heating, air conditioning, water treatment predominantly. We got some things we gotta work on still. Specifically the naming, the branding, right? You said Master Plumbing, heating. We get a lot of calls from people saying, Hey, you guys do air conditioner. Hey, you do water treatment? So we got some things that we gotta work on, but it's been a blast growing, developing the business so far.

Austin Gray: How have you grown and developed the business? 

John Diekel: I think one of the most important things is communicating with the community. The previous owner did a fantastic job. He started the business back in 1987, career plumbing, HVAC guy, brilliant mind, fantastic guy, overall, awesome person. But he didn't communicate with the community that he was looking to grow the business. He wanted to stay the size that he was, which I totally respect. So what we've done is let the community know that we're interested in growing and talking to people, not through marketing means, but just through community engagement and then implementing systems enabling us to scale.

So having an online CRM, we use Jobber, eventually we'll use ServiceTitan, but we use a plenty of other tools for software to enable us to actually schedule. Intake requests, scheduled jobs, quote the jobs, perform the jobs, invoice for the jobs, follow up on quotes, follow up on invoices. The we're establishing lot of systems and processes that actually enable us to scale, whereas the previous owner did it all on his own shoulders, which credit to him. He's a lot more talented than I am to be able to do that, but I have certainly not as talented enough to keep track of hundreds of jobs and thousands of customers just in my mind or notebook. 

Austin Gray: It's pretty incredible what that generation could do. My pops is one of those guys, he just has his whole job book in his head. Like he can just spit off his schedule. He knows what he is doing, he knows where his crews are going, and he is always been able to do that. And then now, like when you know what you can do with software as simple as Jobber, right? Like it makes you question like, how in the world did they do that for so long without something like this?

John Diekel: Oh my gosh. I think that all the time, and I'm careful when I talk about it, to be honest with you because Austin, I don't want anybody to think that I'm finger wagging or saying the older generation, they don't use these software tools that they're bad. But I think it's exactly what you said where it's, they are that incredible to be able to keep track of 'em.

The phone numbers, the email addresses, the addresses, the door codes, what the actual scope of work is, what they did last year or 10 years ago for a boiler or for a heating system in some of these houses. It's just incredible. I've got a couple other employees who have been here since the beginning of this company, so one's been here for now 38 years, two more have been here for 26 years, and they've stayed on since the transition, but it's incredible. 

They'll, we'll talk about a job and they'll say, oh yeah, so, so and so used to own that house 25 years ago. And I, when I built, when I helped build it, we did this and this for the drainage piping over there. That might be the issue and we'll go there and that'll be the issue. It's, it's miraculous, honestly.

Austin Gray: It really is, and there's so much that I believe the millennial and Gen Z generation, rather than bashing that generation for not being able to adapt the software, it's like. There are so many qualities that generation had that we can learn from. 

John Diekel: Oh my God, yeah. You gotta have that respect. And I think that some people, specifically our space, younger generation that's starting to get into the trades or taking over these businesses may not have the respect for the older generation. I just think that's such a huge mistake. I think we gotta give them their utmost respects for their dedication and for their ability to be able to handle that much volume of knowledge across the board. But yet. Try to show them in a way that, hey, it doesn't have to be that difficult. We also can do it like this.

Which has been a kind of a fun task. 'cause we have a, a nice dichotomy now of people who are 55 to 60 years old in the organization. But we also have a nice dichotomy of people who are 20 to 30 years old. So it's pretty mean our organization, we mash a couple generations. We're missing the middle tier little bit. We don't have a ton of folks in that 30 to 50 range, which is what we're trying to grow. But as you know from your business, I'm sure. There's not a lot of people in that generation who went down the trades pathway. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. That's interesting. So you are, it's interesting that you bring that topic up, but you are actually seeing that in the people who apply for the jobs you're putting out.

John Diekel: Without a doubt. What I tell everybody is our mission here is to bring the average age of a plumber, HVAC technician, down from 57 years old to a more reasonable number in the 35 to 45 range. But as a state, the industry's very old, which is awesome 'cause we have lots of people to learn from. But those guys can't necessarily get on their backs underneath sinks or underneath houses or on their hands and knees running drainage underneath houses for renovation work.

So they don't have the body to do it anymore but they still have brilliant minds. But we're really missing that senior level trainer, that 35 to 45-year-old technician. We don't have much of that in Vermont. I think that's largely to deal with the fact that we as a nation said for a long time that we value post-secondary education at university and not talking about the amazing work people do in the trades and the amazing lifestyle that you can have and how you can make a ton of money as a H-V-A-C, your plumbing technician if you do great work and you have great character.

But we definitely see that with our hiring is definitely the hardest thing to challenge to hire for us. The biggest challenge with hiring is hiring those senior level trainers. So we're really trying to come up with creative ways, partnering with different organizations to different digital marketing efforts to try to recruit and hire some of that talent.

And then we just have incredible benefits once we hire 'em on, we retain very well. But the only way we're gonna change the average age of plumber in Vermont for our mission is getting the younger generation, the 18 to 30 year olds trained up, involved in loving life. But the only way we can train 'em is to go get those trainers that 30 to 50-year-old plumbing HVAC guy.

Austin Gray: You do see it as very important to go hire those trainers, like you have to actively go find that trainer, correct? 

