Coming into Your Own in a Family Business | Podcast Ep. 71 | Toolbox for the Trades

Rob Birney, president of Thomas R. Bernie and Sons. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

I am very happy for you to be here as well. You are one of our very adored and lovely Canadian customers here at Service Titan. I know. Do you like how I was searching for that adjective to describe you? I adore you.

Yeah. That was great.

Tell me, tell us, how did you get into the trades?

So we are a family business, so I was literally born into the trades. Quite literally, I think. You know, the first thing they put me in was a. Was a onesie with our company logo on it. So to be quite honest with you, it was just something I did. Like, we just, you know, evenings, weekends, days, like, you know, I had my uncle work, my grandfather, my great grandfather. It's just stuff we did. So, you know, it was just a natural progression to kind of keep following.

Got it. So you grew up in the office, on trucks, visiting jobs, all that kind of stuff.

Mostly on trucks. You know, I go with my dad. He'd get called out at night, of course. You know, I was in school during the day, so if he was on call at nighttime, he got a call. We asked her, you know, to go clean or whatever. Off we went together. I pushed down the handle of the machine. He did the work, and that's how we did it. So, you know, anything that he loved to take me with him. My brother, not so much. My brother does something completely different. But for me, I enjoyed doing it. So that's how I got into it.

Nice. And at what age did you stop just pressing the button and you started actually getting your hands dirty?

I'm going to say probably 16 is when, like, they allowed me to actually do something. Prior to that, I wanted to do it. They were always beating me away. Don't, don't, don't. Because I was kind of probably the annoying guy on the site. I just wanted to do whatever I could. But, yeah, 16, 17. Get your driver's license. Okay, off you go. You know, let's put what you learn into action. So.

That's awesome. Very cool. So why don't you tell us a little bit about Thomas R. Bernie and Sons. What kind of business do you guys do? How many techs and locations do you have?

Sure. We are located in Hamilton, Ontario, which is just about 45 minutes away from Niagara Falls. So we've got, you know, that's part of our service area, actually, and we have about 15 guys that does that. Do our services, which is include sewer drain cleaning, plumbing. We do Excavations, liners, sewer bursting, pretty much, if it's underground or have anything to do with plumbing, we do it. We don't do remodeling, but we do pretty much everything else. The business was started by my great grandfather. The earliest I can find is 1922. In the earliest permit I have from the city of Hamilton is February of 1922. So we're coming up on 100 years. It's really cool. I've got a permit that is signed by him. I also have a permit that's signed by my great great grandfather. So William Burning. And so we have William and John. And then my grandfather was Thomas. He put it into his name in 1946. My uncle came in in 68. My dad came in in 71, I believe. I started coming in kind of part time in 94, 95, and then I came in full time in 97, and it's been going ever since. So had a lot of time in the. In the stinky business.

When you came in full time in 97, were you coming in as a field tech and worked your way up to president? How did that career progression look like for you?

Yeah, so actually, surprisingly, first when I came in, they wanted me to do some marketing. I had done weekends and I'd done evening stuff, but for whatever reason, they wanted me to do some marketing. And so I reached out. We were just getting into this lining bit, and they wanted me to reach out to other plumbers, to let other plumbers know we were doing lining because it was brand new. And so I reached out to plumbers, but they also had me reach out to, like, restaurants, hair salons, all these different places that have constant backups to let them know that we could help them. And so that's actually what I ended up coming into doing for the first six months and trying to get, you know, raise awareness about what we do. And it went really, really great. And then just after that, we started the progression into going into excavations. First water lines, weeping piles, sewer repairs, you know, in the hole, making sure that I understood that aspect of the business. Then the progression to service plumbing and sewer and drain cleaning. Then from there it went to, you know, doing the sales aspect, estimating. Then they had me do some accounting. They brought me through the whole way. So I have. I am a plumber. You know, I don't have an mba. I don't have a, you know, a degree in business, but they brought me through every progression of the company just so I could kind of get a handle on either. Either get a handle on what was going on or annoy everybody who sat in that position. One of the two. So.

Yeah, well, I don't think you need an MBA to run a plumbing business at all. I actually am of the maybe more controversial mindset that you don't need an MBA at all in business. There's actually a book I recommend all the time called the Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman, which really goes on to all the areas of business that you learned through an mba. But I love that model that your family took you through, which was let's put him in every position for six months a year, make sure he knows it because it sounds like your dad really much had the vision that you were going to inherit the business. Is that right?

Yeah, I think there was always a question. He kept me like, if you had asked me in 97, I would have want to run the business then. And he and I used to have these, we would butt heads over that kind of stuff. And, and I remember him telling me, you know, Rob, if I gave you the business now, I'd have nobody working for me. And we had, you know, we had. Because I was, you know, quite driven and so, so, you know, he's like, you need to learn this stuff. So, yeah, he, and he had the foresight to be able to say, listen, you need like, I'm like, why do I need to become a plumber? Like I want to. And he's like, no, he's like, if you're going to do this, this is a part of what you need to do. And so I did, I did the five year apprenticeship program here in Ontario and became. And I'm so glad I did, you know, I'm so glad they had the wisdom to say, okay, you need to do a little bit of this, you need to do a little bit of that. They always knew that wherever they put me, I was going to try and do it as best as I could or learn as much as I could about it. But it was really nice to be able to navigate my way through. So I kind of, I'm able to talk to people like I sat in a CSR role. They had me doing csr. I, the, you know, the lady who taught me accounting, still with us, you know, she started in 95 and she's still here today. And so we have a great relationship. And I understand kind of the struggle, the struggles, the guys. I know, I know I've been a service tech. I get it, I understand. And so it was really good. It was very helpful at the time. You're like, why can't I just go from here to here? But you really do need that progression to have a good understanding of what's going on. At least I did.

