'From HVAC with CARE' Building Trust where it matters most- with Jeff Schwartz

Welcome to TFR This Feels Right podcast. Every episode, we're sharing impactful communication skills you need, or you didn't even know that you needed them until you've listened to this episode. I'm Joel Silverstone, your host, and I'm excited to have you on this journey with us. I'm also the founder of TFR This Feels Right, where for over 25 years, we've been helping leaders, and teams from top organizations build and elevate their communication skills in presentations, team building, and difficult conversations. And if you want to learn more, head on over to thisfeelsright.ca. All right, before we get to our episode, we kindly ask you to do us a favor. If you could leave a review, a rating, and subscribe so you don't miss an episode of impactful communication skills that feel right. Let's get to our show. From HVAC with Care, building trust where it matters most. In this episode, we're going to explore how empathy is going to meet the mechanical.

2 words you don't often hear.

And if you're like me, I'm just intimidated by anything mechanical. And Jeff Schwartz figured this out. He's the CEO of GoLime Inc. And he's created this leadership framework. Something you don't often expect to hear in the HVAC world. And he discovered this from being a young entrepreneur DJ to years of working in the telecom industry about creating this idea of CARE— communicate, acknowledge, respect, and empathy— for his team and his clients. Let's meet Jeff and learn a little bit more as he shares about CARE.

Jeff Schwartz from GoLime, and I love the name. We're going to talk about that in a bit, how you came up with that. Thank you for being a guest on TFR, This Feels Right podcast.

Thanks so much, Joel. It's a pleasure to be here, and, uh, thank you so much for having me.

Do you ever do like a warmup before you go, you meet a client or, or you come on a show like this? You ever do like a vocal warmup?

No vocal warmups. I have a very rigid routine. 5:50 AM wake up. I was, uh, in my basement gym for an hour and a half this morning. So a couple coffees later, uh, I'm sort of shot out of a cannon, ready to go.

Perfect. So let's go right into this idea. And this is why I wanted to have you on the show is that I was like, this, he runs an, he's the CEO of an HVAC or home comfort company, and he's implementing this leadership style called care. Okay. This is a little bit different. You don't often hear that from, from an HVAC, you know, home comfort company. So why, why was that so important to have this idea that your, your company was gonna be a little bit different in that sense of idea of, of care?

Yeah, it's great. Listen, it's a great question. If you think about the HVAC industry or home comfort industry, it's entirely predicated on going into people's homes. And so, what's funny about it, and back to zigzag, I can't take credit for that, is if you think about the zig and zag mentality, if every company is focused on, you know, the biggest private equity firms have it in their infrastructure funds. I look at it as if you think about what our asset is, it's our people. And when I say our asset is our people, 100% of the time people are coming to us to speak to us. So we have to help them, or we're going into a customer's home to install equipment that's usually very complex because you have licensed plumbers, electricians, gas fitters, and they're trusting you in the home. And so there's a methodology back to this CARE word: communicate, acknowledge, respect, and empathy. I think in the most simplistic way of describing it, if you treat people well, and you give them your best, I know our people can gain not only trust, but you can have a long-term relationship with someone because the mechanical room in your home is one of the most complex rooms in the home. So for me, I looked at it and said, if you want to be known as one thing, be known as someone that the customer can trust. But most importantly, our number one asset is our people here. And that is something we try to exemplify 24/7, 365. And that's the CARE methodology for me in a nutshell. It's people, people, people at our core. And if we treat our people Well, guess what? Your customers are gonna be treated even better.

I love that example because I think, you know, I'm absolutely 100% completely mechanically inept. And just like you're talking about, pretty much most people, you're coming into my home. I'm gonna be a little bit defensive already, not consciously, but subconsciously. I'm gonna be a little bit defensive, like, who's coming into my house? What are they gonna try to sell me? Or what kind of jibber jabber are they gonna try to talk to me about? So I'm already defensive. So coming in with the idea That it's about building the trust first before you could proceed. It's like connect before you, you start the work in a sense.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Um, look, I always said, uh, I spent— I've spent 25+ years in customer-facing businesses. Sure, there's B2B and B2C, but I would say the exact same thing holds true. In B2B, it's all about partnerships, relationships. If you nurture great relationships, you have great results. In B2C, And, you know, there's probably a million different examples, but, you know, golden rule number one is sort of like an Izzy Sharp or whether it's Maya Angelou. But, you know, people remember how you treat them.

Yeah.

