Another great episode of HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed, this time with the amazing co-owner of Comfort Tech, Terri Wilkinson! Terri talked about her journey from working in the swimming pool industry to building an impressive HVAC company with her husband. Watch the full episode to learn important ways to give women in trades more power and create a thriving business culture.
Key Takeaways:
To learn more about Terri Wilkinson's strategies and how she has been successful in the HVAC industry, watch our entire conversation. This is a great resource for anyone who wants to improve their business and build a better workplace culture.
Find Terri:
On The Web: www.comforttech.ca
E-mail: greatservice@comforttech.ca
EGIA - www.egia.org
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
On Purpose Media: https://onpurposemedia.ca
Another great episode of HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed, this time with the amazing co-owner of Comfort Tech, Terri Wilkinson! Terri talked about her journey from working in the swimming pool industry to building an impressive HVAC company with her husband. Watch the full episode to learn important ways to give women in trades more power and create a thriving business culture.
Key Takeaways:
To learn more about Terri Wilkinson's strategies and how she has been successful in the HVAC industry, watch our entire conversation. This is a great resource for anyone who wants to improve their business and build a better workplace culture.
Find Terri:
On The Web: www.comforttech.ca
E-mail: greatservice@comforttech.ca
EGIA - www.egia.org
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
On Purpose Media: https://onpurposemedia.ca
So the big lesson is to get in there and make sure you're really keeping tabs on what that culture is. Don't just trust everybody else for your management team to be after trying to make sure that culture is there. You need to show up.
Evan Hoffman:Hey, welcome back to another HVAC Success Secrets Revealed with Thaddeus and Evan. Where we have good conversations with good people and any good conversation worth having is worth having drunk so cheers, my friend.
Thaddeus Tondu:I'm drinking honey whiskey.
Evan Hoffman:Ooh, I just got an energy drink in here and trying to keep me awake right now.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah, that happens sometimes.
Evan Hoffman:Fighting off a little bit of a cold, but
Thaddeus Tondu:whiskey helps hot toddy.
Evan Hoffman:Yeah, there you go. Warm it up. Get some some malt liquor going maybe.
Thaddeus Tondu:There you go you both have two drinks.
Evan Hoffman:Absolutely. Before we get started with the show, we've got a quick little announcement, quick little recognition piece to say thank you to all of our listeners and subscribers. You can go ahead.
Thaddeus Tondu:Oh, okay. Recently on YouTube we hit 1000 subscribers just last week, I believe. Now I don't think it shows an individual number. I think it just shows like 1000. I don't really know what happens when you get above a thousand'cause you haven't been there. Thank you to everybody who who has been listening and subscribing to our YouTube channel. It's not obviously possible without you guys following and liking our channel and continue to come back to our content a month in a month out so appreciate every single one of you for following along with us.
Evan Hoffman:Absolutely. And we started the show to add value and get back to the industry enough about us and let's get back to that. So today's show we've got on Terry Wilkinson. She is the co owner, co founder of Comfortech down in Kelowna, British Columbia, serving the massive metropolis down there of Kelowna in the central Okanagan. I say that in jest because her market's about 150, 000 people and yet they are running a company with about 30 employees. Now, Crushing it with her business. They're just over 5 million in revenue so they're doing an extremely unbelievable job really when it comes to being incredibly efficient in their market, maximizing the market, doing the best that they can in a beautiful area of the country. It gets incredibly hot there. It doesn't get incredibly cold, but they do have to battle the winters a little bit, but it's not quite the same as like in the prairies or something like that. So they don't deal with the extreme seasonal winters that we do in the prairies but they are doing an incredible job there and she really wants to encourage more women getting into the industry and this is something that her and I did talk a little bit about when we were sitting at lunch at Epic at the EGIA event that happened in California, a couple of weeks ago couple of months ago, I guess it was now. But Terri was also on a panel and that's what with some incredibly talented people, Anton Martin, who we had on the show a couple of weeks ago, he was on it with her and she just adds a ton of value to the industry and her husband are running an incredible business in Kelowna. So I'm excited for the conversation today.
Thaddeus Tondu:Oh, no durability, we've got to fill Canadian on. I couldn't resist. I couldn't resist.
Evan Hoffman:I know. I know, eh? Yo, you betcha. Don't even say sorry, eh?
Thaddeus Tondu:Antics
Evan Hoffman:would
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Evan Hoffman:Terry, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us.
Terri Wilkinson:Thank you. It's nice to be here.
Evan Hoffman:Awesome. So you started the business in 2005 curious your journey into the trades. I know it was, I think it was your husband that brought you into it and you were managing another business at the time and then you came in. Is that correct?
Terri Wilkinson:Yeah, basically that's it. Jeff Jeff's been a gas spitter and then a refrigeration mechanic for his entire career adult life. I used to be in the swimming pool industry related service department, maintenance department stuff like that, but a little different, a lot more urgency in the HVAC industry. So yeah, we got, I convinced Jeff that it would be a good idea. To go out on his own and I told him he wouldn't have to work as hard and I told him that, he could make just as much money just on his own and then yeah, so I got a little carried away with running a business and so now here we are you know, like what in our busiest times of year, we employ up to 30 people and I came over from the swimming pool industry with business management knowledge so it was a good fit. He's the brawn. We jokingly say he's the brawn cause he's the guy that knows how to fix things and do things and I'm the brain and I do the HR and the accounting management stuff like that.
Evan Hoffman:Got it and so that was going to be my next question was what is the division of roles there? How does the communication work back and forth when it comes to making decisions and things like that?
Terri Wilkinson:We work really hard at trying to be very definitive in what we do so he won't tell me how to handle a an employee situation, and I won't tell him how to install a heat pump so one of the things that has kept it working as a married couple is that we have very defined roles and except for upper way, upper level business decisions, we don't really mix into each other's areas. We, we try really hard to not step on each other's toes and it's worked very well. We've been doing this for a long time oh, 19 years, 19 years now.
