In the Trades, Mental Health Matters w/ Stacy Fore | Podcast Ep. 21 | Toolbox for the Trades

You've just got to find your own groove in your own culture that matches who you really are on the inside and grow from that. Don't just go from here to there and expect no mistakes or painless growth.

You're listening to Toolbox for the Trades, brought to you by ServiceTitan, a podcast for top service professionals where we interview leaders for their best tips and tricks of the trades. Leaders learn how industry trailblazers stay ahead of the competition and how you too can be at the forefront of an industry. Let's jump in.

Hello contractors, and welcome to the Toolbox for the Trades. Today's guest is Stacey Foer, the owner of H Vac Solutions LLC right outside of Oklahoma City. Stacy and her husband started their business back in 2009 and have learned a lot since then. We dove into the hiring mistakes they made early on in the business and how learning from those mistakes and implementing a new recruiting strategy allowed them to develop the great team they have today. We also spoke about the importance of engaging with and giving back to their community and the new commercial H Vac trend they've taken advantage of that have helped them achieve tremendous growth in the last year despite a global pandemic. Stacy is a total pro and all around wonderful person. I hope you get as much wisdom from this interview as I did. Enjoy. Stacey Foer, welcome to the Toolbox for the Trades podcast.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

I'm super excited for you to be a part of the conversation too. Why don't you introduce yourself to the folks who are listening? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Oh, gosh. Okay. Well, there's a lot to this girl. So I am 46. I have, believe it or not, six kids that we will have raised. I know. Well, let me explain. We have round one. 29, 25, 23. My daughter is very sick and so we raise our grandchildren and we have for three years. So we have a grandson who is four and then twin three year olds and they all have the same birthday a year apart.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Crazy, right? But it keeps me young so it keeps me going. So we have round one and round two. We love them. I own a heat and air company and I am a addiction and recovery coach as well. It's my second life, I guess, and I live in Oklahoma and I love all aspects of my life.

That is amazing. I'm so happy that you shared that And God, you do not look like you or someone who has grandchildren. You look fantastic. So you're the owner of H Vac Solutions LLC in Oklahoma. You're in Oklahoma City, right?

We are. Our business is in Edmond, which is a suburb of Oklahoma City.

So, yeah, got it. So tell me, how did you get into the trades?

Oh, my gosh. So reluctantly, I'm going to be really honest. I do.00 about H vac other than I enjoyed my air conditioned home. My husband was actually in the Coast Guard. He got out of the Coast Guard about after eight years. We lived in Southern California, in Riverside, and he worked for the union and he was an apprentice, did his time. My job at the time was developing off campus student housing. And so it brought us to Edmond, Oklahoma, and we loved it. But, you know, he worked for a couple companies. He didn't really feel like they were necessarily the most ethical companies. And it was really kind of eaten at him a little, you know. On his birthday, March 14, 2009, he got laid off, but he was eligible for his contractor's test. And I said, you know, really, people love you. You're really good, you're a good guy, you're a great tech. Let's just try. Why not?

And he did.

And he passed it on the first time with a 98%. I'm so proud of him. And he came back and he said, let's start a business. And I said, oh, you mean we, because I have a career, you know. And he said, yeah, let's do it. And so I stayed working for another year. Probably didn't trust the process as much as I should have in the beginning. And then about a year into it, I said, hey, you know what, I'm using my talents to develop this company. I could use them here. So we kind of joined forces and that started our adventure together.

I love that. And I loved your honesty about getting into the trades reluctantly. And Mike, your husband, you know, a lot of H Vac shops, a lot of trade shops are owned by husband and wife duos. So can you tell me a little bit about, you know, your breakdown of responsibilities? What does Mike own? What do you own? And how do you guys keep the office out of your personal lives?

You don't. I'll start backwards. It's really hard to do that. You have to work really hard at that. And honestly, we're going into our 13th year of business now, and I think we're just now finally mastering that. I don't know that we've done that real well before. And that just comes with learning, you know, how to separate those. Going from a small company to a large company. All These different growing pains that you go through. I don't know if you're ever going to 100% separate it because shop talk or talk happens everywhere, right? It's just what happens. Your friends in the trade, you go to dinner, all you do is talk about H Vac. I mean, it happens. So Mike's really. He's a contractor. He's all things lead tech training, and I was really all things office. And we just kind of. We used to split this right down the middle. And recently, Mike realized he doesn't know much about the business other than the sales and the technical side. So he was like, man, I don't know when I started coaching more. He says, I don't know what I would do if you weren't here every day. So that opened his eyes to, hey, I might need to know more about that. And then as we developed with service Titan especially, we started meeting all of these other contractors that, you know, they rock it in their markets and we're so deeply blessed to have them invest in us, even if it's just online or via Facebook. And they're really just willing to say, like, hey, we can show you. And so now Mike's really kind of digging into more metrics and KPIs and kind of understanding more of that. But it used to be very divided like most husband wife teams. That is generally how that goes. But they can that you have to progress a little bit. Likewise, I had to learn a lot of stuff in the field, and I can go out and almost journeyman level by myself. I wouldn't say I'd be very confident on your inside unit, but I'm super confident on your outside unit. So, you know, you have to. If you want to learn the business, you got to kind of intertwine both of those things. So, yeah, that's kind of where we landed at.

