With a family-first approach to entrepreneurship, owners Micah and Karen Pilipishen invested their hearts and souls into Micah’s Plumbing, Heating & Cooling. However, they weren’t sure how to effectively leverage their passion to grow the business and increase their bottom line.
Micah’s Plumbing has been serving the Nelson area for over a decade with residential and commercial plumbing, furnace, gas fitting, green energy, hot water tank, and HVAC services. Tradesman Micah and financial planner Karen started the business in 2013, drawing inspiration from other entrepreneurs in their families after years of working for others. Nearly a decade later, they found themselves at a crossroads.
Needing guidance on managing an expanding team while balancing their numbers, the Pilipishens sought the expertise of Columbia Basin Trust’s Basin RevUp, an advanced business accelerator program, in June 2022. Over the course of eight months, Micah and Karen worked with the RevUp coaching team to grow the business’ services and staff, streamline their finances and elevate company culture.
SCALING UP STAFF AND SERVICES
Before the program, the business employed seven people and was often booked up to a year in advance, causing them to miss out on new projects with tight deadlines. With the goal of increasing capacity by hiring more employees, RevUp coaches helped Micah’s Plumbing develop an organizational chart that identified operational gaps. They hired an office administrator and defined new roles for an HVAC project manager and a plumbing project manager, empowering Micah to confidently step into an Owner/Operations Manager role and delegate more responsibilities.
“I got away from the tools entirely and focused more on a leadership role,” says Micah. “I’ve gone from wearing every single hat to focusing more on what I love, like sales and customer service — it’s been such a drastic change.”
Assigning responsibilities to their growing team of 15 has allowed them to schedule more jobs and ensure quicker service turnaround. Increased capacity has also improved profit margins, with each quarter performing better than the last. After the first full year since completing the program, they went from a negative profit margin to an increase of 8 per cent, and forecasts indicate continued improvement.
“RevUp taught me to designate leads for both the plumbing and HVAC sides of the business,” says Micah. “I used to rely on subcontractors, but it made more financial sense to have complete control over each project by hiring HVAC technicians.”
A FRESH FINANCIAL STRATEGY
New hires necessitated a reworked financial management plan. Together with a RevUp coach, Karen calculated how much the business needed to earn to support new salaries and turn a profit. They adopted a new system for developing project quotes, tracking labour and material costs, and organizing financial statements into separate divisions like HVAC and plumbing sales. This gave Karen a better handle on gross versus net profit margins.
“We had to adjust our pricing to account for increases in supply costs and charge extra for change requests, which we weren’t doing before,” explains Karen. “But we make sure we’re up front with clients about the possibility of extra charges from the beginning, so they’re not surprised — direct communication is really important to us.”
Examining their numbers also helped the husband-and-wife team clarify why some jobs were less profitable.
“I review all financial statements every month to see how they compare to averages and trends,” adds Karen. “I understand how to identify profit margin details in each division instead of just looking at the bottom line and relying on gut feelings. Now we know how to break down the numbers for each job to enhance profitability.”
THE VALUE OF POSITIVE COMPANY CULTURE
Core values are important to Micah, a Special Olympics floor hockey coach, both in and outside work. Through RevUp, Micah developed a company culture document that clearly outlines their vision and mission, defining values such as passion for growth, delivering high quality work, commitment to professionalism, and being reliable, trustworthy and communicative.
“I get every new employee to sign off on this document during the hiring process and review it every six weeks in team meetings,” says Micah. “Our company culture sets us apart from our competitors — you just don’t see this focus on positivity in the trades. Word is spreading and now we have people lining up to work for us because they’ve heard we’re an awesome company.”
Micah and Karen have prioritized a positive experience for both their customers and their team, offering a 32-hour work week, powder days, a breakfast station, short paid breaks if employees feel stressed, and supportive communication between project leads and technicians. Micah doesn’t want anyone on his team to “fake it till you make it.”
The business’ long-term forecast is brighter than ever, with a new goal to expand to a second location. Micah says he’s “100 per cent sold” on continuing to work with a business coach.
“Karen and I are developing the company we’ve always dreamed of, and people in the community have noticed a real difference,” he adds. “I’ve told some of my friends in the industry that if they want to step away from the tools and scale up their business, RevUp is the way to go — as long as they’re ready for constructive feedback!”
