A Better Way Forward

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Welcome to beyond your why podcast where we go from just talking about your why to to helping you actually discover and then live your why. Now, if you've listened to my show, you know that every week we talk about a particular why and then I bring on somebody with that why. And so this week we are going to be talking about the why of make sense to make sense out of things, especially if complex and complicated. So people with this why observe take in elements of every situation they're in and make sense out of them. They take complicated or what may appear to be complicated factors, problems and concepts and organize them to create solutions that are sensible and easy to implement. They're highly solution oriented and excellent problem solvers. In conversations with people that have this why, you might hear them say, okay, I got it. Given all that, let's do this. People with this particular why can be very successful management consultants, visionaries, leaders, authors, executives and analysts. They typically can be viewed as experts because they can find solutions quickly. Today I've got a very special guest for you. I've got a gentleman that started a small company and has built it to quite a large company. His name is Dale Armstrong. He was raised in rural western New Mexico. He graduated from San Juan College in 1984. He worked in the plumbing trade while attending New Mexico State University and continued working in Plumbing until 1987. So in 1987, Dale started TLC Plumbing and Utility. Over the past 32 years, Dale has grown the business from a one man shop into a thriving company that employs over 500 people that live and work in New Mexico. Now Dale has raised his family and grown his company in his home state of New Mexico. He knows our state's potential. After a visit to Santa fe during the 2017 legislative session to testify as a business owner and advocate for bills impacting the business community, Dale became frustrated with how carelessly some politicians were casting their votes. To him, it appeared to be more of a competition between parties rather than what was right for the constituents. He came back from the experience discouraged by how he and other citizens were being served on common ground issues. As such, he decided to find a way to educate the public and encourage positive change. Ultimately, this led to the creation of Deontay New Mexico. Dale welcome to the podcast.

Oh, thank you. Appreciate you having me, Gary.

This is going to be awesome. So for those of you that are listening that don't live in New Mexico, TLC plumbing, where does it rank as far as the plumbing companies within New Mexico?

I think we have one of the strongest people cultures of any company. So I like that.

And what does that mean?

A lot of my coworkers wake up excited to go to work. When you do that, it's not necessarily going to work. Yeah. Makes it very repeatable.

So how were you able to create this culture? TLC is known for its culture. Right. I mean, that's. If you talk to people around New Mexico, around Albuquerque, at least that. That know tlc, they talk about great leadership, great culture, great employees.

Yeah. And I agree. So it was intentional to get there. So my mom was a school teacher, and it's kind of funny because she said, well, you better get your education. You're going to end up digging ditches for a living. And so I got my education and I'm basically digging ditches.

But. But I took it to heart how important education was, was just basically working hard. When I started the company as me and my wife, she was taking care of a lot of stuff I didn't care to take care of, and I was out there turning wrenches and digging ditches. And so I began the process of trying to find other people to help me as a company's growing. And there was nobody really focused on preparing anybody to come into the work we were doing. And so I started teaching. So I would do it on a volunteer basis. People could stay after work, and I would go over the technical things, and I started training and teaching. And then what I found, there was a significant void in life skills. So I was very fortunate. My parents had taught me how to survive in life. Great ability to stay on top of my finances and to stay out of debt. And I found that it wasn't that common. And so I started teaching that to my co workers and it just began to make a difference. And I've just enhanced that as I have grown. And it's been a lot of fun and, and very rewarding to watch people grow in that culture.

So you invest a lot in your people, is that right?

Yeah. So it's not like a buffet. You just can't go buy the guy you want. So if you find the person with the right core values, the right attitude, the right aptitude, and you teach them all the things that they don't have within their bailiwick, within their envelope of knowledge, then you've got a good person and they're very easy to support. And so. So that's been a lot of fun.

And so give us an example. Take us through. If I was a new team member at tlc, what happens to me? How is that different than what other people do? How has that worked out for you?

