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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
Exploring Business Challenges and Family Legacies with Ted Fox
Discover the inspiring journey of Ted Fox, the dynamic force behind EL Fox Sons Plumbing Heating Limited, as he shares his story of transformation from a humble plumbing apprentice to the leader of a thriving home services enterprise. In this episode, Ted opens up about the unique challenges of expanding a business in a small market and the delicate balance of setting fair prices that support both his employees and customers. Listeners will gain insights into Ted’s commitment to providing tradespeople with the opportunity to achieve financial stability and the truth behind the misconception that business owners simply accumulate wealth.
We explore the intricate dance of managing family dynamics within a business environment and the pivotal role of core values in maintaining a positive company culture. Ted candidly reflects on the trials and triumphs of working alongside family members, sharing practical advice on separating personal issues from professional responsibilities. Delve into the strategies for scaling a business smoothly, from navigating financial hurdles to embracing innovative growth methods that emphasize sustainable success without relying on external funding.
Uncover the art of leveraging data-driven tools for effective employee management and retention, as Ted introduces us to WhoHire, a key asset in his hiring strategy. Emphasizing the importance of accountability, Ted discusses the concept of time theft and how clear communication and set boundaries can align team efforts. From training initiatives in the plumbing and HVAC industry to addressing imposter syndrome among younger technicians, Ted offers a wealth of knowledge and inspiration for those looking to grow in the trades industry. Join us in this engaging conversation that promises to spark new ideas and insights into the future of home services.
https://foxandsons.ca/?utm_source=vernon%20morning%20star&utm_campaign=vernon%20morning%20star%3A%20outbound&utm_medium=referral
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. I'm here with my man, Ted Fox. What's up, brother?
Speaker 2:You know what I am today.
Speaker 1:It's a good day. It's a good day. It's always a good day to have a good day, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I went to a concert last night with my family just a Canadian band that anybody else in Canada probably wouldn't know, but it was awesome. We stayed up late and rocked out and then got up early this morning to get back at it. So I'm feeling pretty jazzed.
Speaker 1:Love it. I saw a guy. I wish I could remember his name, name and I'm probably just absolutely not gonna remember it, but you would definitely probably know this person. Anyhow, it doesn't really matter because I don't remember his name, but I got to see him live and he was really good, but anyway. So who did you go see?
Speaker 2:just curious we went to see a band called the arkells. Okay, yeah, they're kind of I'd like, I'd say they're like the Killers. They're kind of like the Killers, very similar to that, like the Killers mixed with Dave Matthews Band. They really they brought down the house. It was great. I love it. Good show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love going to live shows, especially if it's somebody that I really enjoy. I don't go typically if it's somebody that I'm half in half out on. Yeah. So, ted, just for people that may or may not know who you are, just give us a little bit of background about who you are and what you've done in the home services space.
Speaker 2:All right, I don't know, sometimes it doesn't feel like much much and sometimes it feels like a lot. So I got into the trades in 1996, as I went into a plumbing apprenticeship and both my dad and my older brother were plumbers and I didn't really want to be a plumber, I wanted to be a teacher, like a drama teacher or something like that, and but I went and went into plumbing so that I could attend university with my girlfriend at the time and so, anyway, got into that, got into plumbing, and I haven't looked back since. In 1999, my dad and I started up a company called EL Fox Sons Plumbing Heating Limited and, anyways, with hopes that my brothers would join the company, we called it EL Fox Sons after my dad and none of my brothers did end up joining, and so my dad and I worked together just the two of us with the occasional helper until around 2012. In 2012 I purchased the final, like the remaining shares from my dad and and then my wife and I started to look at growing the business. So it was bigger, like bigger than just me out in the field and her in the office, because it takes a lot of time when you're the only person there answering the phones and things, and if only I knew how much more time it takes later after you've grown. But since then we're happy to say that we've grown to about 100 staff, 100 employees, and we've expanded.
Speaker 2:We do plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical now, which is pretty awesome, and we've done that in a very small market by most people's standards.
Speaker 2:So a little toot of the horn here. We serve a total between all the communities that we service of about 170 000 people and and so to be able to grow to where we were like hey, this is pretty great. So that's us in a nutshell, that the big stuff with our company is we just we really wanted, like the why changes over time. My why originally was I wanted to take a holiday. My why now is more like changing the industry, but in a way of allowing young families to essentially stay in these expensive markets and get a house and be able to raise a family, get a house and be able to raise a family, and I just know that if that's my focus, then the company will thrive and our customers will do well, and all that by being able to create these careers that allow I shouldn't just say young people, but essentially trades people to stay and not have to move with the crazy cost of living that there are out there the living that there are out there.
