The Purpose of Training with Currie Gauvreau

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Contractor Radio. I'm your host, Jim Johnson, the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro, where we help contractors get control of their business through learning how to be better leaders so that they can grow their business and hopefully, if we do everything right, achieve some personal and financial freedom, which is why we start one of our businesses in the first place. If that sounds like something you want to do, you can go to our website, contractorcoachpro.com and click on the assessment button. Take our 15 to 20 minute assessment. It's a real, not some kind of sales tool. From that assessment, we're going to learn a lot about you. And if you fill it out and complete it, set up a time with us. We'll do a free coaching call with you. It won't cost you anything, so you can see what coaching is like. If you like it and want to be our client, that's wonderful. If not, at least we've provided you some value that day and given you some guidance on maybe the two or three things that you need to take as next steps in your business to move the needle a little bit and grow a little bit more. I am pumped for today. I have a guest that was. I don't know about you guys, like listeners, if you know kind of how this whole podcast thing works, but at some point you start kind of running out of people that you know. I do have people that get referred to me. I do ask my guests, like, if you know somebody that you think would be a great guest on my show. And so I pick up a lot of my guests that way. But there's also this group of people out there that's always sending, like, hey, this person would be a great person to have on your podcast. And I tend to go do a bit of research, like, hey, are they really or are they not? And most of them, like 95% I kind of blow off, to be honest with you. But I checked into this guy, found out a little bit about him. That's LinkedIn's a valuable thing. Facebook is also valuable. I also got some good information from the podcast facilitator and I'm like, this guy's great. This guy has more to offer than just this thing that he does. And so I'm super pumped to bring him on. His name is Curry Gavreau. He is with Honest Water Filter. He's the executive vice president, one of the owners. But really and truthfully, the thing that drew my attention to him is his passion for training and leadership. He was actually the director of training for Clockwork Home Services Success Academy, which has to do with more than just sales. There's leadership, culture. There's lots of training that goes on. If you guys don't know who Clockwork Home Services is, they're a $600 million company. We're going to learn a little bit more about that story as we have our guest. But I want to welcome our guest because we're going to talk about training, we're going to talk about leadership, we're going to talk about culture. So you're going to want to stay tuned for this. Without further ado, let's bring on this rocket, like, come on, trainer for a $600 million company. Let's take advantage of this opportunity today and learn a little bit from our guest, Curry Gavreau. Curry, good to have you on board, man.

I'm thrilled to be here. I really am.

This is one of those things, like I was explaining, like, I don't normally just have somebody I don't have some type of association with on the show, but you're expertise and background was like, hey, this is a no brainer. I gotta have this guy on. So tell everybody a little bit of the story. Like, how did you get into the home services world and then work into this training aspect of things for the success Academy at Clockwork Home Services and maybe a little bit about who Clockwork Home Services is, because people might not know that name, but a bunch of the other names they might know.

Absolutely. So I'm a marine and I'm a retired cop and I started training in 1989. So I've been training people for 34 years. I was offered a position in 2013 with Clockwork Home Services as a trainer and Clockwork Home Services. And I wasn't familiar with them either. I didn't realize how large they were. They actually own the franchises of One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing and Mr. Sparky Electric. And that was at the time when, when I was with them. And so I joined that team and it was an amazing experience. I was able to do training and coaching and it was incredibly fulfilling. My last year there, before I came to Honest Water, we did a little over $650 million in revenue. Thousands.

That's a big number.

Yeah, it's a big number. We had a. We had a training team at one point. I think there was 14 or 15 of us. So it was a large training group. It was an intense group because we held ourselves to a very high standard. But the passion and the thrill of it was when you're able to do a training and have someone tell you, you changed my life. And I see that sign in the back behind you where it says, you know, a good coach and you know will change your life. And if you're a good coach and a good trainer, you've had someone tell you that what you helped them with changed their life. And that's what we're in this for, is to help people change their lives.

Yeah. So you're there. Right. And doing great things. If I had a person that was leading my training, I think a Marine and retired cop might be the right person. Like, there's going to be a little bit of discipline, some structure to it. There's going to be a lot of accountability to it, I would imagine. But how did you move from that into this Honest Water filter situation?

