Keeping it Cool: Implementing Incremental Change | Podcast Ep. 161 | Toolbox for the Trades

Hello, contractors, and welcome to Toolbox for the Trade. My name is Jackie Aubel and today I'm chatting with Krista Landon, the marketing and IT manager at Gulfshore Air Conditioning and Heating in Niceville, Florida. Krista and I spoke about change and change management through the lens of implementing a new software in the last 12 years of being a Gulf Shore team member. Krista credits the company's steady growth and success to the team's culture, organization and collaboration. I hope you learn as much from this episode as I did. Krystal Landon, you are the marketing and IT manager at Gulf Shore Air Conditioning and Heating in Niceville, Florida. We're going to talk today about spearheading company change and managing that change.

I'm so excited to have you on the show. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to speak to you today.

I think it's going to be great. I love chatting with folks that aren't necessarily at the ownership level, but are also on the ground executing change, shaking things up. And you've had quite the experience doing that. So we're going to get right into it. But first, as always, an icebreaker. You have a family. I know you have a couple kids, you're married, you've been a Gulf Shore for a while. I would love to know what's your favorite thing to do by yourself.

Ooh, by myself. That is a good one. Reading, probably by myself so I can actively pay attention to the leadership, marketing, whatever it is I'm trying to grow into actively so that I'm immersed in it.

Got it. So are you doing mostly business reading or do you also like dabble in like fiction or something crazy?

No, I've never been a fiction reader and I only just picked up reading again since college in the last year. So like my bookshelf is cluttered with books and the last time I was that enthused with book reading was when I first became a mom. So reading all the, like, how to books that are out there, what to know before I have kids, for my marriage, what to know before you have children, four children, you know, all of those things. So it's been, it's been nice this year. I typically am trying to take about 15 minutes before I go to sleep every night to pick up a book, read it and get through it. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I, I'm also a fan of, you know, self help books. Anything that can help me improve, anything that can help me learn about business or about my job. But I need to tell you that I am in the throes of a mystery book. Right now, I. I can't recall the title because it is on my Kindle, but I want nothing more to do than just shut my laptop for the rest of the day and not look at my phone until I finish it. So I'm with you on reading, and welcome back to the reading sphere.

It's pretty nice to be here.

I just got back after a break, too, so I'm with you on that.

I mean, mine was really, really long. I graduated college in 2011, so I'm dating myself here. But, yeah. So 2011 to 2023, that's quite, quite a long break in. In reading for. For. For a purpose, so.

Well, you're back, and that's what matters. So I'm gonna try. I'm gonna challenge you to reframe that. So let's dive into your trade experience. How did you get into the trade?

I came home from college and just happened to meet my sister on campus of one of our local colleges, and there was a job posting for an administrative assistant. And I was like, I mean, I could do this. It can't be that hard to, you know, send invoices, respond to emails, make phone calls. And so I applied, I interviewed and accepted the position that day, and the rest is history. I've grown, learned, and, you know, had trials and tribulations along the way, but I've been here 12 and a half years, and I'm not looking back anytime soon. Soon.

Okay, so just to clarify, you took that admin assistant position at Gulf shore 12 years ago, the place that you are at now?

Correct. This is my only professional, like, career job. This is it.

That's awesome. And tell me again, what did you major in in college? Cause I remember thinking it was really interesting.

Yes. So I have a dual major and a minor. So my majors are marketing, and then my other major is entrepreneurship and family business, and then I have a minor in accounting.

Okay. All right, so you kind of. You had the education to do this, and correct me.

Yes.

If I'm wrong, but isn't Gulf Shore a family business? Right.

Correct. It's a single owner by Steve Reynolds. He founded the business in 1995 and is still trucking along with us. So he's here for us, and we're here for him, making it happen.

Wow, that's really interesting. All right, cool. And also, I have to do the shout out. I mean, we're same generation, millennial generation here, having a career, having worked at the same place for 12 years. That is no small fee. I think our generation is very well known for job hopping. And the fact that you've been there for 12 years really says a lot. What do you think it is about Gulf Shore that's kept you there for so long?

