Meet Brandon And GNC’s Roots

Julian Placino 0:00

Welcome to the Home Services Success Stories Podcast, powered by Peakzi, the number one AI platform for growing your home services business. I'm Julian Placino, your host, and we have another great episode in store for you today. Because today I'm with Brandon Sheck, who is the co-owner, vice president, and master plumber at G&C Plumbing and Heating LLC. Brandon, welcome to the show. How are you, man? I'm good. Thank you for having me. Yeah, excited to dig in, learn more about you, and also your experience in the business. So, Brandon, your role as VP and co-owner, what do you personally own in the business and what is your day-to-day like?

Roles, Growth, And Delegation

Speaker 1 0:38

So we're a family business. So it's my father, my mother, and myself. So I'm a part owner of the business. So we've been in business for 20 years and we've grown and developed over time. We for a long time we were just a small family business, my mom, dad, and myself. And for the past about eight years, we've been growing the company. We've always been plumbing and heating. We added HVAC to be able to do heating and cooling on that side as well. So typically with the owners, we have a lot of different hats and roles that we wear. So as we've been growing, I've been trying to give some hats to some other people on the team and help them grow as individuals and give them more responsibilities as well. My role specifically, I oversee the office, I oversee the technicians, I oversee the other managers in the company. I'm heavily involved in marketing right now. That's not my favorite thing. Um, but you can't always do exactly what you want. But don't worry, I'm trying to pawn that off to some other people on the team too, as we keep going. As the service manager, which is one of my primary roles, uh, again, we are we're training another person on the team to take that role over for me. No, I'm not trying to leave the company, but I am trying to, you know, help grow the other team members as well. So I just make sure that, you know, we're running the call smoothly and under the format that we want to. We have um meetings with the technicians to make sure that everything's going well on their end. If there's any areas that they feel they need some help with, try and focus on what's going well. And just ultimately a common theme would be trying to help and grow other people on the team to get where they want to be and help them meet their goals.

Julian Placino 2:18

So super hands-on in the day-to-day and heavily focused on growing the people in your team, right? Yeah. So you you have been, you started as an apprentice in 2010. So you've worn like all of the different hats. So, what has that journey in the business taught you about building a great home services company?

Earning Credibility In The Field

Speaker 1 2:38

So, yeah, I started out in 2010. Uh, that's when I was entering college. I did go to college for business and marketing. I got my degree over there as well. So the first four years was part-time. It was summers, vacations, and things like that. And I was, you know, in the beginning, it was to try and make some money to be able to have at college while I was gone. But once I got into my junior senior year and started doing the actual business and marketing classes that I went for, that's when a light bulb turned on. And I was like, oh, I probably actually got something pretty good back at home for me. And that's when I really started really trying and to learn the trade. And, you know, after I graduated college and I went to plumbing school for five years, that's how long it takes in Massachusetts. Got my journeyman's license right away. Then after that, I went and got my master's license. That's it's essentially a business license to be able to take over the business one day fully. So, but as for experience, you know, I've done all the jobs that you know people don't necessarily like to do. I've had to snake the main drains and you know the kitchen sinks to installing boilers, water heaters, swapping out faucets, toilets, putting water filtration systems. Essentially, what I would say is anything that I ask my team members to do, I've already done it. And I think that helps build respect um with the team because of the knowledge that I gained over that time. It's now, now, you know, I kind of sit behind the desk and stuff like that. So I'm not very hands-on out there in the field, but it doesn't mean that I won't jump in a truck and go help someone if they need help every now and then. So they really appreciate that and the knowledge and being able to help train and grow them. If they had a manager that didn't know what they were talking about, trade-wise specific, I don't necessarily see how they would um how they would see that. I think that it just means a lot more that I've had to go through all the things that we're asking them to do. So I think they appreciate that.

Julian Placino 4:34

Yeah, I think that gives you a tremendous amount of credibility, right, when it comes to delegation and also empathy as far as what your people do. I am curious though, did you ever have any resistance to working in the industry given that you grew up into it? Because some folks, like if you grow up and grow into it, you either kind of love it or you don't. Was there any kind of that wrestling with you internally as far as if this is the thing that you wanted to do with your career?

