In this can't-miss episode of HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed, we sat down with industry titan Scott Bidwell, the mastermind who grew a $15 million company and is now steering the ship at Dallas Plumbing with transformative leadership and an insightful vision.
Scott shares his journey from a maintenance tech to a successful business owner and the tough financial lessons learned while rebranding and reshaping a commercial enterprise into a booming residential service. Learn how Scott uses hands-on tasks to instill core values and emphasizes the importance of letting your team fail, learn, and lead.
Key Takeaways:
Don't miss this illuminating episode filled with actionable wisdom that can transform your HVAC game.
Find Scott:
On The Web: https://www.dallasplumbing.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DallasPlumbingCompany
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dallas-plumbing-company/
Join Our Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed
Presented By On Purpose Media: https://www.onpurposemedia.ca/
For HVAC Internet Marketing reach out to us at info@onpurposemedia.ca or 888-428-0662
Sponsored By:
Chiirp: https://chiirp.com/hssr
Elite Call: https://elitecall.net
Coach2Close: https://coach-2-close.com/
In this can't-miss episode of HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed, we sat down with industry titan Scott Bidwell, the mastermind who grew a $15 million company and is now steering the ship at Dallas Plumbing with transformative leadership and an insightful vision.
Scott shares his journey from a maintenance tech to a successful business owner and the tough financial lessons learned while rebranding and reshaping a commercial enterprise into a booming residential service. Learn how Scott uses hands-on tasks to instill core values and emphasizes the importance of letting your team fail, learn, and lead.
Key Takeaways:
Don't miss this illuminating episode filled with actionable wisdom that can transform your HVAC game.
Find Scott:
On The Web: https://www.dallasplumbing.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DallasPlumbingCompany
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dallas-plumbing-company/
Join Our Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed
Presented By On Purpose Media: https://www.onpurposemedia.ca/
For HVAC Internet Marketing reach out to us at info@onpurposemedia.ca or 888-428-0662
Sponsored By:
Chiirp: https://chiirp.com/hssr
Elite Call: https://elitecall.net
Coach2Close: https://coach-2-close.com/
Hey, welcome back to another HVAC Success Secrets Revealed with Thaddeus and Evan. Thad was on the show, but he's not on the intro, but today we had on Scott Bidwell. He is the general manager for Dallas Plumbing, 120 year old organization down in the Dallas area surprise, but Scott ran a company himself, grew it up to you were, 15 million mark, right in September, 2020.
Scott Bidwell:Yes, sir.
Evan Hoffman:Yeah. So grew a company to 15 million, sold that, exited there, was brought in as a general manager for Dallas Plumbing and has now completely turned that organization around as well. We had a fantastic episode diving into so many different topics about that transition, about running a company and what all that takes. Scott, what were some of your favorite nuggets from this episode? Just we talked about KPIs and management and leading a team making sure that everybody's in line for a successful environment. I think those are real key points. Golden nuggets, man, a lot of them. There was a ton in this episode. I truly, you're a wealth of knowledge. You've been around the industry for a minute from a service tech back in 2006, maintenance tech in 2006 to where you're at now I really love talking about the culture aspect, leading people you hired them for a reason. So how can we help them to make great decisions for the organization? I think your process around that was fantastic. We talked about projections as well for 2024 and what's coming up, and how you can set yourself up for success as a business and the secret to making sure that your dispatch board is full week in and week out, whether the calls are coming in or not.
Scott Bidwell:I say three words to that outbounding, outbounding, outbounding, super important.
Evan Hoffman:Very important and I love that part of the conversation and then also vetting vendors, it doesn't matter if it's a coach, a marketing company, a software company, do they fit your organization and how it is that you work and Scott walked through some questions that you need to ask them. We definitely want to hear from you for the listeners as well. So leave a comment down below. What was your favorite part of the episode? And now a quick word from our sponsors and enjoy the show.
Thaddeus Tondu:We wouldn't be able to do our podcast without our sponsors and in no particular order. Oh, a new one Coach 2 Close, Elite Call, Chiirp and On Purpose Media. So Evan hit us with the read outs.
Evan Hoffman:You got it. So for us, we've got Chiirp one of our most loyal sponsors that we've had for a long time. Transform your home service business with Chiirp. They're the ultimate automation toolbox. Capture more leads, connect instantly, skyrocket your sales. Chiirp integrates seamlessly with platforms like ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, and Sera. Automate your texts, your emails, even ringless voicemails, boost your Google reviews and your customer loyalty and when we look at the season that we're heading into right now, especially in the HVAC trade, having a properly done, properly executed outreach program is going to be essential to succeeding here in the spring. So reach out to Chiirp and using our particular code, chiirp.com/hssr, you get 25 percent off your first three months. So reach out to them today and book your demo and get your discount because everybody loves free shit. Next up, we got Coach 2 Close, our newest sponsor of the show. We've had their sister company on Free 2 Grow several times on the episode talking about CSRs, but they have launched a new segment of their business, Coach 2 Close, which is dealing with call by call management your technicians, they have daily opportunities, not only to fix problems, but significantly enhance a business's profitability. We all know technicians are techs. They're there to repair. They're there to service. They're there to take care of the customer. They're not salespeople without the right approach. These opportunities are just slipping away. So you want to have a comprehensive onboarding process, which coach calls has their personal life support and all aspects, exceptional expertise and readiness to assist significant revenue growth. In fact, one of their first customers that they brought on increased their average ticket from 600 to 1500. truly remarkable after only five tremendous growth there. They have a transformative impact on your business. So you want to make sure that you reach out to them today. coach2close.com to get a very comprehensive, detailed look into your business and what it is that you've got going on and how they can assist you.
Thaddeus Tondu:Sounds like the worth, the price of admission right there.
