This is the sixth installment of how Steve Stone, Master Plumber and ShuBee CEO, propelled his own plumbing company to success.
At the second meeting ever of C2000, now Nexstar, I met some of the greatest trades people that I’ve ever met: Frank Blau, George Brazil, Jack Tester, Jim Hamilton, Tim McGuire, Maurice Mayo, Bill Bradley, Ellen Rohr, Steve Andrews and Mike Diamond to name just a few. The majority of these business owners were running 50+ trucks, some over 100 trucks. I learned so much valuable information over the next 8 years that would forever change how I ran my business and my life.
One of the most important things I learned from C2000 was how to price my services. I finally understood what it actually cost me to run a business. It was at that point that I increased my hourly rate from $50/hour to $125/billable hours. Over time, my rate increased up to $195/billable hours. This decision changed the outlook of my company drastically. I initially lost a few customers after the increase, which I think is the main reason many companies still charge way too little for their services. But think about it, in actuality I wanted my competition to have those customers. My competition had to work twice as hard as I did to get to get paid the same amount. It was a foreign concept at the time but so simple and made perfect sense.