Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Turning Around Underperforming Franchises: Luke Barrett's Strategic Approach

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Turning Around Underperforming Franchises: Luke Barrett's Strategic Approach · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi,
0:16
and today's guest is Luke Barrett, managing partner and
0:19
owner of Citywide Facility Solutions.
0:22
Founded in 1961, Citywide helps businesses handle janitorial
0:26
services, building maintenance and more, offering a single
0:30
point of contact for easier communication.
0:33
Luke plays a key role in driving the company's growth through
0:36
strategic team building and compliance management, ensuring
0:40
every project meets legal standards.
0:42
He holds a Masters of Arts in Teaching along with dual
0:46
Bachelor Science degrees in Psychology and Physical
0:49
Education. Under Luke's guidance, the
0:52
company continues to expand, serving clients across various
0:55
industries and taking on new challenges and facility
0:58
management. Now before we get into all that
1:00
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AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
1:41
today, Managing partner, owner of Citywide Facility Solutions,
1:45
Luke Barrett. Thanks for making the time to
1:47
Share your story today. Happy to be here, Anthony.
1:50
And I want to clarify, you owned one of the franchises which
1:53
location is? It we are in Rogers, AR, so we
1:57
would be considered the Northwest Arkansas market.
2:00
OK. Now before we get into Citywide
2:03
facility Solutions, how that opportunity came about, what it
2:05
is you guys do there, You've got a little bit of an interesting
2:09
path to get here. I understand you were a college
2:12
professor and a baseball coach. I don't understand how you get
2:16
from here to there, but kind of walk us through it.
2:20
Well, you know, I, I played college baseball and I didn't
2:24
want to give up the sport. And I thought what a better way
2:26
to use my teaching degree to teach athletes.
2:30
I, I wanted to be a sports psychologist, but they told me
2:32
that would take another four or five years of school and I was
2:36
already starting to make a family and that wasn't going to
2:38
work for me or or my wife. So I got into the Kankakee
2:42
Community College assistant baseball coach, head of
2:45
recruiting, and lo and behold, that's probably what started my
2:49
sales career because I always jokingly say that was the
2:52
hardest sales job that I've ever had was telling a mother to let
2:55
their 18 year old son become a man with me helping mentor him
3:00
into that. So yeah, I just, I spent about 7
3:04
or 8 years doing that and then an opportunity presented.
3:07
So you parents didn't want their kids to go to college?
3:11
No, it was it was getting them to leave their hometown and
3:15
travel maybe from a smaller town in Indiana to an hour South of
3:18
Chicago, and really trusting in us to turn their boy into a man,
3:24
essentially. Got it.
3:26
OK, please continue. Yeah.
3:28
And so then an opportunity presented itself, a sales
3:31
opportunity in Oklahoma City of doing roofing and construction
3:36
work, became the general manager of NRG Roofing.
3:39
And then a couple of years with no hail storms, I I realized I
3:44
didn't want to rely on Mother Nature to pay my bills.
3:49
So in that industry, that's sort of the trigger, like if you've
3:52
got bad weather, business is good, but if weather is calm and
3:56
even in that area, the sales dry up.
4:00
Absolutely. And unless you've been in it the
4:04
market for, you know, 5 to 10 years, nobody really knows your
4:07
name because there's just so many roofers.
4:09
So yes, you just get lost to the mix and it's really hard to
4:12
build your brand. My brother-in-law has done a
4:15
great job doing it. He still does it.
4:17
It just really wasn't for me and I wanted to help people a little
4:21
bit more then you know, being the guy that knocks on your door
4:25
the 30th time of the day to see if we can I can help you put on
4:27
a roof. OK.
4:29
All right. And So what took place after
4:31
that? Where did you go next?
4:32
That's where I met my mentor, Leah Manigold, and that's really
4:37
how I got involved with Citywide.
4:38
She worked at Enterprise as an area manager.
4:41
And I remember parking my truck about 3 blocks down the road, so
4:46
she didn't see that I had a roofing logo on my truck.
4:50
And I remember getting the call for the interview, getting
4:53
excited and telling my wife. And she goes, you're going to go
4:56
rent cars for a living. And I go, hey, they're going to
4:58
give me the tools to be my own boss.
5:00
So I jumped at the opportunity with Enterprise, climbed up the
5:04
ranks and then worked there for about 10 years.
5:08
And then yeah, COVID kind of happened, microchip shortages
5:12
and so. Things were going well up until
5:14
COVID. You were on a career track,
5:17
Things were going, you enjoyed the job, you you, you know, you
5:20
had a good mentor. And then COVID hit and nobody's
5:23
renting cars. Well, they're, they were renting
5:25
cars, but it was really tough for me.
5:27
I was with the fleet management division and it was tough for me
5:30
to work from home. To be quite frank, I I have to
5:33
have human interaction. That's another reason why I
5:37
chose citywide is because no matter what happens, we have to
5:40
stay open because we're an essential business.
5:43
And throughout the entire time of COVID, there wasn't a
5:45
citywide branch that wasn't out there helping people stay safe
5:49
and healthy throughout that process.
5:51
So how did you find Citywide or how did they find you?
5:54
Well, my mentor reached out to me.
5:56
She. She had moved on to citywide by
5:59
that point. She.
6:00
Left OK she she with COVID there were layoffs that that happened
6:06
and they picked the top people and she was there for over 20
6:10
years and one of the top people and yeah so she she ran into the
6:16
opportunity at citywide after leaving enterprise and so I.
6:23
The microchip shortages happened, vehicles weren't being
6:26
able to be delivered. It was just a tough, tough thing
6:29
working from home. And so I started thinking about
6:32
expanding my horizons. And so I reached out to her
6:35
because she's always been a mentor resource.
6:39
And then I went to a bigger company before insurance
6:41
benefits. So it's funny that you say that
6:43
you own that type of company, but I made that choice.
6:46
And after about 90 days, I realized the culture wasn't for
6:49
me, that I wanted to find a smaller company that I can make
6:53
a quicker, bigger impact the lives.
6:55
And then I reached out to her and I told her you told me I was
6:59
going to make a mistake, not come into work for you.
7:01
Well, I'm, I'm, I'm being vulnerable here and I'm telling
7:04
you I made a mistake and I want to come work for you.
7:07
And that door was still open. And So what do you what did you
7:11
start doing right out of the gate?
7:12
So I was, I, I was performing as the director of sales, had a
7:16
team of about 6 to 8 sales people underneath me all the way
7:21
from sales associates to sales executives and really just
7:25
driving revenue on the janitorial sales side of things.
