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Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 524 - Daniel Quinonez – Leading Change in a 140-Year-Old Industry & Future-Proofing The Trades
00:50:36
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- [00:00]
Dan Quinones
AI has not hindered this industry at all. Where it's helped, AI has become a partner in our industry and we utilize it to both train our contractors to make AI almost a thought partner in their business, almost an essential part of your business. And they're using it for call centers. They're using it for helping a technician expedite writing of, you know, reports on site so they can take on more, more opportunities to get out there and deal with more customers.
- [00:38]
Cameron Herold
Welcome to the Second in Command Podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the Chief behind the Chief. And now here's your co host, former COO of a multi 8 fig remote company and alumni member of the COO Alliance, Savannah Brewer.
- [01:07]
Savannah Brewer
Our guest today is Dan Quinones, Chief Operating Officer of the Plumbing Heating Cooling Contractors National Association. Dan stepped into the COO role in 2024 while also leading the PHCC Educational foundation where he's expanded training programs, scholarships and workforce initiatives that are shaping the future of the trades. With a background in association management, public affairs and even 12 years of service in the US Army Reserves, Dan brings a unique blend of discipline, service and vision to his leadership. In this episode we dive into how trade organizations are adopting to massive changes from AI to family businesses, transitioning or selling, and what that means for the future of contractors. You'll also hear Dan's leadership philosophy, including why his number one motto is to be nice, what that really means, and how he balances kindness with accountability to build strong, effective teams. If you're curious about the future of the trades and the power of value driven leadership, you won't want to miss this conversation. For me, this was one that was super interesting, kept me curious and learning throughout the entire thing. Really unique and actually quite enjoyable to learn about. So if you are interested in any of these topics, give it a listen and let's get started.
- [02:23]
Dan Quinones
Foreign.
- [02:28]
Savannah Brewer
We are live with Daniel. Welcome to the show.
- [02:30]
Dan Quinones
Yeah, wonderful to be here.
- [02:32]
Savannah Brewer
This is going to be really fun. It's we were just talking, you know, the work that you're doing is really, really important and also it may not be the most exciting industry when people hear about plumbing or H Vac. However, just in the first 10 minutes of us talking, the importance of those things being done well and right is really, really crucial to our health and well being. So there's so many different things that we are probably going to dive into Today. But let's just go ahead and start with telling us a little bit about phcc. What do you do and who do you serve?
- [03:07]
Dan Quinones
Sure. PhCC is the plumbing Heating Cooling Contractors Association. It's an association made up of plumbing contractors, H Vac and you know, anyone involved in the industry related around that. It's an organization, it's about a hundred and nearly 140 years old. The oldest construction association in, in America. And it's got an incredibly long diverse history and it's one that's critically important to everything we do. Not only do our contractors provide, you know, an essential service, we also, you know, they're the ones that are hiring young tradesmen, you know, young professionals, young kids that want to come out and get into the industry. It's an incredibly successful business. You know, folks who can start out with one truck that built multimillion dollar businesses. We've got truck trucking companies, maybe just with one or two contractors that employ maybe 10, 20 people to contractors that employ thousands of folks around the country. And they're involved at all levels, both you know, in the home, in a small business, all the way to data centers and hospitals and malls and large office buildings and residentials. So it's, it's an incredibly exciting and wonderful organization. What a great history and I'm very proud to serve it.
- [04:28]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, I was telling you earlier that 140 years is probably the oldest organization that I've interviewed on this show. Do you know how it got started?
- [04:38]
Dan Quinones
You know, it really started. I don't know. It's funny, we've traced back to history and it started I believe around New York, but essentially was to bring plumbers. You know, at that time plumbing was a very different type of business. That's the simple things of putting in pipes and, and how construction went. It morphed into time about dealing with things like clean water. And that was like in the 1920s. I mean, can you imagine what New York City. I'm a history, I'm a history buff and I love, you know, grew up outside of New York City, but I loved hearing this story. But you know, when you look at the cities, the way, you know, you know, water was treated, showers, piping, cooking, it was quite horrible. The plumbing industry kind of merged together to kind of find standards. And that's what they met about. They discussed how to do it, do their job better, you know, what type of rules, regulations, eventually codes was developed out of that to provide sync safe clean drinking water. And you know, that's how the organization Kind of grew over time.
- [05:47]
Savannah Brewer
The growth that it's had since then up until now. What are some of the core things that you guys offer? What are the services that you're providing now?