So, so the first thing, we go through a process, an interview process where one person is consistent in the interview, and we go through three interviews because if one person's consistent, they can tell is it, was it the same person we were interviewing all three times? And then they get different approaches or different opinions to what that person's is. We're basically looking for people that have core values that, that tie to the company core values, which is honesty, hard work, respect, consistency, and compassion. And, and so we look for. We interview for that and then the rest we can train. So that's the process of getting there. And then as you get there, then we ask them a lot of questions in, you know, visit with them on things that they would like to improve with. So we help them paint the picture of what their life would look like. And then we try to target to fill those voids that's in their life. It is very good. And if you think about the trade that we're in, so we're. So we're in the plumbing trade. And when I was a kid, I remember the plumber on Sesame street, you know, the plumber came to fix the sink. And so there wasn't this good portrayal of many people wanting to grow up to be in the plumbing trade. And, and I talked to the technicians and I'll tell them, you know, there's people that'll wake up in the morning, they'll drive plumb across town and pay way too much for something at Starbucks that they don't even need. And I really haven't seen anybody that wakes up and thinks, gosh, I hope I get to change my water heater today. So it becomes stressful for them. It may not be in their budget. It isn't something that they even wanted. So when they call it us, we're starting out on the wrong end of positivity. And so the best thing that we can do is give them a good customer experience. And so we do training that promotes that. And then if we get a customer that calls in and says, hey, so and so was here and they did a good job, we make sure to pass that on because it reinforces what we're talking about. And yeah, it's pretty interesting.

That's so non traditional, as far as I know, in construction and plumbing and utility. I mean, do any of your competitors do things like this or.

So some of them do it. I don't know that they're as committed as we are, but some of them do do it. Actually, some of them used to work with us, and so. And we're fine with that. I mean, if we can have that impact on the community, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. Yeah, I know. I sat down, I was at a lunch, and there was like four or five business guys there. And I told them I was in my 20s, you know, late 20s, and I said, man, I started this training program and it's incredible. And I'm going to train these people this and that. Pretty much unanimous among that group. They said, well, Dale, you're crazy. You're going to train these people, and then they're just going to leave. And I said, holy smoke. Well, what if I don't train them and they stay?

So I've just assumed that there will be some people leave. But we have an amazing retention, so we want to attract and retain top 5% of people in the community. And so that's our target. So we set a high goal and we try to have the very best and we take care of them. If you have the right people, they don't cost you extra because their efficiency is better. It was 1999 that we took the philosophy of hiring and retaining top 5%. And I had hired about two months before that an internal CPA to help help with the bookkeeping. And we were sitting around the table and. And we were talking. We just want the best. And I said, well, you know, we'll have to pay him like 20% more, otherwise how are you going to attract them? And he had his 10 key calculator, and he's calculating. He said, dale, he said, if you don't do that, you're going to lose money. If you do that, if you raise your wages 20%, you're going to lose money. I said, well, you think we'll go broke? He said, well, no, you're not going to go broke in one year. I said, then let's do it. And he kind of looked at me with big eyes because he didn't really know me that well, you know, And. And so he tracked it. And in that first calendar year, our cost of labor versus revenue dropped after making a 20% adjustment in wage.

Wow.

Because we also raised the bar of expectations and the People met that bar and, and they did well and their lives got better. So it was a good thing.

So is that related to what you charged to the customer? Is that related to what the quality of the delivery of the service? Is that related to them showing up more? How did that turn out like that?

I don't think it's a one size fits all. We did not change what we charged the customer because we were afraid, you know, that the spigot might turn off. But what we did is explain to our technicians, you know, you're taking good care of work on your efficiencies, let's make sure that we prepare each day properly and let's go out the gate in the morning with all of our stuff organized and in order and, and then you tell us the barriers that are in your way because it's our job to remove those barriers. So we went through that process and basically became more efficient and an attitude. So when you have that kind of culture where they feel that man, this company is to do anything for me, well then they'll run through walls for you. And it helped the efficiency along. Been very fun. So I don't know, I don't know that there's a way for me to know how we are volume wise based on our competitors. But I can kind of see the trucks, the number of trucks that other companies have. And I've seen some trucks, I think they have 25 or 30 trucks. Will we run 180 trucks? And so I know that what we're doing, that there's value there, you know, I could probably enhance my bottom line but, but that's not what I'm after. You know, if we can, if we can go out and make a good impact on the customer and they actually call us the next time they need something. That's my desire. And our revenue has to be higher in our cost. So it's, it's good system, it's, it's fun, is very repeatable.