7:28
OK. So I want to hear more about
7:30
that role, but paint us a picture of the kinds of services
7:33
that Citywide Facility Solutions provides.
7:36
So pretty unique. We specialize in janitorial
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services. That's our our monarch service
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that we have. But then we have a myriad of
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other services, 20 plus services from the parking lot to the
7:48
roof. You can imagine in facility
7:51
commercial buildings, 10,000 square feet or above, there can
7:54
be a lot of things that go wrong and they have to focus on their
7:57
jobs. So they rely on Citywide to fix
7:59
those problems that do come up when they arise.
8:01
What kind of problems? You guys are cleaning, right?
8:04
You're taking out the trash, you're doing that.
8:06
But what are you doing in a parking lot?
8:07
What are you doing on a roof? Yeah.
8:09
So anytime you know there's an issue that takes place or our
8:14
facility solutions manager is walking the property, they might
8:18
see something that could prevent a a future problem.
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Let's say your parking lot doesn't have a good striping and
8:26
it keeps causing accidents and and such, it could become a
8:30
liability to the company. So we come and give them a quote
8:33
to be able to repave, restripe the parking lots for them.
8:37
Other times our cleaner cleaners have been cleaning and a water
8:41
heater breaks and it's on the weekend and nobody's at the job
8:44
but us and we're able to do the water remediation for them so
8:47
they can be opened up for Monday.
8:49
So you can imagine from fixing the light bulb to a leaky roof
8:53
to clogged gutters, I mean, there's a lot of things that get
8:57
asked by our facility solutions managers to find solutions for.
9:00
You know, and I can see that I'm in an office building myself
9:03
here and I don't, our cleaning people do a decent job, but I
9:08
don't think they're sort of proactively looking for those
9:11
sorts of things, which would certainly be helpful because
9:13
right now it's the tenants that, you know, report the, any issues
9:17
that occur. And if something happens over
9:19
the weekend, nobody's going to notice for a few days.
9:22
So I, I could see how that'd be useful.
9:24
So, so tell me more about how you guys approach things from
9:28
the sales side. You're managing a team of 6
9:31
folks. What is it you're doing?
9:32
Is it cold calling? You're knocking on doors?
9:34
You go into Chamber of Commerce events.
9:37
Yeah. So I do.
9:39
It's funny you say that. I've been at, I think every
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Chamber of Commerce event that Northwest Arkansas can have just
9:46
because I think brand recognition is very, very
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important. So yes, I'm heavily involved in
9:52
the chambers of Commerce's other ways we do it here in Northwest
9:56
Arkansas. We are heavily in the field.
9:59
Our our sales executive knocks over 100 doors a month.
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We realize it's a numbers game. You've got, you've got to play
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the numbers on the sales side of things.
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We've also got a a team of people that call our BDS team
10:14
that calls where Jake correlates with them saying where he
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stopped by the good conversations he's had.
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And then they can go back and book a meeting for Jake to go
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meet with that person, measure the building and give a proposal
10:27
for janitorial services. It all starts with janitorial
10:30
services typically, you know, just because that's really where
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our niche is, is the janitorial side.
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But it's just an added benefit to be able to do anything from
10:41
the roof to the curb for our clients, for them.
10:44
And so those are sort of the value adds that would come
10:47
later, sort of like, and equate it to like McDonald's.
10:51
Do you want fries with that kind of a thing?
10:53
Like you guys are cleaning the place and you're like, hey, I
10:55
noticed this issue with the roof.
10:57
Would you like a quote for that? Yeah.
10:59
Oh, sure. That'd be helpful.
11:00
Thank you. Yeah, yeah.
11:02
And it makes it easy for them to, you know, plan as well for
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the next fiscal year. If you're taking a proactive
11:08
approach, reactive approaches always cost you more money to
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the bottom line. And so if we've got somebody
11:15
always doing inspections once a week and they're building and
11:19
while they're doing the inspection, they noticed
11:20
something that could prevent a larger issue down the down the
11:24
road. We just want to be a partner to
11:26
our clients and let them know, hey, we noticed this.
11:29
It's up to you how you want to proceed with it.
11:32
I always kind of jokingly say it's Ala carte.
11:34
All of our other services we we like to thrive with and earn
11:39
your trust through janitorial to be able to do those other
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services. And so does that mean that
11:44
you're keeping roofers on staff, plumbers, HVAC, is that how that
11:50
works? Like yes, like I said, always be
11:53
connecting. So if I'm driving down the
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street and there's a small, smaller mom and pop looking HVAC
12:00
company, middle tiered HVAC company, plumbers, electricians,
12:05
you name it, I'm stopping at the gas pump and I'm saying, hey
12:09
man, do you have a business card?
12:10
I'd love to get to know what you guys do, what your niche is,
12:14
what you're trying to look for, and see if maybe we can help
12:16
each other out. Oh, that makes a lot of sense
12:18
because these smaller sort of mid tier, they don't have the
12:21
kind of overhead that the bigger companies would.
12:23
So the service ends up being more cost effective for you to
12:26
deliver to your end client. No doubt.
12:29
Yeah. Now you mentioned that you
12:31
briefly went to a larger company before joining Citywide because
12:35
you wanted the good benefits. That wasn't the right fit for
12:38
you. And I think the comment that you
12:40
made was I wanted to go somewhere where I could have a
12:42
bigger impact sooner. Say more about that.
12:46
What kind of impact are you talking about?
12:49
So I, you know, looking at working for bigger companies
12:53
and, and now working for a smaller company, it seems that
12:58
you're not just a number you, you're having conversations with
13:03
employees. You're getting to know them at
13:05
a, on a whole nother level because you know that if, if
13:09
something isn't working, it's going to impact their lives
13:11
negatively a whole lot more than if you're working with 50,000
13:16
people around the country. It's just kind of a, a big
13:19
machine that just keeps churning and burning whether you're there
13:23
or not. I, I think at a, on a smaller
13:26
company level, people aren't as replaceable as they are in
13:30
corporate America. We only, I'm only as good as the
13:34
people that I can hire essentially.
13:36
And I think making that impact, treating people right, treating
13:39
them with respect, following the values that I like, honesty and
13:44
integrity and always doing the right thing and being a problem
13:47
solver. Those are the three things that
13:49
I look for and, and people that hate to lose.
13:53
I would rather have somebody that hates to lose or loves to
13:54
win on my team because. Oh, say more about that.
13:58
That's an interesting distinction.