Speaker 1:So how does that make you feel that you're able to provide homes for people and paychecks that'll cover the expenses or maybe more than cover the expenses of daily living. That must make you feel pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think everything has a tinge of selfishness in it. It does like it's. Sometimes. You have to, you really have to dig through the weeds to find that, to make sure you hold on to that positive, that positive goal that you're searching for, that, that that thing. Because whenever you I don't know who, I don't know your listener base and that's fantastic. But if I'm talking to business owners, they would understand that everybody around you thinks that you're hiding secret bags of money in your drawers. Right, they, they have that feeling. And hey, maybe there are some business owners out there who have figured that out and they got these secret bags of money that they're just squirreling away in the fenders of their car.
Speaker 2:But most that I know, and I know quite a few make a good living and they look after their family but have a real nurturing need to grow and keep the company healthy and to keep the company healthy. Healthy you have to keep your employees healthy. So there's like this, it's like a symbiotic relationship of everybody, like we call it, a win win. Your customers have to be good, your employees have to be good, the company will be good. I will bring it up regularly.
Speaker 2:Hey, look at what we're able to provide young people, we're able to provide, and that comes at a, and the cost is you have to charge the right amount of money to be able to provide those things to your employees. And so you're always in this constant battle of why are we more money than this other competitor and how can they do it cheaper? They do it cheaper because they offer less, and it's not just that they offer less to the customer, but to the employees as well. And so, anyways, that's been a long battle, that's just, and you had, I guess you said have the feel I feel good that I've been stoic enough to keep that, keep that fight going in the steel skin against the negativity that comes with it, because the outcome is extremely positive for our community and the trades in general.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. It is, and there are a lot of business owners that listen to this show. There are also a lot of people in the field and I think it's important. What you brought up is important because I think a lot of business owners don't explain that to their employees that you've got nice uniforms and you've got nice vans and you've got nice iPads and all those things come at a price and that's why you have to charge what you charge. Like you said, you're not ripping the customer off and you're sitting somewhere with a gazillion dollars in the bank while you're screwing everybody and again, there could be some people out there that are doing that, who knows.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day, I believe that a service technician would much rather show up at a home in a nice van with a nice uniform on and with equipment like an iPad that works, it's not busted into a thousand pieces or works some of the time, that just makes their life significantly easier.
Speaker 1:I think it's just perspective and if you can explain that to the employees and get them I wouldn't even say bought into it, because they don't really need to buy into having a better place to work and to be able to function better. But a lot of times I know that you are up against. Why do we charge more? And if you explain that to the employees, I'm not saying you have to show them your whole balance sheet. But at the end of the day a lot of guys don't understand that when they have to, when you guys have a recall that costs the company three, four, sometimes $500 to ship that van out for a second time Heaven forbid it be a third or a fourth and a lot of guys just don't really understand that. They think it's just the gas to go out there. But they're missing the boat on all the other costs that are incurred with that second, third or fourth trip that are incurred with that second, third or fourth trip?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. That's why I think it's so important that it's not a worry, that for the text, that it's not something they need to worry about. My books are always open. My people can look at them anytime they want. But I just think I stopped trying to convince people of it. I stopped trying to convince people of it Like we, we definitely have what would you call it, not projects, but we have like a work, a work group, or we'll get together and we'll do a project together, like in a classroom project, and work on costings and things like that, so to give people an idea where the prices come from.
Speaker 2:But generally it's uh, I try not to give it too much attention because I think even if it's all laid out and all explained, like even a lot of business owners and a lot of they don't fully grasp it takes a long time. It's a whole nother. It took me years to figure out my p and l properly and do those things right and at the end of the day you're you know you're trying to hit a 10 profit, 15 profit. Wouldn't that be amazing? That's what you're trying to hit. So you're not talking. You're not talking huge margins here, but so if you can just really focus on now what is that value we're bringing to the customer and what's the value we're bringing to our people. What is the what are those values at? And if you make sure those are, those are higher than everybody else, then it doesn't. Then the pricing makes sense, right, like you can only afford to charge more if you're better, if you shouldn't say if you're better, but if you provide a higher value and yeah, so that's been.
Speaker 2:The original question was like how does it make you feel? It makes me feel really good Even. I think it was two nights ago. I was sitting with my family and we were talking about this is awesome, because we were talking about a young I would say young, but a young guy that works for us, who was just able to get his mortgage on his first house, and it wasn't very many years ago that we're in this little pocket town, but we're well five-hour drive from Vancouver Vancouver's one of the highest cost of living places to purchase in the world, apparently, and the overflow from that is where we are. So our housing prices and stuff are. They've gone up crazily to a point where the the conversation in the area was like young people, they will not be able to afford this unless they can right, so that's what we're working on, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. So, how do you? One of the things I think is vital and for you to have a hundred people inside of the company, that means that the culture in the company has got to be pretty solid, because people don't hang out for very long in a company that has a not a very good culture. So how do you, how do you cultivate that inside of your company and keep that a positive thing where people want to come and work there?