Evan Hoffman:Absolutely. And last but not least, first, we've got Elite Call, On Purpose Media is last. Elite Call is a U. S. based call center champion for the home service industry for over 20 years. They've been assisting with outbounding databases and filling dispatch boards with lucrative service and sales opportunities, boosting memberships, like nobody's business, which again. Heading into the shoulder season, incredibly important for your business. They're dedicated teams. Don't just make calls. They directly integrate appointments into your CRM, giving you seamless experience. Don't let your competition get ahead. Let elite call connect with your customers today. Visit elitecall.net to learn more and last, we've got those guys from On Purpose Media. You can enhance your online presence with On Purpose Media, your go to home service marketing expert for everything web design, SEO, and PPC. You want to make sure that you're showing up online. You want to make sure that people are converting from your website to actual book calls on your web, on your job board. Visit onpurposemedia.ca to go ahead and get your lead generation powerhouse in order.
Thaddeus Tondu:All right without further ado.
Evan Hoffman:I'm out of breath.
Thaddeus Tondu:We'll see Scott on the other side.
INTRO:Welcome to HVAC Success Secrets Revealed, a show where we interview industry leaders and disruptors, revealing the success secrets to create and unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Now your hosts, Thaddeus and Evan.
Evan Hoffman:Scott.
Scott Bidwell:What's up?
Evan Hoffman:Welcome, my friend.
Scott Bidwell:Cheers. I don't, have the drink,
Thaddeus Tondu:I have one of those. I have one of those too. Just beer first.
Evan Hoffman:I don't. I've got the truly the most Canadian whiskey you can have with maple syrup mixed into it. So it's quite delicious.
Scott Bidwell:That sounds good.
Evan Hoffman:It's really good. Really good.
Scott Bidwell:Might have to hit one of those tonight.
Evan Hoffman:Scott, why don't you give us the rundown? How did you get to where you're at? What was it that initially attracted you to the trades and becoming a maintenance tech?
Scott Bidwell:Money. I was actually doing quite well at a company called Card Service International in Arizona. I was just phone sales basically and my brother my older brother had gotten a job as at a maintenance company at a HVAC company doing maintenance and he started killing it right off the bat and just saw the potential decided to make a jump. No fairytale dreams or anything like that. It's not like daddy used to do it and I held the flashlight or anything like that. It was just, man, to tell you the truth.
Evan Hoffman:No, that's fine. That's it's honest and that's that's what we're all about. So you got into the trade now, your maintenance tech. Took you four years before launching the company. Why did you start your first company?
Scott Bidwell:All along, so right when I started, I mean, I had like two days of training in the field and at the time I didn't even know what a thermostat was, but all along when I was coming into it, I was like, Hey, this is easy. I was just selling like day one and it just came natural to me and throughout the entire, I was there for two and a half years working at that company. I worked from maintenance tech to to comfort advisor and, all of that in between not really a service tech by trade or anything like that. I never, got into the nuts and bolts of it. I just enjoy selling it. But just the sales part is just, it was a driven, I was always driven and before that, my brother and I had a landscaping business. So we kind of always worked for ourselves. So I was like, man, I think I could do this and I had the previous job, I was working at a call center basically. So I was like, why don't we just do this? We'll start up a call center and just determined we could do it. We tried a small little business for a minute and it didn't work and we went back to work for a different company and it was actually the guy that I was working for. He was trying to buy this other company and he was using me. He was like, Hey, why don't we buy this? And you can run that company. I was like, fantastic. sounds like a dream. He backed out of that deal. But I still stayed in contact with the the guy who owned solar bear at the time, and he had just started a year ago and was struggling couldn't get off the ground. So anyways, through our conversation, I said, look, I don't have any money. I can't buy the company, like what we were talking about, but we can make something happen. So we made something happen in, we got off the ground, right? There was April of 2010 is when we opened our doors officially for as the owners of the company.
Thaddeus Tondu:It's funny because you have the, you had the business experience and you went back into work for somebody. Now you're back to being a business owner and then back to, from what I understood from the intro to helping run a company. A lot of people don't have necessarily the running the business skill to start. They go straight from tech to running business and there's got to be some learning curves along the way, what would you say would be your top one or two things if somebody were to be going from transitioning in the field to running a business that they should look at?
Scott Bidwell:The first thing is know your numbers and just the four sponsors you had you kind of run down the whole business operation right there that with those sponsors And it's having, it's surrounding yourself with the right people. Get the knowledge and get it as early as you can. Like I said, a technician, they don't know how to run a business and there's a lot to running a business that is more than just, let me go turn some wrenches and sell some stuff. You got to do the marketing. You got to figure out the bookkeeping. You got to figure out all the taxes and regulations and all the hoops that you can and can't jump through. To get to where you need to be and it's, again, back to learning how to communicate with the customers and stay in contact with them through different levels of marketing. Have a good good coaching program that would help you. That would be the first thing I would do starting over, is start with a coaching program way earlier in, in the industry and then it was a good marketing team to get your name out there and get a brand going.
Thaddeus Tondu:On Purpose Media for your marketing team. That's an easy layup. The coaching program, there's a lot out there, right? You look at, and I'm not going to name any names just cause I don't want to leave anybody out and they might be watching and they might get mad. I'm looking at analyzing coaching programs and taking a deep dive through them. If you were to, look at things you want to know or things that you want to ask the coaching program before you give them your money What would some of those things be?
Scott Bidwell:First and foremost, you got to make sure that they're a good fit. you can't get into bed with with any vendor or organization that is not a good fit and if, just like you, you were sitting here having a conversation, if I can't do that with somebody I'm trying to get into bed with, and it's obviously not going to work out. There are some of them out there, some coaching companies that are very professional in their approach and I'm not that person, I'm not that run it by the book and all of that. So that's definitely one is make sure they're a good fit. Questions to ask there's so many to so many, but everybody's good. Everybody's going to look for, I think a lot of people anyways aren't going to look for the quick fixes. And I think that's the worst approach. I think it's, take small bits and you want to, I think you want to ask, you want to find somebody who's talking that, that type of language. Anybody who's saying, Hey, I'm going to turn your business over overnight and be a five star Google tomorrow morning on Google. That's pie in the sky stuff and you want to make sure that they're not talking to you with pie in the sky type attitude.
Thaddeus Tondu:Not blowing smoke up your ass.
