E50: The real story behind Half Moon Plumbing’s $11M growth
Most people love the idea of entrepreneurship until they realize it takes 18 years of showing up before anything feels “successful.”
In this episode, Sean sits down with Dustin and Tiffany Mitchell of Half Moon Plumbing to tell the real story behind their $11M business, and it’s not the overnight success Instagram promised.
They unpack the early faith-driven decisions, the painful hiring bottlenecks, and the moment Dustin realized being a great plumber was actually holding the business back. You’ll hear how building technicians, committing to clear core values, and getting intentional about strategy sparked their jump from $3M to $11M in just three years.
If you own a local service business and want growth that actually lasts, this episode is required listening.
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Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.
Dustin Mitchell is the founder and owner of Half Moon Plumbing, a service company based in Owasso, Oklahoma, that he established in 2007 with his wife, Tiffany. A second-generation plumber, Mitchell entered the trade before graduating high school and earned both his contractor and master plumbing licenses in Oklahoma and Arkansas by the age of 21. Under his leadership, the business has grown from a home-based operation into a prominent regional player with nearly 40 employees and over $10 million in revenue. Guided by his faith and a mission focusing on "Manners, Methods, and Materials," Mitchell is well known for community initiatives like his local Valentine’s Day billboard campaigns. In his personal life, he is a dedicated father of four who enjoys spending time on his farm, trout fishing, and bow hunting.
🎤Tiffany Mitchell
Tiffany Mitchell is the co-owner of Half Moon Plumbing & Electric, a family-owned service company based in Owasso, Oklahoma, which she established in 2007 with her husband, Dustin Mitchell. She is instrumental in managing the branding and operations of the business, helping it scale from $3 million to $10 million in revenue by 2025. The company serves the Tulsa and Claremore metro areas and was recognized as the best plumbing company in Tulsa in 2024 and 2025.
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MARKETING DOMINATION PODCAST
Introduction
Sean Garner [00:00]:
All right. Dustin and Tiffany Mitchell, I am honored to have you guys on. Welcome to the Marketing Domination podcast.
Dustin [00:56]:
Let’s go. Yay! We finally made it.
Sean Garner [00:57]:
I know. I have been honored to know you guys and to have Half Moon as clients for a while, and I am very excited for other people to get to see a little bit behind the scenes. I truly believe you guys are the definition of dominating your market—from every aspect. But I think if people, especially those who aren’t from the area, are looking at you guys, they probably don’t understand the amount of work it took to do what you’ve done.
So what I want to understand, and what I want you guys to share today, is a little bit of the origin story—but less on the what and more on your mindset. I think that’s very transferable for people: understanding how you’ve thought and why you’ve made the decisions you’ve made that led you to where you are now.
First, give us a little rundown of where the company is at today, just for context. That way, as we tell this story, people understand where you are now before we talk about where you came from. Where are you guys at right now in terms of company size, staff, and all of that?
Dustin [02:10]:
I’ll take it. So we’ll finish 2025 a little over 11 million. I think we have 45 or 46 employees, somewhere in that neighborhood. About 99% of that is plumbing. We’ve added electrical in the last couple of months, but we’re still really just getting that off the ground. So by far, it’s plumbing-heavy.
Sean Garner [02:36]:
So not a small operation, but it didn’t start that way. When you started this, Dustin, did you decide you wanted to be a plumber right away? What was the journey of even saying, “Hey, I want to go into this industry”? And did you go out on your own as soon as you got your license, or how did it start and evolve?
The origin story
Dustin [02:57]:
Oh man. If you would have asked me in high school what I was going to do—other than being a professional soccer player or something—I would have said I was going to own my own business. It was just in me. I knew I wanted to lead, and I wanted to be the boss. That was part of my makeup.
I watched my dad go from living in his car in a park to being very successful—having enough money to buy my school clothes and eventually buying his own home. He did that through plumbing. One day, he was driving around and saw a sign for a little Baptist church, so he started going there. One of the members said to him one day, “Steve, I think it’s the Lord’s will for you to come work for me.”
My dad said, “Well, I sure didn’t know what the Lord’s will was, so I thought maybe this fella did.” So my dad got into plumbing, probably in his early 40s, and the rest is kind of history. He took to it. He told me even then that if he had gotten into plumbing as a young man, he would be rich by now. That’s how I got into the trade.
Sean Garner [04:19]:
Now, whenever you got into plumbing and you had that entrepreneurial bug at a young age, did you know that you were doing this to start a plumbing business? Or was it more like, “Hey, this is a job that’s just going to pay the bills for a little bit”?
