Latest / The Home Service Heartbeat Podcast / The Strategy Behind a $175M Home Service Company | Chris Hoffman of Hoffman Brothers

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The Strategy Behind a $175M Home Service Company | Chris Hoffman of Hoffman Brothers · The Home Service Heartbeat Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of the Home Service Harpy Podcast.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Joe Crozera.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: Today I'm excited to be joined by Chris Hoffman from Hoffman Brothers in St.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Louis, Nashville, and Denver.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: They have offices there.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: Uh and they're moving across the country to improve the life of every home and business.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: And they've been doing that for the last 40 years.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Chris, thank you so much for joining us today.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm thrilled to have you on the show.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure, Chris, and I was looking forward to this.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: So Chris, why don't we start by sharing a little bit about how you got started in the service industry and what you led you to your leadership role here at Hoffman Brothers?
0:44
SPEAKER_01: And just tell us a little, give us a little thumbnail about uh the organization, if you don't mind.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll I'll take you uh Joe on a quick detour uh to 1988.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: I won't stay there long, uh, so I don't I don't keep us for five hours a day.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: But uh my dad started this business in '88, uh uh and and he had really uh bootstrapped this thing, uh, started from zero, was a mechanical engineer, jumped in a service van, uh uh, and then started running running service called and building this thing uh uh by himself.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: And uh I, you know, I ended up going a different path post-college.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: I I joined uh the Marine Corps, uh uh spent five years or so in the Marine Corps, and I left the Marine Corps in 2014.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: And my brother Joe, at the time, who today is my business partner, he was working at Train, uh, the HVAC Equipment OEM.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: He was a sales engineer over there.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: And my dad grabbed Joe and I and we we put our heads together.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: And my dad was starting to think about succession, right?
1:36
SPEAKER_00: He had seen a lot of his friends starting to retire, some of them selling their businesses.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so uh in 2014, um, 2015, uh we we put our heads together and realized there was a lot more alignment around what we wanted to accomplish in the business, the vision we had, the growth ambition.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we we quickly transitioned the business, both from a leadership and ownership perspective, uh uh we were able to make that happen in pretty short order.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I'll I'll say one thing.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: I am I'm incredibly grateful because I feel like in family business in particular, uh Joe, you often hear about like patriarch or matriarch who takes the the keys with them to the grave, right, with the family business.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: The 90-year-old founder, you know, in family business approving every$5,000 CapEx decision.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh Joe and I were incredibly blessed because that was not our dad.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Our dad was very quick to trust and empower.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so that's what he did in 2015.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: We transitioned ownership and leadership of the business.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we had about 40 team members, uh, about 9 million in revenue at the time.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: And that was uh uh that was Joe and my start to uh entering the trades.
2:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh definitely I'm happy to see that this legacy of service has continued.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm very sure that your uh dad is and has been always very proud of you guys, and definitely it's uh a pleasure to have you on the show.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: Chris, while you're doing this, um going from the uh engineer uh who was probably really good at the the heating and air conditioning and the trades, um, to this growth path, the scaling the growth here, uh that's a different uh a different situation here, right, Chris?
3:13
SPEAKER_01: So what's the biggest challenge uh that you faced while you guys were growing this thing and uh scaling it to the three different uh major cities that you're involved with?
3:23
SPEAKER_01: And and how do you guys overcome that?
3:25
SPEAKER_01: What's give us some uh of the challenges that you run into when you do something like this?
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh well, first to clarify, Joe, I'm I'm the I'm the dummy in the Hoffman family.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm the only non-engineer.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: My brother, uh my brother and dad are both the engineers.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: I I studied economics and then and then joined the Marine Corps and put that economics degree to good use.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: If you're my my dad was a Marine, so I think anybody I'm a Marine, I'm in the Marine family, I always say.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: So uh there's you're no dummy, Chris.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: Don't don't don't hang that on yourself.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: That's uh it's it's a it's a pride and honor.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: And uh I I sing the Marine, I I I sometimes cut the grass whistling the Marine Corps hymn all the time.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: I grew up I grew up with that, right?
4:07
SPEAKER_01: So so I'm totally, even though I wasn't in the Marines myself, I'm a Marine Corps, I'm Marine Corps, yeah, I still I still salute when I see the Marine Corps dress uniform for sure.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll say um, you know, when when we joined the business uh Joe in 2015, you you know, what we realized quickly was that um there wasn't a lot of process or structure in the business, right?
4:30
SPEAKER_00: We we were sort of in in reactive mode, things would happen, the phone would ring, you'd send somebody out there.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: There wasn't a lot of uh logic or process that determined which which service technicians went to which call and how we were approaching those calls and what we did when we knocked on the customer's door and how we would go about our diagnostic process or customer service process.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so unsurprisingly, you know, old news to you, Joe.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: One of the one of the first things we did was, hey, let's get really clear on like what does success look like in our business?
4:57
SPEAKER_00: What should we be measuring that we're not measuring, right?
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Things like like average tickets and conversion rates and dollars per lead and membership sales and all these different measures of success.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: And then I think where the magic starts to happen is okay, we've defined what what these measures of success are.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, how do we create process that influences each of those measures of success, right?
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh, how do we present options in the home and what impact does that have on tasks sold per call, right?
5:22
SPEAKER_00: And uh and so that's what we started doing was just really, really dialing in process.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: And those processes started from top of funnel, you know, into the call center, through how we're dispatching and assigning calls, uh, through what our field professionals do when they knock on the door, to what our sales folks do when they go into the home, uh, to what an installation process looks like.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, what is a day when you're in someone's house?
5:42
SPEAKER_00: Like, how do we how do we set that job up for success, be as efficient as possible, and take a job that maybe takes two days and bring it down to one because of the preparation and training that we do?
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Um so it really became a game of let's identify what measures of success we want to look at and let's make sure that we're being really thoughtful and intentional around the processes we're designing and how they influence those measures of success.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: But it's it's doing, you know, Joe, a lot of people have asked, you know, because we we went from about 9 million in revenue to about 175 today.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: And I share that because, you know, a lot of folks say, well, wow, well, how'd you do that?
6:11
SPEAKER_00: What's the thing?
