Plumber Business HiringYou cannot grow past two vans while you are still the best plumber in the business.
Hiring and team building for plumbing business owners who need another set of hands but have been burned before. Finding plumbers worth having, paying them right under the award, training apprentices who stay, and building a crew that runs a job without you.
The week this is about
Sound Like Your Plumbing Business?
Good plumbers are hard to find and easy to lose
The ones worth having are already working, and the mines or a bigger commercial outfit will outbid you on money alone. So you take who is available, carry them, then lose the good one you did train to someone offering an extra couple of dollars an hour.
You are not sure you are paying them legally
The Plumbing and Fire Sprinklers Award has apprentice percentages by year, plus tool, industry and travel allowances that move. You are paying a flat rate you think is generous and hoping it clears the award, which is not a position you want to be in.
Training an apprentice costs you a productive year
First year, they slow the job down and you double-check the work. By the time they can be left on a fit-off, they are looking around. You end up doing the training for the industry and wondering why you bother taking one on at all.
Stay a one man band and the business stops the day you do, whether that is a holiday, a bad back or the day you finally want out.
Hiring and team
Here Is What We Do About It.
The Learning Hub carries the hiring, team and leadership training: how to write the role, run the interview, induct properly and hold a plumber to a standard without becoming a bad boss. Greg works through the big hiring calls with you directly. And the hires have changed: agents can now do the quoting, invoicing and chasing your way, so the people you add are the ones facing your customers and leading your crew.
Free tool, no sign-up
Apprentice cost calculator
Wages and on-costs are the easy part. This adds the weeks they are at trade school, the on-site hours that never reach an invoice, and the supervision time that pulls a qualified tradesperson off their own work, then gives you what one billable apprentice hour actually costs. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Work out the real costHow it works
Three Steps, Starting Tonight.
Hire before you are desperate
Every bad hire in this industry happens in the same week: the week you were already too busy. The training covers hiring on a plan instead of on a panic.
Give them a system to follow
People do not fail because they are lazy. They fail because nobody wrote down what good looks like. That is why systems and hiring are the same problem.
Lead them, then get off the tools
Greg works the bit that is genuinely hard: running a team when you were trained as a tradesperson, and letting go of work you can do faster yourself.
Why you get me
I built the coaching company everyone else runs. Then I took it apart.
Most coaching companies work the same way. You enquire, you get a salesperson. You sign up, you get a coach who has never run a trade business.
I know, because I built one. I grew the Academy to 35 staff, a CEO and 15 coaches. It ran without me.
And I hated it. The bigger it got, the further I was from the owners I started it for.
What gets me up in the morning is getting under the hood of a trade business and helping the owner hit their goals in the least time possible.
So I restructured the whole thing.
When you enquire, you speak to me. If you are accepted into the Academy, you work with me. Directly.
And with agentic AI, the results come sooner than most owners can imagine.
Places are limited. I only take on owners who are committed and ready to do the work.
Who you will be talking to
I built Response Electricians in Perth into a 30+ staff business with more than 1,950+ five-star reviews.
A general manager runs it day to day. I live in Byron Bay.
I have trained 9,000+ trade business owners across Australia and New Zealand.
What AI actually changes
The old way. The new way.
More customers meant more people doing your computer work, and you paying for all of it.
You stay with your customers and your team. Agents run the office your way.
The old way
Grow, then hire people to do the computer work.
Every new customer brought more quoting, invoicing, chasing, scheduling and reporting.
So you hired people to do it. Office staff, bookkeepers, admin.
None of it is billable, and every hire costs wages, sick leave and another person to manage.
Profit and time only grew as fast as you could add people.
The new way
Keep the human work. Give everything else to agents.
Your people do what only people can do: looking after customers and leading the team.
Everything else goes to agents that do it your way, instantly, any time it is needed.
No sick leave. No capacity problems. They scale as far as the business does.
So the only people you add are the ones facing your customers and your team.
A human-centred business that runs on systems you build in minutes. Nobody still running the old way can compete with it.
What changes
What Plumbing Business Hiring Actually Changes.
Three things plumbing business owners walk away able to do.
Hire a plumber against a written role instead of whoever is available
Check your pay rates and allowances against the award with confidence
Induct an apprentice so they are useful on site inside their first year
Questions
Plumber Business Hiring, Answered.
How much do I have to pay a plumbing apprentice?
Are there incentives for taking on a plumbing apprentice?
How do I stop losing plumbers to bigger companies?
Plumbers
The Other Ways We Help Plumbers.
Plumber Business Training
Structured training that turns what plumbers know on the tools into a business that runs properly.
CoachingPlumber Business Coaching
Greg Allan in your corner, holding plumbers to the plan. By application.
SystemsPlumber Business Systems
The documented process that lets the work happen properly when plumbers are not standing there.
The free appPlumber Business App
Lessons, tools and a room full of other owners, free for plumbers with an active ABN.
Marketing and leadsPlumber Business Marketing
How plumbers get the phone ringing with the jobs worth having, not just the cheap ones.
Pricing and profitPlumber Business Pricing
The number plumbers should actually be charging, worked out properly rather than guessed.
Have a Chat With Greg About Your Business.
An hour with Greg, one on one, about anything in your trade business. By application: if his diary is full, you join his waitlist and he invites you. He only takes owners who are committed.