Recovering from HVAC Jobs That Go Wrong
Unforeseen challenges are inevitable in the HVAC business. Jobs can take an unexpected turn in ways you would never dream of, but like all good stories, there is usually something to learn and eventually laugh about.
In this episode of Cracking The Code, Brad Barron and Jason Walker share the war stories that led to hard-earned lessons, better leadership, stronger processes and even a person being saved from a house fire! From costly jobs and hiring missteps to customer challenges and unexpected moments of heroism, they break down how contractors can recover, learn and come back better when things do not go according to plan.
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00;00;00;02 – 00;00;26;23
We’ve had technicians cut through load bearing roof joists, factoring out a fireplace, and the bag blows and soot goes everywhere. We had two electricians on a job. All of a sudden they smell smoke. There is a fire of the neighbor two houses down. So I walked into this job thinking it would probably take a week, maybe a week and a half to change five five heads cassettes.
00;00;26;24 – 00;00;49;12
Okay, there was no service ports on anything, and so we had to open up walls to get to different flares. Right? Just the obstacles and challenges. I thought that job was going to take me a week to ten days. Okay. It took a month.
00;00;49;15 – 00;01;33;19
Welcome to another episode of Cracking the Code with my host, Brad Baron. Brad, I’m super excited. This week we’re talking about unforeseen challenges. It happens all the time as business owners and operators or just in businesses. You know, one thing that I would like to start and talk about is at royalty. We just had a scenario or a situation where imagine this, okay, you as the business owner, okay, you come in, it’s Monday morning and you get a phone call from a competitor, someone that you don’t really know, mom and pop shop, and all of a sudden you get a a nice little message from them that your technician went and saw one of their
00;01;33;19 – 00;01;56;27
yard signs and took their yard sign and replaced it with a royalty yard sign. You know, that’s a that’s a tough one to swallow, especially when you don’t want to have that type of culture. You don’t teach that type of culture. Right? So what I ended up doing was I brought in the technician, I talked to him, I said, hey, why did we do this?
00;01;56;28 – 00;02;17;25
What’s the why behind it? Right. Sure. And he told me, is every day for the last week, it’s been in front of my house at this little across the street. And I look at it every single day. And it’s been killing me that the next day I just said, you know what? No one’s around. But there’s always somebody watching because someone saw him do it.
00;02;17;26 – 00;02;37;05
Yeah, he took it, put it in his truck, put ours right there so he could look at ours. Got the phone call. Now, as the business owner, I wanted to reach out to her and not just talk to her. You know, behind the phone. I personally went out there face to face to their business, and I apologized in person.
00;02;37;07 – 00;03;08;19
I didn’t bring the technician out there with me, but then I also paid and offered 500 yard signs. Yeah, because, yeah, 500 yard signs, 500 reasons, 500 yard signs. And the reason why I wanted to do that was I wanted them to know how like, really sorry I was that that was to happen. Okay. Yeah. But then also I get our yard signs taking quite a bit because the community, they just take them when you just drop them off at random places.
00;03;08;21 – 00;03;31;20
Sure. I didn’t want to be pinpointed as the company that takes yard signs, so I figured if I bought them a bunch of yard signs, they’re not going to say I’m still in my own yard signs again, right? So I wanted to make sure that we were on good, good base when I let their company. And so that was one of those unforeseen challenges, right.
00;03;31;21 – 00;03;52;17
A little speed bump in the road now moving forward. He knows not to do that. He understands why we wouldn’t do that. Absolutely. And it’s just one of those learning moments right. What’s one of those unforeseen moments that you might have got at Barron? Yeah. You know, I’ve been here ten years and we really haven’t had any. It’s been smooth sailing, right?
00;03;52;18 – 00;04;26;28
Just nice and easy. He sound horrible. And watching this podcast just goes royalty. Yeah. Nope. And also obviously I have super humble as well. So. Yeah. Right. They just couldn’t make a neck. But no man I think it was probably episode one. We talked about how many scars like those invisible scars we have as, as business owners, the things that whether it’s a self-inflicted issue or a team member issue, which, by the way, usually boils down to communication and training issues, right?
00;04;26;29 – 00;04;53;27
Like, we haven’t communicated expectations. We haven’t trained on what it is that we really want people to be doing and how we want them to hold themselves. And, you know, people make dumb mistakes. I’m really glad. It was really cool to hear from you how you handled that, because to me, you led by example, you showed your technician that it wasn’t wrong, but you didn’t go throw them on the steak right in front of the entire company.
00;04;54;00 – 00;05;12;28
You went and you led by example. You showed him, this is how we handle when we make a mistake. You you use the word why love that? You let them know why. We wouldn’t want to do that. What are the implications and ramifications? And ultimately, as a result, I think you’re going to have someone that never does that again.
00;05;12;28 – 00;05;34;04
And obviously you’re going to have a culture that really embodies how we or how royalty presents themselves to your coworkers, your customers, and your community. So kudos to you. Before I dove into my stories, I just wanted to say nice job Jason. I don’t know if anyone or everyone would have handled it that same way, and I think that was handled.
