S2 Ep 30: Groundworks Plumbing with Kirsten Camerer

Meet Kirsten Camerer the powerhouse behind Groundworks Plumbing, who alongside her husband Zach, transformed a family vision into a thriving business in Georgia. After leaving Oregon's familiar landscapes, Kirsten and Zach took a leap of faith in pursuit of creating a legacy for their children. We delve into their journey, the trials they’ve faced, and how their resilience and dedication to quality have set them apart in the plumbing industry. Listen as Kirsten dispels myths about plumbers and emphasizes Zach's unwavering commitment to service excellence, making sure every job is left spotless and every client satisfied.

Being your own boss comes with its set of challenges, but it also opens the door to unparalleled opportunities. Kirsten shares how owning their business has given them the flexibility to say yes to family time and no to overwhelming work commitments, striking a healthier balance between the two. From coaching their son’s basketball team to enjoying outdoor adventures together, the Camerer family cherishes the joys of entrepreneurship and family life. Tune in for an inspiring conversation about building dreams and the importance of family legacy.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Stacey Poehler.

Speaker 2 0:14

Hey everybody, I'm excited to be chatting with Kirsten Kammerer. She is the co-owner of Groundworks Plumbing, with her husband, zach. Welcome, kirsten, thank you. Yeah, excited to chat, so why don't you start off by telling us about Groundworks Plumbing with her husband, zach? Welcome, kirsten, thank you. Yeah, excited to chat, so why don't you start off by telling us about Groundworks?

Speaker 3 0:30

Okay, yeah, so we are a family-owned and operated residential plumbing business. We service Milton, Alpharetta, Cumming, Johns Creek and pretty much every city around us. But yeah, that's our business.

Speaker 2 0:49

Yeah, and how long have you guys been doing this?

Speaker 3 0:51

Well, my husband Zach, who's the plumber he's our only plumber at this point. He's been in the plumbing industry for over 20 years, but we just decided to kind of go on our own back in. Well, we got officially started back in May, so not too long now.

Speaker 2 1:08

Awesome, awesome and can you talk about? You know just the journey and what led you guys to opening this business and how you kind of partnered with him in this venture.

Speaker 3 1:21

Yeah, so we moved excuse me, we moved from out of state a few years ago and Zach was working for another plumbing business when we first moved to town. But we found that our work-life balance was not good, and so we realized that we needed dream of ours to be able to pass something down to our children. And so we thought well, if we can create like a good, solid quality plumbing business that we can eventually pass down to our kiddos, you know, that would be great. So that's how we got to where we are today.

Speaker 2 2:01

Awesome, awesome.

Speaker 3 2:13

Are there any myths or misconceptions that are out there about the plumbing industry that you want to clear up for us? Sometimes people kind of imagine someone kind of coming in, maybe slapping in some work, leaving a mess behind, maybe not really caring. I don't know if that's true or not. Sometimes that's been thoughts in my head. Yeah, that you know. That's definitely not the case with us. Like our, our primary goal is definitely to you know Zach comes in, you know he's going to do a super good, solid quality job and never leave a mess behind. It'll be like he never came, was never there except for now.

Speaker 2 2:50

Your plumbing works, yeah, except for the problem being gone right. You know what challenges or bumps in the road have you and Zach had since, you know, trying to get this business off the ground.

Speaker 3 3:05

Yeah, well, there's been lots because, you know, starting your own business is just very challenging. There's so many little things that have come up. It's hard to pick one specifically because there's been a lot, but we've been able to get past everyone and, um, it's definitely been a huge learning curve but, uh, you know, I feel like we're, we're getting there. Um, we moved from across the country, from Oregon and left behind you know pretty much everyone and everything we know, so that was a pretty big challenge. But, um, you know, we wanted to come here and start, start a new kind of life together and as a family, and kind of start our own business and so we've made it this far.

Speaker 2 3:48

Awesome, awesome. And I know you kind of said that you guys were looking for a better work life balance. Have you found that? Most entrepreneurs I talk to you say that they feel like they work all the time, but have you guys been able to find some ways to have fun and you know spend time as a family know kind of our own boss, and we can say yes and no to things.

Speaker 3 4:22

And, um, we have been able to have more time as a family. Zach is actually, um, able to commit to helping assistant coach our son's basketball team coming up here in a few weeks, which he wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. So, um, yeah, we, we love spending time together as a family, playing board games. We love being outside. We're all very active and enjoy that. So, not a ton of free time, but definitely more, for sure. And then, just like you know, having the authority to be in charge of your schedule is just really freeing, so we've enjoyed that a lot.