13:59
Yeah. So that's probably the last
14:01
question I ask anybody in an interview is do you love to win
14:03
or do you hate to lose? And if they say they love to
14:06
win, they they're going to have to overcome some objections with
14:09
me because everybody can remember the great times they
14:11
won. But if somebody allows the
14:14
losses to be learning lessons and then make them push harder
14:18
to never have to have that learning lesson again, I want
14:20
those resilient type of people on my sales team and just on my
14:25
operations team as well. So you find that that hate of
14:28
losing is a better driver than the love of winning.
14:32
Yeah, people get comfortable when they are always winning.
14:36
You have to learn to be comfortable and the
14:38
uncomfortable, as a former boss once told me.
14:41
And if you're always winning, you're probably not putting
14:46
yourself outside of your comfort zone very often.
14:51
And then I understand pretty recently a special opportunity
14:55
became available to you. Yes.
14:57
So I was as the Director of Sales, I noticed on our our
15:04
internal recruiting that there was an opportunity to become a
15:08
managing partner and owner of the citywide facility solutions
15:12
here in Northwest Arkansas. And so I have moved here.
15:16
I've been here for about a month, month and 1/2 and I've
15:19
taken over this franchise and looking to grow it just the same
15:23
way we grew the Oklahoma City market.
15:26
OK. And how's it going so far?
15:29
It's, it's, there's a lot, it's a lot different than just being
15:32
the director of sales when you're having to deal with the
15:34
front of the house, the back of the house and everything in
15:36
between. A lot more conversations with
15:39
employees than I've ever had on the operations side.
15:45
You know, our model is once we sell it, we want to get it into
15:48
the right minded people. Those are operation minded
15:50
people. Salespeople tend to be good
15:54
hunters. They don't be tend to be good
15:56
gardeners. And so dealing with the
16:00
operation side, seeing what affects them based on how the
16:04
front end of sales sells a janitorial contract can affect
16:08
their lives very, very positively or very, very
16:11
negatively if expectations aren't set with the client up
16:16
front. So do you have somebody separate
16:19
that's doing the hunting, that's doing the sales and then
16:22
somebody separate that does the gardening, sort of the account
16:25
maintenance and maintaining that relationship?
16:28
Absolutely. We have a sales executive named
16:31
Jake Zakovic. He he goes out there.
16:35
He is the hunter. He he's already, I think the,
16:39
the goal was 100 doors knocked this month.
16:41
I think he's probably well past 150 at this point.
16:45
He's he's lived here ever since he graduated from University of
16:49
Arkansas. And then we have a facility
16:51
solutions manager who's on operational side of things.
16:54
That's Janine Solomon, as well as Mason Taylor.
16:58
Mason's from Alma, Arkansas, which is down by Fort Smith.
17:02
And then the unique thing with Janine is she's she's bilingual
17:06
and was born and raised in El Salvador and she's working to
17:10
get everything finalized to become AUS citizen.
17:12
And I jumped at the opportunity, told her she's way overqualified
17:16
for the position based on her resume.
17:19
But I think that we can help each other grow this thing into
17:22
something really, really good. And so paint a picture on who
17:26
your typical client is. So we've got, we could service
17:30
really any industry. The main industries that I don't
17:33
like to service is the retail side of things.
17:37
But we do a lot of healthcare clinics, urgent cares.
17:42
We, we do a lot of dealerships around the country as well as
17:46
here in Northwest Arkansas. So we, we look for buildings
17:50
that are either getting clean three or more days a week or
17:54
10,000 square feet or above is really what I'm looking for in
17:58
this area. That's our ideal client.
18:01
Somebody that needs services 3 or more times a week that has a
18:05
building 10,000 square feet or above is really in our niche.
18:08
And it can be any type of industry.
18:10
We work with manufacturing and industrial industries.
18:15
You know, we've got a really, really broad spectrum of clients
18:21
and it's unique to each client. Healthcare is going to get
18:24
clean, completely different than a car dealership.
18:27
So it's having to know those conversations up front on the
18:30
sales side to be able to set operations up for success on the
18:34
back end. Why don't you like retail?
18:38
Well, typically they have employees cleaning while they're
18:41
while they're working throughout the day as well as there's just
18:46
the liability of having items and things around.
18:51
I don't want to take on that liability of if something comes
18:53
up missing, then pointing the fingers at anybody on my team.
18:57
It's just it's, it's easier that way.
19:00
A lot of times they're they're very budget driven and so they
19:05
look to cut their cost by having their employees doing the
19:09
cleaning for them. So it's just not really a good
19:11
fit for what we do. What about restaurants or
19:14
hotels? Are those good fit for you?
19:17
Yes and no. Other services for hotels and
19:20
restaurants like cleaning their their vent hoods and things like
19:23
that. Typically no.
19:25
And, and a lot of times is because they stay open later and
19:30
if our crews are coming in at midnight, are they going to
19:34
perform if they've been working six hours and then this is their
19:37
last stop. A lot of grease, a lot of things
19:41
that you have to really think about cleaning are completely
19:44
different and it takes a lot longer, so a lot of restaurants
19:48
decide to have their staff do it as well.
19:50
Gotcha. So you're you're coming in after
19:53
normal business hours at most your client locations.
19:56
OK, Yes, Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, unless they have some type
19:59
of government security clearance where we have to be there while
20:02
they're there on site. But we also do offer date Porter
20:05
services. There's a lot of hospitals out
20:08
there that use our date Porter services to do their their flips
20:12
of their. Their clients rooms.
20:15
When one leaves that, we go in, change the seats quickly, clean
20:18
the room up before the next person comes in to see the
20:20
doctor. So you guys pride yourself on
20:24
being a single point of contact for building maintenance.
20:27
What kind of strategies have you implemented to streamline that
20:31
communication and ensure that you've got really good
20:34
responsiveness for your clients? I think it's always about how
20:38
you start they a partnership with somebody.
20:43
If they know that you're holding people accountable, you're
20:46
holding yourself accountable to do the things that was said that
20:49
was going to be done, you can earn that trust very quickly.
20:52
Once you earn that trust of somebody, then they start just
20:56
naturally asking you for help. So it's all about connecting
21:00
early on, making sure that we follow the processes and
21:03
procedures that we have in place on the operational side, making
21:07
sure that we are doing inspections once a week, going
21:10
and talking to the client, asking for a rating. 0 out of
21:12
10. How are we doing?
21:15
We want to make sure that there's always a pulse on our
21:18
partnerships with our clients. We don't want to be surprised
21:21
that they're not happy. We would rather know what the
21:24
issues are and try to solve them in a proactive manner.