6:12
SPEAKER_00: What's the magic thing that you did?
6:13
SPEAKER_00: What's the one thing I can go do that does that?
6:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh and the reality is, Joe, it's it's not the one thing, right?
6:18
SPEAKER_00: It's doing a hundred little things every day, day after day, week after week, that allows you to deliver uh really a great outcome that compounds over time.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think if you go back to the uh Marine Corps metaphor, it's uh I always say they're not gonna, the Marine Corps doesn't give somebody a rifle if they can't even make their bet or shine their shoes.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Like first you got to say, hey, can this person even be trusted with uh a uniform and shoes?
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Uh, because we're not gonna give them a rifle and uh teach them how to go to warfare if you can't even do the rituals, the small rituals that get you.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's really the secret, right?
6:54
SPEAKER_01: Is uh uh you know, taking on positive rituals that are uh making you success.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: So let's talk a little bit about that.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh so your customers of Hoffen Brothers can hear this, because I think this is important for them to know.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, you're growing into a much larger company, and that's a large uh accomplishment.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: But to maintain the customer focus, what kind of strategies are aligned with your training and things you guys do that allow you to remain customer focused?
7:25
SPEAKER_01: Because every big company tries to look like a small one and every small company tries to look like a big one.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: Yet it's uh it's hard though, because it's like hard to maintain that personal touch with your clients and that intimacy that you can have when your dad owned the company.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: And now as you grow bigger, uh what kind of strategies are important for you guys to maintain that personal focus uh with your clients?
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, Joe, I'll give you an example.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Every every Monday morning I sit down, uh, I do onboarding for every new hire that starts.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they all start on Monday, right?
7:56
SPEAKER_00: And I'm their first spot of the day at 8 a.m.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I share with them uh during onboarding is the importance of our customer service process.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: And I tell them, I say, here's why it's so important, right?
8:06
SPEAKER_00: We might have Mrs.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: Jones, what we use the the faux customer, Mrs.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Jones, she might call us on a Monday for an HVAC service call because it's not working, then she's gonna call us on Wednesday because uh she's got an electrical panel issue, and then she's calling us on Friday because she has a drain that's backed up.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: What I don't want Mrs.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: Jones to feel like at the end of that Friday service call, I don't want to feel like, oh my gosh, I called Hoffman Brothers, but I feel like I got three different companies that came out.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: They all treated me differently, they interacted with me differently, the experience was different, they presented options differently.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Some used technology, some didn't.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh so what we need to do as a business is to be able to consistently show up and from uh the phone call through the field pro knocking on the door through the work being executed, it doesn't, it shouldn't matter, right, who the field pro is, what the trade is, whether it's in Nashville, whether it's in St.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: Louis.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh when people are buying our business, our company, our brand, uh, they're buying the service experience just as much as they are the technical work that we're delivering, right?
9:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I often joke that like uh nobody writes a review about us.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: I we've got tens of thousands of reviews, probably 50,000 reviews across our platforms.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: And I have yet to see a Google review where a customer writes about how good of a job we did soldering a joint or the vacuum we ran on refrigerant lines, right?
9:15
SPEAKER_00: What they talk about is man, how they how they how the folks interacted with me, respected my home, protected my home, communicated incredibly well, educated with me, educated me, were patient and took me along on the service call, right?
9:27
SPEAKER_00: And so what we've tried to do is we've grown is let's create this customer service process that is consistent, that is scalable, uh, and that ultimately is this incredible service wrapper that goes around our technical excellence so that when customers buy us, they're buying that experience that we're gonna deliver consistently every time.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: And we have to train to that.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: We've got a three-day workshop that we put our field pros through.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Our customer service process has six steps, right?
9:52
SPEAKER_00: From how we prepare for the call all the way through how we execute and wrap up that call.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: But we need to have that same consistent process.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, it's not rocket science stuff, Joe.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: Some of it's like, hey, we park on the street and we don't just pull in people's driveway.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Hey, we we knock on the door and we ask permission to enter.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: We put on booties, we let customers know at the front door what to expect from us on the service call that day.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: We acknowledge their membership status, right?
10:14
SPEAKER_00: If they're part of our home protection plan, right?
10:16
SPEAKER_00: These are just all sort of hallmarks and sort of gates that we want to make sure that we're moving through during our customer service process.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think when I look through some of the reviews as I did some research on the company, what it strikes me is the um, you know, that they mentioned the people.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: And nobody ever said it's because of the guy who put the line set in the right place in the right place or whatever.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: It was because like, you know what, uh John really took care of me or Alex really uh uh you know, call Alex, he's he'll he'll take care of he can manage a project like this.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: I think that's what people um when people say, why do people always need to shop around?
10:55
SPEAKER_01: And I say, Well, the shopping would stop if they felt that somebody cared enough to manage the project properly.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's really what Hoffman Brothers uh does based on the consumer uh reports that I'm seeing here.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: Was there a key moment uh as you were growing though, Joe, when you're doing all the stuff where you guys can you tell me a story about just think about this?
11:15
SPEAKER_01: I want you guys to go, you and Joe and your dad, and you guys all talk about this one customer that kind of told you you're on track.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: Like uh like maybe your dad came back and said, Hey, hey guys, listen to this one.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, Mike Ruckenberg or whatever.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: And he kind of here's what he said about us.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, you can't believe, you know, you know how he is, right?
11:35
SPEAKER_01: Like, like, is there some qu uh like a legacy story you guys have of somebody who gave you feedback that, hey, I think you might be onto something here, guys.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh, anything like that you can remember, Chris?
11:45
SPEAKER_00: No, we get these all the time, flavors of this type of story, and I love these stories.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Something to the effect of, man, uh, you guys came in, you were the third bid, uh, you were the most expensive, uh, and I went with you anyways, because the salesperson was incredibly professional, polished.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the presentation, the value they built in the company, their promise and commitment to how this job was going to be done right.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: And like, you were the most expensive, and I went with you.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, boy, am I glad that I did.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I love that because, Joe, like I what I tell folks, what I tell our team members, like my goal as a company, I don't want our customers to think, call Hoffman Brothers, they're the cheapest.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: Call Hoffman Brothers, they're the lowest cost.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: That is not what I want to be affiliated.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: What I want to be affiliated with is people think, ah, call Hoffman Brothers when you want it done right the first time.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Call Hoffman Brothers, they're the best.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: Their quality of work is second to none.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: Their integrity is beyond reproach.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: The respect they're going to show for your home is amazing.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: The way they communicate and their professionalism's incredible, right?
