Finding & Developing the Right People: How Brown’s Plumbing & Heating in Steinbach, Manitoba, Has Successfully Doubled the Business

Welcome to Successful Contractor, powered by CertainPath, a show for residential contractors about residential contractors. We chronicle business journeys, share insights, and celebrate successes in this wonderful industry. I'm your host, Bob Houchin. For more information on how CertainPath can put your contracting company on a certain path to success, Visit our website, www.mycertainpath.com. I hope you enjoy today's show and take away a nugget or two. Chad, thank you so much for being here today. I greatly appreciate your time. For those watching or listening who have not had the pleasure of meeting you, can you share with everyone your name, your company name, where you guys are located?

Yeah, thanks for having me, Bob. I appreciate it. So my name is Chad Brown. I have a plumbing and HVAC company called Brown's Plumbing and Heating. In central Canada, so we're just outside of the city of Winnipeg, which if you've ever seen any jokes about Canada, it was probably about Winnipeg. So thanks, Ryan Plum.

And the original, so where the office is, he sits about an hour outside Winnipeg.

Yeah, go that. Yep.

How large is the community? Like how many houses?

Like the actual community is like probably 20-ish, and then there's the trading area around it might push it up. I don't actually know the number. 30, 40 thousand.

But it's smaller.

Yep. And you're starting to.

trying to get into Winnipeg a little bit. Yeah, very exciting. Very exciting. We're talking for a good reason. I know since you joined us, business has grown considerably, but I want to talk about operations and all the things you guys do to run a good business. But before we do that, I love learning people's business stories. I think it's fascinating. And in your case, yours is a family business, correct?

It is. Yeah. Yeah. So I would have what I would call like a legacy family legacy business. And I think there's pros and cons to that.

Sure.

But yeah, it was started by my grandpa in 1974. My dad and my uncle had joined him, I think the same year. And so my dad actually ran the company for most of its time. And if anybody's seen our logo or our mascot, that's actually a cartoon of my dad and that's legitimately what he looks like.

Yeah.

And yeah, so I worked there about 15 years and I purchased it from my parents, my wife and I did, approximately 5 years ago.

What were you, I bet you've had at what, every role probably imaginable?

Yeah, yeah. So when I started there, there was no intent of, you know, me purchasing the business on either side, I don't think, or at least no pressure for sure.

Yeah.

So I started off kind of doing some dispatching and some sales right from the get-go. And then, you know, it was sort of a natural progression. I took on more leadership and my dad allowed me to have more leadership. To kind of, I guess, being the de facto GM after a few years. I don't remember how long exactly. And then we had a conversation ongoing for probably 5 years about me purchasing it. And so it was, you know, we got to talk to the lawyer. And then a couple months later, you talk to a lawyer and then we got to talk to an accountant. So a couple months later, you talk to an accountant. So it was a sort of a long drawn out process. But that's okay. Like, we were okay with that.

But everyone was ready for that next step. Your dad was ready and you guys were ready.

Yeah.

Yeah. And does your wife work in the business?

Nope, not on the day-to-day. So I would consider her part of my leadership team. We have every month or every other month, we'll do sort of a strategic planning for the afternoon. And so it's my operations manager, my sales manager, myself, and my wife. And so we'll sit and kind of talk about what are the strengths and weaknesses and what are we doing next. So she's a part of the big picture. She's here at Expo, but not in the day-to-day.

Sure, sure. You did a beautiful job of outlining your leadership team. You made that question easy. So I know that. How about your field and your office teams? How many salespeople or technicians you run in each?

Yeah. Oh man, I should have had this number ready for you, Bob.

Well, ballpark it.

Yeah, we are like, if you include like Service techs and helpers were probably 10 or 12 in the field, and we would be 2, 5 in the office. And then we have 2 people. So the sales manager I mentioned, he's actually been my ops manager in the past, but he moved into a sales role. So he's a full-time sales guy. And then I have another guy who's my sort of salesman in waiting. So he does inside sales. He does some outside sales as well. As soon as we can generate enough leads, he'll become a full-time salesperson.

Right. Well, right. Very good. Now, are your technicians cross-trained? They do plumbing and AC? I've seen with Canadian members that's very common, but it's not in the States. I always think it's fascinating.

Yeah, I agree. I think when I joined SGI, my eyes— it took a while, but my eyes were open to how those were really two separate trades. And yet for us, it's almost without question, like, right, you do both. But we actually Me and the leadership team were talking about that a little bit this morning. We, we value versatility so much. It makes dispatching our technicians and keeping them busy a lot easier. But I think it also has some challenges with, you know, what's the old saying? Master of— oh, master of none.

