Pantheon 2024: Strong Leadership in the Trades | Podcast Ep. 196 | Toolbox for the Trades

James Byer, you are the owner of Bayer Plumbing. Welcome to one of our very first Live at Pantheon Toolbox for the Trades episodes.

Thank you for having me. This is awesome, by the way.

Thank you so much. It's very cool. And I'm not the only one who does this. There are so many people behind the scenes who made this all happen. Why don't you tell the folks listening a little bit about Buyer Plumbing. Sure.

Buyer Plumbing was started in 1990. It was started in our garage by my dad. So we've grown since then to a lot. We went from employee number one in 1990 in the garage to now we have almost 80 employees altogether in 2020. My dad passed away from cancer unfortunately. And so my sister and I were already in the business and so we stepped up and so we've been taking control of it since then. 60% of our revenue is commercial construction and then 40% the leftovers from service. So we pretty much take care of the whole gambit.

Do you remember were you like on the job sites with your dad when the company first started? Just like helping tighten up wrenches and stuff? Like, I don't know. Do you have memories like that?

Yes. Thank you for saying I'm young. It's just there's a lot of gray hair in here.

The lighting is fantastic. So it just looks blonde to me.

So. Perfect. Um, yeah. So growing up we were always doing stuff plumbing wise, my dad always being around, you know, just weird. Go to random things here and there. Um, we, I guess I became an Apprentice at age 16, started working out in the field. And so I remember one vivid memory. Um, I was working over the Easter break. I was working for him and I was helping do a rough in. And so I remember they having a, the Easter party at our house for my whole extended family. And so I remember my mom telling him like, okay, well he's gonna skip obviously, cuz they're, he's not gonna work. Cause we have a, we have an event. And he was like, no, no, no, he's gonna work and he can come after. So I have that vivid memory like.

Like no, no, no, he's working. He'll come after and that's fine, he'll.

Come, he'll come when he's done. And I did, I did. And it was, it was good, it was, it was great. And then I went and did a whole different career education. I went to college, got a master's degree, started in architecture. And then as I was doing it, I realized that's this is not exactly what I want to do with my life. Coming from an office job all the way back, being being outside in the field in the middle of South Texas, summer was probably not the most ideal, you know, idea, you know, but it worked out really good.

So that's awesome.

Yeah.

Can you tell me a little bit about why you decided to go back to the family business?

So, in architecture, it was great. I learned so much. Um, still to this day, love to practice it. And I designed my own house. And, like, I designed my parents house, but as I was doing it, I just felt like there was a hole. And so I. And, you know, I just didn't know what that was. And so I always talk to my dad daily. And so it's one of those things where he. He was like, you know, you do what you want to do. You'll, you know, you figure out your life. And so I did. And I would talk to him daily and be like, yeah, I just, you know, this is happening. This is happening. It's kind of frustrating. He was like, okay. And he would just always be there as a sound sounding board. And then finally I was like, you know what? I've made a lot of contacts in the architectural world for when we do design, build jobs, and, like, all that kind of stuff. And so he's like, okay, well, that seems like a good idea. So bringing a whole different piece to the puzzle of. I'm bringing in a new way of looking at things from the construction world. Our construction department grew pretty substantially for me, bringing in those things and not just me, you know, that. That sounded bad, but, you know, for.

Bringing in, it was all, you take all the credit.

Yeah. So, like, bringing that new insight and kind of thinking about things in a different perspective, from scheduling to different ideas like that.

So what are you most excited about for this year's Pantheon?

I'm so excited to usually get here to see all the new stuff that y' all have been hiding from us and. And to solve all my problems.

So that's the tagline of the event Pantheon. We solve all of your problems.

We solve all your problems. Or we'll tell you we're solving your problems and make you feel better. But I always try to bring all my baggage with me. Right. It's just, bring all my baggage, go to the help center and be like, okay, can you help me figure out why this is doing this? Um, so I love the new solutions. Um, this year I. This year I'm actually talking, and so it's been fun to be on the dip Like a different side of it. Cause I'm getting the little, the inside scoop of everything of getting to know things before everyone else. Um, and so that's been exciting. So different excitement this year because I get to talk and also very nerve wracking.

Talking does that. And you got lights on you. It's crazy. So what is your session? What's the session you're speaking on?

So I'm talking with Jade and we're doing project planning.

Okay.

Project tracking.

Okay.

And so a lot of talks this, this year with his team. And so we've, you know, working through some new construction things, scheduling and how things contribute as you know, as a whole, basically as a whole project. And so really taking service titan projects and shaking it all around and figuring out, you know, what is the most useful things that we could do and we could send to, you know, as a customer, what do I want to see or what everyone else wants to see as they're coming here.

So that's great. And just for anyone who doesn't know, so project service item projects is one of the big ways that we're able to service our commercial and construction clients. So if you were to talk to someone who has never worked in service titan projects before or is getting ready to embark on it, what would you say to them?

