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Successful Life Podcast
The Successful Life Podcast, hosted by Corey Berrier, is a globally recognized show that ranks in the top 2% of podcasts worldwide. It offers expert insights tailored for contractors, focusing on business strategies, sales skills development, and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.
Successful Life Podcast
Breaking Down Barriers: Michael's Path to HVAC Success
Strap in for a thrilling conversation with HVAC entrepreneur Michael Katz. His journey, alongside his brother, from a humble start to a $10 million business is incredible. What began as a hypothetical question about job security evolved into a booming HVAC business that stands as a testament to their tenacity and innovative approaches.
Michael's relentless pursuit of knowledge and excellence has set him apart in the competitive HVAC industry. Hear how he found inspiration at industry events and implemented operational upgrades that propelled their business to new heights and earned them an invitation to keynote at the next event. The duo also leveraged online content and shared insights with competitors, proving that success and magnanimity can go hand in hand. In this chat, we delve into the significance of shop tours, employee potential nurturing, and the power of regular one-on-one meetings.
As we conclude our conversation, Michael shares the secrets behind Trio Heating and Air's phenomenal success. He explains the fine art of managing employees, creating bonus structures, and internal recruiting. He believes investing in employees and rewarding them right is the key to a thriving business. Last but not least, we discuss how his company is making its services more accessible and delivering exceptional customer service with a focus on exceeding customer expectations. Prepare to be inspired and enlightened by Michael's journey and his nuggets of entrepreneurial wisdom.
https://www.audible.com/pd/9-Simple-Steps-to-Sell-More-ht-Audiobook/B0D4SJYD4Q?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow
https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Steps-Sell-More-Stereotypes-ebook/dp/B0BRNSFYG6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1OSB7HX6FQMHS&keywords=corey+berrier&qid=1674232549&sprefix=%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1
https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreysalescoach/
Welcome to the successful life podcast. I'm your host, Corey Barrier, and I am here with my man, Michael Katz. What's up, Robert? What up? Good to see you, man. Good to see you, man.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:You're welcome. I'm pretty interested to hear you've gone from zero to, I think and I could get this wrong, but I think you've gone from about from zero to approximately $10 million in a real short amount of time. Is that about accurate Yep, Yep. So tell me a little bit about, tell me a little bit about Trio, and then tell me a little bit about that story, about how you went from zero to 10 million.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Trio. So we actually just gone through a rebrand, changed the name from Pacific Air to Trio. So some people in the industry know that Pacific Air went over to Trio and I think it's been a crazy ride for the last two years. Definitely unexpected. The company came about by accident. We're nowhere near trade. People never worked at a trade, never got even close to it. We're not even from the US, originally, only been here for about eight years and we basically just stumbled onto the HVAC and just fell in love with it. I think that I've never seen it and I've been through a lot of different businesses and construction. I've seen people work and I've done sales and I've never seen anything like HVAC. But when so many different angles, when I'm actually looking at this industry as far as recession proof and skilled labor and opportunity for growth and so many different things out there, even what you're providing to your customers and how happy they could be at the end of the product so we're literally saving lives out there. Comfort in people's houses is something that, over the years, is getting really important. Yeah, it's been a crazy ride.
Speaker 2:So initially, how it all started was we were here doing sales my brother and I, who was the business owner as well. We're partners and we were doing insulation sales, some people's ad-hacks and crawl spaces, and I've done that for years. I was the work sales guy starting out and at some point it became one of the top sales guys over there in the company and my brother and I were just jumping around from one company to the next with breaking records, competing with each other. So it was fun. It was fun. We were making a lot of good salary. For our age it was back. I was 22 years old, so we were making. A lot of people don't notice about the industry Age back or insulation or construction for that matter, and for a 20 year old to be making $25,000 and $35,000 a month, that's a lot of money and it's something that where I come from and how hard I work to try to get something you're not going to get there. So we did that for a while and I can definitely say we got comfortable.
Speaker 2:We went to different ventures real estate, all these different things, try some investments out and it wasn't until my brother called me one day. I was just sitting around watching TV and he came up to me. We're living at the same house back in San Francisco and he came out to me and basically said what are you going to do if you break your leg tomorrow? And I had no idea what this guy wants from me, like where the hell are they coming? And then he'll watch my TV show having a good night and he comes over and says what are you going to do if you break your leg tomorrow? And it just makes sense to me. I let that sink in, so literally I'm going in the bathroom and coming back out five minutes later. I told him let's open a company and he asked me okay, what are we going to call it? We're going to call it Pacific care. Okay, cool. And what do you want to sell? I don't know.
Speaker 2:The same thing we sell every time that cleaning installation. That's all we knew and we did that for a while. It was a nice side hustle event and the guy we're going out there I didn't have to maintain it too much. There wasn't a process, there wasn't a system, it was just whatever. And it wasn't until, I think, 2021, end of 2020, 2021,. My cousin down in LA, he could tell me we should go into heating and air conditioning and most people don't know this, but installation. People are against age back. It's something that no one understands why. But it's so comfortable and so easy to sell installation and you don't have to know too much and it's easy to get good at it too. It's an amazing industry and we're very against age back because it looks like too complicated or I don't know what. But he kept saying and I listen to my cousin every time I go with him whatever the guy says, every time we're at the relays table we win every time this guy is like whatever it says, I'm amen.