00;05;34;05 – 00;06;01;19
That was handled really well. But man, like I could go down so many avenues. I could go down the people avenues. I could go down the processes, avenues I could go down, you know, sales avenues. But I’ll start with people because I think that at the end of the day, businesses are beautiful because people are beautiful, and that means that they are smart and messy at the same time.
00;06;01;20 – 00;06;29;27
Right? Like we are fallen people, right? We make mistakes. For me personally, by the grace of God, I’ve forgiven for those mistakes. But at the end of the day, they happen. And so hiring people, growing people at Barron, you know, when we’re scaling from 75 people to 175 people, right? When we’re adding 100 positions over the last decade or so, there’s a lot of mistakes or unforeseen challenges that have risen as a result of that.
00;06;30;00 – 00;06;52;10
I think back when we launched our electrical department. So this was the first trade vertical at Barron that we added. Instead of thinking through how I wanted to do that, I said, well, the demands there, our customers are asking for electricians. Let’s just go higher electricians. And then as a result, I’m sure we’ll find people that will rise up and be leaders, right?
00;06;52;11 – 00;07;10;07
So we hired a guy. I’m not going to say the name of the gentleman, but he was a commercial electrician. So in Washington we have both residential and commercial licensure, but we needed a commercial license to be able to do both commercial and residential work. So I hired a guy and he came strictly out of the commercial space.
00;07;10;07 – 00;07;29;10
And in the interview process, when I asked him, because we’re 90% at Barron, right? Like we’re a very residential focused company, but we want to keep growing. Commercials. About 10% of what we do is like commercial. But I asked, this guy said, hey, in the interview process, I was with my director of ops at the time. I said, hey, we’re looking to grow electrical.
00;07;29;10 – 00;07;49;22
But right now the majority of the opportunities are going to be residential and I should have picked up on this. But as body language you could tell immediately, was a little bit like, maybe that’s not my jam, but he was looking for a job. He was looking for, obviously a bigger paycheck, different opportunity. And so he said, yeah, that doesn’t bother me, right?
00;07;49;23 – 00;08;18;14
No problem. Fast forward to his onboarding again talking about the different work that we do primarily residential. And day three rolls along. So this is Wednesday of his first week, right. We have an apprentice with him and I get a call. Right. And it’s from him. And he’s like, hey Brad. And I’m like, what’s up? I remember I was standing out front of the barren facility and he’s like, And I’m not going to use profanity here, so I’ll just say beep for the profanity.
00;08;18;19 – 00;08;51;25
But direct quote, he goes, you know what? I’m tired of this residential beep. I’m out. Hung up the phone. So like, newly hired commercial electrician was meant to be able to help grow an apprentice like lead the charge. And on day three, he’s gone. So what lessons did I learn from that? Right at the end of the day, when Barron looked in the future to scale into different trade verticals, right, we wanted to make sure that we found the right leaders first.
00;08;51;26 – 00;09;23;21
People matter, and leadership is a hard skill to be able to learn and grow. But also some of it is like God given innate talents and strengths, right? Like some people I believe are built and made to be able to be leaders, right? And so we pivoted how we hired from that moment on as we expanded into solar and then plumbing and then sewers and all the different things we’ve done in that we go and we find leaders first, because I don’t want another person to call me and say, Brad, I’m tired of this residential beat, right?
00;09;23;22 – 00;09;43;18
Like, I don’t want that to be a story. And luckily, we’ve been blessed to not have that challenge moving forward so people can be a big again win for the company of done right, or ultimately can be a challenge that ejects after three days. So what about you? I’m sure I know you’ve been around for a couple of years and you’re still in the scaling mode.
00;09;43;18 – 00;10;13;04
I’d have to imagine you have some people’s stories, so. Oh, absolutely. I mean, just a big one. You know, as you’re developing your your team and you’re growing, right, you get ways to fund. Okay. When I talk about funding, I’m talking about financing. And so I brought on a new accounting person for my accounting department that took care of our finances and financing and everything like that.
00;10;13;04 – 00;10;34;09
And I just, I mean, I could imagine it just right now, like it was yesterday. And you guys see that when I say this. Okay. So I picked out four plans. Okay. And I said, okay, these are our four plans. When we do financing this is what we’re going to offer. And so the very first client that we offered financing for.
00;10;34;12 – 00;10;57;23
Yeah. What happened I don’t know I was out of town on a on site and I’m not sure, but the finance wasn’t closed in-house. Okay. So what my financing department did was we signed the contract for the install, but they sent the application via email. And what happened was attached to that email was all of our financing options.
00;10;57;24 – 00;11;20;18
Sure. Like a link or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so out of these options, because we didn’t pick the four that I picked, it gave the client any option to choose any of them. And so there I go straight to what. Not the not the two year 0%. Not the five year 0%. No, no, Brad, we’re talking about seven years.