- [05:57]
Dan Quinones
PHC is an organization, it's a membership organization. You know, we are, are across the country and you know, we provide both date federal and local chapters are our state and local chapters provide a sense of community to our members or contractor members. They get involved in events, they go into learning sessions. Many of the contractors go to get their master plumbing license. PHCC has union members. We also have non human open shops and that's what makes our group so diverse and interesting. I kind of consider the plumbing industry, PHC to be a community. One of the other areas that we do provide is training of apprentices, young professionals who want to get into the trade industry. That's, you know, there's a very strict set of rules for an apprentice to get into the plumbing industry. And as well as on the H VAC side, the learning that goes into it. You know, some states require four years of apprenticeship, some even five. You know, we have an online academy which helps to provide that training to that individual. And you know, many of them come out of that program, they're ready to get into the, into the world. But once they're done and become that get that license in that particular state, you know, then they start thinking about being a better technician, learning more about being a leader, more, you know, dealing with issues on hr, team building, management. And then eventually the hope is they either grow within their company, you know, and they gain business skills through our online academy. And then we also hope that they'll eventually buy their own business and grow their own business. So some of those folks will start up at one or two trucks and then eventually grow to multimillion dollar businesses. And you know, we have wonderful members that are self made individuals who started with maybe one or two trucks, maybe making a couple hundred thousand dollars in their first year. Ten years later, now some of them are 8 to 10 million dollars in revenue. It's amazing stories. And much of that they have business coaches, they're very professional, they learn business finance. You know, to be a great plumber doesn't mean you're going to be a great business person. So they have to learn those skills and many of them are open to that and they, they gain a lot of that knowledge through PhD.
- [08:20]
Savannah Brewer
How often is it that the people who are going through the apprenticeship and are actually out there doing the work, how often is it that they become owners Versus like, are there any owners that own those companies that never were like on the ground actually doing the nitty gritty work?
- [08:36]
Dan Quinones
It's virtually impossible. It really is. That's one of the things that makes being in the, in the plumbing and H Vac industry so unique. We always tell young kids in schools there, there's, there's a change that's happening in our country that you know, regarding getting a college degree as a form of success. And the thought is, you know, constantly saying, well, I've got to go to college to succeed in life. That's not the case anymore. You literally, you can go through an apprenticeship, but so much of being an apprentices, you know, you gain educational knowledge as you're going through the course. You take your online programs or you could be at a trade school or technical school. But you also have to have the hands on knowledge. You have to be in there, you have to get your hands dirty. We actually offer a pre apprentice course where we talk about you got to get into some dirty crawl spaces and see what's going on in an old building. You have to go, you have to it. There's stuff that they have to do. But the difference is you could work at the same company on the corporate side for 20 years doing the same job. The difference is on the plumbing and H Vac spaces you'll start out at that lower level. But as you grow as a leader, you grow with knowledge and you gain respect and understanding of what you do. Growing within a company is very different. You no longer after 10 years are doing those going to job sites and doing it. You're leading a team, you become a foreman, you become a team leader and you grow within that company. You decide maybe you want to open your own business or you grow within an existing organization. But the salary ranges are incredible right now. You know, young apprentices can make, once they graduate, can easily get up into the near 100,000 a year in salary right now. And the job security is incredible.
- [10:23]
Savannah Brewer
Say like AI, you know, there's a lot of things that are going to get disrupted, but we're always going to need plumbers.
- [10:29]
Dan Quinones
It's plumbers and H Vac, it's not going to make a difference. You're going to need those jobs filled. And it's interesting we've had this debate here the last few years. AI has not hindered this industry at all. Where it's helped, AI has become a partner in our industry and we utilize it to both train our contractors to make AI almost a thought partner in Their business, almost a. An essential part of your business. And they're using it for call centers. They're using it for helping a technician expedite, you know, writing of, you know, reports on site so they can take on more. More opportunities to get out there and deal with more customers. They do training via AI. One of our contractors loves to use a call, an answering service called Emily. And Emily sounds like a human being. When you call, she just directs you where you need to go. But that technique, that type of industry change is actually helping our industry grow faster, which is quite amazing.
- [11:28]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Have you found that as time has gone on, it's become harder to get more people into apprentices, apprenticeships?
- [11:42]
Dan Quinones
No, actually, we're getting more and more of people that, you know, the obstacle to getting young kids into the apprenticeship industry side of our industry has been the parents. The parents viewed for so many years. Many of them went to college. They, they saw, they. They frowned upon the trades, particularly plumbing or even H Vac. They're like, why would you want to do that? And I think what's happened is that kids go to college and find themselves stuck with a major they don't want. They don't know what they're doing. They run up, you know, huge amounts of debt. They graduate with no job opportunities. Look at the market right now. I did an interview two weeks ago at actually NBC News about AI taking jobs away from young college graduates by the thousands. I mean, big companies like Amazon, Google, they're just. The banks across the country are saying, I don't need to pay somebody $50,000. I got AI for $500 a month. Why do that? They do the same job and they're never late, they're on time. They don't have to give them health benefits. And it's in the tens of thousands of young professionals are finding the job market terribly terrible spot to be in right now. Whereas apprenticeship, getting into it and learning this trade, you can grow quickly, you can gain that job security that you're not going to have. So the image has changed as well. H Vac technicians are a good example. So many of them, they go through a. Almost a customer training. They're trained to have to deal with customers now, be professional, be on time. How you deal with a customer, how do you manage, you know, difficult conversations. This is stuff that, you know, people coming out of college will go into the job market. They don't. They don't have those skills. They don't teach that in college.