I agree with you because I think also if you're able to sit in all those roles, you're able to see how things connect to one another and maybe communicate the why behind, hey, this is why this needs to get done. We need to be able to fill out forms this way. So this way accounting has this information and things can move smoothly. It kind of gives you really an idea of what, what are the challenges each of these roles have and why do we have to keep doing them even though they may seem tedious or whatever. I think it just would give you a really great bird's eye view of like how the business looks at like a 30,000 foot view, like how everything is connected.

It's true. And you do. And the other thing you can see is, you know, when we get into our jobs, right, we're not by nature, there's not a lot of people as a whole that continue to like grow and learn new things. Like we get into our jobs, we get into the way of doing things. So not only can you see it from a 30,000 foot view to see how it's all connected. And that's really important for me because I'm, I'm a linear Learner. I like 1 to 10. I don't like, you know, 1, 10, 3. I don't like that. So I needed to see it, how it connected from beginning to end. But the other thing it allowed me to do is the things that I started, that I did learn in school, the things that I, you know, as it related to computers, you know, like we were paper and pencil. My grandfather started a computer system in 1984 just to collect data on job addresses that we did. But we were paper and pencil right up to 2006 when it came to our dispatching. So, you know, it allowed not only me to be able to see how the process worked, but it also allowed me to see, okay, how can we best implement systems and newer technology for internal situations that will make us more efficient and make people's lives hopefully a lot easier. And that, to be honest with you, was a huge thing to be able to do that and see and know, hey, you know what, we can try this and make it work.

I just had a thought that you really, having been growing up in this business, being part of 100-year-old business, you really have seen the impact technology has had in the trades in just the last couple of decades.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. My dad got his first camera, sewer camera. It was a cue Sewer camera in 1993. And he was so excited and he'd bring it in and we'd put. And we'd watch these videos at supper and it was really kind of gross, to be quite honest with you. You know, like, we got our first camera, we got our first jetter in 93, our first locator. My grandfather, my grandfather passed in 2000, but he was able to see the locating ability. And he'd call us lazy. My grandfather used to witch. So he'd get a, you know, he'd get a stick and he'd walk over where the water was. But, you know, I have a locator that tells me how far out, how deep down where it is. You know, he just look at me go, you're lazy. And, you know, he was the first one to bring the electric sewer machine into Hamilton. There was no electric sewer machine. So we've seen the progression of the trade, you know, from this, you know, just one electric sewer machine to, you know, all the different things that we've been able to do. And not just in the field, but also like as it relates with service titan and man. Like, so now I'll tell you that my dad says sometimes it was just easier with a piece of paper and you write down the name of the address and you know, like, he's 68, right? So he's like, ah, Rob. But yeah, like all the things that are at our fingertips now, it's been. I love the generation that I've been able to grow up in. I love being able to connect. You know, at one time in our business I had somebody here who was, you know, from 1946. That's when they were born. I also had somebody born in 1999. We had this amazing generational gap that we've been able to connect. I had to connect, you know, the guys who have been here from the 80s and 90s. And I had to connect the new people coming in and we had to bridge this gap of, you know, hey, these people love technology and these people hate technology, but these people have amazing customer service skills and these people need to, you know, we need to. So it's been, it's been challenging, but it's been a blessing. It's been great. It's been really good.

That's so awesome. So speaking of systems, right, I imagine inheriting 100-year-old business comes with inheriting A lot of old, outdated systems and processes. So tell me about the changes you wanted to make when you took over the company and how did you go about making them?

Yes, you are true. You are. Yeah. My dad and my uncle, they had the foresight to reach out to Frank Lau in like 1991ish. And we got involved with contractors 2000. So as it relates to delivering customer service, I really felt that we did a pretty fantastic job. Those were some of the areas that we were really strong at, some of the areas that we were weaker at. Of course, like I said, you know, 2006 were still paper and pencil. There were some things we needed to enhance. And, you know, I say enhanced because, you know, improvement may indicate there's something wrong. There's not necessarily something wrong. It's just a way to get better. I think every generation looks to see, you know, how can I add an enhancement to this? How can I? You know, we want to keep the foundation of great reputation and quality work. And, you know, we stand behind what we do. And I think we've done that really great. I think we've continued that. But, yeah, we needed to enhance some of the processes that we had. And like I said, you know, technology as it relates to service. Titan, you're now, I brought in. I brought in blackberries. Crying out loud. Like, you know, our team was just getting used to cell phones and I'm like, okay, now we're going to do BlackBerries. And people are like, yeah, no, I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's gonna be great. And so we did that. Provincial regulations, it's kind of like state regulations. Nobody from the province comes in and tells you all the areas where you're going wrong unless you invite them. And nobody invites them to do that. So I got in and I started looking at things. I was like, oh, man, we are like, we're like a decade behind here in some of the areas that we need to fix. And so we needed to do that. And, you know, with anything change, change is inevitable, except from a vending machine, so. And it's difficult. You know, it's intensely personal. So there were challenges, to say the least. But we made it through. We're continuing. And I'm very happy with the way things went along, for sure.

