A CEO Leads Her Company Out of the Yellow Pages

Morgan Miller Plumbing used to advertise the same way as other plumbing companies: in the Yellow Pages. Each year, the ads got more expensive and less effective. “At one point, it seemed like the Yellow Pages were going to bankrupt us instead of helping us,” recalls former CEO Stella Crewse. The company pivoted to digital marketing and increasingly found its voice — and more business — online.

“Digital marketing and advertising saved us tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of labor, and now our business grows 10% annually as advertising costs decrease,” Crewse says.

Before COVID, the Morgan Miller team was already using Google Workspace products to share documents and stay organized, and crews were sharing live videos to consult with each other while at job sites. 

While the pandemic’s onset was frightening at first, she says, it quickly evolved into an opportunity to make the business even better, because more employees had to adopt more digital tools. “The pandemic experience has given us the confidence that we will be able to continue operations seamlessly no matter what comes our way,” Stella says.

She’s worried that unwanted regulations on digital companies like Google and Facebook will jeopardize the low-cost digital tools that her team relies on. “With so many positives from digital innovation and online platforms, it’s hard to understand why politicians are attacking the big tech companies that make it happen. These digital platforms are empowering our small business and many others,” Crewse says. “That should be celebrated — not attacked.”