If you're an OG service titan person, projects formed when you would just have a job that was multiple days. And so it's transformed from that into now you can actually call things projects. And so being able to start a project right in quotations at the estimate phase and so say like um, you want to, you're going after this job and so you start an estimate as a project. It's. You create its own little bid template that they can all help you with this. You create its own little bid template. You work on your bid, you send it out, you're good to go, Congratulations, you get awarded that job. So now that project as you've already made, is now going to meet something more. So now you click a few buttons and now you're full. Full like project mode. You can start adding appointments, you can start doing these things. But the most important thing for me as an owner and is really being able to see how, how am I doing on this project. And so that's kind of what the root, the root is for it. So being able to track project costing and being able to track labor hours and all those things is really important. And so seeing how profitable you are, how efficient you are, all those things come to fruition. In the project tracking system. So pretty excited about that.

Amazing. What is it about Pantheon that keeps you coming back year after year?

There's always something new. And so my first Pantheon, I was blessed to be able to go to the one of the Coliseum.

Oh, yeah.

And so it was the year after Covid, so we were still kind of following the COVID guidelines. Everything was outdoors. It was like the most perfect LA weather. I was like, I came back from Pantheon and I was like, that was the best conference I've ever been to in my entire life. The food was phenomenal. Everything, right? So I came back and I was telling everybody. I was like, you all have to go to Pantheon. Like, you're not a service hiding person. You should probably go like. And Brad Paisley did a concert. Like, I mean, it was so cool. And so then last year, I got. I got my sister to come. I was like, okay, you're coming to this one. So we moved it to Orlando. And so having it last year here was pretty exciting. And still the same kind of thing. Like, you never know what you're going to get when you, when you get here. All excitement and all new things that you get to see, new events, new products. We were just walking through the vendor booth, and you walk past all the pro products, and I'm like, oh, wait, we don't have these two. What are these two new ones?

Like, I know, I know, I know. We, we manufacture our pro products like it's our job. It is pretty impressive, really.

It's become like an inside joke. So it's like when we see things, see new things, we're like, okay, how much are we gonna have to pay for this? Because we need it now. Like, is it a pro product?

Amazing. Amazing. I'm so happy you came back and I'm glad that the Coliseum was your first one. That was a really incredible event. And I feel like it's gotten better year after year. So I'm so happy you're here. I think our speakers have gotten better even. Not to say they were ever bad, but they keep getting even better. So I'm glad that you're a speaker this year. So the theme for this year's Pantheon is Leading the Charge. So how do you lead the charge?

That's a tough question, right? I'm also going to rope in Liz into this. And so when we, When Liz and I joined the family business, the culture at our company was great, but we felt like it could be a lot better. And so one of the things that we have worked and we've strived for is to making a culture that we find is a winning culture. And so making sure that we're doing quality hires, like it comes down to quality hires, making sure everyone. We're transparent with everyone. Everyone knows your vision, Everyone knows what you're trying to strive for, from your field technicians all the way to your CSRs to your warehouse manager, whoever it is, everyone's on the same page. And so by being transparent, being, you know, making sure everyone shares that vision with you is really important for me. And as I'm leading, we do book studies. And so, like, we'll find a good book. And we're like, okay, well this is a great book. Let's adopt to this mentality. And so we'll do a whole office book study. We'll be like, okay, well, let's all, all the managers, let's all get together and we're gonna, we're gonna go through this. Last year we did the Infinite Game, which Simon Sinek actually talked at at the Pantheon and the Coliseum. And so just like little things like that, I think that has really helped my company and grow. And we've been more profitable. We've been able to gain more work from different things. I mean, at Buyer Plumbing and the Buyer boys as our, you know, we have a whole family of, of different people in San Antonio, but we all operate off the same core values. And so core values are really important to us. And that's what we, we fire by, that's what we hire by, and that's what we live by. And so it, I think by having those adopting that mentality, adopting like a winning mentality and always learning is really important for all of us.

That's great. What would you like to share with your trade community at large? That service din has put together. What's something. If you're, you're giving a megaphone right now to the industry, what do you want to say?

So from the plumbing trade only, we're always looking for people. And so what does that mean? Like, we're, we're in a trade deficit. And so for me, the most important thing that we're constantly working on is trying to get people into our trade. And so having these events like this is great because this brings in all kinds of people. But really what's important for me and for a lot of people back home is trying to get those high school kids or people that change careers right into the plumbing industry. And so we have people. That one guy used to be a pizza delivery guy for Pizza Hut. Now he's one of our best plumbers. And so no matter what your background is, no matter what it is, we can always make you into a plumber. I've been working with school districts around our area with, you know, our local trade organizations. I'm a huge. I'm a president elect of our state phcc. So a lot of those things are really important to bring people into the trade. So the trades are always important. They're never going to go anywhere. The plumbing trade is definitely not going to go anywhere. I think it's the best one of all the trades.

Fighting words.

Yeah, Right? We bring you clean drinking water. So what, you can live without ac. I wouldn't, but, you know, I wouldn't.

But you need water.