John Diekel: Yes. You have to actively find the trainers. I compare a lot to the military, like I don't wanna send any of my guys or gals out in the field without the proper equipment and training. I just think about my military lifestyle. You would never go on deployment without all your pre-deployment training, without being well versed in your craft. Whatever field of work it was in service, you would never do that. It's dangerous, I think the same way with plumbing HVC systems, but it's very easy with, especially with the systems we have with propane, how combustible it is this. If you send somebody out there who isn't prepared or licensed into the field, that's absolutely dangerous. Not only for your employees, but for the customers and for the entire neighborhoods. 

Austin Gray: That makes complete sense. And what are some of those ways that you're creatively thinking about going to recruit that person?

John Diekel: Great question. So what we've started doing, we started partnering with different organizations that do different targeted Facebook and Instagram ads. For better or for worse, I don't know if you like social media, love it, hate it. I'm not the biggest fan of it. But we all have it all the time, and a lot of us use social media similar to how our parents' generation use the news network.

That's how most of us check our news on X or Instagram or whatever have you. So we're actually running a lot more advertisements on there to say, Hey, if you're interested in looking for work, this is where we're at. We have a huge service net before those targeted ads. So we run 'em around here for 50 miles, but we also run 'em.

I was head of Boston in Rhode Island for 50 miles. In case there's anybody who's in the city working at that senior level trainer who who says, you know what, maybe I do wanna have a quiet life. Maybe I wanna live in a ski town and ski every weekend. So, we try to take a diverse approach to it, which is the opposite of what a lot of companies in Vermont too.

Austin Gray: I was actually just looking at some of our hiring ads that we've been running on meta as well yesterday. How have they been working for you? 

John Diekel: Super. Actually, we actually get a lot of feedback from Deep Edge. You'd be surprised how many people are on social media, how much they'll engage with a click of a button. From there, we have a pretty in-depth process with our partner who goes through and asks the questions, has them apply for interview, does video record interview questions to try to weed out people who may not actually be interested or may just be clicking the button because they see the benefit package that we offer to try to we those folks out.

We're not just talking to a ton of people, but we get a lot of traction. With those targeted ads saying, Hey, this is what we do, this is who we are, very professional, very nice graphics. So I think taking the time to invest the money back into the business to help the people is everything. 

Austin Gray: When you say partner ads, do you partnering with a recruiting agency or like who is this partner?

John Diekel: Yeah, rapid Hire Pro is who we partner with is because I don't have the bandwidth to really sit down, meant the flywheel on that business element. I just don't, it's a complicated one. Obviously with me being in Vermont, the population is only seven 50,000 people in the whole state. So if you think about the city that you're in right now, Austin, holy moly, man, you have a lot more people in that city than I do in this whole state. So it's like for me to be able to recruit talent, it's my, my biggest challenge in growing my business, for sure. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, absolutely. We deal with the same thing with Colorado as well, because. We're in a mountain town too. 

John Diekel: Yeah. You're in a similar market, really. 

Austin Gray: For sure. Yeah. That seems to be the bottleneck for growth. I was just talking about this yesterday with a couple of our, um, AD guys and they're looking at some of our metrics on, holy crap, man, why are you not scaling with these types of numbers? And it's, I think it's really easy for some people to sit behind a screen and look at data and say, this is incredible like why not grow? And it's just, hold on one second. There are so many dynamics involved. 

John Diekel: Yes, sir. 

Austin Gray: In this, right? 

John Diekel: Yes sir. 

Austin Gray: Like running ads in a small mountain town is completely different than running ads in Austin or in Denver or in New York. Like your, you're, and we don't have to go down this super far, but it's so competitive in these big cities, whereas you go to a mountain town and yes, you may be able to convert your ads at a higher percentage rate, but fulfill, like being able to fulfill the job at a quality service is the bottleneck. And so then now, like I'm verbally this whole week expressing that, okay, hiring is the most important thing that we need to figure out internally in our business. Have you identified that with you? Is it a lead volume thing or is it a hiring thing for your business? 

John Diekel: Our problem is definitely a hiring thing. And you're exactly right. How do you do things at scale? How do you perform work at scale if you can't have the personnel to go do it? And I think another interesting fact, at least for us, and I'm sure you have to use tax, same issue so I'd be curious what you think. We complicate people very well in terms of their actual pay structure. In terms of our bonus structure, we do quarterly cash bonuses, and then our assurance and retirement benefits is unbelievable like I'm the only one who pays for health insurance in the company. So everybody, if you work here full time, you have free health insurance just like everybody did in the military. So you have to do those kinds of things in order to attack, attract, retain the top level talent to perform the quality of work that we perform.

So by far, hiring is the biggest problem and you have to invest a lot more money into those personnel recruitment, whether it's with the ad agencies or whether it's with the recruiting agencies, or whether it's just in your employee benefits structure and packages. You have to truly invest and overinvest, not that you can really overinvest in your people, but relative to what other locations in the country may be able to pay high quality people. You have to pay much more in our market. I'm sure it's the exact same thing in yours, right? 

Austin Gray: Exact same thing because you are in a ski town, right? 

John Diekel: Yes, sir. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: So cost of living's high.

John Diekel:  Super. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: What are, what are some of the other benefits you offer? 

John Diekel: Healthcare is totally paid by me for all employees, so health insurance is 100% free. It's the highest rated MVP plan you can get in the state of Vermont. We do dental insurance, we do vision insurance. We do 401k with match. We do quarterly cash bonuses based on performance. Those are really the big ones. We can have our senior guys take their vehicles home, their work trucks. They can drive that home into and from work, which saves them a bit of money. So those are really the main benefits. But it's tough, man. 'cause you gotta pay all those things and unfortunately, you gotta still find a way to be competitive in the market.

