How to Gain $600 More Per Average Service Ticket | Podcast Ep. 75 | Toolbox for the Trades

Jeremy Lewis, you are the owner at Gleason Plumbing, Heating Air and Electric. I am so excited to have you on the podcast. Welcome to Toolbox for the Trades.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

I'm super excited to talk about you. You recently, very, very recently took this business over from your dad along with your brother. You did. Made a whole lot of changes in a very short amount of time. But I'm going to kick off this podcast the way I do every single one, which is how did you get into the trades?

So I've been in. This has been a family business. So my dad, I grew up going, doing H Vac with him. I have a sheet metal scar on my forehead from when I was a small child. My brother has the exact same one in the exact same spot because we were walking through sheet metal shops when we were four years old and we were going up, you know, going up roofs, helping. You know, I've. I'm an experienced flashlight holder, so I did that a lot growing up, but it's always been. We never had a service guy at our house or anything. It's always been. My dad's always been the one that fixed everything. Always had a business, didn't always have this one, but always had some sort of business in the trades. So, yeah, that's how I grew up. Family.

Nice. Yeah. So your dad was very much always tinkering around the house. I grew up the same way, too. My dad's a carpenter by trade, and whenever he would say, hey, come here and help me for a second, you know, you were like, occupied for the next three hours.

Oh, yeah, yeah. He's. He. He does this. And he's also a general contractor, too. So I got exposed to a lot of. A lot of different stuff, you know, growing up.

And with the sheet metal scar, did you walk into a piece of sheet metal? How did that happen? I'm just curious.

I mean, honestly, I don't remember because I was a child, but from what I'm told, it was. Yeah, it was probably something he was working on and it was the edge of the edge of the table. But again, my. My brother has a matching one in the exact same spot.

That's insane. Like, literally. And your brother is younger. Older than you?

He's five years older than me.

Oh, so it just was history repeating itself?

Yeah, I guess. I mean, you know, when we were. When we were younger, you know, my dad was still doing. He was still in the shop. He was still doing a lot more stuff. You know, as we got older, he was Out. You know, he was more in the office, but. But. But, yeah, I don't know. I don't know the whole story because I don't fully remember, but I do know it's from sheet metal and I do know it's guards.

So it's almost like you were marked for. For the service industry at a young age.

Yeah, we're like. We're like Harry Potter, but just in a. In a straight line across our head.

Yeah, you're the Harry Potter of H Vac. I love that. So you actually. So the company as it is right now, Gleason was once Gleason and Elfring. Right, right. And you were the director of sales and business development there for 10 years before you and your brother bought your dad out. So tell me a little bit about the vision you developed for the company while you were in that role.

So a lot of it started from. I mean, really, it started from reading a book when I was like, maybe 20 years old in the summer. So as I was. So I read. I think. I want to say I was 20 years old, it was probably in the summer when I was helping during college, and I read a book called H Vac Spells Wealth. And almost everybody in the business has read this book. But to me, it was interesting because it was the opposite of how we were doing things, because we had always been commercial based, always been project based. So doing it that way was interesting to me because I'm like, oh, there is another way. And then as I got out of college, you know, I pretty much went straight into sales. And, you know, as time went on, I was more into the residential. I was more into the customer service, you know, more into what a repair and replacement business could look like. And as a company, we weren't like that. We did. We did some of it, but not, you know, not entirely. So I had always seen what, you know, what it could do. I always knew that with a different structure, our profits could be a lot higher. And also the money is right away. People pay you right away. Commercial. You wait, you gotta collect. You have to hold money back. And I wanted to spend aggressively in marketing, too. And a lot of those funds weren't there because they were always held back for the next commercial project. So that was the thought. And in the Chicago area, a couple of the biggest companies around here are residential companies. I mean, they're huge businesses. And so I always thought, I'm like. I didn't know the answer at the time, but I always thought, I'm like, what are they doing Obviously, they're not doing any commercial work because our thought was always. Or like what I heard growing up from other people is you have to do residential for cash flow, but the commercial is what you do in the slow times, you know, projects. That's what keeps you working all year round. And I'm like, well, there's these other companies that are 100% residential. They're making it work. So you know what? I again, didn't know the answer at the time, but I knew it was possible. And so that was one thing is, okay, I got to figure out how that's the case, because one day, if I do end up taking it over or I go start my own company or whatever, that's what we're going to do. So I took that time to figure out how to answer that question.

You know, that's really interesting. So while you were in that role for about 10 years and you were learning about the opportunities that residential could provide for the company, you were kind of just learning the way the business was, and you were, in some ways, crafting this master plan in the background.