Scott Bidwell:Yeah, exactly.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah. But it's funny cause you mentioned the, like I wrote down, there's no silver bullet and I think a lot of business owners and shit, look what's going to come in 2024. They're going to look for it. They're going to want it. They're going to say, Oh, what's this magic pill that's going to drastically change my business overnight.
Scott Bidwell:There isn't one. There is not one. You should have been working on that magic pill for the last three years building up to this point cause we all went through it. I mean, I was in the industry in 2008 and when the market crashed and the kind of it's, it's, where we're at, that's what everybody's talking about. It's this year was the buildup to it and this year is the crashes is what everybody, what the big market fear is, right? And the companies that make it through are the companies that made, put those processes in place ahead of time and, they capitalize like you were talking about with one of the, the sponsors, they're capitalizing on memberships and capitalizing on recapturing your own customers because, look, people aren't going to be, people are going to be afraid to jump ship during a volatile market and, when I say jump ship, jump ships from what they're comfortable with from another company. So they're going to continue to go after, if my system breaks, I'm going to go after that. I'm not going to be seeking new ventures. And that's the same. That's where the economy is that too, people are going to not seek new ventures with their money and it's, that's, what's going to tighten the market and obviously cause some issues.
Evan Hoffman:Well, and that's interesting. We, so we had Matt Michel on when we were down in AHR and I'm really excited for that episode to release cause it, it was a great conversation around projections into 2024 and one of the things that he talks about was during tightenings of the economy. Whether that's a recession or crash or whatever the fuck you want to label it, it doesn't matter. It's a tightening. It's a contraction. People will spend money on affordable luxuries. They'll go buy their Starbucks, right? Because it feels like I'm doing something good for me and it only costs me five bucks, six bucks, seven bucks. When it comes to home comfort, how can you position the product in such a way where it's going to appeal to them in that way and make it as affordable as possible.
Scott Bidwell:I think I'm sure that you've heard a lot of people talking about, the bandaid repairs versus a permanent solution and, yeah, absolutely. But the biggest way to position is to make sure that you're prominent and you're able to offer both and not just be one sided. There's a lot of companies out there that are just 100 percent focused on equipment replacement, that's all they go to, and there's companies out there that, they don't do the services and that's not what their focuses are and being able to train and teach your technicians to go in with the mentality and not have blinders on and be able to go, Hey, you know what? I got your Starbucks option and I got your top of the line option. Everything in between, back to coaching companies, there's coaching companies out there that tell you to present six different options and it's all, backed by study data and things like that and it's great. And it goes from basic, economical repairs all the way up to the most premium option and most permanent solution that they could buy. Which is everything that you have to offer and it's being able to train your technicians and not just your technicians to tell you the truth, it's your entire staff your dispatchers have to know it, your call center has to know it, your managers have to know it, everybody in between has to know. How to develop treat those customers like that to where they can, you can give them those options and not paint them in the corner to make them feel like, you're you're like the Starbucks, this is the best I can afford, or I'm doing this because it's something affordable for me, but if I come, if you go to certain people and you say, hey, I this may be out of your budget. You're putting a bad feeling in there towards that situation and you gotta be able to manage that whole process and train, teach, coach, manage all of that stuff through the, with the technicians.
Evan Hoffman:So what kinds of conversations do you have with your team to help reframe their own perspective or their own experience when it comes to spending, when it comes to what they're doing with their money versus a customer and presenting options so that a customer can decide,
Scott Bidwell:I trained my team to buy you like you're trying to, you gotta be the, be what you're trying to sell. you can't sell a BMW and be a Yugo shopper. right? It's just not gonna, it's not gonna be the greatest of fit. Now some people can do that, they'll have that mindset of, to be able to do that. But really it's training the mindset. That's you hit it on the head there what is the mindset? You just have to shift that mindset. It's take the blinders off and that's the hardest thing. You said it, I don't know if it was an intro or what, but the technicians go out to repair. And that's what the, that's what it is. And, but in reality, you're there to provide a service. They brought you out there for a service, not just to fix their system, but to do so many other things for them. And that's what sets apart those people that are going to succeed in the industry.
Thaddeus Tondu:It's understanding that their money isn't your money. And also knowing that when you talk about giving the options, it's good, better, best when you can do the good, better, best, or even you can show repairs or you can show install prices. Now you're giving them the power to choose the customer that is right. And understanding your texts and your texting to understand that as well.
Scott Bidwell:Great. Not spending your own money that's conversations you do have to have with texts. Especially the ones that are afraid to say, it's a 500 capacitor and I know this cause they're thinking of the customers mindset. It's a 5 part. Okay. You're not spending, stop spending your money. You're not spending your money. Go out there and take that mindset. You got to fix that mindset. It's honestly, it's very hard to do sometimes.
Evan Hoffman:I was just going to point out really quick as a technician, you don't understand the full expenses of running a business. You don't have to buy the truck, insure the truck outfit, the truck. Ensure the business, pay the rent, like all of those other things go into that 5 part, which helps pay to run the business so that you can deliver an exceptional experience and replace that part.
Thaddeus Tondu:It's funny because I was about to say the exact same thing, but also follow up with the part of what's your thoughts on open book policy or at least educating your team on all the, you don't have to go to the exact numbers, right? But understanding to know, okay, we charge 1, 000. For this, whatever repair, right? I'm just gonna use round hole numbers to let them know that, oh, the owner's not making they think about their salary and if it takes them an hour and they're earning a hundred bucks an hour there's 900 that the owner's making but taking that backwards and actually walking them through exercises on all the expenses that go into a business Have you ever done that before? And if so, or if not If so, why should more people do it? And if not, how come you didn't do it?