Austin Gray: Yeah, no doubt about that. And people ask, oh wait, do you ever get the, this is way more expensive than the other quote. 

John Diekel: Yeah, we get that occasionally. Yeah. And we don't really get it locally because the locality is what the locality is. Often we'll get the second, third, fourth homeowners who are our target market. We'll say this is more than what I paid in my home in New York or Connecticut or Boston or Jersey. And we feel for 'em and we just explain to 'em, look at, we love the people down there. I've got friends who own plumbing companies down there. It's just a totally different market and we have, we work with like about 7 to 10 different suppliers on a weekly basis.

But there's only two supply houses that we can actually drive to. There's just not as many vendors. The cost of living is much higher. And in order to recruit and retain the talent's, gonna do the quality work that you know you or I would expect in our own homes, then you have to go after the guys and gals who are the best and that requires, you gotta compensate the best. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So let's take this down. I'm curious to know off the top of your head, do you know the true cost  of labor in your business. And I'm asking this because this is something I'm trying to figure out in mine, but as a rough percentage, so if you're paying somebody, I don't know what you pay, it's $30 an hour for any of your roles in line.

John Diekel: It provide field roles. That's in line for our junior apprentices to journeymen range. A lot of our journeymen are around that range. My highest paid guys make 40, 50 bucks an hour plus all those benefits. 

Austin Gray: Cool. So let's take 30 bucks an hour, for example. Do you have the true cost of that labor hour dialed in at this point with when you include all the benefits that you're offering?

John Diekel: Yeah. Our benefits run another like 18 bucks an hour, 20 bucks an hour, right around that ballpark. 

Austin Gray: So if you're paying somebody 30, it's costing you 48 bucks an hour. 

John Diekel: Yeah, just to get 'em out the gate. Not including any of the overhead, that's just that one personnel. 

Austin Gray: And that's just for the benefits and not taxes on your side?

John Diekel: Correct. 

Austin Gray: Is that including taxes on your side? 

John Diekel: Oh, excuse me. We're including taxes, the payroll taxes that we pay there. And then a lot of our benefits we take the taxes out for. No, I just cover the taxes. Not a lot of the stuff. You need employees. 

Austin Gray: So that $18 an hour would be inclusive of benefits and employer paid taxes?

John Diekel: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: Cool. Yeah. So that is something that I think a lot of early stage business owners, myself included, it's Oh yeah, to, I'm gonna pay this guy 30 bucks an hour scale will offer benefits, and then you just don't, if you don't break it down, you never really understand what that's actually costing you. And I think this is an area that a lot of people, especially like a lot of our listeners, are in that like zero to 1 million phase, like getting up and off the ground, especially when you're owning and operating and doing a lot of the labor yourself. It's like it's one thing to sacrifice your time, but once you start growing and hiring people. II personally think that is one of the most important things to figure out when you start paying people on it too. 

John Diekel: See, I agree with you and I, I think holistically knowing your numbers in general matters much like we have a rhythm where we do a monthly close and a weekly close on our books. So every single week, every single month, we close our books. We know exactly what we brought in that week, what costs went out, how many people we're working, what was our cost per job. We go all the way down through all of the metrics. 'cause you just have to know, you just do. 

Austin Gray: And what does that meeting cadence look like and structure?

John Diekel: So we do monthly close meetings where my CFO and I go through his report of, alright, how do we do top to bottom? Are we hitting our targets for cash on hand? revenue coming in the door? jobs lease converted? A lot of different metrics that everything you can imagine we talk about for a good hour to three hours.

Austin Gray: Wow. And it did whenever you bought the cup, was there a CFO in place already?

John Diekel: No, there wasn't. I brought him on about a year in, and he's a Al DFO to be clear. So he does this for me and I think four or five other small businesses in the trades. He had exited his business that he sold for quite a bit of money a few years ago, and this is what he does now to try to help other entrepreneurs like you and me and your listeners, just to help grow to develop our businesses. Cause now that I've been working with 'em for a year, I'm on the same page with 'em of. If you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business, how can you truly lead effectively if you don't even know what you're leading? 

Austin Gray: Stryker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bodi and Andy, the two co-founders, have helped me get BearClaw Land services to the number one search result on Google inside my state for my specific search term. If you wanna learn more, visit StrykerDigital.com. That's S-T-R-Y-K-E-R digital.com. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so once a month? 

John Diekel: Yes. 

Austin Gray: Do you mention something at the end of each week?

John Diekel: Each week we do mini closes, so I don't get involved in the actual closing of books, but my CFO, my bookkeeper, every single week I close the books say, alright, here's where we're at this week. And then once a month we roll that up into a four week report for monthly report to compare against. For example, we just did February's meeting two weeks ago, so we talked about what was February compared to January? What was February compared to February of 2024? Across all these metrics, what about our goals for the month? Did we hit, we had a lot of success. We had some things that we had to work on, so we hit like revenue and cash on hand. We need to work on our operating costs in February, just because we brought on a couple more people so our operating costs went up, but we had to level some stuff out and realign with our goals for March, and I'm excited to see March's report here coming out in a couple weeks.

Austin Gray: Does your CFO work in tandem with a specific bookkeeper? Or did you have a bookkeeper in place and is he working off numbers that he or she is creating? 

John Diekel: He's working off the numbers my bookkeeper creates and he works hand in hand with my bookkeeper, but he does not have a bookkeeper that he has. So I wanna keep bookkeeping relatively in-house. There a remote employee that I hired from off in the Philippines. She's fantastic. So she works same hours that you and I do. But my CFO works with her numbers. It's something I just wanna keep in house. 'cause I think keeping an eye on your books and knowing what's coming in and what's going out is way too important to, to ship out offsite too far, I think.