Speaker 2:It's a great question. We and I don't want to say I'm my worst critic, but I probably am like so culture is something that always feel isn't good enough or isn't great or what, but, to your point, it has to be decent for growth, like it has to. And culture is who you are right it's, it's who you are and how you show up. I would say the nicest way that, or the best way that we cultivate it, was creating our core values, which I highly recommend everybody to have. But more important than creating them is living to them. And I would say that the regular conversation I would have with my staff and my team members is for them to utilize those core values as a shield against negativity.
Speaker 2:So I won't bore you with our core values, but when I hear somebody's having trouble with a person or with an item or with something, I'm like listen, everything we do hangs out within our core values and within our code of ethics. But if you just take those core values and something's outside, you need to hold that value and be like hey, we're not hitting this. This is not a positive attitude thing. And're not. And I said, and we will all follow suit and recognize that and jump on board. Same with if you're seeing some something maybe there's a somebody's grumpy in the parking lot best thing you can possibly do is let them know.
Speaker 2:Hey, this, I don't want to take part in your negativity today. You need to be solution-minded to work here, and that's how I come to work with people who are solution-minded. And by using it as a shield, you're not keeping people away, you're checking them, because we all bring our own stuff in, and so that's, I think, one of the best tools that I could give out to people. For culture is really, don't just make your values or your statement and stick it on the wall. Don't just get up in front of a group of people and spew it out there. Do those things, but as well, let people know how to use them. They are an actual tool and I'd say probably I would maybe the most important tool in your company, because it will make people feel safe to work for you, because they know what to expect every day that makes sense, yeah, and I love that and that that makes complete sense.
Speaker 1:so I want to ask you I know that I've worked with and I've consulted with a lot of companies where it's a family company father and son, maybe a brother, maybe more than that that dynamic is very different than it is with someone who doesn't have family involved, and so I'd like for you to talk to me about. I'm sure there have been times that things were not going super smooth. Okay, Tell me about one of those times where you know if a family business is listening, if a father or son or both are listening. What are some of the things that you had to overcome in that relationship and how did you keep that? How did you keep it separate from your relationship with your father, Because I'm sure that can be affected.
Speaker 2:You bet. So my dad and I because we were just the two of us, and then with a couple of the people in there we got along really well. We didn't have any drama. So I was very lucky that way. We each knew our roles. I was out getting the work done, he was a mentor and doing a lot of office, and then come out in the field so it was good, it worked well for a lot of office and then come out in the field. It was so it was good, it worked well for a lot of years.
Speaker 2:Um, but later on what as I grew later like, my dad still worked for me for a while and he ended up having early onset alzheimer's and dementia and we found this out while he was at work and what I found is family, all family. So I've had I'm a person, I like to bring people together, I really like that, and so I have had my mom work for me, a sister work for me, a brother work for me, some of my kids, my wife, works with me like it's it's like family's in there. But the man, that is your problem. You can't make that your. You can't make your family drama ever overflow into the company that's. Nobody else deserves that. If you have family drama, it's got to stay out same with your. If you're working with your best friend well, you're going to have. It's just them, we'll just with you. If you're working with your best friend well and you're going, yeah, that's just them, we'll just, we're just going to work with them, even though they're a jerk, you know you have to protect your culture and that from that side of things, some like life lessons in this.
Speaker 2:In the businesses my, my brother came to work for me, one of my favorite people in the whole wide world. We worked together when we were younger on a big construction site. We worked for a year or two together, but it was like he did not belong with the company and the company did not belong with him. He came, he tried. It was an absolute not fit, not good for anybody and it had to end. And that was just like.
Speaker 2:You just have to be able to make those choices. You have to be able to recognize it and make those decisions based on the good of everybody that's there. So I would say that the family dynamics can be one way or the other. What I see more than anything with the companies that I speak to regularly is generally they let their family get away with murder or with more stuff and everybody in the company knows it, watches it, sees it happen and understands that it's happening and nobody's happy about it. So you can absolutely work really well with family, but you have to treat the families the same as everybody else there Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. Sometimes I've met, I've worked with people before where they're that they're treated sometimes worse, and I think because they're trying to make sure that people understand that they're not getting special treatment.
Speaker 2:And that's the other thing is the yes, especially when the kids come to work. I see people that like where, yeah, they treat the kids, or whatever, like they're way harder on them than everybody else and they cause they have these expectations and so you, or whatever, like they're way harder on them than everybody else and they, because they have these expectations. And so you, I say you can absolutely navigate this. And the nice thing about having family, like the family that works for me, there's serious trust that goes beyond trust that you can just build in a working place depending. But we all have family, that we know that there's some family we trust and some family we don't trust.