It's been multiple things over the year. Currently, it's the owner's flexibility allowing me to raise my children how I see that I want my children to be raised. So he aligns with that and understands how important that is to me over the years, it's always been really the education of it. I never walk away a single day without learning something. And that just fuels me to know that every day I'm going to wake up, clock in and learn something that I didn't know yesterday. Whether it's a technical thing about a new system, new refrigerant coming out, new financing plans that we're offering, new sales strategy, whatever it is that I pick up that day to master or learn is what fuels me to continue to stay in this trade.

Very, very cool. You know, we talk a lot about hiring and retention on this podcast, and I think having someone who joined the trades right out of college and has been here ever since, you know, I think it's a really interesting case study to examine, especially when we think about what makes people stay. And I think the incorrect assumption is, oh, whoever pays the most is going to be the one who retains the most employees. And that is usually incorrect. I know Chris Hunter's been on the show a bunch of times and he always says, you got to figure out your employees why. And if it looks like for you, your why is I need to be challenged on a regular basis. I need to be learning new things. And I also need to have a job that provides flexibility for the way that I exist outside of the outside of work. And so it sounds like it's a perfect match for you.

Oh, is. And I've only had children for four years now, so the majority of my career was not based on being able to work remote and have a family life and raise my family how I want to. Uh, but once I had my son and daycare, it was in the height of COVID Daycare is where, you know, hard to find childcare outside of a daycare wasn't happening. And thankfully my husband at that point got sent home and so he became a stay at home dad and working. And now it's a pleasure of mine to do that in return. So my husband returned to an office physician this year and now I am a hundred percent remote. I do go into the office once a week, but once a week is not. Is nothing in this industry. So.

Yeah, of course, of course. And I. We can't. I would love to go on the challenges of childcare and daycare ever since the pandemic, but that is not what this podcast about. This is a trades podcast, talking about the trades. And so we're going to do that, Krista. That is my promise to myself and to the listeners, even though I really want to go down that rabbit hole. But to wrap up right, so company started in 1995. A single owner who's still with the business. You've been there for 12 years. Tell me, how has the company grown during your tenure?

Oh, when I started, we closed out 2011, and I think 1.2 million. And happy to report that last year we closed out at 5.5. So it's been steady growth year after year. There's been a few years where we, you know, didn't grow that much. And there's been a few years that we've grown quite a bit, but ultimately, it's been steady growth year after year, whether that is revenue wise, membership wise. This year, we rolled out our new membership plan within Service Titan. We're only one year new with Service Titan, and so we rolled out a new membership plan in April, and our conversion rate went from about 10% in our service department to 27% is what we closed out the year. So it's been phenomenal to watch the growth of the company in different ways, whether that's technicians becoming more efficient because they've been with us for a long time. We just did our company kickoff, and one of the statistics that I educated the company on was that our Average tenure is 4.33 years, which I think is pretty good for our trades industry.

And that's average. That's average of all of your technicians. That's almost five years.

That's average of the entire company? Yeah, the entire company. Office staff included. Four, 33 years. So it's not bad. No, I'm really happy with that number because I've watched good people go and I've watched good people stay, and I've watched bad people go, of course. But my favorite is to watch the good people stay. Of course, the good ones that leave, you always wish them the best. And if they leave on good terms, you know, then you can hopefully hire them back in the future. But. And we've done that a few times, we've hired people back that have left thinking grass is greener. On the other side and. And brought them back in. And it's always my favorite to watch them grow in themselves.

That's awesome. Okay, so why do you think people boomerang back? What do you think it is about Gulf Shore that makes people want to come back?