Austin Gray: Yeah. And at a certain level, ours is contracted out and so I'm just realizing that not having somebody dedicated to that every single day. Cause it's interesting when you contract it out to an agency, he or she's probably managing, I don't know, 10 other accounts if I had to guess, maybe 15. 

John Diekel: Could be. 

Austin Gray: Who knows if he or she is managing 10 other accounts, like you're getting one 10th of their time that week for whatever you're paying. And I think in the early days it's, yes, let's let sure hire the agency. 'cause they're the pros, right? They know what they're doing. In the beginning, you're throwing a lot of things against the wall, but we're getting to this phase right now where agency model, unless they're like elite and have a, a very dialed in system, just doesn't seem to be working as, as well as I want it to.

And so it's interesting to say that you've brought that in-house and that's something important to you because that is something I've been thinking about recently where it's, we just need, we need somebody dedicated and because our reports aren't getting created fast enough at this point to be able to make the decisions. And I think you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's gonna catch up to us at a certain point if we don't get somebody internal.

John Diekel: I, I agree with you. I think the speed of decision making is one of the most important things that you and I have to focus on every day. And with that, having somebody in house gets me the data faster to make the most appropriate decision. I think that's one of my, the bigger things I've done that I'm thankful for. That's one of those ones where, you know, you and I make decisions all day, every day and it affects a lot of people. Sometimes you're like, golly, why did I do that? That was a boneheaded move. But sometimes you're like, okay, that one was smart, and now she's been on board with those for 15 months.

I've been really thankful I've had her in house full time. We tried to do it as a delegated duty for one of our office personnel and just it becomes too much given the number of transactions we do. I've got three deliveries every single day, and now we're going up to five deliveries every single day. We've got two companies that do night trucks. For me, we have just a pure quantity of transactions. Just to even just do the basic classifying transactions in QuickBooks or Xerox or whatever people use. It's just insane for us in our business. So we have to have somebody in house doing it full time. 

Austin Gray: Do you mind sharing change if you want, of course. But just for our listeners, how much are you paying a dedicated bookkeeper, and then how much does it cost to have a. Fractional CFO. 

John Diekel: Yeah, I'm happy to share. I'm not gonna mention their names, obviously, 'cause I don't want anybody to be talking about, you know, them or their money. A thousand to 1500 is gonna get you a pretty good bookkeeper offsite in the Philippines or Latin America by CFO. He's in the United States, he's in California. Like I said, very strong reputation and expertise. He's writing that two to $4,000 range of per month. So not cheap, don't get me wrong. Not cheap, but they're things that as you grow and scale. You can't buy back peace of mind of knowing your numbers and being able to make the right decisions that you can be fully confident in.

Austin Gray: Well, you're talking somebody who's 1099 for, at least for your CFO. Yeah, 24 to 48 KA year to have the level of expertise, even if it's not full time, some is better than 

John Diekel: Yes, sir. And what I would tell you is the things that I talk about with him range, it's not just, Hey, what are the numbers? We do everything from leadership development, conversation to how do we solve these kinds of problems. I'm having an employee issue, I'm having a logistics issue. You know, what is your experience? What do you think about it? So he'll really teach me a lot about leadership and stuff, and I've had so many great mentors like the founder of Gothams is somebody who I always look up to that we were talking about earlier, and like he's similar to that mentor where he'll talk to me about anything under the sun. So it's not just like a CFO only does the numbers. 

Austin Gray: Was he a founder? 

John Diekel: He was. 

Austin Gray: So he's played CEO role and he's now CFO. 

John Diekel: Yeah. Now he's just a Fal CFO working for me. But he had his own small business and he sold that and bought another small business, sold that. And now just helping guys like you and I out. 

Austin Gray: I'm just curious though, like whenever he was in his leadership role or whenever he was running the business. I'm curious if he handled the CFO role or if he wore that hat internally, or if he had somebody else who handled that role for him. 

John Diekel: That'd be a great question. I've never asked him that. I think that'd be an interesting role. I don't know how you can wear too many hats to be honest with you. I know you and I wear a ton of hats and your listeners wear a ton of hats as well, and I think that's the biggest challenge for us is how do you take off hats and give 'em to other people.

That is the whole game. That's why we grow and scale and develop processes and people in order to take things off your shoulders and my shoulders and your listener's shoulders. So many hands make light work. But I don't know at that level just 'cause I'm certainly not at that level of knowledge and expertise yet. I wouldn't know that. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. And the reason I'm asking is 'cause I'm always, I'm really curious now, especially when I hire people, I'm like, man, what's this guy's personality? Or what's this gal's personality? And like, how is that going to correlate to their effectiveness in their specific role? 

John Diekel: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: And like I, I try really hard not to hire the idea guy. Because I'm the one who's like coming up with a million things. We need to do this, we need to do that. It's like the best people and personalities who I work out well with are the people who are just, they don't wanna sit there and brainstorm. They're just like, let's make a decision, quick move, let's implement. And so I'm learning that as I grow. I'm curious to hear on your seat, like, does does A CFO have? Yeah. What's a personality of a fractional CFO? I'm curious. It's obviously working. He's being effective for you. 

John Diekel: He's very interested in discussing collaborating ideas and gently and politely and professionally pushing back and saying, okay, I hear you. I see what you're saying. Let's zoom out a little bit. Let's look at it from over here. Let's got it from over there. Let's take some different perspectives. Are you still sure what you're saying is the right answer to the question? So he's much more of a guide, I think, than just a CFO. Which I really appreciate and he has that go do it mentality, but with a pause for caution, which I appreciate because similar to you, I'm all gas, no breaks.