00;11;20;21 – 00;11;46;01
Oh percent. It was. And it wasn’t like it was like a $10,000 install, right? No, this was a $28,000 install on a 28 merchant fee on that. Oh my God. We had great profit in the job until that happened. Oh, yeah. And so that’s one of those learning experiences, right. But again understanding as a team. Why did it happen.
00;11;46;02 – 00;12;11;19
There was a little chink in the communication. But you also have to learn from these mistakes right. You can’t just brush them under the rug and just think they don’t happen again. It’s hey why did this happen again? How are we going to execute it so it doesn’t happen again in the future? Yeah, no, I think learning from mistakes and not having shame in it is really powerful, right?
00;12;11;21 – 00;12;36;02
You know, I know we’ve talked before in this podcast about what shame can do to people and that when we share, I think transparently and humbly that we grow and we help others grow at the same time. When I first started at Barron, I was I wore the hat of business development manager. Right. And so really, I know I shared earlier, the goal was, is to get to understand the different facets of the company.
00;12;36;06 – 00;13;00;22
One thing that I didn’t share previously is one of my jobs that I self asked for raise my hand was to to tackle and take all of the customer experience challenge calls that we got. So that was whether it was an issue with a technician in the field, a driving issue or whatever the case may be. And man, that was one of the most humbling experiences I’ve ever had.
00;13;00;23 – 00;13;20;07
But it was also just a really good way to learn about what the gaps were in the company and the things that we weren’t doing right. A couple findings from that, I’ll say. And again, these obviously, anytime you get a call is an unforeseen challenge, right? You’re getting a call about something that either you or the team weren’t aware about.
00;13;20;09 – 00;13;38;12
And, you know, and luckily we’re not talking about hundreds of calls here, Jason, but we’re definitely talking about dozens of calls. And when we at Barron, I mean, in a given year we’ll do, you know, 10,000 plus visits in a house to different houses. Right? So that’s that’s a lot of opportunity to crush it and also a lot of opportunity to mess up to step in it.
00;13;38;13 – 00;14;03;29
Right. But one thing that I there’s patterns that emerge from that when I was taking those calls and my gut would tell me is that other contractors have experienced these patterns, but usually challenges arise from one of three different things. The first is communication, right? Like just simply a lack of communication. Right. And that’s usually number one. We did not communicate well enough tied to it.
00;14;03;29 – 00;14;33;20
But the second is we didn’t set proper expectations. So yeah, it’s a communication thing, but we didn’t set proper expectations. One great example of that in Washington state, a lot of our houses up here were not built for air conditioning. They were they were not built for air conditioning down in your neck of the woods. Right. Like every house is air conditioning up here within the last decade, decade and a half has really when air conditioning has become less of a luxury and more of a necessity, at least during, you know, a couple months of the year.
00;14;33;21 – 00;14;54;22
And so, with all that being said, when a salesperson goes out and they don’t communicate clearly that unless they do some pretty school zoning or even a separate system in the upper floor, the upstairs in the downstairs, they’re not going to be the same temperature, right? Like it’s not going to happen. There’s ways to make it work. But your basic 15, 16,000, $18,000 system, right.
00;14;54;23 – 00;15;18;17
That’s a heating and cooling system is not going to do that. Right. And so I would get calls from customers that are like, hey, I just spent 15 grand with Baron and I don’t have cooling upstairs or it’s ten degrees hotter. And so those are the things that can really come back to bite you. And so setting expectations is another way or lack of setting expectations is another way to generate those unforeseen circumstances.
00;15;18;17 – 00;15;39;29
And then the third and I think you can appreciate this, given the fact that you spent a lot of years selling and now you train as a sales trainer, is that when we walk into a home as a technician, electrician and plumber, we need to understand, especially in service, that that customer is scared, like they don’t know how much it’s going to cost.
00;15;39;29 – 00;16;02;15
They don’t know if it’s going to, you know, damage their home. There’s all these different things that are going on. And when we don’t meet them where they’re at and we’re not able to connect, build, trust, empathize, it leads to unforeseen challenges and customer experience issues. So those are my big three takeaways, right. Lack of communication not setting expectations correctly.
00;16;02;15 – 00;16;20;14
And again not meeting customers where they’re at and understanding that they are in a position where they don’t know what’s going to happen and they’re scared. So how do we be that person to come alongside of them and walk them through the process? What about your when your in your world royalty, do you do you feel like that’s similar.
00;16;20;15 – 00;16;44;16
Maybe I don’t know maybe I’m crazy here, but those three seem to be really primary drivers. Absolutely. Of challenge. Yes. Yeah. I got to ask you another question. You know, Brad, has your ego ever got in the way of of you maybe buying a job from a competitor, or maybe your competitors couldn’t do something and your ego just got in the way?
00;16;44;19 – 00;17;13;23
I mean, is this just me? No, no, I mean, I think that all those things exist, right? You know, what did you say earlier in the previous episode is not your me. And I’m going to tell you a story on that. Okay. Well, I here’s the thing. I’m gonna kick it back to you. But I will say this, I think, as you know, hot blooded, you know, men, we have a tendency sometimes to be more naturally prone to leaning into the ego.