Awesome. By the way, thank you for unlocking the BlackBerry memory for me. BBM and brick breaker, my friend. Oh, my go. So fun.

Oh, my goodness, that's just fantastic.

Also, when you say the provincial regulations, are you talking more about hr, more workers? Comp that kind of stuff.

Yeah, we were always really good with workers comp. Workers comp. Was very. They worked with us, but HR basically knowing and understanding all the laws, that was huge. That, that really probably was my biggest surprise of taking over the organization and just kind of, you know, looking at what we needed to do and to be in compliance. That was a big game changer. A lot of our. A lot of our direction came out of. Out of nexstar and they have some great direction. However, in Canada, we're completely, you know, we're not employers at will. Okay. Everything is contractual with us. So these are things that we did not know. And there's two types of laws. There's, you know, ESA law and common law, and there are two different laws in our province. So it was an interesting time, to say the least. I learned a lot. I learned. I wish I had learned a little earlier, but hey, it's all good. And we slowly. And just some changes I made too quickly, I think, you know, But I learned, you know, I learned. I again, I thought the process would be straight and it wasn't like it. It's been all over the map. It's zigzagged all over the place for me. So it was challenging, but we're there.

You mentioned before that you really like linear learning. I'm very much of the same mindset too. I much prefer to do a linear, nice, steady increase, you know, in challenges. But it's never like that in actual real world. Right. You're constantly zigzagging, going from like a small problem to a giant problem and pivoting and all that. Stu, I imagine that you got some resistance from some of these new initiatives that you were trying to implement when you first came into a leadership role. How did you overcome those resistances?

Yeah, so, yeah, I got a business coach. My business coach name was Jim Hamilton. Jim was great. He's been my coach for 10 years. And he basically told me, he says, rob, with all the changes that you're going to make that you need to make for this company to stay viable going into the future, he said, this is going to come with. He's like, it's going to come with resistance. And he says if you manage to make all these changes and you keep everybody employed, it's either a sheer miracle or a sign of your bad management. He's like, that's honestly where it's going to be. He's like, I just. Now you gotta. I'm like 29, turning 30. Okay. Like, I'm not. And so, and I'm the boss's son. So you put that on top. And the team that you're basically coming into as a leader, you haven't been their leader. They've kind of watched you from, you know, young all the way up. So now you're coming in at a situation, you're the boss's son, you want to make these changes. You, you know, you, you're not the guy who hired them. They're really, you know, they don't look to you as their team leader. Anything that I could get done, any role that I got put into that I could do myself, that was really like, I could do it. Like, you know, give me anything, I'll just do it. What I learned was trying to lead a team of people that necessarily don't necessarily want to be led by you, that's really challenging. Like trying to get things done through others. Thing is, you can't get anything done by like, you need everybody. You need everybody. I didn't always have that mindset. My mindset is like, well, I can get it done. Like anything they gave me, I'll do. So. Yeah, that was really challenging. And we had some people that were like, no, this isn't for me. I'm out of here. And then we have people who stuck it out and they're still with us. Like I mentioned Susan, we've got Chad, we've got Robert, we have Jeff. Like, they stuck it out for a long time with us. So I'm really grateful and thankful to those who kind of said, hey, yeah, I'll come along with you. And those who didn't, I understand. I get was just, it's a different system. I'm a different person. I'm totally different than my dad and my uncle. My personality is a little different. And so it was a real culture shock for everyone. I think it was. I don't know how you make a transition from that without it being some form of shake up, to be quite honest with you. But it went, we're still going. And I learned a lot. And I learned some things I would do again, some things I would do differently. But I'm grateful for the journey for sure. Totally.

I mean, 29 to 30, that's a little bit. It's like a year or two younger than I am now. But I can't imagine coming into that role still very young. And I'm the boss's son and I'm taking this over and I've got some really great ideas. Let's get this done. Yeah, it's like, I think your coach was great in just prepping you for, like, hey, there's going to be some real rocky roads ahead. If you keep everyone, it's going to be a miracle. And I think the longer I'm in my career, the longer I realize, yeah, with change comes people leaving, people coming, going, all of that stuff. But it's still hard. Still really hard. And there's really no easy hack or trick to get over that discomfort.

There's not. You always question yourself when people leave. Did I do the right thing? The other challenge, too, is that my personality, my makeup of personality is more of a. It's metric driven. I've always been metric driven. And so you top that, you know, and I'm an instruction. Like, I'm a guy who reads instructions. Okay. I do. If something comes with an instruction, I'll pull it out. I'll read every step of the way. I will put things together.

You probably ask for directions, too.