The move to Owasso
Dustin [04:35]:
No, I never viewed it like that. Even working for my dad, I viewed it as my business.
I was working for my father, but he and I just weren’t on the same page. It would have never made sense to him in a million years to sit down in the middle of the day and do strategic planning. That would have broken his mind. The only thing that made sense to him was to get a shovel, find a ditch, and start digging. So we had several conversations, and we just couldn’t get on the same page.
After about a decade of working for him, we got an invitation to be part of a church plant in Owasso, which, at the time, we barely even knew where Owasso was. I already wanted to break away from my father, but I didn’t want to compete with him. We were in a small town, a small community, and that separation was going to be really difficult.
So we got the invitation to be part of a church plant in a completely different community in the Tulsa area, a couple of hours away. It made sense at that time. Tiffany had just graduated nursing school, so we were going to have some seed money to take this off the ground. That’s what we did—we moved up here.
It was never a question. I never considered for one millisecond whether I was going to work for someone else. I was going to be self-employed. It was going to happen.
Sean Garner [06:09]:
So you knew the goal was entrepreneurship—having your own thing—but how long ago was this? When you guys got this started, did it launch as Half Moon? And if so, was the goal what you’re living now? Could you even envision this, or was it more like, “It’d be awesome if I just had my own truck with my own brand name and my own thing”?
Dustin [06:37]:
Yeah. Do you want to answer some of these? Yeah, I can. I don’t think we could envision what it is now. It’s just kind of formed along the way, but we’ve always had goals.
So this was about two or three years after we were married—maybe five years total by the time we moved here. It went by fast. You asked when it started, so we were an overnight success. We started in 2007. We moved here in the fall of 2007, and as a new graduate, Tiffany got a job pretty fast as a nurse in Tulsa. She started working, and we bought an acre. I started plumbing and working on our house. We built a house here in Owasso.
Sean Garner [07:11]:
Awesome.
Dustin [07:34]:
That’s what I did while she worked, and I started taking jobs. I don’t think it was ever like we had a clear vision of what this would become. But we did have goals.
The first goal was to pay off our house. When I was 25, I had set a goal back in high school to pay off my first house by the time I was 25, and I woefully missed that. That didn’t happen.
When I worked for my dad, I was on salary. I still remember the amount—I made $624 a week. That was it. No commission, no incentives. So that goal didn’t happen. But when we moved up here and started Half Moon, we set another goal to pay off our home by the time I turned 30. That was a goal we had.
You might be interested to know the story of how we moved up here and how we ended up on that property. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this. We were praying about it—it was a big decision. We had 80 acres in Vian, Oklahoma, and I’m not a scared guy, so it was no problem for me to bite off more than I could chew. We were living in a shop house and having a little trouble affording it on $624 a week.
Sean Garner [08:33]:
Yeah, let’s go.
The first “God wink” deal
Dustin [08:57]:
While Tiffany was going to school, her parents ended up buying 30 acres from us and built a home next to us. So she’s in heaven—living next to her mom, life is good. Then I come along and say, “Hey, let’s move to Owasso and start all over.”
To make that decision was difficult—uprooting, moving away from family, all of that. So we’re praying, we’re fasting, and we’re asking God to send us a message in a bottle, for lightning to strike or something like that. Of course, it doesn’t happen.
I’m reading through Ecclesiastes, and it tells the young man to walk in the way of his heart, but to remember that he’ll answer to God for his decisions. I took that, along with “cast your bread upon the waters” and “sow your seed in the morning and in the evening, for you do not know which will prosper.” As a young man, I’m like, “Okay, God’s speaking to me, and He’s given me freedom.” I don’t think this is sinful, so let’s step out in faith and do this.
So we make the decision. We sold our house in about two weeks, which was crazy because it was a shop house on 50 acres, and we got full price. Then we’re trying to figure out where we’re going to live. My pastor kept telling me, “Just build.” And I’m like, “Man, I can’t afford land up there. It’s way too expensive.” Vian, Oklahoma, is one of the poorest counties in the state. Tulsa was way more expensive, and even then, a lot was like $30,000 to $50,000.
So we’re looking at houses and find one that’s outside of our price range. We had flipped a couple of houses before, and I thought maybe we could buy it at a depreciated value and flip it. We drive out on top of Keetonville Hill, look at this property, and on the way back out, we see an acre for sale—For Sale by Owner. I tell Tiffany to call. She calls, and I hear her say “19.8.” I’m like, “There’s no way. Call him back.” So she calls him back, and yeah—19.8.
