From a podcast interview featuring Nate Agentis, CEO of Agentis Plumbing and Plumbing CEO
In this episode of CEO Growth Talks, Pete Hayes interviews Nate Agentis, CEO of Agentis Plumbing and Plumbing CEO, who shares his journey of taking over and expanding a multigenerational family business founded by his grandfather. Nate discusses the strategic thinking behind scaling Agentis Plumbing through technology, data-driven growth, and operational excellence. He highlights the importance of planning and resilience, especially during personal challenges, ensuring the company’s survival. He also shares insights from his coaching platform, Plumbing CEO, to empower and educate service plumbers. His experience with AI and tech in plumbing provides forward-looking perspectives on innovation in the industry.
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“I've learned the importance of thinking ahead, making sure you have the right peers, surrounding yourself with the right people, and having a strategic plan because you’re just not sure when change or crisis will come.” Nate Agentis |
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[Episode Transcript]
[00:00:00] Pete Hayes: Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to another edition of CEO Growth Talks. I'm Pete Hayes, your host from Chief Outsiders, and I am pleased to welcome Nate Agentis, the man behind Agentis Plumbing. The name's been around for a while. Welcome, Nate, to the program.
[00:00:23] Nate Agentis: Hey, Pete, thanks so much for having me on. I'm excited to be here.
[00:00:25] Pete Hayes: Yeah, well, thank you. Nate has a very interesting story—really a fascinating business because it’s been around a long time. He's going to tell us that, and he's also branched out into some other areas. He told me this would happen, so I’m going to mention it right up front: it’s so interesting.
[00:00:42] Pete Hayes: He was recently on The Drew Barrymore Show, so we’ll unpack that a little bit more later. But Nate, how’d you get into this? I mean, you’re the CEO of a well-known plumbing entity north of Philadelphia. How did all this happen? And I know a little bit, so I'm going to tease it out.
[00:01:00] Nate Agentis: All right, I appreciate that. Yeah, man, it's a crazy story—just how things intertwine in life and you end up where you're at. Everybody has a different part in the story. Back in the war days, in the 1940s and 1950s—’54 is when the business was started—my grandpa was in the army, and they gave him two options: kitchen duty or plumbing.
[00:01:19] Nate Agentis: Those were his two job choices. He was like, “Well, I’m not peeling potatoes the entire time in the army, so give me a blocked toilet, and I'll take care of that.” And so, that’s where plumbing began in the Agentis family, which is absolutely crazy—that’s how it started. He came out and didn’t know anything else, so he started a plumbing business. He was way ahead of his time; like before the J.C. Penney’s, the Kmart’s, and the Amazons, he had a bath towel shop with soap dishes and accessories. It was right on Main Street in Bethlehem, which was like the heart and soul of our historic district—back to some of the buildings that the Moravians built. He had awesome ideas that led the way in the trade, but he was just not a great businessman. He had the biggest heart in the world but didn’t know how to run a business or be a leader of people. Unfortunately, the tax man got him because he was not diligent in that journey, and my dad was like 17 at the time when the IRS came, made him sell all their stuff, and put it in a yard sale. They sold everything they had and had to move out of their house.
[00:02:23] Nate Agentis: But that’s all my dad knew. My dad grew up with that, so at 17 years old, he had a pickup truck and some tools and started picking up my grandpa’s customer base and doing the work himself. He was working 24/7, got married at like 20, and I was born in 1980. That plumbing company was in my house; my mom worked in this little office, and my dad was in and out every day, 24/7.
[00:02:47] Nate Agentis: So, for my dad to come home at seven o’clock at night and then hear him leave at two o’clock in the morning—that was like the story of my life. He’d say, “Hey, I’ll be at your game,” and then he’d show up with five minutes left because he was racing there with the work truck.
[00:03:02] Pete Hayes: You were just immersed in this family business. It was already second generation. Was it a given that you would take over the business, or did it just happen? Did you go to college?
[00:03:12] Nate Agentis: Yeah, my dad, he was really great about verbally telling me I never had to be a part of the company. But, like, when you grow up with it, you're sitting in your living room, playing Nintendo with technicians, on job sites, and riding around with grandpa, doing plumbing your whole life.
[00:03:27] Nate Agentis: And then you're at that high school point where it's like, what am I going to do with my life? Yeah, you really start to say this is obvious; like, it's good money, it's a solid career, it's worked for our family, and it's something I know. So, I got my master plumbing license at 21.