Yeah, it was in my head the whole time, you know, and again, part of it was on our developing things, too, is we would go after a lot of commercial stuff, service accounts, and have a lot of maintenance agreements. So I kind of ran the maintenance agreements for a long time, too, on the commercial side. And again, that made me think, okay, well, we've got here, you know, 150 commercial accounts. You know, what if we had 10,000 residential accounts? You know, what if. What if we could get all of those under contract and they paid? And we knew when we started the year, we had however many days of work for however many guys before we did anything. And again, we had always done maintenance agreements, but it was. It was always. It was never the focus. It was always less. You know, we did them, we didn't. We'd, you know, we'd gain 10 a year and we'd lose 12 a year. You know, it was like a. There was no attention put on it. So, yeah, it had been brewing in the back of my head for so long, and I had seen a lot of things that I didn't like, you know, how they were done. And so when it was, you know, when it was fully my time, it kind of just like, you know, I let it all out at once, full speed ahead.

While you were brewing, concocting this master plan, did you ever bring these ideas to your dad?

Not really. So to a point. But again, the part of it was I knew that we had a structure in place and I was trying to just make that succeed, you know, and so a little bit, you know, and me and my brother had talked about it a little bit more and yeah, we had talked about it, but not. Not a ton.

Was there any reason why? Was it just like you didn't want to disrupt waters kind of thing?

Oh, no. We get in pissing matches all the time. It's not that. It's just that I knew the way we were structured and we were doing things, it would have to be a drastic change. And you know, at the point in their careers, they being my, you know, my mom and dad, that I don't think the drastic change was something they wanted to go through. And, you know, as I push and push and push and I can be a pain in the butt to deal with sometimes, but I just. I just knew that I could have no pushback on it. And until I was, until I was at that point, I didn't, you know, I didn't push very hard on it. But, you know, again, when it was my time to do it, then I pushed real hard.

Got it. So when did you make the decision that you were going to buy out your dad instead of just going it on your own?

Well, so me and my brother have. Pseudo been running the company for a couple years. It wasn't until my dad decided to fully step away last fall, around last September, October. It's almost a little over a year now that we, you know, fully decided. And me and my brother had the conversation which was, you know, and I told him, I'm like, listen, we either have to go all in or we should just sell and be done with it. Because there's only two possible opportunities that could come from this. Either we're going to be wildly successful. We're going to crash and burn and fail. So I'm like, what's the worst that can happen? You know, we could get a job somewhere else if we crash and failed. So that was, that was the agreement. Cause I wasn't going to. I wasn't going to put the effort needed unless I knew he was along for the ride. And, and he agreed. He said, yeah, let's do it. Let's. Let's do whatever we got to do. And then we, we started hitting it hard.

Got it. So at a certain point, you know, it sounds like you were at Gleason for, you know, many years. You knew the way it was. You had a set idea in your mind as to how to make it better. And all you really needed was your brother's buy in. And then once you guys took over, you were able to just hit the pavement.

Yeah, I mean, the, the, the nice thing about the partnership that me and my brother have, we're very similar in a lot of ways personally, but we are complete opposites as far as our business goes. My, my brother has an MBA in finance. He is a super learned fellow. You know, he's, he is, he's much smarter than I am as far as that goes. But he wants to keep to the numbers. He doesn't want to be like the front person. He, he, he never did sales. He was always our controller. So. And, and I don't particularly want to, like, pay the taxes every week. You know, like, that's not a super fun part of my day. And, and I don't know, he gets his rocks off on that. So, so he does that and I run the business, I run the product. You know, I mean, we're, I'm doing that part of it. So again, we're, we actually fit really well because that's the thing. And the other thing is I don't trust anybody else with my money. So if he wasn't going to be involved, I was just going to go work somewhere else.

Oh, I hear that. Yeah. I love, I don't get my rocks off by doing taxes either. So you and I are similar in that way.

Yeah. And, you know, I think most don't, but there are the select few that do, and thank God for them, you know.

So when you're a brother and you decided to go forth and purchase the business from your dad, did you guys have set rules, guidelines, contracts in place of I'm going to do this, you're going to do this, and we're shaking on it. Or did you guys just already have that trust and understanding that you felt comfortable just going in? 50. 50.

Yeah. I mean, again, we had already kind of been running things for a while. Not kind of. I mean, we had been, but we had been running it under the same guys as we were previously. But no, there's no other agreements or anything else. I mean, we, you know, again, I, he's my brother. I trust him. I wouldn't, I don't, I don't, I don't worry about it. You know. Have you ever seen Jersey Boys where Frankie Valley never has a contract with the guy he writes songs with?

Yeah.

And you know, it's like, well, if you're in a good enough partnership, you know, I'm not, I'm not worried about my brother screwing me. And then maybe it's naive, but it's, you know, I'm not worried about it.

No, I'm not going to be one who's going to press you to, to think negative like anybody else.

Yeah, Lawyer up all day. I don't trust anybody. But, but, but him. I have my trust. So now we just, and again, we just fell naturally into the roles that, that fit us.