Interesting. And I want to get back to learning more about the KPIs on Mike's side. But I'm curious how you got that field experience and learned more about the technical job that your business actually does.

Lot of sweat, lot of dirty days. I love to learn. I always tell people I would have went to college for a living if that would have paid bills. So I never want to stop learning. And I just decided I didn't want to answer a phone and help a customer if I didn't really know what I was talking about. And the only way to do that is to get out in the field and just get your hands dirty and figure it out. I am by no means the smartest tech in this company, and nor do I ever want to be. But it is really important to have that knowledge so you can talk to your customers. And once you get out there and you kind of. I'm a learn by doing person, then you get the way that H Vac works and what it really means and how it really functions. And you can have really good conversations like this where you can just talk to people and explain it to them. And I think at the end of the day, that's what your customers want. They want to just know that you're a person who understands, you can communicate it well, and you can educate them as well. So it was a lot of dirty days, though. A lot of hot, dirty, humid hot Oklahoma days.

I've actually never been to Oklahoma. I've done the entire. I've done most of the states that touch oceans like the U. So I've gone from the east coast down to the south up to the west. But I've heard cool things about Oklahoma City, actually, and it's kind of on my list.

Well, I don't blame you for sticking to the cool spots in the U.S. i've traveled a ton, and I've also pretty much done all of those. Yeah, you know, Oklahoma City's come a long way. We're now pretty much a mecca for foodies. We have a ton of trendy restaurants and stuff, so the food's great.

Yeah. You also have a pretty cool underground punk rock scene. I don't know if you know that.

I don't. But now, you know, some really great murals, too. We have some fantastic artists that do murals on bricks, and I love them. I love just going doing photos with them kids there for fun.

That's awesome. So, you know, traditionally, and I talk a lot of. In season one of this podcast, I talked to a lot of owners who were originally technicians, started on their own, and they, you know, floundered. They either sank or they swam. But those first couple years were super hard because they were learning how to run a business in addition to running all these service calls. And it sounds like when you partnered up with. When Mike approached you and was like, let's start a business together, you brought a lot of knowledge that allowed the business to run smoother than regular, I'm assuming. Can you talk to me about some of those skills that, you know, you implemented from your first career that really helped in the first couple years of H Vac Solutions?

Yeah, I think the biggest was I had a huge. I worked for a large company, but they were very personable. So I got the benefit of both worlds. A lot of training and invested into us. I was really a training developer. So I trained teams and came in and kind of built up teams and then moved on, was my niche in that. So I had a lot of experience in building teams. Marketing, because they just. We were very progressive in marketing. Brand recognition, just the way that you brand yourself and you kind of keep that going and then processes. You'll probably never meet a more process oriented. Develop it, develop it well, let it go. Keep it running. Which is why I love my Service Titan so much and probably why I'm so competitive on my Service Titan score. It's almost bad, but it's okay. Like, you know, develop a really good system and let it do the work for you so you can keep moving on and developing your team and your company and just moving forward all the time. And that was what I brought to it. It pained me because I came from industry that was already pretty progressive with software. And I. Back then, in 2008 and 9, there were very, very few softwares that were super underdeveloped. And Mike, I remember the first day and I asked him, well, how have you been doing this? And he handed me an appointment book. Like my grandma was. My grandma was a hairdresser, and so she had an appointment book and she penciled people in. And Mike handed that to me and I gasped because I was. I was like, oh, we're really old school, you know. And he says, well, I mean, I don't know anything else. DC and that started my journey of software hunts. And until Service Titan happened last year, for me, I've been on that journey ever since because there just wasn't one that really met my needs. But it was either something better. And so I just kept pushing for that. Just keep going forward, just keep moving forward. And I think that's what I probably do the best for my team is I develop them together and I keep them moving forward and striving for better all the time.

I love that. Yeah, yeah, I love that you brought up systems and processes. You know, that is like, by far, like the number one learning that I've gotten. A lot of people love, to quote Michael Gerber, the E. Myth contractor, and a lot of different resources just to set up those systems and processes to develop that turnkey company. So why don't you tell me where you guys are today? Like, what's your annual revenue like? And how many technicians do you guys. Guys currently have?

So we've done A little bit of fluctuating over the years. I know everyone thinks big companies do big work and that's not always true. There are a lot of great small companies. I would call us a mid company. There's 15 of us in total in staff and we've really kind of grown the office staff this year more than I ever would. And I'll just thank and blame Kris Hunter for that all in one fell swoop. 11. So we have six technicians plus Mike right now. And that's kind of fluctuated over the years. We redesigned the way that we hire and how we hire and it's worked fantastic. So I'm really excited at some point to share that with people because I think that's really important. And I've heard others talk about the same methodology. We all just do it a little different. We. Last year, I'm thrilled to report we did 1.2 million.

Congratulations.

