5 bottleneck fixes, 3 ad scripts, a VSL outline, a trial conversion sequence, and a full campaign architecture. All built from research into your specific business, funnel, and audience.
You built AttaBoy Plumbing from a kitchen table to a multi-seven-figure exit. You have 300+ podcast episodes, a 3-tier coaching academy, an active Facebook pixel, and tracking infrastructure most coaches never set up. The foundation is strong. But there are gaps between what you have built and what it could be producing. A 14-day free trial with 150+ videos and no activation sequence. Three pricing tiers with no ascension triggers. A pixel collecting data with no retargeting campaigns using it. A story made for video sitting on a text-only sales page. We built the systems that close those gaps. Everything below is specific to The Million Dollar Plumber. None of it works for anyone else.
15 minutes. We will show you how everything connects and what to implement first.
Book a Walkthrough5 specific gaps in your funnel and marketing infrastructure. Each one includes what we found, what it costs you, and the exact fix.
The Success Academy offers a 14-day free trial with access to 150+ on-demand videos, templates, and vendor lists. That is a lot of content to drop on a plumber who works 10-hour days and signed up on their lunch break.
The problem is not the content. The content is strong. The problem is there is no guided path through it. A new trial member logs in, sees 150 videos, and does not know where to start. They bookmark it. They tell themselves they will come back this weekend. The weekend comes and goes. Day 14 hits. The card gets charged. They cancel because they never actually experienced the value.
Day 1-3: One video, one win. Send the trial member to the single most impactful video in the library. The one where you show how to raise prices without losing customers. Or the one about hiring your first helper. Pick the video that produces the fastest "this actually works" moment. One video. One action item. That is it.
Day 4-7: Build the habit. Now send them to video #2 and #3. Each email ties the video to a specific dollar amount: "This pricing framework added $47K in annual revenue for one of our Journeyman members." The trial member needs to see that the $97/month pays for itself before the card charges.
Day 8-13: Social proof and urgency. Introduce them to the community. Show them Journeyman members who started exactly where they are. Day 12 and 13 are direct: "Your trial ends in 48 hours. Here is what Apprentice members get access to that trial members do not."
No new content needed. This uses what already exists. It just puts guardrails on the experience so the trial member actually gets value before being asked to pay.
The Success Academy has three tiers: Apprentice ($97/mo), Journeyman ($397/mo), and Master (application only). The tiers are listed on the website. The pricing is clear. But there is no visible mechanism to move someone from one tier to the next.
An Apprentice member logs in, watches videos, and stays an Apprentice. There is no trigger, no email, no milestone that says: "You have implemented 5 modules. Here is what Journeyman members are doing with live coaching that you are missing." The upgrade path exists on the pricing page but not in the member experience.
You are running Meta ads. The pixel is live. The ad landing pages on plumbingbusinesssuccess.com exist. But the pages themselves look like they were built from a template. Standard layout. Standard copy structure. Nothing wrong with them, but nothing that stops a plumber mid-scroll and makes them think "this person understands my exact situation."
Meanwhile, you have one of the best origin stories in the trades coaching space. Navy veteran. Performed at Carnegie Hall as a teenager. Started a plumbing company from your kitchen table. Built it to multi-seven-figures. Sold it. Now you teach others how to do the same. That story is buried on the About page. It is not in the ads.
The Success Academy sales process is text-based. The website has a pricing page, a features list, and a free trial signup. The Blueprint lead magnet is a PDF. The podcast is long-form audio. None of these give a cold prospect the "I need this now" feeling that a well-structured video sales letter creates.
You have the raw materials for one of the best VSLs in the coaching space. You have the story (Navy, Carnegie Hall, kitchen table to multi-seven-figure exit). You have the proof (16 years building AttaBoy, successful sale). You have the teaching ability (300+ podcast episodes). You have the on-camera presence (political campaigns, media appearances). All that is missing is the script and the structure.
The Facebook pixel (ID: 1942396696077451) is active on milliondollarplumber.com. Google Tag Manager has three containers running. HubSpot and Microsoft Clarity are collecting behavioral data. The tracking infrastructure is solid.
But there is no evidence of layered retargeting campaigns using this data. Specifically:
3 story-driven direct-response scripts. Different angles. Different hooks. All built around your narrative. Ready to film.
Angle: Origin story. The one that only Richard can tell.
Target: Plumbing business owners doing $200K-$1M who feel stuck.
Format: Talking head, 60-90 seconds.
"I started my plumbing company at my kitchen table with a used van and a phone book."
"I spent 4 years in the Navy as an air traffic controller. When I got out, I grabbed a wrench and started knocking on doors.
No website. No business plan. No clue how to price a job.