She hangs up the phone. We go to Chick-fil-A, we pray about it, and I’m thinking, this is crazy. We had $40,000—that’s what we made from the sale of our other place. That was our life savings. I say, “I’m going to offer him 17.6.” I just made up a number. So we call the guy and I say, “Hey man, we’ll give you 17.6.” And he says, “Well, I’ll meet you right there.” And I’m like—
Sean Garner [11:04]:
That’s a very holy thing—Chick-fil-A and prayer. They go right together. Yeah, go ahead.
Dustin [11:28]:
What? We randomly spot this acre while looking for houses, we randomly buy this acre, and we drive out there. We’re walking around on this little acre, and I’m thinking, “What am I missing? What is happening?”
Then the guy pulls up, and what else but a plumbing truck—pipes banging, Triple A Plumbing. He gets out of his truck, and I say, “Man, you picked a sorry profession.” He says, “Are you a plumber?”
Sean Garner [11:29]:
Should we just buy this?
Dustin [11:58]:
I said, “Yes sir, I’m going to start a plumbing company up here.” And he says, “Well, you see that right there? That’s my house. I only bought this lot because I was trying to get water to it.” He said, “There’s more work up here than any of us can do. Whatever you need, you let me know, and I’ll help you.”
To this day, he gave me my very first customer, whose name was Bobby Norris. I’ll never forget it.
Sean Garner [12:22]:
Wow.
Dustin [12:23]:
So you walk by faith, not by sight. I started getting chills, and I’m like, this is crazy. What are the odds that we buy an acre from a plumber? And not just a plumber, but one who actually helped me, because I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t know what to charge. He taught me so much—just simple things about the market. So yeah, crazy story.
Sean Garner [12:37]:
I’m a plumber, yeah.
Sean Garner [12:48]:
Wow, that is awesome. Especially because in most businesses, and especially in yours, it’s almost cutthroat and competitive with all the different shops. So obviously, that’s a God thing.
You get your first customer, Bobby, and then you’re building this whole thing. How did you guys form this brand? You have a very unique brand. Most home service businesses—we always joke—it’s red, white, and blue, a little house peak logo, an American flag in the background, and a guy with a plumber wrench. That’s what you think of in the plumbing business.
The Half Moon brand is almost the extreme opposite of that, with the lime green, neon purples, pink—it’s very fun and friendly. It doesn’t seem like this.
Dustin [13:36]:
Pink! I’m pink!
Half Moon becomes Half Moon
Sean Garner [13:45]:
It doesn’t feel like the typical plumber-crack guy in a beat-up van is going to show up. It’s very unique. How did you guys have the vision for that and start creating it?
Dustin [13:57]:
It was pretty much due to my genius.
Sean Garner [14:01]:
I mean, besides you being incredibly intelligent.
Dustin [14:05]:
You’re gracious. No, you want to tell what happened? Well, let’s hear about your genius.
So I bought a hat at the Fossil Shop in Branson, Missouri, that said “Half Moon Plumbing.” We still have the hat. It just had a moon—no outhouse—but it said Half Moon Plumbing. I genuinely thought it was alluding to plumber’s crack. I was a plumber, and I thought, “Well, that’s kind of funny.” It was a corduroy hat. It was cool. It was green. So I bought it and wore it everywhere.
When we moved up here, we moved in with some friends who were part of the church plant, and the husband was in graphic design. When it came time to name the company, he was helping me put everything together. He asked, “What’s the name going to be?”
I wanted to get as far away from the stereotypes as possible. My dad’s company was Steve Mitchell Plumbing. My uncle’s company is Danny Mitchell Construction, and my other uncle’s company is Randy Mitchell Auto. I was like, “I’m not doing that. I’m not naming it after me. I’m not using a pipe wrench or a double pipe wrench for a logo.” I wanted to be different, but I also wanted something clean and professional. I wanted a really good image.
So I’m racking my brain trying to think of professional plumbing—like a plumber in a tuxedo—something completely outside the box. Jimmy, my buddy, says, “Bro, you have to be Half Moon Plumbing.” And I’m like, “No, that’s plumber’s crack. I’m not going to be crude. That’s a terrible idea.”
So he, his wife, and Tiffany teamed up on me, pinned me down, and made me cry.
Dustin [15:48]:
He said, “But listen—it’s the universal symbol for an outhouse. I’ll put an outhouse in the logo. People will get it. They’ll love it. It’ll be amazing. Trust me.” So I finally waved the white flag and said, “Whatever.” Against my will, we became Half Moon Plumbing. That’s the truth about how it happened.
