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What Is The Why At Lipps Electric? · Lipps Electric Podcast

• 0:01
  Joining me today on the program is my good friend, Kevin Lips from Lips Electric.
• 0:06
  Hello, Kevin. How are you?
• 0:07
  I'm great, Jim. How are you doing today? Hey, I'm living the dream.
• 0:11
  It is so great to have you on the program.
• 0:14
  I want to ask you a question. I ask this question of everybody who joins me
• 0:19
  on the show, and that is, what is your why at Lips Electric?
• 0:25
  Meaning, why do you guys do what you do? What gets you out of bed in the morning?
• 0:30
  What motivates you guys?
• 0:32
  Yeah, I love it. This is kind of one of the things I've learned is the most
• 0:36
  important thing for me to preach for our company.
• 0:38
  And we have consistent meetings and conversations on this topic.
• 0:43
  And we really go into our purpose, our mission, our core values.
• 0:48
  And it's kind of how we drive our whole ship here. So our lips electric,
• 0:53
  why, our service, our purpose is to serve our local community that we love.
• 0:59
  We do so by making electrical systems safe and tailored to each customer so
• 1:05
  that the customers feel confident with their electrical systems.
• 1:08
  At the same time, we really foster our employee growth, empowering our team
• 1:14
  to excel personally and professionally. That's our purpose.
• 1:18
  Jumping into the mission piece of it. You know, we really have four aspects
• 1:22
  that we dive into, and it's people first, so being the best place to work for our team,
• 1:30
  foster opportunities for personal development and advancement,
• 1:33
  continuous training and growth. The second one being growth.
• 1:37
  We're looking to triple our custom home remodel revenue by year end of 2028,
• 1:42
  and there's a lot that goes into that, and it will make us a better company by pushing for that.
• 1:48
  We want to be, our number third part is be the best in class.
• 1:52
  We want to be the best electrical service provider in the city of Cincinnati
• 1:56
  and make sure that we are providing top tier.
• 2:00
  It doesn't mean we're going to be the biggest. We just want to be the best at what we do.
• 2:04
  And we really want to hit the community impact, which is our fourth.
• 2:07
  And that's where we want to serve and solve problems for 7,500 clients from
• 2:12
  2023 to 2028. We're well on our way, and we have a team staff to do that for
• 2:18
  folks, and it's really cool.
• 2:20
  And the last thing on this topic is our core values. It's how we walk, we talk, and behave.
• 2:26
  And we have three things, and we measure every single person that's on our team,
• 2:30
  existing employees and anyone that comes on board, most critical things on what
• 2:35
  makes you a great teammate and someone that can really take care of our customers.
• 2:39
  And the first being is show people you care.
• 2:42
  That's for your teammates and the customer. You know, we're taking care of each
• 2:46
  other to help take care of the customers. We say please and thank you.
• 2:50
  We'll show up looking our best. It is important. We seek first to understand
• 2:56
  and we catch each other doing the things that are right instead of only pointing
• 3:00
  out things that are wrong. And we're proud of our work.
• 3:03
  The second one being pursuing mastery and growth. We're always striving to grow
• 3:07
  and improve and get better.
• 3:09
  Be humble, except you might not know everything.
• 3:12
  And you want to keep continually improve. And we do keep providing tips for
• 3:17
  our teammates, absorb knowledge as it comes our way. So that's critical.
• 3:21
  And the third one is integrity. It's where our clients can count on us.
• 3:25
  We are going to do what we say we're going to do. We have very high integrity,
• 3:29
  very honest, use common sense to solve issues.
• 3:33
  And we practice things like kind candor, which is giving feedback and holding
• 3:37
  each other accountable and really striving to leverage each other's strengths.
• 3:44
  That's an awesome list. I'll tell you what stands out is your commitment to your team.
• 3:52
  Your team, employees, they're the ones that are on the front lines.
• 4:00
  They're the ones that people see every day in the homeowner's home.
• 4:06
  And if they are well-trained, they're happy, they're motivated,
• 4:10
  your customers are going to be happy and motivated to call you back.
• 4:16
  100%. And we see that and our team's excited to be here because they know they
• 4:22
  can improve themselves and continually get better as well.
• 4:26
  And those are the types of people that we want to have here where they want
• 4:30
  to improve and they know they're not, they might even really be the best,
• 4:34
  but they don't act like it.
• 4:35
  And they just want to keep doing better so we can take care of,
• 4:40
  our customers and really help foster growth for the younger guys to teach them
• 4:45
  and become a channel where our apprentices can come in and learn from senior
• 4:50
  technicians, the trade,
• 4:52
  and there's no better way to learn quickly than from an experienced tradesman.
• 4:57
  Kevin, something else that stuck out, which a lot of companies in your space
• 5:05
  can't help but do, which is grow for the sake of growing. You said something.
• 5:13
  You want to be the best, not necessarily the biggest.
• 5:18
  I believe that it's very hard to be the same company when you scale to a large size.
• 5:29
  Very few companies get away with that because what made you so great as a smaller company, right?
• 5:37
  One, two, three, four people in the company to 20 people.
• 5:41
  When it becomes 2,000 people, you know, it's like the chef at a restaurant franchising his business.
• 5:52
  He's no longer in all these kitchens.
• 5:54
  So is the food really going to be the same from that chef?
• 6:00
  Can they replicate it in every restaurant? Probably not.
• 6:06
  Is that what you mean by that? You want to be the best, but not necessarily the biggest? Yes.
• 6:12
  I would agree. Yeah. Yeah. We're not, we're not looking to be so big where we
• 6:16
  can't control and have a touch in every single project that our guys go out
• 6:21
  on. So yes, it for sure is.
• 6:24
  And what has slowed our growth tremendously is building that training facility
• 6:29
  and those operating manuals and,
• 6:32
  and having a really well-defined organizational chart to drive who's responsible
• 6:38
  for what and who reports to whom.
• 6:41
  And using those tools and skill sets and all sorts of operating manuals and
• 6:48
  playbooks to drive the checklist on what needs to be done to accomplish certain
• 6:53
  tasks and a process to capture it all, right?
• 6:58
  So we've been working really hard the last four or five years to build that
• 7:01
  process. And, and we've been slow to, to grow in the last year,
• 7:07
  we've started to hire on, um, we're, we're calling them A players.
• 7:12
  We have A players coming on board and, and they meet our core values and,
• 7:16
  and they care about our mission and they want to help us meet these things.
• 7:19
  Cause I know I'm a bottleneck for our growth. I can only handle so much in my
• 7:24
  role and even my leaders can only handle so much in their role.
• 7:27
  So to build this to be an impactful company for our community and to allow our
• 7:33
  current team members and future team members to grow with us.
• 7:37
  We need to build a scalable system
• 7:40
  and process that can be repeated and learned and taught and trained.
• 7:46
  Everybody wins. Your company wins at LIPS. Your team members win.
• 7:51
  And ultimately, ultimately, the homeowner customer wins. Kevin,
• 7:55
  thank you so much for joining me today here on the program.
• 7:57
  I appreciate it. Awesome, Jim. I appreciate you.