Charlie Gindele - Special Coronavirus Message: Set the Tone & Stay the Course

This is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast brought to you by G4 Marketing. Interviews with today's top home improvement entrepreneurs about marketing, sales, money, mindset, and lifestyle. Now here's your host, Brian Kaskavalciyan.

Hey everybody, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group. This is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. And today is Wednesday, March 11th. We're recording this at about 6 o'clock Eastern time. This morning I reached out to my longtime client and friend Charlie Gindel. And as you've no doubt heard, this whole— the world's coming apart. And I thought it would be interesting to reach out to Charlie and get his take on kind of what's going on and how he is dealing with it in his business. We were just talking before I turned on the recording, and really my intention here is I think that a lot of you are thinking about this situation, the impact that it's having on the greater economy. But really, ultimately, I think what you care about is the impact it may potentially have on you. And my hope was that by having this conversation with Charlie, that hopefully we can give you a little bit of confidence and some tools on how to deal with the next, hopefully not too long, month or two. So Charlie, thank you for doing this. I know that I reached out to you this morning and you were kind enough to jump on this afternoon. So thank you.

You're welcome, Brian. Glad to be here.

Yeah. So, so look, I think that it might be, might be useful for me to just personally say what I, you know, kind of my reaction to this whole thing. I was texting back and forth this afternoon with my buddy John Anglis, and both him and I were just saying how ridiculous this whole thing is. And, but I will say that if any of you listening to this have been impacted in any way, you know, we do feel for you. But, you know, I was on, I was in 3 airports and 2 airplanes yesterday. Same thing the day before, I was in 3 airports and 2 airplanes. And I am hoping that I could just live my life normally with minimal impact, although it is starting to, have an impact on all of our lives. And my thing is I refuse to participate, just like in recessions. I just refuse to participate. Now we're all getting dragged into this. So, you know, Charlie, for those of you that don't know, is now the general manager. I think that's the right title, right, Charlie?

That's correct.

Yeah. He's the, the original founder of, uh, Renault by Andersen of Orange County, and through a couple of acquisitions, he is now their hired gun. He runs the place, and Charlie I have known for years and years and years. I trust Charlie, and whatever he tells us, I trust it to be the truth. He's also, and I've said this before, I think probably the smartest person I know in the home improvement business. So I thought of no one better to go to than Charlie. And of course he's kind enough to jump on and do this. So tell me, Charlie, what are you thinking?