Thaddeus Tondu:And I'm sure there's probably been the odd hiccup here and there that probably ends in a little bit of a fight. It's just natural or right but I guess was it always as definitive in looking at the role separation, because I think a lot of times, and like people see this even not just husband and wife, but business partners to be able to say, okay this is your role, this is my role, sometimes didn't start with that and did you guys learn a lot of that on the way, or was this something that you're like, okay, we're going to start this business together. We've never actually worked together. We need to be clearly defined from the get go.
Terri Wilkinson:It was pretty defined from the get go when we got him out literally chucking a truck like a one guy show I was already doing the bookkeeping and, keeping track of customers and what was going on because my background has been business management and service department management, that's what I did when I was in the swimming pool industry. It was a really quick transition. Easy fit the hardest thing I had to, we had to deal with was getting Jeff to stop like answering customer calls. So literally to the point where I actually switched phone numbers with him once because people were calling him and then he's calling me and I told this guy I do this and I'd be like we don't have time to do, so we just put a halt to it but it's been pretty, pretty defined from the very beginning and it's it's what makes it work for us.
Evan Hoffman:I love it. What was his reaction when you changed the phone number? And did you tell him before you did it?
Terri Wilkinson:Oh, yeah. It was one of those decisions that got made intentionally. The problem was, is it got to the point where he's being interrupted so much at while he was trying to work at his office out in the field that people were starting to complain. So I just said, we can't do that anymore and he agreed wholeheartedly and so the phone calls started coming to me and then I would tell people, I won't give out a cell phone number, no cell number for Jeff.
Thaddeus Tondu:Right? And there's layers to be able to handle that and especially if you say okay I'm guess what? I'm also an owner too here. I've got to say, you're talking to somebody to say talk to the owner you are.
Terri Wilkinson:Yeah. And people wanted to call him to book their maintenance or they wanted to call him to book an estimate, or they wanted to talk to him about when could he come out to look at, and those weren't, he didn't have the schedule in his hand. There was no point in these people calling him, so we just put a, we put a kibosh on that, and then we worked really hard to make sure that this wasn't Jeff Ballard, Inc, we made sure to name the company comfort tech. We didn't want it to be him only cause I knew that would be overwhelming.
Thaddeus Tondu:Sure. So in the initial days of having that when he was the point of contact for everybody and then transitioning them out of that, what sort of a pushback did you get from the clients and how did you overcome that?
Terri Wilkinson:We didn't get a lot of pushback they just assumed he was growing and then he'd hired a secretary, which was fine with me. I didn't announce that you're talking to an owner. I just was like, yeah, no, Jeff's out in the field right now and if you are looking to book an appointment, then he's just going to refer you back to me. The tradition, the transition for the customers wasn't, a challenge. They were excited that they met that meant the business was growing. The people that knew me knew that then I transitioned from working full time in another business to working full time for Comfortech so yeah, and then you start adding, all of a sudden you need helpers and then you need another person and so we had to have that decisive stop break between the two sides of the business. So it worked really well.
Thaddeus Tondu:It allows people to stay in their lanes and focus on what they're good at, because if he's good in the field and you're good with customers now you're not mixing that up because he, and this is just oftentimes me speaking out loud, not just for you as a situation, your circumstance, sometimes texts just aren't the greatest with conflict in issues that may arise that require a delicate HR touch. You can't just tell somebody to pound sand because that doesn't generally work out too well in showing up on your Google reviews.
Terri Wilkinson:And he could, yes, and he might. So when you're in the field and you're working really hard and you're dealing maybe with someone challenging out there, having someone else challenging, reaching out and he doesn't have all the information at hand that can be a really trying problem for an owner in the field that, that can be really challenging for him.
Thaddeus Tondu:In terms of conflict, you talked a little bit about the upper level business decisions are things that you guys decide together and your day to day, you generally don't go involved with that other individual to make a decision. When you get into conflict as a husband and wife and business owner on an upper level decision, how do you go about working towards a resolution to be able to move forward?
Terri Wilkinson:Very carefully that's just one of these situations where yeah, you have to, it's just like navigating a marriage, really you have to try and find out when's the best time we're going to discuss this when's the best time to try and talk about this like sometimes I'll leave it for a weekend and then we'll, readdress it on the ride into town on Monday morning. When I've got his captive attention, he can't get away but sometimes those are the type of things where we have to just come to a point where we either agree to disagree or he says, you know what, it's your end, you figure it out or vice versa with a customer. I've learned to trust his gut instinct there have been a lot of times when I've really pushed him to deal with the customer and he's nope, they're a nightmare I don't want to, I don't want to quote them I don't want to deal with him. I'm like, Oh, we could really use the work and he's always right unfortunately, when it comes to that kind of stuff, I hate to admit it yeah, a big part of that is just figuring out who actually has the better the better background to make those decisions when we don't agree and and just trying to listen to each other one of the biggest problems is sometimes you'll go ahead and make a decision and not include the other person and then people start to feel like they're being, set aside and so we try really hard not to do that and worst case We have a manager named Matt and he's been with us for six years now, and he's been, he's terrific and if we have to really have to have a tiebreaker, then we'll talk to Matt and then usually I win.
Thaddeus Tondu:Right? You guys, as I say, depending on who the allegiances are, right. Like he wants somebody else and you want this person and now you got to get, now you got to get like almost a fifth person in there is chosen by the two tiebreakers if there's you can go on and on and up as many scenarios yeah.
Terri Wilkinson:As we grow that will, there's always more decisions to be made. But again, just, when it comes to the work that's being done the deference is usually, to Jeff I wouldn't tell him, what the leak procedures should be on a leaking air conditioner and when it comes to human resources, he doesn't even wanna deal with it it's not his, it's just not his thing yeah it's not that bad working with your spouse as long as you keep those things apart and then the other thing you got to do is it can't just be always, like weekends, evenings, the drive home at the end of the day. Sometimes you just have to shut it off sometimes.