Choosing The Trades And Finding Purpose

Speaker 1 4:56

Yeah, I did. I didn't always want to do it. When I was in my first two years of college, I was looking for, I don't know, we call it co-op opportunities, but I think that's in the trades. But I was trying to look at some other places to be able to get some experience working at, you know, different areas. Out of all the friends that I have, I'm the only person in the trades. So, you know, everybody else kind of went a different direction. But essentially I was born into it, but then I became, you know, I switched over and I grew to like it and enjoy it. And that's, you know, I chose the path eventually. It only took a couple of years, but I did end up growing into it and choosing that it was a really good industry to be in.

Julian Placino 5:34

So having had both perspectives, not wanting it, coming back to it, and now kind of seeing it, like what do you love most about the trades industry?

Essential Service And Customer Care

Speaker 1 5:44

Well, I think it's really unique, and especially over the past, you know, X amount of years, ever since COVID happened, it really was recognized that the trades aren't going anywhere and that it's a very high-demand job, and that you you're just always gonna need humans to do it. I know it's funny because we're kind of talking on a an AI podcast right now, but I just don't think that AI can ever take over the positions that our people do. So we're always gonna need, you know, tradesmen and tradeswomen. We have tradeswomen on the team as well. And that's just not going anywhere. So what I like doing the most is just helping customers fix their problems, essentially. You know, right now, as we're speaking, I think it's like 10 degrees outside. So we're getting a lot of no heat calls, and people have kids, families, and it's a very uneasy situation for them, knowing, not knowing when their problem's going to be fixed. So being able to get customers back to normal as soon as possible is what I enjoy the most. It's that's that's really what they appreciate, and that's what we strive to do is do it in a good fashion as well, you know, get them back up and running.

Educating Customers And Offering Options

Julian Placino 6:47

Essential services, man, like you said, it's like it's like it's it's the thing that people need. Um, and it seems like you find a great amount of joy in servicing customers and making sure they're back up and running. So tell us a little bit about that and the way that you work with customers. G&C is known, is really known for educating customers and giving options. So, what does that actually look like in reality and how does that help serve your customers better?

Speaker 1 7:11

I'm sure a lot of us have had experiences where we need a service or you know, anything like that, and we might not be the most educated about it, and we're just taking the word of the person that we're dealing with, right? So, me personally, I'm not a huge, not a huge car guy. So I just have to, you know, believe and trust whatever the person is saying. So, what we like to do is we try to educate customers on where their plumbing is at, you know, how it's standing, what condition it's in. We also like to be very thorough. So we like to evaluate all the plumbing in the home. So, for example, let's say that you have one toilet that's been giving you issues for a while, and maybe the parts and you know, the guts, they're in bad shape. So now maybe you have a couple other toilets that are all the same age, and maybe you don't have the best water quality. Those are the things that we're trying to look at so we can try to solve all of your problems, you know, instead of just only looking at that one immediate thing. And at the end of the day, what we're gonna do is educate you on everything that's going on, and we're just simply going to give you options that you can choose from. So it's not us telling you what you have to do or handing you a bill at the end of the appointment. It's us taking a look at everything that's going on in the house, giving you recommendations with pricing up front. That way you know what the investment's gonna be to you know, take care of all your all your issues that you have and the solutions that we can provide and let you choose. And whatever you go to choose is we're okay with it as long as it meets code and it's it's a good fix and it's gonna take care of your problem. We're not gonna Mickey Mouse anything over here, but ultimately it's your choice, and we like to let you make an educated decision.

Hidden Issues: Water Quality And Pressure

Julian Placino 8:50

So, not just break fix, not just a band-aid on the issue, but understanding comprehensively what's going on with the whole picture, giving them options, helping them be part of the process themselves so they have ownership in in the repair of whatever issue it is, um, and really helping them uh understand the process that way.

Speaker 1 9:06

So there's there's a lot of examples that we could give. So, water quality is a big thing. If you have a lot of issues with your pipes or your fixtures, you might have an underlying problem that's really causing all of that. So instead of just fixing the immediate issue that's obvious, we try to look for the underlying ones as well. So high water pressure is a really big factor in a lot of plumbing issues. It puts a lot of wear and tear on your faucets, the parts in your toilets, your water heater, your shower valves. So we always check the water pressure on every single job. In Massachusetts, it's required to have less than 80 pounds of pressure. But we've seen houses all the way up to 140, 150 pounds. You're getting really close to twice as much water pressure than you should have. So if you keep having dripping faucets, dripping showers, or you know, going through plumbing a lot faster than you should be, and that's the reason. We try to help identify that if we regulate the water pressure, you won't be experiencing these issues nearly as often because it's putting a strain on the system. So that's what we really like to do is you know, educating the customer. And they might, they would never know essentially that they had really high water pressure if we didn't just take that really easy reading over at the outside faucet, put a gauge on there, see what the reading is. It gives you a lot of information.