00;17;13;26 – 00;17;39;18
Every day. You have to check yourself, right? Humble yourself, understand what your goal is, what your mission is, how it ties in to your coworkers, your customers, the community that you serve. But I want to hear the story. You. You have got me perplexed. I’m excited. Oh, yeah. Okay. Let’s go, let’s go. Jason. Story time. So I went to a call and multiple big outfits in my market.
00;17;39;18 – 00;18;00;19
I’m not going to mention any names. All gave estimates, didn’t give estimates, actually walked out of the call without giving estimates because all of them walked away from it saying that they couldn’t do it. Okay, so I roll up to this house and let me picture the house for you all. It’s not a house. It’s more of a building.
00;18;00;22 – 00;18;28;24
A skyscraper building, per se. Okay. And so it’s probably, I don’t know, 15, 20 storeys high and on the top level. Okay. We have right by the a stadium in downtown SoC where they’re playing. We had a branch box system that was on three levels. And what happened was this house wasn’t even old, okay. It was maybe maybe three year old house.
00;18;28;25 – 00;18;49;19
Okay. But what happened was all the flares on the unit added up, not working. And so what happened was their system ended up fell in on them. And the lady didn’t like it. It was a big ordeal. And so I stepped in and I said, you know what? These other companies said that they want to do it. I’ll go ahead and do it.
00;18;49;20 – 00;19;17;13
So let me talk to you about the worst nightmare story of a business or owner. Okay. The owners were great. Okay. Nothing against the owner. It’s just the job. So I walked into this job thinking it would probably take a week, maybe a week and a half to change five, five heads cassettes. Okay. Also with the cassettes, two branch boxes, one on or three branch boxes, one on each level.
00;19;17;14 – 00;19;40;23
Okay. And there was no service ports on anything. Oh, wow. And so we had to open up walls to get to different flares, right. And open up sheetrock, which I put on the agreement. We weren’t responsible for open sheetrock or anything like that, so that was okay. But just the obstacles and challenges. I thought that job was going to take me a week to ten days.
00;19;40;24 – 00;20;10;22
Okay, it took a month. Oh wow. I had my install crew probably tied up for a month now. Luckily I sold it for a decent amount. Okay, but I wasn’t profitable. I probably lost, no joke. Probably close to $12,000 of a learning experience, right? Because and the thing that I was telling my team to, as they were frustrated as well with all the obstacles and challenges, was, hey, you guys, at this point, we have to understand that this is all a learning curve right now for us.
00;20;10;23 – 00;20;30;05
Okay, this is something that we’re going to use. And don’t look at it as we’re losing money. I’m looking at it and I took on this job and I’m investing in it because no one else in our markets willing to touch something like this. And if we’re willing to do this and learn and still execute, what does the future hold for us?
00;20;30;05 – 00;21;04;09
Right. So that was kind of my, my, my mindset, I guess, of what I was thinking. But man, let me tell you, as a business owner and an operator, it hurt. Yeah. No, I you know, I was blessed to be able to have an opportunity to go to a four year college and get an engineering degree. But I always tell people that as a business owner and the mistakes that have been made, whether they be self-inflicted or not, that is the most expensive education I’ve ever had.
00;21;04;10 – 00;21;39;26
It far exceeded. Typically they’re self-inflicted, I’m guessing. Yeah. Well, and by the way, as leaders to we always have to understand that at the end of the day, the buck stops with us, right? That doesn’t mean we don’t have accountability measures in place to be able to coach and grow our other leaders or other team members. But, you know, at the end of the day, I might be the CEO of a company that supports 175 people, but my name is on the building, and it is my job to take ownership and then create training and solutions to be able to offer those challenges.
00;21;39;29 – 00;22;03;21
And it’s also our job to, you know, to shepherd and steward that culture as well, a culture of humility and a culture of learning and and making sure that our teammates are set up for success. You know, one of the most probably humbling experiences I’ve had with people and I would maybe say in business, when Baron was growing and we had just added our third trade, vertical plumbing.
00;22;03;21 – 00;22;25;05
So we’ve gone to HVAC, electrical, plumbing. I was in the process of trying to figure out how to give myself capacity to be the CEO by having a strong, we call it an executive support team, right? So an executive team to be able to help essentially manage the middle managers. So it’d be like leaders leading other leaders, right.
00;22;25;06 – 00;22;46;29
And so I created a directorship group of people up, Aaron, to be able to occupy, you know, director of ops or install hat, director of service hat, director of people ops hat, etc., right across the board. And I remember going through the process and I got to the hiring of my Director of service, and I’m not going to to name names or use names at all.
00;22;47;01 – 00;23;07;25
But I remember the interview process. And at Baron, one of the things that we really preach is that when a new leader comes on, especially if they’re not like promoted right within the company, they have to first earn trust, right? That’s like step one to grow in culture. Then they have to make sure that their team understands the why behind the initiatives.