Not here in Florida.

Yeah, not here in Florida. You've been such a great guest on this little mini episode here. Uh, I would love it if you could just fill in the sentence for me. I lead the charge by blank.

I lead the charge by leading by example. Like, I want to make sure that whatever I'm preaching to my guys, my technicians, my office, my office employees, whoever it is that comes in that, I'm also living that example too. And so just making sure that we all do. Right.

Amazing. James, thanks so much for stopping by the Toolbox for the Trades booth. You were phenomenal guest, honestly. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Christy Druding, you are the IT Manager at ACE Home Services. Welcome to Toolbox for the Trades live at Pantheon.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

It is a pleasure to have you. I know that you're a member of the torch group and our friend Brittany Burgess helped book you here. Right before we started recording, you mentioned that you've been at this current position for about seven years, you said, right?

No, no, no, not at this current position.

Okay, okay. But you've been in the trades for seven years.

Yes.

Tell me about that. How did you get into it?

Yeah, so I started as a customer success representative at a company called Unique Indoor Comfort. And then I. When I first started there, our Service Titan had just been implemented for like a year. So everybody was just like, oh, you just put something in there. Just throw it on the dispatch board. And I was like, no, no, no, no. This is a powerful software. We're going to figure out how we're supposed to work it. So I designed all of our workflows and Service Titan and then we were acquired by private equity.

Okay.

And then we needed someone to implement Service Titan at the companies that we were Acquiring. So I was like, I want to be that person.

Amazing. So are you now like the go to Service Titan person for like all of these different companies under the private equity umbrella?

Yeah. So we actually wound up coming out of private equity and we're now with Ace Hardware Home Services. So. And our goal is to, you know, get everybody operating the same exact way on Service Titan. And that's basically what I'm doing.

Awesome. And how many locations is that?

So there's 17 on our side.

That's a lot. I'm sure you're fairly busy.

Oh, yes, very, very.

And are they plumbing, H vac, electrical? Like, what's the breakdown of the types of businesses?

Yeah, so mainly H Vac. We do have plumbing and electrical and the goal is for them all to be greenfielded. So if it's just H Vac right now, there'll be plumbing and electrical in the near future. So as we roll out the new trade, we have to set up their service site and for all that trades, workflows and all.

So tell me, what keeps you coming back to Pantheon?

Well, it's awesome. Like just the networking in general and the food, my goodness. But the breakout sessions I really get a lot out of. I think when we were in la, the first session that really, like, I remember was with Keith Mercuriam and on change management. And like, what I do is a lot of change management and it just like hit home. So I took that back with me. And every year I, like, learn something new or something that can come back with me. I'm trying to think. Last year there was all the AI information. I think the Dispatch Pro, I think the insight there was helpful. And the accounting, I learned a lot about the accounting transitions and all. And we had to think a lot when we came back from Pantheon, like, how are we executing? Because we implement SAGE intact too. So how are we going to do this with the new accounting integration? So it was, it was a lot of conversation.

Anthropathia, A lot of conversation that requires a ton of change management.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So given that you focus on change management so much like from Keith's takeaways from what you've learned in your own. In your own position, what do you think is most important about change management? Or like, what's like the one thing that you cannot mess up if you're trying to do it right?

People Relationship. Like relationships. The first company I implemented Service Titan on, I remember I was. They were like an hour away from my office, so I would drive in there regularly. To help them. And I was just like, I don't understand why they're not doing it this way. Like, it's so easy. Just do it this way. And I kept going back to my GM saying, like, they're not doing it right, they're not doing it right. They were like, she's a spy. We don't want her to come here anymore. And I'm like, wait, I'm not a spy. I'm just trying to help you guys. Like, I want you to use the software the way that it's supposed to be used. So I learned that I have to make people believe that I'm not a spy and that I'm there to help them.

Yeah. So it sounds like when you're coming into new businesses and you're getting them set up with Service Titan, when you're getting them to adopt new ways of doing things, you really have to focus on the relationship with them first before you actually introduce this big change into their workflow.

Yes, yes. They have to trust me. If they don't trust me, they're. They're not going to want to change anything. Because a lot of people if, especially if they were on Service site and when we acquired them, their workflows are their babies. Like, this is the way we do this and I design this. So for me to come in and say, well, no, we're not going to do that that way anymore, they need to really believe that I know what I'm talking about and there's a reason why we're changing the way that they're doing it. We actually had a company that was in North Carol, Carolina, and I remember when we were first talking about implementing them on Service site, and he had signed up for Serve man and he was like, oh, I'm never going to move the service site. And I was like, well, yes, you are. That's what I'm here for. That's what we're going to do. And he was like, so difficult. He would constantly send me emails, like, freaking out over the littlest things. And I just, like, kept dealing with it and I kept being nice and I kept coming back. And at one point after we implemented Service Site and he, we were on a call together and he was like, well, this software actually does this better than Serve Man. And I was like, you said it.

You said it. Can I get it back so I can record it and play it back to you?

