Jonathan (6:19)

Who trained that first class of techs?

Kevin (6:22)

It's a great question. We hired a gentleman to come in. He wrote the curriculum for the first six months. That's all he did, is he wrote the curriculum and he was training technicians. We used to teach them the technical part. First, big mistake. We brought them in, taught them technical, and then they would leave. What we realized, and I learned this with Leland, is we put them through two weeks of communication training where they had to pass a role practice in front of a panel of three managers before they could even get to the lab. We used to call it, they have to sing for their ticket. And the ticket was the lab. There's the lab. Because they always want more technical. I want more technical. Okay, that's coming. You got to be able to do the communication piece first. You've got to be able to get outside your comfort zone. And again, we would start a class with 15, 15 texts before we even got to the technical. Technical part. A lot of times we'd be down at 11, 10. And it was because it was rigorous. The communication piece was rigorous. So, Jonathan, let me turn the question. No. And my turn to ask you. My turn to ask you. I've been to mju. I've been to Morris Jenkins University. It's, I would say, the most impressive university in the country. So why did you start Morris Jenkins University?

Chris (7:58)

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Jonathan (8:37)

So Kevin and I had this conversation just a few days ago. And Kevin was saying, jonathan, I know you started your university for a very different reason. And the realization was, no, I started it for the exact same reason that Kevin did. I was tired of being held hostage to the labor force or the lack thereof. Sure, we got the onesie twosies that work out, but the baggage that was coming with the experienced labor into our company and trying to get them to row in our direction was just arduous. Right? It was just sucking the energy out. We still bring them in, but there was no way we were going to get to the scale that we needed to get to the growth that we wanted to get to on that model. So yeah, we started our school now university the same way you did with H Vac Tech Builder. My story is I started at Morris Jenkins, 24 years old, January 11, 1999 at $9 an hour. And I didn't know anything about H vac other than there was a thing on the wall that if you push it up, it gets hotter, if you push it down, it gets cold. I didn't even understand the level of desperation that I can now look back on and see. But we didn't have a university. It was, hey Jonathan, jump in the truck with Chuck and you can figure it out, buddy. And I did. I rode around with Chuck for two weeks and I fell in love with this man. We got our windscreen out in front of us, they're giving us customers, we don't even have to knock on the doors. And we were doing all kinds of crazy stuff and I had no clue what we were doing. But after a couple months they let me go run my own, call a maintenance call, a safety check and we were off and running. So it was a little bit of the walk uphill both ways in the snow to school everyday story. I get it. But now that you understand where I came from, I wanted to fix that. And I wanted to give people the ability, men and women to come into our industry to learn this beautiful, awesome trade with a little bit more guidance and some rails there and some help, whether it's communications training, whether it's understanding our philosophy and our culture and then the technical proficiency with that as well. So I started it for the same reason you did. But my father in law, Dewey Jenkins, had a dream and a vision of Morris Jenkins University being even greater than that because he was our master educator. He was our chief educator. He was the greatest, he is today still the greatest teacher I've ever had. And I've had some good teachers. I know you've had some good teachers in your life. And I saw the next problem that we were going to have is how do we teach people how to supervise, how do we teach people how to manage or even God bless, lead something. And who taught you? It's kind of the wild, wild west out there. I'm sorry, even if you have a business degree or maybe even an mba, I don't think you really have the comprehension of what it takes in the real world to understand what it's going to take to supervise Others. That was the number one problem that we had. We brainstormed it and so we went on this quest to go to the outside world, get out of our industry, maybe stay in the industry to some degree, but get out. That's where. Gazelles, I know you've gone to Verne Harnish's organization over the years for a lot including coaching. And we, we got introduced to what we found would help us. And it's the legendary Marcus Buckingham first break all the rules. It started as a team read, share what you, what you read and what you thought about it. And it's advanced now to multiple classes, even level two and level three classes where we teach the proper role of a manager. You want to know what the basis of that is? It's to turn somebody else's God given talent into performance. That's it. That is all it is. And there's a lot more to it than that. So that was our first class in management training beyond tech builder or build a plumber. I realized that we needed to focus on our people. We hired for character and we trained for skill. And it's very hard to find people from the outside world. We just weren't lucky enough, I guess to get those people to come into our organization to manage and lead. We were going to have to build that as well. The second thing that we found was like we're not taught how to properly have conflict. What are we taught growing up about conflict? Avoid it. It's bad. Yeah, I come from the south and my mama, she was just a southern lady, bless your heart. You know, take the high road, be sweet. Let me give you some octa tea, baby. You know, and that's how I was raised. And so I didn't know how, you know, conflict was bad. But what I saw, the second thing in our organization is we had these intersections, these places where business was handed off. A great example is where sales sell something and then they hand it off to production install. And that intersection like you, you can't see the asphalt, you can't see the white concrete, it's blood red. There is just a massive crash happening there all the time. Does it happen at your, your business? And so we didn't know how to deal with that. And that's where we found Howard Gutman. When Goliath Clash, it's not an easy read. It's hard. But I knew that for us we could take that, bring it back to our organization and build some classes around it and teach even junior level supervisor the proper management of conflict and it kind of went on from there. And we built out six fundamentals. They are our six fundamentals. I could share with you what those fundamentals are. We didn't create them. We just found them in the outside world. You can have them too, or you can go find your own. But that is now the system where we train all of our management team and also our leadership team. Growing up from within, it didn't get there until we needed some help on education. Kevin, you did the same thing. Did you run your school?