That's awesome.

So it wasn't an issue.

That's awesome. Well, you've told me the best part about working with your brother. He loves doing the stuff that you don't like doing. What's the worst part about working with your brother? And the reason I ask is because I love getting into family dynamics on this podcast because so many service shops are family owned and operated.

Yeah. Well, so if you asked me what was the worst part about working with my dad, we could be here for six to seven days, but I don't have a ton. Honestly, it's not, it's. I'm trying to think of bad stuff, but we don't really have anything bad. I mean, we're in agreement on most everything. And you know, part of it is again, we have such a good dynamic for a business because we know neither of us have ever in the history of doing things, stepped on each other's toes in the business world. We just don't. And you know, I know enough that if he says, no, stop spending money, I'll stop spending money. He has not had to say that to me in a long time because things have been going up. But, you know, I'll trust that decision. You know, I mean, I think the, there are some things that can be, you know, just awkward between brothers as they get older. You know, because I'm, I'm the. So I have, I have three older brothers. I'm the youngest. So, you know, I think probably all older brothers or older siblings don't like, are not super great about hearing what their youngest sibling has to say. But again, it hasn't been an issue.

So you took over as from your dad in March of 2021 and you assumed the role of president. You started getting to work super fast. What was the first thing you implemented and why?

So we, again, I really took over last fall. We just kind of made it more official March. But so there were two things actually that immediately I knew. Same Shameless Plug service Titan and nexstar. Those two things because there, there was a couple things that, um, I felt like, I felt like I knew A lot of stuff. And what my most. The thing I was most confident in knowing was that there were a bunch of people who knew a lot more than I did. So, you know, I had been a part of. I've been. I had been a part of other groups before, but I knew again, searching the local company, who's the big. Who's my biggest competitor? Why are they doing $100 million a year and I'm not. Then I find out they're a nexstar member. I'm like, okay, I better find out more about this. And initially, my conversation with nexstar was I had tried. I actually had called them in November of 2020, and I'm like, hey, I'm interested in the area. And they said, no, we don't have any room. And I was like, oh, all right. Okay, cool. And that was the end of it. And service time, I had always known that it was better, but it's. You know, it was. We had different thought about things previously, you know, so once we. But. So we knew that once. And I. And I've told other people at Service Titan this. I feel so bad for the original salesperson. I have been pitched Service Titan for three or four years, and, I mean, I'd be, like, interested. Yeah, let's talk about it now. Go back and forth. Okay. And then I think I had called back when, you know, when I knew I was going to do it, and that guy wasn't there anymore, apparently. And I just got another salesman. He's like, do you want to do the demo? And let me show you. I'm like, no, I don't care. I'm good. Just. Let's sign me up. Here's my credit card. How. How long does it take to implement? And they're like, oh, it's gonna be like, six weeks. That's not gonna work for me. We go ahead and had a need to implement, like, in, like, a week, like, right away. They're like, people don't really do that. I'm like, but I'm good. Let's just move this along. And so that was probably the easiest sale for him. Did he know that somebody else had done four years of work before we did that? But so we got started right away. We got onboarded extremely quick, so it worked out well. And then again, nextar, I had gone to them for. And they said, no, there's. There's not. And I'm like, all right. Then I. Later. Later the next year, I had heard the president, Julian, on a podcast, and he said, they asked him something about social media or how you get in contact with people, and he said, yeah, I don't, I don't. I don't pay attention anything. The only thing I do is I will respond on LinkedIn. So in the middle of me listening to it, I'm like, all right. I went on LinkedIn, I private messaged him, hey, I heard you on this podcast. I tried to join nexstar. And they said no. And he, he text me back, call, call Lisa. This is her number. Send her an email, you know, we'll get you in. And then made it. Made it happen from there. So maybe I just had better intention the second time around, you know, but I had stalked him on LinkedIn, and. And I've never told him that, but. But one day I will talk to him and tell him how I stalked him on LinkedIn.

Well, he actually listens to this podcast, so he may find this out before you tell him. Julian's great. And I actually want to underline this because this is another thing that's going to come up in this season, which is persistence, persistence, persistence. You know, if you see someone you need to connect with or you want to connect with a particular mentor, best practice group. Sometimes just reaching out and being persistent is the best thing you can do.

Well, you know, I mean, to be fair, I was, like, a little sour about it. I was like, well, why not? And they're like, yeah, well, we just, we don't take everyone. You know, your area is full. And I'm like, like, well, fine, I guess I don't want to join nextar. And then, you know, as time went on, I'm like, man, I really need to join nextar. This is driving me crazy. And it just so happened as I was thinking about that, you know, he popped up on a podcast. And. And so I'm like, well, I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna just go straight to the source. And then the. Lisa, when I talked to you, why don't you just ask why you weren't. And I'm like, well, you said, no, I don't know. I'm not. You know, but again, I didn't have maybe enough intention. I didn't have enough effort the first time I did it. The second time around, I knew, I'm a. I'm getting in there. It doesn't really matter what happens right now. I'm going to get. If I got to drive in a Minnesota, I'm doing it. I love it.