Thank you. And that was our top year. And you know, some might say, well, after 12 years, that's not a lot. Might agree with some other companies, but I've always lived by this motto. It took me about a year actually in the industry to kind of understand this. I have no competition but myself. I don't look at other companies and say, can I do their way or can I be them or can I do it that way? If I can develop my own culture and my own values, if I'm always just, you know, measuring it against that, I've won. That's all I care about. The growth will come, the money will come, the sustainable growth, more importantly will come. It's just about starting with that foundation. And we didn't always do that, right, Jackie? That's not something we perfected from the beginning. It really took a lot of hard hitting days, a lot of punches to the gut, Lot of surprises you didn't see coming and maybe some you should have, but you weren't prepared for them. It took all of those things to kind of get where we're at now. So it's never an easy road. But you either you can either fold or you can just keep moving forward and just work a little harder and get a little smarter as you go along.

I got goosebumps when you were actually saying that because I think that is such a key message, not just for contractors, but literally anyone who comes across this recording, the only person you should be competing against is yourself. I know that there's a lot of vanity numbers that come with owning a business, especially in this industry, that there's so much of A of sense stigma. And there's so much. I don't like to say negative perception, but it's kind of true. People look down upon the trade. So I definitely feel that need to prove yourself as a competent and successful business owner. But the way you just described that shows to me how proud you are of your team and where you guys have gone. And I absolutely love the honesty. And just. Yeah, we made some mistakes. We adjusted, and we now we know what works for us, and this is what works for us. And I just. I think that's a fantastic mentally healthy way to look at business growth. So thank you for sharing that.

Absolutely. Well, all good health starts with mental health, right?

Yes. And I imagine that not to deviate a little bit. I imagine that has a lot to do with some of the work you do as work in recovery as well.

It does. That kind of came later, and that came by life circumstance as well. But I think that what I've learned is that when we talk about mental health, often their perception is something's wrong. Mental health is not about always reaction. It can always mostly should be proactive. In fact, so much so, we actually pay fully. I know a lot of companies have employer reimbursement programs for mental health. You know, copays, things like that. We actually have a therapist that we pay for that our staff loves. She participates in staff activities and meetings, and she's there for whatever they want. And of course, all confidentiality stays the same. That's not for us to know anything. It's because. Because we know that when our employees. And they will. It's not about when or if. It's about when. Right. They're gonna have something that happens in their life. If we can give them the resource to develop a relationship before it happens, great. Because when the crisis happens, they're gonna be able to deal with it and they're gonna be able to come to work, still make the money that they need to provide for their families and want to be here instead of worrying out there about what's going on and not, you know, not being fully focused with their team. So, yeah, absolutely. We. There's no denying that. But ultimately, we get really sound employees, and that means everything to us. We invest in them because we care about them. We truly care about them. So it's something from our hearts to their hearts that we want to make sure that they have.

I love this so much. I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but I was a neuropsychology major in college, and I actually was on A path to become a mental health counselor in New York City. And after I got into grad school, I googled how much a mental health counselor starts off making in New York City. And I promptly changed course, unfortunately. But I'm a strong advocate for mental health personally. And being someone who's so versed in it yourself, can you elaborate a little bit more on some of the struggles you've seen as an owner that can come up in mental health and what contractors at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey should be aware of? I know that's kind of a heavy question, but.

No, it's a great question though, because we need to talk about it. It doesn't elude the traits. In fact, I've probably met more people in the traits that suffer from a co occurring disorder, as we would call it in mental health. So one mental health that has another mental health effect or disease at the same time. So the traits are chocked full of it. They're absolutely chocked full of it. And it's so much so sometimes it's hard to hire because there's so much past history. We are a second chance company. A lot of companies don't agree with that and that's okay. I don't compete with them. We are very fortunate to have a team that shares similar mental health struggles. It doesn't mean they're crazy or any of those things that people are thinking to themselves right now. Just means they have a common story. And we didn't do that deliberately. That really has come just naturally the way it does. And I feel very blessed to have the team that I have because they really support each other, they get each other, they know each other and they work really hard for each other. But mental health, you work a lot of hours in this field. You're trying to balance customer service, company service. Everything can just get some days and it's really good just to kind of have somewhere to reset. So my team knows I am their coach all the time. I am their boss. I hate saying that word, but I am their boss at the end of the day, at H Vac at the beginning of the day. I am there for them as a coach. How do we set your day right, right now for you, not for H Vac, but for you so we can have a good day.

I love that. I think that's fantastic. And by the way, I just want to clarify, what do you mean by second chance company?

So we evaluate. You know, I know a lot of people do credit checks and they do background checks and we do those as well. It's not that we don't do them, but we evaluate each person individually in their own unique circumstances. So we don't turn you down just because you have a past. We don't turn you down because maybe a few mistakes were made in the past. We want to honor our faith, and we want to honor our values. And that's first and foremost. If we don't do that, we have nothing. That's just the way Mike and I look at it. We have absolutely nothing. So we want to honor those first. And that means in our belief system, we love God, love people, and there's just period, end of story after that. And so that's really what I mean by second chance. We don't look at your past as who you are now.

I love that. I think that's really good. Thank you for explaining. You mentioned your team a dozen times already, and I really loved. I went on your website, and I love how in the about us, you.

You.

It's like you state your values, and then you sign off on all these different names. So, I mean, how important is culture to you? And what kind of employer do you want to be? Are you?

