By Cinthya Lavin
I had the wonderful opportunity of interviewing Lina Kurucz, owner of Plumbing Troopers in Pompano Beach, and Erica Sullivan, owner and CEO of Erica’s Plumbing Air Conditioning and Restoration in Boca Raton. These business owners recalled their start in the trades and the qualities that earned them each a spot as finalists in this year’s BBB Torch Awards for Ethics.
Cinthya Lavin: Tell us how long have you been in the plumbing industry and how you got started.
Lina Kurucz: I have been in the plumbing business for 6 years. My background is originally in marketing and I started in this industry by marketing an eco-friendly product for plumbers to sell to their customers. I would go from business to business trying to sell this product but it was just a horrible experience. All of the plumbers would shut the door on me and wouldn’t give me the time of day. I had a lot of success selling the product outside of Florida, but my intention was to sell the product locally. One day I said to my husband, ‘I wish I had my own plumbing business because then I would just sell the product to my own customers.’ He thought that was a great idea. My husband did the operations and I did the marketing.
Erica Sullivan: I started the company 12 years ago from my garage. I never thought I would be a plumber, although my father was a plumber. I got into marketing after college and started a marketing company with a friend and I realized that owning a company is really what I was passionate about. Things got a little slow with marketing and I decided I wanted to open a plumbing company so I got my plumbing license. I added the water restoration about six years ago and the air conditioning two years ago.
CL: What would you say is the best part of your job?
LK: Being able to delegate work to everybody equally and all of us feeling like it is a team effort. I have put a lot of trust into my team. I take a lot of pride in having a teamwork mentality.
ES: For me there’s two parts. First, being able to help clients if they’re in a panic when something happens in their house. We come in to fix their problem, we calm them down, and we dry out their property. I feel we’re like their heroes. Second, it is the people who work for me. I’ve seen them from when they are first starting out to when they get married, buy houses, and have kids.
CL: What has been the most difficult part of being a woman in a male dominated industry?
LK: To be honest with you, I feel like I have an advantage because I am a woman. I do feel sometimes it has been difficult for some plumbers to adjust to a female leader. I have had certain occasions when someone asks to speak to the owner or to someone else when I am the owner, but it hasn’t been bad.
ES: I’ve never felt like I couldn’t do it. When I first started out and I was riding around in a truck, there were some clients whose trust I really had to earn. Once they realized I knew what I was doing they had great things to say about me.
CL: How do you deal with people who assume you may not know how to do your job?
LK: I use my business reputation as a defense mechanism. I show the great reputation we have built in this industry.
ES: In the beginning, before my name was on the truck, people would call and ask to speak to my husband. I’d say to them, ‘Well I don’t have a husband and I am the owner and the master plumber.’ It is all about having confidence in what you do.
CL: What would you say to other women to encourage them to pursue a career in the trades?
LK: I think this is a great time to enter the trades. Women bring something to the table that is so refreshing. Women take care of their team because we’re nurturers and some people in the trades are not used to that. Women are extremely efficient, we communicate well, we multitask well, and we are well rounded.
ES: If they want to explore it, I would say go try it first. Go work for someone as a helper for a couple of weeks and see if this is what you want to do. We do something called the working ride along where people work for the day and they interview us as a company while we interview them. Just go and try it, get involved somehow, volunteer for Habitat for Humanity and see how a house is built. Companies actually prefer the way that women work and how they value their jobs. Women can do anything that men can do.
Content provided by Cinthya Lavin, VP of Communications BBB serving Southeast Florida and the Caribbean
