Transitioning From Commercial To Residential, With Brian Cranney

Jack interviews Brian Cranney, owner of Cranney Home Services and a Nexstar member for over 12 years. Cranney shares how he grew his business by transitioning from commercial to residential and adding services. He talks about the difference between the two sets of customers. 

Transcript

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Speaker 1 0:09

BHi, this Jack Tester in the presidency of next door and I am in Marco Island, Florida. And our super meeting and sitting across from me is Brian Creaney. How you doing Brian? Good, Jack. Gleek great to be here. Well it's it, uh, I saw you Brian and I said you got a story to tell. You know, you're an interesting storyteller to begin with and then you've got an interesting story to tell about your business. I do. It's uh, it's been a great run and continues to be a great run. That's awesome man. Well, you're a charismatic guy and you're always fun to be around and you know, when you're around next door I've notices is always circle around you. You know, people listen to your stories and uh, they can be kind of colorful and uh, we want a little bit of that color on the podcast, not the full on. We can modify it. Check. That's awesome. Well, let's do this. Um, why don't you tell us when you, what year did you join next year and what your company looks like when you joined?

Speaker 2 0:58

So I, I joined next, I want to say I was like 12 years ago. And before that the company was purely a commercial industrial. They started out as an electrical contract of 35 years ago. Okay. Um, that's what I went to school for. Um, so I was doing electrical work again, you know, mostly commercial industrial setting. And then over the years I decided to try to offer some other services. So I started the commercial Hva, see division to add to the electrical. And then a few years after that I said, well, if we're doing electrical and HAC, why don't we do plumbing? So we added commercial plumbing. Okay. And so like 12 years ago, I had a fellow that was working for me that had a background and a contract is 2000 as our former name. Yes. Right, right, right. And, uh, good hired him as a, as a, as a to it, he was an employee to manage the plumbing commercial side and my business. And uh, he said to me, hey, there's this group, next star, the residential. And I said, you know, Greg, get away from me. I want nothing to do with residential. He says, hi, it's a little different. You might said, no, forget it. I am not interested in residential. I'm just a commercial guy. He worked on me some more work done, we some more. And he convinced me to go to a money masters down at Bill Raymond shop in White Plains, New York. We get in the car, we drive down there for two days. And you know, I started to learn about next to, and one of the things, so there was, it was a two day event and it was kind of a religious movement that morning. You know, everybody's drinking the Koolaid and the, you know, they get some great speakers and you know, you know, at noontime who's joining in, you know, much of people are raising their hand and I haven't raised my hand yet. I'm enjoying it. I'm learning, but I'm not ready to commit because it's a major commitment to move from, uh, you know, add a come from a commercial platform to a residential platform. So then it was the second day and, uh, it was Kenny. Kenny Chatman was mentioning, we're talking about, you know, you as the trainer, the trainer, that event. And he said to, you know, one of the things, as simple as it sounds, he said, so, you know, we, your technician presents and he does the work and he gets paid right there. I said, Whoa, Whoa, hang on a second. Can you repeat what, what, what do you mean? He gets paid right there and he, so he explains the system, this is how we work and it's flat rate and, and uh, you know, the technician does the work and then it gets paid. That piqued my interest in a big way because you have a little air at that time. Yeah. It was always a whole lot of money on the street. And I said, Jesus, that's, that's, you know, I kind of Wa, you know, one of the takeaways from that two day thing was this, you know, doing the work and getting paid the day you do the work was a big thing. So I went bad in join. Uh, I went back and I mulled it over for a week or so and I decided, you know, what the mall that next step brings about while in the customer and just the residential customers, a beaten customer, nobody, you know, the, the people that service them for the most part, a terrible business people and all they want is service. You know, they're willing to pay a fair price, but just, just, you know, when I call you answer the phone when you say you're going to be there, be there. So I always prided myself on service the customer. So that's how we launched into joining next style and then studying a residential company with zero capital.