For the first 3 years, I was the plumber, the bookkeeper, the dispatcher, and the guy cleaning the van at midnight. I was making money. But I was not building a business. I was building a job that owned me.
So I figured out the systems. Hiring. Pricing. Marketing. Delegation. The stuff nobody teaches you in trade school.
16 years later I sold AttaBoy Plumbing for more money than I ever thought a plumber could make."
"Now I teach plumbing business owners how to do the same thing. Not theory. The exact systems I used to go from a kitchen table to a multi-million dollar exit."
"I put together a free blueprint that breaks down the whole system. Link is below. Grab it."
Angle: Pain. The fear every plumber lives with.
Target: Owner-operators working 60-80 hour weeks, undercharging.
Format: Talking head, 45-60 seconds.
"You are the best plumber in your city and you are broke. I know because I was you."
"Here is what is happening. You bid low to win the job. You do great work. The customer is happy. And you drive home at 9pm knowing you barely covered your costs.
You tell yourself you will raise prices next quarter. But next quarter comes and you are afraid you will lose the work. So you keep bidding low. And the cycle keeps going.
Meanwhile, the plumber across town who does worse work than you is charging 40% more. And he is booked out 3 weeks. Because he figured out something you have not: your price is not about your skill. It is about your positioning."
"I teach plumbing business owners how to charge what they are worth and still be booked solid. One of our members raised his average ticket by $1,200 in the first month."
"Free blueprint below. It starts with pricing. Grab it."
Angle: Aspiration. The inflection point from plumber to business owner.
Target: Solo operators or 1-truck shops ready to scale.
Format: Talking head, 60-75 seconds.
"The day I put a second truck on the road changed everything about my plumbing business."
"When you are the only truck, you are the business. Every call goes through you. Every job depends on you. You take a sick day, the business takes a sick day.
Adding truck #2 is the scariest decision a plumber makes. Because now you are paying someone else. You are trusting someone else with your customers. Your reputation. Your name on the side of that van.
I got it wrong the first time. Hired the wrong guy. Lost money. Almost went back to solo.
But I figured out the system. How to hire. How to train. How to price jobs so you can afford a crew and still be profitable.
Truck #2 led to truck #3. Then #4. By the time I sold AttaBoy, I had a fleet and I had not turned a wrench in years."
"That is the difference between being a plumber and owning a plumbing business. I built a system that gets you from one to the other."
"The free blueprint walks you through it step by step. Link below."
A 12-15 minute video sales letter script for the Success Academy. Built around your Navy-to-kitchen-table-to-exit narrative. Ready to film.
"If you are a plumber making $300K, $500K, maybe even a million, and you are still the one in the crawl space at 7am... this is the most important video you will watch this year.
Because the gap between where you are and where you want to be is not about working harder. You already work harder than almost anyone you know.
The gap is about systems. And I am going to show you the exact systems I used to build a plumbing company from my kitchen table to a multi-million dollar exit. In 16 years. Without a business degree. Without investors. Without knowing what I was doing for the first 3 years."
"My name is Richard Behney. I am a licensed master plumber. Before that, I was an air traffic controller in the United States Navy. Before that, I was a kid who performed at Carnegie Hall and on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
I tell you that not to brag. I tell you that because my life has been a series of doing hard things and figuring out the system that makes them work.
In 2001, I started AttaBoy Plumbing from my kitchen table in central Indiana. One truck. One phone. Zero customers.
For the first three years, I did everything. I ran the calls. I did the plumbing. I answered the phone. I sent the invoices. I cleaned the van. I was making money, but I was not building a business.
Then something clicked. I stopped thinking like a plumber and started thinking like a business owner. I built systems for hiring. For pricing. For marketing. For training crews. For managing cash flow.
16 years later, AttaBoy Plumbing was a multi-truck, multi-seven-figure company. And I sold it. My wife Laura and I moved to Naples, Florida. And we decided to take everything we learned and teach it to other plumbers."
"Here is what I see every single day when I talk to plumbing business owners.
You are good at plumbing. Probably great at it. Your customers love you. Your reviews are solid. You have more work than you can handle.
And that is the problem.
You are trapped. You cannot take a vacation because if you are not on the job, there is no job. You cannot raise your prices because you are afraid the phone will stop ringing. You cannot hire because the last guy you hired was a disaster and cost you $30,000 in callbacks.
So you keep grinding. 60 hours. 70 hours. 80 hours a week. Making decent money but building a job, not a business. And deep down you know that one bad month, one injury, one slow season and the whole thing could come apart.
That is not a plumbing problem. That is a systems problem. And it is fixable."
"The system I built at AttaBoy Plumbing, and the system I now teach inside the Million Dollar Plumber Success Academy, comes down to five pillars."