I think. I mean, I guess am I is a good question for my team. So maybe when they watch this, they'll comment in or something. But what we want to be is exactly what our values say on our website. We develop them together as a team. That is not a set of values that Mike and I sat down behind closed doors as owners, husband, and wife and said, this is what we want our team members to do. We collectively got our team members together about a year and a half ago, and we said, okay. We've not really had a great mission statement our whole business life. It wasn't a really big, important thing to us. We knew what our values were, but we want those no BS values, right? Those are the ones you have to live out every day. So I'm not in the showroom now, but if you were to look at pictures of the showroom, you would see this big, huge vinyl piece of artwork that I had made that has those exact about us values. They mean that much to us. And the ones in green are the ones we did our bullet points for, and we wrote through the rest of what that meant. They're everything to us. We come in every day, we meet every day together in the morning. We don't come in and rush right out the door. We sit, we have coffee, we talk. We find out what's going on in everyone's day, we find out what the problems were yesterday, talk about it collectively as a team. How can we improve it, fix it, do it better? Once a week we have a little longer meeting. Once a month, we have a really fantastic, fun meeting. They're everything to us. Because again, if we don't hold true to who we are as people, there's just no amount of money that matters to us on that. It doesn't. Mike would tell you, if you ask him this question, Mike would say H Vac is his way to serve his community and through, you know, giving them, sharing his faith with them. That's just the way that God gave him the ability to serve his community is with his knowledge of H Vac.

I love that. That's great. You know, I can so tell just by the way you're talking how much of yours and Mike's personality is in the company. But also I love how you're really integrating with each of your team members too. And I can only imagine that bringing those team members together and having those daily, those regular huddles and those fun meetings has really helped with retention as well. I wanted to ask you about hiring because you had mentioned it a couple minutes ago about, you know, we're working on this very cool thing and I want to release it soon. I was hoping maybe you could give me a little bit of a teaser of what you've learned and what you're, you know, the process you're doing now and then talk a little bit about how the culture you've made has helped you retain team members.

Yeah, absolutely. So we used to do it the good old fashioned way. If you were licensed, you were hired. Man, that didn't work. That just didn't work. You know, we soon learned, many years, I say soon and then many years, that that just didn't work. But we didn't really know what to do. You know, the trades are very short. I know you know this. They're short on technicians, qualified technicians. Schools are not really seeing as many students as they used to. So the bad part about that is that you have two choices. You have new people who you can mold into the right values and ethics if they kind of already kind of in that lane. And then you can mold them to the way that you want to do things, or you can get a really experienced tech. But often they're kind of set in their ways of the ways of the past. So it's a hard balance for us. So what we decided to do was no person gets hired outside of a group Interview. The entire team interviews them all at once and the entire team agrees or no one gets hired. It has to be unanimous. And that's how good my team is with each other and that they know each other, they have each other's backs of one to just doesn't have a good feeling then every team member, no matter how they felt about it, respects that one reservation. But I think everyone has really been able to know automatically what their entire team would feel. And we've just, we're really proud of that. That to me is almost everything and what we've tried to develop, we've decided that because really skilled technicians, we have some great ones, don't get me wrong, we have great, you know, old school wonderful technicians. But we've decided that the school level is kind of where we want to do that. We want to kind of grab the entry level, journeyman level one kind of maintenance techs and put them through the training. We now use go time so we can get them on the virtual training. We love that. But we also love the fact that there's a lot of other classes they can take. And as they invest into their team, then their team invests back into them. And it's this delicate balance of you show up for yourself and for your team and then we'll show up for you. And we're just going to keep playing that even balance. And it's worked brilliant for the last two to three years.

That's awesome. So you're really focusing on getting folks who are new to the trades who maybe don't have. It's interesting that you say like old school and like the old ways because add the more interactions, interviews I do, the more I see there's kind of the old way of thinking about the trades which is not really providing a great customer experience, which kind of gave the trades the bad name. And then there's companies like yours that are really spearheading and going above and beyond in terms of customer service and experience. And I personally think will be the ones that lead this industry in an upswing as we, as we move on. So you're just finding that those entry level people are easy to mold, eager to please. And I can only imagine that the more you invest in their training, the more they're investing in you.

It is true. And honestly, we don't even require that they go to school. We'll take them with no experience. We do the mechanical aptitude. The guys kind of decide, okay, you know, maybe he doesn't have 100% mechanical aptitude. But we can get in there and let's invest in him. There's no better way to get a free education than in the trades. So if someone was talking about why should I enter the trades? I'd say because you can get a free education and get paid while you're doing it. You know, it's an amazing career path and we can't sustain a country without infrastructure and companies to build that. So we need to invest back in those companies. I love being able to do virtual reality trainings and love being able to send my technicians to, you know, hands on trainings with companies like that. But at the end of the day, we have some great techs that can really pour back into them because they were poured into at one point and they appreciate that. So, yeah, it works great.

That's awesome. Not to harp too much on the beginning days, but looking back, you guys have been in business, you said for about 12 years, right? 12, 11, something like that.

We're headed into our 13th, lucky 13.

Kind of. Looking back, what are some things that you would have done differently now that you have hindsight, 2020 hindsight.