I do, yeah. Yeah. Because. And I know I've talked to you a little bit before about the color code. I'm a red. I want to get from A to B in the most efficient, effective way possible. So there's no sense of me driving around trying to look for directions when I can ask somebody way smarter than me to, you know. And I'm a literalist. So Jim. Jim would say to me, okay, what I'm about to tell you, I don't want you to take, like, literal verbatim, you know, because I know you will. I'm talking about a more broad, you know, aspect. Just think about this. So honestly, you know, when I came in with that mindset, like, I can do this. I can get from A to B. I can. You know, that also had a negative effect. Jim set me up great. He let me know that, you know, he let me know what was going to happen. He even kind of was able to help me on who more than likely would probably not be a long term with us. But you do. You look at it and you go, man, am I making the right decision? Like, I don't know. I don't know if I'm making the right decision. And so I would go to my dad and my uncle, and they would support me, and they would say no. They would say, this is. You know, they were. One of the things that we established early on is I said, you know, right now, the team members come to you guys, and you guys kind of solved the issue. And if this is a leadership change, you are, you know, intent on making and committed to. I really would like you to have them come to me so that I can listen and I can learn, I can make my mistakes and the whole bit. And I would like to talk to you guys independently, and if you have an issue, come talk to me and we'll, you know, I'll listen. And, you know, it didn't happen a lot. It did happen from time to time, and I was very grateful for their support to say, no, Rob's taking this on, and go talk with him. And that's what we did. So. But, yeah, you start to question yourself. And I'm so glad and grateful that they didn't just leave. They were still here, and I was able to go. And I was going to say, okay, this is what's happening. What do you think? Am I doing this right? Am I not doing this right? What would you do differently? Or, hey, I'm doing this. Hold your breath, because here we go. We're going for a ride.

I'm so glad you brought that up, because I think that's the case in a lot of family dynamics within businesses like this is that the older generation usually stays on to some capacity. But having you set that boundary and set that expectation with your father and your uncle, who are passing leadership along to you and saying, hey, please, I know the guys are still coming to you with this stuff, but please direct them to me. If you want this leadership change to happen, they need to see it modeled by you. And it's so important. I want to pivot our conversation a bit to all of the tools that you use to grow into the leadership role you're in now, because you mentioned a bunch when we first spoke, and one of them was the color code, and you were red. So we've talked about personality tests before on this podcast. A lot of the folks that I interview really recommend them. Can you just tell us a little bit about the color code and how that works and if you gave it to your whole team? And is this an interesting, colorful shorthand you use internally now? What does that look like?

Sure. Yeah, we. So I saw the color code when I went to nextar. I went to a meeting up there, and I didn't understand what it was. Everybody had these circles, these colors around their heads, and I was like, okay. So, yeah, I did it. I came home and it was a. It was a really meaningful meeting as well. And I came home and I did the color code. It wasn't part of the meeting. It was just something I was like, hey, I'd like to Figure this out. Out. So I did it and I. I'm actually a Red purist, which is kind of crazy. I read it and I gave it to my wife and I said, honey, is this, you know, is this me? Like, my, my wife and I, we've been together coming up. We've been married 20 years. We've been together coming up 27 years. And so she knows me better than anybody. And I was like, hey, you know, is this me? And she's like, oh, yeah, it's totally you. So I took it to our team. The biggest, you know, some people who I really trust in our organization, some long term employees, I took it to them and I said, is this me? And they said, yeah, yeah, it is you. And it took a lot because as a red, you don't want to be. You don't want to show vulnerability. Okay? You want to hold your insecurities tightly. And so. But the biggest challenge that I had been having throughout my business ownership tenure is relating with people. So I decided I'm going to. I wanted to know a lot about it. So I want to become a facilitator of the color code. So I'm like, okay, let's go figure this out. So I got in touch with them. Dr. Taylor Hartman is the gentleman who designed it. And it's about your motivations. It's not your behavior. Behavior is like a filter. You can learn behavior, but it's about your motivations, why you do what you do. Not just the behavior you learn, but why is it that you operate so. Red is they're motivated by power, or potter, which is basically a Spanish word, to move things from A to B in the most efficient, effective way possible. That is who I am. Their qualities are vision and leadership. Blue is intimacy, but not in the perverted way of intimacy that we might think of today. It's more like deep, meaningful relationships. And their qualities that they bring to the table are quality and service. Whites, they bring peace. That's their motivator. They want things peaceful. And their attributes are clarity and tolerance. And yellows are fun. My dad is a yellow and so is my daughter. And it's optimism and enthusiasm. And so because any color can do any job, we actually don't do the color code with our, with our prospective employees until we've hired them. We don't want any kind of biases on that. We do have everybody in the organization do it when they come in. We all have them on our offices and on our name tags and stuff like that. And we. And what I've learned is, first of all, I learned how people receive me. I would tell you, you know, or I would share with people that I'm being assertive. And they're like, no, you're being aggressive. And I'm like, okay, I get it. I understand some of the things when I get really, like, I'm task dominant. When I get really stressed, I don't understand that. But that's just who I am. And so what I learned as I learned how I appear to other people, and it really helped in my relationships with them. Not as an excuse to say, well, I'm red. You have to accept me. No, no, it helps me to understand. Okay, red, you know, Emily's white. I've got to make, you know, our interactions a little different. I'm red, and Charlie's blue, you know, so our connections are a lot different. And it really helped me with all of my relationships. And what I learned as well is typically the people who are in the service industry, like, actually out in the field, their blues and yellows. They're blues and yellows, and they have. And blues and yellows are emotion first, whereas red and whites go to logic first. So what I. My wife is a blue. White. Blue with white. I should say blue with white. And so the relationship between red and blue is blood, sweat, and tears. And if you can make it work, it's amazing. But we've had a lot of blood, sweat, and tears days. What I'm learning and growing and is, is that if I give her the opportunity to just get those emotions out and talk and let me know what's bugging her, then I earned the right to bring in a little bit more logic as opposed to just shutting it down with logic first. Which, heck, I wish I had known that 20 years ago, to be quite honest with you. But it really has improved our relationships with our team, and it's just been great. So with me, red purist, I'm almost 70% red with my disc. I'm a CD, so people can kind of figure that out. I've got a. You know, when I first took over the business, I was a D. And, you know, most people would tell you that stands for dick.