Yeah.

Jack of all trades, master of none.

You got it. There we go. We swerved into it.

Yeah.

Right. So, so it's sometimes there's some issues with that. That's a lot to That's a lot to know. I'm not technical at all, so.

Yeah, well, and it's sometimes it's not, it's the technical part, but it's also the, you know, we were, as an example, if we have a cross-trained technician and he runs a Roto-Rooter call and we expect him to, you know, offer and upsell a camera and a Bio One, but he's not doing that every day, it seems to get sort of forgotten a lot easier. Whereas if you can focus and be excellent in one area, I think there's some advantages to that too.

Right, right, right. For sure. We'll get into more operational stuff in a minute. I kind of want to talk again. You joined the organization 5 or 6 years ago. You said ballpark or something like that.

Like CertainPath?

Yeah, CertainPath at GI at the time. Yeah. What, what was the genesis of that decision?

Yeah, so, um, at the time, I don't know if you guys are doing it now, but at the time you were having your success days in Canada. And so we were reached out to cold by by one of your lead setters. And so we thought we would, we had heard of you, we'd heard of PSI. And so, you know, my dad was familiar with it. So we decided to come out to the Profit Day and Ray was actually leading it. And so, you know, I think we've always been a little bit more like, I don't know if I want to use the word progressive, but forward thinking and trying to be operationally excellent. And so we knew We needed something. We just didn't know exactly what that looked like. And so, yeah, that day right then and there, we kind of knew this was for us. Me and my dad had attended it together and we decided to sign up.

Because you guys were quite a bit smaller back then. You were around $1 million or something?

Yeah. I don't remember the exact number. Low million, probably.

You guys are all wearing the hats, right? You're busy all running a lot of hours. I'm sure a lot of that was Was impetus to join. Yeah, just try and get more operationally efficient. Yeah. So go ahead.

Well, I was just— it made me think one of the things that I think I bring that's somewhat unique is I don't really have a trades background myself. And so there's some pros and cons that you talk about being operationally excellent. And so I cannot go out and help my guys on the tools. I simply don't have the technical know-how.

Yeah.

And so I think that has some challenges, but it also sort of forces me to stay focused on the business side and how do we grow and how do we For a little while.

Right.

For sure. For sure. You know, after a profit day or success day.

Yep.

There's EP, Executive Perspective. You get the fire hose treatment and learn everything. Where did you— was that in Dallas at the time?

It was in Dallas and it was before you guys— I think we were the last session of EP before you guys moved into your office. So we were actually still in the hotel. Oh yeah.

Maybe I was at that one. I don't go to them very often, but I remember it was at the hotel. It might have been the last one. It was— I forget what that was, but either way. Okay. Very interesting.

Yep.

So what was that week like?

It was good. It was like you said, drinking from a fire hose. You know, I don't think we were so early in our growth or in our progression that it was all like new. Like it wasn't like I was an only operator in a truck, but at the same time, it was for sure drinking from a fire hose. And how do you, I'm a fairly driven person, so I wanted to do everything the next day. And that That's not reality. And so, yeah, it was a lot.

Do you remember what, what 2 or 3— you said you want to do everything. You kind of got to do the 2 to 3 things at a time. Do you remember what those were for people that are, you know, we're in your shoes now? Yeah. Back then. Yeah.

I think we had uniforms, but it was time to revisit it and tighten it up. We'd gotten sloppy. So I think it was uniforms. When we joined, I did not intend to start using the straightforward pricing guide.

Okay.

But I think I came back from EP and said, we got to do this. So I think it was that almost right away.

Yeah.

And, you know, probably I would imagine tweaking our sales process on the HVAC replacement side. Okay.

Yeah. All right. Very good. How were you? How was your pricing on service and install?

We thought we were high because everybody thinks that they're high, but we had to increase it significantly more, I think. You know, maybe not day one, but in that first year we had some, some adjustments to do.

Sure, sure. So, I mean, But, you know, we charge more. You got to provide more value, perceived value at least. Yeah. So tightening up the uniforms. How about like warranty or guarantees rather? We were, you know, putting them in print with the straightforward price there and, you know, getting the guys to talk and communicate about that.

I think I was a slow uptake on the written guarantees. We probably didn't put that in our sales process until 3 or 4 years in, probably. Yeah, that was a little later.