Thaddeus Tondu:So the toughest thing to be able to do with any business owner really is to shut your business brain off, especially if it's a husband and wife and that's all you talk about I know my wife, when, we don't work in the same industry, not even close. But one of her exes they worked in the same industry and it was all work all the time. That's all they talked about they didn't talk about any other thing what sort of, safe word do you put in place or how do you guys separate that so that way if somebody does start talking about work and the other person doesn't, how do you go about, letting them down softly that you don't want to talk about work or do you just simply say, hey, this is a work combo. Let's pick it up tomorrow I'm out.
Terri Wilkinson:Honestly, both of us are just, we'll literally say you're stressing me out right now. I don't want to do this right now and we just stopped like we've learned that lesson. We used to push, especially me I used to really push hard because I wanted a decision. I wanted it now and I have this sense of urgency, but you have to evaluate your spouse. Like I can be on 24/7 he can't he just, he doesn't want to, it doesn't make him happy he'd rather be outside building something or, working in the garden or those types of things and he just doesn't want to be on 24/7. So really it's me that I have to like disengage we had a big decision to make and I would think over the weekend and we left it, I didn't bring it up for the entire weekend so he could have two and a half days of just doing his own thing and then it got brought up on, on Monday so you have to learn how to work with your spouse just like you do in any, in all of your relationship. You, you can't be on work all the time if that personality can't do that.
Thaddeus Tondu:It's funny, we had that exact same conversation today with our team leaders of just this idea of detaching from the situation. To be able to say, okay maybe let's sleep on it maybe let's not make a decision here let's maybe think on it because as you think on it guess what? You might have a different fact and when you have a different fact that comes into mind or a different scenario now your opinion might change and it allows that time to be able to decompress from the situation actually is a healthy thing
Evan Hoffman:And it removes that emotion from it as well.
Terri Wilkinson:Absolutely and that's a huge part of it. We all think we're right that's like a big thing is we all think that our opinion is the correct one. We think we're right why can't you see it?
Evan Hoffman:I think you're wrong in that opinion.
Thaddeus Tondu:But we'd rather be right to our own demise than wrong to our own prosperity.
Terri Wilkinson:We have a tendency to go that way. We also have to consider, like I said, we have a very defined set of roles, but when we're making an upper level decision, a lot of times it affects everyone's roles not just mine, not just his. It's something where we have to consider what the disadvantages are to him, what the disadvantages are to me, and then the pros as well and sometimes it's more important to deal with the cons on his side because I can handle, or sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes the cons are so severe for me that we have to make a decision that, that takes that into effect we both have to be comfortable with the decisions we're making, or it's just not going to work.
Evan Hoffman:Now, this is all really fascinating because when we were at EGIA, when you were on the panel, one of the questions that was asked was what is the biggest mistake that you made in your business? And you said do you remember what you said?
Terri Wilkinson:I'm afraid to find out what I said.
Thaddeus Tondu:But the mistake could be depending on what's going on in your own business and it's Oh, this one but then you ask the next day it's a different one, right?
Evan Hoffman:So it's a different one totally. It was in not taking action on realizing that there were issues in the business, but they weren't like a level five issue. It wasn't on fire right now. It wasn't the biggest thing. So you didn't take action on it. You didn't move forward on getting rid of it, stopping it, et cetera.
Terri Wilkinson:Those are the things that I worry on every night. I think, okay, so I was supposed to get hiring ads up today. That was really important I was supposed to finalize my advertising and my marketing for next month. That was important and I realized that all I've done is put out fires all day and I didn't get anything and I don't, it's nine o'clock at night like it's not like you think of it. at two and you just say, Oh, I should do that. It's taking action when things need to be fixed is a huge thing and it's really easy to ignore, even just the girls reminding every day did you email that customer and I'm like, Oh no, I didn't do it today I'll do it tomorrow and then it happens again and again it's just an email just get it done but also when you look at bigger things, when you see bigger problems or when your spouse and your business is pointing out like, this is a problem and you're like, I don't even want to think about that and you just keep ignoring it and then you realize, Oh darn it he was right. He's right a lot.
Evan Hoffman:So is that really the reason that you sent him out to get wood right now is you didn't want him saying that, saying something that he was be right on?
Terri Wilkinson:No, I can tell you this kind of thing is not anything he ever wants to do and so I just didn't want him barging in and out of the house with me yelling at him to take off his dirty boots or something I didn't want that to happen during this conversation.
Evan Hoffman:That makes sense. No, I love that idea. The thought that we get caught up in the busy work and we leave the most important things that we know we ought to do but for some reason we just don't do it. We don't make the time to do it. We don't time block it.
Terri Wilkinson:And a lot of times too, like you've we've gotten to a point where we've delegated a lot of tasks to other people so just because I see something come up on our internal messaging, I don't have to jump in on that, but I do like to the point and we have really great staff that'll actually tell you, tell me like, Hey, Terry, we've got this but out and they're terrific that way but yeah, sometimes you just get so caught up in the day to day stuff that you just don't get anything done and then all of a sudden, It's three months and it's still not done and you haven't hired the person you need or you haven't, taken action on the stuff you've needed to deal with and you're still in that same place and then you wonder why are we not growing? And it's because you haven't changed the pricing or you haven't hired the people or you haven't fixed that expensive contract that you could cancel half of it, but you just keep doing it. Forgetting to do it.
Thaddeus Tondu:Two ways I want to go with this, let's go with this one the growth part of things just cause it's the most recent and then I wanted to circle back to getting good people to tell you to butt out. I think that's a good topic that we probably get into after the random question but the bottleneck in terms of the growth and looking at being focused too much on the busy work and I just wrote, I wrote down bottleneck how often are we our own bottlenecks in our business? And you've probably identified that, right? Every single day we're our own bottlenecks. And so if somebody's listening to this is oh shit, I think that's me and my business with this particular problem. What would you tell that person?