So first steps for you were service Titan and nexstar. And then within just a few months, you began pivoting the business from commercial to residential. How was all of this received by the employees that you inherited? And.

I think so my core management group, my install manager, my ops manager, service manager, they were all cool with it, but it was, they're cool with it as long as we have the work, you know, and I think there was, I think the field guys, there was probably the same sort of thought which was, does he know what he's doing? Oh God, does he know what he's doing? Why are we putting away all this work that we had? So, and we still, again, it took a little time to get past all that, but again, as we started making these drastic changes. So we had a company meeting this morning, an all company meeting. And you know, I remember years gone by where company meetings were, they were only for negative stuff. You know, and that was one of my things moving forward was we're not, when we have meetings like that, it's only going to be positive. You know, we have one on ones with people. That's, that's when we can bring up things that need to be worked on. But, so our meeting this morning was very positive and we actually did a survey with all of the employees on how we're doing. So. And I told them, like, please be honest. If, if you mean, if there's negative things, it's not going to affect anybody. You have, you're helping us make the vision for the future. And now if, you know, if I had done this a year ago, it would have been a different. But now it's fairly positive. You know, it's pretty positive. I think everyone's, everyone gets it now. Everybody's in now. It took a little bit, but everybody's in.

Nice. Tell me about some of those early few months as you were doing the transition and you kind of were getting the sense that some folks were like, does he know what he's doing? How did you work through that?

I don't care what people think. I, it's, it's, you know what, it was never, it was never super direct. But you know, you, you hear, you hear what's out there, right? It was, it was never super direct. But I do know, you know, I knew I was going to, I knew I was right. It didn't, you know, I'm very, if you ask my wife, I'm very stubborn sometimes. And if I know that I'm going to make it work or that I'm right, there's nothing that can stop. So I knew what to do. I knew the style. I maybe didn't know exactly what to do, but I knew to ask the people how to get there. So I just, I knew what I was going to do. So it didn't. It didn't really honestly didn't bother me at all. I am not easily offended.

Noted. Okay, well, now I'm just gonna be really mean for you for the rest of the podcast. I'm cute.

Try.

So service titan nextar did you just have. Were the first two steps, did you just have this master list or master checklist that you were just going off in your mind? Like, how did you start operationalizing after those points?

It started, started by the things I'm not gonna do list. Ah. I did not have a to do list. I had a things we're not going to do list. And. And yeah, so we started there. I mean, the one. The big thing that I knew really had to change available was, you know, I saw, we could all see it coming that the people who hold the cards are the people who have the labor force. So I knew we had to set up a training organization. We had to set up training in our company. We had to be able to take apprentices and train them. Not just the normal training you learn on the job, but really put effort into them, really give them all the resources to do it. So that was one thing I knew we had to do, that we had to up the training for sure. And the other thing was we just had a. Had a goal, which was we're going to do everything better than the rest of the field than what everybody else does. Which sounds super broad, but what it is is we're going to do the most thorough evaluation of the system. We're going to charge more money than a lot of people, too. But it's because we're going to do the best part. We care about everything. We truly do. We're, you know, and so that was, that was a part of it, hiring people for character as opposed to what their skill level was, you know, because we decided, you know, we can get guys to a certain skill level. But. But what we're looking for, like, if you're a Gleason guy, like, that's what we, that's what we say. You know, we have, we have. All the employees will say, you know, this guy is a Gleason guy. We know he's with us through and through. And if people aren't, you know, this is a conversation that we have sometimes. And so that was. That Was the goal is getting everybody as excited as I was and not doing some of the things that I think have negative effects.

Yeah, I totally hear that. I love the idea of a things not to do list. You know, when they say that if you're trying to figure out what it is you want to do with your life, start identifying the things you know you don't want to do with your life. And that actually is a little bit easier to pinpoint than things you want to do.

Yeah, well, the first thing was commercial projects. I don't want to do those anymore. I just, you know, they're not. I don't like waiting for my money that long. I don't. I don't like, you know, so that was. That was number one. But then we started, you know, all the. All the other. Other things that we, you know, we had been doing that I wasn't really fond of.

So what was it like turning down those commercial jobs, which I know have pretty big sticker prices on them or, you know, paydays.

