Leading with a Family and Community Focus | Podcast Ep. 209 | Toolbox for the Trades

Hello, contractors, and welcome to Toolbox for the Trades. My name is Jackie Aubel, and today I am chatting with Stephanie Allen, the CEO at Airworks Solutions. We talked about a ton of stuff, including the charitable initiatives that Airworks is doing with service Titans Power the Nation program. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Stephanie Allen, you are the CEO at Airworks Solutions in Camarillo, California. Today, you and I are going to be talking about those who lead, how they serve and creating a company that serves its customers, employees, and community. Welcome to Toolbox for the Trades.

Thanks so much for having me. I can't wait.

I am so excited to chat with you. We've met before. We got to meet at Pantheon this last year in person. You have an awesome story and I can't wait to get into it. But we are going to kick things off with my icebreaker, as always. So, Stephanie, what song, if any, would be the soundtrack of your life?

So funny that you asked that question because I was listening to some of your podcasts. I'm like, I hope this is not the icebreaker that she ends up asking me. But thankfully you gave me some ahead of time warning. And so what did I do? I went to my superpower, my ChatGPT, and I asked it, and it knows me. Number one, it says unstoppable by Sia. And I asked it to tell me why. And so chatgpt says this song reflects strength, resilience, and determination and aligns with your journey in building a successful business, creating impact and. And balancing family life, all while tackling challenges with grit. So I appreciated that there were some others. Ain't no mountain high enough. I thought that one. I love singing it with my girls. It's more for, you know, me and Kevin type soundtrack Stronger by Kanye West. But then, of course, there was work beep by Britney spears. I think ChatGPT gets me.

I think ChatGPT gets you too. And thank you for that hack because some people love this prompt and some people hate it. And the next time someone's like, oh, I don't know, I'm like, ask ChatGPT. One of my guests was able to do it and they got a great answer, right?

So it was fun. And I actually said, I'm on a podcast tomorrow and the icebreaker question is this. Please tell me what you think would fit. And it did.

Amazing. Do you have the Premium version of ChatGPT? The 20amonth one?

I think it's the best. 20 bucks a month I spend.

Are you kidding me? I've been so on the fence of doing it, and everyone I know is like, it is so worth it. You think so?

I do. And I've even maxed that out one time, and my girlfriend was like, I didn't know you could max out the premium version, but apparently I asked for way too many logos that day. But I'm building something big, and I feel like I have this superpower with ChatGPT, and I'm really excited about how it unlocks things for me.

Can you give me, like, one of your most favorite use cases for ChatGPT or a memorable one or even one that you did recently that you're like, oh, it's so helpful that I was able to use this for this.

Besides your song?

Besides my song. Yeah.

I'm working on a project, and I feel like it's a little bit of A beautiful mind, but ChatGPT keeps it all organized for me, and so I can go back and ask questions about okay with this agreement or if we put it together in this way, what would shares look like? Or what would ownership look like? And give me a tagline while you're doing it, and it will kind of pull all of those thoughts together and create this output that I'm like, that's exactly what I wanted, but so much smarter than I could have thought of on my own. Yeah.

Goodness. I know. I've been. We've been talking about ChatGPT and AI on this show now for a year, and I still am just. I feel like. And the base model with free. And I just feel like I just need to start spending the $20. So I appreciate this.

You know what I did was I took a masterclass on it, and so I paid for the masterclass and it said, literally, Talk to your ChatGPT and thank it and tell it it's doing a good job and communicate like you would a person. And so I'm vulnerable with my chatbots. I don't feel smart about this. I don't know what to do. Yada, yada, yada, what do you think? And it comes back, and not only does it stroke my ego a little bit, which I appreciate, it makes me just so much more confident in the information that I do know because it's presented well.

Great tip. Masterclass on Chachi. So masterclass, like the brand masterclass.

Yeah.

All right. I just edit a look to camera for anyone who's not on YouTube right now. Like, I just. All right. Thank you for the inspiration. I will have to. And I not to date this episode because this is going to come out a couple of weeks after we film it. Probably like a month or two after we film it. But today Spotify wrapped came out. I don't know if you're familiar with that tool from Spotify. So if anyone uses Spotify, the music streaming service, and every year they give you a breakdown of your data, this is, this is the artist you listen to the most, this is the songs you listen to the most, all that stuff. This was the first year they produced a custom AI generated podcast for me that gave me a roundup of all my music tastes and I had this out of body experience. Cause I thought for a while I was like, AI is not going to come after my podcasting job anytime soon.