Team Size, Apprentices, And Retention

Julian Placino 10:22

That makes a lot of sense. And the education is a huge service to the customer as well, not just the fixing of the issue. So, so how many, how many guys do you have right now? How big is your team?

Hiring For Culture Over Skills

Speaker 1 10:32

So the entire company is 35 people for technicians. We run 12 to 13 trucks, and there's at this point, there's probably six to eight apprentices. We like to we like to take students from vocational schools and we like to help them start with their co-op process. We've from start to finish with technicians, we've had about seven to eight of them start from school and then go all the way through their licenses, and they're still here, so we must be doing something, right? They didn't leave us when they got their license. So I think that we have a good team and we treat people on the team fairly and respectfully, and I think that's why people stay with us.

Julian Placino 11:12

So, so tell us a bit about your selection process, your hiring process, your training process to ensure that, you know, your your known abilities to be able to deliver such a great service scales across everyone within the organization.

Speaker 1 11:27

So when we start with the co-op students, we're involved with the schools. So we give input, we give feedback, we're on the team, we do, you know, the charity events. I personally love the charity golf tournaments that they have. And because of that, we have formed a good relationship with the teachers. So we tend to get the the top quality students. So instead of the teacher giving us the kid that they're annoyed with dealing with in class because they won't pay attention, um, we get the highest you know quality students. So but when they're not coming from a trade school, we we have like a little bit of a vetting process. There's a couple steps, it's not crazy, but we start off with a Zoom meeting just to kind of feel the person out. The biggest thing we're looking for is that they're going to fit with the culture that we currently have on the team. So it sounds surprising, but skills is not the number one quality that we're looking for. We want you to be a good fit with the team. We have a very good team right now. Everybody gets along and likes working together, everybody helps each other out. And if someone isn't going to fit that mold, they're essentially not gonna work out for the team, no matter how skilled they are, technically. So you can teach skills, but it's hard to teach personality and being a team player.

Wrestling Mindset And High Standards

Julian Placino 12:41

So you can teach skills, but it's hard to because the personality, the characteristics are kind of wired into the person. So it seems like that's a huge part of your selection process to making sure that you have the right sort of culture fit. Uh, so that makes a lot of sense. Um, something interesting about you, of course, which I learned from your bio, is that you are an all-American and two-time state champion wrestler. So I'm curious, how does that how does that influence the way that you lead your team? And how does that help you uh bring those, again, bring that level of excellence into the business? I'm curious about that.

Speaker 1 13:15

So, first off, hopefully no one comes at me. That was a long time ago. I don't quite have the same stamina that I used to when I was in high school, but I was a leader on the team. Um, I would also do private lessons with other kids at, you know, we had a lot of camps and stuff like that, and parents would come up to me and ask me if they could do private lessons, you know, with their kids. So, right from an early age, I liked helping other people get better. And that is also a reason why I got out of the service van because I couldn't help as many people taking one apprentice with me versus doing trainings for the whole team. So wrestling is definitely not an easy sport. I know everyone feels their own personal sport is probably the hardest, but it teaches you a lot of sacrifice and dedication. You know, there it's it's very strict. I had to cut weight, you know, for my weight class. That was definitely not my favorite part. But one of the coaches on the team was a police officer. And if I saw police lights on at my house at 4:35 in the morning, that meant that I was overweight and he'd pick me up and I'd have to go run around the track to try and get down to my weight class. So it was year-round and it was it was grueling at times, but it was also very rewarding. Something that was cool was it's an individual sport, but it's also a team sport. So I could individually perform for myself and I could perform for the team as well. So I think that translates over, but just the work ethic that you need to have for that sport is particularly challenging. And I just like to win. I don't know what to tell you. I'm not gonna throw a fit if I lose, but I really like to win. Yeah, and when we set goals for the company, I don't make easy goals. I we're just always pushing, you know, within within reason. But we set really high goals and we have high expectations for our team, and I think that comes from wrestling, to be honest from you, as well as just my childhood growing up with my parents.