12:41
SPEAKER_00: That's what I want people to think.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And if you can deliver that, uh, then pay customers happily pay a premium.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: If that wasn't true, we wouldn't be growing at the rate we're growing, because we are a premium service provider in our market.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: And there's there's another side of this same coin, Joe.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: If if I'm wanting to be a premium service provider, right, and the reason my costs are high, but my service is very much uh ultimately, my service is entirely a function of like the quality of people that I have.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: And for me to attract the very best people who are going to deliver that incredible value, really high quality of work, and that incredible service wrapper, I need to pay them the best.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: I need to give them the newest trucks and tools and technology and training, right?
13:18
SPEAKER_00: It's why we, I mean, we we have field pros that all regularly make into the six figures for compensation.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: We pay 100% of their health insurance premiums for them and their entire families, over$20,000 per employee that we pay, a 10% of the 401k match, 29 paid days off, right, a year.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these uh this allows me to find the very best tradespeople that are going to be both incredibly knowledgeable uh in their technical uh craft or skill, but they're also like committed to delivering exceptional customer service when they knock on the door.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: These are high-integrity professionals.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: They're not technicians, they are field professionals, right?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: And that's who we're trying to attract and retain in our business.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: So the the story, the customer anecdote that I love, Joe, is one where customers come back to us and say, hopefully they said, hey, we picked you the first time, you were the most expensive, and dang, are we happy we did it.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: But I can tell you we get just as many calls from customers who are like, oh shoot, I went with the cheap guy, and now I'm calling you and please come save me, right?
14:10
SPEAKER_00: And they end up being happy with us for saving them.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the like, my God, I wish I would have just paid that 20% more from the beginning, and I would have saved a heck of a lot of money and headache.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think you went up paying the job you wind up paying two or three times when you do the job wrong.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh, because now somebody's got to you gotta do it the wrong way the first time, pay to take it apart and get rid of all that stuff and do it right by the time you've done three things as opposed to one thing, and sometimes it costs two or three times as much for sure.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh now if I was a a prospective client of Hoffman Brothers, how would I know?
14:43
SPEAKER_01: I think you said some of it, or you kind of leaked it out a little bit there, Chris.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: You're always like you're so like you're always on the next page where I'm just I'm gonna try to catch up with you.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: The uh uh how do I know if I was to be a good client for uh Hoffman Brothers?
14:56
SPEAKER_01: Like what's the best kind of client uh that uh tell us the best client for Hoffman Brothers is uh is what?
15:04
SPEAKER_01: Tell us how would I know I was a good client for you guys?
15:08
SPEAKER_00: Listen, we serve everybody.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: We serve every part of every community that we're in, right?
15:12
SPEAKER_00: There's not any area within our service area that we within our our radius uh in an MSA that we don't go to, right?
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh we serve we serve$10 million homes, we serve$200,000 homes, right?
15:23
SPEAKER_00: And we serve everything in between, right?
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Um and like so we're a good customer, or we're a good, we're a good vendor, we're a good partner for anybody who wants it done right, who cares about quality of service, right?
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh who wants to hire somebody that's gonna send a real professional, who's got a real job that takes pride in what they do, that's drug tested, that's background checked, right?
15:41
SPEAKER_00: If that's what you care about, then like we're a great fit for you, right?
15:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe the the folks that we aren't a good fit is like, I don't give a shit about any of that.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: I just want the lowest number.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, well, I'm Mike, but it's for me to attract and retain the very best talent, that means I'm not gonna be the lowest number that shows up to give you a quote on that repair, right?
15:57
SPEAKER_00: But I can guarantee you we'll be one of the most professional and the most competent and the most technically skilled.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and if that's what a customer values, we're your company, uh, right.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't matter whether you're in a$200,000 house or a$10 million house.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we find customers up and down that spectrum that care about quality and want to work with us.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, when I asked that question, you I think you nailed that answer, Chris.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: I was I'm always looking for that answer you just said.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: And uh people like everybody, I'm like, yeah, but there are some people who uh, you know, uh, you know, just you know they don't care about some of the things that uh they're not aligned in a way.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense, sir?
16:32
SPEAKER_01: I think that's uh that's an interesting great, a great point that you make there.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned before the people who work at Hoffman Brothers.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: Tell us a little bit about uh the qualities that you know that you look for when you're hiring, you know, people who are going to turn into top talent, like you mentioned before.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, I think one of the hardest things that service contractors like us, one of the hardest things we have to contend with, Joe, is um let me tell you, if I just needed to find somebody who was really technically skilled, but I didn't care about their customer service, or you know, whether they brush their teeth in the morning or whether they comb their hair or tuck their shirt in, right?
17:08
SPEAKER_00: If I just cared about technical skill, there's a lot of people that have good technical skill in the trades, right?
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, and or alternatively, if I just cared about customer service and sales skill and how you present professionalism in a home and I didn't have to worry about technical, I'd say, well, there's a lot of people that look like that too.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: But to find the individuals that are technically incredibly competent and skilled and are also just consummate professionals who take pride in what they do, who show up in the way that we expect folks to show up, right?
17:34
SPEAKER_00: Clean shaven, teeth brushed, shirt tucked in, uniform clean, like really excited and taking pride in their career, like to find folks who bridge that gap technically and customer service, that's incredibly challenging, right?
17:47
SPEAKER_00: That is not a huge pool of talent that's out there in the marketplace.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I can tell you, the ones that are incredibly skilled and good at that, at both of those things, uh, they deserve to get paid a ton of money.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of people that want to hire them and treat them really well.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so given that we're trying to be a premium service provider in our markets, and to be a premium service provider, I need those people and I need the very best ones in that small pool of folks.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: I have to pay them incredibly well and I have to treat them incredibly well, right?