Scott Bidwell:So that's funny is one of the things that I had to do here was reframe. I, everybody here was used to selling it was an hourly company, hourly plus parts. That's what the, that's how they charge for the last 103 years or 120 years. So I had to break that mentality and yes, I've done it. I've done it here. I've done it. I did it at my company. And whenever you have the, daddy Mustafa's about pricing and this, that it's like, Hey, I tell you what I understand, I understand you're charging a lot of money and I understand that it seems like it's a lot, but let's go through this process and I actually learned this from one of the coaching programs that I dealt with it's called a one truck exercise and it's literally, I have it on a piece of paper and I sit down with them and say, Hey, to congratulations that yesterday you own your own business. Go ahead and put your name into your business down, go ahead, give your business a name. Daddy is home comfort or whatever, and we just, I just start listing off expenses. Hey, what do you think? The first thing you're going to need is you're going to need a truck to go out and run calls, right? So what is your truck costs? Some people are the frugal guys. They're like, I'm going to buy a 2001, whatever, Chevy Chevy van, and the rest of some of them are, I'm going to buy the best of the best on the market. It's fantastic. How much does that truck cost? Put it down and then, divided by 12 and you go through all of that stuff and at the end, cause you're basically coming up with your billable hour at the end of that conversation. And it's this is, you start asking people, all right, what's your billable hour? What's your billable hour? And these guys they're having numbers, come up with numbers going through that process. There are three times what we're charging. It's okay, now you see what it costs to run a business and I'm not even charging you. I'm charging a third of what you're trying to charge. So go out there and sell some shit.
Thaddeus Tondu:And that's even a better exercise in my opinion then open book policy, I also agree with the part of showing some of the numbers or percentages and breaking it down and so they understand all the things that go into it. We have the same thing with our team. Hey, if you ever want to have questions about running a business, it's up. We're an open book, right? In fact, I do, Evan, I want to do, I run an episode of me being away for a week and a half. It's been, I've been taking lots of copious notes, but the other exercise there too, is now, and this goes back to the Cutco days, right? When Evan and I used to sell Cutco and taught people Cutco. Now we had to go through an exercise of teaching 19 year olds the value of a 1, 500 set of knives.
Scott Bidwell:No, I paid 3, 000 for mine, right?
Thaddeus Tondu:Oh, you got hosed. You must've got the ultimate set, right? But the idea is okay and it's the whole reframing and I love that exercise. I think more people need to go through something like that and it's probably part of the coaching program as well. But if not, maybe it's just enough. Scott, he'll tell you how to do it.
Scott Bidwell:Yeah, that's so the, so the one truck exercise and you keep, you mentioned the open books. I am out, absolutely now. I don't think I don't think I need to worry about or not. I don't know not to worry about, but I don't think it's great to try to teach technicians and dispatchers and managers all of the line items on a P and L. But it's not necessary. It's not knowing the numbers. It's knowing what the numbers do, and it's knowing why they're there. So that's what I think a lot of people fail or lack in management or development in their leadership skills is having people and teaching people the wise. It's great to, snap that and say, Hey, you got to run this call by call process and you're going to do it. If you don't know why and what it affects then you're going to hold, you're going to fight it, fight that process. But once you know the wise, you peel back that onion and you show them, Hey, I'm having you do this. Because six months from now, eight months from now, a year from now, when this customer calls in with an issue, we have this record, that's why we take these notes. That's why we put all these pictures in here. hell, we get, we all get sued right at some point in time and it's never the call you ran yesterday that you have the highest recollection of it's something that pops up two years, two years ago that you were out there and you did something and whatever happened, right? And then now they're trying to come after you for new equipment or whatever the thing is. And if you have your notes, then, and of course you have to trust the process of your technicians, but if you have those notes, and that's why it's look, it's not, I'm wanting you to do all these notes today. It's because when that happens two years from now, I want to be able to look back at this and say, okay, there's a clear indication of exactly what happened, what you did. Here's pictures. And, it protects us there from liabilities as well as just for future purposes, looking at future sales opportunities.
Evan Hoffman:Jocko Willick talks about that in his books, right? It doesn't matter any of the three, he talks about it in all of them. The idea of making sure that your troops, your team understands why it is that they're going to do what they're going to do. If they don't have that, why behind it, they're never going to move forward for you. So I love that. Staying on the 2024 subject, what do you foresee? What are you preparing for at Dallas plumbing for 2024? What are you expecting? What are you projecting? What are some of your goals even? So that you guys can come out on top.
Scott Bidwell:So my biggest belief is we don't participate. So we shut out the noise. It's exactly what we, it's exactly what I did. It's at one source with COVID. We grew in one source. We literally doubled our size that year and it was just cause we just didn't participate. We didn't, turn off the negative crap, get it out of your mind, and this is what we're going to do and we'll figure out how we're going to get there after we've already got there. Then I can look back and tell you how we got here. But I have no intention of slowing down. I have no intention. In fact, I want to, I'd love to double the size of the company. Unfortunately, I don't have full access and control over the marketing spins and all of that stuff. But that's my goal here is so I have a, my, my current budget is at about 13 and a half million this year, it's 10 percent over, over what it was last year. And I'd like to see us in at about 16 to 17 million and my managers. are the ones that came up with that number. So that wasn't just me. So I, have them participate in this is, I already know what I want to do, but I want you to tell me what we're going to do and through that conversation, we built that our own personal budget ourselves. So we know what we're tracking to do.
Evan Hoffman:Can you walk through that, go deeper into that, getting your team involved in the goal setting and the planning, having them buy into the goal? What does that process look like?
Thaddeus Tondu:Oh, and even, and even the part two of them coming up with their numbers, even though you have your own numbers I like that.