Yeah. And I stopped getting like the, the, you know, two o' clock in the morning, nasty emails.

But so it sounds like, you really had to exercise your patience when it came to that.

Yes.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I give you so much credit for doing that.

Yeah.

So the theme of this year's pantheon is leading the charge. How do you feel that you lead the charge?

Um, I try to be open minded. I try to listen to what's going on and take in all the information and then make an informed decision and then teach my team to do the same and be there to support them because we're all going through the train change management part. So I think it's just setting a good example and being the kind of person that I would want to work with every day.

So how would you finish this sentence? I lead the charge by blank.

I lead the charge by being a leader that I would want to be led by.

I love that I'm going to steal that because I actually, I actually agree with that 100%. What are you most excited for for this year's Pantheon?

I'm excited to learn more about Contact Center Pro because we're actually getting ready to implement it at one of our locations.

Amazing.

So I'm excited to actually see it in motion and then I want to go to the inventory sessions and see what's coming out there because I love inventory. It's probably like my favorite mod, my most favorite module out of all service site in.

You may be in the minority there. So before I let you go, I would love to hear a little bit about how your company was acquired by private equity and then why you guys chose to leave private equity. Could you share a little bit about that with us?

Yeah. So we were acquired by private equity when I was actually out on maternity leave and I came back from maternity leave and I was like, what, what is this company? What is this? And. And I was like, oh, my God, is my job in jeopardy? And they're like, oh, no. And I'm like, okay. And then I realized it was an opportunity to like grow into my service lane position. But so we, we were acquired by private equity and then they acquired like a bunch of other locations. And I think we got to like, I want to say like 12 or 13 locations. And then they, they sold us. And so I don't know how to say that other than they, they put us on the market and we had to go through like a wholesale process.

Wow.

So I don't know if they were like looking. Looking to sell us to other private equities companies or whatever, but Ace Hardware was in the market to acquire home services company. So my Leadership team spent a lot of time with the ACE leadership team in due diligence and all and they wound up really liking what they saw. And we're really customer oriented and trying to provide to always put the customer first. And east is the same way. So it was just like a really good fit.

Awesome.

Yeah. And it's been crazy moving into the corporate world, like from private equity to, to corporate. And corporate isn't as bad as everybody makes it seem.

I mean, I've been in corporate for seven years. It has its pros. It definitely does.

Yeah.

What advice would you give to employees of a company who just got acquired by private equity or going through say like a big leadership, like shake up? Because you mentioned yourself this happened while you were on NAT leave and you were like, what? What's happening?

Yeah.

What would you say to someone who's going through something similar?

I always say this to everyone. Take advantage of the opportunity. There is a ton of opportunity out there. Like I went from being a CSR to director of IT ACE hardware. Like who would have thought that like that can happen? And we have so many like open positions for leadership and management and the people who get those spots are the people who actually go after them and say like, I'm interested in that. I want to do it. So don't be scared, go after the opportunity.

Amazing. I have one more question for you because I know there's going to be a ton of new Service Titan members at this year's conference. It's probably going to be a few of them listening. As an implementation expert, what is your like, biggest piece of advice for? Do not screw this up. When you are onboarding with Service Titan.

Attend all of your onboarding. Review the data. Like look at that data inside out. Make sure your customers are where they're supposed to be. Not because service site and service site will work with you to get that all organized, but make sure you're actually reviewing it because no one knows your data better than you do. And then read the knowledge base and watch the Academy videos because they are there for a reason. And everything I learned was through a knowledge base, knowledge based search or through watching a video. And then if I couldn't figure it out, then you have a success manager and that's what they're there for.

Amazing, amazing, awesome, awesome stuff. Kristie, is there any other thing that you want to share? I'm saying to everyone, this is your chance to take a megaphone to the industry. Is there anything else you would like to share to your peers?

Go after the opportunity. I think, like, I've said it already, but I think, you know, there's a ton of opportunity in the industry, in the trades, in IT and Service Titan, all the different vendors you have here, like, take advantage of it.

Amazing. Kristi, thanks so much for joining me on Toolbox for the Trades.

Thank you.

Michelle Myers, you are the founder of Pink Callers and you are also a previous guest on Toolbox for the Trades. Thank you for joining me for Toolbox for the Trades live at Pantheon.

Hey there. I'm so happy to be here again.

I'm so happy to be chatting with you again too. I can't wait to hear what's been going on and how you're doing. Um, well, actually, let's just do, let's just start with that. So what's been going on? What's new and exciting in your world?

In my world, I'm the mother of two teenagers and that's always fun. Um, we are rolling into big, huge grades, 9th grade and 11th grade this year. So a lot going on in our home. Business wise. We have an incredible team of CSRs that are just killing it. I just ran into one of my clients over at the networking event and she talked to me about actually building out an entire remote call center. So I was like, okay, let's do it. Let's just do it. So that was really fun. And I am Speaking tomorrow at 9:30 with Angie Snow and Erica Lenore. And those two are powerhouse ladies and I am honored to be on the stage with them. So that's what's going on in my world.