Speaker 1 4:21

Right. So this is still your business at the time. About how big was it back then when you joined

Speaker 2 4:25

the commercial side? Marshall said, well, you know, in, in the day, you know, we were, you know, we did 16 million on a given year, but I don't care about the growth. It's the net. Okay. So I don't get hung up when he leaves. I'm doing 20 million. Great. What's the net of that? Because that's, to me the most important thing. So it, you know, we like grew it from the commercial I grew from just me and a helper. You know, we were doing some big contracts and chasing money and you know, waiting for payments, you know, and my biggest year was probably 16 million. Okay.

Speaker 1 4:59

Okay. Well you had a nice business and by the way, in case we didn't set this up, but probably don't need to say this, but you're from Boston, you're businesses in the Boston market. Is that, I'm sure if people figured it out because everybody else talks funny. Yeah, they do, Brian. They do. And don't put the R on words that the art doesn't belong. You don't want to confuse people. No, no, we don't want to do that. So you're kind of north of north of the city of Boston, right? 20 miles north. Yeah. Danvers Massachusetts. So that people have an idea where you were and this was kind of pre recession when you joined? That's correct. Right, right before, um, yeah, it was prerecession probably in 2006, 2007 somewhere in there. Is that right? Yup. So, um, you, you, you went to money masters ultimately decided to join and it was great. You're going to go into the residential business and you didn't have one residential customer.

Speaker 2 5:51

Right. Which, you know, again, when I write my book someday, that wasn't the brightest move as far as, you know, what, why is that? Well, because I always thought big. So to me, you know, I joined Nexstar and you know, right away I'm buying trucks for both plumbing, electrical and all this residential and the space, right. You know, it, we're going to generate these calls and you know what, you know, until you build that customer base and you, you know, you get your, you know, repeat customers, it's a challenge. And uh, so I never forget I was in San Diego, I think it was at one of the next hour events. Jim Hamilton's might go to love them to death. And uh, you know, he, it's the first time I met him and, uh, I had to do for myself and is, Brian, how are you doing? It's good Jim. He said, so you're in the red. He says, you know, so what do you have for customer base? They said, well, I don't have one yet. And he looked at me like, you know, with, he looked like it could be like three i's like, oh, okay, great. You know, but you could tell that that was, you know, could I have gone out and purchased an existing residential business? Would that much more cost effective? I don't know. It's water over the dam now. Um, you know, I was fortunate that I had this really large commercial business that's chugging along and that was the feet of the help, right. You know, financially get this off the ground. And uh, I knew the culture was totally different from the commercial, the residential, but when you just start, no, you know, you'd be grabbing some of your commercial guys to do some of the work. Well, you know, they weren't wowing the customer. They booties. They would like, you know, with the, you know, throwing a half inch pipe around instead of running a piece of Romex wire. Uh, you know, so, but they try, they were doing their best, but I immediately saw I want to separate this group. So I'm fortunate I have two different buildings so I, you know, I had the commercial building, you know, it's only a quarter of a mile from the other building, but that's where they resided. And then the residential component, I own a fairly large storage facility and so I carved out a section of that and I started the residential. Okay. All right. So how did, so this was, have been 2007, 2006, somewhere in there. How did you start to grow your customer base? What did you do to get the name out there and what were, what would, would you mail at back then? Was yellow pages, uh, and is back in the day. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess I'm dating myself, but the yellow pages, we made a major commitment and they was still somewhat a decent event every year after that. You know, I love to see the yellow page sales guy come to the office cause he knew he was going to get the shit beat out of them. And we used to just grind them down on price to a point where he said, man, I'm done with you. I'm, you've beaten me to death. And I said, I'm not, you know, I don't like to grind people, but you know, the results of the results in the cost to get a customer through the yellow pages, you know, it was going up to $90. You know, we track that stuff, you know, one of the great things about next to, or as they teach you how to track all that stuff. Yeah. And you know, so then we went into the PPC market and the direct mail market, um, you know, again, seeing your trucks. We, I picked the, the first round at trucks we had and we still have that snake is that unit cell bubble truck. Right. Right. Six old, like a and but it's a great thing. You know, we wrapped them, we were the first company, we had a first official edit I've ever done. I'm sorry. Um, but I pick those trucks cause nobody else had them. Yep. And then we wrapped him, which we, you know, nobody in my area had ever rapped a truck before. So when you look at the rap and look at the style of the truck, it's set us apart. I think that, you know, when we tracked, you know, so when he hits trucks, so when he had trucks, you know that you buy those trucks once, it's a great way to market. So that was direct mail. It was, it was a, he used the same name train who wasn't aiming Ukrainians companies, company any companies is the, the one company and we tee it was craney home services. Okay. Did you have a little tagline or a we uh, I should know what I own. The company.