- [13:31]
Savannah Brewer
Right.
- [13:31]
Dan Quinones
They be they learn to become young business entrepreneurs and an entrepreneur. In our industry, the sky's the limit. We've seen millionaires kind of come out of it within years, like maybe 10, 15 years. And I'm fortunate to see a lot of those stories. It's quite amazing to say.
- [13:47]
Savannah Brewer
Oh, very cool. Well, thanks for kind of giving that that groundwork for us. And I'm excited to hear a little bit more about your kind of personal journey into this position. Give us like a quick kind of bullet point synopsis on what was your journey like before becoming CEO here.
- [14:04]
Dan Quinones
You know, it's funny, my dad, for years, when I was a young kid owned a, was a small business owner. He owned a bar. And, you know, one of the things he made all the kids do in our family was clean that bar at a young age. A seven year old, you know, with a mop and a brush and cleaning bottles. We always had to do that for years. So it was kind of understanding that hands on, get your hands dirty kind of life, you know, years later. You know, for some reason, I just always enjoyed being in government and working in politics and public affairs and lobbying. You know, over time I got into that world working for different organizations, particularly in the construction side. And I was always connected to them both, you know, whether as a home builder or a, you know, electrical contractor and eventually, you know, in managing associations. Over time, you know, I had an opportunity to come to the PhD and it was such a wonderful organization. It's almost been about two and a half years now. And just, you know, you have to understand before taking the position who you're going to be with. And I found I could connect very well with the contractor themselves, that plumbing and H vac contractor. I understand, you know, getting your hands dirty. You know, most of these people have salt of the earth. They built their business from the ground up. So it was easy for me to understand it, having a background and, you know, where I was from and how it was and, you know, it's easy to relate to the struggles that they go through each day.
- [15:35]
Savannah Brewer
You had mentioned before, we hopped on that, sure, there wasn't always a CEO in this organization. So what was it that had them start looking for a CEO and why do you think they selected you for the position?
- [15:50]
Dan Quinones
Sure, yeah. As interesting as it sounds. So this organization, as old as it is, they've had maybe very rarely a CEO or they usually made it more of an executive assistant type position for the CEO, but never one that served as a partner to the CEO. And Cindy Sheridan, who Became CEO right before me. Used to head up our educational foundation for about 12 years and she had been part of membership director for maybe about another 10. So she's been with the organization a really long time. And you know, when she moved over to CEO, the position of the foundation director was open. And that's where I originally started out as. And about a year into the position, you know, her managing the association side and the found looking at the foundation, she had hoped that maybe, you know, maybe it's a good opportunity to have Dan come over to the association as well as managing the foundation that we do as well and PhD organizationally side, it's, we're about a $30 million organization. You know, between what we have on our foundation, our academy and the association itself, it's, you know, small. You know, when you look at maybe a business, but not in terms of sheer size of what we have and what, how big we really are, that's incredible. Yeah. And we have about, when I, and I say that to say, I mean we have about 3,000 contractor members, but we employ probably about 80,000 people around the country. And like I said, our, our, our manufacturing partners, I mean those are in the millions about the number of people they employ around the world. So anywhere from, you know, like I said before, Milwaukee tool or plumbing, any plumbing fixture, someone like that, H vac companies around the world. So we deal with them pretty much on a daily basis as well.
- [17:37]
Savannah Brewer
Incredible. All right, well, when you moved into the CEO position, what was the first 90 days like when you came in?
- [17:46]
Dan Quinones
You know, it was, it was interesting. It was a whirlwind. We, we had looked, you know, being in the position I was in prior as the foundation director, had an opportunity to really understand my CEO's vision. And Cindy Sheridan was, I believe the first woman to be CEO of 140 year organization. So you can imagine the culture change in the organization. You know, it's, it tends to be lean, more conservative. It's mostly men, you know, so it was a huge breakthrough for her. And, and I think, I think she was looking at taking the organization into the modern life. We were still operating in a lot of ways that were like the 1980s and a lot of our policies and structures were, you know, 20, 30, maybe 40 years old and how we operated as an organization. I think my background running organizations in other places kind of I bring a fresh new approach, more modern view of things. And you know, organizationally, I learned in the past from a lot of amazing. I've had actually been mentored by CEOs and, and you know, leaders and in the association business side of things here in D.C. you know, so I learned and I took that knowledge and I'm helping Cindy apply it to these, to the association side.