Oh, honestly, we. The owner, Steve, makes all the difference. He is all about us at the end of the day and how he can help us. He's helped multiple of our employees over the years with financial troubles. You know, we've helped people over the years that possibly wouldn't have been able to secure purchasing a home, take that leap and know that we have their back and that they don't have to worry about next week's paycheck because they know that we're going to be there. And you can't say that about every H Vac company nationwide. I mean, some of them, you go to work on Monday and they're closed on Friday. And that. That for us, the job security there with Steve knowing that at the end of the day, he's always going to be there for us, really, I think, is why people come back. Um, we also are not your average AC company. Uh, we are the AC company that everyone comes to when the other company can't solve the problem. A lot of people, as much as they like to complain about the complicated jobs that we do, I think at the end of the day, knowing that we solved the problem that nobody else could fuels them all as well.

That's so interesting. Well, yeah, it adds complexity to the job, introduces potentially some curveballs that keeps people on their toes, which I know I love as an employee. To my chagrin. Sometimes I wish I was an employee who just was like a cog in a wheel type of person. And I know I'm not, but sometimes I'm like, man, that must be nice. But I love that. And I also love the stability here. So this is interesting because we're talking here about how long you've been at Gulf Shore. We're talking about how the stability of the company and steady growth is one of the things that you think that these really great employees who leave and then come back, that's what. That's one of the things they really like about Gulf Shore. But you told me and during our pre interview that you actually love change, which kind of goes opposite to these foundational pieces here that we're starting with. What are some of the big changes that you went through this year and how did you manage them?

Yes. So our biggest change, of course, for 2023 was Service Day in we implemented Service Titan January 1, 2023. Started out the new year fresh out the door, running. Of course over the years as new updates have pushed out implementing different features that we didn't start off with. There of course is pushback with the change. But I think overall, everyone for the most part is excited about implementing Service Titan and the change that has come with it. I know for me, learning the new software was empowering and exciting to see how robust this software could be if you implemented everything that it had to offer. The reporting for me is. And even as the owner says, I mean, we didn't. Our prior CRM didn't have a dashboard that you could open up and see critical key performance indicators of how yesterday went or how last week went or how the week before went. And having that has, has been really, really exciting to see everyone embrace that, that we can see these key factors at any moment and not have to wait for somebody to pull the report, filter an Excel spreadsheet and then spit out the answer. So for us, implementing the change of Service Titan was really, really exciting. And I think most everyone would would agree that although it's been tough, it's been good and it's been very beneficial for our business.

Thank you so much for saying that your check is in the mail. Well, you know, it's interesting. I always, I always say on the show, by the way, that's a joke I've used a million times. Yeah, you haven't yet reviewed Toolbox for the trades, and this is your second or more time hearing me say that joke. Please leave a review and let me know on this show. I really tend, even though this is a Service Titan podcast, I do like to talk more about the trades holistically, and Service Titan is kind of in the background. We don't really go too, too deep in it, but we're talking about change. We're talking about change management on today's show. And this was a giant change you went through in the last year. And I appreciate your candor about it. I'm really happy that it worked out for you. But it is, it's a massive change. So I really think that our conversation today could help a lot of people, whether or not they're implementing Service Titan, maybe they're implementing another process or system. Like, I think the lessons you learned here could be applicable. And just to clarify, how many people were working, were working at Gulf Shore when you implemented Service Titan? Or like, how many employees would you say at this type at this time who are on Service Titan.

I know that we just started out the year at 30. I would guess that we were probably at like 26, 25 to 27 last year when we started. But yeah, we just hired our 30th employee. Well, like congratulations. So that, that's really exciting. I mean it's a small company. I mean we're not talking about a multi location enterprise. We're talking about a smaller company that yes, we're growing and yes, we hope to make it to 10 million in the next three years. And yes, we have lofty goals to grow it past that. But at the end of the day, it all started in someone's backyard in 1995.

Yeah. And you guys do primarily residential work, correct? Or do you do any commercial or new construction?

So we do have a few new construction clients that we work with. It's very few, very selective on who we partner with. And then commercial. Yes, we are a light commercial company so we help all of our local commercial clients that we have as well. I would say we're probably like 70, 30 between commercial and residential. So it's not the brunt of our business, but it is still very important and lucrative to us. Got it.