Scott Bidwell:So a lot of it is looking at historical data and then projecting towards the future. I literally, I live my life, I'm like a, what is it? Fast and furious. I live my life days at a time, one quarter at a time, not a quarter mile, but a quarter of a year. I'm always 90 days ahead of the team and in other words, I'm looking right now I'm looking at what's going on in April, May, June, as opposed to focusing on what's going on today. I expect them to focus on today while we're going through the, going to the motions. So through that, we have our daily management huddles, things like that with my team and we go through the numbers and it's okay, this is what I thought you were supposed to do. What'd you do? then I'll start teaching and showing them, Hey, this is how I came up with my number. Look at the, if you know your closing percentages your average tickets, things like that, it's all numbers and as long as the, as long as we create the opportunities, and if the opportunities aren't there, then we have to find ways to create the opportunities. So if we're not given the opportunity, we have to make the opportunity, but it's looking through the, looking through those numbers, knowing those numbers and using that to predict what's going to happen today. If I know my average tickets, 1, 500, then I count my calls on the board. Times 1, 500. There's my number for the day. And then, how many of those are going to flip into leads then? How many of those are going to convert? How many of those you're going to, so it's just, it's knowing that information and that's why I think the open book is huge because they have to know that information. You can't manage or lead a team without having that knowledge and all of that stuff. So I think it's just a combination of all of it, having them have that knowledge and understanding of what those numbers are and what levers to pull to affect each of those numbers when, whenever you need to, like I said, if you don't have the calls on the board in the morning guess what, I still need 25, 000 today. Find it. You gotta go dig for it somewhere and that's, it's all of that. So knowing their capabilities, going back to the question, knowing their capabilities. I say, okay, guys, this is what you did last year and that going through, you know, I say, for instance, typically companies look for about a 15%, year over year growth, right? That's like standard, right? I don't know if I know there's some that are shooting higher, some are shooting lower. Some don't even know what they're shooting for. They're just letting it happen. But when you go through, you set your goals, set your budgets like this is historically. So I share what the averages are. This is what we did and I don't think you guys are basic bitches and I don't think you guys think you're basic bitches. So what do you think you're going to do? And no, the same thing with the same thing with the one truck exercise. What are you going to do? And they put it down. I was like, okay how much are you going to commit to that? This is not just a, we're not just picking a number. If you're going to say you're going to do it, we're going to do it. And we're going to collectively come to those numbers together as a team. And once we have that, it's like, all right, you sure that you should going to do it, Evan, you're going to do it. Great. Let's go. That's our budget. that's how we get to those numbers. It's really just a collective collaborative conversation making sure that they have a reward to what if we hit this goal? And then we also have to have a leverage if we don't. And I'm a person again, this is terminology straight from one of my coaching programs, but I adapted that a lot of his mentalities and I really do live a lot of the ways I was taught through him. But literally, look, if I set a goal. I'm going to set it to the point where I know I'm going to hit it because if I don't, I'm willing to cut off my left arm if I don't. That's my leverage. And that's something that, I try to instill within the teams. Look, we were going to set goals. But we're going to set goals that you can hit. They're going to be, they're going to be smart goals and we're going to go to it now all we got to do is push everybody in that direction. Get everybody, the culture. Yeah. That's one of the things that earlier we were talking to the, I'm big on culture it's having that, having everybody on the boat, rowing in the same direction.
Thaddeus Tondu:I do want to get into the, to the culture talk, perhaps after the random question generator. When it looks, when you go to the budget and looking at those and I love the goals, I love the smarter goals too. Big fan of those when you what is it specific, measurable, attainable, realistic timeout. That's the smarter goals for those who are wondering, just Google it and you'll find it. When you look at your budget and going back to it, how often are you revising and adjusting your budget?
Scott Bidwell:So I have my budget that's given to me by my corporate office and I run that and usually, anything I'm projecting is going to be higher than what they're giving me. So I'm automatically hitting their numbers. I'm looking at it daily. that's the first thing in the morning I come in and I look at what my pace is. I look at what we did yesterday. What are each department paces to our budget and if what we're tracking and that projects what the conversations for the day will be is, hey, we're behind budget. We're above budget. Great. Let's move this, let's move this. So we start making, chess moves based off of that. I don't think you can ever get that kind of achievement without just constantly looking at those numbers and the more of the numbers you look into this you start to see more of the cause and effect of what it does in the long run.
Evan Hoffman:Let's peel that back a little bit too. So let's say you're maybe three different stages of a company. The under a million, the million to 5 million or the 5 million and up. What are the numbers that you're looking at each of those stages to know the pulse of your company? Because at the end of the day, when you're 5 million and up and where you're at 10 million, you've got leaders in your organization who are also looking at numbers that are specific to their departments when you're at under a million, you are the leader and you might only have a couple of technicians. So how did those numbers change and evolve as you continue to grow?
Scott Bidwell:Honestly, I don't think they do. The numbers stay the same. You just have more people and more support that you have to pay for. So as I hire two technicians, I have to increase my, my, my revenue by that, which means I have to increase my marketing, which, you know, so I, you have to increase everything together, as you grow. certain formulas, it's, I've always thought four, four technician, one sales guy, two or two install crews, and for every four technicians, one sales guy, two install crews, I need a manager or a leader. Not necessarily a manager, people misuse the word manager, but there's gotta be somebody above that. So whether that be me. Or another appointed person, but as you grow and evolve, that's the formula I've always used and I know, I've always done most of my business historically has come from outbound calling. I haven't waited for my phone to ring. I've been very aggressive in my approach of getting calls. So I was able to control a lot more of my predictability but for every four technicians, I needed to have eight callers on the phone and it's all numbers at four technicians, two one sales guy and an install crew you're probably at a 3 million run rate right there and so that's, so for every four, you need, you just step up just any org chart or any any military organization, whatever. It's like you got four soldiers. You need a leader. You need a first sergeant. You got a commander. You got a commander. You need a general and it just rolls up that way as you transition through the times, I don't think the numbers change because you still got to run a call and you still, you got to track your average ticket, your conversion rate and those sorts of things. You got to know those numbers and once you know those numbers, then it's just a matter of for instance, again, back to averages. If the average conversion rate is 85 and I'm converting at 60 I have room to improve there before I ever focus on anything else. But once I get there and once I have, once I'm meeting those metrics or KPIs that I set for myself, or we set for the company, then I know the only next thing I can do is add more calls once I add more calls, I gotta add another tech. And once I got, then it is just stair stepping it up that way.
Thaddeus Tondu:That makes sense. For anybody, rewind about a minute and a half minute and 45 seconds. Maybe two minutes. Ben, when you're listening, there's a little circle on the bottom left hand side. It'll go back either 15 seconds or 30 seconds. Just hit that a few times listen to the part where he said he didn't wait for his phone to ring. Most of his success came from outbounding that's gold right there. That is worth. listening to this entire fucking podcast. So it's that nugget right there. Dude, it was coming up in 2024, right? Hey, you can't do it yourself. There's three sponsors that are on here that can. Super important. I want to look for, I want to play pretend here for a second, just because I'm in Cancun and while I was on the beach playing sandcastles today with my kid.