So for the people that are listening, Dale's why is to make sense of the complex and challenging and how he does that is by challenging the way things were currently done. And then what he brings is a better way to move forward. And you can see that playing out totally in tlc. Right. You made sense of what was going on, you thought outside of the box, came up with something that nobody else was doing and it was turned out to be a better way to move your company forward.

Yeah. And it's benefited so many of my co workers so that that's a good thing.

Yeah. So if you. Let's talk for a minute about viante. I don't even know if I'm saying that right.

That's correct. It's a. So viante is a made up word. You look in the dictionary, it's not there.

So you can't say it wrong.

Yeah, you can't really say it wrong. But. But it's rooted in Latin via, which is way, and ante, which is forward. So we combine those and made it beyonde with. With the intent of it's a way forward for New Mexico.

Okay.

And the backstory. Do you kind of want to know the backstory of how I got there? So actually, in about 2003, I was on a board of directors for a construction related.

Organization. And part of that is you volunteer to go to Santa Fe and test testify on legislation that affects your industry. So I did. I was like the knucklehead that raised my hand and. And I went up and I spent two full days up there testifying on legislation that affected construction. By the time I left, I decided I wasn't going back because I would listen to all the testimony with an open mind and it was like, really obvious what direction the vote should go. If to me, looking at common sense and boom, boom, boom, here come the votes right down the party lines. And it was like, oh, my goodness. And that was the first day, and then the second day, it was the same thing over again. And I actually did not go back again until 2017. So I took a pretty long hiatus of going to Santa Fe because it didn't make sense. It just. It was just so frustrating. So then in. In 2015, my wife and I were at some event and our representative was there. I live in Magdalena, New Mexico, so it's about an hour and a half south of Albuquerque. And our representative was there, and he came up to me and my wife, and he asked my wife, Gail, I said, hey, would you be interested in running for my position? And she said, no, I wouldn't. And he said, okay, well, think about it. And then probably three or four weeks later, he said, hey, have you thought about it anymore? And she said, yeah. She said, I'm not interested. I'm involved in the school. She was on the school board and she was doing a lot of good things there. And he says, well, why don't you do this? Why don't you come and help me during this next session? And she said, yeah, I'll go help you. So she went up and helped him and she just Loved it. And. But what happened? So she helped him for two years, and then, and then the House switched from Democrat to Republican. While he, she was helping him, he was elected speaker of the House. And he decided he hit 70 years old. He said, you know, he said, I'm, I'm, I'm tired. And with this change in, in the guard, he said, I'm going to be a normal representative out there. And it could create confusion for the new leadership. This would be a good time for me to step down. So, so he stepped down and had my help to get my wife appointed. And so here I go back to Santa Fe. So I'm going to Santa Fe and I'm sitting there watching. And it was the same as 20 years ago. It was just like, disgusting. I thought, no wonder we're on the wrong end of every list. Because they're not focusing on the common ground things, the things that are good for New Mexico. They're focusing on this game of Republican versus Democrat. So both parties guilty. And so I've got to know quite a few business owners. I came back and I started talking to, I said, man, you got to get involved. You got to go up there and testify and do things. And every single one of them said, not every one of them had been there, but everyone that had been there said, you know, I'd be happy to do that. It's a waste of time. And so then when, when I started really thinking about it.