Terri Wilkinson:If you realize you're a bottleneck, you have to first decide whether you can delegate what your problem is because usually it's my problem we had a bunch of employees last year we had some additional phones and iPads, and this year we're. We're not using them right now. I'm like, oh yeah, I gotta fix that, I gotta fix that it's, 100 a month or whatever the amount is, it keeps getting shuffled off but I totally could have delegated that to one of the office staff to, contact the the phone guy and find out which ones aren't in use and figure out which ones we need to cancel so that all I have to do is make one phone call. It's that kind of stuff and then you start looking at it like, Oh, when's the last time we use that review program? That review program costs us 150 a month why are we still paying for that when we're not using it? It's because I didn't take the time to cancel it trying to figure out if you're bottlenecking, you've got to figure out either how to find the time to do it, or you need to find out who is capable of doing it and if you hire really great, competent, and capable people, they're usually better at it than you are at fixing these problems but they're sitting there trying to help you and you're like, Oh no, I've got it then a month later did you do that? And I'm like, Oh shoot, I didn't do it and they're like, do you want me to do it? And I'm like no, I've got it.
Thaddeus Tondu:And a month later, the same conversation happens again.
Terri Wilkinson:Yeah. For months in my, it took me four months to iPads because they couldn't find the time to do it. And it was just a little thing because it's only, so many dollars a month but by the time you fix those problems so I assigned one of the ladies in our office, she's a wonderful young lady named Kelsey. I adore her she works really hard for us she's like my she's like a mini me in a way like she's my assistant she knows how to remind me she pesters the crap out of me to get things done and she pushes me to realize that I don't have to do everything myself everybody needs someone like that in their business that can do that and I have several of them. I have another amazing lady called Emily in the office we have Taylor, we have Matt, our other manager, and then Sherry, my payables lady, who makes sure I pay everything on time yeah they're fabulous people and that's who you have to hire. You have to hire people that are smarter than you in order to do well, and then your business will grow.
Thaddeus Tondu:Do we want to get into that topic or should we do the random question generator first and then get into that topic?
Evan Hoffman:Yeah. Do that first.
Thaddeus Tondu:All right. the random question generator is going to ask very familiar. I'm just going to, I'm going to say it anyways. So you get to choose a question, one, two, or three. You don't get to know what the questions are. We're just going to list them off, but the random, and then you get to choose and then we'll read it out. So the random questionnaire generator though, is brought to you by On Purpose Media, where our SEO tactics are so sharp that Google uses them as a case study. That's actually a good one. I like that. So question one, question two, or question three, what would you prefer?
Terri Wilkinson:I'm going for three.
Thaddeus Tondu:What is your favorite dinosaur and why?
Terri Wilkinson:Oh, that's not even business oriented.
Thaddeus Tondu:No, it has nothing to do with what we're talking about.
Terri Wilkinson:My favorite dinosaur is Tyrannosaurus Rex and the reason is because you get to do the little arm thing yeah sorry.
Thaddeus Tondu:Evan, what about, I'm curious now, I want to know what Evan's favorite dinosaur is.
Terri Wilkinson:Yes, Evan.
Evan Hoffman:My first thought was Velociraptor, but I the idea of the tiny little arms.
Terri Wilkinson:Yeah.
Evan Hoffman:Have you ever seen Datasaur on TikTok?
Thaddeus Tondu:No. Oh, he's, he does everything he does everything as if he was a T Rex. Yeah.
Evan Hoffman:He basically acts like a T Rex and just he terrorizes everything and just rips stuff apart. He did it at a trade show booth once and yeah, security thought that something was actually happening to him and he's no, it's just for TikTok. It's fine.
Terri Wilkinson:Oh, I'm gonna so this is how old I am. I'm gonna have to download TikTok I'm assuming that's something you download, like an app? I don't do TikTok.
Thaddeus Tondu:Nah, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. China will just steal your data.
Terri Wilkinson:I have Facebook.
Thaddeus Tondu:There you go.
Terri Wilkinson:Have a marketing company that does our Facebook campaigns and Instagram.
Thaddeus Tondu:That's all you need. TikTok is I don't have the app either. Let's put it that way. I had it and then I said, this is stupid and I deleted it. So I'm not a TikToker.
Terri Wilkinson:But Evan is, clearly.
Evan Hoffman:Of course.
Terri Wilkinson:Just for the dinosaur guy, right? Just for the dinosaur guy.
Evan Hoffman:And the dances.
Thaddeus Tondu:I think Evan should start a weekly dance on the On Purpose Media TikTok and the HVAC Reveal TikTok. Write that down content team and social media team as you're listening to this. That is now one of our social media strategies.
Evan Hoffman:Yeah, and we'll assign the task to all of you guys. Yes
Thaddeus Tondu:you're going to be doing the dances. So there we go.
Terri Wilkinson:I was going to say, can Evan dance?
Evan Hoffman:Terribly. Yeah. The left feet. There are there's gyrations that happen. So that's about the extent of it.
Thaddeus Tondu:Oh boy. That's talking about when you're 19 in the club again all right, let's get her back on track. So hiring people and getting the right people in and those people that will tell you to butt out. I think is a key thing. Obviously they're not going to do it right off the start, but empowering your employees and your team members rather to be able to do that, to be able to own it, to be able to take that aspect of things. How do you even begin to get great team members inside of an organization?
Terri Wilkinson:I think, so I learned something when we were on the contractor panel, and this is something that Anton said one of his interview questions is always, do you want to grow? How do you want to grow? I think having someone that honestly answers that question instead of trying to tell you what you think is a pretty big deal. But finding the right people to me is always finding someone that, would not necessarily disagree with you, but I guess that they'll actually disagree with you. That people that are open and honest about what they need, what they want. With a job and what they're hoping to do over the long term can tell you a lot about whether they're that type of person that is going to help you build a business. We don't want people that just want to just do a job and go home at the end of the day. We want people that are actually excited about the company and that are excited about the idea of growing the business and have the same philosophy that you do about, how you should deal with customers how customers should treat you that, that's a big one in trying to find the right people and I'll ask those kinds of questions when we're moving forward. It's so hard to hire right now that it's harder to ask the tougher questions because you don't want to turn someone away because you ask them a tough question they're like, Oh, I don't, I want to work at that guy that's, giving me everything rather than that other person that's going to challenge me but I want people that want to be challenged. that want to learn and want to grow and to get into different areas and be cross trained those are the important things. Does that answer the question?
