Mitch Gross didn’t come from a plumbing background. He came from Silicon Valley, startups, and senior roles at eBay and still ended up building a multi-territory plumbing business in Sydney with Plumbing Bros.
Episode Timeline
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 0:49 – What Plumbing Bros does
- 1:29 – Mitch’s background before plumbing
- 6:10 – The decision to leave corporate and buy a business
- 8:22 – Discovering Plumbing Bros as a franchise opportunity
- 10:40 – Running a plumbing business without a plumbing background
- 12:32 – Starting the business during COVID and survival mode
- 13:31 – Post-COVID growth and expanding into new territories
- 16:08 – The risk of relying on one big client
- 17:30 – Diversifying into new segments (strata, real estate, commercial)
- 19:06 – What Mitch actually does day-to-day as an owner
- 22:01 – Maximising contract value vs chasing new customers
- 23:03 – The next 2–3 year plan and growth strategy
- 25:23 – Wrap up
He walks through the real transition from corporate life into business ownership, why he chose a franchise model, and what it actually took to survive starting a business during COVID.
He also shares how winning a major government contract helped accelerate growth, what happens when you rely too heavily on one big client, and why diversification across customer segments became critical to the next phase of the business.
You’ll also hear about leadership, delegation, building the right team, and what changes when you move from “doing everything yourself” to running a growing operation across multiple territories.