Speaker 1 9:53

We cover every nook. That's cranny. Is that what it says? Why are you asking me? Yeah. Is it still on your job? On the trucks? Yeah. You think you'd know this? You think you would. I'm going to my employees here this, this is great. I'm in big trouble. Big attention to detail guy. Aren't you? Cover every nook that's Crannick from the Thomas' English muffin thing. We cover every nook and cranny. No, that's creating all we cover every nook. That's cranny, right? Right. Just jumps was rolls off the tongue then it all anyway. So you're slowly building this customer base up. Right? So tell me, tell me about the evolution. What'd you learn being a commercial guy, being in that mindset, you know, if someone else is listening to this that, that maybe had a background in construction or commercial service like you did, what were some of the things that that did? She had to work through

Speaker 2 10:39

mostly positive stuff. Like I couldn't get over a learning flat rate pricing, learning truly out of price. The services you offer and you couldn't get over it. What does it mean? What I mean? You know, the, the positive, you know, the difference in pricing. And I was an hourly rate guy, always getting the crap beat out of you for this or that. Now we go to this flat rate pricing and it's what you, what you need to judge to be successful. And I would get thank you notes from residential customers, you know, and I'm waiting to get them from your commercial for it. If I did, I must've missed them in the mail, but it was, I just was astounded and I always would say, my God, you know, this is, these people just want to be serviced and we're able to offer those services and, and uh, you know, when over that customer and then they tell their neighbor and the neighbor and the repeat customers. So it was a great culture, great experience. So my office was in the residential side of the business. Now I'd go over, I have a general manager that oversaw the entire company and you know, I'd go over to commercial and, you know, leave the lake, uh, uh, you know, a beaten dog because of this or that. And they'd go back to the residential and you know, it's though Mrs. Jones, she loves and she just added this and that. So it was a breath of fresh air, not forgetting that it was the commercial business that fed the pilot to grow to do other things that I wanted. So it just, my passion started to swing more and more residential service.

Speaker 1 12:11

Okay. So that was, that was one thing that stood out was, was kind of the more positive customer experience. You weren't like in a, in a knife fight every day with customers. Right. But you kind of felt like you were, what else?

Speaker 2 12:23

I, you know, I would say me at learning as a, as an owner and you know, when I joined next to the power, you know, all these training, all the stuff that, you know, that, that next step provides is incredible. But the, the unmeasured pilar is the relationships you build with companies around the country. You know, when we come to a super meeting like this, and I have three people hit this week and they're already in breakout sessions and we have a plan. And, you know, I used to say when we get back on that plane, um, you know, I want you to write down to three things that you'd like to implement and we're going to sit on the plane and we're going to go over it before that plane lands, we're going to come up with a plan because you know, first the first couple of years you get overwhelmed and you come up with all these ideas and you'd go home and nothing happened, you know, you might get one thing done. So I've have the structure that next step brings those types of things really helped me as an individual on how to guide and be the visionary for my company.

Speaker 1 13:26

Your own flow. Okay. So it kind of the connections you got, uh, the relationships you build, the experiences and the people you've met. Was, was something else that was new to you when