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah, a lot of moving parts in behind it that's the essence of hiring great people and you think in the market, 150, 000 people supply isn't unlimited. You don't have, sure you, one could argue people coming in, people coming out, moving, et cetera, but you don't have a as big of a pool as shit Dallas Fort Worth, 8 million people in the Metroplex, right? Now maybe somebody's not going to drive all across there, but anyways getting beside the point. When you look at that as you're building a great organization and great culture, and you're making sure that you ask some of those tough questions in an interview, do you run the interviews at all, or do our parts of them, or is it now somebody else that does it?
Terri Wilkinson:It depends on what the interviewing is for usually if it's for technicians, that we're trying to evaluate from a technical standpoint, then the 1st interview is going to be either Matt or Jeff, or both of them because they're the ones that are trying to ascertain whether that person is actually capable of doing the work. That we need them to do a lot of times with a technician, I'll be in on a second interview or at least meet them so that we can discuss whether that person is going to represent well to our demographic you don't want to, you don't want to have people that, that don't want to deal with, I don't know, dogs like you have to have someone that's going to go into someone's home and make them feel comfortable and so that's also a big part of. of the feel of what you're trying to do when it comes to office staff, people that are, that I'm going to train bookkeeping, those types of roles, administrators, that's typically me so Jeff doesn't need to interview an office person because, that's not his side.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yep. Little hack that anybody that has techs is stock them with dog treats in their van cause I had a window break in our house when we moved in, it was already broken and so I, I got the local company here and this was three years ago to fix the window. I still remember the guy he's hey, can you, cause a dog and it was in our backyard and he's yeah, that's okay bring the dog out. Does your dog like treats? I'm like, what dog doesn't gave the dog a treat in dog's best friend that I watch and the guy like they're outside cause they're doing it from the outside. I see the ball going, I'm like, what the, what's going on? And I see the dog going, and the dog would bring it back, and he would be sitting there, and there was two of them, right? And so he wouldn't throw it every time, but all of a sudden he just, the dog would drop the ball, he would throw the ball for the dog!
Terri Wilkinson:Yeah, no, that's and you know what? I don't know about everybody else, but I have a, adorable little French, Frenchie Boston Cross, and she just loves to meet everyone, and if someone treated her poorly, I would personally never call that company again. Because it's just, and it's such a little thing. It's the same as people being sure not to let your cat out if it's an indoor cat or it's just being respectful. Some people want to sit and chat and talk a little bit and, or they ask you, can you help me move this couch over two inches? I want our staff to do that. I want them to be to, that's part of the whole customer experience. That's so important. So again, if you have an interview with someone and they're very technical, but they have absolutely zero social skills. I'm not necessarily going to put them out in a front facing position with the, with the business. We might find something else that they might be really good at.
Evan Hoffman:Do you still let Jeff and Matt decide on the culture assessment and the culture fit for the company when it's a tech that they're interviewing or has that come back to you?
Terri Wilkinson:When it comes to culture fit, they, no, they don't need me for that. Sometimes it's just good for them to get a female perspective. Like there, there are some people that come in and apply and all the ladies in the office look at me after they've left and they're like, I'd never let that guy in my house.
Evan Hoffman:Which is a great filter for hiring.
Terri Wilkinson:It is. So we try and bring them into the office. We try and make sure that different people in different levels get an opportunity to at least be introduced to them just to see what people's feel is a really important thing our demographic is the people that are deciding who they're going to let in their home is typically the women or the wives and they're in that 35 to 65 age bracket. You need to make sure that you understand who your customer is. So the men of the house decide that they want a 80, 000 BTU modulating Daikin furnace, but the women are like, yeah, but you're not buying it from that guy cause I don't want him. I don't like him like you can buy that furnace from these three different places I don't care if they're more money. Like I'm the one in the house while this is being installed and I don't want that guy in my house.
Thaddeus Tondu:It's a no like trust and we talk about that in advertising all the time, but it's also a relevant factor inside the house too, that trust.
Terri Wilkinson:Yeah, and then it comes down to how do the women in the house feel about it? And how do the men feel about it? I'm not saying that men don't have feelings, but they have a tendency to be more on the technical side where women are more like, concerned about how it looks and who's going to be in the home, it how they treat your pets. Like all of those things are indicators that you have to consider when you're hiring people into these roles cause they are, they're going into people's houses. They're going into their basements. They aren't going to be watched the entire time they're there so even install teams, they have to be likable and presentable and they have to be like cheerleaders for the business. So you've got to make sure that's happening all the time but Matt and Jeff are just as good at recognizing that as the rest of us that they're going to be a good fit for the culture, for sure.
Thaddeus Tondu:Is there a favorite interview question that you'd like to ask everybody?
Terri Wilkinson:Not really. Okay I know that there are a lot of people that, besides the one that Anton gave me recently about, I'm going to ask everybody how they want to grow. But think that we have a very informal interview process. It's a lot like this where we just sit down and chat and I try and get a feel for the people the technical side of the interview trying to dig down into, are you capable of, this or that if they put on their resume that they're capable of answering phones or dispatching or doing admin or working on office programs you have to trust that they're honest there. I don't see much of a point of trying to delve into that specifically. So no, I just try and get to know people and decide whether I think they're going to be a good fit you can train stuff you can't train people to get along with other people or to be a good fit with your culture that like they either have it or they don't.