21:28
So yeah, there there's a lot of ways we can really build and
21:31
grow in that way. But it really comes down to once
21:35
we start with janitorial and then we're offering twenty other
21:38
services that can take a lot of time off of their plate, it just
21:42
becomes a perfect partnership for busy, busy people.
21:47
And then how do you go about what's, what's your approach for
21:49
finding the folks that are doing sort of that frontline cleaning
21:52
work? So I do a lot of work with
21:56
Hispanic chambers of commerce's in the past.
21:59
I'm going to be having a booth at an event stopping by
22:04
churches. You know, there's, there's a
22:06
couple of Hispanic churches that I've stopped by, talk with the
22:09
pastors and let them know what I'm trying to do of creating
22:13
kind of a ripple effect of helping other people grow their
22:18
small business into a medium, maybe large sized business.
22:21
My goal is one day they don't need citywide and they can go
22:24
and do it on their own. We've helped build that business
22:27
up so well for them that they know what to do on their own.
22:31
They know how to do the sales side, they know how to do the
22:34
management side. But early on we're really
22:37
impacting a lot of lives because any account we bring on, we're
22:41
hiring in a small to medium sized company to come in and do
22:45
that cleaning, which is going to impact their families lives and
22:48
then impact all the lives of the of the employees that work at
22:50
the company, keep them healthy and safe.
22:54
It's pretty early on with your new location there in Arkansas,
22:58
but as you think sort of historically all the time that
23:01
you've been with the company, what's been the biggest growth
23:05
lever for you guys to pull? How do you What's the most
23:08
successful way for you to find clients you like?
23:11
The ads work at all? Is it really just smile and dial
23:14
and knocking on doors? What equity?
23:17
I'm a bit, I'm a firm believer sales is you have to be
23:21
connecting. And if you're not putting
23:22
yourself out there to meet new people, putting yourself out
23:26
there and being vulnerable with people, you're not going to
23:29
connect with people. So I, I, it's a numbers game.
23:33
I'm heavily involved in tracking numbers of our salespeople,
23:38
making sure that you know, they're successful, they hate to
23:41
lose, right. So I want to make sure that I, I
23:44
can avoid the losses by bringing on wins, but at the same time
23:49
realizing that in sales you're going to get a lot of no's.
23:52
So you have to be very, very resilient of a person.
23:57
You can't take things very personally and you have to be
24:00
able to kind of flush it and move on and and not and just not
24:06
really wear it as they're not saying no to me.
24:09
They're just saying no to the idea of meeting with me right
24:11
now. So I think the biggest lever is
24:15
is the phone and and the the sidewalks knocking on the doors.
24:19
Do people even answer their phone anymore?
24:22
I don't think so, but they'll answer a text or they'll at
24:24
least read it, you know, so that's that's one thing.
24:27
Whenever I go in, I ask for people's cell phone numbers.
24:29
I have Jake asked for the cell phone numbers because at that.
24:32
Point they give it out. Yeah, a lot of times if you ask
24:34
they're yeah, sure. Here you try to get a hold of
24:37
me. I'm just busy right now, but
24:39
send me a message and and we'll get a time to meet and see if
24:42
you guys can possibly help us out.
24:45
We try to take more of a an approach of I don't know if I
24:47
can help you, but if you give me 30 minutes to an hour to really
24:51
fact find what you guys currently do and where your pain
24:53
is, I could probably provide a solution to take that pain away.
24:57
And so in most situations, are you going in and they already
25:00
have a provider and maybe the cost is too high or they're not
25:04
happy with the service or are you going into a lot of places
25:07
that have just been doing it themselves and have never hired
25:10
or considered an outside source A.
25:12
Lot of people outsource, but they have a taste in their mouth
25:17
of everybody starts off really good and then as the cleaning
25:21
goes on, they gradually goes down.
25:23
And then you have to take a corrective measure to make that
25:26
service go back up. And it becomes a roller coaster
25:28
for them. Nobody wants to have to focus on
25:32
janitorial if they, I always say if they're focused on
25:35
janitorial, we're not doing our jobs right.
25:38
Yeah. So we we look to take that off
25:41
their plate and, and just really help them give time back in
25:46
their day to be able to focus on really what their job is.
25:50
And So what are you guys doing differently from the competition
25:53
so that you don't have that sort of, hey, it started out great
25:56
and then things kind of nosedive in terms of quality?
26:00
Well, it a lot of it's the people we hire certain people
26:04
for the operations side that strive to help people.
26:08
We also want to make sure that you know when we are talking
26:15
with people that we're asking them how are things going.
26:18
If you're below an 8, there's something going on.
26:21
We have to fix the problem. Is it changing a crew out,
26:24
bringing in a new crew? What's the systemic problem that
26:28
is frustrating you the most? And then we got to provide the
26:31
solution quickly and efficiently and then hold everyone
26:34
accountable to performing. We also use technology.
26:38
We have a complaint policy where we've entered into our Dynamics
26:43
365. And then by 10:00 AM the next
26:46
morning, we have to follow up with the client to make sure
26:49
that that garbage can that was missed wasn't missed the next
26:52
clean. And then it reminds US seven
26:54
days, 30 days, 60 days after that complaint was in the system
26:57
and resolved that, hey, follow up on this and make sure that we
27:00
aren't continuing to make that mistake.
27:03
I think that's really the biggest thing is, hey, remember
27:06
last month we had this issue with the garbage cans.
27:08
How's that been going? And then that tells the client
27:11
that your attention to details good and that you're really,
27:14
really, really invested in making their facility a better
27:19
place to be. Your employees can come work.
27:21
You know, this is an important point I'd like to dive into a
27:23
little bit more because in business, you know, providing a
27:26
service, you always want it to be perfect.
27:28
The reality is we're human beings, Mistakes happen.
27:32
I think the really important thing is when those mistakes
27:35
happen, how do you respond? How do you react?
27:38
What do you do to course correct?
27:40
And so using some smaller examples, like somebody forgot
27:44
to empty a trash can can, you make me think of a bigger
27:47
example where man, this is something pretty big that went
27:51
wrong and you had to step in and course correct and sort of
27:55
massage that relationship to get their trust back?
27:58
I think anytime that you're dealing with people and it's a
28:02
small family operation that you're dealing with, I've heard
28:07
of cleaners bringing children in to a facility.
28:12
That's a big no no. We don't allow that.
28:15
We tell people up front to do that.
28:16
But sometimes people have things going on in life and, and they
28:20
just have to do it or something then and we just tell them,
28:23
communicate with us. We'll try to find a different
28:26
solution for that night if you can't.