Well, you know, this, I think this thing is real, obviously this coronavirus, the COVID-19 as they call it. The media are not reporting about, it's not fake news as Donald Trump would say. I mean, it's, it's, these are real occurrences that are happening. But, and I think we all need to be cautious. I mean, we have 150 employees here. We've printed out— we have posters that we printed off online from the CDC about avoiding close contact with people that are sick and cover your, cover your mouth and nose when you cough with a tissue and throw it in the trash and avoid touching your eyes and nose and mouth and clean and disinfect areas frequently. And if you're sick, stay home and wash your hands with soap and water on a regular basis. So we're, we're talking about that with our employees, and most of this is just common sense and good hygiene. So I think it's definitely real. There's definitely people getting sick. There's definitely people dying. It's definitely spreading around the country, and I don't— and around the world, actually. And I don't think we could deny any of that. But also, I think we have to temper this with a little bit of a dose of reality. And the reality is that You know, you've heard the numbers of a lot more people are going to die of the common flu and other things than this disease at this point in time. And what it reminds me of is a couple of situations that have occurred in the past. I remember back in 1999, for those of you who were in the business world then, when about the the maybe second quarter, first quarter of 1999, the media started with all this hype about Y2K. And it was when the calendar switched to the year 2000 on January 1st, 2000, the computers weren't programmed properly and bank accounts were gonna— money was gonna disappear out of bank accounts. And they were even talking about airplanes were gonna fall out of the sky. And it created a real frenzy. And literally people were going to the bank and drawing their money out at the end of December. People canceled travel plans, and there was just a lot of media hype. And social media didn't exist back then, but there was still a lot of media hype. And then, you know, Y2K came and went like it was nothing. The other event that— so that was kind of like a hyped-up event that maybe was fake news. The other event though that wasn't fake news, and I remember it very well, was was September 11th, 2001, 9/11, when that occurred. And that was a real event, and no one was prepared for it. It came out of nowhere, and everybody was in a state of shock. And it's like everything just came to a halt. Any— every event got canceled. Ball sports game, the ball, you know, baseball games, football games got postponed. And I remember the phone stopped ringing. I mean, where appointments went down to nothing. We actually had people calling on the phone concerned about jobs that were in progress or jobs that we had on the books that hadn't been installed yet. And I remember doing a lot of handholding with our employees, especially our sales staff, keeping— trying to keep their head in the game and keep them focused. And it was literally about 6 or 7 days later and almost business went back to normal. In fact, business was better than normal. Yeah, people, I think people just dealt with the shock, they dealt with the grief, and they, they started to say, well, you know, life goes on and, and we got to deal with this. And I think there was also a, if you remember back then, there was almost like a, a community spirit. There was everybody flying the American flag and, and, you know, and Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, you know, people pulled together because our country was stronger than the individual beliefs and factions of different parties and individuals. And, and, but that was a defining moment. And, you know, most people will remember where they were when they first heard about that. So that was real news, that wasn't fake news. The media certainly hyped it up, and, you know, it became, you know, for months and months it became all you heard about. So, and on the other hand, with this situation, you know I mean, if government officials don't react conservatively, if they bury their head in the sand and ignore this thing, then, you know, if, if, if it, if it does go from bad to worse, then, you know, they're going to be left holding the bag on it, you know. So they, they're, they're erring on the side of caution and being conservative about it, and I think that's a prudent thing to do. However, I think, you know, We as individuals, you know, I think the odds are very slight that, you know, any one of us will be affected profoundly by it. You know, we might know somebody and maybe some of us will even get sick, but, you know, everything you hear that the people that are most at risk are people that have bad health and they are at risk health-wise anyway. A lot of older folks, a lot of folks who have immune deficiencies and things like that. So You know, this is one of those things in life that I think, you know, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And, you know, you think you can, you can. You think you can't, you can't. And, you know, you think this is going to be a terrible, horrendous thing, and it will be. And, and you think it's just, you know, another thing that will pass through. You know, we've had Ebola and the Nile virus and SARS and MERS and these other infectious diseases, and By and large, we seem to survive that. I mean, I think all the officials are doing everything they can, and like I said, they're probably erring on the side of caution, which is prudent for them to do, but you got a lot, the media's just whipping this thing up into a frenzy. And so I think for us as business owners, we wanna, we gotta remember that a lot of our employees take their P's and Q's from us. They listen to what we say, And they also listen to what we don't say. They watch what we do and they watch what we don't do. And whether we know it, we're sending verbal or nonverbal signals to them all day long, and sometimes very powerful signals, and it can influence the mentality of our employees. I think for sales teams, it's really important to keep them positive. Just shoulder through this, we'll get through it. And hopefully none of us will be directly impacted by it. But this too will pass. You know, I know the stock market's doing crazy things these days, but you know, if you look at the long-term trends on all these things, it's in the right direction. It's heading north. And I just think we, you know, just as leaders of these businesses, we have to, you know, to set the tone and the pace for our employees. If we're fearful, they're going to be fearful. If we're confident and prudent but measured and discreet about it, then I think they will too. So we have to remember that we are leaders and our job is to lead at this point in time and through this crisis or any other crisis that we encounter.

Yeah. I know you're coming off of one of your best years, if not your best year, and this year you had, you had to plan for this year. Do you think that you might be impacted or have you been impacted at all yet by this?

We haven't seen an impact yet. I mean, we're—

Right.

You know, our— In fact, I could use 10 more salesmen. My appointment calendar is booked out 8, 9 days, which is kind of hurting me with some of my non-traditional marketing. If I have a canvasser that knocks on a door and they can't set an appointment for 8 or 9 or 10 days, it hurts the quality of the appointment. A lot of those appointments, if we do set them, cancel. So we're booming right now. We had the best January and the best February that we've ever had in 36 years of business. And March is starting out really strong also. So, you know, it could have some lingering effect. We've got a ton of work in the pipeline and, you know, we're out there scheduling and installing jobs every day and the leads are continuing to come in. And I've seen in the past though, when the stock market does some crazy things and it drops like it is this week. I mean, I remember back in, I think it was April of 2000, there was a big plunge and we had some cancellations of jobs. People were just fearful of losing money and losing equity. And so it happens. I mean, for the most part, it hasn't really impacted us to this point. And I don't really, unless this thing really gets tremendously worse than it is now, I don't really think it will. But you can talk yourself into things and you can talk yourself out of things. And I prefer to talk myself into what's right with the picture versus what's wrong with the picture.