Evan Hoffman:One of the things that you mentioned very early on in the episode, you were talking about how, at your peak time or your busiest season, that's when you'll get up to about 30 staff members. Is it on the technician side? Is it in the office side? Where does that number fluctuate? And then how do you do that planning heading into that season so that you can over hire and make sure that you've got the right amount of capacity coverage?
Terri Wilkinson:So our business is very cautious about trying to keep every single person that we hire, even through the low seasons, so when we're in a shoulder season, we don't lay anyone off. We try and keep, we try and keep everyone but during the shoulder seasons, a lot of times, or when guys go to school and they finish, apprenticeship and they get poached. That's how you lose people. So our big focus is in keeping everyone all the time, even if there's not a lot for them to do, we try and keep everybody working all the time. So there's, we lost a number of people last year. It was a challenging time we had a bunch of people leave at once and so we have to look back and see how did that happen? What did we do? And we're still trying to rehire. Losing technicians is horrible, especially good ones. If you've got really good people, you don't want to lose any of them. So if you lose a producing technician, that's a big problem.
Evan Hoffman:And that's, I was just down at Any Hour last week and a phenomenal business. The way they're run, everything is fantastic and when they look at some of their goals around recruiting and hiring they say the number one overlooked thing is retention. Chiirp. Because if you have to, if you have to replace someone that you lost, now you got to hire two people, not just one, right? Constantly looking at how can you maintain the, those staff members. So I'm curious on, on your reflection of what happened there. What were some of the lessons that you learned about retention and wanting to make sure that you implement those moving forward so that we don't have any kind of exodus from the business?
Terri Wilkinson:Are Big lesson in that particular situation where we lost quite a few producing technicians at once is to keep a better eye on what's going on in your business. So we talked a lot about delegating, we, and that's really important, but you can't delegate so much and that you're not keeping a pulse on what's going on there. We got into a position where we had one Bad Apple per se and they had a lot of influence and there was a lot of water cooler talk or a lot of closed door office talk and because Jeff and I had tried to step back, we didn't recognize that. So the big lesson is to get in there and make sure you're really keeping tabs on what that culture is don't just trust everybody else or your management team to be after trying to make sure that culture is there. You need to show up you need to show up at the meetings and you need to make sure that that people aren't aligning in a way that might work against you. We have a great company, great culture, great business. We've never lost multiple people at once and it was July busiest month of the year. So the lesson learned is that we needed to be more in touch with those employees, if we hadn't been more in touch with those employees, I don't think that we would they would've been as easily influenced to leave when they did.
Thaddeus Tondu:And especially when you look at the size of a business too, right? As a business gets bigger and bigger, you look at something like an any hour, a hundred million dollars per year. Okay? There's a series of layers that the owners are removed from the day-to-Day aspect of things. But there's something that is important there about their culture is a cultured steward. So do you have a, do you have the one person that is your culture advocate? That has been there for the longest, that understands what you're doing, that understands everything that has that ear, that thing go to the owners and as you grow now as a 5 million per year business, you're still in parts of that business, right? As you grow now that removes it, but getting, making sure that those layers are in place for it are important distinguishing factors depending on the size of your business.
Terri Wilkinson:We have a lot of people, and I think that goes to your culture. I have a lot of people in our business. Even new hires that are very open. We encourage open conversation. So I think when you come down to culture stewards, you need to make every single employee you have and if you have someone in that doesn't buy into that culture, the employees will get rid of that person without your assistance. So again, you need to listen and you need to make yourself available so that those people can come to you and say, Hey, Joe seems a little down or I've been noticing this, or I've been noticing that. And they also have to trust that you aren't going to say, Oh, Hey, Mary came and told me. Okay you've got to be really careful about how you handle those situations and figure out a way to find out what they're telling you yourself so you can say, I noticed it but I would say, 80 percent of our staff, our long term staff are all that culture steward. They're all over that. Trying to make sure that everybody's a good fit. They're all cheerleaders. And
Thaddeus Tondu:that's the thing is like the saying is one bad apple will ruin the whole lot. No, the lot will actually get rid of the bad apple in this case, because they won't they recognize that, it's a self assessment and the reality is that when you create this strong culture, those that, might have slipped through the cracks on the interview process and now are part of the culture, they realize that they're not culture fits themselves by the rest of the people continuing to uphold their culture and their values and their ethics.
Terri Wilkinson:Yeah, no, and that's what happened and I think that's a, again, when we go back and look at the mistake the root mistake where we lost people wasn't that we lost touch just with the people that left. We'd clearly lost touch with the people that were still there with our cheerleaders. I mean that, cause otherwise we would have been better informed about what was happening.
Thaddeus Tondu:How did you reconnect? How did you reconnect with them?
Terri Wilkinson:More presence lot of apologies when you have a number of revenue producing people leave at once, there's a lot of people that deal with the brunt of that not just the owners. It's not just a dollar amount. Your office staff now can't provide an appointment in a timely manner. You're not getting your maintenance down on time. install schedule gets backed up or worse yet, because you don't have service technicians, your install schedule isn't filling the way it normally would. So now your installers aren't busy. There's so many repercussions. to that so there's a lot of apologizing about losing track and double checking that everybody understands that your door is open and that you're going to make yourself available and then make yourself bloody available because otherwise you just screwed up. Like you just screwed up.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah here's the humility that goes involved in that is saying, Hey, it's okay to say that I messed up guys. I recognize, I realize, and now here's my words. Now here's my actions and then you open up your door to have them be able to come back in and when you do that, now they've got an even greater level of respect because now they see, okay I'm just a human too or they're just a human too, right?
Terri Wilkinson:Yeah and we have lots of those conversations with team members before we hire, like I always try and sit down with someone and say, you know what? We're not always going to get along. there's going to be something at some point that we disagree on but just like your relationship with your family or your kids or your parents or your spouse, there's going to be glitches. It's not going to be roses all the time. So you need to make sure that people understand that you're human too, and you need to treat them that way. Like we, we have a relationship with our employees that isn't, us and them. It's, they've agreed to do a job we've told them that we're going to do this in return, which part of it is paid, but that's not the only thing. So you need to make sure that you're doing your part. You can't expect a one sided relationship where you've just laid out the expectations at the beginning and you don't invest in that relationship anymore. You have to invest in the relationship long term.