I'm also like 98% D. So, yeah, I've heard that. I made that joke about myself. Haven't done the color code yet, but that all sounds really interesting. Interesting.

Yeah. So it. It's just, like I said, it's. It's. My. My dad was a yellow with red. My uncle Roy is a white and Reds and whites are complementary opposites, and so that's why I think they work so well together as a team. They were brothers, they grew up in the same household, but they also had contrasting abilities that really brought an amazing combination to our team. So it's been fun.

That's really cool. I wonder if, as you're raised as siblings, if you develop the. If you naturally develop the traits that your other sibling does not have, or you automatically complement it. This is not a psychology podcast, but just a question, an interesting question, kind of going back to what you were learning as you were coming into this leadership role. You mentioned that you're a big fan of Simon Sinek, particularly his take on profitability and people. And it sounds like as you were first coming in at 30, making these changes, you were really starting to see the impact people have on the business. And can you just tell me how Simon Sinek's talk really kind of brought that home to you?

Yeah. So first, how do I. Okay, so when I first came in, I was about instructions and metrics. That's. That's where it was. You know, follow these sets of rules, follow this set of process. You will be. You will be great. There's just a really, really big, big part that's missing, and the people need to buy in. And so for the first part of the tenure, it was like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. If we just do this, this, this, this, this. I mean, I don't understand why nobody gets this. It's really, really simple, like, do this, and it's. Everything's great. It wasn't until later on in the ownership, I had to go through a lot of different scenarios that. That kind of broke that ego down. And, you know, you had to get to the point where you're like, okay, I just. You know, I've tried different things. It's just not working. I've got a. There's some. I gotta do something else. So it all kind of culminated around the same time. Simon Sinek going to this next. Our meeting, the color code, it all just kind of started converging all at once. I was in a time in my life where I was just like, okay, is this, you know, like, it's been such a challenge? And not only that, there was. There was other factors that caused challenge in the business as well. But Simon has this beautiful video, and he talks about buying a car, and he says, you know, you're buying a vehicle, and the purpose of buying the vehicle is not to put fuel in it. The Purpose of buying the vehicle is so you can go experience things. And typically, most vehicles have space so you can bring people along. And like, when he gave this beautiful picture of, you know, hey, you can go experience, you know, the Rockies, you can experience the beaches, you can experience whatever, but it's beautiful. The reason you bought the vehicle is for the experience, not to put the fuel in it. You need the fuel. The fuel has to be there, but that's not the purpose of what you're doing. And at that moment, that was like a light bulb moment for me. And then he talked about the profitability of the organization, and he said, listen, if it comes to 50, 50, where you've got profitability, you got people, is I give one more percent to the people. You'll be amazed at what happens. And, you know, you put that together and you're like, yeah, my business is the vehicle. I didn't buy it to put the fuel in it. The fuel needs it to run. But what are we trying to do here? We're trying to, you know, we're trying to bring experiences. That's really what it is. So I was so glad that I was able to learn that. I was so glad that I was open to hearing it, But I did. And, you know, when Covid happened, you know, our first take was to connect with everybody. We didn't know it was going to happen. Nobody did. We all, you know, attacked it a little differently. And in our position, we met with everybody and we said, listen, we're gonna. We're gonna guarantee your wages for a certain period of time, because we don't know what's gonna happen. And, you know, we're gonna prioritize our people first, and then we're gonna prioritize anything. You know, we're prioritize our expenses to our. It was our government that was shutting us down. So we're like, okay, people, expenses, government, they come last. I might get in trouble for saying that, but that's exactly how I laid it up to our team. I'm like, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out, but we need to prioritize our people. And so we did. And we didn't lose anybody. We did not lose a single person through the pandemic. To the pandemic. You know, a couple people moved or whatever, moved out of the city completely. But, yeah, it was just. It was. It was that we needed. I needed to know that, and I would do that again in a heartbeat. You know, if it comes down to it, you know, I would Rather support one person and give that 1% to the people. Then, you know, I'll take, I'll take the loss. But I'm, like I said, I'm such an all or nothing person. It's like, you know, well, if you're not making profit, you know. No, you know, listen, you gotta, you gotta have a balance. And we're talking 1%. We're not talking 30, you know, we're talking 1% here, 1% there. It's just an incremental. But I want them to know that I care about them more than I care about, you know, the. Whatever, whatever happens, you know, we've gotta care for the people and make it work. And I think my dad and Melville did that great. My grandfather, he also did that very, very well. And I just want to carry on that tradition.