Mm-hmm. Let's put the hammer down and let's get in here, bang out some decisions and let's go execute together. I spend a lot of time with my sales team. I do a lot of quoting, I do a lot of stuff with them. I do a lot of scheduling. I don't get in the field hardly ever, which stinks you. I would love to be out there with the guys putting in heat pumps.

He is, he's the brakes foreman to make sure that we're making the right decisions. And the same thing with my general manager, my office manager as well. They do a lot for me saying, Hey, we have this issue. This is what we think about it, but let's stop and think about it. Let's not make a rash decision. Let's make a decision quickly. Let's make sure it's the right decision we're making quickly. 

Austin Gray: So I wanna go back to the agenda of that meeting. They all start. Like what do you start with? Is there anything set? Like starting with the p and l? Are you looking first at the cashed on hand? What's your agenda?

John Diekel: Yeah, I don't have a blank copy, so I can't just show, share the screen to show you right now, but I'll show you one later what my report from last month looks like. I don't care. But we start with the report and start with the p and l. We start at the top and we say, all right, here's top line. Here's the top line for the last 12 months, we do a rolling 12. And you can obviously see last month, January, this month, February. And then you see our goal on the right side. Then there's an arrow that says, red Arrow for we are less than our goal. And Green Arrow says we were above our goal. And then there's a box next to that says, what was the delta above and below our goal?

And then subsequently, we have everything from cost to asset, turnover, ratio, personnel, turnover ratios all the way through. So we spend a lot of time in the p and l and the balance sheet. I'm being perfectly honest with you, that's pretty much where we live. We watch AR but I keep a pretty heavy AR so we don't watch it too much unless it gets below a certain threshold. You know what I mean? 

Austin Gray: And that is weekly or that's your monthly meeting?

John Diekel: That's the monthly meeting. Weekly we check in. We talk about all topics pertaining to finances in the books, how we're doing. An acquisition I wanna make for equipment is are up, down, are we having any issues with billing out, collecting money? What are we doing? If somebody doesn't want to pay? How do we handle those situations? How do we discount? How do we get back to finding the appropriate mechanism to make sure everyone's all on the same page? It's really a litany of topics In the weekly, he and my bookkeeper handle the weekly close with my office manager, they get that done every week. But the monthly close, he and I basically take a microscope to the books. 

Austin Gray: I love it. This is awesome. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit of insight into the financial picture here. What's your goal with the business? 

John Diekel: So I tell everybody we're growing as fast as reasonable, and not a whisker faster. Everybody wants to be a big person business and crushing it and whatnot, but we're growing. We're gonna grow as fast as reasonable. I'm really excited. We're moving into a new shop that we're building here the end of this year, but we're starting construction in 16 days. We're super excited about it. It's gonna be like a 6,000 square foot facility, so we're gonna have enough room for storage, office space, et cetera.

Our current office is like 900 square feet, 750 square feet, so we're gonna go to 6,000. So we're very excited to have office and warehouse space. So for goals right now, get into the new building, we're gonna do, rebrand the company so everybody understands all of our services and what we do. And then we're gonna continue to grow as reasonable to the point at which we can continue to help the community enable and grow the younger generation to support our community.

I think it's just an absolute travesty that the average age of a plumber or an HVAC technician in our state is 57 years old, and it's getting older and not getting younger. We have to continue to engage the community to help lower that number and show families, and show students that, hey, this is a worthwhile career field and you can have a very good living and you can live an amazing life working with your hand, working with your mind all day.

Austin Gray: That's incredible. What is your favorite part about the business? 

John Diekel: Oh, that's an easy question, man. Favorite part is the people. We have awesome folks in the field and in the office, so the people we get to work with every day, combined with the contractors we work with on some of our construction projects, coupled with the customers in our community, it's the people, man. I don't care what we're doing, whether it's a water treatment system or footing antifreeze, and a heating system, or redesigning HVC system for a new home. It's the people you work with that mean everything to me. 

Austin Gray: So specifically for you though, like in your day to day, is that still your favorite piece about coming into the office every day? 

John Diekel: No doubt. My favorite piece is the people we work with. Work is work. It doesn't matter what you're doing, whether you're selling widgets or doing excavating or doing plumbing and HVAC and water treatment, it's all work.

It all takes time and things go right and things go wrong. There's ups and downs to everybody's day, week, month, year career. It's the people and the relationships you make along the way, that's what matters. I got some incredible folks that I'm really blessed to call colleagues and employees, but also call friends.

Austin Gray: That's cool. So on a normal day-to-day basis for you, what's a day look like? 

John Diekel: A day in the life. I get up at 4:30, I have breakfast with my better half after she makes breakfast and we wash dishes. I go to work, get here about six and the people start rolling in between 6:30 and seven o'clock. We start at seven. Guys get loaded up and if they have any questions for me or Jeffrey, my general manager, we talk about those things. Whatever question they have for the jobs for the day, they get outta here by 7, 7:15. After that, I meet with my service coordinator, my install coordinator, and my procurement specialist, and asked them if they need anything.

