How To Start Your Own Plumbing Business: Some Useful Pieces of Advice

Starting your business in any field is a challenge. Plumbing is not an exception. We have compiled some useful tips to consider before starting something of your own in plumbing:

Learn the Trade

If you have already established your reputation as an experienced professional in plumbing among your permanent customers, it is much easier to start a business of your own. You have got your name and much expertise so knowing what to do next is not a big problem.

However, you may want to set up a plumbing company just right out of school. You can do it of course, but keep in mind that you need a team of experienced plumbers and fill out the license plumbing forms. Try to follow their advice and learn the smallest nuances from them.

Gaining Skills and Experience

• For the start, be an apprentice for a while.
• Think about taking some courses that are helpful for a plumbing business.
• First of all, you need to know how to do all plumbing work yourself. It means that you should be physically fit. You may face the necessity to carry heavy things or climb the heights. Maybe, there will be a need to crawl into cramped and narrow spaces.
• The most important thing is to get a reliable backup. You will have it when you find others with sufficient plumbing experience. 

Create a Business Plan

The goal and mission of your future plumbing company are immensely important. In addition to repair and unclogging pipes, do you prefer to aim all your services at customers and their needs? Or would you like to enter the industrial sphere and provide services for commercial properties? Are you going to do all types of plumbing work? Or, possibly, will you focus on one specific type of work?

These and some other questions should be answered before you proceed with cost estimates and budgets, profits and benefits.

These are some other questions to answer for making up a realistic business plan.

Sample questions:

• How many funds do you need for the very start of your business and how many costs will you spend on the ongoing development?
• What monthly revenue do you expect?
• How many employees would you like to hire and what size of salary can you pay them at the beginning?
• What sort of tools and equipment do you need, how much will your expenses on them be, and do you have to acquire some other materials and instruments, such as, for example, a truck, containers, drills, or other items and appliances?
• Could you use the facilities of your own or will you rent them?
• When you proceed with running your plumbing business and hire plumbers, will you pay them per diem or an established salary?

Finances

A business can develop using the costs gained from services it offers. However, if you start at zero, you may not have spare funds to set up and develop your company as you see it at the beginning. So, you should think about saving money for these needs or looking for investors. The ideas may include getting loans from banks or involving business partners.

Be Sure to Register the Business

As soon as you have settled all the issues mentioned above, proceed with registering your business. You need to apply for it to your local authorities.

After the process is completed, you will be given a business license. This is a document that provides the proof that all the necessary steps and procedures are over and you have paid all the required fees for the start.

Another question here concerns the type of license you will need to work as a plumber. The best option is to check with your local authorities what kind of requirements you will have to meet and what kind of license it is better to obtain. Of course, it should be a Plumber’s License issued by a state but the specifications may differ so it is worth finding out the details beforehand.

Location, Equipment, and Staff

You are sure to have chosen the location for your company already. If not, think about the central point of your customers’ area. The equipment you are going to acquire should properly correspond to the requirements of this location.

You may not know at the moment how big you are going to grow. Nevertheless, you are likely to have several members in your staff even for the start. They should be plumbers, of course. Though, you will also need someone to run the office, talk to clients, and coordinate all the company’s performance.

Advertise

Choosing a name is essential. It should be both easy-to-remember and catchy. You will also need a slogan or motto. On their base, you will be creating further ads. This trade means that reputation is important and word-of-mouth often plays a dramatic part. However, you can also place your ads in local newspapers. This time of advanced technologies also implies having a company’s website that should be recognizable and accessible. If you do not know how to create a website and commercials, hire an expert who would set up the site, maintain it, and do all other work related to online marketing.