Podcast: How Michael Budd Grew the Family Plumbing Business Into a Trusted Service Company in Cape May
Somewhere at Budd’s Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling in Cape May, New Jersey, there is a box full of front door keys.
They belong to the homeowners, mostly second homeowners and seasonal residents, who trust Michael Budd and his team enough to leave access to their property when they are not there. No supervision. No checking in. If something breaks in the house and the owner is hours away, they know the Budd’s crew will get in, handle it, and leave everything the way they found it.
In 40 years of his father building the business and the last several years of Michael growing it, that box of keys is the most compressed measure of what the company has earned. On a recent episode of Everyday Excellence, Todd Baldwin sat down with Michael for a conversation that covers the family legacy behind that trust, the pivot from construction to service that changed the business model, the agency experiences that taught Michael what he actually needed from marketing, and the apprenticeship program that is building the next generation of licensed tradespeople from within.
Cape May’s Seasonal Market and a 40-Year Name
Budd’s Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling is based in Cape May, New Jersey, the southernmost point of the state and one of its most active summer tourist destinations. The service area spans Cape May County and the barrier islands. The population the company serves swings from somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 in the winter to several million during the summer peak. That seasonality shapes everything from staffing to marketing spend to when the phone rings.
Michael’s father started the business in 1984, running primarily new construction plumbing for about 25 to 30 years. Michael grew up around it, went to Florida briefly for school, came back, worked alongside his father, got his plumbing license, and gradually took the business over. The company today runs 13 employees and 7 trucks, recently added an HVAC license, and is approaching another summer boom in a market where the name Budd’s has meant something for four decades.
His father, known company-wide as Pops, still works every day at 64. Michael jokes that he will seize up if he stops. At the Wednesday morning breakfast that Pops cooks for the entire crew every week, he is the one at the griddle.
The Pivot: Eggs in One Basket and Being the Hero
The shift from new construction to service plumbing was not a single decision so much as a slow accumulation of frustrations. Post-2008, Michael watched the new construction world change. Quality and relationships, which had been the foundation of his father’s business, stopped being the primary consideration for builders. Fast and cheap replaced them. The builders the company worked for started treating their contractors as interchangeable resources rather than trusted partners.
Michael did not want to operate in that environment. More practically, he was tired of having all his eggs in one basket: dependent on a handful of builders who could walk away at any moment and replace him. The service side offered something different. “You can be the hero for the day.” A homeowner with a clogged toilet or a burst pipe has never seen the problem before, does not know what to do, and is genuinely relieved when someone shows up who has seen it a thousand times and can fix it in an hour. That transaction, repeated every day across a loyal and growing client base, is what Michael wanted to build the company on.
When COVID hit in 2020, the pivot accelerated. Michael and his father restarted the company as a dedicated service business. At that point, it was just the two of them: no office staff, no admin, no marketing spend. The HVAC license was added more recently as a strategic growth move, giving the company a second service to offer the same client base and a reason for new clients to hear the Budd’s name for the first time.
What’s Working Now: Wednesday Breakfast, Apprenticeships, and In-House ROI
The culture at Budd’s Plumbing has three pillars: faith, craftsmanship, and accountability, in that order. Michael holds them in that sequence deliberately. Faith is personal and non-negotiable, not imposed, but expected to produce the honesty, respect, and compassion that define how the team treats clients and each other. Craftsmanship is why they educate clients on what was done and why, not just whether the repair held. Accountability is what keeps the work consistent.
The most visible culture expression is Wednesday breakfast. Every week, Pops cooks for the entire crew before the day starts. Eggs, bacon, French toast. Michael’s kids eat there too. The whole team, install crews, service crews, HVAC technicians, all gather before heading out. For a company that has grown quickly and spread across multiple service types, that weekly hour together keeps the team connected to each other and to the identity of the company.
On marketing, Michael spent nothing before 2021. The name and the referrals were enough. When he started, $1,200 to $1,500 per month felt like throwing money away. Then his team pushed him to spend a bit more, the phone started ringing, and the math became undeniable. The current marketing operation is handled by an in-house team: Rich and Irish, based in Spain, who built out full campaign ROI tracking that three or four prior agencies never delivered. Every campaign is tied to a specific phone number. When a customer converts, the revenue traces back to the source.