Speaker 2 13:35

different, yeah, it was totally, you know, you are in the my business and the commercial side, you know, you still have another company in a coffee shop. They'd probably Schley should tell you. I mean, it wasn't that friendly environment. I mean, I work closely with other next dot companies right in my area and we work together. It's a, it's, it's a group that, you know, it's a bond. It's, it's a group that, you know, and last year, you know, I helped in my motor home and took two months off, went across country, told my wife yet we're going to go visit the country. We did. But I had two goals when I wanted to visit six next tech companies and I wanted to play great golf courses. I did get the, you know, she got to do the stuff that she wants to do, but you know, for me to, to pull into a company and in Washington state of Washington that at the time did commercial and residential and be able to sit with them for four hours and go over what's working for them and what isn't working for them. You know, go to other companies that, you know, it's just, you know, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. I tell everybody, you know, when, when we're in a meeting and somebody says to me, well, what about this? What about that? I said, just reach out, you know, did you call your business coach yet? You know, did you call your mom going to coach? Did you, you know, tap in, we're members. Tap into that first and then tap in right now my, you know, my daughter's sitting in a serve man work wave yup. Thing. And you know, we're having some challenges with that software that we want to get nailed down. And I said to, I texted her when you told me, you know, to get into this call. And I said, don't leave this meeting without going out and visiting the six companies in that room that already have served men so that we build that relationship. So we're not, you know, we're not reinventing the wheel. Right. That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. So you've been slowly grew this, this residential business. You had a very profitable commercial business that was, for lack of a better word, funding it. Right, right. You know, and, and you started to just find yourself kind of moving more and more to a happy place to do it. Half year place. Right, right. And you have some family and all too. Right. So one of the other reasons like, so my son, uh, who worked, uh, on the commercial side do what Hcac pms and stuff. He's a comfort advisor on the residential side. Okay. Uh, Kyle, my daughter Jessica is like the chief financial person and she handles the software and some of the stuff that, uh, you know, I have, I don't know anything about. And then my daughter Caylee um, is, is managing the call center. Okay. So the residential side on the residential side, they, you know, so that was, they really liked that side of the business on. That's awesome. So the, just the, just so I can kind of summarize this, you saw the residential business in contrast to what you were used to as is one no ar or very little, right. Then you were experiencing big ar on the commercial side, one that you've, you found that the customer was more appreciative. So it was a more positive life experience if you will, being on that side of the business then, then another side. Right? Right. What else attracted you to that model? Well, I always, you know, when, when you hear the word culture, you know, and it's, it's, it's a big, big thing to make sure you try to get your business to be, I always talked about being a good company and a great company and I've learned and I've watched other companies in next hour and how they are able to build this culture in the, you know, this residential component where the commercial side, it just, it was, it was just, it's just a different beast. So to me, to be able to see people, I mean, we were able to build farm teams and watch kids come up through school and, and become leaders in our company. Um, the residential, it's the same thing. Um, you know, we bring kids in from a vocational school or even green, you know, that don't know anything. And through all the training, and now you see the number one, number two producers on the sole Dallas Saudia service business, um, and, and, and now as we start to dominate more and more of a territory, we'll make the, the company of choice, which choice now we're not there yet. That's thing that came up to, you know, in one of, uh, um, we had a little mini meeting last night at the House that we're staying at and that's, you know, I want to become the employer of choice. Uh, we're not there yet. We got to waste. Right.

Speaker 1 18:02

Okay. All right. So you saw that, well, let's tell us now. Um, and there's been some interesting transitions recently, right? So how big today, rough terms is the residential craney residential? Yeah, it's w I think they'll probably do between eight and 9 million. Okay. But it's awesome. It's not the gross brother. I knit. I hear Ya. I'm assuming it's profitable. It's very good. Very good. Congratulations. Very good. So that's an, it's predictable I think. Now. There we go. That's what I was looking to get. Yeah, I think that's,