Using Peakzi For AI Search And Pricing

Julian Placino 15:13

So work ethic, mindset, and the pursuit of excellence is what you're bringing into the business from that background. I think that's great. So you mentioned earlier, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So you mentioned earlier that there's such a huge focus on persons, um, but you only look to like technology for where it does add value. And of course, the show here is powered by Peakzi. So I'm curious what has been your experience with Peakzi and what do you use it for?

Benchmarking, Reputation, And Seasonality

Speaker 1 15:38

So I think AI scares a lot of people. I'm I'm one of those. So, but it doesn't mean that I can avoid it, right? So it's it's obviously a very big part in what's going on nowadays, the way that people are searching online, the way that people are finding contractors and just information in general. So I've taken to it. I'm definitely not an expert on it, but what I do know that Peakzi has helped us with is when it comes to chat GPT and Gemini and the amount of traffic getting sent to our website. I'd say that's number one how Peakzi has helped us. Um, I have people on my on my team that help me understand all of this, but I can definitely see, and we've been using Peakzi for about a year, and you can see the results. There's also some other great aspects to it as well. Like something that a lot of customers look for online is pricing. And what I know from experience is that uh places like Home Depot and Lowe's, they're kind of the ones that are controlling the narrative on what the pricing is in the market. And Peakzi gives us an opportunity to put our prices on there, which which is very, very different from Home Depot and Lowe's because it's kind of a night and day service, you know what I mean? Like the difference between the two services is it's just it's very different. So now we have the ability to help AI understand a more reasonable cost for what it's gonna take to replace a water heater or install a heating system or a water filtration system, and that's something that I've always wanted because I know customers want to have a good idea of what the price is, but for the longest time it just was not realistic. You're you're not gonna get a water heater put in for 800 bucks. They don't even cost 800 bucks anymore, they're they're well over that, just with all the different price changes, with the economy, you know, all the all the tariffs and those things that are going on, you know, it's it's just extremely different. And I appreciate the opportunity to help customers understand a more realistic price point that they're going to be seeing.

Julian Placino 17:47

Okay. What I heard was AI search, so being able to be found by these uh ChatGPT and Gemini. And the other piece was it helps you be much more upfront and educate the customer on more realistic expectations in terms of actual pricing. Is that right?

Speaker 1 18:02

Yeah, I don't like going to somebody's house and telling them this water heater is X amount, and they saw online that it was half of that. It doesn't put us in a good position, but it's also not true. It that's that's not what it is. So currently the information online, pricing-wise, for my trade, is just it's extremely inaccurate and it sets a bad expectation for the customer, and it puts us in a weird situation. Like we don't want to feel like the customer thinks we're just charging double because we can. That's not the case. There's all different sizes, shapes, and forms of companies out there on the market, just like you can go to McDonald's and order off the dollar menu, or you can go to a fancy restaurant and you know get a better cooked meal. There's all different qualities of company out there, and they all come with different costs.

Julian Placino 18:50

Yeah, kind of sets expectations, sort of helps pre-vet the customer to bring you a more sort of educated buyer, right? Because it's it's telling them the actual costing. So um, any other uh significant outcomes that Peakzi's helped the business with so far?

Family Business Boundaries

Speaker 1 19:04

Well, I do like how with Peakzi we're able to compare ourselves to other companies, they have different metrics on there about how you're doing in terms of your reputation online. Are you retaining your customer base and different things like that? You shouldn't always be comparing yourselves to others, you should focus on yourself, but it doesn't hurt to be able to go in there sometimes and see how you're matching up to the competition. At the end of the day, it is competition, and like I said earlier, I do want to be the best and I want to win. So it does give me insight on how I can do better on some areas and different key focus points. And there's also market trends on what people are searching at the time. Like our trade is very seasonal. Like right now, it's very cold. I'm sure a lot of people are searching for heat-related things. But in the fall and in the spring, people are searching for outside faucets. And in the summer, they're going to be searching for cooling. They're too hot, their system's not working, they want to get cool. It helps you get ahead of the trend and see where what keywords you can focus on. So I think that's very valuable too.

Community Impact And Giving Back

Julian Placino 20:12

Cool. So insights in terms of how you rank up within the marketplace and potentially revealing any gaps that you can improve upon to better serve your customers and also the market trends. So it doesn't feel like guesswork, but it's actually based on data and what's happening within the market. I think those are really good points, Brandon. Appreciate you sharing that. So uh we're about to uh to land the plane here. So just a couple more questions about uh kind of you and the business. So um G&C is a true family business. So what would you say is the biggest lesson, good or bad, about building the company with your family?