28:28
But ultimately, if the client looks at their cameras and
28:31
there's a child sitting in there, that's a liability
28:33
concern for them as well. So that's not a fun conversation
28:36
to have with somebody. So we try to take the proactive
28:38
approach when we're bringing on our ICS that we're telling them,
28:42
hey, here's the things that we expect you not to do and that
28:45
can never happen or we're going to have to remove you from the
28:49
the the facility. So then it becomes a hard
28:52
conversation not only with the client, but with your team
28:54
members as well. Correct.
28:56
And I think that's the benefit of the way we do our contracting
29:01
of our crews is that we're able to sit on the same side of the
29:04
table as our clients and they're not having to have that
29:07
uncomfortable conversation with the crew member that brought
29:10
their kid in. I'm having that conversation
29:12
with them. So it, it just only enhances the
29:14
partnership with our clients, in my opinion, because we're
29:17
sitting on the same side of the table realizing, hey, I'm on the
29:20
same boat as you. This isn't.
29:22
This isn't acceptable and I'm going to get it fixed for you.
29:24
And then always closing the loop, making sure that I follow
29:27
up with the client, letting them know that the problem is fixed
29:29
and it won't happen again. Yeah, that kind of highlights
29:32
another reason why it's probably so advantageous for a group to
29:37
hire you guys rather than try to maintain their own part time
29:41
crew that comes in in the evening when nobody's there and
29:44
having to manage them and oversee them and are they really
29:47
doing what they're supposed to be doing that you guys take all
29:50
that off their plate? A.
29:51
Lot of people do in house Anthony.
29:54
It's, it's it's a cost effective way of doing it.
29:57
If an employee needs some extra money, it's a good way to
30:00
supplement extra money for that employee.
30:03
But at the end of the day, if you're consistently in in the
30:07
markets today, hiring people is one of the hardest things to do
30:11
right now is finding good employees.
30:14
So what's that cost of hiring and firing those employees is a
30:18
big conversation that I have with people that are doing the
30:21
in house approach. Luke, talk to me about any legal
30:25
or regulatory standards that you guys need to be in tune with.
30:30
So OSHA, bloodborne pathogen training and all of our medical
30:35
facilities, if we are doing terminal cleans, there is a lot
30:39
to terminal cleans in a medical facility.
30:42
We have to do trainings on that, making sure that we have our ICS
30:47
having the right insurance set in place to protect themselves,
30:53
making sure that they have an LLC set up to protect themselves
30:56
as well. We, we help people start their
30:58
own LLCS if they don't have it when they first sign on with us
31:02
as a cleaning crew. The list goes on and on.
31:07
But I would say, you know, those OSHA standards, being able to
31:11
NSA certified, all of those things that you can provide
31:16
proof to a client will put trust in that you guys are
31:19
professional and sometimes a pretty unprofessional industry.
31:23
Where does the future of citywide facility solutions take
31:28
you? What?
31:29
What do you think is on the horizon?
31:31
Well, hopefully a lot of growth that's I've, I've got kind of
31:35
got a growth mindset. That's what I pride myself in is
31:39
growing the business through sales, but then nurturing the
31:41
relationships we have and maintaining those relationships
31:45
long term is only going to drive our bottom line higher and
31:48
higher. My goal is always every person's
31:52
goal that starts a franchise is be at $10 million within the 1st
31:56
10 years. I was able to watch our team in
32:00
Oklahoma City do that in about six or seven years.
32:04
So now I've I've seen it work, I've seen it happen, I've seen
32:08
the way it's supposed to happen. And and that's my goal is to
32:11
drive this thing and become one of the top franchises in the
32:14
entire country. Wow.
32:16
And you're talking about your sales process a bit earlier and,
32:18
you know, kind of needing to have that thick skin and hating
32:22
to lose and bouncing back and keep going.
32:25
What is sort of a target hit rate, right?
32:28
If I make 100 calls, how many appointments, you know, should I
32:32
be setting? And out of those appointments,
32:34
what percentage of those would I ultimately expect to close?
32:39
Yeah, So I, I look at it more of how many building surveys are
32:44
you booking a month and how many proposals are you delivering
32:48
after those building surveys every month?
32:50
If somebody can make 50 calls and book 10 meetings because
32:54
they're really, really good on the phone, but never deliver a
32:56
proposal, well, we're never going to close business.
32:59
So it's, it's really weighing that is, is all right.
33:02
Are you able to book the meeting?
33:04
And then are you able to go there, have a really good
33:06
meeting, find pain to be able to fix people's problems and then
33:10
deliver the solution to them efficiently where they're,
33:13
they're going to have trust and citywide's going to be able to
33:16
make their place a whole heck of a lot better.
33:19
So yeah, there's, there's a lot that goes into the sales side.
33:23
It's more of a business to business approach.
33:26
And so I, I really just tried to help that process move along.
33:31
Always having calendar to find next steps with people is huge
33:35
in our industry because like I said, if they're not focused on
33:37
janitorial, they will completely forget about you and, and, and
33:40
your salespeople and everything about it, right?
33:42
Like, so we want to make sure that we're staying diligent.
33:46
So if they're making 100 phone calls and I want them to be
33:50
booking 12 meetings a month on their own and then having ABDS
33:55
team booking another six or seven, that equates to about 20
33:59
building surveys in a month. And then you, if you're
34:01
delivering 20 building surveys and you're closing at 50%, well,
34:06
you should have a pipeline where you're able to close $10,000
34:09
every month. Everybody wants to make 6
34:12
figures in sales. And the top performers in the
34:16
citywide system, some of them are making a quarter $1,000,000
34:20
because they stayed diligent to their pipeline, growing their
34:23
pipeline and they're closing 10 to $20,000 every month like
34:26
clockwork. So getting my team to be able to
34:30
learn the process early on, the right way to do things, the
34:34
right questions to ask, which aren't closed ended, they're
34:37
open-ended questions. Getting them to really learn to
34:40
dig deeper into the people's problems and then finding a good
34:44
solution for that and being able to clearly explain here's how
34:48
we're going to fix it for you for the long term.
34:51
So yeah, yeah, the the goal is to get to that $10,000 a month
34:56
mark to earn the platinum status or diamond level status sales
35:02
executive, you have to sell $126,000 in the fiscal year.
35:07
So I put that as a goal for every one of my sales people.
35:11
And so an average deal is about $1000 a month.
35:14
Yeah, typical. OK.