People care how you care. And so exactly to your point, if you're going into someone's home and you have to fix their air conditioner or you have to fix their furnace and suddenly you have a sales mindset and you're swapping it out with a new one when you didn't have to, that's a vulnerable place for customers. That is the opposite zig versus zag. That's the opposite of what we want it to be. We strive to be someone that the customer can count on to deliver only what they want. So, so we always say, you know who our hero is? The customer. The customer is always the hero. And we've taken words out of our vocabulary. Sales doesn't exist. We have expertise. Commissions don't exist because we don't want to influence decisions based on our own outcomes. And so, you know, back to, you know, sort of the overall theme, if you put more care than what you, what you imagined previously, our feeling has always been as a company, We will both win. So, it's like a 1 1 3. The customer wins first. And if we win as well, that could be the very poss— that's the best possible outcome for us as a business.

So, as a leader, how are you implementing this care? Because someone, our one listener is listening right now and going, hmm, it sounds really good, but like, how— I don't know if my people would buy in if all of a sudden I say, it sounds very touchy-feely and we're not touchy-feely people. Or how are we gonna do this? How are people gonna buy into this? So how did you— how would you— how are you doing it?

Yeah. So, so number one, and I can take no credit to say who invented it, but I don't know anyone else that does it. So I'm assuming I've picked up different things along the way and I've shared it quite publicly, probably for the last 15 years. So when I was a director at a large telecommunications company, I might have had a team of 5 people when it started. So it's not— and whether you have 100 people or 2,000 people, frankly, I think it works at every level of scale because simply this: when I joined the organization, the number one thing you have to do is introduce yourself to people. And the way I introduced myself before I joined is it's a one-pager because I'm a big believer in succinct, and it's all about me. And so there's 8 different, call it questions in there, everything from my name, my birthday, not year. It's not about how old, but just to celebrate, and I'll explain that in a moment. And then it has questions like, what are your personal goals? What are your professional goals? How do you like to communicate with other people? What frustrates you in a work environment? What inspires you in a work environment? So some key questions that I answer to introduce myself to the team. What you find quickly is that vulnerable state of taking the time to introduce yourself to everyone. What you get is a mixture of responses. Some people fill it in and have spent 24 hours. Some people fill it in quickly. Some people share photos of their families. Some people, you know, write out a long sort of paragraph about something. But what you get is a sense of who everyone is.

Yeah.

And as a leader, what I would say is this, no matter what size organization, whatever size team you have, this notion of listening, this of connecting with people and the simple notion of making sure that you understand people requires an opportunity to listen. So with this team, when you get 100 pieces of paper back and you take the time to read them, I'll share one very fast story. Probably 5 years ago, I did it with a team of about 250 people. And one of the amazing women that filled it out for me, she wrote back. One of the questions is, how do you like to be recognized? And she said, with butter tarts. And the funny part is with that, I remembered that. I was up in Muskoka visiting a friend and I came home with butter tarts from Don's, like a famous bakery up there. And again, back to when you say it's too touchy-feely, when you go back to, you know, principle one of trying to make sure that you're, you know, you know, creating a great environment for people and you drop off, you know, 3 fresh butter tarts on someone's desk on a Monday morning, I believe that meant more to this individual than the raise they got that year or some of the wins they got in business. So, back to sort of your question, I think it takes It takes a little bit of time. I'm a big proponent of like Michael Watkins' First 90 Days. One of the ways that I can, you know, do my best in the first 90 days is connecting with people. And if you take the time to connect with people, I think for the next 1 year, 5 years, for eternity, you get the best out of people because you have a customized approach where they now know you. But more importantly, I know each of them one-to-many and one-to-one, and you can really harness and take that information and use it. for great value for the culture.

Well, I think what you've just done is you've given the definition of what's a boss and what's a leader. And very clearly is that when you set this vulnerability from the get-go by yourself and you share things about yourself, but also you invite others to also share about themselves. I don't know how many times I've gone into organizations where we'll do an activity like that where, you know, Sharing something about how best you want to be communicated with or what frustrates you at work, or where people share maybe some of their— butter tarts is how they like to be recognized, as an example. People have been working there 15 years and they look at each other, I never knew that. And if you can do that within the first 90 days, as you say, come in and set the playing field where everybody shares what's important to them, I think it comes up to the key point here, which you say you're listening. It wasn't just the butter tarts. It was that you listened. You really saw what was important to her and you remembered. She felt validated. And to back it up, statistics show that the number one thing most employees want over a gift card, over a raise is to be recognized by their manager, to receive validation. That's the most important thing. So, let's talk a little bit about the care.

So, how did you—

Is there sort of some subtext under, under the communication? Is there some sort of subtext under the empathy? Is there sort of bullet points underneath that? Like, maybe just expand a little bit on the care.