So initially it was very uncomfortable, but I'm very stats driven. I love numbers. I always have. When I was a kid, I, like, knew the batting average of every player in the mlb. So, like, I can. I can tell you I can rock out MLB statistics from like 97 to 99. Crush it. But. So I've always been. I've always been into that kind of stuff. So, you know, I just, I just. Once I understood the numbers, truly understood the numbers, it didn't bother me anymore because I had realized that we are doing three months of work and making no money. You know, sometimes people say making money where it's like, yeah, did your job cost more than what your equipment and direct labor did? Okay, but did your overhead, did you cover that? Did you cover everything else that's involved in that? Once you actually understand the numbers and fully have, you know, what it costs you to do business, those jobs, they're not profitable. They're not profitable enough at all.

Did you have like a math equation or something at your desk that was like, showing like that it's not profitable, it's not worth it.

Yeah, well, yes. So we used to bid jobs a certain way. We used to. You know, we would. So the way we would bid before is we would bid hourly rate, and then we'd figure out what our burden rate was. You know, we'd add that on top and we'd do it by hour. And which. Which again, is a fine way of doing it. But. And again, nexstar helped me with this too there, you know, it cost us a day rate for. To send guys out to do work. You know, it doesn't matter what. It doesn't matter what's going on. Even. Even if it's not a full day, hour wise, the other costs associated to running the business are still full every single day. So there's a cost for that. So once we were able to understand what that cost was and apply that to all of our previous projects, you know, like we did, we had a meeting. All right, this is everybody. I worked it out. This is what it cost us to put a guy out there. You know, this is what it costs one truck to run. And then, you know, we get stuff out. I'm like, let's go through all of our other jobs, you know, our old jobs. And it was like, yep, didn't make any money. Didn't make any money. Didn't make any money, you know. And so, yeah, it's. It sucks.

That's why I change it. That's crazy. That's really interesting when you break that stuff down. I want to talk about the training that you implemented at the company. What did that look like when you realized that was something you had to do?

The first thing was find a partner to help us. You know, we. So we do stuff with. With NextStar and their next training. So we're doing. There's an online portion of it where they're going through like, essentially like a trade school, but online, you know, just like you could do for college. And they'll go, they'll do online videos, they'll do training and then it'll come to a test. And then one of our guys that's doing training in here will grade their test and they move on from there. Sometimes they get to a point where, hey, we're at this point. But now you have to make a piece of sheet metal in the office or whatever that may be. So they have to come in and physically do it. We started initially, we started holding apprentice classes on Saturday. So every Saturday we'd have all the group of apprentices come in and it would just be a topic. So one topic for a month was sheet metal. We had someone come in and just teach them sheet metal. Another topic would have been cleaning checks or whatever it would be. So we started doing that. We've actually shifted our focus now where we're not doing Saturdays anymore. Uh, every Friday, there's no apprentices out on jobs. They're in there in school all day on Friday. So on Fridays, we pair our leads Together. And then all the apprentices are in. Are in class for eight hours that day.

Nice.

Which has been very, very good because, you know, having them an entire day as you can get so much done. And we've seen a good advancement just. Just in that time. And my. My operations manager, Rick, he. He has spearheaded all of this. You know, he. He's. He's like a. He's definitely a natural teacher, you know, and after. After we actually, after one of the seminars we went at. At nexstar, he came back and just kind of took it, and it wouldn't be there without. Without him doing it. He. He took it to a point, you know, even more than I. Even. Even more than. Or quicker than I would have thought, you know. And so now we've. We have a full classroom that we set up. It's all fancy, and we got like the. The projector hanging from ceiling, like in classrooms in school. You know, we did the whole deal. And then right now we're in the midst of building a. A fully functioning training lab. So we have. We have a little training lab set up now where we have equipment set up, but we're in the midst of building it out so that we have a full plumbing side as well, so that we can set up sinks so that we can set up a fully functioning bathroom, but where you can see under it, you know, so you can see what. What the pipes are, everything. So we've just been building towards this. This point because again, if we can hire for personality or fit, bring the guys in and train them. You know, if something happens to another employee or in the best part of it, if we grow, you know, we just have a pool of people we can put in place. And that's. That's the. That's the goal. That's always been. The problem is, okay, you lost somebody. Now we got to try and hire somebody, and it's. It's a disaster. You can't do it that way. So the way we have it now, we just, again, we. We needed a service tech like, three weeks ago. Like, all right, we need to. We need to get another one out there to get the call. Volume. Took one right out of the Apprentice. Friday he was in Apprentice. Monday, he was in the truck, no problems. And that was the smoothest, best way we've ever had it done. And now we have this backlog of guys who were almost there or pretty close, and when we need to grab them and pull them, we will. And it'll. It's. It's. It's the best, it's. The best way to staff up is to be able to build something like that.

That's awesome. And I just want to remind everyone listening this again, this is something that you've implemented in the last year, right?

Yeah. Like a really six, seven months. Yeah.

All right. I'm impressed. That's awesome.