Speaker 2:So it's it's you has to be a smart hiring thing. Your business is not a charity, it's a business, right, you have to make sure it's mutual and it's beneficial for everybody in it. And and generally, I've made sure that my, the family that I've hired in, report to a different manager. They don't report to me directly, they report to another manager and I still interact with them in that, but it's they have to stand on their own two feet and and also they need to be protected from me and my expectations of them as a brother, a father like I say. So yeah, it's a very good point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, yeah, that's it's just. It's always. It's always an interesting dynamic, but it sounds like to me that your perspective is pretty solid, One of the most solid I've heard To grow from now, give me an idea of when your real growth started to happen, when you went from and I don't know the numbers, but let's say when a lot of people scale from 5 to 10 million. That's a tough road. 10 to 20 million is also. It's just a very different ballgame. Ballgame and there's. I think, if you're like a normal business owner, there have been times where you weren't sure if you were even going to make payroll.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are terrible times. I'm not laughing because I know there's probably a bunch of people out there struggling with that these days. Yeah, no, that's, that is something that's so. Hey, knock on wood, I have not missed payroll yet, but sometimes that's come at like some real creative thinking as to how do we not miss payroll right over over the years. So, scaling, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, as soon as I bought my dad out in 2012 the because he was anti-advertisement very much as we do word of mouth only, and that's it, and it was. We were in a 51 49 partnership, right, so he had 51, and if I wanted to advertise, he didn't. But the first thing I did is I put out an ad and we started making money, which was cool, cause, up to that point, we had never done more than about $300,000 in a year and we were always just breaking even and paying herself most of the time, but very low. And so, anyways, pretty quickly, we scaled up. And so, anyways, pretty quickly, we scaled up. I think I don't know, it took us a year so to break the, the million dollar mark, and then we've basically been growing at about 30, roughly 30 per year since then.
Speaker 2:I would say that super dangerous part for me for fox was was breaking the two to 4 million mark, because around that it's and I realized I'm old now, so inflation is different and everything but it seems to me that around if you're in a home services company, around that $2 million mark somewhere in there is where you've got to start hiring managers. It's right in there that you're probably got 10, 12 employees, 13 maybe, and you're like, okay, I need a field manager, I need this other manager. And for me the danger there was yeah, I got that, I got a good manager, but I didn't know how to cost properly and set my pricing right and figure those things out to make sure that. Because I just thought, if I pay him this amount of money, he's going to make me more than that by keeping people working like I was working and it doesn't generate that way. And I took a high performing technician who's making the dollars in the field and moved them into a management role, which then so you've taken it, you're taking positive and putting it into a cost. So those are. I know a lot of people. It's going to sound like what a dummy, but that was a lesson to learn that.
Speaker 2:And right in that area you're adding managers. Then I would say around man, around 12 or 13 million somewhere in there, if we're just talking dollars. Somewhere in that range you start adding your second layer of managers, where you have, like, your leadership team or your general managers, and then you've got managers that report to those managers. And so I'm not saying managers are the root of all evil, but when you are, I'm just going to say like non-educated, not that you need the education, but it's like when you don't know. Basically every day I come to work, I'm running a bigger company than I've ever run in my life, and so sometimes you'll scale, you're like I need this leader over here, but then seven or eight months later you realize that was the wrong move.
Speaker 2:So around that 12, 13, $14 million mark, somewhere in there, we added some secondary level of managers and once again, same kind of thing You're inflating your costs, your overhead inflates and your profits go down. Or your profits might not go down, but your overhead inflates and your net profit goes down. So yeah, then all of a sudden you're having trouble making payroll again, even though you've done, you're doing more work than you've ever done. You've got all this like amazing management out there. You're doing all your leadership training, doing all the things right, but it's you want your org chart to be a bit like a Christmas tree, right, like with your field staff here. But the idea is, if your field staff is too large for the management you have, then your field staff feel unsupported, so your technicians will feel like they don't have anybody to talk to. So if you hire managers out first and bail out your middle so that you've got lots of support for your field staff, then your profits go away and you can't make payroll maybe, or whatever you're going to do so. So there's this juggling act there.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I would definitely caution people between when you're one to two million dollars. That's a healthy, that's's a healthy company. You're making good dough and I'm sure everybody who's there is running with they've got two, three, four techs with them and they're running around doing everything they're probably doing really well and I love that time. That was a great time and I'm not sorry that I didn't stay there. But when I see some people and they want to grow, I'm asking them what are you after really? Because, depending on what you're after, it doesn't get easier and you might not make more money, but you can do a whole lot of good in the industry if you want to do this Around that $10, $12 million mark, it's another crazy one. It's almost like every $5 million jump that you do and I believe personally it's a management process. That is the reason that the costing stuff gets crazy, because you have to reinvent your company again with management to cover that section.