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's what we strive to do as a business.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: It's like we want to be the employer of choice, which means we've got to have great compensation and benefits.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: We've got to have great facilities, we've got to invest heavily in our team.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we invest heavily in leadership development programs because that old adage, it's it's true as ever, right?
18:27
SPEAKER_00: People quit their bosses, not companies.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, how do I make sure that I've got leaders in my team that know how to lead and coach and motivate and inspire and help attract and retain the very best trades talent?
18:37
SPEAKER_00: So we've just got to think about the employee experience end to end from comp and benefits through uh leadership and and their engagement and how leaders are interfacing with our team members.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: We've got to get all that stuff right to attract the talent that we need to grow our business.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's uh it goes to that mission of improving life, um, not just in in the uh clients, but also uh the people who work with you, the people who work for you, your vendors, and all the partners who make this possible.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: Because uh, you know, it was a good friend of mine, he was a good friend of yours probably too, Tommy Mello, who said, you know, how do you do all this stuff and you grow a big company like this?
19:18
SPEAKER_01: And he told me, so the answer is not by yourself.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: You have to, it's a community that makes this possible.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh Chris, how much training does it you do to develop those people?
19:31
SPEAKER_01: Because I know that we'd like we'd love to have a finished product, but it would be honestly, uh there's no way you can uh you can rely on that.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: You'd have to say, I'm gonna find people no matter where they're at, whatever status they're in.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna still build on wherever they're at, right?
19:47
SPEAKER_01: From there.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Tell us about the kind of training that Hoffman Brothers does so that consumers know uh how much how many hours and uh what's what's the ritual that you guys do of daily, hourly, uh weekly training with your team.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll I'll I'll start by saying when we think about uh recruiting talent into our business, uh, we'll take folks that are that are new to the trades, right?
20:11
SPEAKER_00: And I'll talk in a minute about what those training programs look like, but we also target folks that are really experienced too, right?
20:16
SPEAKER_00: Who come into our business.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: And we have a an awesome internal recruiting team, really talented talent acquisition manager uh who's got a great team and they do an awesome job uh ensuring that we're hitting our head uh budgeted headcount goals, right?
20:28
SPEAKER_00: And bringing in experienced talent when we can, when there's values alignment and when they are that blend of great customer service and great technical skills.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh but that's not enough, right?
20:37
SPEAKER_00: So then we go to uh within Hoffman Brothers University, we've created a whole uh learning and development function, right?
20:43
SPEAKER_00: And we've invested super heavily in that.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: And there's really three, three legs to that stool, if we, if you will.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh the first leg is around what we call our enter the trades programs.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: So that's where we're taking folks who are new to the trades and creating a pathway for them to be uh uh operating independently in a service vehicle.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: And those curriculums are a combination of OJT, some classroom and learning lab training, some ride-alongs, that sort of thing.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh and those programs can take a couple months, up to five or six months, right?
21:10
SPEAKER_00: Before we put our stamp of approval on someone and say, hey, you are ready to go serve a customer with these specific call types that we've trained you on.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh so that's our first pillar of training.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's been awesome and I think super rewarding to create those pathways for people into the trades.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: The second focus area, Joe, is unsurprisingly, well, we've we've got this giant pool of existing talent team members.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: How do we make sure we're continuing to advance and develop their skills?
21:32
SPEAKER_00: So we call this our career acceleration pillar, right?
21:34
SPEAKER_00: So that's where we're saying, hey, we maybe we have somebody who knows furnaces and air conditioners, but they want to learn geothermal and tankless and duckless mini splits, right?
21:42
SPEAKER_00: It's our responsibility to continue to invest in those folks so that they can reach their full potential.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh and then the third pillar inside of HBU, what we touched on a little bit earlier, is what we call our leadership foundation work.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's just an acknowledgement and a recognition that leadership training is incredibly important.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: And candidly, Joe.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Most of our field managers in our business today and our department managers are folks who started as individual contributors, field professionals, right out there turning wrenches themselves in the field.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you, when you go from a field pro to a field manager, it is an entirely different set of skills that you need to be a leader, leading a team of eight or 10 field pros, entirely different set of skills to do that than is required to be an individual contributor.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of folks, like uh you need to get equipped with, you know, how the heck do you run a meeting?
22:28
SPEAKER_00: What are these KPIs and what do they mean?
22:30
SPEAKER_00: How do I pull these reports in service Titan to know where I can go look at these KPIs?
22:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh, how do I coach?
22:35
SPEAKER_00: How do I train?
22:36
SPEAKER_00: How do I do one-on-ones?
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how do I have tough conversations when somebody's not meeting expectations?
22:41
SPEAKER_00: So all those leadership skills, those foundational skills, as we call them, uh, we've got to make sure that we're super intentional about how we're equipping our leaders with that, uh, with those, those leadership skills.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, tell us a little bit about the uh next up, the leadership.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: You did bring that up.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: So I mean, if uh if you don't mind expanding on a little bit, okay, what is like, would you say the leadership strategy, if you would say like when you guys, you and Joe and your you know, your family go to work and the people who work there who are the leaders of the company?
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh what are some things that are definitely the non-negotiables?
23:14
SPEAKER_01: The thing that you the core leadership strategy, uh, where if you went to Denver, Nashville, or San Luis, you'd be it'd be like, yeah, I can tell you guys are all talking.
23:24
SPEAKER_01: You guys are all talking.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: What are some of the commonalities I would experience if I was an employee with your leadership team?
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and maybe maybe this answer would vary by like um uh maybe like band or seniority level level within the organization.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: But I I can tell you just starting with the top, Joe, like uh what's super important for me when we hire senior leaders, what we'll call them director and above leaders, uh, whether whether that's GMs, director of ops, even department leaders, right?
23:51
SPEAKER_00: Certainly anybody uh in or C suite or directors in any of our functions, marketing, accounting, finance.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: Um uh it's super important that that folks are willing and able to work up and down the spectrum of activities from the strategic to the tactical.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: And what do I mean by that?