00;23;07;25 – 00;23;35;04
And then at the end of the day, we have to give her team the tools and training to be successful. And then we track. And I mentioned some of this in an earlier episode, right, of Cracking the Code. But what I found in the interview process is this individual was very much about KPI, right? He was very driven by KPI, and he spoke highly of his previous performance and that he was able to use like, you know, my team, I that kind of language.
00;23;35;04 – 00;24;04;01
But he also came very highly referred by a couple of people that I trusted. And so I made the decision to hire him even though there were flags. Right. I had some yellow flags there. He did interview well, other than a couple of those flags. So fast forward, right? And about six months in, I’ve been working with this gentleman and coaching him, and I keep getting pings from people, operations, my HR team that the team he was managing, the service group, was just not happy.
00;24;04;03 – 00;24;22;27
Right. And they felt that they weren’t supported and they felt like there was immense pressure on them. And so I started to do some due diligence and found out that he just kept jumping to the end and creating scorecards off items that he hadn’t even taught the team what they were and what they meant and the why behind them.
00;24;22;27 – 00;24;45;09
And so I began coaching, right? Coaching this person, saying, hey, we got to go back to square one. Like, have you done right along? No, I haven’t done them yet. So important, getting some windshield time, right. Have you got engagement from them and asked them their understanding of the why, right behind the different initiatives that you’re proposing? Yeah, I could probably do a better job anyway.
00;24;45;09 – 00;25;16;11
So over and over and over again. And I waited another year before finally terminating this person. So it was the first time I’ve had to terminate an executive level teammate from Baron. So there’s a lot of learning in that too. But what I found. I’m not kidding. The day after the termination, one of my senior HVAC service techs came in and he said, Brad, I just want you to know that your decision saved about a third of your HVAC service text because we were about to walk.
00;25;16;13 – 00;25;40;29
Wow, that would have been over ten people walking out the door at the same time to our competitors. So I was like three weeks from losing a third of my technicians. The lesson in there is that there are unforeseen obstacles, right? Things that are going to be challenging. But also I believe that you need to understand who you are, the type of people you’re hiring and have conviction when you see those flags.
00;25;41;01 – 00;26;04;05
Because usually our gut is pretty accurate. It’s pretty right. And I was that close to having a very different looking service division than I have today, all because I allowed someone to be on the team a lot longer than they should have been. Great guy, family person, wrong fit for the rule, right? And we need to be so protective of the culture.
00;26;04;08 – 00;26;28;19
I think that’s important, right? Is some people hang on too long, right to to different employees and maybe they have different relationships. They’ve known them for a while or family. Right. In smaller startup companies. Yeah. When do you understand that it’s time to let somebody go. I think the team tells you. And by that, I mean I think there’s enough in that.
00;26;28;20 – 00;27;08;04
Yeah, I agree, I think the team, one of the things that I’ve started to implement as a tool to help prevent those unforeseen challenges is a proactive 360 degree review. And so I do this with both high performing managers and not so all across the board. And I have a questionnaire anonymous questionnaire that goes out. And I ask them a lot of different questions right, about how they feel supported leadership, etc., and I have made since then one other leadership team decision to to terminate a leader, and it was based on the team essentially telling me through that review that they’re not happy.
00;27;08;04 – 00;27;34;07
And here’s why. And I did some more due diligence and ended up making the call. And so waiting to not have that crucial conversation can cost you a lot more than you think. So I look to the team, I want to hear from them. I want to get a gauge of what’s going on. And yeah, and like I said, this leader, you know, I actually ended up having three different meetings with my COO.
00;27;34;10 – 00;27;54;02
And, and this was a, this is a different person that we ended up having to let go. And he was a manager in the company and three of our key people in our install department. And after the third interview with that person, I, at the end of the day, I brought the leader in and let them go that day because it was that obvious and apparent.
00;27;54;02 – 00;28;17;14
We needed to make a shift. And so hire smart, fire fast, but make sure you do it with data and with team input. Those would be my recommendations. So now when you do those reviews and the teams put in that information, right. How often are you doing. Are you doing it quarterly every six months? How often is that being handled?
00;28;17;14 – 00;28;38;23
And then I could only imagine that as a leader, even your leadership team, right. They probably got to swallow and be humble pie, right? Well, I have one done on me too. So it’s like I’m not just I’m not kidding. I have my leadership team 360 review me, right? Like right back. I want to know what my gaps are.
00;28;39;00 – 00;29;04;07
What are they? You know, I call them blind spots, right? Sometimes we as people were going, going, going, and we don’t even understand our own blind spots, the areas that we’re falling short. And I think it’s a mindset shift, right? Like if you approach, you know, your gaps as learning opportunities, growth opportunities. I like to say like, you know, be have an insatiable hunger for learning, have a desire to learn how to learn.
00;29;04;08 – 00;29;27;14
Like those are all really important things. And I don’t want leaders on my team, including myself, that aren’t willing to roll up their sleeves and say, I’m okay. I want people to tell me. Hopefully I say, speak truth with tact, right? Like, make sure you speak it with tact. I also think I shared earlier, I believe clear is kind, right?