- [19:08]
Savannah Brewer
Cool. So when it comes to a breakdown of your day to day responsibilities, what are you focusing on?
- [19:16]
Dan Quinones
It's two things that most importantly, we are a membership organization. So my, my thought here is how do we grow members? It's, you know, that's, that's how we, that's how, that's our core is our membership, you know, and, and it's that local contractor. We want to bring in more contract. There's a probably about 80 to 90,000 plumbing contractors in the United States. When you add in H Vac technicians and companies, like I said, both small, maybe a couple of people in a truck to thousands of folks involved in a company. So my number one goal is to help us grow and offer services and provide the end things they need to help be better contractors. My second part is really expanding what we do educationally. PhD only started its PhD online academy only about five, six years ago. And when we first started then it was maybe about 100, maybe 200 people taking these courses. We, I'm proud to say we serviced probably in the last five years, maybe about 15,000 students. Wow. And most of that is through apprenticeship, both on plumbing and H vac. Our course, our courses are highly respected. But interesting enough when I always say this too, there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of kids going through a plumbing and H Vac program somewhere in this country. At the end of the day, we're all trying to get them into the industry. That's the most important thing. But for our PhD academy, we tend to tailor to the person that's about 25, 26 years old. College. Yeah. Working at Starbucks is not a lifelong career. They want to, they want to build something. They went to college, they just, it didn't work for them. They have huge debt. They're not going anywhere. Their career, our average students, 25 years old, if you can imagine that. 25, 15,000 folks over the last five years. And some of the stories are amazing. I've got, you know, folks that I read about. It's, I got us in Georgia, there's twins, identical twins, both going through our program. I love that. And then New Jersey, there was a great story. I was talking to somebody, you know, his father had a plumbing business. He had graduated from Fordham and in, in business finance. Hated it. That's a year doing business Finance in Wall street, hated every minute of it. Said I'm not doing this. Went off to be work for his dad, went through the PhD Academy. Six years later, he took over the family business. He's probably grossing about 5 to 6 million dollars a year now and he's growing significantly. So those are the things. It's hard not to get excited and love what we do. So both membership and education is where I see the core of our future at phc.
- [22:07]
Savannah Brewer
It's incredible those types of testimonials when they come in. I mean, it just makes all the hard days worth it.
- [22:13]
Dan Quinones
Yeah, it really does. It's hard not to be passionate about it because when you hear the excitement of our members and, and the work, the folks who work in this industry and you know, there, it's a life, it's a community. And they're very. And it's not about competitors. I mean, they all sit in a room. We talk, you know, shop, we like to say talk business. They're all, they treat, they, they understand you're, you're in the industry too. It's so, it's. I always equate it to a, you know, a community and, and that community is very close and protective of each.
- [22:48]
Savannah Brewer
Other when it comes to some of those harder days. And maybe the testimonial gives you a little pickup. What are some of those, what are the hardest parts of being a coo?
- [23:00]
Dan Quinones
Hardest parts. It's trying to take an organization as old as ours and bringing it into this century, understanding that technology needs to be an ally. For many years they were still using the same old Excel spreadsheet to keep track of data. Things that processes in a business world didn't make sense. I think we also, you get into this complacency in an organization that's been as old as ours, folks that have been doing things for 30 years the same way we've been doing it like this and understanding to evolve and change, we need to do that. So there's days that are just, you have to sell something that seems obvious to me, but not the contractor or our customer base. And that's always one of the things that's taking them through that journey. And the vision of both myself and the CEO, Cindy, we talk about that often. It's getting them to see the vision of what it's going to look like in the next hundred years.
- [24:16]
Cameron Herold
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- [25:16]
Savannah Brewer
Speaking of vision, sounds like there is a lot of change happening. And like you said, technology that's coming into play. And even in terms of the COO position, even your guys's organization, this was new for you. Talk to me about the CEO position for other contracting businesses. Is that a common position people are stepping into or what does that look like across the board with the COO title? In the plumbing industry, it's changed because.