For my co workers, so we've got 580 people, and they then have a family reach of probably times seven, you know, because of parents and kids and spouses and all that. And I thought, you know what, this isn't fair for them because they actually have no idea what's going on up there. And so I wanted to create a way to educate them. One, to at least go out and vote. And two, if they go out and vote, are they voting for somebody that's helping the state or hurting the state? And so it's just an education platform. So we do a scorecard on them. 30% of the scorecard is based on whether or not that representative or senator actually voted, because there was some pretty low percentages of votes. And then we pick votes, we measure floor votes based on bills that hit only three metrics. Education, prime or quality of life. Okay. And so those three metrics are, doesn't matter. Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian. Those. Every one of us can line up on those issues. Right? And so we measure how they voted on those issues. So it's been Very, very interesting. I've been working on it two years.

And so let me see if I have this straight. So it's almost like a scorecard system for the politicians that you can then go to the website and say, how are these guys doing?

Yep.

And then what's like a typical score?

So we give them a color score, not a number score. Okay. There. So we've done two scorecards. We are actually next week having our anniversary of being able to take members. So we worked about nine months on it before we could even take a member. Because we built the platform, we set a goal that we're going to influence moving the state from bottom 5% of states in the nation to top 5% of states in the nation by 2047. Okay. So we set a 30 year goal. It ties to my top 5%, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, because you can't be the top. You can't be the very top, but top 5% is pretty good. Good enough. And we feel there are a lot of people feel that we're in the bottom 5% of states in the nation. And that's ridiculous because we have so much in New Mexico that is good. And here we have all these bad things. You know, we're the top of every bad list and bottom of every good list. And education and crime are out of control. And then when you look at quality of life, I mean, we have poverty that's out of control. We have an economy with what we have in New Mexico. Our economy should be just thriving and we're just bumping along. So those are the things that we're measuring on. So it's nonpartisan. And so what I did is I formed a board that is of 10 people. Half of them are over 40, half of them under 40. Because I have some pretty long goals and I want to keep this transition so that it outlets me. And then we blended it between Democrats and Republicans. And so anything that we score has to be unanimous on that board. Okay. That's how we find our common ground, is that we've got this blended board. And if we all unanimously agree this would be good for New Mexico, we can score it.

Okay.

If there's one outlier, we don't score it.

Okay.

You know, and so it's been very interesting. It's been a ton of work. There's about 800 hours put on making the scorecard.

Wow.

It was just incredible.

It sounds like what you're doing is what you did in the same thing you did in your plumbing business, which is let's go back to the people.

Yep. So it's funded only by individuals. So we don't take donations from businesses or from organizations because that's another thing I found in Santa Fe is money talks, you know, and so the working class, the people that are working, whether you're a professional, such as a doctor or a dentist or whatever, that's still a working person to a labor in the field, we're the ones paying the bill. Right. So collaboratively we're paying the bill. And generally speaking, we don't have the big money. And so big money is, is doing things that doesn't necessarily benefit the people that are paying the bill. Gotcha. It's just not fair. But the people paying the bill are so busy paying the bills and keeping their jobs and taking care of their families and volunteering on baseball and volunteer, they don't even know what's going on up there. And I thought it's only fair that they know what's going on in there. And I made it funded only by individuals, so nobody could hijack us. The maximum that an individual can give us is $1,000. So right now we've, I'm really happy we've gotten over, we crossed over the 600 member mark this last week. Wow. And so it's a lot of little bit of money that's funding us. And so if one person says, well, I don't like that bill that you're scoring and I'm not going to be a member anymore, it doesn't matter. It matters because we care. Yeah. But it's not going to kill us. Right. And so they can't influence us.

Can't tilt it.

They can't tilt it. And so that is working. It is way harder than I ever anticipated. It's a big job.

Yeah.