Speaker 2:And he says keep going into age back. And he said you know what? I got this really good client of mine here in Palo Alto. He keeps asking me to do some work at his house. I'll go over recommend to replace the age back system and we'll see what we'll take from there. And that's next day.
Speaker 2:I had a company out there. Well, I got bid that same day. Two companies rolled out. It was very quick. And the next day they already did the install and replacement. It was an hour and a half for $10,000. And the value was there, the quality was there.
Speaker 2:So I looked at this thing and I'm like this is some pretty good margin. This is pretty interesting. I like that. So I came up with my brother. I said listen, I'm going to go out there in the field for six months I'm going to sell age back. I don't know what that means, but that box that you see in the garage every time I'm going to go and sell this thing, we'll learn it. I think we're going to start doing that. And that's what I did for six months. I was just selling it, subcontracting it, seeing how other people do it learning, being on the job site and July 2021, we did our first age back job and two years later, here we are. We're at $10 million $10,000, a four foot office space, about close to 50, 60 employees right now. Just this past two weeks, we hired seven more people. By the end of the year, we're looking to be closer to around 70, 70 people, hopefully, and by next year we're looking to be at $25 million.
Speaker 1:So you had to have mentors right in this process of some sort, I would think. Right, you had to get information During that six months. Who was it that you went to as your trusted advisor, so to speak? How did you trust somebody to be able to tell you the right things to do? Because, let's just be honest, it's not. This industry is not full of you know people. There are a lot of people that are trying to help, but there's also a lot of people that will not, that will try to hurt you. So how did you distinguish who you were taking advice from?
Speaker 2:I would say that, generally speaking, my brother and I are hustlers. We're businessmen, we adapt quickly, we learn a lot, we like to learn, we were interested in hearing things. We're always counting for information. I would say right now there's so much content out there that you can honestly find every single question that you have online. The problem is if you're going to be able to understand it, to implement it, to figure out if it's good for you. That's a whole different conversation.
Speaker 2:But with us, the way it happened is we were around an environment that was so bad and I didn't realize it until probably I think yeah about a year and a half ago Because we were around companies, business owners and, as the top sales people in these companies, we would go out and talk to them and see how they do everything and how they manage their business, but their businesses were nowhere near what a business should look like. So my experience it took me a while to really understand this is not good, this is not healthy, this is not how a business should look like. But I did see them growing companies the 50 employees, 100 employees and when you look at it, it looks pretty nice.
Speaker 2:But they were doing a lot of shady stuff. They were doing a lot of illegal things. And now, looking back at it and these people that initially I thought that I was. I just seen how they do things. I just copy pasted it. But very quickly, when I got into business, I looked at this thing and I'm very good at pausing and taking a step back and looking at the next two, three years. In the way that I'm rolling because I roll pretty quick I have to hit the brakes at some point and ask where is this going? How is this going to look like down the line? And I just didn't see it in that method and we couldn't understand what was happening.
Speaker 2:Growth is always going to happen. Anywhere you put me and my brother it's not like every person that I'll sit down and do a training session with or give them my SOPs you will be able to go and implement them and achieve the same thing. You hear that fancy stuff. People hype you up on podcasts and all these online videos the five second videos. Go open an LLC and do this, and that it's not that easy. You need to be sharp, you need to educate yourself and it takes time too, but we're overachievers and we're pushing hard With us.
Speaker 2:Whatever will take another person to realize in two years, we'll do it in a month. That's the secret, right, there is. A lot of us put an end to it, but I would say one of the biggest pivot points where everything really shifted was so, for one year, we're just asking how to attract people more, and when we got to the service sign part of our business, that's where everything changed. So what happened was that, my brother, we were scouting for different CRM software and we were looking at whatever people see out there, how to call Pro and service sign and service something and sales force.
Speaker 2:And people wanted the gloves fit on their business to do everything. And my brother kept saying to me we should do service sign, we should do service sign, we should do service sign. And every time we were about to like okay, let's do this thing. It was like no, but it cost too much.
Speaker 1:But at some point.
Speaker 2:We just said you know what it looks like. This business is growing. We know what we're doing. Worst case scenario if we'll have a bad month, we'll go out there to a couple of these menu, sell them for another 20, 30 grand and we'll bring that money. We'll cover it for a year. And we decided to go for it and nothing changed. Nothing changed. It was just like okay, this is great, I love this, but I don't get this.