Speaker 1 20:43

Biggest lesson that we've learned over time was to keep work at work and keep family family. So we ended up picking a certain time in the day where it's five o'clock. So, because as business owners, we have ideas 24-7. Like I could be sleeping and I'll have ideas and I'll wake up, I'll be like, oh, that was a good one, right? But my parents don't want to get a text message from me at one o'clock in the morning about an idea that I had, you know, in a dream. So once we establish that rule of, you know, no work after five, like that's that's family time, you know, focus on my daughter, which is their granddaughter, and you know, what we're gonna do for someone's birthday and things like that. That made a big difference. And for any family business, I would recommend putting that in place, what that time of the day is that you turn it off and you switch over, or else you might drive each other a little bit crazy sometimes.

Julian Placino 21:37

So setting the boundaries, sticking to it, and having that discipline, separating work and family. I think that's that's great advice. So um, well, Brandon, looking ahead, what kind of legacy, what's the long term vision for G&C? What do you hope to leave behind for your employees, your customers, for the business?

Message To Customers And Team

Where To Find GNC Online

Speaker 1 21:54

So we set our mission statement and our vision statement um, you know, years ago, and our vision. Statement is coming to fruition right now, which is pretty cool. So I guess when that happens, maybe you've got to think about revamping it. But what we said years ago was we want it to be a really big part in the community and be recognized for our involvement and you know with different sports teams, um, charities. And we're not just only going out there fixing plumbing, heating, and cooling issues, but we're also involved and we try and make a difference and an improvement. I could go on and on about all the different things that we do for the community. Um, we're very heavily involved with veterans. We just did a water heater giveaway to a veteran that that water heater is being put in as we speak. Actually, that's funny, I didn't realize that. Nice. Um, for elderly people will give away faucets and toilets every now and then and raffles that are bid on at charities. We're very heavily involved with um the Franklin Food Pantry, which helps families that you know can't afford to get all their meals. And we adopted we adopted five families for Christmas to help support, make sure that those families had the Christmas presents for the kids and all that stuff. And the humane uh the humane shelter for animals, we support them a lot too. Um, you'll notice that our mascot has a dog in it, that's my dog. And you know, we have my parents' dog here at the shop too. So we're just always looking for different ways to give back and be recognized as not only people that fix problems, but also support the community and be looked at as neighbors.

Julian Placino 23:34

I think that's really inspiring, Braden. So not just building a great business, but being having a positive impact in the community and being like a force for good, you know what I mean? And that's that's cool. Yeah. We appreciate that. Well, close us out. What's what's your message for any prospective customers, for prospective team members? Anything else you want to mention about the business?

Speaker 1 23:54

So our business has two types of customers. We have our external customers, which are the people that buy our services, we have our internal customers, which is the people that work for the company, the employees. And we for both of those, we try to go to no end to help to have you have a good experience, support you, be there for you, take care of you. At the end of the day, it's not just a business. We're also humans, and we try and treat everybody like friends and family. And we have a very good culture here, and that's why we provide very good service for our external customers, and that helps make us an attractive place for our internal customers as well, because it's I believe it's a good place to work.

Julian Placino 24:37

Well, share with your external and internal customers and everyone else tuning in how to connect with you, your social, your website. How do people connect?

Closing And Thanks

Speaker 1 24:45

So you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, or X, I guess, TikTok, G&C Plumbing and Heating is how you can find us. And we put some good content out there. We're not just putting coupons on there all the time. Um, we put some silly videos, some funny videos, we put educational videos. Um we're putting more videos out on our YouTube channel, which is meant to give helpful tips to our customers for things that we believe they could handle. But we also go over some things that they should probably reach out to a professional and maybe don't tackle those ones themselves. But maybe replacing a toilet flapper or something, or how to replace the cartridges on your water filtration system. We're trying to help educate the customer in that way too. Like I said earlier, we're we're all about educating the customer. So you can find us anywhere on there, and we got some funny things and we got some helpful things too.

Julian Placino 25:38

Awesome. We'll make sure to plug all your contact and social in the show notes as well, Brandon. So thank you so much for your time and also sharing your story with us on the podcast today, Brandon.

Speaker 1 25:48

Thank you, Jillian. Appreciate you having me here.

Julian Placino 25:50

And that is it for today's episode. So thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Home Services Success Stories podcast, powered by Peakzi, the number one AI platform for growing your home services business.