35:16
Yeah, we want to be around. I mean, our, our, our sweet spot
35:20
I say is between 2500 and $5000, OK, Especially when you're early
35:25
on, smaller accounts take up just as much time of a
35:29
partnership as accounts that are that medium size that we really
35:33
thrive in that are 5 day a week accounts that were there like
35:37
clockwork. When something happens, there's
35:39
not two or three days in between cleans that the client is
35:42
sitting there looking at that on the floor that they don't want
35:45
to pick up or something like that.
35:47
You know it, it's just more beneficial that way to be able
35:51
to be always in front of our clients.
35:53
Let's take a little bit of a detour, Luke.
35:55
I'd like to hear about a serious challenge that you've overcome,
35:59
whether it's something personal or professional.
36:01
Curious how you got through it and what you.
36:03
Learned, I'd say taking a leap of faith, going away from the
36:09
coaching and baseball, what I always knew and moving to
36:12
Oklahoma City was a huge, huge challenge for me because it, it
36:16
put me out of my comfort zone. When you're born and raised in a
36:19
town and and your dad owned the company and everybody knows the
36:24
last name. It's it's you're, you're, I say
36:27
big fish, little pond right? Then I, I go down to Oklahoma
36:31
City, don't know anybody and I've got a network and make all
36:35
new friends, everything like that.
36:36
That was a big leap of faith for me and my family.
36:40
My daughters were really young. I had a three-year old and a
36:43
two-month old. And then while I was working, I
36:47
would say one of the hardest things I've ever had to overcome
36:50
was when my mother had her stroke a couple of days after
36:53
Thanksgiving a few years ago. I'm a self-proclaimed mama's boy
36:57
and she's still here with us. Thankfully.
37:01
I had to have dinner with, I got to have dinner with with her
37:04
last night. But going through that, I'll
37:08
never forget to drive from Oklahoma City to Springfield, MO
37:13
to see my mom during COVID and I can't go see her.
37:17
It was tough. It's brutal.
37:20
Only one visitor a day sitting in the house with my my sister
37:25
and my dad, wondering if our mom's even going to make it.
37:28
We didn't know. And that sent me kind of in a,
37:32
in a spiral of I, I got to a pretty dark place where I'm
37:36
working from home all day, every day.
37:40
This is with the bigger company that you mentioned before.
37:43
Yeah, and and I, I'll never forget my wife and I'm not going
37:48
to get emotional, but she sat down with me and she's like,
37:50
you're not happy. And I'm like, what?
37:52
What do you mean I'm not happy? I'm making six figures.
37:55
We've got great insurance. You guys are providing.
37:57
She's like, you are not happy. And I'm like, yeah, well, I need
38:01
this job. Like I've got to be able to
38:03
provide for you. And she goes, if you were to go
38:06
away tomorrow, let's say you got in a car accident and passed
38:09
away, would you be replaced in a week at that company?
38:14
And I was, I had to do some deep searching, right?
38:16
Like, that's a tough question to answer.
38:17
And the answer was, yeah, I'd probably be replaced quickly.
38:21
So that's when I was like, all right, I'm not happy.
38:25
I need to, I need to do something different.
38:27
Pivot. I'm getting frustrated with
38:28
microchip shortages and cars not being delivered.
38:31
And it just put me in kind of a, a, a depressed state where I
38:36
didn't, I didn't see a light at the end of the tunnel.
38:40
But having a Good Wife, having a good support system in my
38:43
family, I've gotten back stronger.
38:47
I would have never if that if that didn't happen, I'd probably
38:49
never leave enterprise and go to the other company and then find
38:52
my way back to my mentor, Leah. So everything happens for a
38:56
reason. I'm a firm believer in that.
38:58
And if you're always trying to do the right thing by people,
39:01
the right thing is going to be done by you eventually.
39:03
You just got to keep on pushing. It's so interesting as human
39:07
beings, when we're able to look in the rearview mirror, it's so
39:10
much easier to connect the dots and to have gratitude for some
39:15
of those really, really hard times, dark places that we find
39:20
ourselves in. But as we're going through that
39:22
dark tunnel in the moment, it just feels like punishment.
39:26
And it's like, you know, what's the lesson here?
39:29
What am I supposed to be doing? You know, I feel lost.
39:31
I'm banging my head against the wall.
39:33
And so it's great to hear your story, Luke, because it it's a,
39:37
you know, a wonderful example of, I mean, it was sort of like
39:40
a, you know, a series of things that were going wrong and, and
39:46
had to have been really hard in in the moment to get through it.
39:48
Thankfully you had, you know, such a great support system with
39:50
your wife there. Yeah, I mean, anytime you I look
39:54
back at low points in in life, having to give up baseball, you
40:00
you feel like nothing's ever going to happen to make you leap
40:05
up and and forward. If I've learned that if you kind
40:09
of can stay still in the chaos and and shut things down your
40:15
brain and compartmentalize and have a daily plan, execute the
40:18
plan, you're going to get out of that dark hole and you're that's
40:22
when the rebound is way higher. That's one of the best things
40:26
that ever happened in your life is when you come out of the out
40:28
of one of the lowest points of your life.
40:30
I I'm a firm believer in that you're the bounce back is way
40:34
better than the fall. That's interesting.
40:37
You know, and I've talked with a number of athletes and I think
40:39
the same holds true for people who have owned a business and
40:43
then they're no longer an athlete or they no longer own
40:45
that business. And it's not just a loss of what
40:49
do I do with myself? It's a loss of identity.
40:53
It feels like it feels like a part of you has died and you
40:56
don't know there there's this void and you don't know how to
40:59
fill that void. And it sounds like you, you
41:02
know, looking back, I don't know if you were sort of aware of the
41:05
strategy that you were using in the moment, but say more about
41:07
that. How you, you know, kind of had
41:09
that plan, that system to get you out?
41:11
Yeah, it's really just what what three things am I going to be
41:14
able to do every day to make myself better?
41:18
What goals do I have for the day and how am I going to, how am I
41:21
going to accomplish the goals? And at the end of the day, if
41:23
you don't accomplish the goals, what what happened?
41:26
What's the reason for it? I think that was a big turning
41:29
point for the team in Oklahoma City is when they started really
41:32
focusing on what is my game plan.
41:35
Because when the you're in that dark tunnel, it's hard to really
41:38
focus on what you need to do. You're focused so much on the
41:43
negative side of things that you're not even looking for the
41:46
small wins that lead to the bigger wins.
41:49
So I would tell people that write down three things that you
41:51
want to accomplish every day. And at the end of the day, look
41:54
at that list and be vulnerable with yourself.
41:57
Hold yourself accountable. Did you make the calls that you
41:59
were supposed to make? If not, what happened?