[00:03:42] Nate Agentis: I went to school for management and marketing. I started to know, that once I was entering the college area, I did not want to be a technician forever; I knew that was not my thing, the best use of my gift set. I liked people, I liked talking, and I liked leadership. I was doing a lot of that in the church in my high school [00:04:00] days, part of some youth groups and things.
[00:04:02] Nate Agentis: Yeah, so I came out of college and transitioned to learning the office work—accounting, marketing, customer relations, and sales—which was really great.
[00:04:11] Pete Hayes: Okay. So then the business was yours in 2000.
[00:04:16] Nate Agentis: 2012; that’s what I would call the crisis story.
[00:04:20] Nate Agentis: My grandpa had a crisis, which was bankruptcy, and my mom and dad had a crisis. So, in 2012, my mom was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. When my mom got diagnosed, I think it was so devastating for my dad because my mom was his best friend.
[00:04:36] Nate Agentis: They started dating when they were 13 and 15, which is insane. And then, obviously, they worked together in the business. So, their response, in February of 2012, was to walk out of the business. They were like, we are going to pray, we’re going to get doctors, we’re going to spend time together, we’re going to vacation together.
[00:04:55] Nate Agentis: So, like, they were gone. As a young man who had worked in the business but was not the leader of it, I was up to bat. There was a lot of hard transition in 2012 from taking over from my dad at that time.
[00:05:15] Pete Hayes: How long later did you lose your mom?
[00:05:15] Nate Agentis: I lost my mom nine months later. So December 2012, she passed. Dad came back to work, I want to say, like, March of 2013, and said, “You know, son, this is not really what I want to do anymore. This daily grind and being in charge of all this... me and your mom's dream was to have a kitchen and bath showroom.”
[00:05:35] Nate Agentis: We were already doing a little bit of kitchen and bathroom remodeling, but their dream was always like a big showroom with displays and a design process. So, he and my brother started the process to go and building a showroom. They built a 7,000-square-foot showroom with live bathrooms and live kitchens.
[00:05:51] Nate Agentis: We created a separate LLC and got that established, and that's where they both work today. I continued to take over plumbing and set up a plan to officially purchase it from my dad.
[00:06:04] Pete Hayes: So, with your having observed and worked with both your dad and your grandfather, what did you learn from their experience and the way they led the business at that point? What did you take away? What was your leadership lesson from that?
[00:06:19] Nate Agentis: You're a music guy, right, Pete? So, my grandpa could play the harmonica while driving the steering wheel with his elbows down the road as a young kid.
[00:06:27] Nate Agentis: So I'm a young man in the front seat of a pickup truck, and he's playing the harmonica while we're driving down the road. That was like the first step of leadership. What was the
[00:06:37] Pete Hayes: What was the leadership lesson there? You can ride and shoot or something like that.
[00:06:43] Nate Agentis: Multitasking is the key to success.
[00:06:45] Nate Agentis: Man, that's a good question, Pete. I think there are different aspects of what I've learned, but one of the main things is the importance of thinking ahead, of making sure you have the right peers, you're surrounded by the right people, and you have a strategic plan because you're just not sure when change or crisis is coming. I think we all face it. It could be something in-house, like someone gets sick, or something happens, or the economy changes, or whatever, right? If we don't have a strategic plan prepared for that, we hit some really difficult obstacles.
[00:07:18] Nate Agentis: If my grandpa's obstacle couldn't be overcome, my dad's obstacle—this isn't a brag on me; I think we all have different seasons of life. My grandpa was the forerunner of bringing the trade to the family. My dad built it from nothing, but I do believe my gift set was to scale and grow.
[00:07:36] Nate Agentis: Right, without me in play, if I was doing something else, I'm not sure the business would have survived that season either without a leader at the helm. And if it did, it would have been at the cost of some good people and a percentage of our customer base.
[00:07:56] Pete Hayes: Yeah, and so the business has done well, threefold since 2012.
[00:08:00] Nate Agentis: Yeah, three times the size, three times the income. It's expanding our territory, new services my dad dreamed of, and working with CMOs and CFOs on metrics, dashboards, and technology—just really surging technology into the trades, which has been really cool.
[00:08:20] Pete Hayes: Wow. So, you're the one who literally brought strategic thinking into it. You mentioned there were some things that you learned in that process, but you really brought the ability to scale in.
[00:08:32] Nate Agentis: Yeah, I was at a crossroads. So, you're in that spot where Dad is officially gone, and my brother and I are trying to clean up the culture. I'm trying to establish myself as a leader.
[00:08:41] Nate Agentis: Man, I feel like God brought me a best friend at the right time. I was going to church, and this guy joined our church. He was in the data analyst software and IT world—just kind of had a background in all of that. He was working for a local company. We became friends, and we were on the leadership team together at church, getting to know each other.
[00:09:00] Nate Agentis: I just loved the processes, systems, and organization he was bringing into a nonprofit. I was like, wow, this is awesome. So needed. We were golfing one day, and he talked about considering a new job because the schedule shifted, and he was having babies. I just said, like, "Hey man, if you ever are, I could use somebody like you so badly. I need operational help." That opportunity happened; he gave me a chance, and I brought him on. So, I could talk small business, family business, and plumbing-specific service industry, while he had corporate world data, dashboards, and metrics. We merged those two thoughts together and started writing low code eight years ago, before low code was like a popular thing, and started creating all kinds of scaling ability by working through each job role in the company, putting metrics to that job role. It was unbelievable now.
[00:10:00] Pete Hayes: I know you are a man of faith. You and I both share a membership in the international organization called C12. It didn't sound like a wake-up call as much as it was just a God moment of bringing something that was really important, and you acknowledged that. Was that the stepping-off point then?
[00:10:16] Nate Agentis: Yeah, for sure. I just felt like I established leadership with my dad leaving a few years ago to kind of like, "I'm the guy in charge. I'm the one hiring and firing, making decisions, and critically thinking," and now this guy was coming on, and I was immediately making him like my COO. That was just a huge relief for me because I was giving power away; I was giving control away.
[00:10:36] Nate Agentis: Lots of people were like, "Be careful how much you do. Can you trust this guy?" I'm like, "Okay, calm down. Let me settle a little bit here." But man, that was like that humbling process of emotionally not being able to work through my mom's death because the business was so demanding. It was finally a place where I felt like I could start to heal. I could start to see clearly. Strategic planning became a reality because somebody was helping me connect the dots to and for the whole organization.
[00:11:04] Pete Hayes: Well, you learned a lot over these years, and I find it fascinating that, in addition to just growing your own business, you saw some gaps in the industry. Some things weren't being attended to by your industry organizations, and you raised your hand and created something. Tell us about that story.
[00:11:19] Nate Agentis: Yeah, that story comes from just this desire to teach and to be taught. I enjoy both of those aspects. You go to these plumbing conventions or water conventions that are out there. There's not a lot in the trade industry. It's hopefully growing and getting better, but it's not like the IT world, where there's one every week.
[00:11:39] Nate Agentis: You go to these conventions to learn and be educated, and there is just such a gap for service plumbing—a gap for teaching guys who are in the grind and what is truly an essential business. So often we think of plumbers, and we think of the guys who put the pipes in the wall.
[00:11:55] Nate Agentis: That's a job, but the fixing and the unblocking and the flooding and the water heating—like that is life to us as humans in America, especially. I went to these conventions, and there was just nothing for that, so I just raised my hand and said, "Hey, I'd love to be a part of this. I'd love to help serve this organization." And so they gave me the shot, and since then I've been speaking at four or five different conferences all over the U.S., teaching service plumbers how to grow and scale.
[00:12:22] Nate Agentis: Teaching tradesmen how to stay balanced, protect themselves from burnout, care for their families, write long-term visions for who they want to be, and write mission statements and core values for their business.
[00:12:35] Nate Agentis: They've had a KPI or a strategic planning guide before. We're doing it in a real practical way that helps people relate—that they're not out there alone, that other people are going through the same problems that they are.
[00:12:48] Pete Hayes: And you have a branded entity called?
[00:12:50] Nate Agentis: Yeah, a branded entity called Plumbing CEO. It worked out well, plumbingceo.com, and we coach and train technicians. I do speaking events and am working on my first book, which is exciting. I've always wanted to write a book; I always thought it would be a book of faith or family. I have adoption in my life, as I have adopted kids. I thought maybe it would have something to do with that, and here it’s going to be plumbing and scanning. It's your purpose; it feels like that.
[00:13:18] Pete Hayes: And maybe some affirmation. This takes us right to Drew Barrymore. All of a sudden, she’s going, “I heard about this. This is interesting.” So, you’ve been on her program. What's that all about?
[00:13:27] Nate Agentis: Oh my gosh! So, yeah, out of nowhere, Plumbing CEO got some attention with a Wall Street Journal article, and she put two and two together. The producers reached out, and I got to do a really fun six-minute clip with Drew Barrymore.
[00:13:42] Nate Agentis: Just as much as it was scripted to be serious, she’s just a really funny person, and it was just a big, good laugh the whole time. She was asking fun questions like, “What happens if I block a toilet at one of the parties I go to? What do I do?” We had some good laughs.
