By Mike Brewer, Brewer Companies

In 1978, I began working in the construction trades, and after ten years, purchased the business. More than four decades later, I am the Founder and CEO of Arizona’s largest plumbing company, Brewer Companies, working alongside a leadership team of friends I have known for more than thirty years while leading an organization of more than 350 team members, including four of my sons. 

Today, our Brewer family of companies consists of Brewer Enterprises – residential new construction, building over 7,000 houses in 2020, Brewer Commercial Services – providing new build and services to the commercial marketplace, and Benjamin Franklin Plumbing – ‘on-time’ residential service and repair to homeowners.  

As our organization grew, we discovered that the number one challenge facing our company was building and maintaining the labor force necessary to support our current operations, and growing our businesses by identifying qualified tradespeople capable of producing the quality labor required to fulfill our needs. Unfortunately, with a fixed number of trained plumbers in Arizona, one company’s gain in headcount meant another company’s loss. That meant that recruiting had become a zero-sum game without expanding the talent pool for individual employers and our industry as a whole.  

With an emphasis on positioning my business for the next generation of our family and maintaining the high level of quality and service that Brewer customers have come to know, my team and I began developing a plan to increase relevancy and elevate the concept of construction trade workforce development throughout Arizona. That meant a new emphasis on public relations and substantive relationship development beyond our traditional trade partners and industry leaders. I began engaging with state legislative leadership and helping them understand our industry needs and the negative impact that the construction trade shortage was having on both homebuilding and commercial contracting from a bottleneck perspective.   

One of our greatest long-term wins was connecting with the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, Arizona’s largest Chamber, and developing an industry-led, multi-year marketing campaign to promote the construction trades. This partnership culminated with the launch of Build Your Future Arizona (www.BYFAZ.org), an industry-funded and led, multi-million-dollar marketing campaign to educate and attract young people to the trades. 

As the founder and President of the Brewer organization, I was focused on external relationships and strategic partnerships with industry colleagues and C-suite leadership from national homebuilding organizations. I tasked my leadership team with developing a plan to train technicians in a completely new way and develop our own “Brewer” pipeline for the future. From this challenge, our company funded a first-of-its-kind program that we named the Brewer Craftsman Academy. Graduates of our academy receive a fast-track education training program, earn $40,000-$50,000 upon graduation, and by year three are positioned to earn between $70,000-$100,000 annually—without a nickel of debt. Our company’s most productive plumber made more than $120,000 last year, yet throughout the community, many young people don’t know a career in the construction trades even exists. Hence, the importance of developing both internal and external programs to create awareness, drive relevancy and build a whole new generation of young people interested in pursuing careers in the trades. 

At Brewer Companies, we have knocked the socks off of traditional post-high school education with a program that allows team members to get paid to learn and positioned to earn, instead of just racking up mountains of debt today for a potential job in the future. 

The Brewer Craftsman Academy course runs 24 weeks and has trained over 140 men and women since its inception. In August, we kicked off our fifth cohort —with a class half the size of normal because of COVID spacing requirements in classrooms. While initially, we had to work especially hard to generate enough interest to fill our first class of students, today, each new class has seen more than 100 applicants who are committed to securing a seat in this one of a kind program. Retention rates for students have increased as our Brewer leadership team has fine-tuned recruitment, selection, and program requirements – our latest class achieving a retention rate of over 74%. 

We’ve dubbed our Brewer Craftsman Academy a ‘fast-track’ course, because unlike the traditional four-year apprenticeship program, our cadets spend 40 hours a week learning inside the classroom, as well as training with hands-on instruction, working on real projects, in the field as a group. It’s not the traditional “nights and weekends after a hard day in the field” training program, but rather a student-focused, skill-set developing program designed to ensure that trainees are prepared to hit-the-ground running. We make the investment to have their complete attention because, by training in this new method, we can get them up to speed in a relatively short time frame. The Brewer Craftsman Academy model is very attractive to the thinking of young people today who are focused on outcomes. We allow them to graduate with a career in hand instead of just thousands of dollars in debt or the uncertainty that the traditional four-year training program provides.  

Upon graduation, our plumbing apprentices work on Brewer Enterprises’ residential job sites in two-person teams with a mentor coach to make sure they are successful. Despite their training being paid for entirely by the company, graduating academy class members don’t have to work for a Brewer division. We’d like them to stay and grow with us and build our future workforce, inside our culture, but that is their choice.

We believe that our company is a better fit for the next generation of plumbers than union apprenticeship programs or for-profit colleges because we have shown that substantially more time is spent in classes during our 24-week academy, and 18 weeks of mentorship than an apprentice will get in years of taking night classes in a union shop or graduating from a for-profit training program. 

In addition to funding the program internally, as the founder and CEO of Brewer Companies, I invest a significant amount of time mentoring and guiding our Academy students in the first week of classes by sharing my personal story about starting out as a plumber in the field. My own work experience as a teenager, scooping horse manure, and throwing newspapers on a delivery route before becoming an apprentice plumber, helped set the tone for the entire Brewer Craftsman Academy program and I believe, help serve as inspiration for the young men and women who are about to embark on their new career adventure. 

In the last week of classes, I have the opportunity to return for a general discussion with the trainees, and give them practical tips about how to succeed in the trades. With topics ranging from cell phone use and to leave it in the truck, to managing their earnings, these young people are about to earn ‘real’ money, while the majority do not have a background in managing finances. As their employer and as new members of the Brewer family, we have a responsibility to position them for success.

Our Brewer Craftsman Academy has been so successful with the new residential programs that our company is now designing a new curriculum to train service technicians for our Benjamin Franklin Plumbing franchise business. The challenges faced in the service and repair technician side are just as daunting, if not more so than the new build. The retail side of our business requires an entirely different personality, and the special skill set of communicating with customers when they invite us into their home for service.

Developing the workforce of the future is not going to be easy, but with innovative thinking and creative approaches to attracting young talent into the trades with accessible programs that allow new entrants to learn, grow, and secure employment immediately, we are confident that our investments will continue to generate a high return. That’s why at Brewer Companies, we are committed to continuing to invest in the future of our industry by developing and funding training programs while cultivating a willing audience for the future.

About the Author

To learn more, or connect on developing your company’s program, feel free to reach out to mike.brewer@brewercompanies.com. 

Mike Brewer is the founder and CEO of the Brewer Companies, Arizona’s largest plumbing company. He currently serves as President of the American Subcontractors Association of Arizona, chairs the steering committee for Build Your Future Arizona, and has collaborated with Maricopa Community College System in developing a new three-pronged construction trades training program for Carpentry, Electrical, and Plumbing. Brewer is also a tenured member of the Entrepreneurs Organization – Arizona Chapter.