Evan Hoffman:And continually reinvest. It's not a one time deposit.
Terri Wilkinson:Yeah and you have to keep in touch. You have to do those touch points where you're at the service meeting, or you're at the installation meeting or you're out on a job site I try to occasionally get out and get on a job site. When, especially if we're doing an install or something, I think that it's something I don't do enough. We try and send our office staff out on ride along so that they have a better understanding of what the technicians are doing, and it's all about trying to make sure everybody understands that, your job isn't necessarily the hardest, it's just different and so people need to see what the other people in the company are doing so that they understand and can build a relationship based on that kind of information, not just a job description.
Thaddeus Tondu:Key things and I like the part when you even said I'm not a field person, but I'm going to go and check out an install every now and again, because now you're visible out there, right? You learn something. You can relate to them a little more. You don't know how to install a unit, but you know what they went through when they're doing install.
Terri Wilkinson:Yeah and there's a reason that I'm not out there doing it. It's because I don't want to, I understand that job is hard. I don't want to be on a rooftop in July. I don't want to be in a crawl space. I, like I there's things I don't want to do and there's people that are choosing to do those crappy, more difficult jobs and you have to have a lot of respect for that I don't like being on the phone. I'd rather text or email but we have some really fantastic people in the office that enjoy being on the phone and that allows me not to do that. So there's a lot of things that you might like to do and that you have to do. You got to find the people that actually like those things that you don't and you got to give them kudos for doing those jobs because yeah, crawl spaces.
Evan Hoffman:And like you said at the beginning it's hiring people that are better than you at those areas of the business, and surrounding yourself with great people.
Terri Wilkinson:And recognizing them for it.
Evan Hoffman:Of course. Absolutely. You want to give a little plug for EGIA and what that group has meant to you since that's where we met?
Terri Wilkinson:The EGIA has been absolutely fantastic. I'll always give them a plug. I think I gave them a couple during the the contractor panel at the conference. They have been extremely supportive there's the Contractor Connect on Facebook where we actually get to go and ask questions and get answers. Some of the top level people at the EGIA like Drew Cameron and Gary Ellix and others are members of that group. So if you have a question, they'll jump in and actually answer them almost real time. Like they're very big on that group and trying to get people to connect and and who doesn't love a Facebook group where you can, get ask questions and get answers from all over the continent, really. So we take part, we do all of their as much as we can we take part in all of their video style training. When we sign up new apprentices, we get them to go through mindset training and all those types of things. We're currently thinking of signing up for some of their technician training, just to see what that's about, where they actually have to go actually hands on not hands on because it's video, but like where they're actually training technicians and concepts in this industry and of course, we take part in the next level coaching. So we meet with a coach every 2 weeks, more often if we need to, and we talk about some of the problems and obstacles and they help point us in the wrong direction and hold us accountable. For the things that we said we do that we didn't get around to like when we go back to what we talked about before about not getting things done we have Daryl Yashinsky and he's absolutely fantastic and he loves to call me out when I haven't done what I told him I was going to do. So yeah, it's very helpful it's a great group all around it's not tremendously expensive compared to some of the other groups out there and it's just great to have that that backdrop, if I need an answer to a question, I go on to Contractor University and I can find the answer and if I can't find the answer, then I go to Contractor Connect on Facebook and I ask the question and somebody says, oh, that's in Contractor University and section 9. 6.
Evan Hoffman:No it's great to be able to plug into those resources and leverage your time and your opportunities. Because again, when you're a small business under a million to 5 million to have tools where you can provide training for your team as they're coming on board, where it's not always on you and to leverage that expertise, right? That's already there.
Terri Wilkinson:Get people involved and we're talking about some really big hitters in the industry that have done extremely well and you might not intend to grow your business to the extent that Drew or Gary has, but just being able to get that next level help is a big thing and of course, it also gives you a chance to participate in conferences and things like that where you get to learn from people. They also have a lot of in person workshops that you can sign up for. So depending on your measure on your membership, you can send people to these workshops and they can get training on technician selling or on, you can go to a business bootcamp where Learn everything that Gary has to tell you about how to run a company right down to the, how to set up your ledger so that your reporting is good.
Thaddeus Tondu:And that's the thing with best practice groups is like why do you need to learn how to do it yourself? Because guaranteed the issue that you're facing, somebody else has faced it and they've successfully solved it and so you're not alone in this journey and just reach out and ask for dang help because people are going to be able, people will be there to help you and that's a good part about finding one of those groups. Love what they're doing down at the EGIA and I threw that up there. If you want to look out and check out more egia.com is there a URL? They got, I think it pops up and there's a couple different options that you have and look if and find the group that resonates for you. There's plenty out there. It doesn't necessarily have to be EGIA. It could be somebody else and they all have the same fundamental principles that are out there business you know this, you were in the pool industry you went to the HVAC. I guess what business fundamentals in the pool industry are the same in the HVAC industry. Whoa.
Terri Wilkinson:Swimming pool industry. There is very little there's very little KPIs shared in that industry. There's very little group help. It's just not something that you can find as easily and so I had a fantastic mentor, an employer named Tim that I used to work for in the swimming pool industry and he was just flabbergasted that there were, there wasn't any benchmarking or available numbers or anything like you can find in this industry we're in with heating and cooling dollars per employee, revenues per employee what should your service technicians be making when they're in a full size van? What should your install crews be doing? What should your salesmen be doing? Those kind of things are, were not available in that industry. So it's really cool to be in an industry where you can, you take your numbers and your information and put it against the best and see where you are and where you need to improve.