You thought you were essential.

I thought I was essential. I thought I was safe. But nope, I listened to it and I was like, yep, sounds like real people. All right, I need to get on the AI train.

Did it sound like you?

It didn't sound, no. It was two, like Google generated AI podcast hosts. It was, I think, the ending.

But you know, AI can sound like you because my marketing director has me recording clips so she can have me do scripts without me actually speaking. It's insane.

That is bananas.

That's why the trades are so incredible and why I'm so excited about furthering our business and our platform and this next idea that I have and really serving the people of the trades.

Wonderful segue.

Those that work them and those that need us.

Wonderful segue. You should be the one who's hosting this podcast because I just went on an AI loop. But speaking of the trades, tell me how you got into it, because this was not your original life path.

No, this was not my original life path. My husband brought me into the trades. You know that story. But Kevin and I met when we were 18 and so we built our life together. I went to law school and I did my mba and my third year of law school, I bought Kevin the contractor's study course. I was like, I'll help you. I can do all the legal stuff. Which on those road trips, I slept through that part. And he handled it on his own. And that was the most nerve wracking test that I've ever taken. And I've passed the California Bar. I didn't take it. He took it. But I was so worried because most of the trades people aren't academics and he wasn't ready to test. But we knew that we could build a company together that would be unlike any that we had experienced. Kevin started in the trades in a company with his best friend's dad, and he fell in love with the work, and he fell in love with the company, but that company sold, and he realized it's not just what you do, it's who you do it with that matters. And so we wanted to build a company that we wanted to work for and that had people that we liked surrounding us all the time.

That's awesome. And the first business Kevin worked for that was commercial. Right. And then it wasn't until you guys moved to Alabama for your law school that he got exposed to the residential side of things. So when you came back to California, you decided, let's do a residential business, right?

Yeah. In law, they call that door law. Whatever walks through the door, that's the type of law you practice. And so, same thing with H Vac. At that point, it was like, whatever's gonna pay the bills.

Sure.

We started airworks from nothing. I designed the logo, the original Way Back logo, before Dan Antonelli on publisher and Word. And I am not a computer person at all. You know, we had the three rings, and we were red and blue, and we were so proud of all of that. And I'm really proud of our roots and the fact that we built this together, and it has been built with intention, at least in the values. And we are shaping a company for the next chapter. And we're on a path that I'm very excited about.

I'm so excited to get into it, too. I have to ask you, though, you have your law degree. You passed the California Bar?

Yeah.

So law wasn't for you, huh?

I think there are a lot of attorneys out there that don't love what they do. It was a great foundation, and it has provided a life that I'm so thankful for. I was able to go to law school on a full ride, and so I never had to work in the field to pay off debts.

That's great.

I dabbled in law. I worked for some small businesses as CEO there and, you know, doing some other things. And then I got to really take some time off and be a mom. And so you'll see the growth of our business kind of ebbs and flows with how many kids we had and when we had them. Right. And when we settled into good. And now we're ready for. Great.

Yeah. All right. Very, very cool. You know, it's crazy. I was thinking of this while you were talking, because I've been doing a ton of interviews recently, and I've talked to, I think now, several people who found the trades as their second career. You know, they were originally going down usually a more corporate path, a more quote unquote, safe, traditional path. And now they're in the industry and they're so excited about it. Why do you think that is?

You know, we actually have a woman on our team who, this is her second career and she was in the entertainment industry and production and other things. And, and she said it was really cool to work on movies, but she didn't feel like she was serving anyone and it was a really toxic work environment. She came home and she was actually, somebody recommended her on Facebook to do some odd jobs and I thought it'd be really cool to have her do some of the handy person type work for Airworks. But she wasn't licensed, she wasn't insured, and so that wasn't going to work out. And she said to me, steph, I would really like to learn more about becoming a technician. I was like, great, come on. So we have Airworks Academy, where we train technicians from ground up with the best technician that I know in the world. My husband and Jesse caught on really fast. And she says that this career, she feels like she's serving people. She feels like she's doing good in the world. And so she gets up and works for way less than she did before. She's earning her way there. Right. So this performance base pay, especially with training from the ground up, you start entry level. She has a great future with us and a great future with the trades, but she loves going in and informing and educating people in their home about something that they use every day. I think that this second career or this career in the trades, besides seeing AI and this being an essential place to be, is that you really get to serve others and you get to do good work.