Kevin (15:17)

No. No, I didn't. Let me ask a question. Raise your hand if you have currently some sort of university or training arm in your company. Okay.

Jonathan (15:32)

So three quarters of the room.

Kevin (15:35)

Yeah. That's great. And I just want to stress that I remember our first university. It was small in a little area and there was nothing to it. So, like, if you go to Jonathan's, you'll see that he's got a full time principal on staff now from the public school education. So it's gone to a totally different level. It's gone to a totally. We followed his lead. We hired a principal. We then hired a second principal. But I want to stress though, in 2011, when we had that meeting with our coach, it took us about two years to even start. Like he told us, I'm one of those guys. I'm a perfect candidate for Gazelles, which is a slow learner with a lot of money. So it takes me a while. So I have to keep coming back. I've got to keep coming back. But. But I want to just encourage you if you have yet to start your school or even if you have a school, that these things, it happens slowly. We decided that we wanted to be Jiffy Lube versus Bob's Auto Shop. Let me tell you what I mean by that. Both are in the automotive industry. We want to be Jiffy Lube versus Bob's Auto Shop. Think of Bob's Auto Shop. Think. Think of Jiffy Lube. You can scale Jiffy Lube because it's built on a simple process, maintenance. I really stress all the time in our company that we are a maintenance company first. We're a maintenance company. Oh. And we happen to do a lot of replacements. Bob's Auto Shop. Right. You walk into Bob's Auto Shop and you greet Bob and he's probably got a red handkerchief in the back pocket. But it's hard to scale Bob's Auto Shop because he's a super technical guy. He can fix a transmission, he can put people in awe. But that is Incredibly hard to scale. So if we build our company, which we did around maintenance, you can hire these young technicians, you can train them, and then they'll develop. And again, it's a way that we avoided the whole idea of being held hostage.

Jonathan (18:00)

Yeah, that's great. And I know that we. I've known you for many years now, and we've been blessed to be together in some. Some groups. The families group. Leland, Dave Geiger. At one time, I was telling the roster of who was in the families group, and that wasn't associated with anything. That was just us coming together. I. I called you because I know you were running the families group at that time. And I was in an ACCA mixed group. Anybody here been in a ACA mix group? Two people nodding the head, and I love those guys. But we became the biggest in that group, and I quickly left that group. If you become the biggest in your group, you can still have. We're still friends today. We still have great relationships. But I just was at this place where I needed to get out, so I figured out who the next biggest was, and I called you and thank you for letting me in. And we learned a lot. But you and I traded a lot of these ideas off of this university concept. We have seven FTEs on the team. We're probably pushing near a million dollars in payroll per year just for our educators. And so that's pretty daunting and big. And I was telling at our table, even if you just start with a group read around a principle that you have found or you have heard from somebody else, and you get your leadership team together or even your junior management team together to start going through that principle. That's where we started. And you can build it out from there. I'm a key believer in an organization will only grow as large as the key people that represent it. One thing that we're going through, and even I personally, I'll be vulnerable about it going through right now is our own ceiling of complexity. And that ceiling of complexity, everybody in this room is faced with it. And I'm talking with our group about that because I've been faced with that, and I find myself faced with that because I get busy doing other things, and I kind of slow down on developing myself. Has that happened to you, Kevin?

