For many small business owners, especially those in the plumbing industry, the concept of managing cash flow is one of the steepest learning curves. As Tyler Williams, the founder of Mammoth Marketing for Plumbers, often points out, the predictability of a weekly or bi-weekly paycheck, which many plumbers transition from, actually damages the entrepreneurial mindset.
The fundamental hurdle in business is accepting the necessity of capital expenditure before revenue is realized. Mr. Williams regularly observes business owners who are only investing enough in marketing to tread water—just breaking even. When advised to scale up, perhaps needing to spend an additional $3,000 to capture ten more booked jobs (based on a typical $200 cost per booked job), they balk. Their scarcity mindset takes over, fearing the immediate cash outlay.
However, as Mammoth Marketing stresses, the math is simple: Commit to the spend, and the jobs will fund the marketing. The crucial step is moving past the ingrained psychological barrier of spending and embracing investment. This strategic leap is central to answering the question of how his brother became became a multi-millionaire plumber. It requires a complete re-wiring of a lifetime’s worth of financial conditioning.
The Scarcity Trap: Escaping the “Fixed Income” Mentality
Jered Williams’ (Tyler Williams brother) personal journey highlights the profound impact of childhood financial conditioning. Raised in a household that, while financially middle-class, operated with a deeply frugal and scarcity-based mindset—what he calls “middle-class poor”—Williams carried this anxiety into his early business ventures.
This upbringing fostered the belief that money was a limited resource, and its acquisition was entirely dependent on external forces, such as a set wage in a job. In this framework, one takes what the world offers and settles. This “fixed-point” thinking caused Williams to dramatically undervalue his time, his skill set, and the abilities of his team. He projected his own price sensitivity onto his customer base, fearing that any significant price increase would cause clients to walk away.
This psychological barrier is what holds back countless plumbing contractors. Mammoth Marketing consistently sees owners who are unintentionally devaluing their entire operation by applying their personal financial fears to their business pricing. The first pillar of growth, according to Williams’ experience, is acknowledging that the anxiety surrounding money is a projected fear, not a business reality.
Winning the Pricing War: When Being Expensive is the Only Way to Win
The most significant strategic and psychological victory Jered Williams achieved was overcoming the fear of high pricing.
When Williams performed a cost analysis of his former plumbing business, he realized his initial rate of $140 per hour needed to be closer to $259 per hour to sustain a truly healthy operation. Despite his apprehension, the result was unexpected: customers readily accepted the new pricing. Williams found himself eventually charging over $300 per hour with zero resistance.
The reason for this success is simple: perceived value and service convenience.
Customers requiring a plumber, especially in an emergency, are primarily seeking a fast, pain-free solution so they can return to their own high-leverage activities. They are paying a premium for reliability, speed, and professionalism. Companies like Prospector (Williams’ former plumbing company) that mastered the customer experience—answering the phone every time (a feature Mammoth Marketing clients often leverage with call-handling services like Plum Line), sending texts with technician photos, and maintaining a clean, professional appearance—are seen as a premium solution, and customers are willing to pay a premium price.
Williams’ competitors viewed his higher prices as “ripping people off.” Williams quickly realized they were simply failing to understand their own worth. Higher prices allow for vital reinvestment into the business—better vehicles, better training, and better systems—all of which enhance customer service and justify the price point. Williams learned that operating from a place of financial strength, rather than scarcity, is the only way to genuinely provide best-in-class service.
The Entrepreneurial Investment Principle: Spend to Secure
Once profitability is established, the next great challenge for the business owner is making the leap from saving capital to investing it. Williams vividly recalls the fear of watching an initial $80,000 in savings—the most money he had ever possessed—evaporate as he invested it into vans, marketing, tools, and new hires for his scaling company.
This is the tightrope walk of the entrepreneur. As Williams was mentored, capital must be spent to create leverage and secure more capital. Watching his bank balance dip dangerously low before payroll was a terrifying, yet necessary, initiation.
Mammoth Marketing views business spending as a necessary investment, not a loss.
Marketing is the clearest example. While many owners stop spending when they reach break-even, this limits the company’s potential. The marketing budget should be viewed as an aggression meter. A larger, consistent investment will inevitably generate the required returns, often within a short cash-cycle window. Mammoth Marketing emphasizes consistency and time, noting that stop-start marketing efforts often fail because they lack the necessary momentum to break through the noise. The lesson here is clear: to see multi-million-dollar growth, you must be willing to make multi-thousand-dollar commitments to the future.
Scaling the Machine: Risk Management and Clarity
Eventually, the business becomes a self-sustaining machine, leading to the pleasant, yet disorienting, problem of having “more money than you can spend.” At this stage, Williams advises that the new psychological hurdle is the feeling of guilt or unworthiness.
Williams recognizes that the risk borne by the owner is significant. The substantial earnings of the owner are directly proportional to the immense risks they carry. This capital must be used to build a robust safety net—a financial runway—to protect the entire team during unforeseen circumstances. Williams advocates for maintaining three to six months of operating expenses secured in reserves.
Furthermore, Williams stresses the importance of clarity over people-pleasing. As a business scales, the owner must be comfortable with the necessary clear, firm decision-making that supports the business’s long-term health, even if it is occasionally “perceived” as being difficult. Setting firm expectations and boundaries is not being an “a-hole;” it is being a responsible leader who protects the team’s security and the business’s longevity. Building redundancies, both financial and operational (multiple technicians, multiple CSRs), makes the entire operation more resilient and less stressful for the owner.
The Final Step: Defining the Audacious Goal
Tyler Williams found that the biggest impediment to growth was a lack of defined, ambitious goals. He consistently set goals that were too small, hitting them quickly and then facing an inevitable plateau.
His current approach, heavily influenced by successful business doctrines, is to set one large, Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and then reverse-engineer all daily, weekly, and yearly decisions to support it. As Williams discovered, by focusing his mind relentlessly on a massive, specific goal—like his target to acquire $100 million in wealth by a specific date—he heightened his awareness of the necessary opportunities and minimized wasted effort.
This intense focus provides the intention required to propel a business forward. When a decision needs to be made, the owner simply asks: “Does this action support the BHAG?” If the answer is yes, the decision is swift and intentional, minimizing the time spent second-guessing.
The multi-million-dollar outcome is not an accident of fate; it is the inevitable result of setting a massive target and taking consistent, relentless action toward it. Mr. Williams’ journey proves that the most critical tool for a business owner is not the wrench or the marketing budget—it is a clearly defined, uncompromising vision for the future.
Ready to Apply This Blueprint to Your Plumbing Business?
The team at Mammoth Marketing for Plumbers is dedicated to helping you overcome these exact psychological and strategic hurdles. We don’t just run ads; we help you build a profitable, scalable business machine.
If you would like the Tyler Williams crew to take a look at what you need to focus on to grow your business from the ground up to a multi-million-dollar operation, schedule a consultation with him today.
➡️ Schedule Your Consultation with Tyler Williams Here: https://tylerwilliams.net/
