Jimmy Hiller and the business he had to give away

Jimmy Hiller had spent fifteen years getting people to hire his plumbing company. In the autumn of 2005, he decided to stop working for a large portion of them. The new construction jobs were consuming his time, and collecting the money had become a recurring battle. By his reckoning, leaving that work meant giving up $4 million, half the company’s revenue. He had also bought a building. It was an awkward moment to discover the attractions of a smaller business.

He went ahead. Then he went to Florida for a two-week management class, looking for a plan to make the decision work. Hiller remembers replacing the lost revenue in 2006. The more revealing part is the interval before that happened: an experienced tradesman, already responsible for employees, making himself a student again. His company’s next chapter depended on learning something his tools could not teach him.

A pair of gloves, then a set of tools

Long before he put a smiling face on a truck, Hiller learned to box. He started at twelve. His father helped bring coach Donnie Broadway into his life, and the young fighter won the Mid State and Southern Golden Glove championships twice apiece. The sport gave him an early experience of preparation that could be tested in public. An opponent was unlikely to reward a promising intention.

Plumbing arrived through another introduction. After high school, with a child to support, he needed a direction. His father and a plumbing inspector helped arrange his first job in December 1984, working on apartments in Nashville. Experienced plumbers taught him. He progressed through the trade and earned his master plumber’s license before opening his own business.

In 1990, at twenty-four, Hiller started from a duplex in Antioch, Tennessee, with $500 and a pickup. The sum has become an often-repeated part of his biography. It can obscure how little it bought: permission to begin, followed by the daily problem of finding work. New construction supplied his first customers. Residential service became part of the business in 1998; heating and air conditioning followed in 2003.

The later decision to leave construction gave those additions a new importance. He was choosing the work around which the company would be organized. A founder who has struggled to win an account can find it difficult to relinquish one. Hiller had to weigh the money attached to a job against the time and uncertainty that came with collecting it.

The smile that had to earn its keep

Hiller gives substantial credit to Jim Abrams and Terry Nicholson, whom he met in 1999. They helped him think about how a contracting company could present itself and operate. It is an unusually useful admission in a founder’s story. Being able to perform a skilled task and being able to build a business around that task require different kinds of knowledge.

Consider the truck. A wrench would announce plumbing, but it would do little to distinguish one plumber from the next. Hiller’s smiley face began as a small graphic and grew larger on subsequent vehicles. It was easy to recognize. His name could slip a customer’s mind; the expression on the truck was designed to stay there.

“I wanted to stand out.”

Jimmy Hiller

A cheerful picture also sets a demanding expectation. A customer dealing with a leak may have limited patience for cheerfulness unsupported by competence. Hiller’s service model makes room for ordinary courtesies: technicians wear shoe covers, keep work areas clean and explain pricing. These are details a homeowner can observe without knowing anything about pipe sizing or electrical work.

Then there is the guarantee: “Happy You’ll Be or the Service is Free.” It puts the outcome in language anyone can understand. The company’s stated WIN5 philosophy similarly names five groups whose interests it wants to serve: customers, employees, the company, communities and vendors. The list acknowledges how many people must cooperate before a successful visit can happen. Even a friendly truck needs someone to supply the parts.

The family in the office

The family history supplies a less conventional piece of interior design. Early in Jimmy and Michelle’s relationship, a $60 toilet occupied his den. Rain was forecast, and he had brought it inside to protect it. Romance had encountered inventory management. The story survived, which suggests the visitor took a reasonably generous view of the furnishings.

On Christmas Day in 1993, he proposed with a ring, a photograph of the children and a note asking Michelle to marry their father. They married the following year. Later, she left a career as a legal secretary and took responsibility for the company’s office, administration and finances. The division gave Jimmy more room to work on the business outside the office.

Those responsibilities deserve a place alongside the truck and the founding cash. A service company needs someone to make its promises administratively possible. The domestic and commercial histories overlapped long before the Hiller family appeared together in a company photograph. Family members were helping keep the enterprise running while its founder learned how to make it grow.

First, teach the technician

Growth kept returning Hiller to a practical difficulty: finding enough people to do the work. In 2005, his recruiting advertisements offered a $4,000 signing bonus and a year of maid service. The campaign brought in two workers. It is a wonderfully concrete reminder that an employer can make an imaginative offer and still have a stubbornly small pool of candidates.

Eventually, training became a larger part of his answer. Hiller had been sending technicians to Total Tech, a school founded by Don Miller. He acquired the school in 2013. The relationship expanded beyond improving the skills of people already on the payroll; it could help prepare new entrants for the trades, too.

The teaching was deliberately physical. At Total Tech, students could work on equipment and plumbing systems in laboratories, practicing the kinds of tasks they would later perform in homes. A 2017 account described seven full-house plumbing simulators and a makeshift crawlspace. The surroundings offered a useful correction to any idea that learning a trade consists mainly of watching somebody explain one.

Hiller also took technical education seriously himself as he expanded beyond plumbing. Learning how to size a heating and cooling system properly mattered. So did using established technical standards in the school’s curriculum. Customer care depends partly on good manners, but the equipment must work after the pleasant conversation ends.

Transition to Trades brought that approach to service members preparing to leave the military. Developed with U.S. Army Garrison Fort Campbell, the Career Skills Program launched on July 5, 2016. Participants could attend Total Tech while still on active duty, beginning their preparation before the change in employment arrived.

That timing makes a difference to a household budget. An Army account described a participant starting the program sixty days before separation, giving him training and an interview opportunity while he was still receiving military pay. For someone supporting a family, the interval between one paycheck and the next can matter as much as the title of the next job.

The program also recognizes that graduates may want to live somewhere other than Hiller’s service territory. Industry contacts can help them look for employment elsewhere. The company gains a route toward potential employees; participants gain skills they can carry beyond one employer. That portability is part of the appeal of learning a trade in the first place.

The student takes a second chair

In 2016, Hiller joined Abrams and Nicholson as a co-founder of PRAXIS S-10, a contractor mentoring organization. The former student now had experiences other owners could use. He could discuss the decisions that frightened him, the work he stopped accepting, and the management knowledge he had needed to acquire along the way.

The same interest in providing direction reached younger students. Through a partnership with PENCIL and John Overton High School, Hiller supported HVAC teaching, internships and employment opportunities. His own entry into plumbing had depended on adults making a practical introduction. Helping another student see a possible career gave that early assistance a longer life.

He has spoken about wanting the company to become the country’s largest privately held service business. Expansion continues: in July 2026, Hiller announced a partnership with Eagle Pro in Florence, Alabama; in September, McNorton Mechanical joined the business in the Pensacola area. New places bring new customers, colleagues and obligations to a founder still associated with the company he started.

The smile on the trucks makes the story look straightforward. Hiller’s decisions give it its more interesting shape: accept instruction, change the work, train the next person. The company can buy another vehicle. Someone still has to learn what to do when it reaches the driveway.