Local Service Ads is the primary lead driver. The team has learned to turn spend up and down based on the season and the schedule, treating LSA as a dial rather than a switch. Google Business Profile and organic rankings are maintained alongside a website rebuild currently in progress. Review generation is systematic: each technician has their own QR code review card, and every five-star review earns a $25 gift card. The incentive produced an immediate jump in review volume.
The membership program adds recurring revenue and client retention. Three tiers: Silver covers plumbing, Gold covers HVAC, Platinum covers both. Members receive two to four annual visits, priority scheduling, a 5% discount on all services, and Platinum members pay no diagnosis fee. In a seasonal market with a significant second-home population, memberships are also a mechanism for keeping the name top of mind year-round.
The Lesson: Throw Into the Wolves, Accept Failure, and Build for the Long Term
Michael’s leadership philosophy runs through everything he describes: people learn best when they are given real responsibility and trusted to figure it out, with support available when they need it but not handed to them before they do. His father handed him a 22-bathroom beach house project the day he asked for more responsibility. Michael gave that same experience to the team member he trusted to lead the Budd’s Portal development. You throw people into the wolves, knowing you are there when it gets bad.
The apprenticeship program is the institutional version of that philosophy. Every employee at Budd’s is eligible to go through the apprenticeship program and earn a plumbing or HVAC license, paid for by the company. The commitment goes both ways: Michael asks new license holders to stay for at least two more years after licensure. Seven years total, give or take, and then they shake hands and part ways, or stay on and grow with the company. Either outcome produces a licensed tradesperson who carries the Budd’s standard into whatever comes next.
The agency experience produced one of the sharpest lessons in this episode. Three or four agencies, two of them large, and not one could produce the report Michael wanted most: which campaign drove which revenue. “They can never tell me that Mrs. Smith, you sold Mrs. Smith this water heater for X and that phone number was tracked back to this campaign.” Marketing that cannot be measured is an expense, not an investment. The in-house solution he built now does exactly what the agencies could not.
For anyone starting in the trades, Michael’s advice is grounded and personal. Find a foundation. Accept failure, because it is coming regardless of how well-prepared you are, and the only relevant question is what you do next. And carry forward one proverb he references, slightly apologetically: there is enough worry in tomorrow not to worry about it today. Take the next step and trust the process.
At Everyday Media Group, Todd Baldwin and the team work with plumbing, HVAC, and home service companies to build the ROI tracking infrastructure that Michael describes, connecting every phone call and web form to a specific campaign and producing the accountability report that any good marketing partnership should deliver by default.
Key Takeaways
- Trust is built in years and stored in a box of front door keys. The second homeowners in Cape May who hand Budd’s a key to their house are not making a small decision. They are expressing 40 years of the family name being worth something. Michael knows this, which is why protecting the name is the thing he says he is most proud of. Reputation is the most durable competitive advantage in a small market.
- Marketing that cannot be traced is not marketing. It is a subscription. Three or four agencies, never once a true ROI report. The in-house team Michael assembled now ties every call and every dollar of revenue to a specific campaign. That is the standard any agency partner should meet before the first check is written. If they cannot show you where your money went and what came back, find someone who can.
- Grow within before you grow out. 2026 at Budd’s is a year of developing current team members into managers and supervisors. 2027 is when the company plans to bring on a wave of new hires. The sequence matters: new people should walk into a team that already knows how to lead them, not an organization that is still figuring out its own structure as it expands.
About Michael Budd
Michael Budd is the owner of Budd’s Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling in Cape May, New Jersey, a family business his father started in 1984. Michael got his plumbing license approximately 11 years ago, gradually took over the business, and pivoted the company from new construction to service plumbing around the time COVID hit in 2020. Since then, the company has grown to 13 employees and 7 trucks and added an HVAC license. Michael runs the business on a foundation of faith, craftsmanship, and accountability, with an apprenticeship program that helps every team member earn a plumbing or HVAC license. He plans to add an electrical license in the next year to 18 months.
Find Budd’s Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling at budsplumbing.com.
Is Your Plumbing or HVAC Company Getting the Marketing Attribution It Deserves?
Michael Budd went through three or four agencies without ever getting a real ROI report. He built the attribution in-house and now knows exactly which campaign drove which revenue. Everyday Media Group builds the same call tracking and lead attribution infrastructure for plumbing, HVAC, and home service companies of every size, so that every marketing dollar is connected to a real outcome. Schedule a conversation with Todd Baldwin and the team.