Scott Bidwell:Absolutely.
Thaddeus Tondu:Okay. I was trying to build them. He kept destroying him. Hey, it was a love, hate relationship.
Evan Hoffman:Who are you hating?
Thaddeus Tondu:The fact that I couldn't build my damn sandcastles.
Scott Bidwell:Kids get bullied by some six year old on the beach. Right?
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah, two and a half year old kid just screaming, I want to take the sandcastles, I want to stop them. Anyways, if you're on a beach somewhere, what are your three metrics as a business owner that you want to see every single day to measure the success of your business?
Scott Bidwell:So conversion rate, average ticket, obviously
Evan Hoffman:You want to see those daily or weekly or monthly or quarterly.
Thaddeus Tondu:So these are to gauge the overall success of your business and the health of your business and so for me, if I'm sitting here, I want to know, okay, do we have any new sales? Do we have for our marketing agency, right? It's like new sales coming in lost clients that are going out and revenue where we're at and maybe collections.
Scott Bidwell:Yeah. This is the daily check in that I do in the morning is it's, so it's the same thing, I guess, what did we do yesterday and sales and revenue what's projected to go in today? And how does that match our budget run? really what we check in every day with. If I was in Cancun right now, right alongside of you, that's what I'd be, that's what I'd be focused on. What did we do yesterday? Where were we at? What are we, what do we have going in the ground today? And what do we need to do? For instance, if I start the day and I've got, my run rate is supposed to be at 30, 000 for the day and you tell me you've got 10, 000 going, I'm just like, okay, what are we going to do to get some same day work to fill that 20, 000 gap? So it's having that, having that knowledge and focusing on that. Cause you can never get a revenue. You can't you can never make up a lost revenue day. So if I have, if my daily goal is 30, 000 and I fall short of that goal. Then I can't make that up. The, you can't make it up. I can sell more tomorrow, but I could have sold more tomorrow by increasing, and it's still had that increased revenue day yesterday. But yeah, I think those are the two conversations and then back, what you said is like where are we tracking and day to day from a business standpoint, I don't think I don't think I've ever attracted like, number customers lost or things like that. I just overall, we're going to lose X amount of customers every month here and there. That's just going to happen. They're going to go shop at Joe's heat them and cheat them or whatever other businesses up the road.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah. The customers thing was on our business. Yeah.
Scott Bidwell:The big, metrics. if I was out of the office for an extended period of time, like even a week. Then obviously the what I'm going to look at is going to change a little bit because it's, how are we training? How, what is those trends and making sure that the managers are focused on the same thing that we're focused on?
Evan Hoffman:Makes sense to me.
Thaddeus Tondu:Anyways random question generator brought to you by On Purpose Media. You never want a homeowner DIY their furnace repair or air conditioner. So why are you still building your own website? Leave your marketing to the experts at On Purpose Media. I love that. All right, Scott, we're going to read off actually, we're not going to read off the questions. You get to choose what question do you want? Do you want us to give you the random question one?
Scott Bidwell:So it's either random question one, random question two, or random question three. Is that what you're saying? Let's go with I like being on the top. So let's go number three.
Thaddeus Tondu:If you could only eat one cuisine for the rest of your life? What food would it be?
Scott Bidwell:Okay let's go with number, don't you think? My question is everybody says tacos or pizza, right? And steak. I'm a steak man. give me an eight ounce ribeye for every meal.
Thaddeus Tondu:I had a ribeye last night. Sadly it wasn't an Alberta beef level or probably what you get down in Texas, it was tough.
Evan Hoffman:My cows are a little lean down there or what?
Thaddeus Tondu:it's not go there. Nothing. I say will be good. No, I joke. I joke there. This actually wasn't actually bad beef. They're just not, they're not a typical North American beef. I want to get into the culture part because you mentioned we've alluded to it a few times. We talked about it. You're the culture ninja is the sales ninja has alluded to and it's I think that the part that I want to get in and hone in on is how can somebody coming in? And I know we're keeping on this 2024 wavelength, but making sure that your culture is sound and making sure that people in your team aren't going to be panicking. Some people probably are going to be panicking because they've heard about it and I still reference the map, Michelle it's 3 percent contraction in the market is considered a major recession. So it's not a huge number when you think about. 3 percent obviously trillions and trillions it is, but what are you doing and what can people do to help, team morale as it comes into what's going to be a tight season?
Scott Bidwell:Love your people and say what you're going to do and do what you're going to do, what you say. I think that's super important. You know, I think a lot of us as leaders make a lot of empty promises, Hey, yeah, they don't really listen to their teams and, they might say, let's, for instance, your CSRs are just constantly complaining about the bathrooms. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to take care of that. Don't worry. we need to have a good sales month. We've had a good sales month the last three months, whatever, whatever the managers put off on why we can't take care of that today take action, that's the huge thing for instance, in that situation man, I didn't even know there was something wrong with the bathroom. What do we need to do? This is this. Okay, great. I got a guy coming out tomorrow to fix it and just take that action to, to get it done within your people in your organization. I say love on your people because that could mean a lot of things and, knowing your team's wise, knowing your people and what drives them, because it ain't money for everybody. I can promise you that and trying to support those needs and that helps to, get those people fired up to work for you and again, back to the we don't participate, helping people block out the negative noise in their life and, trying to teach them that and help them with that is super important because. Everything can happen when you go home, whatever you ran into the door, wife, kids, stress, taxes, whatever it was, if you bring that to work, that's gonna affect everybody here at the office and it's gonna, it's gonna infect us like oil on a ship. And it's gonna project out in the field when you go out in the, and run those calls. So that's super important, is keeping that, that negative stuff and negative energy away from the office. But overall, culture for me is sharing the vision, sharing, you're going back to the open book, that's something that, you know, for instance, if I'm an owner and my ultimate goal is to dominate my industry and become a 50 million company, and I want to make a million five a year, and I don't share that with my team. They have no clue what the hell we're in business for. So share that vision, whatever it is, if you want to be, the best service company in the industry, if you want to be the most profitable company in the industry, if you want to be the fastest growing, whatever that vision is, share it with your team, get them in the boat burn the ships conversation. I don't know if you guys have ever heard that the full story or not, but we always talk about burn the ships and stuff is same thing, get them all on the ship. Rowing for that vision, have a vision, have a purpose, have the core values and get everybody on the team lined up with all of that and that's going to propel you 10 times faster than anything else you can do.