- [25:49]
Dan Quinones
So much of the industry is evolving and there's a new element that's in the plumbing and in the H vac space. It's private equity. And private equity is Wall street driven. They're profit driven and that's what their primary goal is. So they are coming in now and they're buying your mom and pop country plumbing shop and taking that and making it into more of a corporate structure and we're seeing more of that growth happening. They tend to, you know, that the CEO tends to be, you know, at a higher level. You know, he's usually your Wall street broker, your guy that, you know, that's, that's a different person, the CEO or the CFO as well. They tend to run, you know, a multi, tiered, you know, companies across the board. Some maybe own 10, 20, 30 different plumbing companies at once. So one CEO can't handle that. It's, it's just not, it's not feasible. You know, I always see is once you get to that point as a CEO, you know, when you're, you're so inundated and so overloaded and so swamped by the day in day, day in, day out business, you have to be able to delegate your vision to someone else. And that's where The CEO comes into play. You know, you're, you're there to be the tool to your CEO. You know, that's the person the CEO needs to turn to to help implement the vision and especially the larger the organization you get, it's just more common. It's a big part of that. Ironically, what I see now is more of the plumbing companies that are large. You know, maybe when I say large 100 employees, they tend to see the CEO as their successor to take over the business. And it could be a family business or, you know, one that's, you know, they want to keep that legacy growing and they tend to put, they create the position of COO as the, the person they're going to see take over the business and, and build that out in the future as well. So it's good to have that training go into place. I always found in a discussion with my CEO, a lot of the organizations in D.C. have a COO, and part of that number one is, you know, succession. In this world today, we never know what's going to happen. There's so many, you know, so many things could happen, go wrong. Something can happen to somebody. If you don't have a number two in place when something that happens, you're going to struggle. The organization will struggle. When you over rely on one person, it could cause incredible dissension and problems when that, that person is not available no more. So that's part of the other reason too, I think we see. You know, my CEO wanted to see a COO position created.
- [28:35]
Savannah Brewer
That makes a lot of sense. And I don't know if you've ever followed any of Cody Sanchez's content. Have you heard of her?
- [28:42]
Dan Quinones
I have, yeah. Actually, I do watch that occasionally.
- [28:44]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, I know she's talked about kind of that thing around like family businesses that have been around for a long time and they don't have anyone to really take over the business. So yes, she talks a lot about going in and kind of hustling your way and then eventually asking for a little equity and then eventually just trying to kind of take it over, even do a full buyout, which a lot of young people have been jumping on the buying the business train. And I know that that's where it's coming from.
- [29:11]
Dan Quinones
It's happening on the plumbing on the H Vac space because so many of these businesses started out as family businesses. And over time we have family businesses that have 100 years old. You know, I, you know, I see them, some of them go three, four generations and. But eventually it's somewhere along the line. The kids don't want to take over the family business. And one of my, my contractors here in our foundation is a former chair of our foundation, wonderful person out of New Jersey. His kids are doing something else. They don't want to be in the family business. Even though he's built it to, I mean, I think well over $10 million size business and he wants to sell, he wants to retire. He's got his boat and house down the beach and he was like, it's time, but there's nobody to take it over. So he actually is brought in a COO and created for the first time as someone that could eventually continue his legacy. And we got hundreds and hundreds of stories of that. And PHCC as an organization, actually we partner with Federated Insurance and we talk about succession planning. You know, who do you want to take over? Some of them just, they don't have anyone. That's when they turn to private equity and sell the company that route rather than it just continuing. And that's a change. I mean, but it's hard if you've built a family business that spans 50, 60 years and you're just selling everything to someone else who's going to completely transform it and change it. You may not even, it may not even be around the name.
- [30:38]
Savannah Brewer
Right.
- [30:39]
Dan Quinones
But when you have a family that's had a business for 67, I guess at over 100 years old, it, it's tough, you know, it's, you know, third, fourth generations going on right now. I have a business essential leadership class that we give and I've got three people there. I think they're in the, they're the fourth generation to take over their family business. So they're the nephews and nieces. They don't even have the actual kids anymore at that point. So. Yeah, it's fascinating.
- [31:05]
Savannah Brewer
It is really fascinating.
- [31:07]
Dan Quinones
Yeah.
- [31:07]
Savannah Brewer
Thanks for kind of giving the, the scoop on that. I mean, definitely like my business brain starts.
- [31:12]
Dan Quinones
Yeah.
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Savannah Brewer
Being with ideas. There was something you filled out on your show form around your personal mantra of be nice.
- [31:20]
Dan Quinones
Yeah.
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Savannah Brewer
Could you tell me more about that?