24:06
SPEAKER_00: It is super easy to go hire whatever, an executive, a director, a VP, and all they want to do is sit behind their computer or sit in a boardroom and talk about strategy, but they don't want to log into Service Titan.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to roll up their sleeves, they don't want to deliver on any of the required project work that needs to get done.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: And like in our business, like that's not okay.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: We need leaders who are willing to do whatever it takes.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh, even if there's a C in front of your title, sometimes that might mean you're doing pretty tactical shit and you've got your sleeves rolled up.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but that's okay.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: And that's the culture we want is like uh we want executives in our business and senior leaders in our business who do whatever it takes and can move seamlessly between the strategic and the tactical uh work that needs to happen in our in our business.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: Uh from a field.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: Oh, go ahead.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: No, that's why I was like so.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: It sounds like really to me the the that the answer to that question is you guys try to walk the walk.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're trying to tell your employees the same, because I see a lot of times where management's like, hey, you gotta do whatever it takes, and then they themselves are, but I'm gonna go home right now because I got stuff I gotta I gotta do or whatever.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you ever work in a place like that, Joe, where uh you know the manager's like, hey, you guys gotta do what it takes.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: Come on, let's go.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do those things.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I I'll be gone like this afternoon though.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: I got things I got things I gotta do.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
25:20
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's like uh, you know, so you know, be the leader that you wish everybody else to be.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: Does that add up for you guys there, Joe?
25:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, Chris.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I called you your brother's name.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, but yeah, yeah, no, it's fine.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I mean, yeah, listen, setting an example is an important part, like modeling the behaviors that we expect from our teams is absolutely, I think, an important uh part of what we do.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: And I can say, you know, as I I think about like a lot of our our frontline leaders, which I think are some of the most important leaders in our business, right?
25:50
SPEAKER_00: That's where all of our talent sort of touches those initial frontline leaders.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: And like that's where, you know, Joe, though those fortunately, most of the folks that we promote into those roles are or most of the folks that are in those roles today are folks that we internally promoted.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: So we had the ability to um uh observe them in their roles as individual contributors and like see that they demonstrated the values we like to see from our team.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Everything from uh the work ethic uh to high integrity to just earning the respect of the team members, the way they communicate, the way they step up when things get hard, the way the way they respond under pressure, right?
26:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, those are all things that fortunately we've had the ability to observe.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of times when we're promoting field managers, uh, we have the benefit of that observation to make sure that we're choosing folks who really are uh values aligned.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: But I can tell you it's a it's a hard leap to make, right?
26:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, to stick with the Marine Corps analogies, right?
26:37
SPEAKER_00: It's it's tough when you go from a Lance Corporal to a corporal.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: So you become uh, you know, a junior enlisted Marine to a non-cor, you know, an NCO, uh, and now you're responsible for leading the people that you used to be peers with, right?
26:47
SPEAKER_00: And that can be really hard because then you're then you're holding them accountable.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: And your success, your results, your effectiveness as a manager is now being measured by the way in which you can drive results through that person, right?
26:57
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're not good at doing that, that that can be a real challenge.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: And if you're not good at transitioning from peer to to manager to leader sort of team member dynamic, uh that's a that's a shift that people have to make and it can be a hard shift to make.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about the balance of the efficiency, because I know a big company like this, uh, you know, the move the move to say, hey, we got to get this uh uh more efficiency within the workforce, because it is, I mean, honestly, the kind of thing you're doing with three different locations and all the hundreds of people at each location, it is very inefficient.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just like you can try as hard as you want, but there's gonna be a lot of inefficiencies in this situation.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh tell us about the balance between the str the striving to be efficient versus the connection that you want your people to make with your client.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: If you had to if you say that uh what's valued more there, it's it's the efficiency or the um the connection and the care that you show and respect for your clients.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well I would I would challenge you and say, I don't think those two things are intention.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: They're certainly not mutually exclusive, right?
28:02
SPEAKER_00: You can have both.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: You can have great connections with your clients and run an efficient operation.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: And trust me, I'm not saying that we do.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: We've got like anybody, I think we've got plenty of opportunities to elevate how how efficiently we're we're delivering those services to customers.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: But we we relentlessly focus on just continuous improvement across the entire business.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: And there's, you know, I'm Joe and I, my brother and I often joke, it's like the day we look out at our business and don't see a bunch of problems, like that's the day I'll get worried because then I get worried about how I'm gonna be able to continue to create value.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: But today I look out at our business, I'm like, man, if we could just fine-tune that, or if we could optimize that, or if we could fix that, like then we then our results could be that much better and our impact could be that much greater.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: Um uh so I I wouldn't say uh those things are attention.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: I will say as we've grown, Joe, one of the things we've been really thoughtful and intentional about, it's kind of interesting.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: You look at um uh within the home service space, even if you look among like some of the largest consolidators today, I'll stick with Tommy as one example because I think he's on one end of the spectrum.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh that this question around what you centralize versus what you decentralize from an execution perspective.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: I would say Tommy's probably closer to like the command and control high centralization model, right?
29:08
SPEAKER_00: Centralized call center, centralized marketing, centralized training, right, with their big facility and university, centralized accounting and FPA, right?
29:16
SPEAKER_00: So he's got this really tight, uh highly centralized model with a lot of control over process, right?
29:21
SPEAKER_00: And control over quality and execution across those different functions.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: And then on the other end of that spectrum, there's some of the large consolidators today that are incredibly decentralized operations.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: They buy all these different brands.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: And it's nope, keep doing exactly what you're doing, keep publishing your books locally, keep we're just gonna keep having complete decentralized execution across all these functions.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: Do marketing decentralized, run your own call center, right?
29:44
SPEAKER_00: Um and I think the challenge, as we talk about efficiency, I think I think the challenge for a lot of businesses today, like I think the market values, and I think the right answer is to have a more um holistically integrated uh business that does share best practices and does begin to consolidate uh some of those supporting functions across multiple brands and multiple locations.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: But it's really hard to do that without sacrificing quality of service to the brands that you're supporting.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: So I think the best companies figure out how they can both elevate the quality of service they're delivering while consolidating those functions and delivering higher quality of service at lower cost, right?