Speaker 2 18:30

you know, that's one of the biggest things in the, you know, when you talk about the recession years and, you know, and I, you know, I've, uh, knock on granted or whatever it is, marble table level, uh, we made it through, was it, it wasn't pretty the commercial side in particular. Well, yeah. But yeah, it was, you know, we took some major hits and I'm a, you know, I kind of lead with my heart and more than my brain and keeping people on and try, you know, responsible for all these families. And it was, you know, the, the, the losses were significant losses. Uh, but we made it through that, you know, and, and so now the, the commercial predictability was, you know, depending on the, what you're bidding on a, whereas you know, where the residential is so much more predictable and we have some great seasonality stuff that we work on. We have some great stuff we learned from other next dot. Companies. You know, I find in our business in New England, you know, February, March is a shoulder, two months, August and September is a shoulder, two months. And so, you know, what I learned was let's spend most of our marketing dollars in those shoulder months. And what we've been able to do, and one of the things I'm very proud of, a lot of residential companies and some companies can relate to this, some probably not getting through the first quarter. It regionality, January, February, March, getting through that first quarter, I always said, you know, a good company will, we'll break even a great company will make money. It's just been the nature and an egg after. This was the first year now where we got through that first quarter and we made money. It's no, okay, we got to dig out of the hole and April, you know, it's just, it was great. Yeah, we just had that, you know, we have it going and now we just got to make sure that we continue to maintain the processes and we train, train, train, and we continue to wow the customer. And the future is endless. The growth, you know, what? Growing at about 23, 25% a year. That's awesome. And you know, it's just, it's exciting. It's a great, you know, I go in there, I, you know, when I'm around, you know, I've, I'm somewhat of an absentee owner. I do a take off quite a bit. Um, but you know, I'm home, you know, I'm at the dock at six 30 in the morning, you know, wishing everybody a great day to work safe and to have fun and win the day. And, and uh, it's just a great, you know, I'm like a cheerleader. Yeah. Well you are very, very engaging man, as for sure. Yup. So what did you do to the commercial business? So, so last year we were at a business planning workshop, which is, you know, started as a next step, major, Major. You know, I don't know how companies can run their business without being involved in that. And because of the commercial model and the business planning workshop in the next time model is good. You know, residential, we were always, you know, having a skew the numbers and look at call counts, but that's not predictable and it just, you know, and finally I turned to my brother who, you know, I, it doesn't own anything to do with the visits. He's my accountant. And I said, if I'm sitting here next year and we're going through this blank again, you know, shoot me because it's just time is, you know, it's come time where, you know, we just need to break this off. So, um, I hired a next de Vendor and without, uh, you know, Fred Sill Silverstein from SFP advises and um, you know, went through the numbers and uh, and, and, and uh, Fred came up with a host of great bias and, uh, I was able to have my general manager who is going to go with the new entity. I wanted him involved in picking, you know, make sure that this is a good fit. I had picked my mind, the company I thought, but I wanted him to pick and we ended up selling the commercial division January, July 31st. And, uh, I'm very excited for them because now they have an owner that's just focusing on the commercial side, is wants to grow it and do those things if they were at a better place than they were with me. And now I'm really excited that I'm focusing all my time and energy. On a passion that I have, and that's the residential side of the business. That's awesome. Yeah. The eight laws of double digit profitability in the first one's worked the model right. What you're doing right. You know? No, no confusion there. No, no. You're all, and I know you're a talented guy and you know, even though you're there, you know, it's uh, getting to hang around with people like you frank. You know, I picked up a tidbit of information out besides getting all the fly bites it. So over the summer there was a golden nugget that came from the two day venture that I went back and implemented in my company. And it's unbelievable how it's taken off. Oh, that's awesome. Those are the things that you can't measure. Those are the things that, you know, besides the great, the greatness of the training and everything, the processes and all that, that that wasn't even an official event. You were just hanging out with five people, just six people just hanging out. You know what I mean? Just like go and pheasant hunting, you know, you just, you hanging out, you know what, I'm going to do this next two days. You know, my people will be into a lot of these speaking events and I will be there, but I'm going to see somebody that I want to talk to and I do have a bad habit. I smoked so guys, and I'm going to grab that person and we're going to go out and we're going to spend the hour sitting out in the sun and the porch here and, and uh, talking about things. And that's just such a huge value that I don't think people realize that that next out has been able to provide to me. The relationships I've built all around the country. Right. Special. That's awesome.

