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Podcast #104

“Bodenheimer Plumbing”

Featuring David Bodenheimer

Intro: Welcome to Profiles In Prosperity. The leading podcast for residential service contractors, sponsored by Service Roundtable and hosted by David Heimer.

David Heimer: Hi, this is David Heimer. Welcome to Profiles In Prosperity. I’m really happy today. My guest is David Bodenheimer of Bodenheimer Plumbing Services in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And I have been wanting to interview David for quite a while. I think I first noticed him just because our names are so similar, David Heimer, David Bodenheimer. But what I realized very quickly is that David is a really smart guy. He runs a great business. And I’ve attended multiple meetings with David’s Service Nation Advisory Board, and when you listen to David, you realize he’s got great practical experience and advice. He’s a wonderful contributor and advisor. And additionally, David’s company has a proud family history starting back in the 1930s. I’m not the only person who thinks this; Bodenheimer Plumbing Service is a winner of multiple Readers’ Choice Awards, recipient of the Patriot Award. They participate in our industry associations, and they’re a member of Service Nation Alliance since 2020. So David Bodenheimer, welcome to Profiles In Prosperity.

David Bodenheimer: Thank you, Dave. Thank you for the introduction.

David Heimer: Tell us about your family history. This is really interesting.

David Bodenheimer: It goes back to my grandfather. They worked together. My grandfather started probably late thirties and my dad worked with him. And over the years, they did pumps, my grandfather sold supplies and my dad would do the plumbing portion for him to help people put their plumbing in, pumps and took care of that. And then my grandfather passed away and when that happened, my dad went to work for a large mechanical contractor that did plumbing and HVAC work. They did a lot of textile work, a lot of large industrial commercial-type projects. And he worked along there for several years until about 1977 and then he decided to come back to the plumbing shop, start plumbing again. And he worked on that. I think what got him back, me and my brothers were getting to be teenagers and we were probably driving our mom crazy. So I think that had some influence on him to get back home. But he started plumbing again back in 1977. And then my oldest brother was getting out of school. He’d come to work with my dad. Then my middle brother, he had got out of Appalachian State and he was looking for a job. He had graduated in the county in business and my dad brought him on and he started working in the office side of things. And then I’d come on when I graduated from Ap State, come on and started working also.

David Heimer: So did you always want to be in the family business? Was that part of the plan for you?

David Bodenheimer: Well, I’d worked in it during the summers and holiday breaks and that stuff. We grew up in it. He always had something going that he needed help with, and he was grooming us all along. I don’t know that I always wanted to be in the plumbing business, to be honest with you. One summer, I’d come home and I told him, I said, “I don’t want to work in the plumbing. I want to do something different.” And so my dad said, “Well, you’re going to have to do something this summer. You can’t just lay around.” So he gave an address and gave me a man’s name to go see. He goes, “You got to see this man at seven o’clock Monday morning.” And I went, and it was actually for the company he had worked for. So I went to work for that company one summer, and all I did was thread pipe all summer long. So I didn’t quite get away from plumbing. I thought, but somehow he hooked me right back into it. Yep. So yes, I’m stuck with it, you know what I’m saying? That’s what we got to do.

David Heimer: Yeah. So are your brothers in the business still or are they doing something else?

David Bodenheimer: They’re doing something else. Back in 2012, 2013 I lost my dad then we lost her mom about six months later. So we had a time that me and my brothers were working together and they were getting at kind of different stages of their life, going different directions on some things. So my oldest brother kind of retired out and then my other brother did some other things. So in 2017, I bought my brothers out. We got all that taken care of and that’s when I started. Once I bought them out, I got more involved with the Service Roundtable in 2017 and then in 2020, the Service Nation Alliance. There’s a contractor in our market here, John Ians with Ian’s Heating and Air. He’s in our local market. He was on one of the success meetings that I went to. And I didn’t know John personally at the time; I knew his company. And I spent some time with John and he really told me what a good organization {inaudible 04:28}, what it was, and how it helped him. And that really gave me the confidence to join. He really helped me make a decision with that.

David Heimer: Oh good. So tell us about Bodenheimer Plumbing Services now. How big are you guys? What do you do?

David Bodenheimer: We provide residential and commercial service and repair here in the Winston-Salem Triad area. Then we do, I call it kind of like commercial work. We’ll do some outfits, some dental offices, doctors’ offices, projects like that. I call it the projects that are too big for the small companies, but too small for the bigger companies to pursue. It’s a good niche for us. Since joining, probably in 2017, we were at $3 million in sales and revenue for the year. And this past year we were at six-five. We finished up the year.

David Heimer: Wow. Congratulations.

David Bodenheimer: Well, I need to thank y’all for what all y’all have done for us. Y’all really helped us with a lot of programs and stuff and the mixing and meeting with the other contractors and the AB meetings. They’re very, very helpful. You get a lot of good information from there.

David Heimer: Well, thank you. That’s very kind of you. Well, when you look back over the growth of your company, what are some of the things that you did that made a difference for you?

David Bodenheimer: Before joining Service Nation, we were always on our service at a time and material company and I was, I’m sure, the last one in my AB group to make a change to some upfront pricing. And that’s helped us tremendously. And just the training opportunities.