Evan Hoffman:When you went through all of that, as you transitioned into your role as GM with Dallas plumbing, the team was, then the company was mostly commercial. You transitioned it into residential. You had a large, Turnover in the business. Walk us through how hard that might've been in some cases. And the same time, maybe it was easy because you were doing what was right for the technician in that.
Scott Bidwell:Yeah, it was it was a challenge. hard, easy, nothing we do is hard or nothing we do is easy and I don't think anything we do is extremely hard. We're not rocket scientists or anything like that, and we're not our brains that much. But when it comes to that kind of the transition first thing I did was, when I came down here, I started assessing the situation learning exactly where things, where we were missing the marks and where things were going and then again, I opened the conversation to these guys that had never seen this before. But I said, guys, just so you know, January, February, this is what we did. This is what our goal was. This is how much money we lost. And, it wasn't just, we were falling behind target. We were losing money when I first got here, it was probably the second payroll, but before I really saw the payroll numbers and we had done the payroll was 150, 000 and we had done like 200, 212, 000 in revenue. It was like, this is, you cannot keep going like this. So literally it was like, I called the manager's meeting and say, all right, this is the budget. I'm not sure and I started asking questions. Do you know what this means? Engaged all of their knowledge and what they didn't know. It was never shared with them. And then I showed him that number. I said, now, what do you think? The first thing everybody said what's the fear started coming in? Are we closing the doors? What's going to happen? No, that's what we're doing. We're going to fix this by knowing it. Now we know what we need to fix. And that conversation led to getting my managers to actually be the one. So I knew what our ultimate goal was going to have to happen was we were shutting down the commercial and the new construction site. I knew that, but I got them to make that decision by showing them the numbers and saying, Hey guys, what do you think of this? And the first thing out of the commercial manager's mouth was we got to stop this division. And he was the biggest advocate for it before. It was like, this is what keeps us busy. it does keep you busy. Everybody's out there doing a lot of nothing, but he was the first one. I was like, yeah, we can't operate like this. We got to shut it down. I'm like, is that what you guys want? They're like, yeah, because if I would have come in like a wrecking ball and started shutting it down. I'd have been the big bad wolf everybody, nobody's ever going to follow in the culture line with me, but allow them to make the decisions and then support their decisions with, this is our decision. Let's go.
Thaddeus Tondu:And I love the part about allowing them to come to their own conclusions, and really enhancing and supporting that. I didn't get to reference Jocko Willink as a leadership strategy, tactics, phenomenal book and he even talks about that when somebody comes to you with an idea too and this is also the converse of kind of the same, but a little bit different. They come to you and their idea is 80 percent of good is what you would think it was going to be. Let them run with it because guess what? They're 80 percent of their own idea is going to be better than a hundred percent of your idea. Now, 7%, okay, you might have to ask a question or two and lead them to the path. 60% ask them more questions. And if they had to, 30% is good of what you would think okay, maybe you just need to cancel and say, Hey, go back to the job board. But there's an arc to that. How do you plant those seeds with inside of it? Now education showing is one thing, but now if you're trying to plant some seeds to be able to allow them to come up with these sorts of decisions on their own, what are you doing in a cultural aspect to be able to help that?
Scott Bidwell:Man, you ask pretty tough questions.
Thaddeus Tondu:I like to call them great questions myself.
Scott Bidwell:Great questions. I'm sorry. That's a great question. When you were going through that, you actually brought up, it made me think of the book, one minute manager. I don't know if you've ever read that, but it's a good book and that's that mentality is like when you said the, their ideas, 80 percent is going to be better than a hundred percent of my idea, and when you go through that, I hired you for a purpose, I put you in this seat for a purpose and I believe in you. I think this is the answer that I would have for your question is showing them that I believe in them enough to allow them to have that lead you have enough leash to, to do what you need to do and I'm never going to steer you. I'm never going to let you get too far off course. You know what I mean? So it's, I'm going to keep you within the guidelines, but I want you to, I want you to be the driver and you can swerve. You're going to swerve to the left. You're going to swerve to the right. But stay within the guidelines and we're good and once you start crossing or getting close to it, it's hey, maybe we could try this, instead of this is what we need to do. Have you ever thought of trying this to sit, this way of doing it and just proactively, or even at that same state is not let them come to you. But just pepper them with just small little, gidgets and gadgets that are going to help them go to where they need to go.
Thaddeus Tondu:And using that analogy of staying on the road and if you're serving too much, let's say they, they fucking crash and they roll the car. Whoops! They fucked up. Shit happens. How are you handling those sorts of conversations when they've went into something and it's been a catastrophic failure for either them or the business and et cetera.
Scott Bidwell:So back to the culture conversation. So again, first, when I first arrived, my first day here, I said, Hey guys, collectively come in here and I had a meeting and I said through part of that whole, note, take note that I had to go through was burn the ships to culture and all of this stuff. But another step was exactly what you just brought up was. You're going to fucking fall and I'm going to be here to pick you up you've got a whole team here to pick you up and support you and pick you back up and get you back in the right place. you're going to fall and you're going to fall off and we all are going to fall off and it's not how it's Will Smith said fail forward. It's not how far, it's not what you fail or rocky quotes. All this stuff comes into mind when you're talking like this, but It's not the failures that we come across. It's not getting outside of that lane and crashing and burning. It's whether or not you stand up, get up, wipe your, wipe yourself off and try again and keep going. Shit, we go out there and do an install and completely screw it up what are we going to do? What do you think we should do? I think we should replace everything and start over. Sounds great. Let's do it. What else are we going to do? else is there to do? No, I'm just going to leave it like it is. We're just going to deal with it and let the customers say whatever they want about us and all the other stuff. No, I'm going to go fix the problem and we're going to make it right. And learn from our mistake.