But I have learned so much and it is a lot of fun. But oh my gosh, this is a big, it's a, I committed to it, but it's a big deal. The way I look at it, I spent 30 years building TLC. I'm going to spend, you know, so I look at my segments of my life. I'm not 60, but I spend the first 30 years of my life just learning, learning, learning, you know, through as an infant, as a preschool, as a high school, as a college. I'm learning, learning. And then I'm early in my work career and I'm learning. And then I began earning, you know, and I, so I look at 30 years of learning, 30 years of earning, and now this. 30 years, this beyond it is me returning. Ah, love it. And I think it's just a good way to look at it because if I look at the work that I have to put into it and all the volunteers that are putting work into it, it is not an economic thing. Right. It's just us returning back to the community. Community. But I'm just real happy. I thought it would take about three years for them to even pay attention to us, but first year they knew exactly who we are and they were paying attention to us. So it has a lot of potential and we're gaining momentum like crazy. So.

So is this something that other states could use? Is this something that the gut we could use nationwide?

I think it is. Okay. I think it is. I think in general, I mean, if you look at a federal race that they spend $55 million on and this person's going to make a 95 to $105,000 salary. Yeah. Does that mean that maybe big money might have influence on that? It will. Right. But us, the people that are showing up and doing our job and being the best community people that we can, we're kind of left out of that equation. Yeah. So. So it's very interesting what I've learned.

That's what I was going to say. What is the biggest thing you've learned so far?

So what I've learned. So the biggest thing. So I've learned a ton of things. I guess I would tell you the biggest thing I've learned is there are a bunch of people that really care. They just don't know what to do. And I am. I feel that way. Yeah. So we have over 600 members. They care. We have 112 legislators. And I would tell you that 95 to 99% of them really care, but they just don't know exactly what to do. And me, after two years of putting a lot of. I don't know exactly what to do either. But we're going to keep discovering what to do and get everybody lined up in the same direction. So that's the thing that. My biggest takeaway is that people really care, but we're not getting the right results. Results.

Got it. And so what is the ultimate goal of deontay?

So the ultimate goal would be able to get working people information so that when they vote, they're voting for somebody that's doing good. Not bad. What a weird concept. Yeah. And so, yeah, and I can go into a room and 30 people and say, how many of you know the name of your representative? Maybe two will raise Their hand. I don't know. It's because they don't think it. That it matters. If we engage, if the working people engage, then all of a sudden we do matter. And so that's what the ultimate goal is. Let's make sure that the people that are paying the bills are getting represented properly.

You know what's interesting about what you're saying is your how being to think outside the box and what you're doing with Viante is outside the box, but it's really not. It's the way it should be, but it isn't.

Right. Yeah. That is so interesting.

It should be obvious that let's vote for the people that are going to do good, but we don't do that.

We don't necessarily do that.

So doing something that's the way it should be is now outside the box.

Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

Well, it's going to be fun to track that. Be fun to see where it goes. Are you getting calls from people? So there's a lot of people all over the world listening to this, this. And if they're interested in doing something like this for their state, is, is anything like that on the works? Is there a way they can get a hold of you guys and copy it or do something similar or what would you suggest?

Yeah, so it would be easy to. Well, I tell you, it's not easy to copy. It's a lot of hard work. But it would be easy for them to reach out, send us an email and maybe give us. We could give them some feedback on that. I would say that five years from now this will be way better developed than what it is because we could not find anybody using this same model anywhere because we were trying to ride somebody's coattail. Yeah, yeah, but. But we couldn't find it and so we just started. We just got with it and started working on it and.

Well, since I haven't been to the site, if I go to the site, what am I going to see? What does this tell me? Is there the politicians that have different colors or what am I going to see that helps me.