Speaker 2:Then we went to the service sign pantheon event, the first event. We were almost so close to not going. If they would have charged us even a hundred dollars probably would have said you know what, let's focus on other things, because we didn't know the value. But they send us with free tickets to our CSM. And we went over there to that service sign event and suddenly I'm seeing everyone are there doing age back, everyone are doing plumbing and I'm starting to talk to people. I'm starting to ask questions. I'm starting to see all these different people on the stage talking. I'm seeing Tommy Mellow, one of the people that I really admire.
Speaker 2:I read this book a while back and at that moment everything just shifted. So we finally understood how an age back business is supposed to operate, just by a conversation, literally, we're just talking to different people, owners of companies of 30 million, 100 million. We were just talking and I'm asking them a question and we realized how far behind we were. That was the pivot point. We came back to the business and we just literally implemented every single thing that we heard. It was like six months a year of seven days a week, 12, 16 hour days Saturday, sunday, whatever just sitting here, implementing nonstop. And it worked. And it's funny because we finished that event. It was a mind blowing event when we finished it and I told David, my brother, we're saying to each other I don't know what or how we're going to do this, but next year we're going to be on this stage. Next year we're going to be here. I don't know how, but we're going to do it.
Speaker 2:It's funny enough because, basically, ara reached out to us, the founder of Service Sign. He reached out to us. I think it was like two weeks before the event the pentium that they just had, like three weeks ago, 2023. He reached out to us. They looked at the numbers and everything. He saw some videos from different people about the growth and he heard that we don't have age-dark experience. He heard that we don't necessarily didn't come from this. We never even worked at a shop. I don't even know. I didn't know what an SOP or KP I don't know about the warehouse nothing Basically. He reached out to us and says we want to put you guys on the main stage. Send me some information. We sent them the name of the company and everything and I was shocked In the keynote speaking event, when they opened the event, he actually showed our company on the big screen and saying these guys started, didn't know what they were doing, came to the first fancy on, implemented everything.
Speaker 2:A year later, they're cleaning up 10 million. The only other person on that page was Tommy Mellor, right after us, a1 Grodd. That was a huge honor and it's really service time. That really was the first thing that opened our eyes to it. As long as you just adapt to their system and follow what they tell you to do, that's pretty much all you need From there. The next thing that you need is just to talk to more company owners and, like you said, not all of them are going to be nice and sharing everything with you. But we went to a couple of shop tours. We didn't do too much on it, honestly, but we chose the right company. We went to two shop tours and from these two shop tours we were able to actually get everything else that we needed People that have been through it, people that they already have the answer. We hear something, we see how they operate, we see if it matches our style. We analyze it a little bit, think if it makes sense. From there we just go in and implement.
Speaker 2:Those are the two things that really helped our growth.
Speaker 1:What was the first shop that you are very at? What were the two shops you remind me? Tell me, ask them what two shops did you visit?
Speaker 2:The first shop that we went to was actually one of the speeches that I liked the most was next Janish.
Speaker 2:Malone right, because I remember we were there and I didn't know too much about the company at the time, but I was there in the event and I saw there was a big hype around the tent. It was around the time that we were breaking a lot of records and I saw a lot of people going into that tent and he was explaining everything and saying stuff and I'm like, wow, this makes sense, this makes sense, that makes sense. We came over there at the end of the speaking and basically I talked to him and asked him a couple of questions and he said you guys should come to my shop. That was the first time that I've heard of a shop for it. He was like you should go to my shop and I'm like, okay, I'm in LA anyways, and every like three months I have family, I have friends over there, sure, let's go over there.
Speaker 2:I came over there to the shop and I'm walking inside and I'm seeing everything run. For the first time in my life I realized that we're not doing so bad. Yes, some things will be chaotic, but it's organized chaos. Yes, it's fine. A lot of things just click for me. The second shop that we went to, that was my brother. Honestly, I can't remember which shop he went to, but the second shop that he went to I think it was actually around here in the area there was an event that he was going to and same thing. He came back from there, showed me some pictures and videos and stuff and said these guys are amazing. We just implemented everything they said.
Speaker 1:One thing that I think is impressive about the guys that allow shop tours. Most people in the industry would shy against that, I think, but the people that you mentioned Tommy does the same thing, ishmael, I don't know. I don't know necessarily anybody else, I'm just not thinking that do that, but those guys are pretty open book with showing you how they did things. I think that's pretty damn cool For somebody like you that is newer in the industry to be able to go and see how somebody's grown to several million to a couple hundred million dollars is pretty impressive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that it's funny because we got into the industry around the time when everything was already there. We weren't there. Everyone are lucky. You're always going to get a lucky moment when you walk in the industry. Our lucky moment of walking into the industry was we caught it at the time where there was more content online. We're able to see more.
Speaker 2:I've had this is a funny story, but I've had the company that I worked for. A while ago it was like five, six years ago I worked in that company and I was really good at getting reviews. I had an amazing system for getting reviews. Our company has more of an organic reviews growth than companies that have been around for 20 years companies with a budget that I don't even want to say what it is for marketing to get reviews. I remember the owner of the company that I worked for was an inflation company. I used to always recommend him and tell him to do things, but he was like, no, everything has to go my way and this way. It was very stubborn and, granted, he did go through some managers that took advantage of. He didn't do a rise out, so I understand it, but he was just here. He was just here two months ago. We have some we're slowly moved out of the installation, moved into age, actually had a couple things.