Maybe maybe eight months. Maybe eight months. No, it's November. Yeah, maybe maybe eight months. Yeah.

That's awesome. Dude, I'm so happy to hear that you've got that going and that you're working through that. That is definitely hands down what I'm finding at the podcast. The best way to do this, you.

Can see in some of the nexstar companies who are bigger, you know, or really big. They all have it. They all have, they're all training like that because again, they understand that the. You cannot grow and staff a company by hiring people off of. Indeed. It's not possible. It's not. So you, you have to build them.

That's awesome. During this process, again, very busy year for you, Jeremy, you also acquired a couple businesses. Do you want to talk about that for a little bit?

We did a couple of things. We, we, we acquired an H vac company.

Residential.

Residential, yeah, completely residential. So that was, that was, that was the other thought was. Okay, well, so we need. There's a couple things. We're gonna start turning down commercial work. So if we're gonna start turning down commercial work. Oh, and by the way, we want to grow, so. Okay, what do we have to do to get to that point? Well, it would be nice if we had a lot more calls. So, okay, we're gonna market, we're gonna build a call center, we're gonna outbound, but it would be a lot easier if we just gained like 5,000 customers, you know. And so obviously the initial thing was, and this has been part of my growth strategy the whole way is acquisition. So we found, we found a company that was in our area, but not directly where we are, but in an area that we do work in. They were a good sized company and they fit the mold. And when I went and talked to the owners, we got along so well. I knew that they treated their people well. So that was the kind of company I wanted to buy. I didn't want to go buy a disgruntled owner. You know, I wanted to buy somebody who, who was good, but it was just ready to retire. And that's how they were. They were great people. And, you know, it worked out. It worked out really, really well. And Then we opened a plumbing division and in June, and so we had to pull from there. And so, yeah, we just kind of. We've. We've done little things along the line that. That just help increase. But the acquisition thing is, is, you know, it's. It's good. It's a lot easier to buy people. So for us, we're in the Chicago region. It's really hard to buy somebody in November and December when everybody's busy. But you start hitting, like, February, March, a lot of people start thinking about it again because they're slow. And that would. That. To me, that's the time. So, you know, last spring, I was like, okay, well, now we're. Who, you know, who can I talk to? And again, I know I've got prospects now, and I know this February or spring, I'm gonna buy another one, too. So, you know, it's. It's the. It's the timing in our area.

What's. What was that like, logistically and from a personnel standpoint?

So we gained. We gained nine employees from it, and we have not retained all of them for one reason or another. I mean, we've retained the good ones, but, you know, so my initial. So we actually have done it all through sba. So the loan process went through sba. They're just, like, giving away money at this point. So that was super easy to deal with. And then as far as, like, the people, we basically said, I'm like, no, I want everybody. I want everybody who comes with the deal. We need it. You know, we need to go up. And then, you know, we retained. We retained, you know, 30% of them, I think over. I mean, they all came over, but just over time, you know. And again, that's part of. You know, I think you assume you're only Gonna maybe retain 80% if you do a company, and then there's gonna be the. You know, we're our way of doing it. And if you're not into our way, then, you know, it is what it is. But, you know, we got the customer base. Their customer base was incredible. They, again, because they. They came from a company with a good owner, with a guy who cared. You know, these were. These were dedicated customers, had a lot of maintenance agreements. And he had actually been. He was not a plumbing company, but he had been next to a plumber. So they hit. They had been putting a lot of work. Like, they had been recommending this guy a ton. So when we came in and we're like, yeah, we do plumbing, too. They're like, oh, great. So we actually gained, percentage wise, gained more customers from the acquisition companies as plumbing customers than we did from our original base.

Wow.

Yeah. So it's, it's from that point, it's been really good because now we're marketing all of our products to so many other people. You know, we're doing it all in house. So it's, you know that that's the goal. You want to be able to offer the major trades inside. Inside the house.

That's amazing. Now that you're thinking you're going to acquire another business in the spring for your season, what are you going to do differently?

It will go faster this time. I was pretty comfortable doing it. I mean, we didn't get like a bunch of. We didn't get lawyers involved. We didn't get. I mean, we had a. We had a business intermediary, but we didn't use brokers or anything. I'm pretty comfortable with all the legal stuff. I always have been, so that part wasn't too bad. But I would definitely do differently is I know the numbers and the exact science now of what I'm looking for. So the negotiation and the negotiation. There's not a negotiation. It's. This is how much I value your company at. Would you like to do this? Yes or no? And that makes things go quicker. It cuts out the unserious talk, you know, and just because I know what I'm looking for and if their company doesn't fit what I'm looking for, then there's no reason to have a continued conversation anymore.

Okay, I just want to recap real quick. So we're recording this in November 2021. In November 2020ish, fall 2020, you took over from your dad. Ownership, like, did it by the book, so to speak. By March 2021.

