Welcome And Meet Michael Moffitt

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 show in store for you today. Because today we have Michael Moffett, who is the president at Moffett Plumbing and Air. Michael, welcome to the show. How are you? Wonderful. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Excited to learn more about you and the business. So let's jump in. So, Michael, take a moment just to introduce yourself. Tell us who you are and what you do for the business.

Speaker 0:32

Lovely. So, as you said, I'm Michael Moffett. My father started Tom Moffett Plumbing back in 1969. And so I'm a second generation owner. Took over in the mid-90s for my father, and slowly added other services such as HVAC. So obviously I've changed the name to Moffett Plumbing and Air. Handle all the day-to-day stuff. I do have an operations manager that does quite a bit for me, but uh pretty hands-on, to be honest. Uh still kind of like the family feel that my dad started um over 36, 37 years ago now. So um we still try to maintain that that same family, those same family values, if you will.

Julian Placino 1:18

Gotcha. And excited to dig in more about the culture and some of the values. But what would you say you love most about what you do? Being kind of hands-on at the day-to-day, as well as providing the strategic vision. What do you love most about what you do in the home services industry?

Helping People As The Real Reward

Speaker 1:32

Uh I I just I love helping people. Um, that's really the extent of it. And um, you know, when I was in the field, that was really the draw, right? Uh going out to people's homes and and uh be one of their worst days, something they weren't expecting, and uh turning the table on them and and uh realizing it was a great experience and and solving the problems, being the superhero. Um, it was very, very rewarding. Um now I I'm in a definitely a different role um, you know, in management. I I put out a lot of fires. Um, but but I've I've transitioned to we still obviously help people, whether it's um not maybe not so much hands-on for myself, um, but definitely with the community. We do a lot of uh community uh outreach and um different programs that we do here to to really help out our our community and and uh be known uh in in the different uh cities that we serve. Um, but also what we do for our employees. And and uh I feel that's one of the biggest um rewarding things that I get to be involved in is seeing them progress and um you know supplying for their families and and being successful and uh just exceeding uh their dreams more than they could ever realize. Uh it's it's really, really empowering.

How Tom Moffitt Started Plumbing

Julian Placino 2:58

So it sounds like it's quite heavily based on service, um helping people, serving the community, also your people, who are, of course, your boots in the ground to delivering the uh the service that it is uh your your home service business. So I think all that's all that's great. Um give us a bit of the genesis story behind Moffett. So take us back to the beginning. How did the business originally start? What do you think your your your dad's kind of vision was for starting the business?

Speaker 3:21

Interesting. I mean, my my father wasn't a visionary. Um you know, he he fell into plumbing because it was his my grandparents owned a restaurant. And owning a restaurant, you have a lot of drain issues. And uh, you know, I I think my sister was already born. I have an older sister who's two years older than I am, and uh there's stories of of they would give her baths in the the commercial kitchen sink at the restaurant. Um, but I I I believe the story was that yeah, they had a drain issue, and and my dad started talking to the drain technician and decided, hey, I can do this, and uh just decided that was what he was gonna do and and really started as as a drain cleaning operation. Um didn't really have a goal or a great scheme or a plan of what was going to transpire. It was a way to uh support his family in the early 70s. Um, and uh, you know, he'd he'd grown it to a I think four or five truck operation, couldn't handle it, let everybody go. Uh, went back to a one truck operation. Um, I remember we ran things out of the house from a very young age. Um, I remember being when when we did have four or five technicians, uh remember being in his office crawling around the floor and and everybody sitting on the ground, Indian style, like crisscross, applesauce style. Uh, you know, and that was just that was the office, right? And I'd crawl around and sit on these guys' laps. And um, yeah, it was not a very uh large operation at all. Um fast forward, you know, 20 some odd years, and again, my dad had gotten frustrated with with employees. Um, didn't really that wasn't his forte. His forte was again helping people. Uh, he loved doing that. He's one of the best plumbers I've ever met. Uh, very, very quick, easy, quick to diagnose, uh, thorough. Um, just an amazing technician. Um, but business wasn't his forte. And um, you know, so in the the mid-90s, he was getting frustrated. Um, we did grow it at that point. He had I think we had four trucks when he decided to leave um and decided to move out of our market, just uh handed it to me. I was mid-20s, and uh he said, You you run this, I'm I'm kind of done. You run it and we'll we'll split the profits. And you know, being a young, naive 20-year-old kid, I thought, great, I'm gonna make all kinds of money. Um, and it didn't take me too long to realize there were no profits to split. That's all right.