Speaker 1:And so you mentioned making and I think anybody listening to this can identify with making a bad hire someone who you thought really was going to do a great job. How, at this point, hiring is a big problem I shouldn't say a big problem in the trades. Hiring is a big conversation in the trades because there's either not enough people or everybody sucks, or there's a whole list of things and I can get into why. I think people are saying that without calling out leadership or whatever. How do you now mitigate making some of those bad hiring decisions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's, that's cool. Hire slow and fire fast, right you like? Do more research more, get as much data as you can ahead of time, as much. And we still make bad choices because we all get desperate. You're like all, you're like man. We really need this person and this guy seems greater. That girl seems great. Let's go more data, is it okay? Can I talk about who hire for a second? Yeah, please, is it, do you mind? Okay, I think it's super relevant to the. It's obviously relevant to the hiring question, but I was.
Speaker 2:We had a manager, so we use whoire, maybe a little differently than most people. We're going to really get into a whole bunch of other things, but one thing we were using it for is building profiles on all of our people to figure out their flight risk, their happiness, all those things. We were looking at it and going okay. Now, from a promotion standpoint within the company, like who should we be working with? So, anyways, long story short, I'll get into here. There's a manager that we had on staff who checked everybody's boxes. We were like this guy. We all loved him and he's great hard worker. I was good, he's happy just nailing it.
Speaker 2:And my wife, sue, she's like very analytical with a lot of this stuff, and she kept coming because I'm like I'm gonna take this guy to this training, I'm gonna take him here, and she's I don't think you should be doing that. And it's like why? It's because, like our who I report shows that he's a flight risk and that he's unhappy, and I'm like there's no way though it's got it wrong, because we can't all be wrong, we can't. And so I was taking him, he was the person I was putting in and then, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, he turned in his notice and was like thanks very much, I'm heading to a different industry. And it was like, right after flying him out to a, to another city to go through.
Speaker 2:And so it was one of those moments where this hundred thousand dollar a year manager just dumping resources in because he's got all these skills and had been with us for he had also been with us for a while like this, he's been with us well over a year, and so that who hire had nailed it like it nailed it if I had just looked at what the data brought back to me on this person instead of what my gut and heart and you got to keep the humans in it, like we're. You and I are here having a conversation because there needs to be humans here, but don't ignore that data. So that's like when you ask about hiring and that, yeah, take all the data, you can look at it and utilize it. Because had I utilized the data that was right in front of me, that that we honestly paid to get, not only would I I don't even like I would have saved the money that I spent sending this fellow around and doing those things, but, more importantly than that, all of those resources would have gone to another more more deserving or more beneficial to the company person on staff rather than that person. Do I know if it'll always get it right? I don't know, but so far it's nailed it for our for that stuff.
Speaker 2:Sorry, shameless plug who hires? Pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting because one of the things that you're right the data is so dialed in and it's been. We've done so much research through the Nextar network and utilizing the companies in there and the employees that it is as accurate as anything that you're going to find more accurate in my opinion. But what it does do to speak to what you're talking about is it helps you to take the human emotion, like you had everybody had, because they love the guy being ignored. The data, and so having that data helps you to not want to stick around peg in a square hole just because you like the individual yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I guarantee you you put him in anybody else's company. It would have been a similar thing where this person's performing department's doing well, like all the things, all points north. Everything was like this guy's awesome, let's keep, keep them, let's let's good. And there was one canary in the coal mine. And I shameless plug out to my wife, sue, she was just like I don't think you should be doing it and it was a regular talk. I don't know, have you looked? I'm like, yes, I've seen the who hire stuff, but hire stuff. But look what he's doing. It's now on on camera and audio.
Speaker 1:I was wrong, my wife was right, and that is the truth right there well, that's fantastic and I think one of the reasons and we'll jump off this topic and just one of the reasons that I believe in what we're doing at WhoHire is because I know the problem that it solves with the arguably the largest problem in the industry, which is finding good people, and I think it's, I think it's going to, I think we're going to be a household name somewhere here pretty shortly. So, really grateful for that, appreciate that. So when you are hiring, do you use it for everybody that comes through the hiring process?
Speaker 2:at this point, no, not at this point. So that's our next phase is to roll it. We wanted to really use it for all of internal like looking at all the people we have and what we're doing there, and then our next phase is to get it tied into everywhere and just go for it with it really utilize it, yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 1:The data. It makes sense. The data is pretty nuts, so where do you want to scale to? I'm just curious If you're at 100 people now I don't know what that number is. What's the? And it doesn't sound like it's a monetary thing, but would you like to see 500 people underneath the company, or what does that number look like?
Speaker 2:That's not a yeah, that that hasn't been a practical metric for me as a goal as to how many people. What I want is sustainability and I think that you need growth for sustainability. I think that that if you're not, you don't have. You don't need mega growth. Like 30% per year over year is it's a lot, especially without any outside input private equity groups or anything like this just us growing Right, but it's a lot looking at the market share analysis and everything else. Like we, we could keep scaling, like we have been for a long time.