Yeah. So Gulf Shore, about 30 employees. 70, 30 split residential with commercial new construction. We're implement, we're making a big change to the company. Right. So what, what advice would you give to folks listening who are maybe in similar situations and are going to be implementing change at their business? What tips would you give to them? Now as someone who's literally just done a massive change like implementing service Titan.

Into the organization, organization would be the best thing I had Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google everything that you could have open. And it was a collaborative effect with everyone in the office in terms of our management team managing. What features and setup did they want within service site that we were implementing and then all the way down to our technicians, we didn't implement out the gate templates for our price book, but now they're considering it and now they want to learn more about it. And how can you know, this help them this season to not have to work so hard thinking about good, better, best options and you know, it would already be there, they would just have to click on it. And so it's been, it's been pivotal for us to have organization within. What features do we want to set up? What features do we want to bring over? Or not necessarily features, but what information do we want to bring over from the old software in terms of job types, business units, how do we Want it to export to QuickBooks, and how do we want that to look, you know, all the way down to the nitty gritty of, you know, customers coming over? We only filtered our quote unquote active list of customers, so we only imported into Service Titan clients that had used us for the last three years before we implemented. So I only wanted to bring over true client data with us so that I could start off with a clean slate. Late of we know that these people we have touched in the last three years, we know that these are all clients that are going to continue to use us, 90% of them. And it has really helped with the implementation of Marketing Pro now later this year, that I know that when I'm emailing these people that it's actually people that want to hear from me and not somebody that I haven't serviced in 10 years. Not to say that you can't pull clients from 10 years forward, but it's unlikely. So for us, that's what I would say is the organization of it to begin with, that once we started with the onboarding of Service Titan and being organized of what features and setup do we need to do in Service Titan, what do we want to bring over to mimic, and then how do we want everything else to go from there?

I love that. I want to get a little bit more technical here because even though 30, 26, 30 employees, you know, that's still a couple dozen, right? How do you get everyone on the same page at those early stages of change where you're making sure that we're all bought in, we're all moving towards the same goal? Because I know you, you love change. Other people, not so much. So how do you make sure that people's voices are being heard? How are you managing any pushback as this process is happening?

So for me, it all comes down to training. Whether we didn't train them correctly during implementation and so we're doing retraining or additional training on processes and workflows. Service Titan is ever going to evolve and so is every other software out there. They're always going to push updates. If it's, if it's a good one, they're always going to push out updates. And so having the team on board with the understanding of that it's ever going to evolve, that we can't just from the beginning implement every feature, every service that any CRM software has to offer and knowing that what you do today might be different tomorrow, not because we're trying to be rude or, or harsh, but because it's going to. Cause it's going to benefit either the employee, the customer or the company. I mean, communicating that to them at the end of the day has been beneficial. I mean, just last week I was doing training with our service team on the templates and how we can use them. And this conversation happened November 2022 when we signed the contract and began onboarding of hey, we've got templates, we can do this. I can make it look like this. And here we are a year later and they're like, oh, you can do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that might be something we would be interested in.

That's interesting. Yeah, you know, I. This is a, this is a personal theory I have, but I really think that when you're explaining new concepts to people, you really have to keep it pretty simple at the beginning and you have to plan it out, like start baby steps first and like go gradually. And I know you use Titan Advisor a lot to kind of guide how you were going to grow. So can you at first actually explain to the folks listening who may not be familiar what Titan Advisor is?