Fear And Pressure Taking The Baton

Julian Placino 6:01

Interesting. So, so when when that that proposition was brought to you, was there hesitation on your part? I mean, growing up in the home services industry, when I've met you know, second generation owners, some like love it, some hate it, some leave and come back. So, where did you sit on that spectrum?

Speaker 6:19

Um there was a lot of fear, a lot of fear. Um, you know, it sounded great as far as you know income, but um the the pressure was was huge. Um, you know, I had heard it from from several of our clients uh that they had used other companies and then second generation took over, and it was never the same. Um, so I heard a lot of those stories. And uh so there was there was a lot of fear of of not being able to you know fulfill my father's legacy uh properly. Um the other side of it too was as I said, we had four trucks, those the the the other three gentlemen that were working for us, uh I basically was their apprentice through my teen years. And so here I am in my early 20s, they're all 10, 15 years older than me, and all of a sudden I'm the boss. Um, that was a very unique situation to be put into. Um, the dynamic was was was odd. Uh, and it was hard for me to to kind of overcome those obstacles for a little bit. Um it was it was a rough few years. Um, but eventually found my footing and here we are.

Managing While Still On Service Calls

Julian Placino 7:28

So and at the time, were you just straight up in the field? Like, did you have any type of leadership experience when that transferred over to you?

The Numbers Behind Early Struggles

Speaker 7:36

Or no, none whatsoever. Um I still worked in the field 60, 70 hours a week, um, and then was trying to manage whatever we had to manage in the office. It wasn't you know a big organization. There was sometime in my day I would stop by a bank and make the deposits, and then at the end of the day, I would uh go through all the paperwork and you know collect all the checks that everybody had turned in and create the deposits for the next day. And so sometime in my route, I would, oh, there's a Bank of America. I'm gonna stop there and make this deposit real quick. Uh, it was there, there wasn't a whole lot of managing of an office. We didn't have a marketing uh plan. Um, it was we'd been in the industry at that point 25 years, 20, 25 years. Um so we had a decent client base, but there was no marketing, there was no business structure. Uh I I had uh a woman answering the phone. Eventually I uh I hired uh another woman to to come in and help answer the phones, who was a girl I was dating, and then that was my wife, and she answered the phones for a while uh until we outgrew that as well. Um, it's been it's been a fun road. It's been definitely a fun road.

Julian Placino 8:55

Yeah. Okay. So so so what is it? So it started from scratch with your your dad, and it looked like uh at at the time there were there were four trucks, right? So what's the status of the business now? How many employees? What does the business look like?

Speaker 9:07

So at four trucks, I want to say our biggest year that we had um in the mid-90s. Uh we'd lucky if we pulled 300k uh cumulatively for for the entire business. Um we were not priced properly. Um again, my dad was not the greatest businessman. He he figured if uh he charged somebody $45 to clean a drain, he had $45 to go spend that night. Um, you know, didn't realize all the other costs that came involved with with running a business. Um, where we are now, um, we have 32 employees, uh trucks in the field uh between install crews, salespeople. I I think we have 23, 20.

Julian Placino 9:55

Amazing. Okay, so okay, so what was the difference then? What was kind of the scale point, the new skill that you had to develop, a new business practice or or whatnot? How did you go from like sort of day-to-day in the business versus actually now growing the business?

Finding Systems With Certain Path

Speaker 10:10

Um, well, it was from the the failures, really, um, not having any uh structure whatsoever and and just continually failing. Um, it didn't take me long to realize that uh it was just gonna be you know a hamster wheel. Um so I actually found an organization, um Certain Path, which is uh Success Group International back in the day. Um and that was the first time I realized there's a lot to being a business owner, and I needed to stop being a technician and being being an owner and work on my business.

Julian Placino 10:48

Love it. Okay. So what would you say were some of those things and very familiar to Certain Paths? Shout out to them. Uh, we actually produce some shows there out of their studio here locally in the Dallas area. But what would you say were some of those kind of practices that you implemented that really move the needle for you?

Slowing Down To Deliver Real Value

Speaker 11:04

Um, well, it's just a matter of of tracking our numbers, realizing that we were in control instead of being reactive to you know the demand calls that would come in um and just taking them at face value. And um I think also not maximizing the opportunities. Uh back in those days, it was run and gun, right? You uh you took every call that came in and you just fixed the immediate issue and got out of there and moved on to the next one. There, it wasn't uncommon for us to do 12 service calls a day per truck. Um, but you know, we weren't serving the clients properly. We were we were clearing a drain, uh fixing a drippy faucet, uh, fill replacing a fill valve on a toilet and moving out. There was no uh looking for the root cause of of what the issue was. Um there was no building any value. Um we and it and it wouldn't be uncommon that we would see the same client three or four times in a month and and they would be frustrated. You guys were just here. Well, we didn't address this other issue because we didn't dig into it. We we weren't providing good quality service. And that's what Certain Path really brought to the table was look, slow down. Um, let's let's look at every opportunity and make sure that we're providing amazing value to our clients. Um, let's make sure that that they're not being inconvenienced by having to have a plumber out multiple times a month. Um, let's solve the issue and uh you know maximize revenue as well and provide amazing customer service.