Yeah.

In the last year, not only have you pivoted the company from being all, almost all commercials, now being all residential, you joined Service Titan, you joined nexstar, you acquired a business, you opened a training division and you also opened up a new division, which is plumbing.

Yeah. Two new divisions, but yeah, electric as well, right? Yeah.

I mean, holy crap, man. What does that feel like?

Yeah, we also went through a brand change and a logo change. We changed the name. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, amazing.

Yeah, I, you know, at some point in, it was about August when we had a manager meeting and they were like, can you just not like, buy anything for like, just like the rest of the year, you just not do anything else because, like, we're there you know, we, everybody, it was, it was hard, you know, but again, but this was the thought that I had. I, I. When me and my brother had that conversation, all I needed for him, I. All I needed for him was to say, yeah, go out and do it the way you would do it. That's all I needed. I knew he was behind me. And I'm like, well, let's go. And believe me, our conversation was not that polite. It was more like, yeah, effort, let's go. You know, whatever it was, it was a lot. It was, it was a lot, a lot worse. But as soon as I got that, I knew, I'm okay. This is, this is the line we have to go down to do it. You know, we've. I've been, you know, everybody says I've been in the business or whatever, but, you know, I've seen someone run an H VAC company my entire life. You know, I've never not seen that. So, you know, I'm very opinionated. I've had my opinions on how to do it for a long time. And it was just, you know, I had this plan. So as soon as it started going, you know, and I got other people's blessings and I got my group of guys, you know, my managers and everybody to play along, then we just went for it.

I love that. What advice? So all of those changes that you made, people, other shops may make one or two of those changes in one year and be like, oh, we went through a lot this year. Yeah, what advice? Or what's, like, the biggest piece of learning you got from making all of that change in the last year?

So, like, Nike, just do it. You just gotta go. I mean, really, what it was was you. I am impatient, you know, and so once I completed, like, here's the way I thought about it. And this way, I think about everything in the business, too. Once it's handled, I don't think about it anymore. It's done. I remove it from my mind. So, you know, we talked about brand change. Okay. So I got on service titan.

Good.

I never have to worry about CRM software again. I'm good service. I, you know, handle it. I'm good. All right. I need to be in a best practice group. I'm in nexstar. I'm in the best one that there is. I'm good. I don't have to think about that anymore. So those were two good things, but I didn't have much to think about. We changed our name. You know, Ido Elfering is impossible to Spell and try writing a radio jingle with elfering. That's hard. Nothing rhymes with it and it's not a good marketable name. So I knew we had to cut that part out. We had gone through. We had some conversations with some other marketing companies that want to change you into Rocket Man Heating and Cooling or like Surf Dudes H Vac. And I, I just, I don't like those. I just think they're silly. So anyway, so we, we just went with, went with that. And again, once I picked a new logo, pick new colors. Good. I don't have to think about it anymore. You know, we, I just, there's no second guessing. Once I made the decision, we just, we just continued to do. And that's how I try and do most all the things is, is I. Instead of second guessing all the plans that we did, I just, I just followed through with them and you know, I had a punch list and I'm just, I mean, my punches is not done. I'm still, you know, I still have plenty of things I need to do. But, you know, I just, I did one and moved on to the next and just didn't, it didn't take up much space in my mind. You know, I just did it and then moved on.

I love that. All right, so since taking over the company with your brother, you've since grown 40% in total revenue and you've had a $600 average increase in your average service ticket.

Yeah.

That's incredible. Way to go. What's next for Gleason?

Sewer is next in the business plan. So right now we're serve it, we're doing service plumbing or we're not. We're not really doing much sewer work. So we're going to open a sewer department Next year. We're going to expand on our electric division. So right now it's, it's small, it's minimal. We're doing generators, more things like that next. By next spring we're going to be doing. We'll. We'll expand those offerings. And then the thing that we've most recently done is we're, we're putting a lot of chips in water treatment. So we. A lot in our area, there's a lot of wells where we are, there's a lot of older homes. So we're putting a lot of stock in the water treatment. So far, it's great. The profit margins on water treatment are insane. So that is definitely kind of the way I feel like our H Vac division is really good. We've been Doing it for the longest and it's the most structured, it has the most people in place. So I have, I have a really great plumbing division manager right now. So it's just going to work. We're going to, I'm going to put more attention on that as the year goes is on plumbing and sewer and expanding our electrical offerings and then you know, keeping the water treatment moving. So that's, that's thought wise kind of process where, where we're going is, is a little bit over there and then again me personally it's going to be acquisitions and, and you know, expanding the business like, like it always is.

That's awesome. Jeremy. I have no doubt that you're going to get it done and in a year you're going to be like friggin like forex where you're at now. So we definitely have to catch up. I've got a couple more questions for you first off and I think you'll have a good answer for this is what's your most controversial opinion on the trades?