42:02
And how can I avoid doing that in the future?
42:05
Being that consistent approach I think will avoid those big
42:08
pitfalls in life and being a good communicator when things
42:12
aren't going right. I want, I tell my team, I want
42:14
you to be able to know that my door is always open and you can
42:17
talk to me and be vulnerable. And I'm not going to judge you.
42:20
If anything, I've probably been through some some stuff in my
42:23
life that I can give you some advice to help you get out of
42:26
that sooner rather than later. Yeah, it's so great to have
42:30
mentors, to have bosses like that, to have peers that you can
42:34
go to in those kinds of times to lean on.
42:37
Because you're right. Like, you know, and I don't know
42:40
if you're involved in any peer groups as well, but I, I found
42:43
that to be incredibly helpful. You just sit in a room and folks
42:46
are like, Oh yeah, I've gone through that before.
42:48
And you know, here's here's the service provider I used to help
42:52
me, or here's the strategy that I found useful.
42:55
And you're like, oh man, thank you That that's such a great
42:57
shortcut. Yeah, yeah.
42:59
It's, it's incredible when you are vulnerable and put yourself
43:03
out there, the effects that that can have on yourself, but then
43:07
the people around you, you realize that they've been
43:09
through the same thing and they were able to get out of it.
43:11
You can, you can talk through that.
43:13
A lot of people, I think forever we, we've mental health is
43:16
something that we've just swept under the rug.
43:18
And me with my psychology degree, I don't agree with that
43:21
whatsoever. If you're having issues and
43:23
obstacles in life, you've got to have somebody that you can go
43:27
talk to about that. Leah was that for me for many,
43:32
many, many years. She still is to the day.
43:34
She's a mentor to my to me as well as my wife and my and my
43:37
parents. You know, it's you have to have
43:40
a resource of somebody to reach out to when things aren't going
43:43
well. Whether that's a best friend and
43:46
uncle, it doesn't matter. Don't, don't get depressed and
43:49
sit in that dark hole and think that you're never going to get
43:51
out of it. Somebody will help you get out
43:53
of that hole. So that's always been my message
43:56
to people and my employees is if you're having issues, I want to
43:59
know about what's affected you as a person before, as an
44:02
employee. I think that's when you really
44:04
create a culture of everybody pulling from the same side of
44:07
the rope. I think that's an important
44:10
message because so many times when people find themselves in a
44:12
dark place, the natural human tendency is just to sort of
44:16
turtle up, to withdraw inside. Yeah, shut down.
44:20
And it is the least helpful thing.
44:23
It's going to put you further into that dark tunnel.
44:27
The best thing for you in those moments, in my experience, and
44:30
talking with lots of people. Be curious to hear your take on
44:33
this, Luke, especially with your psychology background.
44:35
It is to reach out to someone that you trust and have that
44:39
human connection and be able to share that experience and and
44:43
talk about it and process it. You're nodding your head.
44:47
Yeah. Yeah.
44:47
That I who's getting Sometimes in those situations, you don't
44:51
even know who you are. Lean on somebody that knows who
44:55
you are to the core and they, they'll, they'll remind you, you
44:58
know, that hey, everything's going to be OK.
45:01
Everything is happening for a reason, but what are we doing to
45:04
fix it? You know, also having people
45:07
that you talk to that won't let you have the woe is me attitude
45:10
of, oh, this is nothing's ever going to work out.
45:13
You know, sometimes somebody in your life's got to have that
45:16
tough conversation of quit feeling sorry for yourself.
45:20
Tough love. Yeah, yeah.
45:22
You know, and you have to know the person, right?
45:23
And, and if you got a best friend, a, a sister, brother,
45:27
whoever it may be, they're gonna know when to give you the tough
45:30
love and when not to. But so many times we're so
45:34
prideful that we'll never talk to anybody about it.
45:37
We'll just keep on battling the demons in our head behind closed
45:41
doors. And it just goes further and
45:43
further down a a rabbit hole of nothing good.
45:46
Yeah, look, what's your superpower?
45:51
Oh, man, I would say connection, like being able to connect with
45:55
people, it drives my wife nuts. I can be in a room of strangers
46:00
and by the end of it, I probably got two or three people's cell
46:02
phone numbers and and we're probably going to connect in a
46:06
week or two and, and do something, you know, to see if
46:09
we it's just always be connecting, man.
46:11
Like that's I thrive to, I try to make everybody happy in my
46:16
life. I think one of one of, I think a
46:18
flaw of mine is, is I, I worry too much about that where I put
46:24
myself in positions of vulnerability or maybe exposure
46:29
to getting hurt or something like that.
46:31
Because I always trust people right when I meet them.
46:34
I'm very people oriented. So yeah, work in a room is
46:37
something that I enjoy doing thoroughly, and it can drive
46:42
other people that are introverts and nuts.
46:43
Like, how do you become best friends with complete strangers?
46:46
So never bring me on a cruise. I've never been on one because
46:49
all I'd probably do is talk. How about resources that you'd
46:55
recommend to our audience? A book, a course, a podcast?
46:58
Something that's been useful for you.
47:00
Something that's changed my life personally, professionally is
47:04
the book by Jocko. It is called Extreme Ownership
47:08
and it is something that it talks about when things go
47:12
wrong, you have to look inward before going outward.
47:15
I think that's made me a better husband, a better boss, and just
47:19
an overall better person to deal with day in and day out because
47:22
it allows you to really be more consistent with your
47:26
communication. If you look internally and put
47:28
yourself in another person's shoes when things are going
47:31
wrong, you're not going to point the finger and throw people
47:34
under the bus. You're going to treat people
47:35
with respect and do the right thing every single time and
47:40
taking ownership and accountability when things don't
47:42
go wrong, being able to say, yes, I made the mistake, I'm
47:45
going to fall on the sword right now.
47:48
And sometimes that just bleeds into your team there.
47:52
When things go wrong, they're not going to blame the boss.
47:53
They're going to look inward and they're going to say, well,
47:55
maybe I didn't make enough calls that day or maybe I should have
47:58
followed up on that proposal, that one last call before just
48:02
saying, Oh well, they just won't return my emails or my calls.
48:05
Maybe I do need to go walk over there and knock on their door
48:08
and say, how's life man? Are you busy?
48:10
Is that why you're not reaching back out to me?
48:13
You know, I think that was a big game changer.
48:16
We did the practice of every Monday morning, a sales
48:19
executive or one of the person on the sales team would go over
48:22
2 chapters of it and discuss something in their life that
48:26
they can correlate on those two chapters to.