Kevin (20:07)

For sure.

Jonathan (20:08)

And so we're talking about that with our team and what are the tools that they need to do to break through their next ceiling of complexity. In a lot of cases, it's, you need new relationships. You don't have to abandon Your old relationships, you just need new relationships a la me. Leaving an ACA mixed group to go find some new relationships. You have to change your paradigm. You most likely will have to change your goals. And so I right now had found myself didn't even realize that I was slowing down and I was bumping up against my own ceiling of complexity and I need to break through with that. So you person are going through that same thing. Your team members are doing the same thing. And I view that we're both a growth organization and a learning organization. We're not going to be a growth organization unless we're a learning organization. Outside of the technical training that you give to build a plumber, to build an electrician or an H Vac tech, you need to put a lot into building your own people. Even if they came to you with a degree from a big university, it's still imperative for you as the leader to bring out the best in them. And you're going to have to side world to build your curriculum as you see it around your culture. And I know you've done the same thing.

Kevin (21:31)

Anybody in here? Well, I'll just share. I was faced with some major challenges at about, I think I said at 15 million in revenue and I was, it's funny, I was the issue. We were flat, we were flat for, at 15 million in revenue and I was so frustrated. For five years in a row we were flat and didn't grow. And I'm like what the hell? And to, to your point Jonathan, I realized we needed to get outside of the industry. We always came to stuff like this, this, like Rhino X these types of things. For me it was airtime 500 going to these things consistently. But we also needed to get outside and that's where Dewey, Jonathan's father in law introduced me to Gazelles who, where we got an outside coach to come in because that was a real game changer for us. I realized we, we had an entrepreneurial led business me and we needed to transform and become a professionally managed business with an entrepreneurial spirit. And that was the, that was the gosh, probably the five to seven year transformation we went through. It was not easy. It was not easy but I, I was, I was the challenge and we went outside, got an outside business coach. If you want to talk about how we began to develop middle managers which that was another challenge that we faced is we had pretty poor middle managers. We didn't hire the right people. We hired people from within our organization. I love, I love, I love what Wyatt said about Making sure you can develop people. But we didn't have. We didn't have a system to develop people. We just, we. We just, we just took a great tech and we made him a manager. And that was a huge mistake. So going outside and doing what Ken Goodrich said earlier, going outside, hiring a professional manager, teaching them our business, then begin to implement and put in place a management development system inside your company. But what does that look like? Cause that sounds all sophisticated. For us, it was just getting away on a quarterly basis to have a coach lead the four to six key people in the organization over and over and over. And really, it was really to teach them how to think. Because most of my managers were linear thinkers. They came into work and all they did is they, you know, and then they ended up somewhere with. And they ended up what they had. Where strategic thinking is, you look out to what is it that you want. And then you work backwards. About 97% of the population is a linear thinker. And if you can teach your people how to be your key managers, especially how to be more strategic thinking, that was a big game changer for us. The other thing we talked about, I was talking to Brett at our table about it, is making sure you have a bonus plan in place for those key people that you pay out on a monthly basis. And I'm happy to share positive, immediate, and certain.

Jonathan (24:56)

Pay it out quick.

Kevin (24:59)

Brett. We were talking about it. I sent it to him this morning, before we even came here, because we were talking about it at dinner last night. Having a. Like for your service manager, your dispatcher, your sales lead coordinator. All the key people have got to be on a. On a bonus plan that's paid out monthly. Geared around. For us, it was geared around revenue and gross margin. We hit our revenue and we had our gross margin. And there was tears. Like if you're, you're, say you're a $5 million company. If we do 400,000, you're going to get this amount. If we do 450, you do 500. So there was always like five to seven tiers. And it is amazing how that accelerated our growth when everybody was pulling on the same rope. They were going crazy with each other at the end of a month. Cause they wanted to hit the bonus and then boom, then we would pay them, and then they'd be ready to go for the next month. That was a major game changer for us. So simultaneously, we're beginning to train our managers, beginning to incentivize them, beginning to hire and develop better ones. And that's truly what caused and helped our business grow because we were. We were pretty messed up. And I was the issue, and I still am the issue.

