(NewsNation) — Plumbing is a dirty business, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at Richard Behney of Florida.
Behney is a plumber and a millionaire, along with his wife of 30 years, Laura.
“I’m proud to be a plumber,” he told NewsNation in a recent interview where he talked about how he started the business as well as an online education platform called Million Dollar Plumber.
Chris Cuomo brought on a “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe for a special edition of [CUOMO] focused on elevating and encouraging blue-collar jobs. Watch the full episode here.
Behney wasn’t always a successful entrepreneur, though.
At the age of 22, after being an air traffic controller in the U.S. Navy, he didn’t know what he wanted to do.
But then, one of his friends said a plumbing company he worked at was hiring. Thinking that he needed a job and that the trades paid good money, Behney took the opportunity.
His first job was rough: It was snowing, and Behney was held by his legs as he replaced a valve in a dug well four feet in the ground.
“That was my first job,” Behney said. As he worked, he recalls thinking to himself, “Man, what did I get myself into?'”
Eventually, though, Behney’s confidence grew. As he talked to more customers, they started asking for his services specifically.
Seeing how much money the company he worked for was making, Behney started to wonder: Why can’t I do that?
“That’s when you want to strike out on your own,” he said.
It wasn’t easy. When he first told his wife he was starting a plumbing company, Behney had no money. He had just spent his last $1,500 on an “old, beat-up truck.”
Armed with that vehicle and a few hand tools, Richard and Laura Behney started their venture.
“We literally started from our kitchen table,” Behney said.
From that table, Behney was able to grow his business into a “multi-truck, multi-seven figure plumbing brand” serving central Indiana, according to his website.
In the beginning, Laura Behney says, it was hard, especially being a young couple with kids.
“But through that struggle, we went through a period of time where we were like, ‘We need to focus on the business, but we need to focus on ourselves more,” she said.
With the help of their faith in God, counseling and date nights, Laura Behney said, they were able to get through these tough times.
After selling the business in 2017, Richard Behney thought he was done with the plumbing business.
“You’re making $3 to $5 million a year and millions of the bottom line,” Richard Behney said. “We’re going on vacations, our kids had everything ever wanted. I mean, that’s a great life.”
Still, though, “there’s only so much golf you can play, so much boating.”
That’s when he decided to create “Million Dollar Plumber,” which teaches people how to grow their own businesses.
“This is very fulfilling when you can take somebody and actually change their lives,” Richard Behney said.
In fact, Laura Behney says when they see people being helped by Million Dollar Plumber, “that gives us way more joy than when we had our plumbing business.”
“We’ve had so many plumbing business owners that we’ve coached start from literally next to nothing and have grown their plumbing business and have sold it,” she said. “It changes the trajectory of their family. That gives us more joy because we know that they’re creating the freedom lifestyle that they want. They’re literally changing their children’s lives.”