Building a business

Scaling Smarter: Strategies for Profitable, Sustainable Growth in the Trades

Recap of the Ask a Pro webinar featuring Mitch Smedley, Founder of Smedley Plumbing & Co-Founder of Tradewinds Consulting.

Sep 19, 2025

Ask a Pro is our live webinar series where we sit down with experienced trades professionals to talk real growth, hard-earned lessons, and what it takes to run a modern service business.

In this session, we spoke with Mitch Smedley, Founder of Smedley Plumbing, a company that blends sharp operations with community-first values to build a standout local brand. With a background in the plumbing trades and business coaching, Mitch brings unique insights into brand building, team culture, and creating a sellable business.

From branding that keeps you top-of-mind to hiring practices that protect culture to systems that make your company desirable to buyers, this conversation was packed with real-world strategies for trades business owners who want to scale and thrive.

Watch the full webinar here.

Quick Takeaways

Here are five standout insights from the conversation:

Entertain between jobs. Customers are not on social media to learn about water heaters; they are there to laugh, smile, or feel connected to your brand.

Live your values in public. Smedley Plumbing’s Family First program, which provides free plumbing repairs to community members in need, builds goodwill while reinforcing team pride.

Stop being the technician. Business owners must shift their identity from doing the trade work to leading a team that can outperform them in every role.

Fix culture before you grow. Expanding a team without strong values and accountability multiplies problems, while a healthy culture makes growth almost automatic.

Create a business that runs without you. A company that runs on processes rather than the owner—supported by profitability and autonomy—is both more valuable and more enjoyable to operate.

About Mitch and Smedley Plumbing

Smedley Plumbing is a residential service company serving the Kansas City metro. The business focuses on reliable workmanship, memorable customer experiences, and meaningful community impact. By its second year, the company surpassed $1 million in revenue, grew to a fleet of five trucks, and earned more than 1,200 Google reviews.

Mitch Smedley, Founder of Smedley Plumbing and Co-Founder of Tradewinds Consulting, brings years of hands-on experience building teams, processes, and brands. He is passionate about helping other trades business owners create scalable and sustainable companies.

Full Recap

1. Brand First: Stay Visible When Customers Don’t Need You

Mitch began with a blunt truth: many trades businesses are “nonexistent” in their markets. In plumbing especially, customers call infrequently, so a strong brand must live rent-free in people’s minds until they need service.

“What we do as tradesmen is not sexy…so you have to find ways to get on social media in other ways.”

Smedley Plumbing does this by leaning into humor and community-driven content—like a miniature plumbing-van go-kart used in parades—to earn attention and goodwill between service needs.

2. Invest in Community and Team Every Week

Mitch explained that healthy growth comes from investing in both your community and your employees. Smedley Plumbing’s Family First program reserves the first business day of each month for free plumbing repairs for neighbors in need. Importantly, employees are paid their standard wages for these jobs.

This initiative demonstrates that values are not just words on a poster—they are tied directly to the schedule and payroll, making them real for the team.

3. Mindset Shifts: From Wrench-Turner to Business Builder

Two mindset shifts are essential for growth. First, owners must recognize they are no longer technicians but business leaders. Second, they must embrace the power of building a team.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Mitch cited The E-Myth Revisited and Napoleon Hill’s teachings, noting that success comes from leverage, not long hours. His approach was to hire people who could do their jobs better than he could, allowing him to focus on steering the company.

4. Values → Culture → Hiring: The GIVES Framework

Smedley Plumbing is anchored by five core values: Gratitude, Integrity, Value, Experience/Excellence, and Service (GIVES). Weekly meetings include a “Big Job Breakdown” that uses these values to evaluate what went well and what could improve, with an emphasis on personal accountability and zero blame.

Hiring follows a simple philosophy: hire fast, fire fast. Mitch stressed that if someone proves to be a poor fit, leaders must act quickly to protect the culture.

“If you’ve got bad culture and you grow the team, all you’re doing is growing the bad culture.”

5. Pricing, Sales, and Profit: Flat-Rate + Three Options

Mitch emphasized that switching to flat-rate pricing was the most impactful operational change. It allows efficiency and skill to benefit the business, not just the customer.

On the sales side, Smedley Plumbing always presents customers with three options, which gives homeowners control and prevents them from shopping around for multiple bids. Key metrics like conversion rate (above trip-charge) and average ticket are tracked relentlessly, with the goal of achieving strong net profit.

“People hate to be sold something—but they love to buy.”

6. Make Success Inevitable: Goals, Reviews, and Sellability

Mitch described how he sets math-based targets and stretch goals, celebrating both with team outings and equal cash bonuses for every role. For demand generation, his company prioritizes in-person review requests. Technicians are trained to ask while still in the customer’s home, supported by invoice links and QR codes on their phones. Each five-star review earns a $25 spiff.

On long-term planning, Mitch shared his recent decision to sell a majority stake in Smedley Plumbing to local entrepreneurs. He credited the company’s strong processes and systems for making it desirable and valuable.

“Every frustration is either a process not being followed—or a process that doesn’t exist.”

FieldPulse: Systems That Turn Good Intentions into Daily Habits

Mitch’s strategies become easier to implement with the right operational platform. FieldPulse helps service businesses:

Standardize pricing and options. Build good-better-best packages in the Pricebook, present clear estimates, and convert more jobs on-site.

Track performance. Monitor conversion rates, average tickets, and profitability trends across your business.

Embed culture into workflows. Use job templates, forms, and checklists so values show up consistently in every customer interaction.

Power reputation growth. Trigger post-job review requests automatically while still encouraging in-person asks for maximum impact.

Final Thoughts

From Mitch’s experience, one principle stands out: brands supported by systems win. Whether you are starting out, scaling your first team, or leading a larger operation, your ability to stay visible, hire to values, and run by process is what separates thriving businesses from those stuck in survival mode.

The trades pros who grow consistently build relationships that make people smile—and put systems in place to make those relationships repeatable.