I am so excited. We're going to talk about your session in a second, please. But I'm going to ask you, is this your first pantheon?

It is not. It's only my second pantheon.

Your second is.

And I've been here twice and I'm so excited to be here.

So what did you like the most about last year?

Last year I will admit that I was in every session that had to do with call centers, remote call centers, outsourcing call flows, anything that had to do with customer service, I was in every single session. And this year I'm going to do the very same. Except I am honored to, like I said, be up there with those amazing people providing content this time.

Amazing. So what was it about the first Pantheon that made you want to come back?

Well, I think it's just the community. I mean, I just can tell you that I have been in several other industries before I came to H Vac, Plumbing, electrical, the Skilled trades and mostly, you know, male dominated and the industries that are here and the women mostly that are here, and the community that I found here is just second to none.

That's. What a great answer. Yeah, that is so great. So the theme for this year's Pantheon is leading the charge. How do you lead the charge?

As a daughter of a pastor, we were in the family business of leading the charge. And so leadership has been something that I'm consistently working on in my own personal journey as a business owner. And I think that leading the charge means doing the things you're scared of and setting really high and big and scary goals. And so while I was here last year at Pantheon, I sat in one of the rooms, I took a picture of an empty stage and I said, michelle, you're going to be up there next year. And it happened for me.

That is incredible. So tell me about your session. What is your session?

We are going to talk about building cohesions with CSRs, dispatchers and call center managers. And so we're going to talk about how do you handle customers, how do you manage difficult situations on the phone, and then how to use other tools to help round out the CSR's toolkit so that they can be all that they can be while they're taking care of your customers. We're going to give away an entire landing page of resources. And so Angie has got a couple of resources. She's got a call center Playbook, which is a Pantheon product. That is incredible. We are going to give away some things from Omsi Group, which is Erica Lenore's business, and so she's going to give some ways to talk to your customer on the phone and how to manage that call. And then I am actually the systems queen on the, on the lineup. And I'm going to give away a link to Slack, which I think is such a powerful communication tool, and how to use it, and then a Slack naming guide. And then I'm also going to teach you how to build a digital representation of your company in Trello so that your CSR while they're on the phone, can easily consume information about your business and answer those questions in real time while they're on the call.

Trello, Slack, Playbooks, like these are all such incredible things. So many resources. So let's say you're talking to someone who just attended this session that you, Angie and Erica are doing and they're maybe very overwhelmed.

Sure.

What's the first step they do when they get home?

They can open up those resources Print everything that's printable and consume that printed material first. I always say start with something that you can do in a quiet space, space, maybe off time when you're, you know, back at the. Back at your home or something that's a little bit less distracting than the business. And then when you have that consumed material, then go and look at the tool sets that might be deployed into the business. Those might take a team, kind of a group effort. You may need to have your team buy into those new tools and so bring that back to your office with an understanding of how to do it. The cool part about what I'm doing with Trello is that I'm building an entire loom video for each person so they can see exactly how to set that Trello board up when they get back to their office. So it should be plug and play for them.

So given that you are really an expert at helping people lead change within their organization as it pertains to CSRs, how do you recommend people take the knowledge they're learning from Pantheon at this, this year's Pantheon and implementing it at their own business?

That's a good one. Well, I'd say don't be overwhelmed. Take three to five pieces of information, three to five vendors or PDFs or takeaways or relationships that you can build. Put them in a notes app on your phone and then set aside some time to look at those opportunities for your business and then break those opportunities down into achievable goals. So if it's a building of a relationship, say you meet someone really cool, reach out to that person by phone and by text and then say, hey, you know, I'd love to come to your shop, see what you're doing. I'd like to learn more. Give something back to people and then take something from them if you're building that relationship and make it unique to you. And then if it's a tool, bring that tool back. Understand that tool, find the information online. YouTube has a wealth of knowledge about anything technical. Watch the YouTube videos, consume that material with your team, and then vote on it and say, how do you think this would impact the way we would communicate or the way we would action different things within the business that are around customer service? And so I. There's a lot of different ways to do it, but don't get overwhelmed and don't pick too many things. That's the key.

Don't pick too many things. Wonderful, wonderful piece of advice. I would like you to complete this sentence. I lead the charge by Blank.

I lead the charge by not listening to my own head trash about being too old or being too tall or being too not savvy enough or being too late to the game. And I lead the charge by not listening to that head trash while I'm in places like this so that I can really be the best me that I can be while I'm here.

I have never heard negative self thoughts. Being labeled as head trash, man, that is so good. I'm stealing that. You should. That's a lot of head trash today. Oh my gosh. That's fantastic. So tell me a bit about the CSR Academy because I know you're doing this with Angie and with Erica. So what is it? About what? Like how does this expand upon your work with pink collars? Tell me about it.