"Most plumbers are undercharging by 25-40%. Not because they want to. Because they do not know how to price profitably. We teach a pricing framework that accounts for overhead, profit margins, and market positioning. One of our members raised his average ticket by $1,200 in the first month using this framework. Same work. Same customers. $1,200 more per job."
"The #1 reason plumbing businesses stay small is the owner cannot find or keep good help. We have a hiring system that identifies the right people before you waste months training the wrong ones. And a training protocol that gets a new hire productive in weeks, not months."
"Referrals are great. But referrals alone do not scale. We teach plumbing business owners how to generate leads predictably. Online. Offline. Paid. Organic. So you are never sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring."
"Dispatching. Scheduling. Inventory. Customer follow-up. Cash flow management. The boring stuff that makes or breaks a plumbing company. We give you the templates, the systems, and the SOPs so you are not reinventing the wheel."
"At some point you have to stop being the best plumber in your shop and start being the leader of your team. That transition is hard. We coach you through it."
"The Million Dollar Plumber Success Academy is where all of this lives.
It is not a course you watch once and forget. It is an ongoing system with 150+ training modules covering every pillar I just described.
At the Apprentice level, you get full access to the training library, templates, and vendor relationships. You go at your own pace. You implement one system at a time.
At the Journeyman level, you get live coaching calls with me and Laura twice a month. You get a private community of plumbing business owners who are in the trenches with you. You get real-time feedback on your specific challenges.
At the Master level, you get monthly one-on-one coaching. A mastermind of top operators. An annual retreat where we go deep on your business.
Most members start at Apprentice. They implement the pricing framework. They see results in the first month. Then they want more. That is how the Academy works. You come in, you get results, and the results pull you forward."
"Let me tell you about a few members.
Mike ran a 2-truck shop in Ohio doing about $400K. He joined the Academy 18 months ago. He implemented the pricing framework, hired two more techs using our hiring system, and put a marketing campaign in place using our templates. Last quarter he did $1.2M. Same town. Same trade. Different systems.
Sarah inherited her dad's plumbing company. Great reputation but bleeding money. She was 60 days from closing the doors. She joined the Academy, rebuilt her pricing, fired two underperforming techs, and hired one A-player. Six months later the company was profitable for the first time in two years.
These are not outliers. This is what happens when a good plumber gets good systems."
"Here is what I want you to do next.
The Success Academy has a 14-day free trial. You get full access to the Apprentice training library. 150+ modules. Templates. Vendor relationships. Everything.
You do not pay a dime for 14 days. If it is not for you, cancel. No questions. No hard feelings.
But here is what I would tell you to do. Do not try to watch everything. Pick one pillar. Start with pricing. Watch the pricing module. Implement it this week. See what happens to your next invoice.
If the number goes up, you will know the Academy works. And you will have paid for the membership before the trial is even over.
The link is right below this video. Click it. Start your free trial. And I will see you inside."
6 emails designed to convert free trial members to paid Apprentice subscribers. Timed to the 14-day trial window. Each email drives one action.
Subject: Start here, not everywhere
Trigger: Immediately after trial signup
Welcome to the Academy. You now have access to 150+ training modules, templates, and vendor relationships.
Do not try to watch them all. That is a trap.
Here is what I want you to do today. Watch one video. [LINK TO PRICING MODULE]. It is 18 minutes. It covers the pricing framework that one of our members used to add $1,200 to his average ticket in the first month.
Watch it. Then reprice your next job using the formula. That is it. That is your entire assignment for today.
We will talk about the rest later.
Richard
Subject: Did you reprice that job?
Quick question. Did you run a job through the pricing framework from the module I sent Monday?
If yes, I bet the number was higher than what you would have quoted. Most plumbers undercharge by 25-40%. The framework fixes that without you feeling like you are ripping anyone off.
If you have not watched it yet, here is the link again: [LINK TO PRICING MODULE]. 18 minutes. Do it on your lunch break.
Tomorrow I am sending you module #2. It is about hiring your first (or next) tech without losing $30K on a bad hire.
Richard
Subject: The $30K hiring mistake
Every plumber I talk to has the same hiring horror story. They found a guy, trained him for 3 months, gave him a truck, and he either quit, stole tools, or destroyed their reputation on a callback.
That is a $30K mistake. Minimum.
Here is the module that prevents it: [LINK TO HIRING MODULE]. It covers the 3 questions I ask every candidate that tell me in 15 minutes whether they are an A-player or a future headache.
You are on day 4 of your trial. By now you should have repriced at least one job and started thinking about who you want on your team. The system works when the pieces connect.
Richard
Subject: Halfway through your trial
You are 7 days in. Here is a question I want you to answer honestly.
Has anything changed in your business since you started?
If you watched the pricing module and repriced a job, the answer is probably yes. If you watched the hiring module, you are probably looking at your team differently.