Jonathan (26:20)

Kevin, we, we have found over the years, there's Johnny, Johnny's been a plumber. Johnny's ready to get out of the truck. We really love Johnny. Don't like we love Johnny. And that's Johnny becomes a supervisor. Has that happened at your business?

Kevin (26:38)

Oh, we did. That's all we did.

Jonathan (26:40)

That's how we live. And it was a lot of frustration there. I felt for Johnny because I lived it as well. As a rookie manager, I felt like Johnny was back like my first day on January 11, 1999. Didn't know what he was doing. And what we found is we have to put in a curriculum where Johnny gets that daily, daily food delivered to him to learn how to be a manager. What we also have to do is give him that astonishing positive reinforcement. And we actually had Aubrey Daniels organization come in and help build our incentive plans throughout the organization, even to the level of a dispatcher, call center, esupport, Incentivize, incentivize, incentivize. And when you win, you celebrate, you celebrate, you celebrate. And so if you don't have Aubrey Daniels in your organization, you can get the book and read it. It's bringing out the best in people. It's a great read, a great thought of how to have a positive reinforcement system throughout your organization, whether it's tied to KPIs or bonuses or not. The other thing that we've realized, I know you and I are both huge fans of Patrick Lencioni, and that is one of the staple curriculum in mju. I know you're a huge believer of it throughout your organization. His legendary series, you know, starting with five dysfunctions. We base everything on how to build teams off of that. But there's a book, one of his books that I was late to pick up and you and I were on a call when Brandon led that call. The new president of Morris Jenkins. And it was the book the motive. And I am seeing that throughout our organization. A lot of our people get into management and or leadership with the wrong motive. And that motive is reward centered motive for them versus responsibility, responsibility centered motive. And you want the responsibility centered motive. There's a lot that do it for the reward. I get to work on what I want to work on. Look at that. I got manager on my business card now. It's for all the wrong reasons. You've seen that as well.

Chris (29:02)

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Kevin (30:28)

What I think is great is we can have these universities and they can have online training for managers and I think that's essential. I think what Ken Goodrich said earlier though is the best way to train your managers is to have a consistent weekly accountability meeting. Every Monday at 10 o' clock we have our key GMs come in and they have to report on how their numbers are doing and they're sharing on what they're doing, what their strategies are, what's working, what's not working, and they're really helping each other. I mean that is something that we implemented in my company probably seven years ago. And that was another transformational thing that just that rigorous and being consistent. Cause I heard somebody say earlier that culture is about consistency. So if you can figure out how to bring your managers together on a weekly basis, figure out. And it's always at the same time. They know what they're going to be, the numbers they're going to be asked to report on. You can produce the numbers for them and show them. That's what we do. We put them up on a screen and so now they just have to tell us what's going on, what happened this week, what are you doing to fix it. And then they're interacting with each other and so they're coaching each other and they're learning from the mistakes of others, they're learning on the successes of others and. But it's a constant, week after week consistency, by the way. By the way, Ken you said you didn't really focus on culture. Your culture is all about accountability. That's what your culture is. It's accountability and it's urgency. And I guarantee you, you look at any business because you were sitting up here going, I didn't really focus on that culture stuff. Yeah, you did. You have a very clear culture. If you, if you look at any business that's struggling, there's two things lacking in it. And I, and I ask you to look at your own business. It's lacking accountability and it's lacking urgency. If you can fix those two things in your company, I, I am certain you will find success. And putting in place consistent accountability. When it comes to salespeople having to report their numbers, when it comes to managers having to report their numbers, when it comes to managers of technicians who have to stand up and be reporting how their team is doing regularly every week, let me tell you, that is how you transform an entrepreneurial led business into a professionally managed business with an entrepreneurial spirit. And I think we're getting the hook or being told that we got to open it up for questions.

Jonathan (33:19)

If we're not, we're going to give Chris some time back. Kevin, I'll finish with this voracious note taker. You never go anywhere without your journal. And kudos. I can't keep up with you on that. I try, but bless you. You do such a great job with that. That means a lot. Any questions?

Chris (33:39)

Yeah, we have time. If we, if anybody has a question for these guys. Anybody want to have a question? Do we have a mic we can pass? Just one. There we go.