Yeah, for sure. And so if I think back 15 years, I, I was fortunate to do a bunch of training courses and a bunch of different things. And this word care stuck with me. No coincidence, her email address for the company now is care@golime.com, which is funny because you can't, you can't appreciate the level of But you think about what the word care means, and the word care means how you want to be treated. The word care means is how you want your customers to be treated. The word care can sort of fit everywhere. And I'm a big believer in, you know, this notion of taking a word and utilizing it to have more power or more value in what it can represent. So again, I don't— can never take credit because I don't remember, but I don't know anyone that's done anything similar. And I have thousands and thousands of these care sheets. It's funny. They're a box, some of them at home. So it's like my secret power is I know everyone's birthday. So that's the funny for your one listener, hopefully for the many listeners that tune in, that's the fun part about it. But for me, it's like if you think about what those words represent, C, communicate. If you can't communicate or you can't communicate succinctly and clearly, you know, it's like the number one pitfall I often say in organizations and teams. One of the CEOs I admired most early in my career put 5 strategic imperatives up on the screen. And when he retired 10 years later, it was the same priorities. So what could be clearer than that? Acknowledgement. So back to what you said before, if you ask people what they genuinely want, of course, people want raises. Of course, they want growth in their career. But I think most people want an acknowledgement that they've— that, you know, not only are they doing a good job, but an acknowledgement that, you know, supports their journey. And so that word acknowledgement was hugely representative for me. Respect. I think, you know, if you think what the number one— if you think Just the word toxic as an example. I can't tell you how many people have said I'm in a toxic workplace. Usually what that means is there's a lack of respect for other people. There's a lack of trust. And I think respect is something that's earned. And so I looked at that as something that it needs to be earned. So, you know, I sort of took that word respect. And then the last piece is this notion of empathy. I think for me, you know, empathy isn't just, you know, sort of being kind to other people. It's genuinely listening.

Yeah.

And having an ability to hear. You know, early in my career, I remember seeing a video on design thinking from IDEO in California and it like dawned on me. It's like, holy moly, like that's how we have to create great innovation. And the model is simple. You let different types of people sit in a room. You don't inhibit what they say by making sure that there's an ability to say anything. Some of the ideas come from other ideas. There's no bad idea, but most importantly, everybody is treated equal and you have this opportunity to respect and treat people the way they deserve and watch what happens when you do. So it's like infinite outcomes versus, you know, call it something that would be very constrained. So for me, those 4 words resonated and then I tried to build sort of 8 to 10 questions around that. And it's just been remarkable for me to see people open up, but also to be able to use it. I Have a binder on my desk. I flip into it at least several times a week still. I have reminders in my calendar, everyone's birthdays, but more importantly, what people's preferences are. And if someone says that, like, ultimately they want to be an introvert and wear headphones all day because they feel more comfortable, they're not being antisocial necessarily. That's a comfort. And but again, if you— I always say action versus intent, and then I'll turn it back to you, Joel. It's like if the action you see is someone wearing headphones, but the intent is I do my best work as an individual performer when I can concentrate. Just by understanding that, you're not making a preconceived notion to say, well, they're detached from the team or they're not looking to be collaborative. No, they just, their preference is time to time they want to have some quiet time. So I think for me, it's all about finding a way to care for your people in a way that fits them. And that's the part I find quite unique is I think originally when I started my career journey, one-to-many worked. I think what I've realized is one-to-many for some things. And communication probably is one of them to give consistency. But many of the other elements are all about one-to-one. And the more that you can understand people one-to-one, the better you can tailor what a team needs by just showing a little bit more care.

There's so much gold in there, Jeffrey. And there's 2 things that really stand out for me here, which is Communication is so abstract. It's like everyone thinks they're a good communicator, but it's the other pieces that makes us the good communicators, the listening, the empathy, and how we respond to them. But I love this idea of— 2 ideas here that really stand out is action and intent. And I think that's where miscommunication happens. Absolutely. Like the person wearing the headphones, that could be perceived as being rude and antisocial, but it's the intention behind it, which is, look, this person is going to be more productive doing this, and they feel more comfortable. They feel more like themselves. So, they're actually They're actually going to be more social because they feel respected that they're allowed to do what— how they work best. And the other thing is, and it kind of comes from the world of improvisation where you say no bad idea. And the world of improvisation, rule number one is first thought, best thought. And everybody's allowed to make an offer. We're not allowed to judge. You're not allowed to judge the idea. And I think that is so important for every meeting, every one-on-one. Have this yes-and mindset, which is let's just Let's just throw out all the ideas. Let's not censor ourselves, and then we can narrow it down. But as soon as we start saying, you know, but at the beginning, we've lost. So I do love that. Okay, I got 2 questions, and one is sort of my completely off-topic question. But last question, and I'll give you like 30 seconds to answer this, which is, you know, GoLime, very original name for an HVAC home comfort company. How did you How did you come up with that? Because you think Go Lime, you don't exactly think it's a home comfort HVAC company.