So you also mentioned when we first spoke that you went to a Keith Mercurio session at nexstar. And the big takeaway was that contribution trumps competition. And that's really the vibe that I'm getting from you. And I just, I think contribution Trump's competition is such a nice succinct way to describe this whole way that you're viewing leadership. And I just want, before we move on to another section, I just want to give you an option to respond to.

Yeah, that was a, that was a massive turning point. You know, it's called leadership mastery. And Keith is amazing. Poor guy had him out till like three in the morning on his first, the very first time I met him. So if he's listening, my apologies, But I know, I know it gave you great wisdom, Keith. They played a game and we didn't know the game was being played. We got a little clicker and, you know, you, they put a thing up on the wall and you clicked your answer and started playing this game. There's four colors, you know, I was the blue team and so, you know, they put a question up and you click your clicker and then they show the results and blue team wasn't winning. And, you know, we kept playing it and then they allowed us to play it in a table group and so on and so forth. And then he asked, he asked a question about. He said, you need to ask yourself three questions when you go home tonight. He says you need to ask. The first question is, what are the rules of the game? The second question is, what questions should I be asking about the game? Third question is, how is the way I'm playing the game reflective of the way I play it at home in My business. And I was getting angry with the game. I was getting angry with my teammates, to be honest, internally. So I went back to our hotel, my hotel room that night, and I was like, okay, what are the rules of the game? Like, I don't even know. I just started playing. Like, I picked up my clicker and I'm just like, I'm playing. I can't even tell you the rules. I don't know the rules. What questions should I be asking? Well, when I really thought about that, it took me to a scene in Tommy Boy when he's holding a box and he says, you know, like, I can take a dump in this box and market guarantee, but all you get is guaranteed piece of crap. So I'm thinking, well, what questions should I be asking about the game? Like, what am I going to win? Is it a guaranteed piece of crap? Like, I don't even know what I'm playing for. You know, I just started to play, and then, you know, how is the way I'm playing it reflective of the way that I'm playing it at home? Well, I was playing for me and only for me. I wasn't playing for anyone else. And so then that hit me like a ton of bricks. That was the changing point in a lot of things that I was doing here in our business. That took me out of my own selfishness and ego and said, hey, I'm playing for the wrong reasons. As the leader, you can't be playing for yourself. You have to come in and play for the others. You start out doing it for yourself, and that's the challenge. As, you know, as you're migrating through the different areas of the business and you're, you know, I know this and I know that, and I know, and I can do it all. And, you know, but as a leader, your role changes. You know, like Simon says. Simon said, it says, you know, usually they promote the best guy at who does the job, and now he's, you know, telling you how to do the job that he used to be the best at. They don't really provide him too much leadership training. And to be quite honest with you, for me, it was like one of those moments where it was like, man, I have to stop worrying about the metrics. You know, like, part of that. Another part of that meeting was you don't hear a coach yelling out, you know, on the baseball field, hey, you're at 20. You know, you're 22%. You know, conversion. We need you at 30%. You know, let's go get A hit. You don't coach the metrics. You coach the people, you coach the behavior. And you're not doing it for you. You're doing it to see them succeed. And like Maxwell says, if you can become a person of significance, success will never measure up after that. It doesn't matter how successful you are. If you can be significant to someone else, that's so fulfilling. And I want to thank Keith specifically for that lesson. I know he, you know, he has shared it with many, but that was just. That was a turning point for me. It was a turning point for how I was going to run this business. I came home and I was like, I met with guys, I had to get right with a couple of them, and it was a big thing. So it was. It was very impactful.

Yeah. Wow. I'm so happy. Thank you for sharing that. You honestly gave me, like, a bit of a knock upside the head myself. And I'm just a year or two older than when you were. Sounds like when you learned that lesson, so thank you for that. Yeah, I just want to, like, sit with that for a second. That was. That was like, you're not playing for the metric because I think also we have all of these tools at our fingertips that allow us to say conversion rate, average ticket, all of this stuff, you know, how many callbacks did you get? How many warranty calls? All this stuff. But the metrics only tell so much of, like, the metrics can only motivate so much. You know what I mean? Like, as humans are not number, like, we're not numbers, you know, like, we need something more than just up. You're down two months in a row, how are you going to bring that up? You know what I mean?