Thaddeus Tondu:As the saying goes, a rising tide raises all ships. So, That's what I like about what's happening with a lot of great individuals inside this space, inside the HVAC space. It's often in other home service industries too obviously we're in the HVAC space, so we know a lot more about that. I do want to say, Terry, thank you I know we're coming up to the top of the hour here. I want to thank you for taking the time a fellow Canadian to chat with us about some of the success secrets to be able to run a successful HVAC business of course, if you guys want to check her out, they have comforttech ca is their URL. You'll reach out to them. It's great service at comforttech.ca. Happy to answer any questions, be able to help you guys get to your next level of success but before we go, Evan has one final question here for you, Terry.
Evan Hoffman:Terry, what is one question that you wished people would ask you more, but they don't?
Terri Wilkinson:Oh, that's a really big question. You could have warned me about that one. I think the biggest question that I would love for people to ask is how more women can get into the HVAC industry. Whether it's as a trades person, an office person working in a sheet metal fabrication shop, whatever those things are, I, that's the question I wish people would ask me all the time. How can my daughter get into this industry? I want the schools to ask, That question too. Can you come and talk to our people about, come and talk to our kids about how to get into trades and to explain the benefits of doing so. The wages or the the industry itself, that the type of work that is available for them to do. I think that there's a lot of people that don't even realize that those are options for them men or women it doesn't matter male or female. A lot of people are pushed towards college. Which can be very expensive and they don't see trades and especially the HVAC trade as an option. So yeah, I'd like to, I'd like people to ask me, how do I get into this?
Thaddeus Tondu:Here's your soapbox.
Terri Wilkinson:There it is.
Thaddeus Tondu:If you had a message but if somebody came up and asked a question what would you tell them? What would you say?
Terri Wilkinson:I would tell them just to find out everything that they can. I would tell them to connect with a business like ours and ask to go on a ride along. With some of the technicians or spend a day in the office with some of the office staff I would get them to get in touch with people like me that want to introduce them to the industry and we're happy to try and facilitate those kind of conversations. I want the schools to approach us and we try and approach the schools. We're trying to find the time always to get out there and do that. But the last time we reached out to local schools, we got three different interested parties that wanted us to come out and meet with their students and do a presentation on how to get into trades in general. Talk about women in trades and also, the benefits of being in a trade versus going to college. I think a lot of people go to college because that's what they're supposed to do and then they realize that, It's not lucrative or they can't find a job in the field, but they thought they could find a job in where in trades, as you guys know, you can get a long ways especially in wages fairly quickly if you just follow the program and get it done.
Thaddeus Tondu:I know my dad tried to push me to go towards the trades growing up. I'm like, no, go to business school and in hindsight, hindsight's always 20 20. It's Maybe I should have went into the trades because you you ramp up, you're like there's one benefit right there. You ramp up your income quicker versus somebody that's going to college university. Now they, now, granted, depending on what you want to do, you want to become a doctor. Okay. You just can't go work underneath the doctor and learn how to be a doctor. Maybe you could but there's a lot of anatomy and stuff that goes into it, but but it's reality, right? But here's the thing is, so once you go to one school and you knock it out of the park, I think this is even more empowering if it's from a female going into the trade school to be able to give that message, to be able to speak to women and obviously men will resonate to that message as well once you do it once, go do it every year, right?
Terri Wilkinson:Continue training, participating, learning everything you can, being willing to take on more things. But yeah, the benefit of going into trades, if you're so inclined, is that you can earn money while you learn. When you go to school, there are grants and things in Canada that help pay for tuitions and things like that. There's women in trades programs that are available that also help. There, there's a lot of things that, so you're coming out of four years, with a good income and no debt, so it's, if you're a mechanically inclined person or if you're interested in doing those types of jobs I'm not, but then there's still that, go and learn about business and then get into into a trades company and there's a lot of things you can learn.
Thaddeus Tondu:So I would even probably push back on the business side of things. I have a business degree and I run a business and most of the things that I learned about in my business degree, I aren't really applicable in running the business financials. Okay I'll give that as like the one and how to have a conversation, maybe drink a beer and we're in Canada, so I'll have a little bit of Toki every now and again in university but the idea is that the profit, the financials, right? That's something that I learned from my business degree, You can also go learn that elsewhere. I mean,
Terri Wilkinson:In a three or four day bootcamp with Gary Ellis.
Thaddeus Tondu:Right? Exactly there's resources, but if I were to go work on a and learn the technical aptitudes of being in Australia as well, a little longer than a weekend, like a, I'm talking about running, like working on a furnace and gas and like all that stuff a little bit longer than a weekend course here.
Terri Wilkinson:It's forever learning. Yes, actually, because with the increase in efficiencies and with the changes in technology, the way that we can diagnose now, we have thermostats that'll get back to us about how a customer's furnace is operating. So there's it's a forever learning thing there's different ways to diagnose there's different ways to deal with customers problems the new advent of the heat pump technology the government's pushing towards that technology, trying to deal with people's reactions to the government, trying to push that technology there, there's a lot to, there's always something to learn and so again participate as much as you possibly can.
Thaddeus Tondu:Exactly and guess what? A profit and loss statement hasn't changed in 20 years longer.
Terri Wilkinson:There's a lot of HVAC companies that don't really understand how to read one, but there's a course.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yep and there's lots of information out there Terry thank you for getting on your soapbox there about getting people into the trades. I think it's a very powerful message that more people need to do and getting involved in their local schools and their local area to be able to help impact that is going to be the, quickest and easiest way to be able to do that to show what it can do for somebody in their world and giving them another option versus the university world. Thank you for sharing the struggles of being married to the job, working with your spouse and making sure that it's definitively things on there a lot of great information came out of it for a lot of great people. So thank you for opening up and sharing all those success secrets.
Terri Wilkinson:Thank you. It was fun to be here. I had a good time.
Thaddeus Tondu:You're very welcome and until next time.
Evan Hoffman:Cheers,
Thaddeus Tondu:Wells 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.