Speaker 2:I reached out to him today. I got a bunch of stuff that he wanted to buy for me, some extra material. Some of them I sold, some of them he could take for free whatever. And I told him by the way, you should come take a look at our shop, because this guy had been around for like 10, 12 years. He's a good-sized company, 100 employees, but for the longest time it's just him and someone else in the office. And I told him this is not scalable, you're not going to be able to wire you suffering so much, this doesn't make any sense and you're losing so much money. And when he came here, I remember he looked at everything and he saw an HR and a CalME and a call center and this and, honestly, anyone that will look at our shop. It's, hands down, one of the best shops out there, not just the design, which is awesome, but the energy of the people.
Speaker 2:And when he came over, I'm seeing him trying to snap a picture of a couple things. But he would try to take a picture. He didn't know if it was okay and I paused him for a second. I told him listen, man, I have a Google Drive with SOPs for everything. I'll send you that Google Drive. I'll send you everything, don't worry about it, I'll get it to you. And a lot of companies are afraid to do it because they're like I don't want to share my secret thoughts because then they'll become my competition. Two things you need to understand when they get better, you get better. You should use that as the drive for you to go in and basically push it even harder. You should actually share information with them, because you know something they don't know. They don't know something you don't know. You should be able to go in that way. Number two they're never going to implement it.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:That's the sad truth about it. They're never going to implement it. I'm sitting there, I remember, in this shop through down in LA and apparently they're doing a lot of these shop tours. I'm sitting down and I'm seeing five other companies over there or three other companies. We're talking to each other and I'm just looking at people talking around and like you're not going to implement it. You don't even know what to ask.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of work that comes outside of just going in and doing these things. That kind of hype you up. Yeah, you can go to the service and fancy on events, but what's your goal? If your goal is to grow your business as a general, I don't know if you're going to be able to do that, because that's a lot With us. What we do is we try to just figure it out. Here's something that probably, if anyone is going to be really listening to this and taking action from the things that I'm saying, you want a great business by another million, another five million in the next few months or in the next years, two years.
Speaker 2:Here is what you need to do Go to shop tours, get up from your chair, let a couple things burn. I understand it's burning. I know it's hard. I've been through it. Yeah, I've been at the hospital, heart racing. I get it. It's hard. I understand it's hard working.
Speaker 2:People in the industry Respect that. But you have to go and do a shop for it and when you go into a shop for it, pick a company that you admire. Pick a company that you feel like they are the best, someone that inspires you, someone you feel really good about, someone that you want to be like, someone that you even trying to be like. Copy. It's fine. Everyone doing it. Everyone are calling each other, checking if they're answering the call and it's throwing away in a script. Give them a call, set up a time for a tour, book the damn ticket. Go over there to one department, sit down with the manager of that department, take pictures, take videos. If you can't find that company, by all means come here. We have breakfast every morning for everyone. Everyone are super nice. Any person that walks in here is all smiling and all you need to do is just do that one department. And if you ask me where to start, yeah, dude.
Speaker 1:That's the first person your customer talks to.
Speaker 2:That's the first thing. That's when your customer gives the call. What's the experience that he's going through? Is that person on the phone smiling? Are they happy? And I can tell you why. Maybe they're not smiling, not happy, because you're not paying them enough. And you should be paying them enough and you shouldn't be nickel and dining with them, but you should pay them in a performance pay.
Speaker 2:If you hit that many calls, if you hit that many calls per day, per week, per month, your job. You're not going to put a system on the table and say, hey, here's your system, go make money for me. No, it doesn't work that way. You got to sit there and if it's too stressful, book a meeting two weeks from now, but at least you're going to go to that meeting. Make sure you're there, get down with them, explain everything over to them, give them KPIs, give them goals to hit, incentivize them, encourage them. You don't have to spend a lot of money, a lot of time with them. You just have to spend the right time with them and when you're doing that and you're giving them goals and you're encouraging them and serve a sign will tell you if you're doing good or bad.
Speaker 2:There's a number right there on the dashboard it tells you you're at 60% 75%. That's a lot of money You're throwing to the trash. You could use that money for a nice vacation. You can get an assistant with that money and take all the headache off of you. Right, improving these numbers? A quality CSR. You don't even understand the quality of that.
Speaker 2:Two more calls booked is equal another $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 on your, not the bottom one, but let's say the total. In a month. There's a lot of money to be used from there to cover $2 more an hour to get involved in person and incentivize them and give them the movie tickets once every month or so. You have to go to shop tours. You have to pick us on one department. You have to implement it quickly and don't let anything else blindside you. Just do all, just that, that's all you do. You fix this. You feel really comfortable. You have the best. Do you really have the best call center? Great, move to the install, move to service, move to sales, and it's going to continue. You just got to lay a good base and a lot of people don't have that good base.