Well, we have found that in a lot of cases, home service businesses send their owners, their technicians, their, you know, managers, their sales team to events like this and a lot of the CSRs are left behind to run the shop and keep things going. And so we really thought an in person event was something unique that we could offer to the market that wasn't out there. There's a lot of companies that come into your shop and do training. A lot of it is very technological based, right? Like how to use service Titan, how to get the best out of your price book. And those tools are incredible. But what we found is that there's not a lot of soft skill training and there certainly is even less of that in person soft skill training. So we wanted to build a workshop in which you bring your laptop, you show up in Las Vegas and it's two days of actually deploying change. So I really believe that building out that support for a CSR is really important and how it flows from CSR Academy into any of our businesses. Angie's got a coaching arm that she works on, Erica's got some coaching and some training. And then I just love to vision and envision things for business owners like building out, like I said about my customer today, he's like, we have one person in our team from your business, but what if we had like three or four? And so I would love to be able to build those remote call center environments for people that may not have the room in their shop or whatever. But building the community, I think is back to what I said about being here in Pantheon is that having that option for CSRs in person where they get on a plane, they get to meet people and they get to come back and be in a slack environment. Together. That's really what we're after, is having that option for them.

So to wrap up today's mini episode, I would love for you to share your thoughts. Think of today's moment, this moment right now, as you taking a megaphone to the industry, a megaphone to all of these people that work in the service and that work in the service industries that you serve. You're an expert in CSRs and in customer service. What is one thing you would like everyone to know from you? Like, what is one big piece of knowledge you would love to share?

I would love to share how important that customer service piece is to your business. And I know that there are incredible tools coming around the corner. They're already here. AI agents are here and all the pro products that can really help to subsidize some of the skills that the CSRs might need subsidized. But at the end of the day, there needs to be a really high level human being running those tools to make them the most effective that they can be and to handle anything that is of a higher level. And so as a business owner, you're going to have to decide how your business walks into that technology. And not only will Service Titan help you no matter which way you decide to go, but there are lots of other awesome vendors out there that have the human component that can be added as well.

Excellent. Michelle, thanks so much for stopping by.

I'm so grateful. Thanks so much.

Gary Lightfoot, you are the owner of Copilot Coaching. Thank you for joining me today at Box for the trades live at Pantheon.

Perfect.

I'm excited to be here and I appreciate you having me.

I am so excited to chat with you. There's something very specific I want to chat with you about before we even get to that. Is this your first Pantheon?

No, I've been to several. Five or six.

I'm curious what keeps you coming back?

Oh, man, I just love the growth of Pantheon. I love the people, the networking, all the new stuff that keeps coming out. It's just amazing.

That's awesome. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your story because you weren't always the owner of Copilot Coaching. How did you actually get into the trades and find yourself in the position you're in today?

Yeah, so my dad started an air conditioning company in the early 80s and I ended up working there and took over that company and spent a lot of years there growing. We ended up doing air conditioning, heating, plumbing, electrical. And, you know, the last few years I really concentrated on trying to Grow that company big. And I did with the help of some, you know, service titan and some coaches that I work with. They really helped me. And two years ago, I exited and sold that. Sold that company. So it's amazing.

Congratulations. Do you mind me asking how big the company got to. And you can share whatever you want to share.

Yeah, for sure.

So we grew from about 1.52 million all the way to up to over 20 million.

Amazing. Congratulations.

In just about five years.

So, okay, so we've talked to several owners on this show who have exited, have partnered with private equity. Are you involved in the business at all today?

No, I stayed on for a couple years. I had employment agreement, and I did that. So I'm done with that now. So I'm completely, completely through.

All right, so tell me, what's it like when you put all of your effort into growing a business? You sell it, you exit. What happens next?

Well, first of all, it's an amazing thing for me and my family. I got to share in that with my family and change their lives forever. And. And we'll have generational wealth from, you know, for a long time. And so it's. First of all, it's just a blessing and an amazing thing that that can happen and be done. And that's part of the reason I coach is I want to give back and help other people if I can do it. I know there's a lot of people that can do what I do if they want to. Um, but definitely the. The next phase, you know, you want to have a plan what. Where you're going to do, what are you going to go? And. And because I've seen people struggle, they've done this for their whole lives, and now they're, you know, they're out. And so what are you going to do now? And so one of the cool things that my wife and I, and she owns this company with me, Mary, and we. We're building an upscale RV resort in Texas. We got Big Longhorns, and there's 133 sites. And so it was just a dream of ours, and we're making that come true. And so we're excited about that, too.

Amazing. Mary's actually been on the show before. She's fantastic. So I would love to know. I imagine there's a ton of loss that that happens when you exit a business. When you're. When you're finished doing this monumental task, you hit the top. You did what you had to do.

Yeah.

How did you process that? And what do you recommend for other owners who may be thinking about doing that in the future or maybe on the precipice of exiting their business, I.

