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This is a great argument for starting a company in an industry where you are an expert, but this guy isn't doing house calls for hourly pay. He's taking a big c

This is a great argument for starting a company in an industry where you are an expert, but this guy isn't doing house calls for hourly pay. He's taking a big cut of alllll the house calls. According to wiki he is paying his plumbers more than I'd expect, which is cool. >The company promotes itself as providing a high-quality service, employing "£80,000/year plumbers", charging £80–200/hour depending on time of day and service performed."

chrisseaton 7y ago
Someone said a plumbing business wouldn’t scale. He scaled a plumbing business. Obviously in scaling it, this multi-millionaire is not personally doing the plumbing anymore - you are right. I don’t see how that means he hasn’t scaled it though?
- thebean11 7y ago
  Exactly, none of the tech billionaires got where they are by coding or even designing software forever. I don't see a fundamental difference between that and managing a plumbing business.
  - throwaway100773 7y ago
    The point I was trying to make was that the trades don’t scale like tech or banking do. It’s clear that this guy, who did manage to scale a trade, has a net worth of about 100mm after almost 40 years of scaling, whereas the most successful tech entrepreneurs have multiples of that in a quarter (or less) of a timeframe. This guy is an exception, but still sort of exemplifies what I’m trying to say. It’s worth noting that this guy may be the most successful plumber in the world (or at least on a short list of the most successful plumbers in the world). If we made a list of people in tech or finance, the people would be younger and richer by several orders of magnitude in some cases which is saying something when we’re talking about 100mm bucks. My argument wasn’t that the trades don’t scale at all (this would be an asinine argument as I know contractors that do scale and this guy is clearly an exception to that argument), but rather that the trades don’t scale the same way tech or finance do.

chrisseaton 7y ago

Someone said a plumbing business wouldn’t scale. He scaled a plumbing business. Obviously in scaling it, this multi-millionaire is not personally doing the plumbing anymore - you are right. I don’t see how that means he hasn’t scaled it though?

thebean11 7y ago
Exactly, none of the tech billionaires got where they are by coding or even designing software forever. I don't see a fundamental difference between that and managing a plumbing business.
- throwaway100773 7y ago
  The point I was trying to make was that the trades don’t scale like tech or banking do. It’s clear that this guy, who did manage to scale a trade, has a net worth of about 100mm after almost 40 years of scaling, whereas the most successful tech entrepreneurs have multiples of that in a quarter (or less) of a timeframe. This guy is an exception, but still sort of exemplifies what I’m trying to say. It’s worth noting that this guy may be the most successful plumber in the world (or at least on a short list of the most successful plumbers in the world). If we made a list of people in tech or finance, the people would be younger and richer by several orders of magnitude in some cases which is saying something when we’re talking about 100mm bucks. My argument wasn’t that the trades don’t scale at all (this would be an asinine argument as I know contractors that do scale and this guy is clearly an exception to that argument), but rather that the trades don’t scale the same way tech or finance do.