Thaddeus Tondu:And if that doesn't suffice, you can always just Will Smith and just slap him and
Evan Hoffman:I was going to say
Thaddeus Tondu:I was killing myself laughing. I'm like, I got to get this in here somehow.
Evan Hoffman:Right? I was going to say well, Smith had another great quote. And it was keep my wife's name in mouth.
Scott Bidwell:Oh man. How do you, how to bring the Oscars into the 2024 conversation about HVAC?
Evan Hoffman:We always can. We always can. Letting go of that is so hard though, as an owner, because you know the way, you have the answer, you want to give it to them. How do you restrain yourself from overstepping and allow them to step into that role as the leader make the decision. I love the asking the questions to guide them. Is there anything else that you did to help transition from that helicopter leader or helicopter parent almost into allowing them to step into the role that they needed to be?
Scott Bidwell:I think it's the type of person I don't know that this is a good thing, but in those instances, I just started doing it myself and I think what happens is they realize, oh shit, obviously I must've been doing something and then they'll come to me and ask questions. Like for instance, I was two months into it. I was sitting out in the dispatch room and it was me and one other dispatcher running the entire company from the call by call and we were dispatching and doing everything and I think that number one, I think that helped drive the culture and reignite everybody's okay, if he's willing to do this, then let's get in there and do it. But I think that's, I tend to do that a little bit too much, I think and that's just, if you're not going to do it, I'm just going to take it on and get it done and then hopefully. You'll you'll see the you'll see the fault in picking up yourself. And if I, if it's obviously something that's a pain for me it's a task I don't want to do, but I'm doing it for you. Then yeah, we're going to have a conversation about it for sure.
Evan Hoffman:I love that though, is that to have that, yeah, to have that standard as a leader to say, I'm not going to ask you to do anything that I'm not willing to do. Yeah, I love that. As we wrap up here, because I know Thaddeus has to bounce, he's got some kids to take care of and a beach to go lay on.
Thaddeus Tondu:well, It's getting, it's getting a little late in the day. The other kid's going to wake up and he's, so I'm going to give a tip here that if you ever go to an all inclusive with a ten and a half month old, just don't do it. Wait until, either do it before they can crawl or after they can walk because the kid can't crawl anywhere because it's scratch, like it hurts his knees.
Evan Hoffman:So sometimes you gotta toughen up those knees though, you never know what kind of career he is gonna get into.
Scott Bidwell:Another tip that you may wanna look at is if you're gonna go to an all inclusive, just don't take the 10 month old, or
Thaddeus Tondu:I would've brought my grandparent, like my parents or my in-laws because they would've just taken the kids and then we could have actually had a meal out without our kids.
Evan Hoffman:Scott, where can people get ahold of you if they have questions, they want to reach out?
Scott Bidwell:Once I'm right here in Dallas, maybe come on, bring it on no, actually for the company purposes. Yeah. You got the website up there. dallasplumbing.com. You can, I'm an open book and you can put my phone number on there. I don't know if you've got that. There you go. Shoot me a text. I'm available 24 7. I'll answer when I can obviously text
Thaddeus Tondu:Woohoo. 24/7 alright.
Evan Hoffman:We're a good time.
Scott Bidwell:Phone is on 24/7 I may not answer 24 7, 24/7I'm a late night person, so I do a lot of work at night anyway but anyways, yeah, anybody could text me, call me. I respond to texts a lot more than I answer my phone.
Evan Hoffman:There you go. So you can reach out to Scott for those listening to this 7 1 9. It will be in the show notes, of course, as well. 8224393. You can also check out their Facebook page as well. Dallas plumbing company for Facebook and then dallasplumbing.com is their website and check out what they got going on in there. Scott, as we wrap up, we do have one final question for you and that is, what is one question that you wished people would ask you more but they don't?
Scott Bidwell:Exactly the golden nugget that we were talking about back there any question about outbounding any question about reaching out to customers and creating your own work that I talked to a lot of business owners where you mentioned earlier with the million to a million to three, three to five, five to ten and I've talked to owners that are 50 million plus and a lot of them just don't know and understand what outbounding can do for their business. So that's anytime the conversation comes up, you almost wait for them to say exactly that question is what's going to, what's going to help me do the best? It's what are you doing for outbound?
Evan Hoffman:No it's true. It's taking control of your job or taking control of the future of your business. And when you look at any successful business, that is. Thrived, not just survived through a downturn, but thrived through a downturn. It's because they didn't wait for opportunity to strike they went out, got it for themselves.
Scott Bidwell:Got to knock on doors. Got to do something.
Thaddeus Tondu:A hundred percent and by the way, mom, she commented of this awesome to buy a motion vacation. I thought it was the other way around. I thought that you would just want to have a great experience with your grandkids in that you should either just take them by yourselves or bring us so you can enjoy, I would show you what he's doing. Actually, you might even be able to see him out there. Probably not. He's dragging a boogie board on the ground, not in the water on the ground.
Evan Hoffman:Scott, this has been a pleasure, my friend. Thank you so much for joining us. I truly appreciate it. Congratulations on all the success in running Dallas Plumbing. Honestly, one of my favorite brands that Dan has had the opportunity to re redesign with KickCharge. I love the van rap that he did. I thought it was so timeless and classic paying homage to the history of the company and I've been a huge fan of it ever since he did it. Yeah tremendous job in the turnaround that you've done in leading that team and continue to drive them forward. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for being a leader in the industry and appreciate the time.
Scott Bidwell:Thanks for having me.
Thaddeus Tondu:Until next time.
Evan Hoffman:Cheers.
Thaddeus Tondu:Well, That's a wrap on another episode of HVAC success secrets revealed. Before you go two quick things. First off, join our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed. The other thing, if you took one tiny bit of information out of this show, no matter how big, no matter how small, all we ask is for you to introduce this to one person in your contacts list. That's it. That's all one person. So they too can unleash the ultimate HVAC business until next time. Cheers.