Julian Placino 12:37

Yeah. So the thing that I heard is really getting to know your numbers. What are the what are the metrics within the business that actually can help you grow and scale? Also improving quality and looking for every opportunity to maximize not just revenue, but also value for the customer. So you've definitely for sure gone from survival mode to like scale and growth now, but you're obviously a leader in home services. So what would you say that you have done differently than other home services companies out there? Because as you know, it's a crowded marketplace. So what is your secret sauce?

Speaker 13:06

I I feel the thing that we do differently than other people in our market is the amount of training that we supply to our employees.

Speaker 1 13:16

Okay.

Speaker 13:16

Um obviously technical training, um, but also you know, role-playing and objection handling. Um, we spend four days a week training. Um and some people that have been through our organization, they get frustrated with it, uh, and they're not the right people to be here. Um, but the reality is we want a consistent experience each and every time. Um and you can't do that if you don't put in the time. And so we spend a lot of time with with our people, our staff in the field. They're the frontline employees, they're the people that are uh you know interacting with our client base day in and day out. And if they're not they don't have the same core values, or if they don't have uh the same um drive or or or even just focus on on what we're trying to do, it's not gonna work. And so we're very meticulous about the training, about uh how we expect a service call to go um and what we expect. And then of course we track those expectations.

Hiring For Core Values First

Julian Placino 14:22

Yeah, so I heard training and also tracking and also measuring, you know, um measuring the outcomes that they're they're responsible for. So training is one piece, but you know, hiring the right people is another. And as you know, it's like tough to find awesome uh uh home services talent. So what have you learned about attracting the right people, interviewing the right people, finding the right people that match all your values?

Speaker 14:45

Uh that's it. We stopped probably about seven, eight years ago, we stopped hiring for skills and started hiring for core values. Um we can teach the skills. And um, you know, I'm proof positive that I I started as an apprentice and and here I am now president and CEO. Uh it's it can be taught if you're mechanically inclined. We can teach you. It may take you might be in a truck for you know two or three years as an apprentice, you might be in an apprentice for five, six years. It I don't know what that looks like, it's different for everybody, but I can teach it. What I can't teach are values, and uh so we we hire four people that fit our our our scheme, uh, what we're trying to to do. Um, integrity is is job one. Um and we've had a lot of people who who will come through the doors and go, yeah, I have those same values, and you'll realize real quick in an interview process that uh it's it's just not there. And so that's what we've really tried to do is focus on making sure that the people that we're hiring are the are the same people we want in our homes.

AI Search And The Peakzi Shift

Julian Placino 15:53

Lovely stress. So technical skills, you can teach and train it, but you gotta hire the right character, the personality, the core values because you can go so much further with the right person. I think that makes a lot of sense. So, as president and CEO, and of course the the owner, you're always responsible for kind of future strategic vision and also innovation. And as you know, the show here is powered by Peakzi, your customer of Peakzi. So I'm curious what has been your experience with Peakzi?

Speaker 16:20

Um technology moves so quick. I mean, it really, really does. I again been in the industry as long as I have. It amazes me how quickly the marketplace changes. And uh in the past, we have been a little bit slow to adapt. We didn't have a website for many, many years. Um, we we didn't allow booking online for many years. Um as I mentioned, we didn't even have a marketing partner at a point in time. Um and since joining with Peakzi, I mean, we've we've really been able to focus on you know the next wave, and that's AI. Um, so many people are are you know using Gemini or Grok or whatnot to do searches for home services. And without knowing what is out there in the on the web, what what those uh AI uh spiders are pulling up, um you're you're just you're letting yourself just be a subject of what's out there, you're not controlling the narrative. And uh Peakzi has given us a platform where we now know what people are saying about us out there and what these uh what these these bots are doing and what they're finding about us. And we can of course now direct that narrative and and alter it. Uh it's a great insight tool. And um, it's it's just growing day by day. It's and it's so amazing how quickly the environment's changing.

Julian Placino 17:51

Any significant outcomes you can report having used the Peakzi platform?