- [31:23]
Dan Quinones
I always joke, as somebody said, isn't that from that Patrick Swayze movie Roadhouse? To a degree? Yes, it is. No, I actually had a mentor years ago. He was a prominent politician in New Jersey that I work with, you know, my prior world. And he always said, just be nice. You don't, you don't know what's going on. Be nice just means, you know, not avoiding difficult conversations. But, you know, you see Sometimes that a CEO or someone in charge feels they have to be this heavyweight. I'm the boss, I'm the king. Follow what I want. No, I mean it's, you know, be nice, be calm. Listen to what folks are saying. Take the opinions and you know, be, see the world around. See the different, you know, stuff that's happening right now. Take everyone's value, everyone's opinion. They calm, difficult conversations. People look to you for leadership, you know, and being nice. It doesn't matter who it is, whether it's your, your team, another CEO to a waiter, to a janitor, to a plumber, to a plumbing, you know, H vac technician, it doesn't matter. It's, you know, stay calm and you know, be nice because at the end of the day you never know where you're going to cross into somebody on the street somewhere and, and I will say D.C. as much as people talk about is an incredibly small town. It's, it's, it may sound like a big city, but it's a small town. I can't tell you for last. I've lived now in the D.C. area for about 25 years. I cross paths with people all the time that I've seen years ago now. They're, you know, they're CEOs of an organization. They're, you know, a couple of them are now congressmen and senators I've crossed paths with, you know, and they just remember, you know, being nice and they remember me in a, in a way that, you know, it's fun, it's interesting to see. Yeah, I remember you 20 years ago when you were just, you know, a staff person or something like that. It's, it's, it's fascinating to see. So you just never know. Be nice, you know, there's no reason, take the conflict out of it. I, I've seen the strong headed CEOs and I never found them effective. Very few, you know, or the, you know, the, I've seen the, the military generals who cuss at everybody. It's not, it doesn't motivate anyone. It doesn't, it doesn't help them see.
- [33:46]
Savannah Brewer
Your vision and it's really not sustainable either. I mean my actual like my first kind of real job when I was 19, I sold a Special Forceship selection prep program. I was on a team of all men.
- [34:01]
Dan Quinones
Yeah.
- [34:02]
Savannah Brewer
And the owner was a Canadian special forces sniper. Amazing, amazing man.
- [34:06]
Dan Quinones
Yeah.
- [34:07]
Savannah Brewer
And also he was intense.
- [34:10]
Dan Quinones
Yeah.
- [34:11]
Savannah Brewer
And scary. Yeah, it something with my nervous system very early on in my career having that experience. I just started to, you know, find this like nervousness, like seeing messages and how that kind of transmuted into the next job that I found. I would just found myself kind of, there was some pattern that was going on where for about eight years I found myself working for just like really intense people. And over the last couple years I've really gotten to work with very different types of leaders. And it's, it's fascinating how much can get done through, like you said, being nice. The podcast, My First Million they did an interview with, cannot remember his name. He's some billionaire that owns one of these AI. Maybe it was Zapier, I can't remember exactly, but they were saying how he was the nicest guy they have ever interacted with. And he was like, because he's the owner of my first million. And he's like, maybe it's just because, like I'm the owner. And he was being really nice. So he asked everyone on his team, he was like, what's your guys experience of, of this guy we're working with? And everyone was like, he's the nicest guy I've ever met. And so it's, it is possible and I think being someone that can show that as an example, the ripple effect of the people on your team, I'm sure is going to go really, really far.
- [35:31]
Dan Quinones
Well, you know, and the part about being nice that I always found, you know, it doesn't mean you, you shy from heated and tough conversations and tough questions and having to be there and deal with the difficulty of running in a business. I mean, it's. That's part of any order. It's going to be, there's always going to be an organization. You know, it doesn't matter what you do and where you're at, you know, whether you're working behind the counter at McDonald's, they're working in a boardroom, you know that there's stress at all levels. And you know, I think over years it's just learning to be calm and be nice and listen to what folks are saying, that ultimately that's to me the definition of leadership. And, you know, and your team respecting you and understanding that, you know, I'm a believer, if you don't love what you do, why do it? How many people do that every day? I can tell you love what you do. I love what I do. Why do anything else? Why do something that makes, you know, I see people drowning on miserably miserable every day. You have to, you got to look what you have a passion and love doing. And get into it. And I think that's the entrepreneurial spirit of that. I see both on plumbing and H vac technicians, they love the entrepreneurial side, these folks, and we see it every day. I mean, you probably interview hundreds of folks that are like that. They wouldn't be in it if they didn't love what they do. They wouldn't have that passion and enjoy it.
- [36:50]
Savannah Brewer
Speaking of the accountability piece, I would love to know how do you balance being nice or you had mentioned the word respect. How do you balance the ability to be kind and have this really safe, enjoyable culture where everyone loves what they do while also holding standards of excellence? What's your approach to that?