Sure, sure. How about like service fees? You know, I know a lot of people are like, I mean, you give a free estimate on a new system. I know people do that, but, but like for plumbing, I don't know. Did you have service fees already built in and all that?

We did. I think we had to increase them pretty quickly. But yeah, we did have a service fee. So that wasn't, you know, a hurdle necessarily for my team. Right.

How about answering the phones? Do you remember back then who was doing the phones? Were you answering the phones or do you have somebody?

Yeah, we were answering the phones. I think we were, again, maybe a little bit ahead of the chuck in a truck kind of thing. But there's always scripting that you can improve. You know, there's things that kind of blow your mind because you're used to doing them one way. And so the idea of, you know, dispatching for profits and right tech, right job, maybe even being willing to overbook in order to get the right calls on the schedule, those were things that You know, you can— we were probably a little bit hardheaded on at first and like takes a little while to adopt.

Yeah, I mean, it's a little difficult to accept. Well, we got to move people around. We told them we're going to show— I get, I get that for sure. But if you communicate it right, people get it and they're like, oh, okay, well, great, I can run another errand or something like that. Who manages dispatching for you guys now?

So we have a team of 2. This might not be the right way to do it.

No, but it's all right.

We have 2 CSR dispatchers. They share the duties. One sort of designated as CSR and one sort of designated as dispatch. But there's heavy overlap between the 2 of them. And then our operations team leader, who actually started with us as a CSR, brand new to the industry, she's our operations team leader. And so she would oversee not only the technicians, but also, you know, the CSRs and the scheduling as well. So keep an eye on it.

Do they set the board in the morning then too, or do you have some manager input in setting the board in the morning?

They have quite a bit of freedom on setting the board. And I would say it's more like they set the board the night before, at least for the start of the day. But there's always— there'll always be some manager oversight and going, okay, do we have enough work? Who are we sending where? What's going on? What does this look like?

That's a great point you bring up because a lot of people are like, they don't— they don't look the day before at the call board, which you got to. So when does your team get together? You go, okay, let's make sure we need to move things around if we have to. Yeah. 3:00 the day before.

Yeah, pretty much. So they're always looking at You know, moving things around. But we asked them to start confirming their call, the calls, all the calls for the next morning by three o'clock.

Yeah.

And they're not really supposed to leave until they either have confirmation or at least have called, left a voicemail, and sent a text message. You know, reminding customers about the next.

Sure, sure. That's such a big part of it.

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How about like club memberships? Is that something you guys had in place back then? Is that a big part of the business now?

Yes, yes, we did have them in place. We call them our MVPs. So if I slip that term in, no, that's all right. Unintentionally.

No, I like it.

Yeah. So we had them. We we've to be perfectly straightforward. We've struggled to sell as many as we would like and get the uptake from our customer base. We have about 500.

Okay.

Would love to see double, triple that many. Sure.

The 500 solid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What, what, what do they get? What are the benefits of the MVP? Yeah.

So our MVP includes 3 inspections. So one for plumbing, one for heating, and one for cooling. Okay. We try to split them up into 3 separate visits when possible. So we're in our customers' homes 3 times a year. That doesn't always work. Sometimes they want 2 in one visit or, you know, we fall behind. So they get the 3 precision tune-ups and then they get priority service. They get a 15% discount on service repairs, no overtime fees. We do charge a higher service fee and repair fee after hours, but not for our MVP members. And then the regular things like peace of mind knowing that their equipment's kept up to date.

That's great. It's helped probably offset when there's The typical lulls and shoulder seasons and stuff like that.

Absolutely. Like, I think this last year or two, I don't, I don't know what we would have done without our MVPs because there are certain times of the year it's just really, really hard to make the phone ring.

Right.

And so that's our go-to. You know, we get on our CSRs and go, okay, 3 days out, the schedule is looking pretty bare. I need you to get a couple of MVP tune-ups on the board.

Yeah.

To at least start the guys off in the morning.

Right.

Yeah.

I'm glad you brought up outbound. How frequently is your Are your 2 people in there outbounding to club members or to, you know, unclosed sales opportunities, stuff like that?

Yeah. So just to be clear, you're not talking about cold outbounds. You're talking about either follow-up, gold dusting, or MVP tune-ups?

Yeah. I mean, or just in general, like, tell me what all they're doing in terms of outbound.

Yeah. So I would say MVP tune-ups, we don't have a set rule. It'll depend on the time of year, but I would say a couple of times a week they're making some outbounds for that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

What we would call gold dusting, which I think is Sonya's term, I believe.