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Which is an important, I would call that operating leverage, an important efficiency metric is you can compress SGNA, your your overhead body, while delivering uh better results for your customers and your team members.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where uh as people are growing and entering multiple markets or multiple brands, or if you're acquisitive, uh figuring out how to scale in that healthy way, I think is is really important.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: I think that's the tough thing.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: It's like uh the you know, the more efficient you become, the better the uh the the the the uh the investment, uh better the investment is for the client.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: They're not uh they're not wasting money on that inefficiency.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: And that's really uh it sounds like you guys are really drilling down on that.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about uh let me give you like just another example that like shows up like that shows up with the client.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Like when you think about efficiency, even like so.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: We show up at someone's house, right?
31:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I I I'm proud that like in HVAC, 96% of the time we can complete a repair with what's on our truck stock.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: But like a lot of companies can't say that, right?
31:18
SPEAKER_00: So you show up at a customer's house and they've got to run to a parts house.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: They don't have what they need, they're out of that specific particular fan motor.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: They don't have the right type of refrigerant, they don't have the filter that they need.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: Like for us, the the exercise we've gone to, gone through to determine the truck layout, what skews are on the truck, truck, what quantity of each skews, the replenishment cycle, like how frequently are we going to replenish items that are consumed off of that truck?
31:42
SPEAKER_00: How are we tracking and maintaining integrity of what we say is on that truck that should be on that truck?
31:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh, like getting that dialed in.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: And for us, we almost on average have about$15,000 of inventory on every truck, right?
31:53
SPEAKER_00: And how that allows us to better serve our customers, the efficiency gain we get by not having our team members having to run to parts houses middle of the day or leave customers' houses to go pick something up that should have been on the truck if we had an efficient replenishment process.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: Like those are the small things that absolutely, the efficiencies that absolutely benefit our customer.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Because when it's July, when it's today, and we've got a blistering hot week here, July 2nd in St.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: Louis, and it's 95, 98, 99 degrees, and you've got a truck outside of your house, nothing's more frustrating when they say, I got to leave because I don't have what I need to fix your system.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: Like thankfully, 96% of the time, we don't have to say that.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: We say, hey, we've got it, because we run around with$15,000 of stock on our truck and not just random stock, stock that we've optimized based on what we know we need for the most common repairs that we're gonna encounter.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like, you know, I I I definitely see that uh, yeah, and that's one of my passions is the inventory part of the business.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: It's not weird.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: I have a weird uh uh because you know what, I built my like probably your dad did.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: I I had to build all those shelving units and those bins and all this stuff.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: I did it myself the first time.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh it took me about a year and a half, and I'm like, I still have uh actually I'm writing a book right now on that process because I should show it to you.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: Because uh because it is, it's very uh you know, very, very uh the efficiency of that process, keeping the trucks maintained and keeping the the uh the you know the the people who are out there serving your clients supported uh with that.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: That's that's what that's what it means to the client is that uh the job gets done today rather than having to go get parts or whatnot.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: And hey, where is this guy?
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Hey, let's talk about something.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: Let's just hold on to the code.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: By the way, joke, that that ties into pricing too, right?
33:28
SPEAKER_00: Because we said, well, we're not the cheapest.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me tell you, 500 trucks times$15,000 of inventory to to each of those trucks, that's$7.5 million I got driving around on trucks.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: That's not free, right?
33:39
SPEAKER_00: So so if you want, it might be a little bit more expensive, right, when you call us because we have seven and a half million dollars of inventory on trucks.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I can tell you we're gonna be able to service you sooner.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: So, like back to where we started the conversation, we're a premium provider, which means we're priced a little bit higher, but hopefully that means we're delivering better service levels, more responsive, and having what customers need when they need it.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: That's great.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about something more fun.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: The future of home service industry and Hoffman Brothers.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it's uh I want you to imagine, I want you to dream a little bit, Joe, about you guys have probably talked about the trends that are shaping the future.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: Maybe when you're at your uh barbecue this week with your family, you talk about, yeah, here's some of the things I see happening.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: What do you what's what's it gonna look like in the home service industry from a consumer standpoint?
34:26
SPEAKER_01: Um can you give us some highlights of what you think is in store for the consumers of a home service industry and how technology and uh let's say 10 years from now or as far as you want to go into the future?
34:38
SPEAKER_01: What do you see some of the trends emerging that are gonna affect consumers who hire services like yours, Joe?
34:44
SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit, Chris.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit about that again.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I'll I'll start with Joe.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: What's not gonna change, right?
34:50
SPEAKER_00: Which is like there's gonna be a field professional who's gonna show up and knock on your door.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: And like the customers' expectations will continue to be that they're high as ever today, and they're only gonna get higher when it comes to the level of competence, professionalism uh that that field pro has to have when they knock on the door of the homeowner.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: So that part is absolutely not gonna change.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh, technology is no doubt transforming what's happening on the front end of our customer journey, everything from top of funnel marketing activities uh through call center operations and dispatching and capacity management and call prioritization, right?
35:22
SPEAKER_00: All of those things are absolutely being transformed today uh based on uh some of these tools that exist now.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: And actually, Joe, I take a ton of pride in the fact that I think we are uh among the most advanced of home service companies with respect to our technology stack and the uh uh the efficacy of our AI deployment across the front end of the customer journey.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: So today is an example.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: If I look at the if I look at the month of June, I had 28,000 inbound calls that were answered first by AI, right?
35:52
SPEAKER_00: And my AI powers all of my omnichannel communications, voice, text message, online chat, online scheduling, third-party lead aggregators, right?
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Angie's list.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: If someone submits a form fill and it's a speed delete game, my AI is calling that person instantly.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh and and then my AI also manages all of my capacity, right?
36:09
SPEAKER_00: So in my business, right, I need 300 HVAC service calls in St.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Louis today.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: I need 77 plumbing service calls.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: I need 62 boiler calls in Denver.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: I need, you know, 70 drain calls in Nashville.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: And I need to know in real time how much availability I have.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: So as my AI is managing this omnichannel intake system, it knows exactly when and where I can schedule each of these calls.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: And to do that well, right, another layer of complexity, every one of my call types maps to different priority levels.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: Like I got five different priority levels for these calls, and based on the priority level of that call, we'll determine our availability.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: Are we available today?
36:42
SPEAKER_00: Is it tomorrow?
36:42
SPEAKER_00: When is that person gonna have to wait until?