Yeah, great question. So we sort of set out to do 3 things. I said earlier a little bit about caring for your people, caring for your customer. We wanted to be 100% customer-centric. And back to this notion, when they zig, we zag, we wanted to go the opposite direction. So every other name says we're in the HVAC home comfort space. Go Lime has nothing to do with that space. Go is the moniker for take action. And lime, when you see a lime, it's fresh. It's something that is, it makes you feel good. It's green. So we tried to take some symbolism out of that. And if you think about it, customer interaction, jeff@golime.com. Again, I don't mind if your listeners reach out to me. And the best story of all of this, and you said it yourself, is all the best ideas come from everywhere. When I joined, we had zero people in marketing, and that's normal for a lot of companies. We're a small business. We're fortunate that we have a slightly larger team now that has supported the growth. But when we got here, we hired 4 co-op students, 3 from Waterloo, 1 from Humber College. This person from Humber College is, was probably 2 years new to Canada. It was his first opportunity for sort of like, you know, letting his wings fly, so to speak. Architect by training, design, graphical designer by training, came in in 4 months, blew us all away. Go Lime was in many ways created by a co-op student that joined us for a summer and is now our lead graphic designer and has been here for over a year. So back to, you know, what a brand means and what it can become, it becomes what your people put into it. And that's what I'm most proud of as, you know, the president and CEO of the company, but also as a leader in a company is everything that you see in the company was developed by the people in the company. Go Lime was created by the people of this company in a room together. And back to the comment that you said before, all voices equal from every level of the organization.

Well, you've laid it out very clearly. There's very much a sense of purpose in everything that everyone does, and everyone feels obviously very supported and respected. Here's my completely off-topic question, which will wrap up our episode today, Jeff. And then at the end, you'll share how we can best contact you. I think you've already given us a clue. It's jeff@goldline.com. But maybe this is something Somewhere else you want to find a connection with. But Little Jeff, what did— what did— what, you know, maybe Little Jeff didn't think he was going to be the CEO of an HVAC company. What did— what was Little— what did Little Jeff want to do? What did Little Jeff think he was going to become or dream about?

Yeah, I can tell you very simply that answer. I had a couple dreams as a kid. Number one, I was in love with summer camp.

camp.

And what I probably didn't realize at the time is I went from camper to counselor to unit head, and I was responsible for 250, you know, sort of staff and campers in that section. And what I can tell you is that was the defining moment that I knew I wanted to work with people. When you have to care for other people's children and you have to care for staff, you sort of draw that line between leading, but listening and caring. So I think those were early days. If my voice sounds like a DJ, I spent 10 years as a disc jockey. And so I probably wanted to do something in entertainment. But what was interesting about those 2 examples, if you take, you know, sort of working at a summer camp and everything that you love about, you know, whatever camp meant, it was largely to do with people. And then if you think about disc jockeying, what I loved was interacting with people. And so if you take those 2 early examples of Jeff. I ended up in business school and ended up in almost a 20-year career at Bell Canada, which I adored. But the point being is it was always around people that got me excited. And so, I would say 25+ years later, little Jeff would say, hey, you're at your best when you're with others. And now, 25 years later, I'm at my best when I'm with others. I've never been a person that you know, wanted to do everything on their own. And sort of I reversed it to say, I'm at my best when the team does everything they need to do, and I'm there to support that journey in every way possible.

Terrific. I, we could see you clearly laid out without knowing where your path was, but you figured out pretty quickly what was important to you. And, you know, your values, I think, were really important to you, and you had a good self-awareness of what was important to you. And also, it sounds like music was important to you.

It still is. I would say even when you're having a moment of, you know, sort of you need some thinking time, I listen to music, podcasts. But music has been something core for my whole life and continues to be to this day, for sure.

Okay. I have one follow-up question. What was that? What was the song that got everyone up off the— onto the dance floor?

Oh my God. I would say, which I'm not going to do right now, Cotton-Eyed Joe was a huge song. in the, in the bar mitzvah scene.

Really? Cotton-Eyed Joe? Okay.

Cotton-Eyed Joe was very high up on that.

Yeah.

But it was pretty much any song where you could be dancing on the speaker in some way to encourage the audience to participate. So Macarena, you pick it. But Cotton-Eyed Joe is the one that came to mind. So I'm going with it.

I never would have guessed that. Okay, terrific. Jeff, where can people— Jeff, if people have more questions, where can they find out more about Jeff or connect with Yeah, absolutely.

The best way to reach me, my LinkedIn, which I'll make available to Joel. I work hard to connect with, you know, everyone from not just a networking perspective, but lots of opportunities on LinkedIn. That's probably one way. jeff@golime.com. But either through LinkedIn or through my corporate email address, both are amazing.

Perfect. All right. Thank you so much, Jeff, for being a guest on TFR, This Feels Right podcast.

Thanks so much, Joel. It was a real pleasure.

Thank you for listening to this episode of TFR, This Feels Right.

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