Are we all good on the service schedule and the install schedule? Are we good on procurement? Do we have any emergencies, any issues, anything they need help with? After that, I'm usually up here by 8:30, 9 o'clock. I'm upstairs in, in the office where the sales team sits. My salesman sits across from me and my drum manager sit and sets me. Cause like I said, we've got 750 ish square feet here, so we are all tight quarter. There's no office, there's no doors. It's all open floor plan. So then the three of us work on sales pretty much all day, either going out to site visits, working on quotes, redrafting quotes, talking to customers, educating, training customers on what we're recommending to do with their homes, how to maintain and take care of their homes that way they don't duplicate costs down the road, but then ultimately close deals and answer any questions for the folks in, in the company, whether it's the office downstairs or whether it's the guys and gals in the field. 

Austin Gray: Got it. That's really cool. 

John Diekel: Yeah, it's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work. There are a lot of nights we stay here till 7, 8, 9 o'clock. There's a lot of days that. We show up on Sundays. I remember the first year in 2023, my drum manager and I were doing quotes on Christmas. I remember he was at his house. I was at my house, we were on speaker phone, on the computers. He was jotting out parts lists and I was pricing and writing quotes for at the same time, cause we had customers that needed emergency services and they needed immediate heating system replacements over the Christmas weekend when they were here. So sometimes that's what it takes. But we have a lot of fun. 

Austin Gray: That's what it's all about right? 

John Diekel: Exactly. 

Austin Gray: Gotta have some fun doing it. 

John Diekel: Have to, or it's not worth it. If you don't enjoy the people you work with and you're not having fun with 'em, then you gotta change it. Not every day is fun. Don't get me wrong. We all have ups and downs. I don't want to do any rose colored glasses, but in general, you gotta have fun. If you gotta enjoy what you're doing, life's too short.

Austin Gray: What ski resort are you close to? 

John Diekel: We're right down the road from Oke Ski Resort. 

Austin Gray: Okay. 

John Diekel: And we're another 30 minutes from Kenton. 

Austin Gray: Okay. Is that what your people like to do? Ski? 

John Diekel: Most of my folks like to snowmobile, but we're some big snowmobilers. We actually sent four guys up for a couple days off and a long weekend up north to go snowmobiling. So I think we had five or six guys go this year. This took a couple days off and got to relax a little bit. Ride sleds, have some good steak dinners and hang out and have some more comradery. 

Austin Gray: That's great. Do you ride?

John Diekel: I ride a little bit, not very well. Everybody here leaves me in the dust pretty good. I ski better than I ride.

Austin Gray: That's awesome. Have you gotten out this year?

John Diekel: I have not. I've been so busy, which is a blessing, right? We wanna be busy, but I've been so busy personally that I haven't even gotten out. Yeah, we're trying to grow and scale, right? But even though things are wonderful on the outside, we're building this new facility, we got these new people, we got these new trucks. I think something important for your listeners to know and understand is something that I've gotten to understand quite intimately. Just 'cause you're making progress doesn't mean you've solved everything. There's always gonna be problems to solve.

There's always gonna be things that, Hey, you gotta work on this process. Well, it's way better than what it was two years ago. We're also twice the size, what we were two years ago, so maybe we've gotta rework it again. It's like I've been reworked a lot of processes or reworking some stuff with. Sales handoff and how do the employees in the field learn from the employees in the office of what the scope of the job is and how we're actually gonna do, and what's the actual plan. So I think that I've been a little too busy to get on the sled this much this year, but I'm hopeful that with the things that we're working on right now, that next year should have a lot more free time come December, January. 

Austin Gray: Uh, that's great. I hope you're able to get out a little bit, but I love what we do.

John Diekel: Me too. 

Austin Gray: Um, the pain is more so when your friends are like, let's go ride. And it's like, theoretically, like I could go out any day of the week. 

John Diekel: Yeah, of course.

Austin Gray: But every time that you're away and not solving that problem, it's just kicking the can down the road. And so it's just really hard sometimes to explain that to a friend who's not building a business and who doesn't understand that concept. But you've hit the nail on the head for the listener if you want to grow. It can be nonstop. There's always something to solve and there's always something you should be working on if you want to grow, and yeah, it's a hard concept least in person to explain that to some other friends who aren't building a business or who haven't before.

John Diekel: I agree with you. I think it's difficult thing to understand and explain. At the same time, you also have to prioritize your friends, family, a partner, et cetera. That's something that I'm proud that I do. Like I said, my partner Madison and I have breakfast every morning together. I we dinner every night.

If I'm not having dinner with her at between 6:30 and 7:30, there better be a really fine reason why I'm not at the office, or there better be somebody who's got a real big problem. There has to be a huge job that we're working on in order for me to not spend that time with her, and that's because she understands. There are a lot of nights that I'm not right there at four or five o'clock. Like some of our friends who may not be out on their own, they might be working for another organization or a different entity. 

But yeah, there's, you can definitely go anytime you want. You sure can, but you gotta be very disciplined about what you do and how you do it and making sure that not only are you working on the things, 'cause it's the right thing to do for your team, but also because they see and understand that, remember the Titan said attitudes are reflection of leadership. So if you're never there physically, they're probably never gonna be there mentally. 

Austin Gray: That's a good word right there.

John Diekel: Just if you're not there physically, if you're not in the office or in the field, if you're not working and you're not showing your people that you are working and that you're working as hard as they are, they're probably just gonna lay down on the job, whether in the office or in the field.

So if you're not there physically, they're not gonna be there mentally. They're just not. And frankly, I don't blame 'em. I don't wanna work for somebody who's just collecting Corvettes or only there one week a quarter. That's ridiculous. And of course, everybody needs a work life balance. And if you're allotted the vacation time or the PTO, you should certainly take it. That's not at all what I'm saying, but I think I've seen some owners who work very hard. I've seen other owners that have gotten to the point where they want to be done. And if you're not there, then they're not gonna be there for you. 

