Episode Overview
A stage four cancer diagnosis. A family plumbing business with no succession plan. A COVID breakdown that nearly cracked a marriage wide open.
Nate Agentis inherited all three before he turned 35.
His grandfather started the family plumbing business, then lost it after falling behind on taxes. His father, just 19 at the time, threw his tools in the back of a pickup truck and rebuilt from scratch. Nate grew up sweeping the floors of that same business.
In 2012, his mother was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. There was no plan for who would run the company.
Agentis stepped in. Employees who'd known him as a kid now had to take orders from him.
The business grew anyway — from $4 million to $14 million — after he brought in a corporate outsider to build real departments and real KPIs.
Then COVID hit, and the growth stopped mattering.
"Burnout is the secret slow decay that catches you."
Working from his bedroom, fighting technicians over masks and customers over sewage backups, Agentis started unraveling questions he'd never asked himself — about faith, about family, about whether he even wanted the business anymore.
He found a counselor who thought nothing like him, on purpose. He wrote his wife a ten-page letter. He built a "balance wheel" exercise that scores life across finance, health, marriage, and friendships — and nobody, he says, ever comes out with a round wheel.
"You will burn out long before you ever get to that spot."
He sold the company at the end of 2024. Now, as VP of Plumbing at BDR, he coaches other owners through the same reckoning.
"A healthy owner is the first step, because when the owner is healthy, when the owner cares about the harmony of life, when the owner cares about the legacy of his life, then that overflows into the culture of the business."
Nate Agentis recently joined Jackie Aubel on the "Toolbox for the Trades" podcast to discuss:
[2:49] Why the grind mentality ultimately leads to burnout and regret
[13:09] How bringing in a corporate outsider helped Nate 3X his family business
[21:59] Leaning on others to help alleviate the pressures of business ownership
[29:07] Why a healthy work culture starts with a healthy owner
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
To hear more stories from the trades, subscribe to Toolbox for the Trades on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or here.
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