The logo you see today isn’t the original rendition. The one Jimmy sketched out for us was an outhouse with a pipe coming out from underneath it, and “Half Moon Plumbing” ran underneath the pipe. It was similar, but it wasn’t as clean or as loud as what it is now. From the beginning, I knew I wanted to be loud and different in terms of color. I think the first color scheme was orange and green. They were really loud and looked very graphic.
Sean Garner [16:30]:
Yeah.
Choosing loud colors
Dustin [16:44]:
We did meet the goal, by the way—we paid off our first house. It wasn’t a big house, but we paid it off right before my 30th birthday. For the first four or five years, we were doing commercial construction. I realized there was no reward for plumbing excellence in the new construction world. Everything is about price. No matter how good you are, it’s always, “Dustin, we love you. You’re the best plumber we’ve ever worked with, but we need you to be here.”
I got tired of that and thought, “I want to be in a market where I can be rewarded for the level of detail I’m putting into these jobs.” I also wanted to lean into the customer service aspect. So we started transitioning toward service work.
I got reached out to by a guy from RSU. I don’t even remember how he found me. He was from the RSU business department, kind of a nonprofit wing they had. He said, “I can help you tighten up your brand,” talking about things I didn’t know anything about—PDFs, PNG files, all the stuff you guys use for printing. He said, “It needs to be tightened up.”
When he did that, he said, “You’ve got to settle in on some colors.” That’s when we really started thinking about what we were going to lock into, and that’s when we chose pink and green. That would have been around 2012 or 2013. At that point, we only had girls.
Sean Garner [17:37]:
So this is your first person, and you’re still doing this by yourself right now?
Dustin [17:40]:
Yeah, it was just me and Tiffany. She wasn’t nursing at that time—we had a bunch of kids by then—so she was helping with the books and everything.
Green is my favorite color, and since we had all girls, that’s why we chose pink. It was different. We knew it was loud, and it wasn’t the red, white, and blue you usually see. It was unique to the market, and we knew we could lean into that and stand out.
Sean Garner [18:45]:
Yeah.
Sean Garner [18:51]:
When you drive around the highways and neighborhoods here, you see your trucks, and they really stand out. All the others blend in—either a white van with a logo or the red, white, and blue. Everything just kind of merges together, and you guys stand out.
So how long had you been in business before you started bringing on other staff members and techs? Now you have 40-plus people working for you. How did that process evolve? Was it slow, like bringing on one person at a time, or did it eventually turn into a hockey-stick effect?
The journeyman bottleneck and slow growth
Dustin [19:30]:
Yeah, for the first five years, I literally hired people out of the newspaper. I would run ads in the paper for help and just say, “Hey, hold this.” That’s how we got by. I wasn’t trying to grow. I had one goal, and that was to pay off the house.
When we transitioned to service, I genuinely thought it would be easy. I thought I was so amazing that people would just run and beg for the opportunity to work with me. And believe it or not, that didn’t happen. That kind of blew my mind.
Sean Garner [20:03]:
They didn’t understand your genius and just want to work for you for free, just to be around you. Yeah, okay.
Dustin [20:09]:
It was wild. I was like, “What is wrong with these people?” It was a tough go. We had a really hard time getting employees.
When we transitioned to service, we started trying to recruit and hire a plumber. At that time, the huge lock for us was that I believed the only way to grow was with journeyman plumbers. I was trying to play by the rules, and I thought you had to have journeymen to scale and put another truck on the road.
The problem is it takes a minimum of three years to even be eligible to take the journeyman test. So you’re having to pull a journeyman from another company and convince him to come work for you just to put another truck on the road. It was incredibly difficult.
I even called the state. You can get a list of license holders from them, so I did that multiple times. I emailed people, called their phone numbers, texted them—everything I could do. We could not get someone to come work for us, probably for a lot of reasons. We had no credibility in the market at that time. I wasn’t a good salesman—still not great—but it was just really, really hard.
Eventually, we met a young man at a trade show. It was perfect. He said, “I’m two weeks away from being able to take my test.” I thought, this is amazing. I can bring him on, train him for a couple of weeks, he takes his test, and then I can turn him loose and we’ll have our first truck on the road.
So we hire him. That weekend, he calls and says, “Hey, I need to tell you something. I reached out to the state, and they’re not honoring some of my experience. It’s actually going to be another year before I can take the test.” I was like, “Are you kidding me?” I didn’t need a helper—I needed a plumber. It was just a tough go, man.
Sean Garner [22:16]:
Yeah.