00;29;27;14 – 00;29;49;00
And this is a way to be clear and a way to be kind. But they help prevent those unforeseen circumstances, right? They help prevent the challenges when we’re able to proactively get ahead of that. What about you and the royalty side of things? Are there certain things that you do? We do hours every six months. That’s what I found to be a good cadence.
00;29;49;00 – 00;30;16;21
Quarterly was a lot. Right. That’s just a lot of input because it takes time, right. These aren’t short little like, you know, three question reviews. There’s 25 questions that are in this review. So as of right now we do quarterly reviews as performance okay. But I have not done the overall view of the company yet. But this is something that we’re talking about as we were talking about burnout last episode.
00;30;16;22 – 00;30;40;14
Right, right. It had me really start thinking of what is it that, you know, talking about humble pie. Me as a leader, I can see where we are missing opportunity and where we are failing because of me as a leader. Right? Right. But I also, like you said, you got blinders and spots that maybe I don’t see that maybe the other teammates on our team can see that they can point out.
00;30;40;14 – 00;31;01;13
So I haven’t done any questions or anything formal with the team yet, but I would love for you to send me over what you guys have, because any type of feedback from my team just elevates us to help us get to the next level. Right. But you’ve got to be humble, and I think that’s probably the most challenging thing for everyone is to be able to go through these reviews.
00;31;01;14 – 00;31;26;11
Okay? And not taking it personal as an attack. Okay. And I think that’s where a lot of leaders fail is they think they’re being attacked. But understand and take it in and dissect it and understand that there’s reasons why they’re seeing this type of stuff, okay. And give them a different opportunity. Yeah. We you know and this goes across the board with anyone looking to be in a leadership role.
00;31;26;11 – 00;31;54;00
But we can’t take things personally. Right. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t expect tactful and respectful responses. I think culturally that’s important. Like you don’t like I don’t want to see on a 360 year review. You know, like Brad’s a bleep and bleep and he’s terrible and like is that even like constructive or you know that’s I mean if you feel that way I hope you come into my office and shut the doors.
00;31;54;01 – 00;32;18;22
We could have a conversation about that because there’s probably a misunderstanding, you know. But like I said, speak tact, you know, with truth and be willing to have and receive feedback is crucial. And I think it’s something that needs to be addressed in companies. If there isn’t a review process like that, you know, we do quarterly reviews of team members.
00;32;18;22 – 00;32;42;25
So those are performance based reviews. Yeah, one of those reviews we do is given more of a I guess it’s the beginning of the year. It’s like an in-depth goal setting type of a review. And I also believe in personal and professional goals being melded. I’ve talked about this and some of the other, you know, shows I’ve been on and some of the other teachings I’ve done.
00;32;42;25 – 00;33;05;16
But, you know, at the end of the day, when we get a chance to lead by example and we get a chance to show people that we can take feedback, then the team is going to rise up and respond in a similar fashion. That’s my belief. I agree 100%. No, Alice, we’re rolling and we’re changing real quick. I know that there’s been unforeseen challenges with clients.
00;33;05;17 – 00;33;27;27
Okay, sure. What are some unforeseen challenges that pop up where a client’s called in or situations happened? Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. We were just talking about this with my leadership team. This last we have a monthly meeting. It was two weeks ago. We do it. I think it’s the second win or Tuesday. Excuse me, of every month, our whole leadership team comes together.
00;33;27;27 – 00;33;48;13
And I think it probably has to do with the economy that we’re in right now, as we know it’s you know, we talked about this. It’s it’s a different economy than during the booming Covid days, right. You know, there’s less leads going around. People are more conservative with their money. Right. There’s maybe more fear in those larger ticket item purchases.
00;33;48;13 – 00;34;10;20
And that’s not specific to HVAC, electrical, plumbing. That’s anything that’s financed. Right. And so one thing that we’ve been seeing more of is customers. When there’s an issue with a system. We just had one recently with a generator where one of the parts on a two year generator failed, the generator was under warranty, and then the customer comes back and they say, well, it failed.
00;34;10;20 – 00;34;35;11
We want a brand new generator. And it’s like, you know, generator is for us, it’s a 20 plus thousand dollars install, right? You’re like, you want a brand? It’s under warranty. We have the part. We can fix it tomorrow. What do you mean? You want a new generator? And I think that one of the things that we’re starting to see more of in this world of instant gratification, of the Amazon experience, where you buy a retail product, right?
00;34;35;14 – 00;34;58;09
And then if you don’t like it, you can send it back, no questions asked. You go to Costco, you can buy, you know, a retail product and then use the product and then take it back and say, I just didn’t like that product. Right. In service contracting. Right. What we do like that isn’t the standard. There are warranties for a reason because of the fact that we want to protect the customer protective equipment.
00;34;58;09 – 00;35;14;29
And so we’ve been navigating some interesting customer experience challenges where there’s a challenge with the, you know, part. We go through the manufacturing warranty process. And then at the end of the day, the customer is like, nope, I want a brand new system. And how do you deescalate that one? Right. And so you have to draw a line.