So the founder of Honest Water, his name is Eric Brockmire, he's been a plumber for 35 years. And when I was hired by Clockwork, Eric and I worked together. He was a vendor and a trainer. He was actually the VP of training for the organization that he was with. And I trained with him. He taught me how to train water treatment. And then one of the other executives at Honest Water is Chris Adams, and he's been a water treatment guy. And he and Eric worked together. I met both of them. The three of us just kind of hit it off. We share similar values, similar goals to helping people. And. And when Eric discovered this product, probably about six years ago, Five, five or six years ago, and he brought it to me, I knew that it was a game changer. And so I was actually the first full time employee at Honest Water. As we grew this business, developed it, and now we have over 5,000 systems installed across the country. And we're growing exponentially. And we're very, very pleased and very.

Blessed if people knew what was in the tap water they're drinking.

That's true, that's true. And it's about education, right? I mean, everything is about education. People can use the Google and get misinformed when in reality they should be talking to a professional who will give them the real information.

Because I want to talk about this because health and wellness, fitness, that type of thing is. It's kind of been a thing for me my whole entire life. And I look at all sides of it. Nutrition, nutrition, you know, working out your mental health, like all of those things are really important to me. And water is confusing. Like there's a million different things out there that this is the Right thing. That's the right thing. And there's a million different filter systems. You can water filtration companies. You can't shake a dead cat without hitting one. It seems like what makes what you guys do so different about the process and why you got involved with it?

Well, we scaled it back to simplicity. We really felt that water treatment should not be confusing. And so we created a program that was very simple. Because at the end of the day, if you are a contractor, let's say a plumber, and you own the company and you love a product, but your plumbers don't love the product, they're not going to sell any.

Right.

So we had to make a program. We knew we had a better product. That, that's been proven. We have the certifications. We know that we had to create a program that could penetrate a plumbing organization or an H VAC organization and win the technicians, the plumbers over. And so that's what we did. We simplified to the point where our systems simply remove the bad stuff.

Can we use that in the sales pitch? It just removes the bad stuff. Let's go.

You know, and again, why not, right? Why not be simple? You know, you mentioned, you know, my background with, you know, military, law enforcement, everything. And one of the things that I like to tell people is I'm very direct and I'm very transparent. I like things to be simple because you screw up less when it's simple.

Yeah. I think good coaches and good trainers have a knack for being able to take the complicated and make it simple.

Oh, you are preaching to the choir. That is exactly how I explain my approach is I want to take a concept and make it easily understood by anybody.

And so with, you know, so let's talk about the water for like, what is the right thing for? Because you hear reverse osmosis, you hear all the different things like, and you're like, okay, am I taking out too much? Am I taking out good stuff too? Is it like that kind of thing? I don't think most people know.

Right.

In a simplified version, how would we know that we're getting the right thing?

It's a great question. First you have to determine what is your source. The majority of people are on municipal water. So we in. Yeah, me too. Right. So at Honest Water, we direct our efforts towards municipal water. That's that low hanging fruit. And what's really interesting about municipal water is we know what's in it because every municipality has to provide a report every year. So what we do is we approach it Addressing three areas of contamination. The physical contaminants, the chemical contaminants, and then the minerals. Hard water. What happens is with water treatment in general, they tend to overcomplicate it and that leads to a lot of misinformation and a lot of misunderstanding with physicals. You need a filter that measures in microns. That's how you measure your level of filtration with chemicals, you need carbon. And with minerals, all you need to do is stop the minerals from creating scale. That's it. So that's what our products do. But what's beautiful about Honest Waters products is we don't change the chemistry of the water at all. And we can work with other pieces of equipment. So we can be a standalone solution or we can work alongside other pieces of equipment.

Yeah, the people that are wanting the reverse osmosis, negative ion, that kind of whatever it is out there that they believe in, you can actually work in, in line. That's pretty co. Cool. That's. That's really cool. And I'm in agreement with you because I want water. Water, right. Like, I just want good water coming out of my tap. I don't want a bunch of scale messing up my pipes and those type of things. I learned, I learned more about microns in the last three. Well, last month or so than I ever thought I would because I put in one of those cold plunge pools and I have a filter for it. So I had to like, hey, that's too few and it's catching everything and it's clogging it up. Like 20 microns was the, the needed thing for it.

Oh, I love my ice bath.

Yeah, that thing's amazing.

Oh, I love my ice bath.

Every morning. Every morning. It's a thing to do because it kind of ramps me up and gets me going for the day.

And just to put some relevance, our standard entry level product for the whole house is five mics. We actually have a pre filter that you can. It's an upgradeable pre filter that goes all the way down to 0.015 of a micro.

Wow. Okay. That sounded a viral little bitty stuff.

Yeah, yeah. But again, it's not changing chemistry, it's just removing bad stuff.