Dustin [22:20]:
Praise God, right after that we got Sam, who came to us and is now our install manager for the entire plumbing department. He’s been with us the whole time. That was our first really good hire who helped us get another truck on the road and start getting the ball rolling.
But it was slow, man. Super difficult. You asked how we really got it going. We were going to church with this kid who had started for Roto-Rooter. He hadn’t been there very long, and he comes in and says, “I’m running my own truck.” I’m like, “What do you mean you’re running your own truck?” He says, “Yeah, they turned me loose. I’m setting water heaters.”
I’m thinking, okay, I’m done. So I called the state. I didn’t rat anyone out, but I said, “What is the deal? It’s ridiculous that I’m trying to grow a company and it takes three years to get a truck on the road. You and I both know all these service companies aren’t running licensed plumbers—it’s not even possible. There aren’t enough licenses.”
He said, “Well, Dustin, what’s on the books and what we enforce may not always be the same thing.”
Sean Garner [23:13]:
Yeah.
The scaling unlock
Dustin [23:34]:
The moment he said that, I was like, “I got you. I’m done.” I completely shifted my mindset and decided we were going to build our own plumbers. I didn’t care if they had a license or not. We were going to run it and start building this thing.
Sean Garner [23:50]:
Once you figured that out, two things: one, how quickly did growth escalate from there once you had your own system and didn’t have to wait three years? And two, talk about the system you guys created.
Dustin [24:05]:
I wish I could say it was immediate, but it was still super slow. That was probably around 2017. We didn’t know how to build technicians, and it felt like a heavy lift to hire what I considered dead weight at the time. You’re picking up overhead, pulling a truck off the road to train someone, and that’s expensive. Then you worry, “What if it doesn’t work out?”
But there are no secrets, especially by 2025—and even back then. Podcasts had become popular, and there were trade podcasts everywhere. I had access to successful companies around the country, and they were all starting to build universities. They said, “Forget recruiting transfer growth. We build our own technicians.” They built massive empires that way.
So I thought, we need to do that. Around 2020, we finally started bringing a couple of guys in and dedicated a space in our shop to train them. It was very primitive. It was me spending a couple of hours with them, then I’d jump on the phone. They’d be standing around, and I’d come back and say, “Okay, where were we?” It was unproductive, but it got us moving and got the ball rolling.
Things really took off in 2022. Before that, it was steady. Then 2022 hit and it was like this. We were doing three million in 2022, and we’ll finish this year over 11 million. So in three years, we went from three to 11. That’s when things really changed.
Sean Garner [25:58]:
Yeah. Do you remember the year?
That’s all I was going to say. Then we got the wife—the brains behind it all—to come in.
Let me ask you this, because I think a lot of people buy into the entrepreneur culture on social media. I love it. I think everyone should have some type of side hustle, but I don’t think everyone should be a full-time entrepreneur. It’s overly glamorized—like you start a business and next year you’re on a yacht driving Ferraris.
You started in 2007. You did three million in 2022. Do you remember how long it took you to hit one million? What year was that?
Dustin [26:39]:
Seven.
Dustin [26:49]:
No, because I was telling someone this the other day—I didn’t care. It meant nothing to me. It wasn’t even a thought. I remember my accountant telling me one year—I sincerely don’t remember when—but I remember him saying, “You hit a million dollars this year.” I was like, “Okay.” He said, “That’s a big deal.” I said, “I don’t have any more money. My bank account doesn’t know any different.”
Sean Garner [26:56]:
My house is paid off. I’m—
Sean Garner [27:11]:
What’s my tax bill on that?
Sean Garner [27:17]:
Yeah.
Dustin [27:17]:
So we weren’t trying to grow up to that point. I tell everyone this—I thought we were so good that we were like an aspiring musician who one day gets discovered and goes viral overnight. Tiffany loves that analogy. I really thought that if we just kept our head down and did the right thing, it would just happen.
We were doing the same service in 2025 that we were doing in 2008. It hasn’t changed—the same customer service, the same level of plumbing excellence. I thought if you do that and treat people right, growth would naturally happen. Turns out, that’s not true. It didn’t happen.
That’s the shift that occurred in 2022 when we got intentional and strategic. I realized that if I didn’t put my back into this and we didn’t get serious about it, we were never going to grow. It wasn’t going to happen naturally.
Sean Garner [28:22]:
Yeah. But you guys have obviously put a lot into this. That’s tremendous growth—going from 2007 to 2022 and hitting three million, then from 2022 to 2025 and doing 11 million. That’s amazing growth over the past several years.