Yeah.

Or Missy.

Anyway, it's been around.

Yeah, it's been around that. We actually have a separate person. So we have a former CSR that's— I think I mentioned him earlier that he's going to be a full-time salesperson, but he currently does our inside sales, which would be our gold dusting.

That's great.

So he stays on that sort of daily, you know, whatever there is to follow up on, he stays on it.

So explain for people that don't know what that is.

Yeah.

Gold dusting is for you guys.

Yeah, so for us, that basically means if we go to a customer's house, we expect our technicians to make recommendations when they're there. And if the customer doesn't go ahead but shows some interest, we will call them to follow up. So sometimes it's my spouse isn't home, sometimes it's I need to think about it, you know, whatever.

Yeah.

We had just switched CRMs. And so now there's a lot more tracking built into our software that will help us for that. So to this point, we have not called to follow up on every open lead. We've called to follow up on ones where our technicians say, hey, this customer was interested in this. Could you follow up?

Sure, sure. What's that phone call look like for that gentleman then?

Really just that, just, hey, you know, this is—

So not too aggressive.

No, not at all. And, you know, we'll kind of keep calling them until they tell us they're not interested, but we're not going to badger them. But it really, I think you need to view that as you're doing a service to that customer because they really do want the service. They just needed a chance to think about it or whatever. And unfortunately, I can't tell you how much revenue we've booked off that, but I know it's significant. Again, there's times of the year where that has allowed us to keep our technicians going throughout the day.

Right, right, right. Yeah. So, I mean, sometimes people are like, oh, I didn't expect to have to spend that.

Right.

You just kind of have to wrap your brain around it and then find out, like, you know what, it really makes the most sense for my— for the family. How much has financing been a big Is that a big tool that you guys utilize?

Yeah. Yeah, we— so with the financing company we use, we can finance anything over $1,000. So repairs or replacements. Just getting the team to buy in and understand that they need to always present a payment option.

Yeah.

Because as soon as you say to a customer, would you like financing? I think sometimes the pride of that customer kicks in. They say, oh, I don't need financing.

Sure. Yeah.

It's been a little bit more challenging lately with interest rates rising.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. So I was thinking that kind of leads into an obvious, you know, when you first join, you know, your prices are going up, you're asking guys, so we got to tidy up these uniforms, going to do the shoe covers and mats and this and that.

What comes—

there's also this component of training. You got to— you've got to know how to go through the steps of the call and do an inspection and communicate the value of that. How have you guys used training in your company?

Oh man. So I think we've always been a proponent of training, but I think I came back from EP going, I can teach my guys this.

Yeah.

I know this stuff. It's not that I don't, you know, not that I don't know how to do it. And I'm, you know, I make my living talking to people. So I don't struggle with the scripting. I can show them, right? So I'll role play with them. And then I would feel like I got to the point where I kind of felt like I was hitting my head against a wall. They didn't seem to get it. And It was frustrating to me because I felt like I'm giving you the answers. Why are you not receiving said answers?

Yes.

You know? And so, you know, I think I had to come to the conclusion or the realization that sometimes they need to hear it from somebody else. And so, you know, using the CertainPath training, sending our guys to the classes, they hear from somebody else and they'll come back and go, hey, Chad, this is a great idea. We should implement this. And I feel like punching them in the face because I've been telling you this for 5 years. But there's, you know, the old proverb, a prophet is welcome anywhere but in his hometown. Yeah, they need to hear it somewhere else. We tried doing some of it remotely, like on Zoom, because again, you guys offer that.

Yeah.

And for us being in Canada, the logistics of the flights and the hotels and the exchange rate, it becomes quite expensive to come to send them to training. And so we tried to avoid it. But again, I think in the last couple of years I've realized that they really need to hear it from somebody aside from me.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, do you guys still have regular training meetings every week or they kind of touch base on all this stuff?

Yeah. So our meeting cadence is we have like an all-hands staff meeting once a week where I'll do a lot of updates and then we try and do a bit of role-playing at the end. So we'll run a call with the CSR having directly and the technician Again, you've you kind of are showing my true colors. We don't do it probably as often as we should, but we do that there. And then our technicians have another meeting once a week where they'll sort of alternate between a technical topic. You know, if we've had callbacks or that type of thing, and then some soft skills like how are we going to present these options or what does that look like?

Right.

What questions are we going to ask?