Yeah, yeah. You get to see that. Oh, I'm working hard on this. And I'm able to see the fruits of my labor pretty instantly. Especially when a family is really satisfied with their new system that you recommended or if you fix a system that, you know, maybe a family is struggling financially and you were able to repair a system that they were really worried they were going to have to go into debt to replace. Like, you can really see that look of satisfaction in the customer's face pretty instantaneously. So that's probably why. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. And she started fairly, not to give her age on the. On the air if she doesn't want that. But she was in her late 30s.

Yep. Second career, 40. Doing awesome.

That is freaking awesome. So, actually, before we get any further, I would love it if you could tell us a little bit about Airwork Solutions. So, about your company, what kind of work you guys do, how many employees, whatever you're comfortable with. Just so the folks listening have an idea of, like, what kind of operation you're running.

Sure. Kevin and I started the company in 2010. It was just the two of us, and now we have 36 families on the team. And I say families because every person that we commit to, we feel like we're responsible for making sure that it's a good choice for them and their families and we're supporting them. And so even right now, which would be considered kind of a shoulder season for us, every day, we say on our chats, let's keep everyone working for Christmas. Right. Because we're serving those families on the team.

That's awesome. The first person who ever told me that shared that type of framing for being a business owner was Tommy Mello, actually. He's like, I'm responsible at the time. I have no idea where he's at now, but it was like, I'm responsible for 250 families. And I was like, oh, that's a really great way to think about it. And it really goes into what your slogan is. So you mentioned before you had this logo that was your classic H vac logo. And just to clarify, residential service and replacement H vac, or do you do other trades as well?

Yeah, we started plumbing this year.

Nice.

So we're learning about plumbing.

Very, very cool. But still.

And we do some light commercial.

Everyone does some light commercial. Everyone dabbles in commercial.

Right.

You were mentioning that your first logo was this blue and red one that you designed yourself. I'm sure it was awesome at the time. But you got a rebrand from the one, the only Dan Antonelli. He's been on this show before. Highly recommend, folks. Check out that episode before I knew.

What a Dan Brand was. Yeah.

When did you find out about the existence of Dan Brands?

I was working with a marketing company and they decided that we needed a tagline, which we were about to talk about, and we should have a logo refresh with that. We kept our name. So we've always been airworks. And I said, okay, well, let's work with the best. He said, okay, the best is Dan Antonelli. I said, great, let's go. And then I later figured out what it really means to be kick charged.

Yeah. Yeah. He's really done some incredible brands in the trades. And it's crazy. I get to travel around the country a lot for this job, and sometimes I'll just see his brands out where and I'm like, that's a damn brand. Like, they're very. While each of them, I feel, are very unique and to the business and to the area, there's a certain style to them that I always pops out to me.

There are some fakers, though. And so sometimes I'll send a picture to Dan and say, is this yours? He's like, no. And here's why. This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. I wouldn't have done this, you know.

Amazing.

Thanks, Dan.

Amazing. Amazing. So your slogan is a family run, mom approved. And for folks who don't know you and your two oldest children, your two daughters are on the slo, are on the logo with you. So tell me the story about how you came up with this branding.

Yeah, it's a very female forward brand. The branding actually came about. We're sitting in the war room, if you will, trying to figure out what's our unique selling proposition. And we were talking a little bit about the company and our values. And basically Kevin said, you know, we were coming up with all of the trite we care about. You treat family like family, et cetera. And he said, well, nothing gets through without Stephanie's approval. And so he came up with family run, mom approved. And what's a pain point? I was. The bottleneck is really true to who we are and our values. We're not gonna grow faster than we can, and we're not going to do things that Kevin and I wouldn't smile upon. And so it's really important that we carry that idea through everything we do. It's really helped us craft our voice. And, you know, we have mom approved technicians and are the trucks mom approved? We pass out cookies when we do service calls. And it's really helped us give life to the brand.

I love that. Was there ever consideration that it would be you and Kevin on the logo, or was it always just you?