That's pretty cool. So that's neat stuff if you guys want to talk to Curry about that. Curry. How do they get a hold of Honest Water filtration? Because we're going to talk about adding a product here later to what we do. But how would they get ahold of you?

Well, our website is created to be a resource. So if you go to honestwaterfilter.com you can learn all about our products. You can learn where our dealers are, you can watch videos, you can see our certifications. We are certified both by NSF and the state of California, which is important. But if you go there and you're interested in finding out more information, you can either reach me directly at Curry C U R r I e honestwaterfilter.com or just submit your information on our website and we'll contact you. We'd love to talk to you.

Awesome. So let's talk about the stuff that actually makes the rubber hit the road, right? So we all got products. No matter what you do, you're a plumber, you're an electrician, you're a roofer. Whatever it is that you do out there for our listeners, we're home service contractors. And some of the things that I see that prevent home service contractors from achieving what their potential is, it tends to be in a leadership side of things, like not being skilled as a leader. And it's kind of pride that holds them back. If I'm going to be honest that I got this, I'll figure it out. People want to work for me. Do they really? How long do they work for you? Is there drama in the business? So that kind of leads to this. Good leaders create great cultures aspect of things. What has your experience been like as you work with all of these different contractors? Do you see that, like, leadership is kind of the key to whether they turn out well or not? I really hate interrupting these videos, but I've got some important information for you. If you haven't tried out Atlas shingles, you should, because they put you first as a contractor. They want to give you a competitive advantage out in the field so that you can win more sales and be more profitable. Check out Atlas in your local area, find your local rep, get hooked up with them today and start making more money tomorrow.

Product leadership.

I've seen a lot of crappy products that get sold a bunch of. Because they got great leaders.

Absolutely. You know, I was asked a question at an interview a couple of months ago. You know, what would make a product fail? And there's. There's really three reasons why a product might fail. First of all, it's not a good product.

Lack of functionality, lack.

It doesn't do what it says it's going to do. So let's put that aside. The second is you might have a good product, but it's not supported properly by the manufacturer or the Team selling it. So whether it's marketing training, technical support, that can make a program fail from the product perspective, but if you have a great product that does what it's supposed to do and you have great support, marketing training and all that, and it still isn't selling, it's leadership. It's a failure in leadership. Because I've been in those locations where that manager is firefighting every morning from 7 to 9, right?

Oh, yeah.

And I've been there where they're not exhibiting effective leadership behaviors. The first being role modeling the behavior that they expect from their team. That's the first rule of effective leadership.

I see so many with core values, and then the leader doesn't adhere to the core values, right?

Yeah. Those are good for everybody else.

Those are for everybody else.

Yeah. Yeah. And you've seen it? I've seen it. I've traveled the country for years coaching leadership, and when someone achieves a position or a title or what have you. You mentioned ego a second ago. Ego insists that they want to be treated differently. And the reality is you should not want to be treated differently. If you're a true leader, you want to be treated the same as everyone else so that they can feel a part of what you're trying to achieve.

I could not agree more. They need to see you doing the things that you would want them to do.

Right.

I mean, if that's picking up a piece of garbage off of the ground and throwing it away instead of kicking it underneath the couch. It's the little things like that. And we kind of forget that as leaders that we set this example every day. Do we bring energy in? Do we bring positivity in? Like, if we bring that to the game, then our team's going to be that way. If we bring negativity, drama, chaos, crap like that into the game, well, guess what? That's what everybody else is going to be. Because the reality is they want to be you. They do. They're like, that's the example. This guy's successful. I want to be like that. So he acts like that. So I'm going to act like that.

Yeah. The definition of success is interesting though, right?

What?

So you said they want to be successful. What does that mean? They mean more money mean more prestige. You know, what does that actually mean? I can't tell you how often I would be at a location doing a training and the leader's not in the room.

Oh, yeah?

What kind of example is that? Right. I'm not your babysitter.

Yeah.

I'm Here, I'm here to provide information or what have you knowledge and then when I leave, who's going to back up and support the information that I gave your team?

If you're not in the room, it's actually a requirement. Whenever I go in and do training, because I do leadership and sales training in a lot of organizations, I tell them part of the deal is you're there, you need to be there. Because I'm going to leave, you're going to need to support this. So that's awesome. Good, awesome advice. Where else do you see leaders fail?

Well, you know, one of the things that again, I talked about firefighting and a great leader. Well, actually, let me back up. If you take any MBA course and you take a management course, the first tenet of management is a manager will not do what can be delegated.