Mean, that is the key. And what tied it in so beautifully that week? And actually, unfortunately, I was older. I was almost 40 when I got there. But what tied it in so beautiful to me was my son wanted to learn how to play baseball. He, you know, he was only about 13 at the time. And that week, just before I went to that meeting, he asked me, he said, hey, dad, can you come out to the baseball diamond with me and pitch me some balls, you know, so I can learn how to hit? And it just happened, so happened that he used the, you know, the division of baseball and the game. And I did. And all week, all Sunday afternoon, I was pitching them balls, pitching them balls, pitching them balls. And I was, you know, I was coaching him on the behavior, not the metric. I was coaching him on the behavior to help him Be, you know, to succeed and be better. Because he hadn't hit a game yet. Like, he hadn't hit a ball in a game yet. And so he's, you know, I'm like, okay, bend your knees. You know, raise your elbow. Get the bat up. Don't lean it on your shoulder. Like, I'm coaching him on the different behaviors, not the metrics. See, metrics mean a lot to me. I love metrics. You're right. Service titan tells me every metric I want to know, crying out loud, I could get metrics coming out the wazoo. And it's great. Like, it's really great. But for someone who's driven like I am for metrics, I really would encourage to. Those need to come second. They are important, but they need to come second. And by the end of that Sunday afternoon, he was hitting balls, like, zinging them over my head. Like, this kid's a big kid at 13, and I'm throwing in balls, and, I mean, they're flying at my face, right? And I'm like, oh, man. And then I flew out to Minnesota to go to the meeting, and he had a baseball game, and he hit his first. I wasn't there. Unfortunately, I miss it. But he hit his first game and he called me. He's like, God, I got it. I got it up over second base. I got on base. I'm like, yeah, right, because the metric doesn't matter. You know, the fact that he did it and he got going that he, you know, and now he's just going to improve. He's just going to continue, you know, building on what he learned and improving. So when you. You're right. When you coach the metric, when you coach the number, you know, hey, you're down this much. Like, you know, what's your plan? You know, it's like, listen, what is. What are. What is the behaviors that are contributing to what's going on. Let's look at those things. But you can't do that. You can't do that unless you have a connection first. Connection comes first. Yeah. You know, and that's hard to learn. It's hard. It's hard for me. Connection has to come first. Then you can ask about the behaviors, but, you know, then you have to be open to what are the objections of that? Like, there are, you know, the first time you tell a bunch of texts to role play, you know, it's going to be crazy, right? You gotta, you know, hey, guys, I'd really like you to role play. Yeah, right. You know, you gotta. And you gotta model it. So. Yeah.

Wow. I just, I just want to say, Rob, this has been a really wonderful conversation. Just talking about coming to your own in a family business and all of the lessons that you learned. So I just want to pause right here and just say thank you for being so. You're red. You may not be vulnerable, but you were very vulnerable here. And I learned a lot. We're getting, we're losing time, which is like insane to me. But I want, so I want to keep this quick and snap, not quick and snappy, but I want to make sure that, you know, we're giving, we're giving the folks. I'm going to listen to something to digest. There's a bunch of other directions we could go. But I think where I want to end this is really talking about the family dynamics in the business. Because I know over the hundred years of the business being a business, you've had family members come in and out, leave, stay, all that stuff. And what would you like to share with our listeners, many of whom are in family businesses themselves, about what you've learned with family dynamics and how to kind of navigate that and some of that crunchiness that comes up with egos and wants and different opinions and all that kind of stuff?