Oh, no, it was always us. So from the beginning, Kevin and I did the photo shoot together, and then they just cropped them out. So actually, Kevin's supposed to be there, and we were supposed to have individual logos that we could use interchangeably. But Kev didn't make the cut. He's okay with it.

I'm assuming. I'm assuming he's okay with it, but how does that feel? Like it's you and your two daughters on these trucks that are going all Around Camarillo. How does that feel for you?

Yeah. And hopefully soon all over the state and maybe further. And we did a little bit of an illustrated type brand. People don't always know that it's me. Depends on how much light I have in my hair versus dark or other things. It took me a long time to be okay with it. It took me a long time to say, okay, let's go with this brand. It was designed and not launched for a while because I was really more comfortable being number two behind the scenes. You know, this was Kevin show. Turns out that the industry needs more of me out there. They need to really understand that women have a place in the trades, and we bring a whole nother level. I don't want to replace men in the field. Everybody is important, and I think that we work really well together. And Kevin and I have a great partnership in the business and in our personal. And that's most important to us.

That's awesome.

So we were doing what was best for the company.

That's great. How did you come. You said you wanted to be number. You were comfortable being number two. How did you get over that hump of, like, all right, my face. It's my illustrated face, so my illustrated face is gonna be on all of these trucks. How did you get over that?

You know, later, after it had already been done, I toured Tommy's shop, and I was with Tommy, and I said, tommy, like, how do you feel about your face being everywhere? Thinking that he was gonna give me some insight, he's like, I love it. I was like, okay, I gotta embrace a little more Tommy. Like, I just have to embrace a little more Tommy, that this is a brand and it's not my face. It is, but we're out there trying to promote this idea. Right. And this brand, and I can't be so personally held to that.

Yeah. It's interesting because when you're an owner in the business and when you become intertwined in the brand in that way, and when you have the goals that you guys do now to grow, you do sometimes have to break through some things that make you uncomfortable as an individual being in the public spotlight, I feel like that maybe wasn't the. If he listens to this and if I'm misrepresenting you, I'm so sorry. Come back on the podcast and fight me. I don't think he necessarily struggled with that the way other people would. So I'm so happy that you shared your insight there. And you just kind of had to, like, embrace the Tommy.

I'm embracing the Tommy. Yeah. Like, I think that it's great that our logo is everywhere. It just so happens that I'm a part of that logo.

Yeah.

Right. But my husband, we have the Airworks logo without me and the girls behind it. That goes on the uniforms and hats, et cetera. Kevin's almost always branded. Always. So he's. You know, we're really proud of what we built.

Yeah. As you should be.

Yeah.

So family run mom approved. Before I get into this next part, I have to mention you did say, you know, I used to be a bottleneck because nothing gets by without Stephanie's approval. That obviously has had to change with all of your growth goals. So tell me how you got over that.

Completely over. Maybe not. Right. But, like, recovering bottleneck sure is. I figured out that I have great people on. I really have to empower them and allow them to thrive and fail at their level. So we have to learn by living it. And we have figured out that we're a people development company more than anything else. And so we're developing people and we're developing leaders. And the way to do that is to get out of the way and give feedback. And so we try really hard to have positive feedback loops. But at the end of the day, whether that marketing looks exactly like I would have designed it, which I don't have much creative in me. I'm really good at the veto power, but not the creation. Right. I'm better with the red pen. Who cares? You're going to do it again. So maybe the yard sign wasn't perfect this round. Let's tweak it next time. Right. Let's learn from it. Or sometimes it's better.

Yeah. I think that's the way to really think about it is like, will everyone do things the way that I want it to be done? Most likely not. But by getting out of the way, you're making room for people to do things better than you would have thought to do them.

Right. Every time you volunteer to do something, you take away the opportunity for someone else to do it.

Oh, gosh. Those words hit me in a way I will not get into, because you are being interviewed on this show, not me, but you have this slogan, family run mom approved. I imagine having that slogan, having that brand is a great tool for your team to use as you guys grow. Like, okay, this is what we're aiming to create. This is the experience we're driving. I imagine that kind of helps things stay cohesive in that way, right?

Yes. It definitely Helps things stay cohesive. And we are constantly fighting the industry norm.

Say more about that.