- [37:15]
Dan Quinones
I actually, it's interesting. That was one of the changes that we made here. It's about accountability. It's about having your metrics. What's your goal? You know, we, you know, being an old organization, you know, the whole notion of working virtual was foreign. The folks here, I mean, it's like, how can you do that? That's crazy. And then Covid came and then they started to realize, well, now people can come back to the office. What I found was that it doesn't matter where a person is working is, you know, or what they're doing, it's the, the metrics. But having them buy into the goal of what you're trying to accomplish, you know, and it doesn't matter how you do it. You can do it at home, you can do it, you know, remote, or you're doing it in an office. But, you know, what are the metrics? So what I did last year, working with our CEO, is set a series of metrics, you know, membership growth, academy sales, you know, how do we grow our academy sales? What do we need to do? We launched a whole new series of courses in the last six months. You know, what's the metrics to build those? What was the goal to get? How many did we want to set up? We're launching a PHCC on demand which is going to be like a Netflix style videos of all kinds of content related around plumbing and H Vac, not going to be your Netflix watching movies. But it's the stuff that they as a contractor find they need. There's going to be training, visual videos that was groundbreaking for our organization to move into that tech space where, you know, having an app and going through those. So that is how I set my team up. We set it up in a way that what are the goals? You know, what do we want to accomplish this year? And you know, we Try to meet those goals and we collaborate on those goals. It's never, you know, just get this done attitude, how do we do it, what do we need to do, what are the obstacles to get it done? And we work with that, that effort. And because the difference, you know, our organization, we have a board of directors that are the members, the volunteer members and we have to report to that board of directors every year. And we usually, you know, probably about twice a year we'll sit down and we present what the association team is doing, the employees here, and what we're, where we're accomplishing, what we're succeeding on. And it's, that should be fun and exciting. You know, to me that's, that's where we, you know, we look forward to that. And this past year, like I said, we've had incredible growth in terms of educational opportunities, education, sales. Like I said, Our PHP Academy went up to 15,000 registered users, which is amazing in the last five years. But one of the key metrics that I said is that, you know, I wanted to go from, you know, $800,000 in sales to 1.2 million in our academy sales. And we did. We're on track to do that for this year. In three years, I want to try to get to 2 million and keep growing on that. And that's, you know, what else can we be doing to make our organization better and grow those, those metrics? And we do that, you know, and that's the thing. But I get buy in with our team. Nobody sits there and said, this is, this is crazy, this is never going to happen. No, they buy into it and that's the job I have, is to help that team buy into that.
- [40:34]
Savannah Brewer
Would you say that's the kind of the main piece initially up front with like for any CEO that's listening and maybe they're in a company that is older or more traditional and they're trying to change things and adapt with the times. Is that the kind of, the main thing that you focus on in the beginning is just really taking time to get everybody bought into why that's important or what advice would you give to someone that's wanting to start making those changes?
- [40:58]
Dan Quinones
It is important to have buy in from your team. And I'll be honest and say, and this is where you could still be nice, but there are times sometimes that the staff, the team in place might not be the best, they may not be the right fit and you know, they, that person may be, you know, from a past administration, they're jaded they're, they're complacent and they don't, they don't buy into the vision or they, you know, and I always tell them, again, if you're not happy, you know, that's, that's the mantra to me is adding on. You can be nice, but if you're not feeling passionate about here, you don't enjoy being here, why be here? And you know, and some people realize most of the time on their own that, yeah, I think I want to go do something else or, you know, when you're restructuring sections of our organization, you have to make staffing changes sometimes because the per, the folks that may need there are just not the right fit. But there's a way to say they're not the right fit in a nice way as opposed to just. We see a lot of the corporate just, just cut 20,000 people randomly. You know, that's, that's, that takes the heart and soul of your organization out, you know, and I think, you know, that's, that's tough positions to be in. You know, I'm fortunate to be in a, in a nonprofit organization where we're not worried about, you know, profitability per se, but I do consider ourselves almost like a for profit nonprofit. So I do want to see growth in that sense. And the more we grow financially through sales and our programs, the more revenue that we gain. I circle that back into the programs we do and it's going back to gaining more young apprentices, getting to, you know, more, more courses, more coaching, all kinds of programs that we develop now that just constantly grow. At the end of the day, it trickles back to the member of bhcc, that contractor, that company who takes advantage of their membership.
- [42:51]
Savannah Brewer
Amazing. I, I would be interested in knowing for these companies that have people growing from the kind of like day to day, the, the nitty gritty work to eventually growing through the ranks and some of these people taking over the CEO position or even coming into a CEO position in one of these companies. What is the way that if, you know, like what are the ways that these companies are supporting their new COOs to learn the business side of it versus the actual trade itself?