Kevin (33:52)

So I wanted to ask you earlier because my background also is accounting and we didn't really speak on that as much in this. It was more what do your financial meetings look like? What are our financial meetings look like? Yeah, financial meetings. For daily cash flow statements, do you do weekly snapshots like Alan Rohr recommends? I definitely get a daily cash flow from my cfo. First thing they do in the morning is send me that.

Jonathan (34:22)

Yeah. Our executive team has a daily huddle, a weekly adjustment meeting. So we call it the tactical adjustment meeting. This is all about the key KPIs. A lot of us, we were in a discussion either last night or today. What are you using around a group that I was with. But what are the key KPI? Well, it was last night at dinner, we talked about the KPIs. And what are your top KPIs. Well, first of all, there's a lot of them and we all Had a lot of different answers on that. But for us, it was starting as an H VAC company. Everything good in residential H Vac starts with a cash on delivery call. And so the number of COD calls was paramount. Well, what comes before a COD call? Well, there's a lot of things. For us it was new customers and so that was another one. So you have your key KPIs that you look for. And the one thing at Morris Jenkins that we don't want to have is a reporting meeting. I mean, stab me with a spoon, those are dreadful. Right, don't go to reporting meetings. So your team should know what the numbers are. But what we want to talk about is how to affect those numbers, make the adjustments we need to make them better, to get back on par, to get past par. So, yes, we're on a daily basis. We have a report that comes out at 7am we call it the Dewey daily. And it's the key metrics, including the weather, the call count, how many CSRs booked a call, how many supporters booked a call, the cancellation rate, the close rate. I mean you can just zip down through it and see what's the snapshot of the day before and, and then also what is already lined up in book four today. So we can put some affecting on that. So, yes, you need to know your numbers. I am not an accountant like Leland, but you have to know, you don't have to be. You just need to know your numbers.

Kevin (36:16)

In our weekly manage like our GMs, I've got, there's six locations and I'm acting like I'm president still. I'm not, I stepped down last year, so. But I have got a great guy, Dan, that I work with him still very closely and I know that he's still getting the daily cash flow statement. But that meeting we have with our GMs, we've got six GMs, and on one of the Mondays after we get the financials, they get the financials, they're expected to report in front of us. What were the top three things they saw on their financials and how are they fixing them? We go all the way to profit for their location. They all see the profit all the way down. But we expect them to look at their financials, know their financials, know how to read them, and we certainly give them training on it. But every once a month in that meeting, it's a financial meeting where they have to tell us, okay, what were the top three highlights from your financials? Where are three challenges that you see and then what are you doing to fix those challenges? Does that answer your question? Yeah. So it's. Yeah. Yes. We did. We did. We did. We went. We went.

Chris (37:54)

Kev, will you repeat the question? So that way.

Kevin (37:56)

Okay. So the question was, did we go to. Did we get any grants for our university? And the answer is, yes, it is. We had to go in front of a board in California and we got approved for. First time was 700,000. Next time it was 400,000. But I just want you to know, it's a pain in the ass. I mean, it sounds so. I don't want anybody like seven or big numbers. But then you got to. It's so much tracking, and someone's got to be in charge of it. And. And it's certainly not for me to do it. But we did it and we submitted it and we got the money. But it's kind of like that thing where the state is going to delay you. They're not going to pay you. They tell you they've run out of money, and it's like, so we got this grant, and then they don't have money to fulfill it. So I went in with the idea that. I went in with the idea that there weren't going to be grants, but there are. There are. So you said your Local abc. What did you say? Local ABC Association. Okay. Did everybody hear that? So there is. I would just stress, because I agree, that you'll need an administrator to make sure that they're in charge of it, to make sure you get that money. Because if it's left to me, we'd never get it.

Jonathan (39:20)

Yeah, a lot of that stuff we haven't done that. I had this mantra that I'm not going to wait on the education system, and I'm damn sure not going to wait on the government. But I like what you said, and I probably need to look into if there are funds available before Elon gets rid of it.

Kevin (39:40)

Let's hope. Yeah.

Jonathan (39:44)

And Texas. God bless Texas.

Kevin (39:46)

Yes. God bless Texas. Yes. I live in the Republic of California.

Jonathan (39:53)

The Democratic People's Republic of California.

Chris (39:57)

Guys, I appreciate you so much. Let's go ahead and put our hands together for a job. Thank you, Kevin. Thanks, JB.