So what we do. So we're. So since our funding only comes from individuals, there's a paywall. If you go to our site, it'll give you some information. You can watch a little short video and just talk about our principles and things. And I think you can look at our values to what we set up. But you can't see what the legislative score thing was because that's a members only area. And so the cost to a person is $120 a year. I tried to, you heard me mention my Starbucks example earlier. So if a person would just skip one Starbucks a week, you're more than going to pay for your membership in Beyonce. So I actually thought that was. It'd be 10 bucks a month, $120 a year. I thought just about anybody. That'd be a no brainer. Right. It's actually been a bit of a barrier. Yeah. Getting people to make that commitment. And so there's something in that model. So I wish that my idea behind the $10 a month is that people pay attention to something they pay for. And so if it's just free, then they may find the exact same value and. Right. Because there was no value for that, you know, and so that's why I put the paywall in there. We're still, I mean, we've been 11 months doing this. We're still trying to figure out how do we attract more people? Because it's really the strength comes in this, in numbers. The more people that can have the number, the knowledge out there. The one thing that has been very successful me, for me at tlc is teaching life skills. I just feel that the school systems have just kind of skipped that and people come out and they're not really ready to be productive citizens and manage their life. And so we do a lot of life skills training. And so I thought, well, maybe on the Beyonce website I could provide value to companies so that they would encourage their employees to be a member if we had a robust life skills training availability on our website. So that's something that we're thinking about. It's just, it would take a lot of resources to get that done. But as we grow membership, we'll have more resources, but we can't just be a scorecard. Yeah, we have to have multiple value propositions in our deal. So one thing we, that we did last year is produced a voter guide that was very, very good because I personally have gone to the polls. I knew the people that I knew and then I didn't know the rest and I didn't know the details of a bond issue and I didn't. There was so much I didn't know when I got there. And the voter guide that Rhiannon and our executive director produced was very informative. And so I thought, well, that's another value added, that we can have a voter guide there for people.

So your challenge is how do you get people to pay for this? And if they don't pay for it. They don't get it. And if they don't get it, they can't really vote. Right. Intelligently.

Right.

So you're in a kind of a.

Yeah, it's a tough one. But you'll solve it. We will get it fixed. We're right now looking at school boards and what makes the ideal school board member because basically the school board hires the superintendent. Superintendent, it hires the teachers. Now there has to be some accountability with that school board to their community so that they can raise the bar on the education system. And I know PED and different, there's a lot to that. But in this last research that they did, it was one in four fourth graders were reading at grade level. Wow, that's horrible. Yeah. You know, and so that's what I'm just learning. It's like I'm drinking from the fire hydrant, you know, with information. And I still actually have a full time job. So it's been fun. For sure. You've been busy. I've been busy.

Well, listen, Dale, I appreciate you taking the time to come and talk with us and be on the podcast and if there's people out there that want to connect with you, connect with Deontay. I don't know if you do anything with TLC and teaching other organizations how to do what you did, but how should they get a hold of you?

Deontaynm.com is our website. Viantm.org I'm looking at the pamphlet now but it.com gets to us. But it's.org and. And so there's a place to ask a question or send an email to. To me or Rhiannon. And for my company website it's D Armstronglcplumbing.com so perfect. But I've enjoyed that. I've actually met with a lot of individuals and just visited with them on business and things.

Best practices.

Yeah. And that's fun because really I learn more than they do. Yeah. You know, so I enjoy the conversations and I have a good rapport with my competitors. I look at us all as being a resource to the community and we need to kind of work together but not too close together. Yeah, they would turn into politicians. But. But it's fun.

I found it fascinating that every time I've been to a Dale Carnegie course we send our people through Dale Carnegie as well.

We do too.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Every single time I've been to a Dale Carnegie graduation of one of our team members, there's a half a dozen people from TLC Plumbing that had just finished the courses. Every single time, though. So I don't know if you just continually feed them or how that works.

But, you know, we help them paint the picture of what a successful life is. A lot of them present that as a challenge, so we support them by going, you know, going through Dale Carnegie, we. We've sent people through college. We have a program that will pay for their books and tuition on any passing grades that we pre approve. So. So if they say, hey, I want to take these classes, and we say, go take them, well, they pay for their own tuition and books, but we reimburse them when they pass it because we've had trouble. If we just paid for it up front, they don't even show up. So, yeah, it's been pretty amazing what.

An impact you've been able to have on so many people.

Yeah.

Outside of your just your customer, you've had a great impact on them. People.

Yeah. Really. It's all about people, really.

That's awesome. Dale, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you being on the podcast.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me, Gary.

You did great.