$6M → $25M Plumbing Company in 3 Years (Part 1)

Last week, I had a chance to talk to longtime Sagan member and owner of J Blanton Plumbing, Aizik Zimerman.

He is the DREAM for almost every entrepreneurship through acquisition person out there.

Got his MBA from Booth, quickly acquired a plumbing business, and has grown it from $6 to $25M in revenue within 3 years.

I'm gonna link the full conversation at the bottom, but what he is doing and the way he thinks is worth studying.

For background, here are some of the ways he is currently using global talent in his plumbing business:

• Inbound Call Center Team: Call center agents, Team leaders, the entire inbound call center is overseas

• Outbound Sales: Outbound call center staff for sales functions

• Recruiting: Multiple recruiters who spend time on Indeed and other platforms reaching out to potential hires (skilled tradesman)

• Administrative & Finance: Bookkeepers, Accountants

• Quality Control & Auditing: Various auditors checking completed jobs, Safety picture auditors (ensuring technicians upload safety photos after excavation jobs), Transaction auditors

• Permits & Compliance: Someone dedicated to calling villages/cities to pull permits and arrange utility markings for excavation jobs

• Technical Development: Web developer, Two software engineers/developers who create internal scripts, automations, and reports

• Operations: Fleet coordinator

Digital Marketing: 4-5 global talent people on the digital marketing team doing various functions

Aizik mentions having 40-50 global talent members total, representing roughly half of his workforce, at a PLUMBING COMPANY.

We talked about a lot, and we got into the weeds on some of the levers that he's using to enable that kind of growth.

Some of the concepts are so rich I believe that they deserve discussion on their own.

I'm going to write a three-part series on what I think are the three most powerful and applicable ideas to other business owners that we talked about within this podcast.

These are things that I've talked about over and over, but for you to see them applied in a living, breathing environment, I think adds a lot of punch.

The Power of Hyper-Focused Roles

The first idea is to create global talent jobs that are as small as possible, not as big as possible.

Most people approach global talent hiring backwards.

They think like traditional US hiring: "I need someone who can handle scheduling, AND customer service, AND some light bookkeeping, AND maybe help with social media when things are slow."

This is broken thinking.

Aizik does the opposite.

He carves out the smallest possible job description and asks: "Is this single task worth $1,500 a month?" The answer is almost always yes.

Stop obsessing about utilization rates!

Instead of thinking "How do I keep this person busy 40 hours a week?" you think "What's the smallest job that creates massive value if done consistently?"

How This Plays Out in Practice

Let me show you exactly what this looks like in Aizik's operation.

He employs someone whose primary job is calling villages and cities to pull permits and arrange utility markings every time they sell an excavation job. That's it. One specific task.

Miss this step and you're looking at costly delays, compliance issues, and potentially thousands in penalties.

"It's super important and it's something we can't miss," Aizik explains. By having someone focused solely on this, "they're super fast at it" and nothing falls through the cracks.

Another example: He has a person whose main responsibility is auditing safety pictures after every excavation job. Just safety pictures. Nothing else. They ensure technicians uploaded the required photos, check compliance, and immediately message anyone who missed the requirement so penalties can be implemented right away.

The Math

Take skilled trades recruiting. If a dedicated recruiter sources just ONE additional plumber per year - and that plumber drives $1-2 million in revenue - they've paid for themselves many times over. As Aizik puts it: "If they do this one thing a couple times, what value is that bringing me? It's actually off the charts."

This is the opposite of how most business owners think. They're coming at it from a cost-savings perspective, trying to extract maximum utilization. But Aizik flips it: focus on the value created, not the hours filled.

The fundamental issue is that most people are still thinking in U.S. labor economics.

When you're used to $75,000 all-in for a full-time person, of course you need them handling multiple responsibilities to justify the cost. But at $1,500 a month, the entire calculation changes.

You're not hiring a "full-time person" in the traditional sense - you're buying a business function. The question isn't "How do I keep them busy?" It's "What single thing, done consistently, would be worth $18,000 a year to my business?"

The Reality Check

Of course, this approach isn't without its challenges. Not every task can be perfectly isolated, and some roles do benefit from broader business context.

You'll also need strong systems to coordinate between hyper-focused roles to ensure nothing falls between the cracks.

But here's what I've observed: these challenges are far outweighed by the benefits of having someone become genuinely excellent at one critical task, rather than mediocre at five different ones.

Once you make that mental shift from utilization to value creation, everything changes!

You start seeing opportunities everywhere…small, specific tasks that, if done consistently and well, could transform your business operations.

The question becomes: what $1,500-per-month business function are you currently missing?

Yallah Habibi,

Jon

Here’s the Link: