Built Backwards From the Brand: Plumbing Marketing Lessons From Michael Marvin and Lucas Jones of Smiley Drain
The Plumbing Company Built Backwards
Most plumbers start with a truck and bolt the marketing on later. Michael Marvin did the opposite. Smiley Drain, his plumbing and drain cleaning company serving the northern half of New Jersey, was engineered from the brand outward: the name, the logo, the colors, the feeling, even the hold music, all chosen before the customer ever picks up the phone. On a recent episode of Everyday Excellence with host Todd Baldwin of Everyday Media Group, Marvin and his marketing director, Lucas Jones, unpacked a plumbing marketing philosophy that treats the brand as the product’s first impression, and the phone call as step two.
“People, visuals, names, colors, and sound touch deep inside decision making in your brain psychologically that you may not even be aware of.” – Michael Marvin
Marvin’s path to that insight started far from a design studio. Raised by his grandparents at an apartment complex where his grandfather was the superintendent, he watched licensed plumbers and electricians arrive like superheroes with fully equipped vans. A push mower, a junkyard of broken equipment, and a VoTech automotive program built his mechanical instincts, and a stint as a mechanic’s helper turned into a plumbing apprenticeship under a mentor who changed his life.
Ten Years of Experience in Five
Rick Edwards worked, in Marvin’s words, like he was twelve years old: forty hours would land by midweek and Rick would ask if he wanted to do another boiler job. Weekends were for working. Hangovers earned a seat in the truck, not a day off. Twelve stitches in the leg came with a ride to first care, a “never do that again,” and a cast iron sink to carry up to the second floor that same day. Marvin tells the stories with gratitude: by year five he had ten years of experience, a license at 22, and a father figure he never had.
Rick’s business lessons stuck just as hard. Do not chase being the biggest company; find the sweet spot between a big business and a sane life. And do not become the owner whose kids only know him from photographs. Marvin took all of it. After starting NJ Mechanical for side work, then Let’s Go Plumbing at 24, he roughed in houses through the mid-2000s boom, watched 2008 crash the construction market, and pivoted to service work on purpose: simpler to systematize, fewer contractor headaches, and a business that could eventually run itself.
“You are your own casino. You can bank on yourself. If you think you can, and you put your mind to it, you can get it done.” – Michael Marvin
The Exit He Refused to Take
A few years ago, Marvin decided to shed his HVAC division and focus entirely on Smiley Drain. Private equity had come calling, and he had listened, but he knew what the PE playbook would mean for customers he had served for decades. So he did something almost nobody does: he placed an ad saying he was looking for someone who wanted to run their own business, with mentorship, coaching, and even his license behind them.
The right candidate arrived in Steve Burnell. The plan was a one-year trial; within six months, Marvin knew. Same ethics, same principles, a hustler the customers loved. He sold the HVAC division to his own employee, kept the entity, and walked away with the thing PE could not offer: certainty about who was taking care of his people. It is a succession model worth stealing for any owner who cares what happens after the sale.
What Is Working Now: A Brand With a Feeling, and Three Fishing Poles
Smiley Drain was originally designed to be a franchise, built around the observation that drain cleaning franchise territories were largely bought up. The marketing taught him the next lesson: homeowners search for plumbing, not drain cleaning, and the ad economics of a drain-only brand were brutal. So plumbing came under the Smiley umbrella, and the brand now carries both.
The local strategy is deliberately simple. Three Google Business Profile locations act as what Marvin calls fishing poles in separate ponds: each one signals to Google that Smiley Drain is genuinely local to the searcher, because one location can never stretch across a territory Google knows is too far for good service. The vision for the next few years doubles down: own the block. Forget ranking ten towns away; dominate the neighborhood where a technician can be at the door in minutes, and let real proximity become the service advantage. One profile already carries 476 reviews at a 4.9 rating, the trust signal that powers everything else.
Jones, who joined in late 2024 after a decade building a sports media brand that helped grow the largest junior hockey league in the country from 15 teams past 90, runs the content engine on one principle: great service makes great content. Technicians shoot photos and videos in the field, the posts mix professional work with what he calls a little whimsy, and the algorithm can change all it wants. “You acquire them because of the marketing,” he says, “and they become a repeat customer because of the service.” Acquire the customer once; keep them with the work.
Hire the Who, Then Pay Like You Mean It
The Jones hire itself illustrates Marvin’s people philosophy. While other employers puzzled over how sports marketing could transfer, Marvin saw a brand builder from a high-pressure, wear-every-hat environment and moved. His hiring method is blunt honesty: post exactly what you are looking for, and treat the right applicant as the answer to the ad. Then he revealed something on the recording that he admits he told Jones never to share: “Lucas is the first guy that got a raise before he started.” The logic is pure Marvin economics. It is not about what you pay somebody; it is about paying people enough to build a successful life, because the right who is worth it before day one.
The $100 Toilet Repair Problem
Marvin does not sugarcoat the state of paid search for home services. When a lead costs around a hundred dollars, a three hundred dollar toilet repair sends a third of its value to Google before the technician picks up a wrench, and that cost ultimately lands on the homeowner. Even a search for the company’s own website name, he notes, gets a sponsored door placed in front of his own door.
The fraud makes it worse. Fake map listings and rank-and-rent websites siphon traffic away from real brick-and-mortar businesses in the same towns, and enforcement feels inconsistent: Todd Baldwin added that legitimate, verified businesses sometimes lose their profiles while fakes persist. Marvin’s honest conclusion about AI search fits the same theme: it is a moving target, nobody truly knows the ranking metric, and his webmaster earns his trust precisely by admitting it. The team’s approach is volume and patience, publishing deep content across every town and service while the platforms sort themselves out.
“If you run into an agency or someone telling you they have AI figured out, that’s a red flag. Run from them, because nobody has it figured out.” – Todd Baldwin, Everyday Media Group
The Lesson: Control What the Platforms Cannot Take
Strip away the frustration and the playbook underneath Smiley Drain is exactly the hedge every home service business needs: a memorable brand that customers recognize before they compare prices, review velocity that no algorithm change can fake, hyperlocal profiles that make proximity a feature, and content built on real work. Those assets compound whether the click costs rise or the search interface changes.
On the episode, Todd Baldwin laid out the next layer: answer-first content. Homeowners are learning to ask AI platforms long, specific questions about what is happening in their homes, and the businesses that get recommended are the accredited, well-reviewed companies whose sites actually answer those questions, with robust FAQs and even pricing guidance, a structure most plumbing sites still lack. That work, high-end SEO, answer-first content, review systems, and lead tracking that feeds closed-job data back into the platforms, is what the team at Everyday Media Group builds for home service companies every day. It is also the honest version of AI optimization: no magic claims, just the trust signals the machines demonstrably reward, tracked all the way to revenue.
Key Takeaways From Michael Marvin and Lucas Jones
- Build the brand before the phone rings. Name, colors, feeling, and even hold music shape the decision before the first conversation. Smiley Drain was engineered backwards from that moment.
- Efficiency beats size. “It’s not what you charge, it’s what you keep.” Fix your own house before raising prices, and remember the thirty-year value of one customer a single bad review could cost you.
- Own your block. Three local profiles, 476 reviews at 4.9, and a two-minute response radius beat trying to rank ten towns away, and no platform price hike can take proximity from you.
About Michael Marvin and Lucas Jones
Michael Marvin is the owner of Smiley Drain, a plumbing and drain cleaning company serving the northern half of New Jersey, built brand-first with franchise ambitions. Licensed at 22, he previously founded Let’s Go Plumbing and sold its HVAC division to a longtime employee. Lucas Jones is Smiley Drain’s marketing director, bringing a decade of sports media brand building to the home services world. Learn more at smileydrain.com.
Ready to Build Marketing the Platforms Cannot Take Away? Everyday Media Group helps home service and trade businesses build compounding visibility: memorable brand-first websites, high-end SEO, answer-first content for AI search, review generation, and lead tracking that connects every channel to closed revenue. Hosted by Todd Baldwin, the Everyday Excellence podcast features real conversations with the owners behind growing home service companies. Schedule a free consultation connect with Todd Baldwin on LinkedIn.