Speaker 17:57

Uh I just see uh the call volume has gone up tremendously. Um it started out slowly, but uh it's it's growing day by day that we're seeing call volume that most of it is is generated from uh you know an AI search of some sort. Uh it really seems like you know, some of the the pay-per-click options that used to be the big player um is diminishing. And uh it it's it's impressive. I mean, anytime we book a call, we're trying to get down to the bottom of you know, where where do they find us? And it's it's tough in this market with uh just in the environment that we're in, you know, whether it's our billboards, radio ads, you know, at the end of the day, we used to always get, oh, I found you on the web. Well, you found us on the web when you did a search, but something sparked a memory because you saw our billboard or you heard our radio ads. Um, now we're able to you know dig down a little bit deeper and go, where did you this? And say, actually, I did a uh I I asked Grok and this is what they told me. Um, and so that's kind of it's exciting to see.

Julian Placino 19:03

Yeah, it's like the nature of search is changing, like how people seek information. Because as you know, you've seen it like it was Google, it was paper click, and now it's like everyone is just going to their LLMs nowadays. So um I think that's a really great point. So anything else you'd like to share about Peakzi before we sort of close things out, Michael?

Speaker 19:22

Uh I just feel it's it's an amazing program. I think the gonna kill me. I think the price point's too cheap for what they offer. Um, it it is it's just amazing what it has done. And it's just opening our eyes to the the next wave, as I said. Um, we got to get on it quick and and it's gonna continue to change. Um, and I believe that Peakzi got their finger on the pulse. Uh every time I meet with them, they're like, hey, you know, we've noticed this moving uh in in our environment, and we think we should get on top of this. And uh it's just it's it's impressive that they're they're very proactive rather than reactive. And uh I'm excited to be paired with them.

Why Customers Choose Family Owned

Julian Placino 20:02

Well, certainly appreciate your words and insights about Peakzi, Michael. Thank you for that. So um so getting ready to kind of land the plane here. So if you were to speak to a prospective customer, if one of them was listening right now, what would you say to them? What's your message for them? Why why choose Moffitt?

Speaker 20:19

When you choose Moffitt, you get the feel of a big company, right? We have the resources to take care of you um 24 hours a day. Uh uh doesn't matter if you know I'm I'm on vacation with my family, or if I'm not feeling well and I'm I'm under the weather and I can't get them into the office, we have people here for you 24 hours a day. Um, but at the same time, we're not such a large company. There's a lot of private equity in our industry these days. Um, and it's it's actually very rewarding to still be family owned. And so I say to our clients, hey, you're you're supporting a family business that you spend money with us and we spend our money in our communities, and it all just comes right back. Um, we appreciate uh the the families we've served in the past, really, it's generations. Uh being around as long as we have, it's it's very, very exciting to serve children and grandchildren of clients that we have served for many, many years. And um, it's we can't thank them enough. It's it's an amazing opportunity that they've given me and my family, and we appreciate it.

Legacy Integrity And Next Generation

Julian Placino 21:26

So, on that thought right now, so looking back at everything, and what a story, Michael. Like, truly, like your father started the business, you took the baton without any kind of leadership experience, not really knowing what you're into. And look at what you've done. You've grown it, you've made such an impact. So, when you are looking back at things, like what kind of legacy do you hope to have left behind for your customers, employees, in your community?

Speaker 21:50

Um, I I hope uh that we're we're seeing in a positive light. Um, a company that that has high values and integrity. And that we've um always done right by our clients. Um you know, we're human, we've made plenty of mistakes, that's for sure, but it's how we handle those mistakes. And I hope that uh we've seen we're remembered for that. Um I'd like to say that that my my kids would take over as I did for my father, but um, I don't see that happening at this point. They're they're pretty much not involved. Although I do have one son that that works for uh CRM platform, House Call Pro. Uh so he is kind of in the the industry, if you will, but he's a computer engineer and I don't think he has any desire to get into the the trades.

Julian Placino 22:35

Well, you certainly are a true home services leader and you have a great success story. So thank you so much for sharing it with us today, Michael.

Speaker 22:43

Absolutely. Thank you, Julian. Appreciate it.

Where To Follow And Final Thanks

Julian Placino 22:45

Yeah, close us out. Share your social media, your website. How do people connect and follow you?

Speaker 22:50

Find us at uh geez, this is a question from my wife on Facebook. I think we're Moffett Plumbing. Uh Instagram, it's Moffett Plumb. Uh I know we're on TikTok as well. I have no clue. I'm I am horrible at stuff, but my wife could give you the whole run around. But I guarantee you we're on every platform you can imagine out there.

Julian Placino 23:13

Awesome. Well, we'll make sure to get all that contact information and plug it in the show notes so folks can connect with you. Uh so, Michael, this has been really wonderful getting to know you. Thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 23:22

All right, thank you.

Julian Placino 23:23

And that is it for today's episode. 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.