Austin Gray: Absolutely. 

John Diekel: I have, it's an interesting concept. 

Austin Gray: I just had a conversation with somebody this week because I read it in my twenties, but I think it's just ruined a mindset of what approaching business is actually like you're not sitting on a beach in a hammock, and you probably haven't since the day you bought this business or even before. Whenever you were putting your plan together to come and buy the business and Yeah, it was really interesting. I had lunch with the guy the other day and he was talking about it and I was like, man, he asked me, he is like, do tell me if I'm outta line here. And I was like, in no way, shape, or form is a small business anywhere close to the four hour work week lifestyle. 

John Diekel: No

Austin Gray: It’s the exact opposite and. Yeah, I'll stay off this soapbox but 

John Diekel: No, I think it's important to talk about, to be honest with you, Austin, and what I'll tell you is there's a balance, though. I have taken a couple vacations since I bought the business, right? So I'm not a big believer in extremes, right? I think the four hour week is wonderful in e-commerce business where that's super feasible, but in our business is certainly not feasible. 1000%. I think that's an extreme example of what is possible. I don't think that's an excuse to not build systems and processes and to.

Diversify and develop your people and to encourage them and empower them to make the appropriate decisions that they needed to make life easier. But at the same time, I don't think it's as crazy as some entrepreneurs make it out to be a, oh, you've gotta, you can never take a day off, you can't have Sundays off, you can't go on vacation. I don't necessarily believe that either. I worked every single vacation for one to 10 hours a day. It doesn't mean I wasn't taking some time out trying to relax a little bit. I go away for a couple weeks, a year, once or twice in the wintertime to go someplace warm and hopefully once and maybe twice to go hunting in the fall.

I'm just not a big extremes guy, and I would encourage everybody to build their businesses in a way that's actually feasible in the long term. Cause Brother Howell, are you and I gonna stay in business for 40 years dedicated to our communities, growing businesses for essential services that you do and the essential services that I do if we don't ever take a day off for the next four years. I don't think that's realistic, but I also don't think the four hour work week is realistic in our business models, either. 

Austin Gray: 100%. I think you hit the nail on the head. I hope that you get to get out on the sled and the snowmobile. 'cause I've definitely taken a few days, but I think where I was going with that 

John Diekel: Yeah.

Austin Gray: Is that I don't know about for you. It's still very hard for me to disconnect. It's almost like I have to get out there like the whole time I'm driving out there, I'm like, dude, I should, I need to be doing this. I need to be doing that. 

John Diekel: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: And then it's like, okay, when I'm on the sled ripping, then it goes away and I'm able to relax for a couple hours. But that's just the reality. And to your point, like taking a little bit of time to allow yourself to do that kind of stuff of course. 

John Diekel: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: I think we should continue to encourage that.

John Diekel:  Because even when you're not working. You're still working for sure. Like to turn it all the way off and be present with friends and family is definitely a challenge.

It's definitely something I have to be actively engaged and trying to do. Because you're right, there's always something you could be tinkering with. 

Austin Gray: And it's always spinning. 

John Diekel: Yes, it is. Yeah. And the cool part about my business that I'm really proud of, Austin, is we've grown the business dramatically, right? Seven employees to 23. We haven't done any outward marketing yet. The only thing that we do is a company comes down quarterly and they take photos and videos of our guys and post 'em on our social medias. Just for recruitment purposes and just really the root of it all is I want everybody to be proud of what we do here.

We can post some of the high quality craftsmanship that we do just so the community can see in all of our folks and show their friends and families. We don't do any direct mail. We don't do any Facebook marketing with ads. We don't do any email or text listers yet. So we're getting ready to go down that pathway to really continue to grow the business. But we've got all this business with zero marketing effort. 

Austin Gray: Wow, that's incredible. You are going to turn on a fire hose whenever you get all that dialed in. 

John Diekel: I think so. We're doing things as fast as reasonable though, right? We don't want the fire hose too crazy, but we gotta get in the new building first. We gotta do the rebrand. So everyone, when we communicate, they know all of our services. I don't want to go into a home and do somebody's heating system and they say, oh yeah, by the way, I had so and so install my water treatment system last week because I didn't know you guys did it. So we gotta work on our communication, our branding first.

But I'm hopeful by end 25 into 26, we'll be ready to start marketing and growing effectively. And not just growing for the sake of growing. 'cause like I said, this is not a thing I'm trying to sell tomorrow or next year or ever. You know what I mean? This is my career and my community, so we gotta build a sustainable business too.

Austin Gray: This episode is brought to you by DialedIn Bookkeeping. Ben and his team provide bookkeeping services, job costing reports, and accurate financial information for the home services industry. If you're looking to keep your books up to date, visit dialedinbookkeeping.com/ownrops. When you use this specific landing page, you'll get your first 3 months 50% off.

Austin Gray: Incredible. This is, is really good to talk to you and like, like listeners, if you're not watching this on video, like you can tell John is genuine in what he is saying and that's gonna go so far in building this business. And to your point, you've done no outbound marketing at this point yet. And I think it's gonna be incredible whenever you get to that point and you're ready to grow because you've built the systems to support that and the people in the culture.

John Diekel: Yeah, we've definitely done a lot of good work building the people in the culture and the processes. Like I said, though, we got a lot of things we gotta work on too. Some things are really right and some things are eh. You adjust that about 30 degrees left and 20 degrees right? You get it dialed all the way in.