Yeah. I am the second youngest grandchildren out of 12 grandchildren. The second youngest grandchild out of 12 grandchildren. My grandfather had four children. Each one of them had a child in the business. So there was four of us who are cousins. That's a big question. Because every family is a little bit, you know, they all have their own ways about them. We were blessed by being connected with a lawyer, like a transitional lawyer. My dad, my uncle sought out who was with an organization called cafe. It's for Canadian association of Family Enterprises and I believe that's the acronym. And so it's about, you know, how you transition a family business correctly. You know, we still didn't do it 100% right. I don't know if there is 100% right way to be quite honest with you. But I would say the biggest thing that you'd want to do is you definitely want to identify the roles and responsibilities. You want to be able to identify the founders values. So the values that dad and Uncle Roy and grandpa had, like we have a. We're very blessed to be able to have connection with my dad and my uncle who understood the values of my grandfather. Now they did not, unfortunately, unfortunately get to meet their grandfather. He passed away before they were born. But there's a value system. So what Are your values as a company? What are your values as a family? Because I think every family business has its own DNA, and I think that if you try to get out of that DNA, it tends to break down a little bit. So what are your values as your family? And then be really. As much as possible, try to be really specific about the roles that you're filling and who is filling what and who is responsible for what. If you don't do that and you've got a bunch of family coming in as ownership, you're just going to have fights. You really are going to have a lot of struggle. So try to set clear expectations of who's doing what and who's responsible for what. That is really important, you know, as it relates to having a conversation. My dad and my uncle and my cousin John and myself, we're kind of the four owners and we generally like, we'll meet once a quarter or whatever and just talk. They've been phenomenally good. They were good to me. They did not try to hamper me and handcuff me in any way. They didn't generally work against me. Me. There were some challenges, of course, you know, different. Different views of where we should go. But, you know, I remember coming to them and talking about not. Not doing on call anymore. You know, they're like, what are you talking about? You know, we always do on call. In fact, Grandpa ran from Monday till Saturday at 3, and then it was just on call for emergencies until Monday. And I'm like, yeah, but the business world is changing and we need to. We need to get with the program. So, you know, there are squabbles that you're going to have. There are, you know, they're not. Try not to make them personal. Try to make them more about business and what's going on in the business side of things. John and I have agreed that we. We're not going to. Don't take this the wrong way, but we're not going to work with our wives. We love our wives. We love them dearly, dearly. But if I work with my wife all day long and then I went home with it could. It could cause problems. So she's out. You know, like, I live about 30 minutes away from the office at 30, 40 minutes, and I need that separation. And it's nice. And so, you know, we communicate. Communication is important. If you don't communicate, then you start building factions against factions and it's not healthy. So keep communicating. Make sure everybody knows what their role is, where they. Where they fit within the organization, make sure that people have an accountability level to what they need to do. We didn't. There's some things we didn't do really well. And then understand that not everybody's going to work well together. Like, my cousin Roy was great. I love my cousin Roy. He's a smart guy. He came in in 91. You know, I'm the young whippersnapper. They say that, you know, there's the saying that, you know, a prophet can't be a prophet in his own country. And of course, you know, when you, when you come in as the young grandchild and you're like, hey, we're going to change everything that you're ever used to. That's big. Roy stuck it out with me for a long time, but we just didn't see eye to eye and that was cool. And he moved on and I wish him all the best in the world. There are going to people who don't, you know, mesh and gel. So it is going to happen. It's tough even in family because there's a tense, tenseness there. But. But at the end of the day, if you get those things set out and you get them documented and, and everybody kind of knows what they're responsible for, it just makes things a lot nicer, you know, I will. My desire is to do that, you know, like his decide to come in. I want to be able to identify their strengths and their limitations and guide them in a way, you know, that they can use their strengths. Like you said, right. The one child, you know, lives with the other child and they kind of adopt different strengths and weaknesses. That's totally true with my son Tyler and my daughter Kara. You know, my son Tyler, he's a great kid. He'll work hard and you know, but, you know, he doesn't have the same strengths as Kara does. Whereas Kara doesn't have some of the same strengths he does so putting understanding where they best fit. And if they want it, you know, like, you got to get it, you've got to want it and you got to have the capacity to do it. And don't put somebody who doesn't have the capacity to do something in a role that they can't. They either don't want or they don't get because it's just going to drive frustration in them. So have open conversation. Do you want this? Do you, do you have the capacity? Does everybody feel that way and make sure you take a long time. Like, this is not a one month thing. Like we. This is this is like a good year or two of transition. So don't think you can just transition in six months. It's just not. It will leave a lot. And again, if we're talking about the people, my dad, my uncle, they didn't just drop me. They didn't just install me and then leave. They stuck around. They agreed to allow me to be that leader, but they stuck around. And they stuck around because they cared about the team that they had and they wanted to see it. They had the, you know, they had the vision and wisdom to understand that there were going to be some that left, but they wanted to make sure that I was treating them like I was trying to treat them the way that I was supposed to. And then they would pull me up on the carpet if I screwed up. And that was okay, you know, it was. It was. It was needed.

What a fantastic answer to a very broad question, Rob. Seriously, this has been a wonderful study and how to come into your own at a family business. And again, I just want to thank you. Really gave some awesome, thoughtful answers. I have a couple rapid questions.

Sure.

I didn't give to you beforehand. Are you ready? Would you mind answering them?

Sure.

All right, ready. How do you take your coffee?

I don't drink coffee.

Oh, okay. If you could have dinner with one person dead or alive, who would it be?

Oh, one person dead or alive. Oh, man. I had a conversation with one person in her life. I don't know. Pass. I'll come back to that one.

Okay. What's the number one thing you're trying to learn about right now?

Oh, right now, I joined up for the John Maxwell team. I want to be a John Maxwell team member. So I'm actually indulging in all of his training. It's amazing.

If money worn in objects, you had unlimited resources. What's the first thing you would do?

The first thing I would do if money was an object, I'll be. I'll be honest. If money was an object, the first thing I do is just pay off my house. Like, if I had an unlimited amount of money, I just. I just pay off my house. And then, man, I would probably do something to like coaching and mentoring, you know, just being able to help people in this industry. People kind of like me, similar, you know, family businesses, you know, hey, what's your struggle? Like, how can I help you? You know, set up. Set up something where we could just. I love community, like communing with people and talking. So I would. I would love to help people. I would just. I would Just help. I would help people.

Nice. What podcast or book recommendations would you like to give the audience?

There's all sorts of good ones. I just said Maxwell, so anything. Maxwell. Anything. Simon. Sinic. Good. To great traction for your business. Traction. We've been going through traction hard lately, so it's been a great one. Gino Wickman. Yeah. And Kerwin Ray. I watch Kerwin Ray a lot. He's a guy out of Australia. I love him. I've done his Nail it and Scale it series. Just a really great guy. So if you pick him up on Instagram or whatever, short little vignettes. Good stuff. Nice.

And finally, what's the number one thing every contractor must do to run a successful business?

Pray.

That's the first one. That's the first answer. I never heard that one before.

Pray. You gotta pray, man. I think the answer to that question about who I'd have dinner with is Jesus. Because there's a lot of questions, a lot of questions that I have, and I do a lot of praying. So pray.

Amazing. Rob, thank you so much for your time on Toolbox for the Trades. I've really enjoyed this interview.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.