Titan Advisor is a feature in the administrative or backend office side of Service Titan where it will track your usage and give you points based on how well or not you are using that feature. And it's the basic features that come with Service Titan. Most of them there are features that can be turned off that you'll never use and you just won't ever get those points, which is fine. But out the gate, we started with a really, really high Titan score because I was so adamant of that. If we're going to implement some of these critical features, we're going to start it from the beginning and then from there. As I've evaluated different goals within my Titan Advisor and rolling them out to new team members or other team members of hey, we really need to be using this software in this way and this is why this is how it is supposed to be used. Yes, we were not using it that way for now and that's fine. It's not a problem. There's just a better way we could be using this feature and working towards increasing our Titan Advisor score. I think the highest I've seen it so far was at 1:73, so I'm pretty excited about that. The only, the only one year in, we've hit 173 one time. So it ebbs and flows every day it's different and I don't let it get to me when it drops. It's just a matter of, you know, why? What caused that? And then, you know, reaching out to the team members that are affected by that Titan score and going, oh, okay, well, you know, it's because the service manager or I sat in the dispatch office and forgot to click the green bubbles for a week, like, sorry. So simple things like that that have happened over the years or over this year that, you know, I'm like, well, really can't fault anyone other than myself for that one.

Sure. I love that. I want to kind of go back to more of your foundational people skills that I think is a. Is like a talent and a skill that you have that I think is right now muddled in our conversation over, you know, Service Titan and Titan Advisor, which are tools that everybody can use. Right. But I still think it takes a certain special type of person who can have these honest conversations with coworkers and kind of check the pulse. Like, do you have an internal process or like a check system? Like, oh, I've got to check with the dispatch team, or, oh, I got to check with the technicians, or, oh, I need to solicit feedback from the service manager. How do you, like, go about managing expectations of all these people and making sure that everyone's vibes are still good, for lack of a better phrase?

Oh, yes. Every time that I'm in the office, I'm constantly taking a pulse on thoughts, theories, and issues with Service Titan and then working towards making our relationship with Service Titan better. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, that's my responsibility as the IT manager to ensure that the software is being used correctly, implementing new features as they're rolled out with updates, or we're bringing on existing features that we weren't using prior. And so getting everyone's opinion up front of how can we use this better or why weren't we using this? And wow, think of how much money we could have saved or time we could have saved had we been using it. The whole thing with templates that brought the conversation back around was this statistic that was put out about that companies that use templates close. I think it was like 10% more in revenue every year. And I got with the service manager and I was like, I think we need to. I think we need to really consider this. And then we got put in the beta for the Titan intelligence for the templates, and I turned it on and I just turned it on. I didn't tell any of our service team members it was coming. I turned it on and waited until the next meeting that I attended to roll it out and say, this is what Service Titan has created based on our job price or our tasks in our price book, used most frequently. And this is what they're saying should be in our templates. What are your thoughts? What do you want to see? Y' all have seen this now for three weeks. It's been turned on. Nobody said anything. I just let them sit on it and think. And I came back with a list of ideas and I came back and did what I told them that I was going to do. I copied and pasted every template that Service Titan or the Titan Intelligence put out that we should create. And I said, okay, here's your list. What do we want to get rid of? What do we want to change? What do we want to add? And let's, let's reconvene on this in two weeks. And so really, at the end of the day, I think having the collaborative effect has been the most successful thing for us at Gulf. Sure. With any amount of change, it's always been a conversation with team members on how is this going to affect you, how will it affect the clients, and how will it affect the company at the end of the day, and making sure that at some point we all win.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And also, I mean, to your point, software is expensive. Like, there's no ifs, ands or buts about it. And when you have such an expensive, powerful tool running your business and supporting your growth, it would not make sense to not do those check ins regularly and. Or to not have someone like you who's more or less dedicated. I know you are a hyphenate marketing and IT manager. I too am a hyphenate here at Service, Podcast and Webinars. So I understand that that can be a little, you know, wonky sometimes, but I think it really makes sense to have someone at your organization who leads the change, who's in charge and owns the change, so that this way, their con, their main priority is making that change happen. I think without that, you're kind of setting yourself up to fail. Do you agree?

No, I, I definitely agree. I'm currently working towards my certified administrator certificate so that everything that I don't already know and haven't learned in the last year, I can pick up the little bits and pieces and go, okay, let's have a conversation about this. How do I change this? Why do I change this? And meet with whether it's the finance team.