Speaker 2 4:55

Yeah, and how about you and your work journey? You know what were you doing before you? You know kind of partnered with Zach in this endeavor.

Speaker 3 5:04

Well, I actually am currently still working part time. I work part time in physical therapy, and so I am still doing that just part time, so I can kind of manage both. Sometimes feels like a lot, but yeah, so that's for now, and then the goal would be at some point to be able to just kind of come on full board and be able to really focus on just growing our business.

Speaker 2 5:34

Definitely, definitely. What do you think are the long-term plans? Are you guys looking to kind of expand and add some additional team members? What's the goal? You've only been doing this now a few months, but where do you kind of see yourselves heading?

Speaker 3 5:52

Well, we're definitely picking up momentum and so we're working towards at some point. No-transcript plumbing is hard on your body and it does take a toll after so long. He's been doing it for such a long time and he was actually in commercial construction or plumbing for a while as well, and that's even even worse. So that would be our goal. We'll see if we get there, but that's kind of what we're hoping and shooting for Well.

Speaker 2 6:53

I'm sure, with your background in physical therapy, that you're giving him advice on how to bend down and how to lift things.

Speaker 3 7:00

And he actually has pretty good body mechanics. I'm really proud of him. You know he doesn't he doesn't need a ton of coaching for me, but I am definitely on top of him when it comes to that kind of thing. I'm making sure I'm staying on him to make sure he doesn't hurt himself.

Speaker 2 7:13

So yeah, good deal, good deal. Hurt himself. So, yeah, good deal, good deal. Anything else that you haven't had a chance to share about the business that you want to make sure our listeners know?

Speaker 3 7:23

Yeah, you know, I think that you know, when we first moved to the area, we didn't know anyone and so we kind of relied on referrals from people that like, especially our realtor, and then like neighbors that we had met, and I feel like that's so important, you know, to be able to refer someone and feel confident in your referral and knowing who. You know who you're referring and what kind of work they're going to provide. And I think our number one takeaway is we want people to know that. Well, two things one, you're always going to get really good quality plumbing. Like it sounds kind of silly because it's plumbing. Like who gets excited about plumbing? But I think you know, just knowing that like the job's going to be done right, we're going to be, you know, really focused on attention to detail.

Speaker 3 8:11

Zach is I kind of like to describe him as a meticulous plumber, because he really goes in and does a good job and he takes pride in like having his pipes lined up perfectly and like having everything just like tight and neat and clean. So that's one thing. And then, so, knowing you're going to get that kind of service, but then also we're really trying to be as connected to our community as possible. You know we want to help people. We know this is a really tough time to, you know, do life right now. Everything is expensive, everything's hard and we're just trying to, you know, help as many people as we can and we want to feel like we can be counted on and know that when you call us you're going to, the work's going to get done and it's going to get done right and yeah that's, and that we can make connections with our neighbors in our community. Great, great.

Speaker 2 9:00

And can you share where folks can find you guys, how to contact you? Yeah?

Speaker 3 9:06

You know any one of our social media handles. We're at Groundworks Plumbing on Facebook and Instagram. We have a decent little following on next door. We can be found on just online at groundworksplumbingcom. You can call or text us. We're at 770-701-1774. And then I don't know what, the last little bit I was going to say about that I know there was one more way to contact us, but I'm linking, so those are our main ones, alrighty.

Speaker 2 9:43

And how'd you guys get the name? How'd you figure out you wanted to be called Groundworks?

Speaker 3 9:47

Oh, that's a good question. I like that. Well, we wanted something original, but we also wanted something. So our kind of motto is your plumbing solutions from the ground up, and so we wanted to kind of capture the sense of we can really do it all, like Zach can do plumbing underground. You know work in the ground all the way up to every little bit of plumbing that you can possibly think of, so he can really do it all. But we wanted to make sure we didn't. We kind of focused on like hey, we can do those water lines, the sewer lines, all the underground plumbing that sometimes people don't necessarily want to do or can do, and so just really making sure we kind of captured all of that. And we just like the name it's catchy.

Speaker 2 10:38

It is for sure All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Kirsten.

Speaker 3 10:42

Thank you so much, Stacey. I appreciate your time. It's great.

Speaker 1 10:50

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Milton More. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNP Miltoncom. That's GNP Miltoncom, or call 470-664-4930.