One of the things we were talking about before we started is that your brand is more than just logos and colors. By the way, if anyone happens to be in Owasso, Oklahoma, it’s the coolest plumbing shop you’ll ever see. You walk in and it’s fully branded. You’ve got a merch shop—what plumbers do you know that have a merch shop? And it’s actually cool merch.
But it’s so much more than the visuals. When you talk about intentionality, you guys are very intentional with your mission statement and core values. Every business says they have those, but you guys live them. You practice what you preach. Talk a little bit about your core values and mission. When were those founded, and when did you start being as intentional about them as you are now?
Culture that actually sticks
Dustin [29:48]:
From the moment we started doing residential work—around 2012—I knew we had to do some things if we were going to grow in service. One of those things was having a mission statement and core values. So I sat down and asked, “Who are we? What has made us successful up to this point? And what is the ultimate mission?”
The original mission statement—it's been amended since—was to provide plumbing excellence through manners, methods, and materials. That came from wanting to be a full-circle company. At the time, there was a franchise trying to get us to sign up called Mr. Rooter. I talked to them a bit, but it was very number-centric, and I felt like they left craftsmanship out of it. That really bothered me.
So when I drafted the mission statement, I was pushing against that. I wanted it to be all-encompassing. Manners meant customer service—yes ma’am, yes sir, how we interact with customers. Methods meant craftsmanship—the level of detail and excellence we put into every job. Materials meant the parts and products we install in every home. Not just meeting code, because code has a very low bar. We wanted the standard to be excellence and longevity in the home.
Today, it’s been expanded to “provide home service excellence through manners, methods, and materials,” to make room for electrical and potentially HVAC in the future.
The core values have been amended as well. They were: to work as unto the Lord; to be a blessing and not a burden to our customers; to be without excuse in failure; to think responsibly; to provide charity to those without means; and to remember always, to whom much is given, much is required.
I’m not exaggerating when I say the first hire I ever made in service sat across from me at a little table in our shop on Keetonville Hill. We rehearsed the mission statement and core values together. Then there were three of us, sitting around that table, and every Monday we rehearsed them. We did that for over a decade—every single Monday morning.
A lot of times we started at six o’clock, and I had one rule: you cannot talk about plumbing from six to six-thirty. That time was for culture and community building. Then at six-thirty, we stood up and rehearsed the mission statement and core values in unison.
I think one of the reasons we were able to scale so fast is because we had really deep roots. This wasn’t something we just hung on the wall or said once and forgot. We not only rehearsed them, we fleshed them out every single Monday. What does it mean to work as unto the Lord? What does it mean to be a blessing and not a burden to our customers? What does it mean to be without excuse in failure? We’d bring in real examples from the previous week and talk through them.
That’s always been part of who we are, and I think that’s a huge reason for the success we’ve had.
Sean Garner [33:33]:
And you didn’t even read those—you just said them because you know them. I’ve seen you around the shop ask team members about them, and they can just rattle them off. They truly know them. That’s something I really love and respect about you guys. This isn’t just something that sounds good on a wall. You live it.
I genuinely believe that’s been a large part of the success you’ve had.
Dustin [34:03]:
No kidding—one of our managers was so moved by them that he basically adopted the core values and made them his family’s core values. I don’t even know if he changed them. He just took them home and applied them, because they work. Things like being without excuse in failure—they’re transferable. They’re universal principles.
Sean Garner [34:22]:
Yeah.
Sean Garner [34:34]:
Okay, shifting gears a little bit. This is probably more from Tiffany’s viewpoint. This has been a crazy course. Courtney and I have owned businesses—you guys are entrepreneurs too—but you’ve had tremendous growth, especially in the last three years. On top of that, you’ve got kids, activities, and life.
How do you guys handle it? I don’t even think “balance” is the right word. To balance, things have to be equal, and that’s not really reality. How do you survive it? Let’s get real—how do you work through this stuff? Because it can’t be easy.
The pressure behind the scenes
Tiffany [35:24]:
No, it’s definitely not easy. One thing Dustin says is that before this three-year growth period, we didn’t even know what stress really was. People would say, “I wouldn’t wish owning a business on my worst enemy,” and Dustin used to say, “I don’t understand that.” The last three years have really fleshed that out for us.
I will say this—I’ve been able to come back into the business because of my mom. She really stepped in. I have good help at the house. She comes three days a week and helps with the kids, and that’s been a huge mental relief for me, knowing the kids are with someone who loves them. It helps relieve some of that mom guilt.