How did you get your guys to buy into doing the options? I mean, you know, the inspection, the options are so foreign to a lot of technicians like. Is it just talking about it consistently and, hey, there's the value of it for the homeowner, just all that kind of stuff?

Yeah, I heard a saying that in leadership you have— people need to hear things 7 times. And so when you've told them once or twice, you got to stop saying, I've already told you twice. You got to start saying only 5 more times. So it's really repetition. I really am a strong believer in explaining why I want things done. So helping them understand this is going to help our business. This is going to help you as technicians make more money. It really is a— truly is a service to the customer. Right. How dare we go into their homes and not show them what's going on and what they can do about it? Because a lot of times they really don't know. So I think it's helping them understand why. And then a lot of repetition. Yeah, it's kind of what it comes down to.

Do you frame it as good, better, best, or you just call it 3 options? What do you guys do?

Good, better, best.

Good, better, best. And with your unique ability, your technicians' unique ability to do You know, HVAC and plumbing. Is there a lot of combination in those options?

Sometimes there can be. We try and ask them to be cognizant of, you know, if you're working on the sump pump and they haven't mentioned anything about their furnace, don't make your top option replace your furnace. You know, it comes off as too salesy. But we do try to encourage them, ask a lot of questions. The more conversation you can have now, you've really earned the right to make that recommendation and potentially talk about a furnace or potentially talk about, you know, another piece of equipment if you've had the appropriate conversation beforehand. You also asked before about how do we get them to present options. I think part of my role in leadership too is we have to, as I mentioned, show them why, repeat our message, but then hold some accountability.

Right.

So, you know, we do ask it on our debrief, what were your options? And then we'll have one-on-ones with our technicians too and go like, how have the options been going? What's— what does that look like? And so They need to know too that we, we didn't just ask them to do what we expect them to do, but we'll be following up.

How frequent do you do that one?

With our, with our field staff, it's once a month.

Okay, that's great. And who manages that?

My operations team leader.

Okay, that's fantastic. It's just what, simple check-in? This is what we expected you to do?

Yep. Yep. So we have this format that we follow that I took from a different organization, but it's called goal setting and review. So it's going to be kind of like a Hey, how are you? How's the family? What's going on? How are you feeling? And then it's gonna be reviewing your numbers, whatever KPIs we set out from last month, and then it'll be setting some new goals. So what revenue do you wanna hit this month? How many club memberships do you wanna sell this month? And let them speak into it. So hopefully they'll take a little more ownership of those goals.

Is compensation tied to that in some way?

There is some like spiffs. Yep. Some spiffs and some bonuses. Yep.

Okay. Very good.

You know, you've grown considerably since you started with us. That means you've added technicians, I'm sure apprentices. How are you? That's a big— right. Always a hot topic. So how are you finding people to add to the team?

Yeah, love this question. I love this question. Would you like me to answer that in regards to hiring and in regards to training new technicians?

Let's start with the hiring.

Okay.

Yeah.

So SGI, CertainPath talks about 30% of your time as a manager should be dedicated to hiring. Now, I'm not here claiming that I spend 30% of my time, but the message of you have to spend time is so critical. I think if you're really dedicated to it, there's been some coaches with CertainPath in the past that have talked about some of the processes and how you use Indeed and how you use different assessments and stuff. I think that's really important. I think if you spend dedicated time, you can find some candidates.

Yeah.

Now, I'm not saying they're sitting there waiting and you can have your pick of the litter.

It's hard.

But one of the things I find frustrating is when business owners do a really, really poor job of hiring. They'll do a 15-minute or a half an hour coffee break with this guy and then hire them. And then they wonder why they have bad employees. Well, I mean, I'm sorry to break it to you, but it's your own fault. You got to do a better job hiring. You got to do a better job onboarding. And so I'm a firm believer in spending time And effort and money on those things.

Sure.

And I'm happy to go into that more.

Yeah. I was like, for example, when you're interviewing, I know interviewing is so important, trying to figure out, do I have a good person here? Yeah. You know, so how do you, what are some good questions or what are things you ask to draw out what kind of person I'm sitting across from?

So, you know, all, all interviewing and hiring is sales to some extent. So I'll tell you what our, what our, you know, process is for hiring.

Yeah.

Not saying we have it perfect and we do, I will tell you upfront, we do not bat 1,000. You know, I'll spend all this time and money and we'll still miss.

But it's really natural.

Yeah.