Speaker 2:Right now, what our b hag is big, hairy, audacious goal is based around memberships, like our company memberships, because we have our flywheels all based around it.
Speaker 2:When somebody, when a customer, signs up on a membership with us because we don't just give them away right like they're, they cost something when they get on membership with us that really closes a loop.
Speaker 2:That tells us that we had to give great service and so you people don't buy a membership with a great service and high value and they definitely don't buy it if your technicians and office staff aren't talking about it. So if they do buy it, that tells us that all those things are coming together and those people want us back in their home. So we have a BAG to have um 9 000 memberships, which in our small area could be big, hairy and audacious, but that's what we're after and I think we've got eight years left to hit that. We're currently at 2 000, so we want to get 7 000 more, and so I could crack that down as to how many technicians that'll take the service to those people, I could probably figure that out, but it basically puts us at five times the size we are now, or four times the size we are now All right, so I'm really glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1:So do you all. At what point is the membership being offered to the customer? Are CSRs also offering memberships? Is it just the technicians? Is it our CSRs also offering memberships? Is it just the technicians? Is it a combination of both?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm going to go like a 98% of the time kind of thing, cause sometimes there's always things that happen in the periphery, but 98% of the time the membership is offered at the end of the job. Because you don't a good friend of mine in the industry, dan Friesen. He told me you don't want to, you don't want to propose to somebody before you go on a first date, right, like you don't want to. You don't want to show up and be like, hey, you want a membership. Do you want to? Do you want to lock in with me for a year? And you don't even know what I'm like? So you got to go show them before you present it.
Speaker 2:So we try not to do the over the phone sales and that kind of thing. Once we've gone and worked for the people and we've gone there and we can talk to them about what it is and what it entails and how it works with their home and they've been able to like actually have us in their house and feel what it's like to work with fox, then we'll talk about it. So it's 98 technician or comfort advisor in the home talking to them about those things. If somebody calls us up and I want a membership. Yes, we'll do it, but we'll show them what it entails first. But does that make sense? Yeah, I just it. Just it feels strange to just offer a membership and link in with somebody that you don't even know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know there's different schools of thought on it. I know that some folks will use that opportunity. If the customer's got their water heaters busted and you're going to have to replace it, yours busted and you're going to have to replace it, they could use that opportunity to say, if you as a CSR, if you want, you know doing our membership, we're going to waive the, the, whatever fee you want to call it, or in, there's different ways to position it and I think it both could work for sure. So what's your? What is your? How do you feel about training, Meaning? How often do you train with your CSR Maybe not you, but but whoever you ever, how you do that and your technicians? What's your school of thought on that?
Speaker 2:we are I think we started this conversation is that I wanted to be a teacher when I went into plumbing, but so we're heavily based in training. So we have a training center here, a full classroom. We have a thing we call the train tainer, which is a container with set up with furnaces and air conditioners in it that we train in and and that training isn't it's not just hands-on skills training, it's service training, call center training. So like training is out the wazoo here. This past year, like I'd say the last 12 to 18 months, the lead counts have been down for people. The the industry generally is like slower. So we have slowed down on our in-house training. But, that being said, we didn't stop the training where it's needed. So, um, you know I'm constantly taking tech, initially, right right now I've got one one guy who works with me and he's just like man I need to know about furnaces and that. So him and I meet in the mornings. We come up a few times a week. We meet in the mornings, we rip old furnaces apart, we train up Like it's it. So really one of the best places you can do that.
Speaker 2:I will put this out there, though, for any of the technicians that are listening. If I can, I just be a big brother right now, spoken from a tech to a tech, spoken from a tech to a tech. Stop asking for more training. Just stop it, because no matter how much training you get, you're going to continually think and feel that you don't have enough training. You need more training there. Like that's one of the most asked questions that I get is why don't we have more training? And it's like, legitimately, I know my training budget and I guarantee you it is higher than anybody in the Valley. Like the amount of dollars and time that we put into training is insane, but it's for a good cause. What you're going to get out of it before you start that training, what am I going to leave with this? And then follow it up with your YouTube videos, your TikTok videos, whatever you're going to learn online reading. Like all of us old school guys, we did it with reading and watching and learning.
Speaker 2:Training is not going to go away, but I've found definitely for some of the younger techs coming in, some of the younger techs coming in like I'm going to say below 35, that there can be this feeling of imposter syndrome. Where it's, I'm not ready to go do this because I haven't been trained on it, or I was trained on it last year and I don't remember it anymore. You've got to take responsibility for yourself. You're out there as a professional. You do the research and learn what.