Speaker 1:It seems like, based on what you just said, that culture is probably something that's pretty important to you.
Speaker 2:Ah, dude, I don't even know how to explain it, but almost every job that I had I was fired from every single job. If you would be shocked, I was the worst employee, the worst sales guy, like the worst. I was young, I thought I was entitled to things. I thought that I was. I was just not there. I felt like people owe me something for some odd reason. And it wasn't until we grew this business and I've noticed the impact of a good person on the team, an A player, and I noticed the impact of a B player and a C player, and it's one toxic person in your company will shut down your business, will shut down your company, and maybe some people are working with friends and family so they're not able to cut that loose. But that's really what it is. You know we've had I'll tell you a nice story about our company. I think this kind of represents how we operate.
Speaker 2:But initially, when we're starting, we didn't have money for a call center. So I talked to my brother and we kept saying no money, no money. He's the money guy, right? So it was like no money. I told him okay, I got to get creative with this. How about a remote employee. There's some countries out there that's $5 an hour. It could be 20 for them. So we said, all right, let's try it out.
Speaker 2:And our business was built on a lot of remote employees in the beginning. By the way, if you have remote employees, please start moving out of that. The clock is ticking. It's not going to last for a while. You need people in the office. It's good for specific tasks, maybe very specific tasks, but trust me, it's not long-term. You need people in the office. The culture is worth it.
Speaker 2:But basically we had an employee $6 an hour and he was working out of Mexico and he was so good but he was on and off. It was a roller coaster with him. He still works with us and we had a company event, a company barbecue. I decided to buy him plane tickets. Come be at the company event. If you're talking to these people, these installers, these sales guys or whatnot, so much, you should come take a look. We flew him out here from Mexico.
Speaker 2:He came to the company event and he came to us at the end of the company event and he said I'm moving here. I'm dropping everything I have in Mexico. I'm moving here. I don't care how much you guys say to me I don't care what you do, I want to come here. And he said that because one of the things that David and I were really careful with is we want to work with people that are supporting each other. We don't want to get to a place where we're walking into work and we see someone and we don't feel comfortable. I want people to really enjoy it and on the way they're getting there, you're going to have to fire a lot of people and you're going to have to pass on a lot of really skilled people because they didn't have the right attitude.
Speaker 2:This person moved over here. He became so. He went to the call center. From the call center, he became accounting payroll. From accounting payroll, he moved into call center. From call center, he moved into being a negotiator. He started calling Yelp, calling Google, getting us refunds of $10,000, $20,000 from nothing. So he was just amazing and I told him I'm going to make you a sales guy one day because you're just incredible. And we turned him into a sales guy and he's driving a Tesla Model 3, just like all of our other sales guy right now. He has the time of his life, he loves it and he was in Mexico for taking phone calls remotely, making $6 an hour. He's making anywhere between $20,000 to $35,000 right now a month and he's at the office every day at like 3, 4 pm Having fun going out to people from here.
Speaker 2:Investing in your people sometimes backfires on you, but if you invest in the right people and you put time in them and you make it an effort to notice when someone is being depoxic, you have to really focus on them and try to see if there's something to do there or not, and you have to remove that from the team. I had some situations where I hired people and literally after three days, three days into training, I would wait two weeks for them to start Three days after training. I'm cutting it loose. I'm like I can't do that because this type of energy is going to hold us from reaching that $25 million and the $50 million. I can't have someone being talked to in an attitude.
Speaker 2:I don't want that. I want people to be happy. Everyone has to make enough money, everyone has to get enough hours, everyone has to grow and get to better at who they are and everyone has to be nice to each other. Put all those things together, that's it. You're going to have the time of your life. You're going to be the happiest person in life. So culture is a big thing. It takes time to develop it, but you have to start at the basics. Remove the toxic people, cut them loose, pay your people well and be with them throughout the process.
Speaker 1:I think one thing that you said there I think is super, super important that I see no-transcript in a lot of companies is there'll be a service manager who filled a bunch of phone calls every day that he doesn't really need to field, but so he can feel important. But he's in the right hand, he's in the year of the owner and what I see is there's talk there are usually toxic people inside the business, but sometimes it's people that the owner just Can't believe that person, maybe it's the guy like the guy from Mexico, right, if your brother came to you and said, hey, whatever the guy from Mexico's name is, hey, I think this guy's become toxic, you would have a harder time believing that than you would a newer guy. And so I think, how do you handle? Or have you run into being close to an employee and realizing, oh well, things are not quite like I thought they were with this individual. I got to cut them loose.