48:29
And it was really, really cool to see the buy in from the team.
48:33
I thought it was going to be a corny thing to do that they
48:37
wouldn't gravitate toward, but they bought in and it was an
48:39
amazing thing to see. Give us another nugget from that
48:42
book, as I mean, you use the phrase that changed my life.
48:45
So I want to hear a little bit more about this.
48:48
Yeah, I right. After everything went down, it
48:51
was the second time when I left Enterprise and went to the other
48:55
company. I, I, I read that book a second
48:59
time and it allowed me to bounce back a whole lot faster.
49:03
It allowed me to not be prideful and not call Leah and say I made
49:09
a mistake. I, I took ownership of the
49:12
decision and what am I going to do to change it?
49:15
I think that's the biggest thing is finding the solution and then
49:18
changing it and then making it a habit at that point.
49:22
That way it's a consistent habit, so you're not making the
49:25
same mistake over and over and over again.
49:27
You have kids. I have two daughters.
49:30
How old are they? 15 and 13.
49:34
Have you found a way, Have you even tried to sort of teach some
49:38
of those same lessons from that book to your kids?
49:41
100% when grades aren't well. When grades aren't well and I'm
49:46
asking them what's going on and they immediately start pointing
49:48
the finger at the teacher. I said we're not going to do
49:51
that. What have you done to get the
49:54
grades that you've gotten? And then, and then lo and
49:56
behold, we'll open up the thing. And she has, she's forgot to
49:59
turn in a couple of things to the teachers where she's got low
50:01
grades. She turns them in, the grade
50:03
goes up. And I'm saying, see, if you
50:04
don't sit there and blame the teacher and you look inward and
50:07
say, what do I need to do to get that grade lifted, then it's
50:11
going to happen. You know, I think the big thing
50:15
too is it's very easy to make excuses.
50:20
And when you take extreme ownership, there is no excuse.
50:23
You can't make excuses for yourself.
50:25
If you look inward first, naturally, you just won't do it.
50:29
How does that messaging received by your daughters?
50:33
Oh, he's doing it again. No, I think you know my my 15
50:39
year old Angelina, she's pretty close to a straight A student.
50:43
I never was. I didn't apply myself in high
50:45
school the way she does. So hopefully, you know, just
50:48
seeing me, being consistent in my approach at work, seeing me
50:52
consistently being able to provide for the family has, has
50:56
brought that consistency in her life.
50:59
I've been married to my my wife for 18 years.
51:03
And so, you know, being able to be a better husband to her shows
51:07
shows her. And sorry, my headphone just
51:13
went off. Give me one second.
51:16
That's all right. I can hear you again.
51:18
All right, yeah. So just being able to show her
51:20
by example of what you should be treated like by somebody in the
51:24
future. I think it's huge for kids.
51:26
You know, there's always that nature versus nurture
51:29
conversation. I think that's a 5050 Rd.
51:33
Genetics plays a part. But if you, if you love on your
51:36
family and, and you rely on them and they rely on you, they're
51:39
going to be good stewards of society.
51:44
What habits do you have to get you started in the day?
51:47
I brush my teeth. No, I just.
51:50
It's a good start for everybody, I think.
51:52
Yeah, no, I try to write, I try to practice what I preach of
51:55
what's my daily plan. You know what, what What am I
51:59
going to do to grow the business?
52:01
What am I going to do to set my sales executive up for success?
52:06
It's usually by holding him accountable to what his goals
52:09
are, following up with him at the end of the day, asking how
52:11
it went and doing and just riding along is is one of the
52:17
hardest things for somebody to do when you're in a leadership
52:21
position, but it can make the biggest impact your employees.
52:24
So slowing down when you're busy is saying what needs to get done
52:28
today before I leave the door. If you have a plan and you try
52:32
to execute the plan and it and something doesn't work, you can
52:35
fix it and try it again the next day.
52:37
So I think that's the biggest thing that I do is I think
52:40
about, all right, what three things am I going to accomplish
52:42
today? And if I get those done, try to
52:45
add 2-3 more things to the list. Yeah, I'd say that's probably
52:50
the biggest thing that I do mentally.
52:52
Every morning is like, what do I need to do to get better, 1%
52:57
better every day? I just got one more question for
53:01
you, Luke. But before I ask it, I want to
53:03
do 2 things. I want to invite all listeners
53:05
right now. Pause just for a second and go
53:08
to your podcast app. Go ahead and hit the follow or
53:10
subscribe button. Leave us a comment or review.
53:12
All this stuff really helps other people find the show and
53:16
it ensures that you continue to get more great content like this
53:18
in your feed. Luke, I also want to let people
53:21
know the best way to get in touch with you.
53:23
They're in Northwest Arkansas. Maybe they just like something
53:25
about your story. LinkedIn always be connecting.
53:29
I've got a, I got a decent size presence on LinkedIn, but you
53:33
can find me Luke Barrett, Just look up citywide facility
53:38
solutions Northwest Arkansas. That's probably the easiest way
53:42
to get a hold of me is LinkedIn always be connecting to my
53:45
model. So I would be kind of
53:47
hypocritical if I didn't utilize that.
53:49
And we'll make sure we include links to your LinkedIn profile
53:53
there in the show notes. Last question for you.
53:56
You and I reconnect a year from now, Luke, and you are
53:58
celebrating something big. What's that thing you're
54:00
celebrating one year from today? Platinum Club.
54:04
What is that? That is being one of the top 10
54:07
franchises in the in the entire nation.
54:11
I mean, that's aggressive in 12 months from now.
54:13
You just took over a few months back, yeah.
54:17
Yeah, yeah. Pressure makes diamonds, right,
54:19
Anthony? Yeah.
54:21
So I, I, I think, you know, we are only as good as the goals
54:25
that we make. And if we make goals that we're
54:27
always achieving, those aren't goals.
54:30
In my opinion. Goals have to You have to fall
54:33
short of your goals every once in a while.
54:35
And then you want to really stretch yourself.
54:37
You want to put yourself out of your comfort zone, set high,
54:39
high standards for yourself of accountability every single day
54:43
and, and strive to hit those goals and, and on the days you
54:47
don't feel like it, you know, be the be the person that is
54:51
resilient enough to get that head trash out of the way and,
54:54
and attack every day. Get 1% better, Luke Barrett.
54:58
From Citywide Facility Solutions, I wouldn't be the
55:00
first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story
55:03
with us today. I really appreciate it.
55:05
Thank you very much, Anthony. It's been a pleasure.
55:08
Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
55:10
podcast. Thanks for learning with us
55:12
today.