- [43:23]
Dan Quinones
Sure. It's interesting where this industry is so different, the trades themselves is so different is again, you start out learning the hands on side of the business. You know, whether it's roughing a bathroom to putting, installing a toilet and putting in pipes. We have young apprentices that do a competition every year at our annual conference and at SkillsUSA and in Georgia, these kids in two days will completely install a bathroom. I mean the whole wall, piping, sink, everything. It's amazing. An 18, seeing an 18 year old kid do this and like that's the hands on side. As they grow in their profession, as they get into the trade, you know, that's when I hope they see an opportunity to gain business skills. The number one issue that I see with contractors that struggle the most in building their business or starting their business is business finance. So gaining that skills, learning how to, you know, manage a budget, manage your, your books, credit, how much in credit impacts your company, you know, gaining those skills, hr, legal, basic business law. You know, these are courses that folks, you know in our industry start taking once they become a licensed contractor if they want to be a successful business owner or move up into that position of CEO. Many of the folks that achieve that CEO position on our companies, they start having a business background and it doesn't matter. College is not the necessity of it. I know college dropouts that are now running multimillion dollar businesses, you know, they didn't, you know, they didn't need that. They were entrepreneurial. They learned, they take advantage of business coaching. PhD has a group, we have a quality service, contractors. It's a coaching, you know, where the coaches will literally come in and help each a new business owner, an existing business owner that wants to grow, you know, how to be a better businessman and how do you, how to gain that knowledge and experience and training and you know, it's fascinating to see that project, you know, kind of happen. Some of them are like again, amazing stories of incredible growth once they are able to master that part of the business side.
- [45:46]
Savannah Brewer
Awesome. Yeah. The, the coaching and the mentorship is so important. I was telling you before we got on that I joined Cameron Co alliance when I found myself in a CEO position. I had no idea what I was doing.
- [45:59]
Dan Quinones
Yeah.
- [45:59]
Savannah Brewer
So being in a room full of people who are doing the same types of things. There are people that have been doing it 20 years longer than I had and showed me the ropes on things that would have taken me years to learn on my own.
- [46:09]
Dan Quinones
Yeah.
- [46:10]
Savannah Brewer
There's also a course Cameron has called invest in your leaders which is just along the lines of, you know, when someone's moving up and you need them to move into a managerial position, all the key kind of things that they need to learn. Cameron has it so simply laid out in this course if anyone's listening and that something that you might be interested in or find value in, that's something you can look up at Cameron Herald's co alliance. And just to kind of wrap up. This has been absolutely amazing, Daniel, But I would love to know what are you most excited about in the next six months, both personally and professionally?
- [46:50]
Dan Quinones
I love, you know what I do. I get an opportunity to help transform people's lives every day. I mean I really do. You know, one of this young apprentice gets into this industry, I, you know, I see them grow and learn and it's, it's wonderful to see that now next month at PHC is going to have its Connect conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And that's, you know, the last week of October. We do a competition every year at that. It's a plumbing comp and H VAC competition where I see these young apprentices build, you know, an entire, you know, they rough an entire bathroom in there. These are kids that are going to be in passionate about the industry and they're going to be part of it. They're young, they're hungry. I get to meet them, I get to shake hands and get to know them over their stories. Two years ago we started supporting a program called World Skills. So folks know Skills usa, which is like a big trade show convention, you know, competition in Atlanta. Every year they get about 100 different trades. On the plumbing side, we support that. And we have a kid that's going to the world skills. He's 18 years old, he's out of Connecticut. Young kid, got a little mustache. We kid very smart. He won the competition last year. He's going to Shanghai, China next year to compete against 25 other countries on plumbing. I did not know this was a change his life. And we had a kid last year, the first time we really started supporting this program. He was from Fargo, North Dakota and he literally never traveled out of the United States. He went to Lyon, France and competed against other countries from around the world in plumbing. And it's to see his life change from that, you can't help but love that. You know, it's, it's, it's hard not to have that. So the next six months, I mean it's just, I am so excited we're going to have so many new programs that are launching in our organization for education and training. I love seeing those like launching those programs. I love I'm gonna have an opportunity to talk to our members at our Connect conference again in October. You know, hear what they have to say and you know, seeing just be able to kind of be the speaking the gospel of plumbing at H vac. It's hard not to get excited about. It's hard not to have fun. It's, it's, you enjoy it. So you know, it's work. Can I get paid to do what I love? You know, I sound like a baseball player. You know, you get to do that. So what's not to enjoy?
- [49:25]
Savannah Brewer
Well, I'm so happy that you are happy in your job. Well, this has been absolutely incredible for anyone that's listening. Yeah, of course. Who wants to connect with you? Where's the best place for them to do that?
- [49:37]
Dan Quinones
Sure. Phdc.org It's a wonderful organization on plumbing and H vac membership organization. We're across the USA. Please please check out our website and learn more about us and our long history. And you know, if anyone is in the industry wants to connect and learn more, please look us up.
- [49:55]
Savannah Brewer
Wonderful. Thanks so much for your time.
- [49:56]
Dan Quinones
Thank you.
- [50:00]
Cameron Herold
You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herold. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to follow, like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.