Speaker 1:What my point in saying all that is? You have to do it quickly because you can't pull that band on bandaid off slow, but you can. But it bleeds the company of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think so. It's funny, but a lot of these things that remind me of our initially, when we were starting out. A lot of negotiation would happen in different departments and different roles and at some point we got sick of it and said we have to establish something that will get people to just not come and negotiate with us every two minutes literally, and then follow walking into the shop and you're like trying to make sure they won't see hiding behind something because he's going to ask for a raise right now. He looks a little pissed at me. I get that. So you have to first. What I'm trying to say is you have to establish what is it that you want? What is it that would make sense to you? What numbers do you want? What kind of KPIs Like? What are the indicators of good performance, bad performance? First of all, you have to know what that is, because you might get emotional and emotional is not good. You have to be analytic, you have to be technical and there is an emotion side of it, but that's more on inspiring them and helping them achieve their goal. So I would say it's hard for me to make a decision about letting someone go as long as there's no goal or KPI that I'm able to measure if he's hidden or not hidden.
Speaker 2:And at the same time, was there a one-on-one with him and his manager? In the last one-on-one it was a big thing for us. I didn't even know what that meant. But when we learned about one-on-one and a one-on-one for anyone that doesn't know, every week, every two weeks, every month, you just sit down with someone who's under you. If you're managing someone, if you're the owner and you're managing everyone, then you're going to sit with every one of them. If you have more than six, 10, 15 people to get someone to help you out, but you basically need to sit with them. And just how are things going this week? What is happening with your project? There's always a project in the background. What's happening with these numbers? And you want to encourage them to do better on some stuff that they're doing not so good on, and you want to celebrate their successes as opposed to just hit the hammer as soon as they mess up one.
Speaker 2:And I would say, as long as there was a one-on-one done with him, as long as there was a hundred-day plan. What do you want? Do you want to buy a boat? Do you want to buy a car? Do you want to pay off debt? Do you have a newborn on the way?
Speaker 2:What is it that you have in your personal life that is happening in the background, and how do I match that with the business? And can it be matched with the business? Because otherwise and some companies are avoiding that because they don't want to do a hundred-day plan because, honestly, they can't do it let's say, if I sit down with an employee and they tell me I want to make $2 more an hour and I know that's not going to happen, I would rather figure it out at a hundred-day plan when we sit down on the desk, discuss it and figure out where he's at, as opposed to being disgruntled at some point of understanding. Long story short, have you done all of these things, those two, three, four, five things? If you've done all of them and you come to me and say we need to let go of someone, that's fine. I would take a look at it Now. At the same time, has anyone tried to help them out? Was there really a lot of investment? Because sometimes you have different people in positions, I can catch everything right now.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of processes in my business that I'm not even aware of. I don't know how it works. A lot of people come to me and ask me so what do we do in this case? And I'm like dude, I have no clue, but let's go figure it out. So you have to make sure that there's the right amount of ratio of the manager, the person, the person. You have to make sure that whatever you do with him, that he does or she does with them. And as long as all of those things happen most likely these things are just going to happen At the same time are just going to happen better and more smooth At the same time.
Speaker 2:Some company owners, like myself I just learned HR literally a few months back. You'll be surprised, but I've noticed that a few of the people in my production team were suffering because I wasn't making the right hire for a certain position and it took me a while to figure it out. But they didn't feel comfortable sharing with you and it wasn't until the 100 day plans that they started sharing a little bit more and they basically found the idea in my head that understood. I'm not so good at managing on a particular aspect of things. I literally went down to my HR lady over here and I basically sat down and I said, hey, I want training, I want to learn how to manage better and you have to learn. What does it mean? Corrective coaching, verbal warning, write up, put someone on a pit. So combine all those things together. Have these structures. You won't get to these moments. And even if you get to these moments, the employee is ready for it because he's aware of it and it's not you figuring it out.
Speaker 2:If I gave you coaching training like a million times, and then we sit down and again you don't show up on a Monday. Every Monday and Friday you don't show up, right Somehow. Every Monday you're saying you, I mean, it's not going to get there, at least you're not going to be disgruntled when you leave the company. And for me as a manager, I'm not going to get frustrated because at least I'm aware of where it's at. We think that we're aware of where it's at. We're not, we're running all over the place. I don't have that answers your question, but I really hope that people have those two things in place. And if you don't know how to do those things, again I'll tell you come do a shop tour with me. I never have time, but I always have time. I'll sit down with you for five minutes. I'll give you a crash force of management and I guarantee your employees are going to be happier and you're going to be more peaceful at work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's a lot of the piece where a lot of homeowners do miss the piece that really your customers to the business are not your customers. Your customers are the employees. Your Michaels customers are the employees. Like that's you, that should be your main focus and then your customers will take. Your customers will take care of the paying customers.
Speaker 2:Right, yes, it's true, and it's a video, I think it was yeah, what's coming? Though I saw a video where he's basically taking a $20 bill and right down by her wife's flower and he gives it to the guy, and you know, he said happy wife, happy life. And it's true. When your guys are happy at home and when they are, when you have that in place with them, that's where things are going to really change, and you know, I can say that the struggles that I went through with people in the business as a business owner one of your daily things that are passing through your head every like hour, out of nowhere. You could be watching a show, talking to someone. Suddenly there's this voice in your head your business is going to shut down in the next five minutes. Everyone are leaving you, you're going to go bankrupt, you're being strutting down and you start getting this hard racing and you jump work on something. If you're a business owner, exactly what I'm talking about is stressful. Everything is just like everything is. It's an ongoing storm that you somehow get used to, and then it's quiet for like two minutes and then again. So I think that, with us, what we were trying to figure out and I do this a lot in the interviews and I could be tough sometimes. I'm definitely I'm a straight shooter. I don't beat around the bush too much.