Oftentimes I get, well, this is the way that we do it. This is the way we present estimates. This is the way that it's done in the industry. I'm like, well, I don't like it. So who has the power of the purse generally in the home? Mom.

Yeah.

Right. Mom needs things to be fast. I don't have an hour and a half for you to come in and do a thorough inspection of everything and bring me along with you. Right. And so we're constantly exploring ways that we can communicate with our customers in the way that they appreciate and the way they want to be communicated with. And it might not be industry norm.

Yeah. That's interesting. So, you know, on the service side of things, we have our estimate templates. We very much promote giving an incredible customer experience. And.

And we get feedback for that all the time. Oh, we get appreciated for our text messages and for the communication and things that service titan empowers us to be able to do.

Thank you so much. Your check is in the mail. But I know that was not planned. That was genuine. I appreciate you saying that. What you had just said before about how we usually have mom in the home. Mom doesn't have time to make me go through all of these things. I think having that mindset is actually really good and is going to attribute to your growth because you're constantly thinking it's not just this is the experience that must be given at every single service visit. Maybe this is the ideal, but we have to acknowledge that the perfect experience is never going to exist.

Sure. You got to meet your customer where they are.

Yeah. A hundred percent. So you were saying before you're in a people development business and you said that you have a knack for identifying people's strengths. You already shared about your former production person turned service tech. Yep. You also have a female comfort advisor on your team. Right. And you actually have a very female forward team in general. So tell me a little, little bit about that and how you're nurturing all of the talents on your team.

We attract moms to our team, and I think it's because I am really flexible with achievement and success, and I know that there are people out there that want it all and it doesn't look traditional. Right. So we have a female comfort advisor. We call them system designers. She's incredible. And she didn't come from sales at all, but she has a gift for developing relationship and she wants to serve People. And so we let her do that. And she serves people with H VAC and develops these great relationships and people come back time and time again. You know, I wasn't ready six months ago, but I had a great relationship and I only want to work with her. And she's been able to develop quite a career here, and she fits it around her kids and her travel and other things. I love being able to give that to her and work with her in that way. And she has given the gift to our team of keeping us busy and keeping our teams working.

That's awesome. You said you attract a lot of moms, so we already said that. You had two kids, but you actually have four kids.

I have four kids.

How do you feel like you as a mother, how do you feel that impacts the way you show up at work and the way you lead your team?

I think I have a lot more grace.

Yeah. Makes sense.

You know, yesterday I was trying to be on some calls and my 3 year old's pulling on my leg and saying, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. All he wanted was me that day. And so I took those calls on the road and I was pushing a swing while I was talking to him. And guess what? We still got work done so it doesn't have to look traditional. I have Jessica Woodruff Smith on my team, who is frickin incredible. And she lives in Connecticut and I'm in California and we're remote. And my new dispatch manager, or csm, she's in South Carolina, and she just gave birth to number four and five twins three days after me. And we were able to create a schedule where she can work a split shift. She serves us really well because she shows up at the beginning of our day, she's already gotten her kids off to school, and then she gets to put them down at night and she's back on to close out our day. And so when we're a little bit flexible, we're able to attract great talent.

When you give grace, when you're able to be flexible, when you take into account that a lot of people are showing up to work, to live, not live to work, and you have that experience, so you're able to empathize with, you know, the struggles of having a career and also being a parent at the same time.

Totally. And it creates a culture of loyalty and appreciation.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. So one of the big reasons I wanted to have you here today is because Service Titan has an initiative called Power the Nation, where we help contractors amplify Their community impact. And you've been doing quite a bit of that at airworks. Can you tell us a bit about the specific project you collaborated with us on?

Yeah. We were so blessed to get the opportunity to work with Service Titan to give not just one system, but two systems to foster home in Ventura county area. It's called 2 Kids 4 Kids. And they help girls who have been trafficked overcome that and make it to their next chapter.

That's awesome. What was it about this organization that you really wanted to help Impact?

So I am all about massive impact. And we had lots of stories in the community who would have definitely benefited from the gift of a new system. Gosh, I wanted to serve them all. But this particular organization, the impact of the girls that are there now and the girls that will be there in the future was huge. So it was an opportunity to really help them create a better life. Because it turns out you can't really heal when you're uncomfortable. And so they're doing a lot of hard work and they should be as comfortable as possible while doing it. So should their caretakers and their therapists. And so they were working in a home that was just not temperately comfortable. Right. And so we were able to give them that gift.