I agree with you—there really is no balance. One thing we try to do, and we’re not great at it, is being present where we are. We’ve had a really hard time with that, especially that first year of me coming back into the business. I’d have to tell Dustin, “I’m businessed out.”
We kind of made Sundays a rule—no talking about business—because it was dominating our conversations. We’re together at work, together at home, and if something pops into your head, it’s so easy to say, “Hey, did you take care of this?”
So open, clear communication is huge. When I have too much or need a break, I communicate that. Just saying, “I need a break from talking about the business,” or “I’m feeling overwhelmed,” and talking through it. Clear communication is a big one.
Dustin [37:42]:
I agree. I think balance is a myth. When you own a business, you live with it.
We have a child with special needs, and she was in the hospital for 40 days after she was born. Tiffany and I were there all the time, and the main doctor caring for her was always there too. One day I asked him, “How many hours do you work?” He didn’t miss a beat. He said, “All of them.” And I was like, touche. Very nice.
Sean Garner [38:09]:
Yeah.
Dustin [38:12]:
It’s like that—I’m never not thinking about the business. There’s always some problem to solve, some new iteration to come up with, or a podcast you’re listening to that gets your mind going. If someone can truly shut it off, God bless them. It doesn’t keep me up at night. It’s just part of life and part of who we are.
Sean Garner [38:27]:
Yeah.
Dustin [38:41]:
Maybe if she tells me to shut up, then I’ll shut up—most of the time.
Sean Garner [38:44]:
That’s what I was going to ask—how often do you have to say that? I agree, because one thing that’s unique and probably presents different challenges is that Courtney and I do some business together, but she has her own thing and I have the agency. It’s not the same.
With you guys, you’re fully in it together. Work stuff can easily come home. So I’m assuming you have to be extremely intentional about saying, “This is not Half Moon time. This is family time.”
Dustin [39:17]:
Yep.
Tiffany [39:20]:
Yeah. And I think part of that, for me, is we talk about this a lot. We hear this idea—especially in this generation—that husbands should be home all the time and that hard work isn’t fruitful or productive, almost like it’s the enemy.
I’m actually thankful. This is a different type of stress and responsibility, but ten years ago, when we went on vacation—locally, like Silver Dollar City, because that’s what we could afford—Dustin would be in the corner on the phone seven of the eight hours because he had to be.
Now it’s different. He can be off the phone, and we have some margin. The work now is more mental—vision, strategy, thinking about where the business is going. We’re constantly thinking about it. But I think part of that is being thankful and living in the game, not the gap—recognizing how far we’ve come and appreciating what we have now.
Sean Garner [40:40]:
Yeah.
Dustin [40:42]:
That’s really hard to do. You have to be very mindful of it. I’ll say this—I worked a billion hours, like all entrepreneurs do on the way up, and I don’t think a lot of people understand that. I worked a lot of hours, and she was very gracious. She never complained. She never made work the enemy. She supported me.
Without that, our marriage wouldn’t have worked—none of it would have worked. She saw it as necessary, something I felt like I had to do to provide for our family.
Tiffany [41:22]:
And in all fairness, I knew what I was getting into. When we were dating, he worked for his dad during the week, and on the weekends he worked at Lowe’s doing installs. Those were our dates. I literally rode in the plumbing truck.
Dustin [41:40]:
To these podunk places to install toilets and sinks. That’s what our dates were. So in all fairness, she knew what she was getting into.
Sean Garner [41:50]:
That’s awesome.
With that, though, you talked about the gap and the gain. Now you have vision, especially over the last few years, where it’s like, “Okay, wow, we’ve got something. This is working. This is going to be much bigger than we ever originally thought.”
So two questions. One, when did you really start to realize, “We’ve got something here”? And two, now that your vision has opened up, what’s next? What’s the new “pay off my house by 25” goal?
Tiffany [42:28]:
We hired some really great people, and one of the reasons we were motivated to grow is because we saw their capacity and potential. Dustin said, “If we don’t grow this business to create jobs for them, they’re going to leave.” We knew what they were capable of, and we loved them. We didn’t want them to go somewhere else. So we either created those opportunities here, or they would go elsewhere. That was a major factor in our growth.
Dustin [42:58]:
In terms of realizing we have something, I’d say that’s the season we’re in right now. It’s still somewhat surreal. Last year at this time, we had our fingers crossed, fighting to hit seven million. This year, we’re already over 11 million.
It’s crazy—it feels like the flywheel effect. In January, our biggest month ever had been around 650. Then we hit around 900, and we were all like, “What just happened?” We thought it was a fluke. Then we hit it again, and then it just kept coming. Things started to break free.