Oh, isn't that a blessing to have that? I think I would have grown slower in the beginning. I would not have been so eager maybe to get out of that garage and into your first building. That always feels like the next step up from, you know, new business ownership in the trades. Get out of the garage and get into a real office and have a real address. Don't just hire anybody. You know, really, really set those values down. I definitely would have done our values from the very beginning, although I love that we did it as a team. So I don't know. There's that trade off too, because in the beginning it would have just been Mike and I and maybe we would have got those values wrong. I don't know. I love my team enough to love the input that they've given us with that. Be open to all advice. Take the good, leave the rest. Trust your gut. Never be the smartest person in the room and definitely listen more than you talk. I mean, those are my advices in life anyways. But I would have, yeah, just grown slower. Maybe just not been so eager to be the top dog in the neighborhood. You know, I've learned that lesson the hard way and it wasn't a fun lesson.

Would you elaborate on that lesson if you feel comfortable?

Yeah, it's just about, you know, I listened to Tommy Mello's podcast that you did with him and he reminds me a lot of Mike, the honesty that Tommy had about how I just was a jerk in the begin, I just wasn't a great boss, you know, I expected. I pour into you. You give to me. You know, you give to me, I give to you. Mike's very honest about that. That's kind of how he was in the beginning. So if you worked for me three to five years ago, so sorry, we've gone a long way, you would love the team now. But, yeah, it was hard because we were constantly fighting these personnel issues, but it's because we didn't do it right from the beginning. We didn't have this core set that we hired around. We hired for license and not for culture. And I know we've heard the word culture a million times, and I know some people are sick of it, and that's cool, but I'm not. I love culture. Culture depends on the people that are in it. Ultimately, that's all that matters about the culture, because it can change based on the people that are in it. I don't care if we're in the same city with the same H Vac company with the same size. My culture is going to be different than your culture. Neither one's necessarily better or worse. It's just different. You've just got to find your own groove in your own culture that matches who you really are on the inside and grow from that. Don't just go from here to there and expect no mistakes or painless growth.

Wonderfully said, by the way, and also really nice commentary on how you're not only growing a business, but you're growing personally as well as you take on the responsibility of pain. I know that particular interview with Tommy, I love how he pointed out, like, I am responsible for all these people and the families that they feed. And so that inspires my strategy and how I move forward. Thank you for elaborating on that. I know you're very comfortable and open about the history of the company, and I so appreciate that. The more candid you are, the better.

Yeah. You know, I don't try to hide anything, really. I mean, I'm an open book. And I think that anyone who wants to hide their mistakes hasn't come to full realization of what they are. I have a personal motto which is, at the end of the day, I can't lie to myself and God, I have got to face those two truths and those two people. So when you come to my table of conversation, I only ask two things. You come with a confession and a solution. So admit that what you don't know is what you don't know. But you want to know. You want to learn, you want to grow. You're open to the empathy portion of that conversation. And don't be just the person who sits at the table and wants to suck up all of the energy. Give it back out a little bit.

Yeah, I think that's so great. You're just dropping knowledge bombs throughout this entire conversation. So recently, in my opinion, from what I know about you and how you chat with your customers, we talked a lot about team. We talked a lot about the growth of the company over the last almost 13 years. In my opinion, you're a little bit of a marketing expert. So I would love if you could tell me a little bit about how you guys are running marketing campaigns at H VAC Solutions, both to new and existing customers.

Oh, well, I love that you appreciate that about me. It feels harder some days than others, but, you know, you guys kind of make it easy at Source. I'm not gonna lie. It's kind of easy using Marketing Pro. You can be a pro with Marketing Pro for sure.

I didn't tell her to say that, by the way. I did not probably.

I just love the product so much because it is one of those things that if you can do it and set it up and walk away because you've done it right, you don't have to worry about it anymore. You can focus on other things. Really. Here's our culture that we hold true most anything else. And I'm really proud of this. We don't do a ton of marketing outside of one local TV newscast. We started that this year mainly because my daughter is a news media seller and we threw her some business. It's still fine. It works okay. But it's. It is what it is. We don't do a ton of advertising. And we believe that out of all the things we might have done wrong through all the years, one thing we consistently did right was we always put people first. We always sat at their kitchen table. We always got to know them. When I say we, I use we lightly. It's mainly Mike, but that's okay. And we took them at the moment, you know, they were the most important people because they were. And we cared about them and we developed those relationships. The sales came later. It might not even came that day. They come later. And our highest campaign revenue is now and I hope will forever be customer referrals. We're 73% customer referrals. It's mind blowing. After all the things I know, we could have done better. We still are at 73% or higher in our campaigns. If you were to go pull my reports, my legacy, my legacy number is my campaign tracker for that. And it's absolutely what that is.

Can you talk to me about how you set up that customer referral program and how you track it?

Yeah, we have the tracking number now for the legacy customers. Of course, I have fantastic csr. So those relationships are built really well. But just asking that information, really it is about just repetitive information that you gather. It's not about the repetitive tone that you use, but it's about being consistent and getting that information. I would just say if you treat people right and fair and you do the right thing, that doesn't always mean getting discounts. It certainly doesn't mean being the cheapest in town either. We're not the cheapest in town and we'll probably never be the cheapest in town again. But it does mean treating them right and doing what's right for them and their home. And every person and home is unique. And, you know, we're not, as we call it, a change out, slap and go company. You know, we don't. We just. That's not how we do things. We want to look at totality of your life. So I think it's just about doing that. And then people just naturally want to share the good parts of their life with the people they care about. So if, you know, you're doing work and we have so many families, so many families, Jackie. And I love it because I know the families, I know their dogs names and their kids and where they go to school and, you know, they send me little Facebook messages and it's just really nice. And I don't ever want to lose that. I don't ever want to be so big that I don't have that connection with customer. I miss talking to customers. I don't do a lot of. I don't take a lot of phone calls anymore. But once in a while I see someone calling and I quickly answer it really quick because I know I want to talk to that customer. I haven't talked to them in a while. I miss that. But I think that's the single best thing that you can do is develop those relationships with your current customers in an honest way.