That's awesome. Yeah. If you're sweating, if you're freezing and you're trying to work through horrific traumas that have happened to you and get on with your life, I can't even imagine that.

Right.

What's the name of the organization? 2Kids4Kids.

Yes.

If anyone wants to find out about it. 2Kids4Kids. And you can find out all about all the cool stuff we did with airworks in installing those units on service. Titans power the nation. But you also do other initiatives within the community. And I feel like this really goes back to the brand that you've created. So what are some other community initiatives that you guys have done?

It helped us spark the airworks Cares initiative where we honor cool acts and warm hearts. Love. That is the tagline for that. We've done a variety of things. We like partnering with other businesses in the community. And so we had a local ice cream shop gave us 20 free scoops to honor kids who have done cool stuff. And so we had some submittals on that. We just recently had the mountain fire through our town and we worked with some suppliers at the Christmas parade. We'll be giving out some air scrubbers and filters. We are doing free safety checks for all of the homes impacted. We're asking for a donation if they can. And that will be going to local schools. We work with a lot of schools, we work with a lot of sport teams to do fundraising for them. We're really grateful for our community and we want to give back to the community. Kevin and I met in high school, Camarillo High School. And so we are where we grew up.

Yeah.

And it made a major impact on us and we want to leave that legacy also.

It made such an impact that you guys left and then you came back.

Yep.

Not many people do that. Not many people leave their hometowns and then come back or boomerang. Some people do, but it's still, it's interesting.

And when we're talking about flexibility of work, we like our team members to be invested in their kids sports also. And so we sponsor those and we make sure that we adjust their day so they can be off for practices or they can make it to games. And that creates more loyalty back because when we work with them, they want to work with us.

That's awesome. So you're allowing again that flexibility not only to be a parent and take care of your children. Right. Having those flexible hours, like for whatever people need, but also, hey, we get it. Your kids are going to have these sports games, they're going to have these events that you want to attend to because it's only going to happen once. So we're going to continue to work with you.

Well, and it helps them develop as people. Right. Those who lead, serve. And so if they can serve in their sports teams or in their churches and their community in other ways, they're growing all sorts of personal development and leadership skills that I might not be able to help them with personally in our company, but we're helping them get those in other places.

So you're not only looking at their personal development in terms of the skills that they are actually doing at work with you, the H VAC skills, the dispatching skills, the call center skills, you're actually looking at how can we develop them outside of that? You're looking at it very holistically.

It sounds like, yeah, I'm committed. Everybody leaves your company at some point. Right. We hope most of it's for retirement, but I'm committed to everyone leaving a better person than they came in.

Yeah, I think that's fantastic. So you already mentioned that that's been great for finding good people. How has this focus on your culture, giving back to the community, being flexible and understanding of people's personal lives, focusing on their personal development. I imagine it's done Pretty good things for retention.

Yeah. One of our missions is to be a company that has no competition.

Oh, interesting. Say more about that.

We wanted to have a company that we didn't have to compete for the best people, the best talent. We didn't have to compete for customers because they want to work with us because of our values. They want to work with us because they know the quality of work that they're going to be getting. So it didn't come to competition on price. Right. It doesn't come to competition on a paycheck. Our people are well compensated because they do great work, but they also have great life work, balance, and they want to be where they are.

What advice would you give anyone listening right now who's hearing about all this community impact that you make, the stuff you did for the women's shelter, the Air Works care initiative, if they're like, oh, man, I want to start doing stuff like that, what advice would you give them if they're looking to get started?

Just do it. Start small, talk to your rec, and park to your community centers. I mean, we handed out candy for $10 for Halloween, and we just. We pulled up a truck. We did trunk or treat. Our community center paid for all of the candy for liability reasons, and it was great visibility for us. And so it's not about, can I afford to do it, because you can find lots of ways to give back that don't take a whole lot of financial commitment. People have three gifts. They have time, treasure, and talent. And you should be giving something. Right. If you don't have the treasure to give, give your time or give your talent. So there's a lot of ways to give back and to serve. And most of the time, if not always, you get more than you give.

I mean, that's what it sounds like for you. And it doesn't sound like that is in any way your drive for giving. It's just like, oh, wow, look how much has come back to us.