Speaker 2:But when I sit down with people in an interview or when they get hired, what I always ask them is tell me a little bit about your life. And after they share a little bit about their life, I'm asking them questions like even during the interview tell me something I'm very proud of. Why does it mean so much to you? What is something that you've achieved? What is something that you're working on right now? If they don't have anything going on in their life, that's going to be hard to work with. If they're not, if they're not inspiring to something, it's either they're just not inspiring or they don't know how to do it. So I have to figure out what's my angle with. That's your job as a business owner to figure it out.
Speaker 2:And when I sit with them and you have to dig deep sometimes but when I sit with them asking them what do you want right now? And they say I want, let's say I just said I remember our marketing girl just hired. She came here and I was asking her. She was fresh out of college and I was asking okay, what do you want? And she basically mentioned I want this amount. And I said, okay, this is great, we can make that happen, but a year from now, two years from now, tell me more. What else do you want? What do you really want to achieve? What are your goals, what are your dreams? And she told me I want this amount and I want to get there. I told her that I like that I can work on, and I'm going to work on it with you.
Speaker 2:And how do I guarantee that? I'm going to work on it with you? We're going to book meetings right now. Every two days, every one week, every two weeks, every month. I'm going to sit down with you. We're going to write down a plan. We're going to write down what do you need to do in order to get to that point, to make sure that it makes sense to the business?
Speaker 2:And here is something very simple. I guarantee you have a leak somewhere in your business. I don't know what. You're buying too much toilet paper. You're buying too many cars with your pain, too much for your insurance. You're paying too much for your uniform. I don't know what. I will go into your business and I'll fish is $20,000, that you're waiting, if you're at least two million, two minutes.
Speaker 2:So what we usually tell people is if you save the business money, I will reward you for it. So if my marketing is that and the person that's in marketing calling the Elko or Corning Google and negotiating with them and saying where did that money go, please send me a script. I want to see the numbers, I want to see where it went and you're able to catch some things and you get a $600 refund, a $1,000 refund, or you negotiate a monthly price. You can negotiate it as an ongoing thing. Set up a new one in your calendar every week with a different vendor, sit down with them and talk with them. And when you sit down and talk with them, just tell them. You don't have to be a sharp negotiator, I want a better price. We've been with you guys for a while. We're consistent, we're growing. Everyone are growing in age. If you're not growing, give me a call, we'll figure it out. But basically, everyone, you have to negotiate with them and when you negotiate with them and you save money to the business, I have more money to the people. So it's something that you can always bring something out of the business.
Speaker 2:So in the call center I told a lot of the girls I'm going to implement bonus structures that are going to make you guys the highest-paid CSRs in the industry. And how am I going to do it? By knowing what my average ticket, by knowing what's my conversion rate, by knowing the lease worth. If you book more leads from that source in that timeframe, you pick up the phone in less than 15 seconds. All these different things and here's what I want you to look at and you're able to hit it. I'll give you $200. I'll give you $300, I'll give you $500, you know what I'm saying? That $200, $300, $500 is worth 50,000. It's worth 100,000. Yeah, I can sit with you confidently in a 100-day plan and make sure that you reach your goals. It doesn't have to be on an hourly rate and I forget about you. You have to earn it and it's fine and people are aware of it and they'll start to develop.
Speaker 2:Some hustlers Everyone here are hustling. You should see our calls today, like the vibe, the energy that's in the place you walk out of here. You want to go sell something. So we encourage this and we pay them. And you have to think of long-term and as soon as they slip a little bit, as soon as they slip a little bit, you're not acting like your 100-day plan. That girl that you want to be in three months, man, I don't think she would do something like that, right. I feel like she would do a little bit better, right. So it's encouraging and less micromanaging and rewarding them too, as opposed to just telling them when something went wrong, not caring about their personal life, not connecting them to work.
Speaker 2:People are shocked by people. Leave them. Do they have good friends here? Are they happy every day? Are you even watching them? If they don't have good friends here, if they're not making enough money, if they're not making enough power, they're recruitable. A lot of our people are not recruitable, it doesn't matter what they say to them.
Speaker 2:I have people coming here sometimes because I'm not able to even pay them as much as I would want to. They take a pay cut just to be here, and I heard this so many times with people and the one-on-one. You know what, mike, I'm actually surprised, but I took a pay cut to be here with you guys. Not that we're paying less, but some companies out there will pay whatever Just to bring good person in. They drown them with work and they say I took a pay cut.