Yeah, and that's why I said earlier that I'm just kind of refusing to participate. I was in airports and, you know, and yes, I took some precautions. Addie, it's funny, Addie provided me with some of those wipes, those Clorox wipes, and she put them in a little baggie and she said, hey, when you get on the plane, wipe down the tray and the armrest. And on the first flight, or the first set of flights on Monday, I didn't do it. But yesterday on my way back, the guy sitting next to me, took out a wipe and started wiping the stuff down. I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna be the only one. We laughed about it, and I took out my wipe and I wiped my stuff down. And I might be getting on a plane next week, so I'll probably do the same thing. But you're right, it's— we just have to take a common-sense approach to this and, and be careful. So at this point then, you're really not— you're not expecting And so you're not taking any precaution, you're not pulling anything back, your marketing is still driving forward, you're still hiring, you're still installing. Is there anywhere in there that you are maybe holding back a little bit? Because of this, not because of other—

No, not at all. I did hear earlier today that we had a customer who was scheduled for installation next week And I think they're older folks, and they called in and asked if they could push their installation back till May.

Okay.

So of course, you know, we accommodated them, but we're going to do it, let them do that. I mean, but that's, you know, if all of a sudden the phones start ringing off the wall with people wanting to push their installations back or whatever, then I'd probably have reason for concern and, you know, probably have to develop a policy of how we're going to handle that. I mean, this was right now, this was an isolated instance. Yeah, I think, you know, we have to all exercise extreme caution, but be prudent. But on the other hand, we can't let this paralyze us and can't let it paralyze the people around us. And again, I just go back to what I said, as leaders in our businesses, it's up to us to set the tone and, and, and, you know, to define, you know, what what right looks like or what good looks like. And I think that's very important. Anytime there's a crisis, whether it's something like this, a worldwide epidemic or pandemic, whatever they call it, or it's a crisis within your company, or we've had employees that have passed away that have worked over the years. We've had employees get cancer and get sick. We've had employees, a lot of stuff happens. So whether it's a big thing or a local thing, you know, it's very important to step up and be the leader and not to bury your head in the sand, but also to be honest and frank and be positive in every situation. It's very easy to slip into negativity and become the Debbie Downer in your company inadvertently, and it's very important that we become positive and stay positive and continue to generate positive vibrations while at the same time not, you know, obviously ignoring the obvious things that are in front of us. So I think that's very important. You know, who knows? I mean, none of us do know, but until you actually do know, I think you got to proceed with a positive outlook on business and just keep on keeping on and And I think, you know, we'll all get through this, you know. It's, uh, you know, but, but, you know, again, it's— don't forget, your employees and your customers are not listening on this, on this podcast. Your employees and customers are reading the newspapers or listening to radio. They're on social media, you know. They're, they're watching the news broadcasts, and they're, they're being fed this constant source of negativity and And, and, and given people cause for concern, and a lot of people are cautious and afraid to take risks anyway. That's why they work for us and they're not us, right? You know, as owners and managers and leaders, we're risk-takers. The people that work for us work for us for the most part because they're not risk-takers. They're in the, they're in the security and comfort, and they, you know, they need to be reassured. And that's, that's our biggest job, I think, at this point in time. Yeah.

Well, Charlie, thank you. I appreciate it. Great, great advice. And I hope for the listener, I really going into this, that didn't really, I had a sense of where it was going to go, but hopefully listening to Charlie and hearing what's going on, we've hopefully given you a little bit of confidence with what's going on and you will keep fighting and keep moving forward. I think Charlie, your advice about, you know, be the leader, this is a time to step up and lead because people are watching us, is great advice. And hopefully all listening will heed that advice. And so thank you again, Charlie. I appreciate you and I appreciate you taking the time to do this. For everybody listening, this has been a special episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group, and there are regular episodes that you can go and listen to that will hopefully inspire you and help you grow your business and make this still the best year that you've had in business. So until next time.

All right, so that's it for today's episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Let me ask you, did it help you look at your business in a new way? Did it spark an idea or ideas you hadn't thought of before? Do you have a list of action items that you can take and implement into your business or your life today? I really hope so. Now, before you go, make sure you subscribe to the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. So you get access to the latest episodes as soon as they're available. We're always striving to provide you with great content, so you don't want to miss what's coming up. And a favor, I'd really appreciate it if you'd go to iTunes and post a review of this podcast. Let us know how we're doing. And finally, we started The Wealthy Contractor as a resource to help you, the home improvement entrepreneur, Regardless of where you are on the wealthy scale, get where you want to go. We want to provide you with the motivation, the confidence, the resources, and the tools so you too can live the life of the wealthy contractor. Now, the wealthy contractor is a place where it's okay for you to want it all. In fact, it's not only okay, it's encouraged. So until next time, This is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group.