Speaker 1 24:10

Special. If I can, if I can editorialize here for a minute. Um, Brian, you, you're a very gregarious man, you know, and, but I think the, the, the lesson you have is this is I think, I think a lot of conversations come a little easier for you. You know, you're a big personality or you'd like to talk, you like to engage. You're not shy at all. Shy, you know, not at all shy did I mentioned that. So you, you, but when you do put yourself out, even if you're not Brian craney that much of an outgoing personality there, can you get the benefits that you get? I think more naturally, right? We just put this environment together and you just took to it. I mean, you were, this was like, you know, duck to water or whatever, you know, this was, you were meant to be here as far as I can tell, just from how you interact and work a room and get people,

Speaker 2 24:58

well, the, yeah, Jack, thank you. But, um, you know, I look at the training and the coaching that next day has provided me to help, not just me, but all the people that work for me to better their lives from my kids and the growth. And it's just, it's just like, you know, it's, it at 62 years old, um, I'm in no rush to retire. I love what I do. Oh, that's awesome. I love going around the country, meeting people, picking up the phone when I have a question. Um, you know, and it's just, uh, in the, in the coaches, in the whole staff and you know, get the website figured out a little bit better. It's better. It's, it's getting there. It's got, or you know, this. But overall, no, you're on the logo. I don't even know your own slogan. No, I, I'd be the first one to say, but I, and then our website is perfect. Oh, I'm sorry. Well, I'm sure I'm not the only, it's come a long way. It the only person that didn't know their slogan, but go ahead. We cover every nook that's cranny and now you got it. That's what it is. The side of the truck. But no, it's a [inaudible]. One of the things that, you know, and I say Jim Hamilton's might coach and, and John Conway who was a coach in John Conway, used to have his own company. So to Jim, and Jim did too, but I'll never forget when you interviewed John Conway when someone, you know, and John, I think when he told his story, you know, he had, he, when he joined next door, you know, he wasn't in a great place and he had a lot of digging out to do. And so I said, John, you know, so Jenna, what did you do? He said, I did whatever Jim Hamilton told me to do. I said, what? He said, I did what did give me a to never told me to do. And I repeat that in every meeting with my people when Jim is on a phone, you know, through the business planning workshop. And I said, look, whatever he says to do, just do it right. There's proven. Does it happen? Does it happen? Absolutely. Okay. Now it's, you know, one of the things in Jim's doing an onsite with us in December, and I said to Mike, I said, you know, Jim's big on cleanings, I don't know if you've heard about in his cleanings. And I'm a believer in, I've just go back to what John Conway and I said, look, if Jim tells me to do it, I'm doing it. And so yeah, that one there I have to push a little harder with my people because you know, it should that be part of a system check that should be part of a tuna. I said, look, just listen to Jim. Whatever Jim tells you to do, just do it. You do it will be successful. Just that mindset. That's awesome.

Speaker 1 27:24

So that's great. That's good. Great. You know, well let's, let's, so let's, let's, you know, maybe kind of start to summarize a few things here. So if there's somebody listening that that is in your shoes 12 years ago, somebody that's got maybe a couple of different kinds of businesses going on, um, what I'd like you to do is reflect on what you wish you could have done either better or sooner, or that you didn't do. So just us reflect back. Let's just go back on your walk right now and say, you know, what would you have done maybe different to get to where you are today?