David Heimer: Does your team do the whole house inspection when they show up? Or have you gone through that?

David Bodenheimer: I hadn’t gotten that far yet. We’re still new into it and we’re trying to progress along. But we show up and present them some options and let them choose and it seems to be working well for us.

David Heimer: So with this growth, I mean from three to six, that’s very significant, you’ve had to add people. And so what is the best thing you’ve done to get new people? Has there been anything in particular that works really well for you?

David Bodenheimer: I’ve got a lot of brothers that work here. Seems like we’ve got a lot of family folks that work here. So I get one brother and then another one comes. I said, “Hey, we might need another,” then another one shows up. So we’ve got a lot of that. Once I bought the company in 2017, I had folks coming back to us that had worked for us in the past. So that’s helped. So we’ve got some people coming back and starting working with us again. And we’ve had some folks that just moved from other parts of the country into this area.

David Heimer: Oh yeah.

David Bodenheimer: We’ve hired a few that way. Hired one fella who moved here from California and he started working here. He worked here for about a month and then he goes, “You know, my brother-in-law is real mechanical, you want to talk to him?” And he’d come on and I think he’s going to turn out to be a real good service tech for us here. We’re just waiting on the truck to come in here next month and see if we can get another tech on the road.

David Heimer: Well, I got to say, that speaks really well for you as a company. If you’re so good that a guy says, “Hey, I’d like my brother to come work here as well,” I mean, people don’t bring their family into bad situations usually.

David Bodenheimer: Yeah, that’s true.

David Heimer: And you’ve had people who worked for you before, went and worked somewhere else, and then said, “Wait a minute, I had a pretty good deal at Bodenheimer. I want to go back to those guys.” I mean, you must be a good place to work. That’s got to be part of it.

David Bodenheimer: Well, we try to be a good place to work. We try to work hard and do a good job for the customers, but we realize you got a family outside of this, you don’t want to be here 24/7. But we try to be pretty straight up with folks and like I say, we got to take care of our customers.

David Heimer: Yeah. So I look over the program, you know, Service Nation has this rebate program, and you have gotten a lot of money back from the rebate program. Do you have any particular strategies for maximizing your rebates?

David Bodenheimer: I’ve talked with the person in y’all’s organization that handles the rebate and he got me signed up, made sure I was maximizing that. There were people that I didn’t even realize did rebates until he brought it to my attention. It’s really helped a lot. I mean, it’s a once-a-quarter thing. It makes a difference for us. It more than pays for any kind of dues we’re paying out. It’s a really good program.

David Heimer: Yeah. We’re a profit center for you guys. That’s good.

David Bodenheimer: Oh yeah.

David Heimer: And the guy you’re talking about is Michael Rudowitz and Michael Rudowitz’s job for Service Nation is to help the members of Service Nation get the most rebates that they can. So I’m glad to hear that’s working out for you. That’s good.

David Bodenheimer: It’s well worth it. It’s one of those things that before you do it, you’re kind of, “Yeah, we’ll see how the rebate works,” but it really works. It’s worthwhile.

David Heimer: You’re not the only one. People are very skeptical of the rebate program. I don’t know why.

David Bodenheimer: It sounds too good to be true, you know. This can’t be true, right?

David Heimer: I guess that’s it. But we have members that make lots and lots of money off of the rebates and now Service Nation pays out millions of dollars every quarter in rebates to the Service Nation members. So it’s a great program.

David Bodenheimer: It sure is.

David Heimer: Looking into the future, what are you looking for for your business? Where do you want to be in five years and what’s out beyond that for you guys?

David Bodenheimer: We’re just continuing to try to grow and improve our service business, improve our practices and processes. I’m turning 59 in April, so I need to start kind of planning where I’m going to be personally. You know what I’m saying? So I’ve always told my wife and my daughter, I said, “I just don’t want this business to be a burden to anybody.” If something happens to me, I don’t want them to have to come in and have to fool with it. So I’m kind of trying to plan ahead and see what we need to do with it and see how we move forward from there.

David Heimer: Do you have family that is interested in inheriting the business or working in the business in the future?

David Bodenheimer: I have a son-in-law that’s working here now. He’s a licensed plumber. Went and got his plumbing license; he’s doing a great job. I don’t know, running and owning a business, it’s a lot of stress and strain to it. I’m sure all the other contractors will tell you. I don’t know how many people want to take that on. And it’s not one of those eight to-five jobs where you can just kind of check in, check out.

David Heimer: Well, it’ll be interesting to see where it goes, and I’m looking forward to following up and finding out about all that. So thank you so much for doing this with me. I love hearing about your business and I’m so proud of what you’ve done. My goodness, that’s tremendous growth. And being able to get those people to come and work for you and bring their family in, that says that you guys are a really top-notch company. So congratulations on all that. That’s terrific.

David Bodenheimer: We appreciate all that, Dave, and thank you for your time today.

Outro: We’re always looking for good ideas and interviews for our podcast. If you have an idea, or maybe you think you should be interviewed, just shoot an email to profilesinprosperity@serviceroundtable.com. That’s profilesinprosperity@serviceroundtable.com. If you think what we’re doing has any value, it would be very helpful if you would give us a great rating on iTunes. Thanks for your support. Hope to see you again soon. Bye.