Even now, we’re not really impressed with what we’ve accomplished, because we did it. I know who I am, and I don’t see myself as impressive. So if I could do it, I think, “Anyone could do it.” But I have to remind myself of where we started. We set the goal of 10 million.
Sean Garner [44:24]:
Yeah.
Dustin [44:50]:
I look back to when 10 million felt like an insurmountable mountain. Three years ago, I was looking at it thinking, “Man, that would be crazy if we ever got that big.” Now that we’re here, it’s like, “We still kind of suck. We haven’t really done anything yet.” There are companies doing 50 million and beyond.
I’m not great at having this 100-million or billion-dollar vision. The 10 million mark was actually the first revenue goal we ever set. The only reason we picked it was because I read in a book that only 0.4% of businesses ever reach 10 million in annual revenue. I thought, “Game on. If that’s where the elite start, let’s go.”
So once we hit 10 million, the plan was always to survey the landscape, pick another mountain, and climb that one. Then survey again and pick the next. We haven’t officially set it yet, but it’ll probably be somewhere around 25 to 30 million, with a two- to three-year goal to get there.
Sean Garner [46:06]:
All of that shows your humility. I get that analogy completely. Courtney and I gutted and remodeled a house once, and people would come over and say, “This is so beautiful.” In my mind, I’m thinking, “Yeah, but I know that cabinet is off-center, and don’t step right there because there’s a weak spot in the floor.” It’s kind of the same thing.
Dustin [46:27]:
Yes.
Sean Garner [46:33]:
I really appreciate you sharing that. So to close this out, for someone in the trades or a startup entrepreneur seeing your journey, any words of wisdom or encouragement? Something to say, “It is possible, but you’ve got to put in the work.” What would you tell them?
Final lessons
Dustin [46:58]:
You want me to go first? Go first. I would say consistency. I’m preaching to the choir, but there will be days when you don’t want to get up or don’t want to do it—whatever it is. Stick to the plan and be consistent. When you get punched in the face or in the gut, get back up and keep going.
Most businesses fail just before they get that flywheel effect. You’re going to outperform most competitors just by showing up and being consistent. If you keep showing up and stay consistent, that would be my advice. What’s yours?
Dustin [47:49]:
I would say hard work is easy. My dad has worked hard his whole life. He’s 75 years old and still working hard. He’s not hungry, but he has three old, beat-up trucks. He literally takes a part out of one truck and puts it into another to make it work. When that one breaks, he swaps parts again. I was driving those same trucks and plumbing out of them 20 years ago.
Hard work alone isn’t enough. Hard work is easy. Any dummy can work hard. The shift for me happened three years ago when I was talking to another entrepreneur who built a plumbing company. In six months, he went from zero to a million dollars in a single month. It took us 18 years to hit a million in one month.
I told him there was no way that was possible. He asked me, “Are you a plumber?” He wasn’t a plumber, by the way—he came into the industry without that background. I said, “Yeah, what else would I be?” He said, “That’s your problem.”
That hit me hard. I realized in that moment there was a paradigm shift. He had a skill set I didn’t have. He did in six months what took me 18 years. He knew something I didn’t. There was more to it than plumbing.
Dustin [49:22]:
What I believed was my biggest asset had actually become a liability. Plumbing was easy for me. I knew plumbing. But being a good plumber wasn’t going to get us to 10 million.
I had to make a mindset shift. We had to get intentional and strategic. I had to develop a different skill set—a business skill set.
So if you want to grow, that’s what I’d say. Hard work is a given. If you’re not willing to work hard, go to bed or do something else. But hard work alone isn’t enough. You need intention and strategy behind it.
Sean Garner [50:05]:
So good. Dustin and Tiffany, I want to honor both of you. I’m incredibly thankful for the opportunity for our team to work with your team. You guys are the real deal. You’re amazing at what you do. You love and serve God, and that’s not just a public-facing thing—it’s truly who you are. You’re incredible people. I’m blessed to know you, blessed to work with you, and thankful for both of you. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on here and share your wisdom.
Dustin [50:35]:
Thank you. We love you, Sean. And for anyone out there who needs help with SEO, you’ve got to check out SG Consulting. He took what another company couldn’t do in three years and got us strong positioning in the Tulsa metro in six months. You’re the real deal.
Sean Garner [50:57]:
I appreciate that. Thank you. It’s easy when you get awesome people to work with. Thank you so much, guys.
Sean Garner [51:01]:
Thank you guys for checking out the episode. Have an awesome day.
Dustin [51:04]:
All right, take care. Bye.