Speaker 2:But I'm home every day. I see my wife, I see my two little daughters. I'm a lot happier right now. I rather take a pay cut. I don't care and at the same time they think it's a pay cut. But once the performance takes in, at the end of the 15th every month we do it once a month Everyone are happy. Yeah, I would say. As far as people attracting talent, keeping them, you have to know all these things and you're not gonna do it in a day. Start with one person, move to the next and you'll get there. You'll get there. It takes time 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know we're getting close to time, but, yeah, you hit on something super important there. If your people are not saying, hey, michael, I have a friend that is looking for a job, could you give them an interview, then you're probably not treating your employees right. And I guarantee that you have that happen right, cause people are gonna come to work if they have friends at work. They're gonna take less pay if they have friends at work. It's just a fact. But so many people don't get that, so that's super cool.
Speaker 2:Our entire company has grown from within. Most of the people here have grown from within and I'll give everyone a little nugget. Hopefully they'll take this. A lot of people don't really understand what their time is worth per minute, per hour, and I'll give you the most basic formula, just a basic formula. How much do you make per month? How many hours do you work as a business owner? This is how much your time is worth. Simple math, right? Not too much, right, Whatever amount it is. And how much time do you spend on interviews? How much time do you spend on training? How many resources and other people's time is spent on training? How much headache did it give you when that sorry didn't show up on a Sunday, when that manager just didn't show up on a Monday, when you're opening that big job, how many times have you gone through this struggle and this stress? And when we actually looked at our numbers, we noticed that the people that came as a referral were better performers. They stayed with us for longer, they were easier to manage, they were all their numbers are just insane.
Speaker 2:I did a quick math and the numbers that I went down to pair how much it cost me to get people that's gonna quit or be let go after a few months were just unbelievable. What I did was I went in and gave a bonus up to $3,000, up to $3,000. And here's what I said to everyone I don't care if you're an employee, I don't care if you're a manager, I don't care if you're a performance, I don't care if you don't work here. I don't care if you're the vendor that just dropped off the furnace in the back of my shop. I don't care If you give me one of the three positions that are holding your business. One of these three positions the sales guy, the service tech and the team lead installer those are the three things that are holding your business. Without three quality people like that, or if you get one really bad person like that, it's gonna drain you out. It's really gonna drain you. You're not even gonna know where it came from. But if you get one of these people, I'm gonna give you a bonus. And a lot of these companies, like the bigger companies out there I hate when they do that. They say you're gonna get $4,000. You're gonna get $10,000 bonus, but you're gonna get it in three years and if you ever leave before, you have to pay that back. Why do you do that? One month of this quality. If I hire them, he's quality. If he's quality, he's worth X amount of money. To me, that X amount of money is a lot.
Speaker 2:I paid them within six months, everything. On the first day they get a big percentage out of it. The first week they get another big percentage. The first month they get In. The first month, just in the first day, you're already being paid and you'll be surprised.
Speaker 2:I do get some people that are coming in here going through the entire onboarding, the entire process, everything. They work for one day and they leave and what does the installer expecting? Oh, he's not gonna pay me right now, he's not gonna pay me. And I come to them, I give them the envelope, I pay them and I say thank you so much for the referral. More, I want more. Give me more and you'll get a blast of text messages. I have so many texts in my phone I can't even tell you how many people are walking through the door Every single day wanting to be hired, wanting to work here, and it's because they hear how happy people are.
Speaker 2:And yeah, you have to recruit from within and people over complicated, and I think that the best people that will be able to recruit from within are the owners. You're the inspiration, you're the soul of the business. There's a different energy when you're around the way you're not around. Hopefully, it's better when you're around and you are the one that needs to go to them and basically say bring your friends, We'll take good care of them, Bring quality people. So yeah, recruiting from within has been one of the biggest things and I think that a lot of people should be doing that and stop going. You should be going online, but you should also recruit from within 100%.
Speaker 1:Well, look, dude, great conversation. Where can people find you? Where would you like for them to find you?
Speaker 2:Right now.
Speaker 2:we went through the rebrand Trio Heating and Air is the name that was barely out there, but I think this campaign that people will go online and see the things that we do we plant the tree for every job that we do A lot of people are interested in seeing how we do it and how it works, and I think it is important to put some environmental focus, and I would say that the best way to find us would be probably on LinkedIn. Michael Cass, you can just search for Trio. I would say probably, yeah. Anywhere that you're so protruding, just call us, just say hey, I want to talk to Michael In a second. I'll get a message for it, I'll give you a call, we'll talk for a little bit and we'll figure something out, anything that people need. I'm not afraid of sending SLPs and whatever it, pay plans, whatever it anyone needs.
Speaker 1:What's the phone number they can reach you?
Speaker 2:What number would you like for that call? 415-786-1144. Usually text is better. I'm probably not going to answer your call, but if you shoot me a text, I'll get back to you within a day, promise.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Thank you, brother. I really appreciate the conversation. I enjoyed it. Thank you, Corey. Thank you.