36:44
SPEAKER_00: How long are they gonna have to wait?
36:45
SPEAKER_00: Right.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: All of that powered autonomously on the front end by AI.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: We used to have humans do that, and we had a bunch of logic and we had a bunch of processes and we had like defined SOPs.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: But let me tell you, it's incredibly hard to execute those SOPs consistently at scale when it's done by 40 different humans that are in this loop and trying to get trained.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: And humans are imperfect.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm imperfect, right?
37:06
SPEAKER_00: But like with this AI deployment, like it removes human error on that intake process, which is incredibly powerful.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: And then it follows up that there's the back end of this journey.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: There's autonomous outbound marketing campaigns, our memberships uh year to date, 82%.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: And we have 28,000 members, Joe.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: So we're we're in, we're in in the home 56,000 times a year, right?
37:24
SPEAKER_00: For two visits a year.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh 82% of our membership visits so far this year have been scheduled autonomously by AI.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: It looks at our capacity, it sees when we have availability, it's batching communications to those customers to schedule the visits.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: Customers just text back and forth and book their uh book their appointment.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: It shows up inside of our capacity management system, uh, and and no human in the loop, no human intervention.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, it's I think what we've been able to do over the last 15, 16 months with respect to RAI deployment has just been incredibly transformative on the front end of the customer journey.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: So the customer's gonna have that experience, like, man, how do they do all how do they how do they keep me so informed?
38:03
SPEAKER_01: Or how's that uh it's crazy.
38:05
SPEAKER_01: Again, like I said, every large company wants to uh act like they're a small company, honestly.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what allows uh us to do that in a way, and I think that is uh great.
38:15
SPEAKER_01: And I think some of the technicians are gonna be smarter than ever, too.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: But the you can get better tech uh knowledge because uh the uh the rapid delivery of information into the technician's brain uh or while he's at the home, I mean I used to have I had like three guys that could ask back when I was in a technician like your dad, and now I've you know got uh access to hundreds of thousands of different ideas on what to do, but uh that's another subject from our time.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: Let's go on to another subject, which is uh a young Chris Hoffman, uh like after you got out of the out of high school.
38:51
SPEAKER_01: Let's go back in the way back machine.
38:54
SPEAKER_01: If there was something you could do to give yourself advice back when you graduated high school and you're about to embark on this uh fantastic journey with your brother and your family uh to grow this enterprise, what advice would you give yourself uh if you could go back and give yourself some advice?
39:10
SPEAKER_01: This is for all the young people out there listening who uh would want to listen to what you would say to a young person such as yourself back then.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh here's what I would say, Joe.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: Like, I I think the biggest mistake you can make is to think that you've got all the knowledge and that you're gonna go design a system or solve a problem in a way that's that's unique or better than anybody else who's tried to solve the same problem.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what I would say is there's so many incredible people that you can go and learn from.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: There's so many best practice organizations, training organizations, right?
39:40
SPEAKER_00: They're all out there.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: There's a ton of them.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: And rather than trying to reinvent the wheel or trying to uh learn all these hard lessons on your own, like hit pause, put your ego aside and say, man, I am gonna go learn from folks who've gone where I aspire to go, who've traveled the roads I aspire to traverse, right?
39:56
SPEAKER_00: And like go, go learn the lessons they've learned, the hard lessons, the things that worked, the things that didn't.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh and when you do that, you will save yourself so much heartache and so much challenge.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, so that's that's uh number one.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: And uh maybe number two, Joe, I would say is you have to uh, you know, once you've got equipped yourself with that knowledge and you you've got a good plan and you're ready to execute, you have to uh I like to say you have to assume success.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh, because if you don't, I'll give you an example.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: When we went into Nashville, uh, before I had a single customer, I bought a 20,000 square foot building a mile east of downtown.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: I relocated four team members there.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I bought several hundred thousand dollars of trucks, stocked them, upfitted them.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I made big marketing commitments in that market, right?
40:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and it it we went all in.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: And I said, failure is not an option, and we will build this business.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: And today, by the way, six years later, we're approaching$20 million top line and 53% gross margins, and we're pulling our marketing spin now at sub 15% of gross revenues, still optimizing for growth because I want to, I don't want to stop at 20, I'm trying to get this thing to 50 or 75 or 80 million as quickly as I can uh in there.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: But but you have to, if you go in and stick your toe halfway in the water, if I would have said, ooh, I want to enter Nashville and I'm gonna get a really small building that I'll have to move every 12 months, or you know, I'm I'm just gonna send down a beater of a truck and I'm not gonna put a lot of inventory on it because I, you know, I don't want to take that risk, or I'm not gonna send down my best team members down there because I can't lose my best team members, I'm not gonna hire these people in the market.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: If if you half-ass it and stick your toe halfway in the water when you go to execute your business plan, well, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's not gonna be as impactful or successful as it otherwise would.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: So if you have a good plan and you've thought it out and you you equipped yourself, armed yourself with the knowledge that you need to be successful, then you got to assume success and execute with confidence, right?
41:43
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's an important um uh variable that a lot of people miss, where they they don't have that confidence, they go halfway, and because they went halfway and didn't execute all the way in, uh, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where it wasn't successful.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: Chris, when you look at uh when you wake up every day and you hit the ground running, what matters most to you about the work you do?
42:07
SPEAKER_00: Um that's a good question.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, for me, I I want to do this in like a sustainable and healthy way.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: Like it would like of course I could give you some great answer.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: Like, I I reflect holistically on how how you know my relationship with this business, how it affects me, my kids, my family, the people we employ, the community we serve.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: And then like I'm trying to thread this needle where like I'm driving wins for all of these broadly defined stakeholders, right?
42:33
SPEAKER_00: The people we're serving, the communities we operate in, the team members that that have hitched their wagons to our company and are relying on us to provide a great career and compensation of benefits.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: And of course, my family and my kids, my six-year-old, my two-year-old, one-year-old, I need to make sure that I'm I'm showing up the best way possible in every part, in every part of my life, from my business uh to my personal life, to my own fitness and health, to my family, to my role as a dad, as a husband.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so for me, like getting out of bed every morning is like, how do I take all of these different stakeholders and all of these different groups that I need to make sure are winning?