Speaker 2:You've got to take responsibility for yourself. You're out there as a professional. You do the research and learn what you got to do, as well as taking the training that your companies are providing for you. And if you're a business owner, train your people. Don't run away from it. Train it, but once again, give them some form of accountability to it as to at the end of this training, I expect you to be walking out of the room with this knowledge. If you don't feel you have it, I'm going to stay here longer and make sure that you do Right so you have that, just so that people aren't there for a donut right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so do you do most of the training in-house, then, or do you also do you? In addition to that, do you also bring other outside influences in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, both. For the past seven years, eight years, we've had a full-time in-house trainer and we did that way smaller than we should have done it, but it's been valuable. This year, like I said, in the last 12 months that trainer ended up moving into a management role with a group of technicians to do like SWAT team, like they're working together in a really confined way, which is awesome. But on top of that we also do away training. So we go to next start trainings we went to. Two weeks ago I took a couple of technicians down to Arkansas, went to the ultimate tech academy. Ago I took a couple technicians down to Arkansas, went to the Ultimate Tech Academy. So next week we're in a Daikin training.
Speaker 2:When the opportunities present themselves, if it fits your business, get there. I feel like I'm preaching, but if you own the company, go to the training. Like I know, it's a drain on your time and energy, but and if you can't go, then have somebody you can, that can go with your people and not to make sure that they're learning the stuff, but be there to have the conversations after the class and in on lunches about what that training's bringing up and how you can apply it within your business, because I find that the most powerful things I've received from trainings is the conversations that I have at dinner afterwards with my people. Yeah, it's, you're just opening opening. You're opening up the mind, which opens up conversations, and you should explore those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Do you so in terms of, like, soft skills training? How much role play do you do? Is that something that you incorporate pretty often? Do you have people stand up in front of everybody and do it? How do you? What's your view on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't role play at all, we skill practice. Okay, we determined a while ago that role playing was not a word we were going to use for whatever reason. So it's skill practice. Yes, skill practice is integral to what we do, and so, for, if you're an X-Star, you're using service system. If you're a service round table, you're using something else. There's all these different styles of systems you can use and eventually you kind of mold them and make them your own. We've been doing it long enough. We have a blend that's the Fox service system and that's just a go-to. So if we do see somebody that's maybe not, they're having trouble converting, or their review count is down, or whatever those things are, we can come in and do a two hour, one hour skill practice session and go through these specific areas that we're going to work with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, skill practice and soft skills is to me, this is the hard part. We are a customer service company. We're not before a sales company, before a mechanical company. You've got to get it straight it's your customers that you're there for. So you have to be a customer service company before anybody will buy anything from you or before they'll let you do any work. So if you set yourself up like we're this rough, tough, pipe-fitting company, you're going to miss the mark. If you set yourself up like we're going to go out and make the biggest sales on the planet, you're going to set yourself up not for long-term success. If you set yourself up like customer service, how do we stand in front of a customer and have them want us to still be there in five minutes? You have to do soft skills. You have to yeah Massive amount of training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, A hundred percent. And that goes the same with the CSRs too, because people can feel if your CSR is having a rough day and their spirit's down or they have even a negative attitude. People can feel that right through the phone.
Speaker 2:You can hear it. You can hear a smile. You can absolutely hear a smile. Yeah, 100% smile. You can absolutely hear a smile. Yeah, 100 and yes. So csrs, dsrs I think the dsrs have I don't say the hardest job, because I think every good job is hard, but the amount of juggling of people's emotions and time, and between the technician and the customer and the company, like those skills of being able to practicing what to say what works, how to be organic with it, it's huge, like you need those skills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. I want to ask you what is, what's an offense that, without a doubt, is requires you to fire an individual, what has to happen, or what are some of those things that is just a non-negotiable for the company yeah, that's an awesome question.
Speaker 2:I actually have a call coming up after this. That's literally about non-negotiables, so I was like, oh, I didn't know, you're gonna ask this man, okay, so blatant theft, vandalism, physical abuse I would say verbal abuse, but that so, yes, that can be, but dependent on what it is and how it comes across. So I do think most of those things require an HR audit, like an HR 360 review, because sometimes you can offend somebody by saying something that that wasn't deemed intentional. But theft, physical physicality, physical abuse of some kind, vandalism and I would say theft comes in the form of not just like taking staplers from the office, but material theft, time theft is a pretty big one if it's, if it goes on for long periods of time, that that's one that, to me, once you've basically once you've broken trust, if there's no way to re-establish the trust, then that's it. But I fire. It's too slow. I fire too slow at bombs because I would like to work with people to see if we can't get through whatever it is. But there are some things where, no, we cannot come back from this and then it's over. But I think that the majority of times when people get fired is generally that they were not tipped properly. Like you should have a. We have a process of like a three strike rule, although at any point in those strikes you can come out. But it's I okay. Sorry, I'm rambling.