Got it. And just to clarify at the beginning, a lot of the reason why you're able to track that so many of your call centers come in from customer referrals is because your CSRs are very diligent about Asking that question, how did you hear about us? When they pick up the phone, right?

We have the CRM with service time, we have the campaign set up with our phone system. So they call a certain number. We're going to know that. But most of the time you may still asking that question. How did you hear about us? Because we all know they might call a number. Most people are going to tell you Google in the beginning, but that might not really be it. It's where they landed in the end, or it's even where they started. But then they started going somewhere else and read reviews or it took them to a different landing page. So how'd you hear about this? Well, you know, my neighbor Sally had work done and I saw your number and I went to Google. Oh great, let's look up Sally. So that's how we, you know, kind of get that. We always ask that question no matter what number calls in.

I love it. And you know, you mentioned building those customer relationships, doing honest and good work. And you guys are only H vac right now. Correct. Do you have any intention of being multi trained?

Nope. Nothing that we've really put any thought into. I think we like our lane and we're good at it.

I love it. Until again, this is what we're gonna do. That's what you do and that's fine. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys do that with H Vac? Because then, you know, a lot of owners, I hear they go into multi trade because they want to be the one stop shop. So in terms of your solution, what you guys are offering, how do you continue to cultivate that relationship with customers throughout the lifespan of their unit? Do you guys use maintenance programs? Like. Yeah, just talk to me about that.

Yeah, we definitely have maintenance plans like everyone else does. I don't think that we're the company with the most maintenance plans. I don't think we have a real well oiled maintenance revenue understanding. You'll have to remind me who I watched that did the Jamie do.

Domenico.

There you go.

He's gonna be on the show.

My whole staff watch it. And I think when he said like 25 maintenance trucks, my whole staff whipped it and went like, wait, because you know, everyone loves PMs and then everyone kind of doesn't love PMs. The schedulers are like, you know, the techs are like, ah. But they are customer retention. But I think that that's, you know, that's one way that we do it. I think that just being in the community and Serving the community is another, you know, really great way we. That's hands down one of our top priorities as a team is to serve and give back to the community. I don't allow my staff when we go places, and this might be the opposite of what most people tell you to do, but I don't allow my staff to take photos at events that we're at. If someone takes a photo of us there and sends it to us or posts it on their social media, I'm fine with that. But I don't do it for bragging rights, and that's just the way that I want to be with it. I don't think there's anything wrong with people who do it the opposite way. I'm not saying that at all. It's just the way that we do it. But being involved in our community at so many different levels, I think puts that at the forefront as well.

So just to reiterate what I heard, you know, when you and your employees go to a community event, you encourage them to mingle with people. You encourage them to be present at the event and not focus on. Let's make sure we get a couple good shots for Facebook.

Exactly. And actually don't even allow them to hand out business cards unless someone specifically requests it. The rule of thumb in mingling is you ask for the business card of the other person and ask how you can serve them and what their ideal customer is that you can refer to them if you're at, like, a networking event. And that's how I train my staff. I don't think I needed to train them that way. I think they were always going to be that way anyways. But we don't even really take business cards and stuff in our pockets. We hand them out if someone asks, but it's not really our priority.

I'm curious your thoughts on this. I love it. You're providing different information and a different point of view, which is the point of this podcast. And I think it really boils down to knowing your community. Would you say that?

It absolutely does. We love Edmond. We serve a large community in Oklahoma City, but we serve our backyard and then we kind of work outwards. We finished raising our children in this town. They went to the high schools in this town. Now our grandkids are going to school in this town. So we know this town. We love this town. We are transplants. We've been here 14 years. I think that's long enough to say officially. It might be part Okie.

Is it the longest place you've ever lived.

It is the longest place I've ever lived because I used to travel for a living beforehand. So personally, for me, it's the longest outside of growing up, because I grew up in Northern California. So after I turned 18, it's definitely the longest place I've lived.

Yeah, I would say that you're an Okie. Is that the shortened version of an Oklahomian?

Yes, it is. It's the native tongue of your native to Oklahoma. And then we invite transplants after so many years. Don't know what that formula is, really, but I'm gonna call this Okie for now.

Got it. So being an Okie, being super, like, being super tuned in to the needs and the ebb and flow of the community, it sounds like you've been able to train your team on how to best interact with that community. And I mean, that's really what good marketing. What good brand marketing is, is knowing your audience and responding to them in a way that they want it.