Basically when I get an applicant in, I try and call them same day, 10-minute phone call. How you doing? I'll ask some pre-screen questions like, would you be willing to pass a criminal record check and a drug test? Some things like that that are sort of could potentially eliminate some headache for me.

Sure.

Then if we are interested, I will send them an email with a little video about us. We just have a YouTube video, Why Work at Brown's.

Oh, nice.

And then there's 2 assessments in there. So one is Culture Index. And the other one is an assessment that has some aptitude portions to it as well.

Okay.

Then if I am still interested and they're interested, we'll set an interview, an in-person, typically make them come to my office and I'll give them a little tour. That interview is anywhere from half an hour. If I know early on I don't like them, I'll cut it short. If it's a good interview, it's north of an hour, probably 2.

Yeah.

Well, north of an hour. And I don't ask a lot of technical questions there. I can see what they can do technically from their resume. I'm asking things like, how would, I'm looking for certain characteristics, like what's their attention to detail? How driven are they? How, you know, how goal-oriented are they? How good are they at interacting with customers? Will they take ownership for their own mistakes?

Right.

There's a book as a side note by Patrick Lencioni called The Ideal Team Player, really worth a read. It has some good interview questions in there. And I think my best interviews, we get really personal. Like I've had people, you know, almost talking about their past and like, you know, almost needing a tissue and that type of thing. And then I know that I've got somebody who's being really genuine. Yeah. And then from there, if they're on board, I will set a ride-along.

Okay, cool.

And so they will come ride with one of our technicians. Usually like a sort of like a crew lead type position for minimum a half a day. I do not pay them for this. Yeah. And I wouldn't pay them for that because if they demand money, they're probably not the right person for me.

Right.

We will buy them lunch and I will try and get as many people in that room for lunch as possible.

Very good.

Like CSRs, whatever. And then, you know, we'll usually at that point do a second interview with another manager. And so that would be sort of my minimum. And I'll call references. So that's sort of my minimum to hire anybody.

That's great.

So I would say before I hire anybody, I probably have 4 to 5 hours of my own time invested plus that ride-along. Yeah, that's important.

Yeah, it's so important. Now, is it mostly only experienced technicians you're hiring or do you do it? So, so you have a lot of apprentices as well? Yep.

Yep. And that's that same, you know, we follow those same steps. Yeah, we might abbreviate some of them if it's a more entry-level position, but basically Yeah. And then would you like to talk about training a little bit?

Yeah, let's go to the onboarding. I mean, the next step, the onboarding. Yeah, after they're hired, let's go ahead and cover that.

So we've tried to really drill down into that. We will spend basically the first week, the first day is kind of, hey, we want you to feel loved. We want you to feel welcome. We want you to feel like you're here. We want you to know who your manager is. We want you to, you know, Know you can talk to people.

Yeah.

Then we kind of, uh, the first— the rest of that first week is a combination of following certain paths, onboarding process with the— with the videos and how to run a perfect service call, talking about a technician. And then they will spend a half a day riding along, sitting along with our CSRs. Yeah, they'll spend a half a day with our warehouse person, they'll spend a half a day with our bookkeeper.

That's great.

Then the second week, kind of as a minimum, they would be riding along with somebody else. while we try and get at least a few role plays in with them through the week. Yeah, so minimum 2 weeks would be that onboarding, um, before we would let them run a call on their own. A lot of times that might be a little bit longer.

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And then from there, you just kind of— it's what, talking to them every day, how's that going, watch the performance?

Yep.

That's great. And then you have the normal training that you're doing that we talked about before.

Yep.

Very good. Okay. Do you guys— you were talking about performance management a little bit. Do you guys still do goal boards and stuff like that, or really the one-on-one supplemented that?

I would say we have not been doing goal boards, but not because I don't want to. It's sort of a probably a longer story than is really interesting to talk about. But basically it comes down to we need to complete our software changeover.

Okay.

And then I want to have goal boards up and still, still keep that in front of us.

That's interesting. I've talked to some, some members now that are going, well, it's been a demotivator and now we're doing one-on-one goals. So I didn't know if maybe that was something that with a newer generation of technicians, it's been— it's become a topic that I didn't even think would be a topic, but Here we are. Yeah, that's interesting. In terms of the numbers, we haven't talked about the numbers, but obviously that's a huge part of the business.

Yeah.

Make sure you're hitting the right gross margins. So ultimately the net profit is there. What do you— I mean, how are you watching that? I know you're switching softwares over, so that's probably offering some challenges and stuff like that. But how frequently, you know, once you get it set up, are you, are you keeping an eye on your gross margin and materials and labor and all that good stuff?