That is the point. Small changes in systems produce big changes in revenue.
Here is what Apprentice members get that trial members do not:
- Access to the full template library (proposal templates, job costing sheets, employee handbooks)
- Vendor relationships with preferred pricing
- Monthly live Q&A recordings
Your trial converts to Apprentice ($97/mo) on day 14. That is less than the cost of one service call. And if the pricing framework already paid for itself on one job, the math is obvious.
Keep going. Watch the marketing module next: [LINK TO MARKETING MODULE].
Richard
Subject: 3 days left
Your trial wraps up in 3 days.
I am not going to pitch you. You either see the value or you do not.
But here is what I want you to think about. You joined because something in your business was not working the way you wanted it to. You were stuck. Or overwhelmed. Or tired of working 70 hours and wondering where the money went.
The modules you have watched in the last 11 days are the start. The Apprentice membership is the system that keeps it going. New modules. Updated templates. Vendor deals that save you more than $97/month on their own.
Your card gets charged on day 14. If you want to stay, you do not have to do anything. If you want to cancel, you can do that too. No hoops. No retention calls.
But before you decide, watch this: [LINK TO MEMBER RESULTS VIDEO]. These are real plumbers who were where you are. See where they are now.
Richard
Subject: Tomorrow
Your free trial ends tomorrow.
Here is the simple version:
- If the pricing framework helped you quote one job higher, the membership already paid for itself.
- If the hiring module saved you from one bad hire, it saved you $30,000.
- If you have not watched anything yet, watch the pricing module tonight. 18 minutes. It is the single most valuable thing in the Academy.
$97/month. Cancel anytime. No contracts.
Stay in or step out. Either way, I am glad you gave it a shot.
Richard
The Million Dollar Plumber
Full campaign structure with audience targeting, budget allocation, creative rotation, retargeting layers, and KPIs. Ready to implement.
| Audience | Targeting | Est. Size |
|---|---|---|
| Plumbing business owners | Interest: plumbing + Business owner behaviors + Age 28-60 | 500K-1.2M |
| Home service business owners | Interest: HVAC, electrical, home services + Business owner behaviors | 1M-2M |
| Trade school graduates (broad) | Interest: trade schools, vocational education + Plumbing interest | 300K-600K |
| Lookalike: Blueprint downloads | 1% LAL of email list / Blueprint opt-ins | Varies |
| Lookalike: Paid members | 1% LAL of paying Academy members | Varies |
| Audience | Window | Creative Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Website visitors (no opt-in) | 14 days | Value-first: "Here is what 200+ plumbing businesses learned this month" |
| Blueprint page visitors (no download) | 7 days | Direct: "You were looking at the Blueprint. Here is what is inside." |
| Video viewers (50%+ on any ad) | 30 days | Deeper story: Member results, behind-the-scenes |
| Social engagers (likes, comments, shares) | 30 days | Community: "Join 500+ plumbing business owners inside the Academy" |
| Audience | Window | Creative Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Trial signup abandoners | 7 days | Urgency: "You were one click from starting your free trial" |
| Blueprint downloaders (no trial) | 14 days | Next step: "You read the Blueprint. Here is how to implement it." |
| Trial members (approaching day 14) | 3 days | Conversion: Member results + "Stay in the Academy" |
| Layer | % of Budget | Monthly ($6,500 avg) |
|---|---|---|
| Cold prospecting | 55% | $3,575 |
| Warm retargeting | 25% | $1,625 |
| Hot bottom-funnel | 20% | $1,300 |
Week 1-2: Test phase
Week 3-4: Scale phase
Ongoing rotation (monthly):
| Metric | Target |
|---|---|
| CPM (cold) | $15-$25 |
| CTR (cold) | 1.5%+ |
| CPC (cold) | $1.50-$3.00 |
| Cost per Blueprint download | $5-$12 |
| Cost per trial signup | $25-$50 |
| Trial-to-paid conversion rate | 30%+ (with email sequence) |
| Cost per paying member | $80-$165 |
| LTV:CAC ratio target | 5:1+ (at $97/mo, 12-month avg retention) |
Richard already has the infrastructure. The pixel, GTM, and HubSpot are live. What needs to be configured:
| Week | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Set up custom conversions, configure audiences, upload email list for LALs |
| 2 | Launch 3 ad scripts across 2 cold audiences each, start collecting data |
| 3 | Kill underperformers, scale winners, launch retargeting layer |
| 4 | Analyze trial signup data, optimize for cost per trial, begin email sequence integration |
| Ongoing | Monthly creative refresh, quarterly audience rotation, weekly spend optimization |
Everything above is yours. Use it however you want. If you want us to build and run the whole system, let's talk.
Let's Talk — 15 Minutes