Absolutely. You have to be relevant to whom you serve. So if you're not, you know, if you're an H VAC company, of course we can always donate our services. We can always give out equipment for free, you know, and of course, we do some of. But it's also about just showing up to the arts festival that raises money for the local dog shelter. It's about doing those simple things as well for your community. Knowing when we have a thing called swine week, it's nationally known. Edmond Memorial is a big school here. They're nationally known for being the school, the high school that raises the most money out of any school in America. They call it Swine week, and they raise money every year. And every year, a new charity, you know, gets that money. And I'm talking upwards of like, $750,000.

Wow.

By a high school for a charity. So it's amazing. The students are amazing. And so we want to participate in that and, you know, ways that we can do so. It's just really, again, knowing your community, Oklahomans tend. They're very protective, and they, you know, Oklahoma strong. That's kind of the statement here. We get hit by tornadoes a lot. We've got to be community oriented. We've got to help each other. We've had a lot of tragedies in Oklahoma, and I think that that makes Oklahomans stronger because they always come together, and we just wanted to make sure we were a part of that.

I love that. I think that's a really. That's wonderful. I really like that. I have no follow up. I just like it. So I have another thing I want to talk to you about. First off, what percent of the work do you guys do is residential versus commercial?

So it used to be almost 90% residential. This last year we took on quite a bit more commercial work. So I would say we're more of a 70, 30, you know, residential to commercial. I think that's getting more and more commercial. We're not losing the residential side, we're just gaining more commercial. For sure.

Got it. And particularly you are dipping your toe into a brand new future commercial space. So would you please talk about that?

Yeah, it hit us and we didn't. I'm so ashamed to say I didn't even see it coming. As a business owner and knowing H Vac so well. Last year, Oklahomans passed medical marijuana in Oklahoma. And that was a huge deal for this state because as you know, we're the buckle of the Bible belt. So that was a big deal. And honestly, we didn't see it coming because it didn't affect us personally. So I think Mike and I just didn't have it on our target. And it was passed overwhelming. Like 78%. So pretty majority rules here. And we were like, okay, great. You know, that pass. It didn't affect us. We don't really care one way or another. And then last summer, around June, we got a phone call from our landlord from the big spaces that we have here. He called and said, hey, listen, I've got this grow that wants to start. And so not a dispensary. Those are completely separate. In Oklahoma you have to grow in a separate area and then you have dispensaries. So he wanted first and foremost to get our permission as a tenant to have them in the same kind of building complex. And we were sure we don't care. And then he says, great, you know, I'll send them over for all the H Vac. Okay. You know, no big deal, man. That's an industry. So you gotta think about it like this. I didn't even. I. Jackie had no idea. I was blown away. So I go over and it's not a bit. I would say it's about 2,000 square feet. It's not huge. And I'm trying to do the low calculations. Mike and I are there. It's not just me. We're doing the low calculations. And. And it's not just normal load calculations. We're talking lights. And then it's like, is it sodium or is it LED lights that they're going to use because each of those have separate BTU and it's outrageous amounts of BTU heat that you put in there. So now we're talking where we used to do a 5 ton or maybe even a 7 ton to kind of give it some extra dehumidification. Now we're putting 15 and 20 tons of air in there and no heat obviously. So we kind of broke into this market of where mini splits worked the best. And we've always done mini splits, but mainly residential or garages. And this is an industry where we've hit hard in the mini split because you can do one condenser with multi cassette zones. So if something happens overnight when they're not there to their ac, they have lost an entire crop. Because. Because chances are only one head's gonna break at a time. Luck isn't gonna have it that you have more than one. So you can put multiple heads in there for the cassettes. And it just grew and grew and grew and grew because you think they're competitors, but they're not. I think they're very tight knit community because it's them against the world a little bit. So when they find a good contractor that does good work, they kind of spread the word around. And it just came. I made one call after another and Mike was a rock star because he all things grow. He can do all that calculation just standing there looking at it now. I'm so amazed at how he does that. And he went down to the city inspector because all of the international mechanical code, we'd never had it written for this. What's code gonna be for exhaust and all these things. And Mike sat down and he had this meeting. He got pretty much all his answers. They were themselves scrambling to figure it out and how this was gonna work as well. And it just took off from there and it just hasn't stopped. It just continues to grow and grow and grow. I think it's actually going to get bigger in our state because I think, you know, it's my opinion, I think at some point recreational is going to happen and so we're just going to have a shift in demand at that point or the amount of people that are better using, however you look at it. So yeah, that was a huge. I mean it probably, we probably did and if I had my financials, you know, we probably did it boosted it definitely took us over that million dollar range and we probably did 450, 500,000 in that department alone last year.

That's incredible.

Yeah, I think it doubled Us.

That's first off. Congratulations on uncovering that opportunity and really running with it and being lean, mean and we gotta learn about this and just going with it.

That's awesome.

And I just really want to call attention to the fact that this will go live in the fall. But we're recording this in July 2020. At the time that this is being recorded, we are currently in the midst of a pandemic. I am in California, which just closed down restaurants again. And I know a lot of commercial businesses are hurting, but this just sounds like a tremendous opportunity that H Vac company should be keeping their ear to the ground for if and when their state decides to take those steps.