Still go back to have a plan, but above that, stay involved. You know, I'm. I'm the kind of person I want to be around people. I want to continue to learn and grow myself. And, you know, Mike Aguilera with Food Dog is one of my coaches, and he still coaches. He coached me to grow my company exit, and he still coaches me today in life and business. And so I'm grateful for that relationship. And that helps me stay in tune with what's going on, gives me other opportunities, meet new people, and so just. Just allows me to continue to do what I've been doing. But I do miss the interaction with my team. I had every day. We had meetings all the time, and I. I spent a lot of time and effort in growing those. Those team members. And so it's definitely different.

Yeah, I can totally understand that. But awesome that you've since redefined yourself and are now on this whole different. This whole new journey, which has to be exciting.

100%. It's amazing.

That's awesome.

Yes.

So the theme of Pantheon is leading the charge. I'm curious, how do you lead the charge?

I'll lead by example, for one thing. Always trying to grow and learn myself so I can continue to give to my friends, family, colleagues, customers. And so that is definitely the way I do it, is just continue to grow and be an example.

So I've been saying this to folks, right? We have a lot of listeners on the show, a lot of people that interact with it. This is your chance to take a megaphone to the industry. What is one piece of advice you would like to. You would like to pass on to our listeners today?

Well, I was taught to grow my business to sell, whether I actually wanted to sell it or not. And that's a profitable, successful model. So I've heard people I'll never want to sell, but you really don't know what's going to happen five years from now, ten years from now. So grow it to sell, and then you always will have that option if you get to that point.

Yeah, I feel like it's also, you know, you just being ready for that opportunity if it comes up, and that will give you, like, a ton of freedom. And if it's built to sell, as the owner, operator, things are kind of just humming along and you can kind of live your life and start taking a step back. So get more of that work, life, balance in order, I would imagine.

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I actually just recently wrote a top 15 things that a business owner can do to get ready to sell. And I'd be happy to share that for free with anybody. If anybody wanted that, I'd be happy to email it over to them.

And.

And I actually worked with a broker to create this, so I know, I know it's top notch stuff.

Amazing. So that's Gary Lightfoot at Copilot coaching. For anyone who wants that list. Can you share one of the steps? If you can think about it. If you can think of it off the top of your head right now, yeah, for sure.

Absolutely. So one of the big ones is you have to grow a leadership team underneath you so that that business will run itself and doesn't rely on you to be there. So growing a leadership team is, is. Is key.

Got it. So making sure the right people are in the right seats.

A hundred percent.

Awesome. Gary, is there anything I should have asked you about or should we should have talked about that we didn't get a chance to.

I think you did an amazing job.

Thanks so much. Your checks in the mail. I appreciate you coming on Toolbox for the Trades.

It's my pleasure.

Thank you so much for having me.

Great. Mike Agliero, you are the owner of Foodog Group, but you are also a part of CEO Warrior. You've got an incredible story. Welcome to Toolbox for the Trades live at Pantheon. Thanks for joining me.

Yeah. Excited to be here and what an amazing show. There's so many excited people walking around.

I know. This is really awesome. I'm pretty sure this is not your first Pantheon, am I correct?

No, it's not.

How many have you been to at this point?

I think only one other one that I've been through. Yeah, but. But I've been out of the this industry stuff for about three years now.

Yeah.

And then I was like, you know what? I know Vahe and these guys for a long time, probably over a decade or so. I was like, you know what? I gotta see all this magic that they produced and wow, it's impressive.

Thank you so much for saying that. So you've been to a Pantheon before. You say you got to see the magic. What else keeps you coming back?

The people. And I'm sure you hear that all the time.

I do, yeah.

Friends. I mean, there's lots of friends that. I mean, I have them out here. Gary was just on. He's incredible, Mary. Incredible humans.

I know.

It's all about the people. You come and see him. Plus Ellen Rohr, I mean, Joe Chrisara. I mean, there's legends. These are people that have been in my life and guided me, helped me nextar. I was in there, so I come just to see everybody I can.

Amazing. Well, why don't you tell me a little bit about your story. How did you get into the trades?

Yeah, so I was on my own at 15 and there was kind of two tracks in the world. It's kind of like college. College, you might know, probably vocational school. You probably should become an electrician or a plumber. I became an electrician and I worked for people and then I thought they were my bosses were idiots. So I figured I gotta be able to do it so much better. Went into business, just found out I was an idiot too. Did that, struggled for about 10 years, and then decided to start Gold Metal. It was Gold Medal Electric, and then did that. After 10 years, you figure out a point like you have no idea what you're doing. So I looked for a whole lot of people that knew a lot more than me. And then we scaled really quick. We went from, you know, two trucks and under a million dollars to 32 million a year in less than 10 years. 165 trucks, 200 employees and sold that. In 2017, I exited that company with a sign my name and walk away. Deal.

Wow. Wow. Congratulations. Okay, so obviously coaching and mentorship was life changing for you. And I'm assuming that's what helped propel you into the CEO warrior role, is that correct? Yeah.