Speaker 2 27:56

Yeah. On the commercial side, I just would have driven that to more of a service and replacement business and not the bigger contracts and construction. Um, you know, there is a, there, there is a home, a good business model for service and replacement and the commercial side. Right. But, you know, it doesn't mix with the residential side. Um, you know, when I look at, uh, you know, I wished I had heard about next, uh, you know, 10 years earlier than that because I think, you know, my education in business, you know, I'm a high school vocational graduate. I didn't go to college. I didn't, you know, and so I learned so much about running a business through my next step training. Had I done that 10 years ago, you know, where would I be today? So it couldn't have come sooner. Yeah. Uh, I wasn't in, you know, when I joined next door, I wasn't, you know, I had a good business, just decided to branch out to something that, you know, that we weren't doing. And it's about wow. And in service to the customer. So, you know, that model, that type of stuff. Uh, if I'm somebody out there that's running multiple businesses and not show, and I, and I, we just brought a company that join next, uh, through, you know, meeting with us and they just came to my office a few weeks ago and, and, uh, you know, they, they were a commercial h vac company and they're trying to get into the residential and they have some commercial Pete, you know, employees that just not drinking the Koolaid. And I was like rolling that back to me when I was trying to pull this off. And I just took him aside and said, you know, look, you can't put a square peg in a round hole. You know, you didn't say it that way though. Yeah, no, we were editing on that. Good. You're doing good. Yeah, thank you. And uh, you know, that's The v you know, it's giving back. You know, you look at frank, you know, and I said, our founder next door, I said this to my daughter on the way to the drive from the airport and I tell everybody, you know, Frank Blau should have a plaque in the White House. I mean, frank blow what he did. You think about it, it's true. Jumping in a station wagon, driving around the country, trying to teach people how to price and service the, you know, do the business and you know, get heckled and holiday that, you know, you don't know what you're talking about. And he just had the perseverance to keep at it. Uh, that guy, you know, I owe my, you know, every, we all, we all owe frank. It's really gratitude is what he did. And, you know, it's just shows you the power of one person. So I learned like his mother told him he needed to give back. I enjoy when I see a company and I see him new and they're going through some challenges that I've already gone through. Hey, come on in. That's spent as many hours as you want. You know, you can do whatever you want when you're done listening and not that, you know. And so that's a great way for me now, especially in this position I'm in where you know, I can give back and, and uh, and meet with people, enjoy helping them, you know, get through some of the, some of the barriers of humps. Make him set a humps, make them, yeah. Small Hills and whatever.

Speaker 1 30:59

Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, it sounds like you have a, a nice little life going on right now. God plays in Florida. You're down here quite a bit. In the winter time you got a motor home, you travel around the country, you and your dear wife. Yup. Got a healthy business back home that your kids are growing into and other people are growing into. It's profitable and growing well.

Speaker 2 31:20

Yeah, it's great people, you know, just make, yeah, I have great, you know, I have longterm people, you know, it's all about the people. And uh, so I'm very fortunate and I've been able to, you know, people say, you know, I have no reason to retire because I am able to live this life. You know, I never, I don't get involved in the day to day. I'm kind of the vision guy. I sense that costly. I don't even know how to turn the God damn software on, but I don't tell everybody that. And uh, you know, but it's a great, I'm using my strengths where I, you know, and, and, and then I have the people that, the attention to detail and some of that other stuff that I probably don't have. And greatest thing is, yeah, we have these Thursday meeting. One thing I do is I have direct report meetings once a week, religiously, even when you're on the road, when I'm on the road. And it's just the mom and forms, the next step form that I use. Awesome. And I always say to, you know, and then I'll come up with these visionary ideas and I know that when I leave the room, they'll say, don't worry, he'll forget about it by next week. So, you know, I've made a point because part of that plan is, you know, when you're wrapping up a meeting, okay, what are the action steps going forward? So, you know, those are some of the things, maybe it sounds basic, that's not, not what does, but you know, those are those little things that you need to do to make sure that the results happen. So again, I, you know, we're going through the staffing model right now. We're looking to, you know, as we grow, we don't, as Jim would say, you don't want chaos and growing. He wanna you know, you want to, I always used to say, yeah, you want all your cylinders running. So now a review and all that staffing to see who has what percentages, who's doing what, right? So and no one, we're going to add so many texts every year, making sure we fill those positions in the back office as well so that the growth is controllable and it's not chaos.

Speaker 1 33:01

Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, well done. Glad to. They hit JL done. You know, it's a great story and the story continues. All right. Hopefully for many, many years to come. So if you, uh, are at an star event or if you're in Danvers, Massachusetts, I didn't see me. I won't, I'm not there from January to the end of May. Okay. You're there. You're in Vero Beach, Florida beach, Florida golf gave him my fishing game. That's awesome. But he's, you can reach Brian. He's a, he's an awesome guy. Fun to talk to you. We'll have a little more colorful conversation that we had, but uh, if you're up for it, he's up for it too. You can test me on the motto of the company. That was awesome. Well, thanks again Brian. Thank you Jack Time and thank you all for listening is very interesting. Special edition of the Leadership Lounge as Jack Tester. We will catch you next time. Thanks so much.

Speaker 3 33:53

Oh.