00;35;14;29 – 00;35;37;23
You have to understand what you’re willing to do and not do. Just like in sales. You have to give them options like we can do this for you or this for you, right? Don’t tell them what they can’t do. Tell them what you can do. Right. And those types of things. But those have been popping up more. And I think it’s a combination of this instant gratification return world that we live in that is retail based.
00;35;37;23 – 00;36;00;14
That’s not, you know, contracting based yet because we sell equipment. Contractor, excuse me, customers expect contractors to just swap it out, you know. And because it’s that easy right, Brad. Let’s just swap it out. Just just well and again there’s an education of like that’s just not how our system or how the, the industry and the system process works.
00;36;00;15 – 00;36;20;16
Right. That is not how it works. So you know, we’ll have those ones. I would say we have a 100% customer satisfaction guarantee at barren. In my ten years here at barren two times, only twice have we had a completely taken a system out and given money back. It has happened twice, but we do hold true to that.
00;36;20;17 – 00;36;43;23
We obviously try to make sure that doesn’t happen. But you know, and sometimes it’s for the betterment of the company. I’ll share this and I’m sure you can relate. It is okay for contractors to fire customers. It is okay 100%. But I think that’s something that people get caught up in thinking that, oh my gosh, I can’t lose that revenue stream.
00;36;43;25 – 00;37;10;17
There’s a reason why Service Titan right. That’s what we’re on has a do not service tag right. Like sometimes you got to use it right. And that also helps control unforeseen circumstances. Because if you’ve got a customer that’s berating you or your technicians, you got a customer that refuses to pay or is ticky tacky. Contractors need to know that they can tactfully, professionally fire customers.
00;37;10;19 – 00;37;36;29
Have you ever fired a customer before? Yeah. I mean, I was going to relate this story. So as a professional in the sales, you know, being a comfort advisor, even at royalty, I teach my team. Also, not everyone is a great fit, maybe for royalty. And that’s okay. We got to understand that. That’s okay. And so when I go so there’s only so many opportunities of installs that I have per week okay.
00;37;37;01 – 00;37;58;28
If we do two installs a day, six days a week, that’s 12 opportunities. And I live in. And if you take that by four weeks right. That’s 12 2448 installs. So what does that mean? That means I live in a community of 100 and something people, and I could only take on a certain amount of people. So I think that I also have to be selfish.
00;37;58;29 – 00;38;21;15
And when I’m sitting there and I’m in my, you know, engineering a new system for them, I’m also interviewing them to see if they’re a right fit for my company or for me. Right, absolutely. And I think that’s 100% okay to do. I’m not talking about prejudging, right. I’m talking about asking the questions and gathering the facts and coming up with the conclusion.
00;38;21;16 – 00;38;44;15
Yeah, no, I agree, and I think there’s tactful ways that you can do that to in the home and offering, you know, solutions that you know, are maybe they’re very price conscious, propose the right solution. And if they choose to go with someone else, know that your proposal was what should have been done. And you can you can rest easy knowing that they didn’t want to go the right route, right?
00;38;44;17 – 00;39;02;10
Because by the way, that will also lead to customer experience. Challenges of a system of cheap system is going to create high static in a house. Guess what’s going to happen years down the road? It’s going to be challenges, right? So if you don’t address the static, even if it costs $2,000 more, they’re not really looking at the whole home performance.
00;39;02;11 – 00;39;18;20
Right? They’re looking at just the box swapping. And I know you guys speak the same language at royalty as we do a baron. We’re not box whoppers. We’re performance based contractors. So and if you’re going to be performance based, you’re going to solve a lot of challenges that might have reared their ugly head months or years down the road.
00;39;18;21 – 00;39;46;04
I have a client story that I would like to share real quick. Okay, unforeseen challenges are obstacles. Okay, so things happen at installs. And this was probably year one, probably one of our first or second installs. And what happened was we were doing a cutout on one of the supplies. And what I usually do is we teach our installers when they’re doing a cut out on a supply.
00;39;46;04 – 00;40;03;16
We have a box, we have a vacuum. We make sure that any residual falls, it’s in a box. It’s all enclosed. There’s not a bunch of dust and dirt everywhere. Well, what happened was the individual was cutting for some reason from the attic, and no one was down there to catch it. And what happened was that drywall that we just cut.
00;40;03;16 – 00;40;23;08
What do you think? It landed. Oh, no. There TV? No. And so when I heard that, my installer called me and said, hey, we got a problem. A sheetrock fell on this guy’s TV and it’s a broken TV. And I’m like, all right, well, what’s the size of the TV? He’s like, oh, it’s like a 67 inch TV, 62 inch.
00;40;23;08 – 00;40;45;19
And I was like, or 65 inch. I was like, okay, well, my mindset TVs aren’t that expensive anymore, right? I just bought a 100 inch TV for $1,000 on Black Friday. So I’m like, all right, well, that’s not a big loss. Well, no, you know what this TV had to be? It had to be like the ultra light TV 67in, and it was like a $3,000 TV.