Speaker 2:My analogy is this we live on a pirate ship or not a pirate ship, but we live on a ship of some kind. This company is a ship. We're all going in the same direction, and what I like to say to my managers and to the people who I manage is listen, if you start not pulling your weight on the ship or trying to cause a mutiny or something, the first thing I'm going to do is we're going to go for a walk around the ship together and as we're walking, I'm going to show you this thing and say, hey, see that, that's the plank. You don't want to see that, so just know that's there when people aren't on board. And if the next time we're having a, a conversation about there was some kind of other, I'm not following your system, I'm not this, I'm not that is I'm going to show you the plank. We're going to walk over, we're going to look at it, it and you're going to decide whether you want off the ship or not. The third time you're going to walk to the end of that plank and you're going to have a look, and this is now where I'm deciding whether you can come on the boat, back on the boat or off the boat. And then the fourth time you're not in there.
Speaker 2:Now, the reason, the reason I put this, I put this out there like that to most of my people is that most people, when they see the plank, don't want to go there, so they're willing to correct whatever that thing was. They just want to be on the ship, so they're willing to correct it. Once they've been out on the plank and they get out there, it's like now, it's like there. There's two sides that we're, we're both thinking about this now and they have to make a conscious decision to get back on the boat, like I'm changing something, to get back on here. Nobody ever gets to the third time. I shouldn't say ever, but most people don't get to the third time because they usually correct completely or they quit, because they recognize that this is not for me or this is for me.
Speaker 2:And I think I bring this up this way because if you don't follow a process like that, what you get to is you never show people the plank.
Speaker 2:They get worse and worse and worse and worse. They don't know that they're bad. They think the company is bad. You're both living in these weird things and you just hear nattering out there until finally the manager gets told you have to fire that person, because did you know what they did? When had you talked to them six months ago and said hey, if you keep on this path, you're going to end up walking off this ship. You need to stop what you're doing right now. Doing that corrects almost everything, and most people who do not belong in the culture will absolutely leave on their own. And that's what we find is, we don't conduct a lot of firings here. We do have people that leave and although I like those people, I'm not sorry for any of them that have left because I think that we weren't the right company for them and they weren't right for us, and I think that they'll be happy somewhere else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. So can you describe maybe a bit more detail about time theft? How do you define? Because I think that can be defined in a bunch of different ways. So when you say that kind of what sticks out?
Speaker 2:Okay, taking lunches, but not clocking them out. It would be a real easy one for time theft. It can also be taking a job, completing the job, driving somewhere, parking and just letting the clock run for a while, which is silly. I'd rather be at home than that. I don't ever look at it as just lack of efficiency, because that's a different thing. That's something that you can work on.
Speaker 2:But when a person is legitimately doing something to clock hours or to, if you have, let's say, you have seven install crews all doing similar kinds of work, but this one crew somehow gets double overtime twice a week, every week, and you're like that's weird man, Like how is that? And then you look at it and you're like that's strange. Like every Tuesday and Thursday they seek to work till 7pm. Let's look at these jobs, what's weird about these jobs? And you start finding patterns. Those types of things, once again, are very easily corrected with a conversation. Just be like hey, look, here's you guys and here's everybody else and we either need to fix efficiency or you are not approved for this kind of time. You're not, but by being on top of it you can stop it. But a person who just will not is blatantly doing time theft, altering their time sheets or clocking in funny to just get more time. I don't think that's a thing that you can come back from, because that's legitimately. You're just stealing at that point and it's a conscious decision.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely I agree. Yes, yeah, absolutely I agree. I appreciate you explaining that, because there could be many different ways of looking at that. It could be. Inefficiency is one of those things where you can improve efficiency, but then I guess some people take advantage of maybe, if it's overlooked. But anyhow, yeah, that that makes complete sense. That makes sense. I don't know if it's okay with you, ted, if there's somebody listening and they've heard something that you've said today and they'd like to reach out to you, what would be the best way to do that?
Speaker 2:out to you what would be the best way to do that? I would say email me. It's Ted at Fox and sonsca. Yeah, I'm happy to give my number out to it. I just don't know if you want me to say it over over here. It's never changed. So so, yeah, you can give me a call, or text is usually better, just because I a lot of times I'm on the phone but it's two, five zero, three zero nine, seven four zero five, and that's been my cell phone since I was a teenager. Hey, don't lose it. But yeah, no, give me a shot anytime. I'm super interested in helping people if it's helping out the industry a bit. I think if we're all having a little bit of positivity, putting positivity into the world, we're doing the right thing.
Speaker 1:I would agree, ted. This has been a fantastic conversation. I greatly appreciate you spending some time with me today. Thank you very much and I really appreciate you my pleasure with me today, thank you very much and I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, corey, thanks for doing this and, yeah, we'll talk to you again.
Speaker 1:Got it, thank you.