Yeah. So up until now, it's, I could only truly look at, I could look at revenue numbers daily, but gross margin and net profit really at the end of the month.

Yeah.

I'm hoping that we get that a little better dialed in with some of our job costing and stuff with the new software. But I do have sort of a once a month intensive. So my bookkeeper, I expect her to have the month closed and completed by like Between the 8th and the 10th, and around the 10th, we are setting aside an afternoon to go over the numbers. And so, you know, there's several different spreadsheets we use and stuff, but basically we're looking at gross margin by department.

Yeah.

And then we can look at different technicians' performance a little bit, look at our cash flow plan to know what's coming up over the next couple of months, because it's not fun running out of cash.

With your apprentices, obviously you have a number of apprentices. How do you decide if this is a person who's going to be better at As an install type situation or better at service or eventually sales? How do you decide that?

The blunt answer?

Sure.

I don't really care.

Yeah.

I'm looking for good people. So again, you go to the ideal team player, humble, hungry, smart. People who are people smart, people who are gonna be well-spoken, people who are intelligent, humble, and can accept responsibility for their mistakes. We can figure out the rest later. If they're gonna You know, we talked about how most of my technicians are cross-trained. Yeah, but they'll still have a tendency, you know, a strength. So whether these new apprentices are going to kind of take the plumbing path, the HVAC path, the install path, it doesn't really matter. I want A-players in my organization. Now, of course, there are times where you need a specific role filled, and so you'll look for that a little bit more.

Sure.

But mostly we want, we want the right people on the team.

That's great. That's great. We talked about your management team early on. How frequent are you guys talking and conversing? I think you mentioned there's a strategy meeting once a month.

Yep.

Are you— is it once a week? Are you guys getting together going over, you know, calls and stuff like that?

Yeah. So our meeting cadence on that front is I— my direct reports, which is my ops manager, my sales manager, one other sales— this inside salesperson— I meet with them weekly. So we will do like a goal setting and review with them. So I'm going to go over that with them. What are their main objectives for the week? What does their calendar look like? I'm a big believer in block scheduling and using, you know, your Google Calendar. So We look at their calendars together and look what that's gonna look like for this upcoming week. So that's a one-on-one. And then we also try and have with me, the ops manager and the sales manager, once a week we'll try and do a weekly check-in as well, Friday. So what went well? What didn't go well? What's our gross margin? What are some opportunities for improvement this week?

That's great.

I like to, I feel like a big part of my role is facilitating good communication. My people in general like each other and they're happy to talk, but they wouldn't carve out the time if it wasn't for me. And so we need to facilitate those conversations.

It's so important.

Stay in touch.

Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about kind of like leadership and culture. You said humble, hungry, smart. Do you guys have other core values that you kind of abide by or—

Yeah.

You know, help run the company by?

Yeah. So our sort of vision— no, not vision, but value statement would be we want to be loyal team players that you'd be comfortable sending into your own grandmother's house.

Oh, that's great.

So the 3 traits there are loyalty, team player, and somebody that you'd send into your grandmother's house. And that last one I really love because I find it paints a really vivid picture for most people. It's not always exactly the same picture, but it really covers, you know, our uniforms, manners, honesty, integrity, working hard, technical know-how, all these types of things. So those are the traits that we're looking for. I think it was Brandon Jones used to say, we want OKG. So we want our kind of guy, our kind of gal, right?

Yeah.

We don't have to be best friends, but we should be able to get along and have some common thoughts and threads and values in life. I don't believe that there is 2 Bobs. I don't believe there is work Bob and home Bob. When I hire somebody, you're hiring the entire person. So you really wanna look at who is that person as a whole.

Right. How did you build your value statement? Was it just, you're like, hey, we came back from an expo or you read a book and you're like, I need to sit down and figure out what I want my business to be.

That one we worked with a local company to help us build. Yeah, build those values and flesh them out. And then, yeah, so we just did that with a local company a couple years ago.

How frequently are you communicating and bringing that up to the team so that's just, you know, it's, it's top of mind, right? Because it's easy to get stuck in the day-to-day.

Yeah, yeah, I would say not often enough.

Yeah, it's easy to get, get stuck into the day. Yeah, I understand.