But I'm really proud of the team. Everything we've done, we've come an immense way to build upon a beautiful business that the founder and owner built and owned, and was kind enough to sell it to me and trust me with, for our community. So we're doing a lot of things right. We're gonna have a lot of fun when we continue to grow the business, but I'm just really excited to grow the business in such a way to achieve my other long-term goal, in addition to building the community so everyone knows that this is a fruitful career and their sons and daughters can join our industry and our company and have an amazing career. 

In addition to that goal, I want to pay for everybody's health insurance and all of their spouses, children's. That's the thing I'm really looking forward to. I want to truly take care of people, man. So like why aren't we growing the business? I'm not just lining my pockets and going craziness. I haven't taken a single draw yet in two years. Everything I've made has gone right back into the business building a new facility, buying the land, new tools, trucks, benefits, upgrading, et cetera. So I'm really excited to the, when we can grow to the point where we can pay for everybody's families to have health insurance, that's gonna be a cool day. 

Austin Gray: That's great. We're approaching the top of the hour here. 

John Diekel: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: What else would you like to share with listeners? 

John Diekel: I think you touched on. You gave me a confident about me being genuine, which I appreciate, so thank you. And I think the most important thing is just given a dang, you gotta actually care. You can't just say, I wanna make money, or I don't wanna work for the man or the woman. You gotta actually care about your people. You gotta care about your internal customers, your employees. You gotta actually care about 'em, not just say you want 'em to do good work, now you gotta actually care about 'em.

And then additionally, you gotta actually care about your external customers, making sure that their homes are safe and comfortable and. Perfect or as perfect, you can make it. You gotta actually care. Caring is 90% of the battle, and that's what we talk about all the time here. You gotta give a dang, we call it the give a dang factor.

You gotta care. You gotta care. So I think if you care, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes. Who cares? I do every day. I'm sure you do Austin, and I'm sure every other business owner in the trades has done this exact same thing, made ton of mistakes. But if you actually care. You will learn, you'll grow, you'll figure it out.

Customers will help you, they'll refer you. Employees will tell their friends about you and about your business and wanna come work for you. If you actually care about people, everything else will take care of itself. But I think the foundation of who I am as a leader and who I'm as a person is actually caring. And I think that's what our team is about, and that's what we're trying to grow and develop. 

Austin Gray: That's incredible. It's, it's such a good word. It really is. Because yes, the mistakes come and I truly believe, and I agree with you in the sense that it's like the mistakes are gonna happen, but it's how you handle those and your attitude towards handling those to make it right for the person on the other side.

John Diekel: Exactly. Can you take the one star customer who's on the phone yelling at service coordinator for something she didn't even do wrong or something our service techs didn't even do wrong. Can you take that one star customer and can you change their attitude in such a way in one conversation to where you take care of them and they give you a five star review on Google after? That's the question that we try to answer in the office a lot. Can you take a one star customer to the five star? 

Austin Gray: And that's tough. 

John Diekel: Yes it is. It's tough. 

Austin Gray: It's really tough for me 'cause like I get fired up real quick. But yeah, if you can solve that problem. It sounds like you are. 

John Diekel: I'm working at it. Yeah.

Austin Gray: Good. This has been fun, John. 

John Diekel: Yeah. Been incredible. It's great to meet you. Thank you so much for having me. 

Austin Gray: Yes, and I'm, I'm thankful to have been able to interview you here 'cause it's all good. The coolest thing about doing this podcast is like I just get to meet people who are committed to being the best version of themselves, committed to being the best leader and yeah. It's such a good word. It's for me personally right now too. Yeah. 

John Diekel: I'm learning from you. I'm excited to keep learning from you. I'm excited to stay in contact. Hopefully we can spend some time together, either in Colorado or or Vermont. We can go get on the sleds here next winter, but I've got a lot to learn. I'm thankful to be in your network. I'm thankful for you having me and anything I can do for you, please let me know. 'cause obviously have me honest is a blessing, but I like to be a reciprocal guy. If I can help you out in any way, please. Anything I can do, I'd love to help you with. 

Austin Gray: Fantastic. Thanks for that.I appreciate it. Listeners, this is John with Master Plumbing and Heating, and we'll be a rebrand. Will you have a new name shortly? 

John Diekel: It may change slightly. We're never gonna go away from the master branding that gives us such validation, but it might be master plumbing, heating, cooling, or something to that effect, something that just communicates more effectively.

Austin Gray: Cool. And where can people find you online or your business? 

John Diekel: You can find us at masterplumbingheating.com and all of our social are linked there, so the long thing written out at the.com, you can't miss us.

Austin Gray:  Fantastic. Alright, listeners, thanks again for tuning into another episode of the OWNR OPS Podcast. If you are enjoying these episodes, very similar to what we talk about a lot with Google Business Profiles and getting five star reviews. Podcasts are the exact same. I would greatly appreciate if you could take 30 seconds and just leave us a five star review, only if you're enjoying the content and getting value out of it on Spotify and on Apple. And then if you are listening on YouTube, we would sure appreciate a like and subscribe to the channel.

You'll get notified whenever we release. Our weekly episodes are scheduled on Fridays. We publish a new episode with a business owner in the services and trades like John. Then on Saturdays we write a newsletter to summarize some of the key points in the learnings. So we will send you a newsletter on Saturday mornings.

If you have not signed up for that yet, you can sign up ownrops.com. That's ownrops.com/newsletter. Thanks again for listening. Don't forget, work hard. Do your best, never settle for less. See you guys next week.

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