[00:13:56] Pete Hayes: And by now, it should be in the comments of this post up on LinkedIn.
[00:14:00] Nate Agentis: Well, enjoy, and it’ll be a good two-minute laugh.
[00:14:04] Pete Hayes: Wow! So, now that you’ve gone through these amazing life transitions, you’ve taken over leadership of a company. You’ve helped scale it to whole new levels. You’ve engaged to just help your industry peers with all the challenges they face. You’re a pundit in the industry; that’s going to continue with the book. Do you have a title for the book yet? Is it working?
[00:14:25] Nate Agentis: Not yet. We're still working. I’m still waiting for marketing approval. It’s going to be a little edgy, but it’s going to have to be full of virtue and values.
[00:14:31] Pete Hayes: We were talking earlier, and you quoted Jim Collins. I thought, yeah, so you’re reading all the leadership books yourself.
[00:14:38] Nate Agentis: Oh, yeah! Jim Collins and Traction. We’re doing different versions of that. It’s nice when you read a book like Traction, and you’re like, “Oh, we’re doing a lot of these things.” It may not be the same as the US system, but it’s solid and has accountability, a lot of meetings, departments, and defined goals. That’s quite refreshing. And obviously, Jim Collins’ Good to Great—you’ve got to read it because it’s got Bethlehem Steel in it, and that’s my hometown. It helps me understand why it’s rusty and not still in operation.
[00:15:04] Pete Hayes: So, as you’re coaching other CEOs in your business, what are the leadership themes that you have to go back to help spur them on and give them the guidance they need to scale and be successful like you have?
[00:15:17] Nate Agentis: Yeah, I think a lot of it is right; you’ve got to go back to go forward. I think a lot of these guys are plumbers or tradesmen who worked for someone and then decided they were going to try for a better opportunity and become entrepreneurs. They have that entrepreneurial spirit.
[00:15:31] Nate Agentis: So they’re smart guys, but a lot of people—just because you can turn a wrench doesn’t mean you can run a business or lead people. I learned that story even from my dad and my grandpa, right? My grandpa wasn’t doing a good job at that at all; my dad worked hard to do a better job but still loved to turn the wrench. It was in his blood, and leading people and creating strategic plans to grow is very difficult. We go right back to the heart of things: what is your mission? And then they say for the business, and I’m like, “No, for your life. What do you care about? If we were doing a eulogy right now and your kid was going to walk up on stage, your best friend, your wife, and they were going to read your purpose in life—what you were known for—what would that be?”
[00:16:15] Nate Agentis: Put that down, and we can build your mission and vision for your business. Then we can look at those other things because if you don't know who you are, where you're going, and where you feel led—like, man, I fought plumbing for so long.
[00:16:26] Nate Agentis: I remember being a kid, praying, and being like, "God, really? A plumber? I'll do anything other than a plumber, like anything." Now, the more I'm owning it, the more I'm seeing it's God's plan for my life. The more opportunity doors open, things are happening, and my leadership is growing because I see it's my gift.
[00:16:46] Nate Agentis: I think when you look at your purpose in life, you connect it to your gift set. You can start applying that to your business, and I really love the thought process of just the humility journey of that. I can't do it all alone; I need good books, fractional people in my life, coaches, and sometimes counseling for different seasons. I need good business partners that I can delegate to and let go of control. One of the things I created right after I was in charge was a breeding ground for people to give ideas and help bring change into the company so that everything wasn't coming from me—my idea, my thought, my dictation from the top. So it doesn't work.
[00:17:26] Nate Agentis: Partnership, right? Try to make everybody feel like a partner in it. Obviously, we're not talking about everybody owning a piece of the business, but making everybody feel like it's a home, a place for them.
[00:17:35] Nate Agentis: It's a place that they can contribute. They're not just there to make money—especially in a service world, right? They come in the morning, and then they're gone. They come in in the morning, and they're gone; you don't see them. It's not a restaurant where people are in front of you or an office space.
[00:17:47] Nate Agentis: Your moneymakers are the road warriors; they're in customers' homes, and you don't get a lot of face time. And so you've got to create places to make them feel seen, make them feel valued, and let them have a voice. I think you really can get somewhere.
[00:18:01] Pete Hayes: Wow. Before the program, we were talking about your use of AI, and you rattled off several instances of how you're deploying AI, which might surprise a lot of people. Plumbing and AI—how does that go together?
[00:18:13] Nate Agentis: Yeah, that's crazy, right? But that's been part of the data journey that we've worked hard at, where everybody's got box applications, whether that's like QuickBooks, CRM, or HubSpot. Everybody's working in some sort of box application. It's a beautiful thing because you don't have to maintain it; you don't have to update it. It does all that for you, but I want to see it this way. I want a dashboard that tells me this.