00;40;45;23 – 00;41;06;13
So again, what I had to do was let my team know that, hey, as a new startup company and operations, things like this could completely deplete a new startup company. Oh, what we have to do is we have to identify and we have to understand that it is our job and our mission to keep their castle and their kingdom clean.
00;41;06;14 – 00;41;29;13
Okay. I don’t care what you guys do at your house or what your house looks like, but when we’re inside our clients houses, our goal in our mission is to leave cleaner than what we walked into. To the point where if I go to the job at the end and I still see trash or anything, not trash, but like little pieces of, of, you know, whatever, or I feel like their house is a little bit dirty, right?
00;41;29;16 – 00;41;46;25
I will offer to get their house clean for them. I say, hey, one of our guarantees here is as x, Y, and z. What that means is that we’ll pay for a professional cleaning company to clean up to your standards. You know, I know that this was a really big job, and I know that you probably want to come in to something nice and fresh.
00;41;46;25 – 00;42;08;26
So why don’t we have someone come in the following day and do a full cleanup of your house? Right. And that’s the level of expertise and professionalism that we deliver every single time. Where yesterday or the other day, I was at a install and it was a much larger installer. Guys were there probably 9:00, but they weren’t probably going to get done until about 1030.
00;42;09;03 – 00;42;28;28
And I had an earlier conversation with them around probably 7:00. And I was there and I said, hey, with you having small kids and everything, what I would like to do is with it being a later night install, I would really like to provide you and your family to go stay in a hotel on us, right? Oh, nice, because I want them to enjoy the process.
00;42;29;00 – 00;42;48;08
I want them to go tell somebody about it, because if I could have them tell someone about it. What do you mean? That experience is to them, right? Oh, man, I love that. That is so cool. You gave me goosebumps again, Jason, I love that look at you. I’m good at giving you goosebumps. Brad. You are, you are.
00;42;48;10 – 00;43;12;13
There is the wing. No, I mean, man, I could list and I won’t go into all the details, but I mean, we’ve had technicians cut through load bearing roof joists. We’ve had technicians be back out of fireplace and the bag blows and soot goes everywhere. And of course, it’s white carpet and white, you know, you know, furniture, you know, we’ve had knocked off chimney.
00;43;12;19 – 00;43;32;16
I mean, I, I could go back into like the third generation marble Cupid statue because we’re paying attention in around driveway with a box truck. I mean, I could go on and on. Accidentally left the gate open. So there are two dogs. Got out and ran around and the technicians had to go find them. I will say this.
00;43;32;17 – 00;44;04;04
We did have this was a couple of years ago, sort of a cool hero story. And maybe I’ll end with this one because it was unforeseen, but it ended really well. Love it. That’s cool. We had two electricians on a job in a neighborhood in the Bellingham area up here, and all of a sudden they smell smoke and and it’s coming from two houses down, and there is a fire coming out of the upstairs of the neighbor, two houses down they go.
00;44;04;05 – 00;44;26;10
Drop everything, run in, the door’s locked, kick the door down, and there is a lady passed out on the bottom floor of a house that is in the process of burning down. They pull her out. I’m not kidding. Save her life. Call 911 and they only keep it so they upstairs of the portion of the house burnt down versus the whole house.
00;44;26;10 – 00;44;50;11
If they would not have been there, the house would have burned down. And they were in the Bellingham Herald or Maine Paper as heroes for running over and helping this lady that had passed out unconscious on the bottom floor of her house with the top stairs, bedroom on fire. Right? That’s an unforeseen circumstances. We ended up saving a life and ended up saving a house right as a result of it.
00;44;50;16 – 00;45;12;13
But sometimes we can be the heroes too, when it comes to things like that. So, you know, Brad, as we’re ending the episode of Cracking the Code, what are some things that we highlighted in this episode? We didn’t talk about much over 45 minutes. Right? Just all these mistakes that we’ve made, the pain, the mistakes. We’re being very open and transparent, right?
00;45;12;13 – 00;45;33;19
Yeah. Well, I think if I, I hit a couple off the top of my head, one understand that unforeseen circumstances are going to happen, challenges are going to happen. And at the end of the day, if we can approach them with a the right mindset, a humble mindset, a learning mindset, and be willing to take care of our team and our customers will be successful.
00;45;33;20 – 00;45;56;10
And I think to be proactive, to like, identify, be willing to identify and ask the questions on where is communication breaking down, where our processes that have gaps, right. Identify those things so that when you do get to a point where you’re scaling your business, you’ve hopefully solved challenges before they even arise. Those would be two big ones for me.
00;45;56;12 – 00;46;23;04
So what about you? Jason I’ll throw it back to you. You know, the the unforeseen challenges of just how to go through day by day. You know, having the understanding that things might turn a little left, you know, it might not be it might not be straight and narrow. But at the end of the day, it’s how you go about it and how you bring those problems and situations to results.
00;46;23;04 – 00;46;30;08
And results go so much further. So until next time, a crack in the code. Late signing off.