Absolutely. And it kind of gets addicting.

Yeah.

You want to keep giving more because it feels really good.

That's awesome. All right, so I'm just going to cobble together your life story a little bit here. 18. Met Kevin.

Yep.

You convinced him to move to Alabama with you for a couple of years while you. Eventually, while you got your law degree and your mba, you guys come back to Camarillo. You start the business around 25, 26. You have kids from 30 to 40, and now you're at this place where you are ready to take airworks to the next level.

Yeah.

What's next on your agenda?

I'm really excited about this next wave for the trades.

Yeah.

There's a little bit for everyone. And I stalled out for a while on growth because I wasn't sure what I wanted. I'm not incredibly fueled by money. I'm fueled by impact. And so I had to figure out, how can I create that impact? And I understand that you need money for impact, and, you know, money helps the world go round. So how was I going to make this work together? Right now, we're on a mission to build a platform for airworks that helps inspire other legacy companies to be strong enough to do whatever they want to do. I think that there are so many of us that are really proud of our brand, really proud of our culture, really proud of what we built, but we're so scared that we're going to be gobbled up by something bigger. And so I am working on what I've dubbed a revolutionary growth collaborative to bring a lot of these legacy brands together to do good work for the people in the trades and for the people that hire us.

Hmm. So you're cooking something up new?

I'm cooking something up.

All right. I'm curious to see where that will go. I appreciate the details you were able to give me.

Thank you.

If you could go back in time and tell yourself something when you and Kevin first started Airworks, what would you say to yourself?

Just do it.

Just do it.

Yeah. I think that Kevin and I question a lot, and I've been hearing a lot in the industry right now that the strength of these companies that have grown is fast decision making, and we're really good at recovery. So even if we made those decisions and they were wrong, we would have pivoted and turned it upside down. Right. But a lot of times we stalled out in growth because we were too worried about X, Y, and Z lining up perfectly. Turns out you just figured out while you go, one of our values is flex, adapt, and pivot. If we would have adopted that value sooner, I think it would have given us permission to just go.

To just take risks.

Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like the level of risk you assume as a business owner, your comfort with it determines perhaps how quickly you grow. I think in some ways it's interesting because I talk to contractors on the show from all different walks of life who, you know, some shops that miraculously have, like, hundreds of millions of dollars, some shops that are, you know, at the $10 million mark and don't want to go farther than that. And it's just interesting to see the difference between those two types. So it sounds like from your side of things, just what is the big.

Difference between those two types?

I don't know. I really don't know. I'm trying to figure that out, it seems so.

We do shop tours at some of the big companies too. Like they have the same problems we have, just on a massive level.

Yeah.

You know, we're all fighting the same fight. There's no reason that we can't be them.

If they can do it, why not us?

Right. And I feel like we've spent the last couple of years building a really strong infrastructure for growth. And so here we go.

Nice. Nice.

Yes.

I'm so excited for you. High school sweethearts. Yep. Wow. Congratulations. That's very rare. What's your secret for working together with Kevin? And it sounds like you still love him very much from the way you talk about him. So what's your secret?

We are very committed to each other and intentional about that. It's not always easy riding this rollercoaster of business and relationships and kids, but I think that we've always been just very committed to one another and honest. And I can tell him, you're really upsetting me right now and why. And it's not easy to work with your spouse. But Kevin and I have very distinct gifts. And so it's easy for us to kind of have lanes in that way. It was more difficult when he came out of a truck and started to try to find his place in the office and in leadership and what that meant. And I think it's probably more difficult for him because I have a tendency to railroad people and I just kind of do what I want. So he's really had to advocate for his voice and it has made me a better leader all around to listen.

Yeah, yeah. Some great self awareness there.

What of the railroading?

Yeah, that's some great self awareness there. So kudos to you. Is there anything else I should have asked you to make this a better interview?

I think that we could talk all over the place.

We could.

I am really passionate about opening the trades up to those who haven't considered it as a path for them. You know, Catherine has the pathway to prosperity that she talks about. And I love being a part of this next chapter that really the world is starting to see what essential services the trades are and that there can be a place for you here.

Yeah, 100%. Stephanie Allen, thank you so much for being on Toolbox for the trades.

Absolutely.