[00:18:34] Nate Agentis: I want this to be my KPI. Now you're back to taking data out of these different box applications and typing them manually into spreadsheets, and it just becomes massively cumbersome. So between low code and AI, we've been able to pull out data, create dashboards, create metrics, and create platforms that do everything in one space out of these different box applications.
[00:18:58] Nate Agentis: We're using it for invoice writing, email writing, and chatting with customers. We even have a widget on the website that helps customers diagnose their problems by clicking different parts of the house and answering strategic questions, which then leads to them booking a service call with us. So, lots of different fun ways and it's only beginning, right?
[00:19:19] Pete Hayes: Congratulations. There are really two different kinds of CEOs and how they view AI. One group looks at it as an efficiency tool, and others see it as a strategic market, enabling customer experience and embedding it into the core processes of their business. You're certainly the latter.
[00:19:37] Nate Agentis: Yeah, definitely. It will never be under the sink or fixing the toilet for us. That's the beautiful part of people, but anywhere else we can incorporate it.
[00:19:46] Pete Hayes: But it's already doing diagnostics for you.
[00:19:49] Nate Agentis: I know it's so crazy.
[00:19:50] Pete Hayes: That's fantastic. And I know you get to do this, but provide advice to someone who's in a service business with consumers, as you are, but maybe they're not feeling the joy of the business that they're leading. You seem to have caught this; this wasn't your dream, but now it seems to have become quite fulfilling and purposeful. What's your advice to somebody who isn't in that spot?
[00:20:14] Nate Agentis: I just had this question asked by a guy I was coaching the other day. We were knee-deep in strategic thought, working through the fires and trying to connect those to his goals. We had 15 minutes left, and I said, "All right, now let's talk about blah," and I was ready to dive into that.
[00:20:29] Nate Agentis: He said, "I want to stop for a second." I'm like, "Okay." And he said, "Man, I'm depressed; I am struggling. I'm struggling to remember why I'm doing this." I said, "Yeah. If you don't have a purpose and you don't have your 'why' nailed, you're going to miss all the motivation for what you're doing."
[00:20:46] Nate Agentis: I don't want to repeat myself, but I walked him back through a tool called the 12-Week Year. I forget who did it, but my COO and I worked through that a few years ago. One of the things was learning how to write your long-term vision.
[00:21:01] Nate Agentis: I just told him, "You got to go back to finding your 'why' for life and then connect that to why you're being a CEO." This guy came from white-collar work, and his father-in-law was selling a plumbing business. He decided, "Oh, I don't want to be in a cubicle in white-collar work. I'm going to go in and own a plumbing company," even though he doesn't know how to turn a wrench. It's like, you got to figure out why you did that. What was the purpose, right? I helped connect the dots. Your goal was to have a baby; you wanted a better future for your family, and you wanted freedom and independence.
[00:21:30] Nate Agentis: Those are all good things, and you're a man of faith. So, like, why did God lead you here? Just helping him sink his teeth into that, I think, was the answer for him. It's a journey to write it down, and like, "Oh, I'm so happy now. I love going to work every day."
[00:21:42] Nate Agentis: I don't think that's the reality, but I think the reality is that you start to see the long-term play of, "Yeah, I'm going to go to work this week, and I don't have a good attitude. I'm going to try to make the best of it because I'm going here for this reason." That's a good starting place, but that's that humility piece, right?
[00:21:59] Nate Agentis: Pete, that's the—like, ah, slow down and take that breath. I can't do this on my own, right? I can't squeeze tighter. The tighter I squeeze, the more control I actually lose.
[00:22:10] Pete Hayes: Yeah. It's amazing to see the posture that you've found that works, where you can listen to divine provision or guidance and recognize when that's in front of you, to take advantage of it and to use that gift, or the books from Jim Collins or Simon Sinek, and knowing your 'why.' Yes, exactly. You mentioned just opening it up to your team, who are the doers and the wrench turners, for their insight and input and their ownership. It sounds like a lot of wisdom, Nate. Thank you.
[00:22:42] Nate Agentis: Appreciate it. It's been a fun journey and a lot of learning, and I know I have a lot to go yet, but it's an exciting trip.
[00:22:47] Pete Hayes: Well, thanks for joining us today; I really appreciate it. A lot of nuggets in here, and thank you, everybody, for joining us.
[00:22:54] Pete Hayes: We'll see you next time on CEO Growth Talks. Bye-bye. Thanks, Pete.