And in 2014, I was talking to my business partner, Rob Zadati at the time, and I said, you know what, Every time we go to trainings, our friends would go, oh, so how's business going? I'm like, amazing. I just bought 22 new trucks. I'm like, how about you? And they go, struggling, can't find good people. And year after year that was happening. And I went to my business partner at the time and I said, you know what, we gotta change this. We had a big building, 15,000 square foot. We had amazing disc building, matching customer service. And came to me, let's start CEO Warrior.

You're either average or a warrior.

And we found out that people wanted to be especially in a pretty male dominant, but a lot more women today, they wanted to be unlocked. They wanted to be able to show up the way they want if they're tattooed or not. And that started a movement, which was the CEO Warrior movement.

Amazing. Amazing. So what were some of the big things that you started Coaching on when you. When you kicked off CEO Warrior, I.

Started to be known as the, like, mindset person.

Sure.

Because I really understood the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, all the programming. And what a lot of people may realize or don't realize is that everything happens in the mind and it's all from your programming. That's why I recently wrote a book called Mind Power just to solve this for people. So when people would come to our trainings, all I had to do was find out where was all their guilts and shames and traumas and where did they feel broken. Unlock that. And then I could teach them marketing, sales, operations and systems. But trying to teach them what to do without teaching them how to function different.

Sure.

It's a pretty tough way to. You're not going to win that way.

So unlocking. So discovering and unlocking traumas, shame. Pretty, very light, very easy, breezy task.

I imagine right now you got to have skills. I mean, I've been doing that for over 30 years.

Yeah.

And a lot of people don't want. I always say, like that, you know, the creeper, creepy horror movie.

You.

It's.

There's always a basement with a blinking light, a little flickering light. That's like people's past.

Yeah.

And.

And look, we're not therapists, and we're not that, but we. We have a process, a proven process that can go in, ask people questions, and let them go to that place in their mind and just redefine it. And once you redefine it, I mean, how many people were bullied as a kid?

A lot of people.

Yeah. Or what about this? I used to. My dad, he used to tell me, he's not around no more. He passed last year. But he used to say, money doesn't grow on trees. And probably after I was doing 20 million, I went to my dad, and you know what I said? I said, dad, I think this is wrong. He goes, why? I said, if I owned lemon trees, orange trees, couldn't I just pick them? And it's money. And then he said something that was magical. He said, my dad, he. He taught me what his dad taught him and his dad taught him and his dad taught him. So if you think about it, today, people, most people have some form of money programming. Let me give you another example. Ready? I'm a kid, I'm walking. I pick up a quarter, maybe four years old. Mom, mom, look, I got a quarter. She goes, michael, that's really good. Now go wash your hands. Money is dirty, dirty. Now you think because today money's not dirty. But guess what? Inside your mind, you're still thinking. What about when you counted your. Your birthday money? Your mom or dad said, now go wash your hands. And people are wondering why they're stuck today and they're not getting the money they want. So we created Food Dog Group, where you could get life, business, and wealth by design. And we believe we're leading the charge not only in helping people think different, live happier, live in a connection with their relationship so they don't feel. Because you know that phrase I always say, if you're not. People will say, if you're not growing, you're dying.

Yeah.

If you're not growing, you're already dead in one part of your life. You just maybe didn't even realize it yet.

Oh, interesting. So Food Dog Groove, is that a little bit less on the business side and more on the relational aspect?

It's all on the balance.

Okay.

If you don't have your life dialed in, it's going to be very hard to run a business because you. A lot of people, especially since I taught thousands of men, they would say, I'm doing it for my family. My wife doesn't understand. And I go, no, you're not. You're doing it for yourself. You're just blaming it on your family. Right now, most of us are trying to prove something to ourselves that we're worthy, that we accomplish something. Because the third grade English teacher said, you'll never become anything. Yeah.

Interesting. So I'm doing this for my family. But then at the same time, they could be working 12, 14 hour days and never be seeing their family.

Yeah. And guess what? It took me years. It took me a decade to figure it out. But I used to come. This almost happened between me and. And my wife. After 10 years, I'm going to trainings. I leave things. I'm all, like, banging my chest. My wife's like, yeah, what about me? I've been wiping the baby's butt for a week. She's not having the growth. It almost cost us our own relationship until we figured out, oh, man, you know what? We're not growing together.

Mm.

And so we started to come to these things. But not everybody wants to come. Like, my wife didn't want to go to all events because maybe it's like marketing. She's not listening. We created an experience where husband and wives can come. They all get some kind of value and their relationship changes, their health changes, their community changes, Every aspect changes.

That's amazing. So essentially, what you're doing is you're bringing the couple together. And that's so important because in these industries that Service Titan serves, the industries that I feature on this podcast, a lot of husband and wife duos. A lot of husband and wife duos. And it's interesting chatting to those that are seeing success and when you hear their stories about how they actually had to nurture their relationship alongside their business to make that possible. All right, Mike, thanks so much for joining me on Toolbars for the trades live at Pantheon. Best of luck with Flu Dog Group. I have a feeling you're going to get some people reaching out to you after this.

If I can serve, I'm honored to serve.

Amazing.

Thank you. Boom.