Yeah, I, I hope that we communicate it through our actions, like, you know, when we enforce uniforms or we enforce Honesty, you know, like I try not to tolerate any dishonesty as much as I can in my organization. So even if it's something as simple as, you know, my call takers take a call and somebody wants to talk to me, don't say I'm not there.

Yeah.

If I am, you tell him he's not available, but let's, let's be honest in what we do. Or if we've got a special order part in for a customer, but we don't have time to get there today, we don't tell them the part didn't come in. We tell them we're not able to get there today.

That's good.

We really want that to be, you know, as close as we can to 100% honesty.

Right. Yeah. Because you do those little things, it can lead to the big things, right?

Yeah.

How has it— but I think, you know, you said you were going to, you know, be straightforward. You said we don't talk about it enough, but you've done a great job, I think, and sounds like your hiring process to make sure people meet those. So, I mean, that's, that's a big part of the business right there. Yeah. How has turnover been since you kind of have this new process? Has it slowed down some? Or is it still kind of something you struggle with?

That's a— you, man, you're hitting on some really good topics here, Bob. There's— we've had some turnover over the last year, year and a half, more than I'd really like because turnover is expensive. But I also think that people hold up retention as this holy grail, right? That they should have 0% turnover. And I don't believe that. I think We want to hire well. We want to do a good job in our interviewing. We want to bring on the right people. We want to do the best we can. But you do not want to keep people around that shouldn't be in your organization.

Yes.

So have we had some turnover? Yes. Has it been a little more than I'd like? Yes. But I also don't think 100% retention is what we're aiming for.

No, that's a good point.

Yeah.

I mean, there's some people— I mean, if you have all the processes in place, right, and then you've, you've done as best a job as you can to identify good players, But sometimes you don't know until they're there. Right. So the goal is to make sure it's not a giant percentage turnover. Yeah. Just kind of in wrapping up, you know, you've mentioned some of the tools that you've used with, with us and CertainPath in general. For me, we get a lot of people watch lists that are not members. You know, they're just looking for nuggets because they're either struggling or they just want to get better. What, what, what's CertainPath been or how has it been a part of your business? How has it affected your business?

You know, I think probably like a lot of people, I have a certain level of pride and I really would love to say that I would be where I am without an organization like CertainPath. But the reality is I don't think I would be and certainly not in the timeframe. You know, what an organization like CertainPath does is it allows you to shrink some of those timeframes. Things that you would have to figure out for yourself and would take a decade, you can now come to an expo and talk with somebody else. And you don't have to learn it. If you're willing to be a little bit humble and listen, you can pick that up in a conversation. And so that sort of leads me to, as much as I value the resources that CertainPath gives me, the coaching, I would say maybe more than anything else, I value the relationships with the other members because entrepreneurship and business ownership are a lonely road. And you can sit and talk to family or friends and they'll, they, it's not that they don't care, they do. but they don't get it.

Right.

And so when I can meet with my tag group that I have within SGI and I go, hey, you know, this was a really hard week, like legitimately, like I struggled with cash flow, I had an employee quit and, you know, whatever. They go, that happened to me last week. I get you.

Yeah.

And there's just a different level of understanding. And further to that, you can also go, okay, what did you do to solve this problem? What's some of the steps? How can I shorten my learning curve? Why do I have to spend the next decade learning something that I can learn from somebody else.

Yeah. For people that are, that are watching or listening and don't know, we do have these, these tag groups. You guys get together monthly, monthly, and then you each talk about the good and the bad and you can, you can, you know, get some wisdom from, from one another to really kind of help smooth those bumps out faster. Right. So that's great. Let's kind of wrap it up. What's your business going to look like in the next 5 to 10 years? What are you thinking?

Yeah.

Yeah.

2 years ago, I set a goal of being at $10 million revenue, which was about 5x for us. We're a little bit behind this year on our growth. So I don't know if we'll hit it, but I'd rather set a big goal and miss it a little bit rather than set no goal.

Yeah.

So I hope to grow the business significantly because I am competitive and I am driven. But more than that, I really feel like my, my mission and my calling in life is leadership, people development. And so I want to grow the business so that it can be relatively self-sufficient and I can do some other things. And I don't know exactly what that looks like, but if I can go help other businesses or churches or people or do some coaching or, or I don't know. Yeah. But I know that I want to grow it and find another challenge.

Yeah.

That's fun.

You like connecting with people. Yeah, that's what what you enjoy.

Yeah.

Well, good stuff. Well, Ted, thank you so much for all your time today. I really appreciate the conversation and and best of luck to you in the journey.

Thank you, Bob.

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