Why would a busy company owner choose to become involved in an industry organization? After all, it would only mean being busier. Turns out, it isn’t a masochistic impulse. 

Eleven years ago, Mike Prencavage Jr. took over the family business started by his father in 1990, The Family Plumber. The Los Alamitos, California-based company was a small operation when Mike Jr. assumed leadership of it and he quickly began to scale it into more of a regional service company.

The company owner simultaneously became involved in the local chapter of the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association. He held several PHCC board positions before becoming president three years ago.

Why take on the extra time commitment?

“I got involved so I could be in the know,” he says.

As holder of a business management degree and being up to his elbows in plumbing since his teen years, one might ask, what more was there to know?

Answer: The knowledge that comes from networking with other local contractors and developing business relationships.

“I get to meet and understand guys who have been there and done that. Interacting with them teaches me how not to make the same mistakes they did,” Mike Jr. says.

Obviously, the learning flows both ways. 

During his tenure, organization membership has grown more than 150%. Seventy-five local contractors are members now and 35 affiliate members. In other words, PHCC benefited from Mike Jr.’s leadership, which is why at the end of the standard two-year term of office, the organization’s board and bylaws committee voted to extend his term an extra year.

Mike Jr. also serves the national PHCC organization as a member of the business development committee.

“I want to stay as heavily involved as I can,” he says.

Read more about The Family Plumber in the February 2024 issue of Cleaner magazine.