I met Ben Levine at the MJU (Montreal Jewish Unity) Expo in Canada this past week. As the fourth generation in the family business, Ben now heads Levine Bros. Plumbing, a large plumbing company servicing both residential and commercial clients.
At the expo, I spoke with Ben for only a few minutes, but I was intrigued to learn more. Ben’s ideas for empowering his employees are innovative, and his vision of customer service is different from the norm. He runs his company with the mindset that the goal is not simply to resolve the client’s existing problem but to educate them to avoid such problems in the future.
Levine Bros. Plumbing is a full-service company: If it involves water, gas or heating, they do it. That means they provide everything from repairs to renovations and from hot water systems to home winterization.
We spoke about how he modernized a century-old family business, his unique approach to customer service and more. The lessons in honesty and customer service you can learn are applicable to any business.
Enjoy!
—Nesanel

I was born in Côte-Saint-Luc, the youngest of three with two older sisters. I went to Jewish People and Peretz School (JPPS) and Bialik School, so I have a little bit of Yiddish education in my background.
“Before and after the Second World War, many Jewish immigrants settled in Montreal. They spoke Yiddish to each other and started the Peretz School for their children. It’s based more on the culture and holidays of the Jewish people than on observance. It’s strongly Zionist—the mentality that built the moshavim and kibbutzim. The Bialik School had a similar philosophy. They taught Yiddish culture, but I’ve lost most of it except for certain expressions. I’m still the one who asks the Fir Kashes in Yiddish on Pesach. Today I’m shomer Shabbos, and I eat only kosher meat.
“I am a third-generation Montrealer; three out of my four grandparents were born here. That’s a huge anomaly in the Montreal Jewish community. My family is originally from Ukraine.
“The family plumbing business dates back four generations to my great-grandfather Isaac. It was a father-and-son team. My great-grandfather was originally a blacksmith, and he made the metal rims around the wooden tires of cars. When car manufacturers switched to using rubber tires, he lost his job, so together with his son Arthur, who was a construction plumber, he started this company. That was in 1922, 104 years ago. Then my grandfather, Jack—Arthur’s younger brother, by 17 years—joined them in the late ’20s.
“My father, Elliot, studied engineering in school and then became a master plumber. He joined the business in 1970. The following year, my uncle, Neal, graduated from business school and joined the company. Now, my brother-in-law and I are the fourth generation to be involved.
“My father and his brother had a great relationship. Their strengths were complementary. My uncle retired ten years ago. My father is no longer involved in the business, but he is still active; he was at the booth this morning.
“I’ve been coming to the office since I was ten, whether it was during spring break, between school and summer camp, a week here, a week there. We had an ice storm in Montreal in 1998, when I was in grade 11. Everything was shut down for about two weeks, so I worked on a truck as an apprentice, going into people’s homes and helping the plumbers. Winter break was six weeks long, so I’d work for six weeks. Also, we have junior college here, CEGEP, which has a longer summer break, so while my friends were going on vacation, I was working.
“I wasn’t entrepreneurial as a teenager. My free time was spent in the office or playing hockey. Originally, I wanted to become a physiotherapist, because I always got hurt playing sports and I like to help people, and I felt the two went together. But once I took a business class, my life was illuminated by the concept of business. Everything made sense. It was common sense, on a much higher level. That was when I started to take everything that I was learning—all the case studies, all the assignments—and try to apply it to Levine Bros. Plumbing. My mindset from the time I began studying business wasn’t, ‘What else can I do on the side?’; it was, ‘How can I improve our family business?’
“I joined the company right after I graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce in Economics, a month before I turned 23. I started from the bottom up. My first role was to fill in for the dispatcher, who was on vacation. That was the first two weeks. Next, I was in the warehouse, sweeping and putting stock away and helping wherever I could. Then I got my apprenticeship cards, so I became an apprentice on a job site until our warehouse manager—the guy who ordered the stock and organized it—had a heart attack. I filled in for him for about three months. During that time, my brother-in-law, Jacob Bratin, and I reorganized the entire warehouse. I made a lot of connections in the supply industry side and started learning about pricing.
“From there, I moved on to service and operations. At one point, I was the service manager. But I didn’t feel I had enough of a base in actual plumbing work for what I wanted to accomplish and where I wanted to take the business. I told my father that before I could lead a team of plumbers, I needed to get back onto the road and learn some more. He agreed, and I returned to working on the trucks as an apprentice. I made sure to work with each one of the plumbers on each team. I was able to do that because the service department still saw me as their manager. At the end of every workday, I’d come back to the office and go over the calls for the next day with them. I would schedule myself either on the same job or a new job with a new plumber I hadn’t yet worked with.
“Our company focuses on both residential and commercial plumbing, so I learned all aspects of the job. I put in the work: I did all of the hard jobs, all the heavy jobs, the dirty jobs, the overnight jobs. I put myself through the wringer because I wanted to earn our workers’ respect, to show that I didn’t feel entitled just because my last name is Levine, but that I was there as an apprentice to learn from them. I felt that it was very important for them to get to know me, to know how I work and how committed I am.
“When one of our project managers was considering retirement, I was brought in as a project manager to learn from him. He trained me for three years before he actually retired. By then I was 28 and had been married for a year. My first daughter was born then.