43:03
SPEAKER_00: And how do I make sure that I'm balancing all these things the right way?
43:06
SPEAKER_00: And that my business is winning, my relationships are winning, my role as a dad, I'm winning, right?
43:11
SPEAKER_00: The community is winning, my customers are winning.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it's a moving target, Joe.
43:15
SPEAKER_00: And it's hard.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: And like, uh, and it involves just a high degree of like agility.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, you, you know, some day my days don't look the same.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: If you ask me to write down like my job description or an agenda or like a what a week looks like, it's it's different every freaking, uh, every freaking day and every freaking week.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's doing whatever it takes.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh and I can tell you this you know, things get a lot better and and the wins are a lot bigger and more impactful, and wins for everybody.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: When you've got a bunch of incredible leaders on your team who think the way that you think, uh, who can d demonstrate a high degree of ownership over their span of care, who are able to operate autonomously, independently, have good judgment, are really smart.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you all those things become a lot easier uh when you've got that team and uh and the wins that you can drive for all those broadly defined.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: Stakeholders, uh, they become a lot bigger too.
44:02
SPEAKER_01: Although I am uh very impressed with all of the Hoffman brothers employees and and the owners and leaders there.
44:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm extremely impressed, especially with you, Chris, because uh the transparency you provide uh to the public and to other professionals.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: Uh I know that it was a strange thing about phenomenon.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure you probably you probably recognize it about uh I'm not sure it was a year ago or maybe eight months ago where I saw you on x.com.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, is that the Chris Hoffman?
44:31
SPEAKER_01: Chris is that I looked into it, like, yeah, that's him.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: And it it just turns out you're a normal guy, Chris.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: Surprise, Joe, I guess.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: You're just a normal guy.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: You're just a normal guy who likes to go out there and uh talk to people.
44:43
SPEAKER_01: And honestly, I've had some really I've had some really good conversations and uh uh uh shown my support for your uh some of the knowledge and wisdom you're willing to impart out there.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: And so that's one of the things I love about you is the uh transparency that you get that.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: Why did you decide that that was something?
45:01
SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of guys are like, hey, I'm not gonna make I'm not gonna put myself out there in a public like that.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: Why did you decide that uh that's an important element for you to express yourself?
45:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah well, two things.
45:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, and actually uh our our mutual friend Tommy influenced my thinking here.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, as we came out and said, Hey, I want to uh the the selfish, non-altruistic reason why I got on on social media, Joe, was because uh as we we started to say, hey, we want to become inquisitive and we want to partner with folks, let's start talking about what we stand for and how we think how we think and how we want to grow this business and what our values are so that hopefully we can attract partners who share those values and share that vision and want to be a part of this.
45:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh so the the non-altruistic, selfish reason to get out there and start talking about this stuff is hey, I hope I attract people uh that that maybe are looking for a partner or expertise or capital to be able to grow their business.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and they're also values aligned and they they get to know us and feel like they know me because they see uh my uh willingness to share and tell our story and talk about our business, what's working, what's not, and do that in a in a public way.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of the the selfish angle and sort of the the unintended benefit that's come from it too is uh I think customers enjoy seeing that that sort of uh that transparency, that authenticity, uh, that look behind the curtain in a business that operates in within their community and understand what's working, what's not.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: Um and I think it's become a real powerful recruiting tool, right?
46:21
SPEAKER_00: When people see like, ah, this is this is how the business thinks, this is how they operate, this is how you know Chris's decisions are guided by these values and X, Y, and Z.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: And I just think in general, transparency has worked.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I think like CEOs are increasingly um uh I think the brand, I think the CEOs can play an important role in in how their organization is branded and how it's showing up in a community.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: And there's been a lot of writing on this here recently, uh, to include some uh pieces and well-known publications like the Wall Street Journal and others, where where you're seeing uh the CEO brand and the company brand, there's this like convergence and they're both they're both pretty important.
46:56
unknown: Yeah.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: All right, Chris, let's get down to it.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: Uh we already gave them one avenue that they can connect to, but how can listeners connect with you?
47:04
SPEAKER_01: Or if they would like to uh learn about working, having you work for them at their homes uh to improve their life uh as a business or as a uh consumer, a normal uh customer, a residential customer.
47:19
SPEAKER_01: Tell us how do people connect with you and with Hoffman Brothers?
47:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the first with me, I'm I'm on LinkedIn and I'm on X.
47:27
SPEAKER_00: Those are probably the two most active channels that I'm on.
47:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh look me up, shoot me a note, connect with me.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: Um admittedly, I'm not the best at monitoring my inbox on those channels because there's there's a lot of stuff that lands in there, but I do keep an eye on them and check them uh intermittently.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: And then for the business, you can go to any of our websites, HoffmanBros.com, Blue Sky up in Denver, Hoffman Bros, St.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: Louis in Nashville, Ferguson Roofing, right?
47:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh and if if you need to get us, you can schedule online, you can call our AI, you can text our AI.
47:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh happy to uh uh meet you wherever wherever you prefer.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: All right.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: Well, that was another great conversation with Chris Hoffman from Hoffman Brothers.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: Chris, we really appreciate having you on the show.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for coming here.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate this.
48:09
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Shaw.
48:10
SPEAKER_00: Great, great seeing you.
48:11
SPEAKER_01: Great, and thank you for sticking with us, whoever's listening to this, until the end.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: If you gain value from this episode, whether you're a potential customer or an employee of Hoffman Brothers, uh, or maybe even a company who's looking for uh uh somebody to uh align yourself with, we'd love for you to leave a rating or review wherever you listen to these podcasts.
48:33
SPEAKER_01: And if you know someone in the service industry or even somebody who's just a homeowner in Nashville, St.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: Louis or Denver, who looks for great customer service uh and who cares about the client, uh send this episode their way so they can be enriched by the Hoffman Brothers experience.
48:50
SPEAKER_01: And if you take one key insight from this episode and put it into action, just let us know how it goes and we'd love to hear about your progress.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: Thanks again for joining us.
48:59
SPEAKER_01: And we'll see you on the next episode of the Home Service Harpy Podcast.
49:04
SPEAKER_01: Goodbye, everyone.