Absolutely. And honestly, I think most, you know, most H VAC contractors and states. I'm from California, so I get it. You know, it's been, it's been out there for a long time. So those contractors, you know, probably it's a no, no, duh or okay, well, yeah. Why didn't you see a coming factor? For us it was a little different. But I will add to that that it doesn't stop just with the H Vac. And I think the industry as a whole doesn't do a great job at this. And it's one of the things we're really passionate about is indoor air quality. Grows have to have indoor air quality or we're gonna lose crops. And you have to have things like exhaust that you can't do in an ERV way because you can't bring fresh air back in because then you'd be polluting the crops. So there's all these really sophisticated things that you have to do. We have to use UV light, but you can't have the UV light shine at all. It can't show through anything. So you gotta have special bends with your products or you use special lines of products that are made and dedicated for it because that light throws off their whole grow cycle. It's an intense learning process. I'm not sure we're done learning it completely, but I think Mike has mastered it pretty well. I'm pretty amazed. And I let him just kind of take it and go. But they're huge jobs.

That's insane. And just like you mentioned, you're getting these jobs through word of mouth because that community is so tight knit.

Yeah, we don't advertise for it, not for any particular reason. We just didn't see a need for it. And we just continue to get the referrals one after another that comes in. And a lot of them were Last minuters, some of them tried to cheat the system a little bit, I think, and get opened without having permits. And then they called us in a panic. So there was some of that going on too.

Totally. And thank you for talking about it. But I mean, when you really zoom out of the whole issue, because I know there is some political, you know, there's some political stuff around that particular type of job. But when you really zoom out, it's really like the magic of farming and the magic of growing something that is. That is consumable and having to really, you know, in a lot of ways, it's like H vac is the provider of being able to cultivate this plant in an environment where it would be difficult to grow otherwise. So you guys are really like. It could be applied to not just medical marijuana, but also to other types of crops down the line wherever our world, you know, the next iteration of what our world cycle is.

Yeah, absolutely. You never know what's coming. Our environment's not great, so you never know how we're going to need to source our food and hopefully we can do that the most natural way. So, yeah, there's always going to be a need for it and there's politics behind everything. I try not to pay attention to that too much. You know, I've had people ask me, I know companies in town who won't do the work and that's fine. I honor their values and I honor whatever decisions they want to make. All I ask is the same of people with my decisions. It's not really, to me, it's not a big deal. I'm fine with it. So, yeah, you just have to let the other stuff go away. Away from you.

I think the message of this entire interview is essentially find, like your biggest competition is yourself. Find what brings you joy. Maximize it as much as you can. Don't pay attention to anyone else. I think probably like that's like the footnotes of today's talk, which I really enjoyed, by the way.

Yes, I think so too. I think my mom. I really. Oh, I hate to say that because I honor people so much, but I try really hard to just let what is is, you know, if we're going to have a dialogue, great, we'll have a dialogue. And then if we're not, well, that's okay too, you know. Yeah. Own your why, right? Figure out your why behind your why. Own it. Be you. The world really does need who you were created to be. So use who you are to the best of your ability. Show up for Yourself every single day as much as you can and work the program, whatever life program you're on. Work.

Love it. I have a couple of rapid fire questions that I didn't send to you in advance, although you did not review my questions in advance before, which is totally fine. But before I jump to those, is there anything that you want to talk about in terms of growing the business that we haven't covered yet?

It's just, you know, my biggest advice to people is sit down. Today, might be today. Think about just maybe a one year plan at a time until you get a little bit bigger. If you're going back because you've been in the trades for a while and you want to go back and revamp, that's okay, that's fine. Go back to that and do that because you're going to get stronger from it. Just focus maybe on one yearly goal at a time because we don't know what five years brings from us. So let's just focus on this year, in this moment, the best that we can be. And let's just keep doing that. And in no time you'll be in five years and you'll look back and go, wow, maybe I struggled a little less because I was able to do that. I can't guarantee that though.

I love that. I think that's great. I think it's great to laser focus on the present as much as possible and set goals, not just try and take it one step at a time. I think is great advice. All right, you ready for some rapid fire questions?

Shoot them.

How do you take your coffee?

With lots of cream and a little bit of sugar.

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

Russell Brand.

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

Being still.

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

Oh, sister, that's deep. I would, in all transparency, I would open the largest, best rehab center that Oklahoma or the world has ever seen.

I absolutely love that. And now what's the number one thing? We kind of covered it already, but I'll ask it again. What's the number one thing every contractor should do to run a successful business?

Set your pace. Set your pace. Stick to your own pace. Drown out the noise.

I love it. Stacy, is there anything you want to plug or promote or is there anywhere you want people to find you if you don't want them to find you, that's totally fine. Too. You've already given them an hour of your time.

Oh no, they can find me. So obviously you can. I mean, if you're. No matter where you're at, you want to follow H Vac Solutions on Facebook, you're welcome to do so. I would say the thing that I love the most is purpose for change. That is the coaching. But it's not, you know, coaching like you're paying me to coach you. It's really just interaction and connection. I am a huge believer in connection. We're made for it for nothing else, in my opinion. And I want us to give real and raw and honest and kind with each other. And so I created a platform for people to do that. And it doesn't matter where you're at in life or what you're doing, you're welcome there.

I love that. If you give me the link, I'll share it in the show notes so people can click it right from this recording.

I will absolutely.

Well, thank you so much, Stacey. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Absolutely like it. Thanks.

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