Yeah. So the challenge better at that one. That's one thing I could, like, if we're honest here, like, and I think a lot of people get trapped by it because they get trapped by this thing. Like, well, I know if I do it, it's going to get done right or at least the way I want it to be done. If I give it to somebody else, will they do it that way? I've learned over the years that they might not do it exactly the same way. Sometimes it might actually be better. Right.

There's no doubt. There's no doubt.

And if it's not quite as good, at least it got done without taking my time away from doing the things that are important for the business.

When I got promoted in law enforcement. So now. So I went to sergeant and I had a squad and I was a high product productivity police officer. I put a lot of people in jail.

I was going to say, you wrote a lot of tickets for people in jail.

Not a lot of tickets. I didn't write a lot of tickets. My job was to put bad guys in jail. Well, when I became a sergeant, I had to take a step back from that. I couldn't expect all six of my police officers to behave the way I behave. And it's the same thing in business. It's not about them being you, it's about them being them. And all of these individuals come together as a team to achieve that higher goal of the organization. And so. Right.

That military thing, like, everybody understands the mission. Understands the mission and why we're doing it and why it's important. They will tend to make the right decisions if they're bought into it.

If you have a team working together, they Might have less skills than another group, but they'll achieve more because they're working together. So in other words, a team is working together. A group is a bunch of individuals.

Ooh, that's really good. That's gold right there. Do you have a team or a group? That's very different things.

And when you, when you train or when you coach, you'll go into places and you'll see that one superstar who's treated like a superstar. That's not a team, that's a group.

Yeah, I would see that too much in some of these businesses that are out there, that they're almost held hostage by that superstar.

Happens all the time. All the time. And I. And it's. It's a little depressing, actually. But more often than not, when that superstar moves on, whether voluntarily or not, the others in that group become a team and they raise their game. And now that leader has a team that individually has raised their game. So now the whole team has raised their game and he's not stressed out half as much.

Best thing I ever did was fire a two and a half million dollar sales guy. He was our top guy because he was toxic. He was absolutely toxic for the culture. Didn't follow processes, didn't follow it. Made work harder for everybody else. And when I fired him, it was like within seconds I got a text message. Did you let this guy go? I went, yeah, thank you. And we sold more than we ever sold before.

Right.

He was actually holding us back, not taking us to where we needed to go. You can't rely on one person. And we do a lot of sales training. We teach this concept of staying off the pedestal. The second you step up on that pedestal, you're done. We already know it. We might as well just get rid of you at that point.

You mentioned it earlier, it's ego. So the challenge you have is when someone starts to perform at a higher level and they start getting accolades. It's human nature to start thinking, I am this good. Right?

I'm a badass.

Yeah, exactly. And they start to be a separatist when in reality, you want that person to share what it is they're doing. So the rest of the team can then up their game.

Right.

That's the challenge.

Yeah. We teach a concept called humility over hype. Stay humble. Don't forget where you came from.

Don't.

Don't listen to all the press clippings. Right? Like, that's the first sign of you going downhill when you start believing what everybody's saying about You.

Right. I created a leadership program. It's a two day leadership program called Intentional Leadership. And the basic premise is what we were just talking about. It's having leaders understand that it's okay to be humble, it's okay to be vulnerable, and it's okay to communicate. Even though you're a guy, you can sit down with another guy and tell him how you feel and nobody's going to think less of you. And that's the first step to leadership. Because all of a sudden you start viewing things through a different lens.

Yeah. You'll actually connect with them. They'll be like, oh, so he's not.

Perfect right now we can talk. Absolutely. You know, I mean, how many times do you have you seen a leader apologize to their group because of their behavior or their decision or what have you? And they say, hey, look, you know what? I thought this was the right decision and I want to let you know that it wasn't. They admit they're wrong. That's a major step.

We call that falling on the grenade. It's like, hey, I'll take the hit. I made the decision, we went after it. It didn't work out. Unfortunately, Jim Johnson falls on the grenade a lot. I make a lot of decisions. They don't always work out, but I always own it too. Like, hey, this is, you know, there's a lot of really good content out there, like extreme ownership and what Jocko does with that.

Yeah.

And he comes from that military background. Oh, yeah, right.

Yeah, absolutely.

Is that something that was built into you really in the military more than in our world?

Believe it or not. It was. Oh yeah, I lost you for a sec. But it was, it was sports. Okay, so I played sports. Well, I was. I played football in college and I play hockey and what position I played those. Well, it's funny story, I was recruited as a defensive back and I Show up all 5 foot 10, 155 pounds of me. And within 30 minutes, the coach walked over, tapped me on the helmet, went, you're a wide receiver now, huh?

Yeah. Okay.