I have a couple.

Tell me, tell me them all now.

So I think. So the first one I truly think is I at this point, knowing what you know and how you can do it. I think being a plumber, H vac guy, electrician is more important of a job than I think the general public understands it is. You know they, the, there used to be those, those advertisements from like the 40s and 50s that plumbers are the health of the nation, you know and there's, there's a, there's a next. I remember that, that at our last thing talked about, you know, the difference between us and a third world country is heating, plumbing and electric and it's Elaine Damntion. I don't want to just say it without, without saying who it was. She, she said this in this class and I'm like, I'm like that makes a lot of sense, you know. So I think that's, that's a big part of it. I, you know, I shouldn't be a stigma on hey, I don't want to be a lawyer but I would like to be a plumber because there's a lot of guys who are in their early twenties who are making six figures being a plumber, you know, and they're doing something that needs to be done. Not that lawyers don't need to. Well, wouldn't be the worst thing if they didn't, but not that. It's just, it's very good. And the other one is um, everybody, if you, if you join a Facebook group of H Vac guys, everybody, once a day. Hey, where are you finding guys? There's more people who complain about where to find talent and a lot, lot less people who are encouraged to train, to train guys. Nobody wants to. You know, you see, with a lot of guys, they don't want to train the apprentice. You know, they just get out of my way or just go grab this. Shops are not investing back in the company. You know, that's, that's the, that's the big thing now is, you know, we've grown significantly, but a lot of that money that we're getting that's extra is all going back in the business. You know, we're. I'm not growing it for this year. I'm growing it for what it's going to be. So, you know, we're putting in a lot of money per employee. And there's a lot of shops that want to ask why their indeed ad isn't going on there, but none of them that'll put the time and actually train guys. You know, they want everyone to be perfect right out of the, right out of the thing and, you know, get all these experienced guys. But they're just. It doesn't work that way because I know if you're a really good, experienced guy, you're probably not going to leave your company if you're a good one. You know, there's plenty of disgruntled ones out there. But, but. So, yeah, I think just a lot of complaining, not a lot of action and a lot of stuff. And I'm sure that's across the board in most things, but I know the guys who have training programs in place are much more comfortable with their business than the guys who aren't.

Yeah, I definitely see that as well. Also note on, like, because I think shops like yours are taking the steps necessary to keep their techs trained, get helping them with certifications, that kind of stuff. Why would you, as a really good tech, move from a shop that's doing that to a shop that isn't? You know, it's like, it goes into, like, what else are you getting out of the job? Right. And everyone has different internal motivation factors. But I think that's also something that's gonna start coming up on play as well.

Yeah, I mean, you want to train them so that they can leave and treat them well enough so that they don't. Yes, that's. That's the thing. And again, so I was saying about the survey we did this morning, the first few questions Were why. Why do you stay at Gleason? The second question was, what would make you leave? And we surveyed the entire company on that, and there was a couple. There's more questions, but that, that's the first two things because we want to know, you know, what are we doing that's keeping you here? And then what would somebody else be doing that would be better that would think you would want to go? And so we're trying to learn from our employees too. You know, we want to have a good idea. And funny enough, as we surveyed all these guys, there was, you know, two or three things that they thought we could improve on that were consistent throughout the guys. So that's a really good indicator of. Okay, yeah, you're right. And I agreed with him. We could do better in that area for sure. And so that's something else we have to work towards. So, you know, I think being in communication with the guys, especially putting that training into them, you get a lot out of it. You get more. You get more out of it than what you put into it once. You know, if you do it right, that's awesome.

All right, I got a couple rapid fire questions for you. Don't think, just answer. Are you ready?

Sure.

How do you take your coffee?

I don't drink caffeine, so decaf only.

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

Paul and Carney.

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

Plumbing. Actual plumbing.

If money weren't an object so you had unlimited resources, what's the first thing you would do?

You know what, I just want to grow strawberries, like on a field with hundreds of acres and like farm animals around. That's like, truly what I want to do. It's like when people, people have all these things. Like, yeah, if I had a bunch of money, I would, you know, I'd buy a Ferrari. No, no, I'd buy a bobcat. Like 3,000 acres. And I would just grow strawberries and, you know, be by myself in a field. It would be awesome.

That's my favorite answer everyone's ever given. What are some podcast book recommendations that you'd like to give the audience?

So book wise, I, you know, I think it doesn't hurt to start out with H vac spells wealth. You know, there's still some good stuff in it. Even where we're at now. As far as industry stuff, I like, can't stop the growth. That's a good one. And then also H vac. Masters of the Hustle. That's a good one, too.

Nice. What's the number one thing every contractor should do to run a successful business?

Care about the people that you work with.

Amazing. Jeremy Lewis, thank you for joining me.

Yeah, thank you.