The Pivot That Revolutionized Shepherd Communication & Security

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Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

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Speaker 2
Welcome, everyone to Blue Collar Start Up, the podcast where hard work meets big ideas. This is your home for real talk, real stories and real strategies from the front lines of life in the business of the trades. I’m one of your hosts, Mike Nelson from Five Towers Media.

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Speaker 1
And I’m your co-host there at Foster Data Cleaning Systems.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. Are. There. I got to say, they’re back there. I’m sorry. I know, it’s funny.

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Speaker 1
I’m. I’m. Wait. I wait.

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Speaker 2
For it. Every time I tell you the I know you’re like, look at this. Like he’s going to say it. Derek, how are we doing, man?

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Speaker 1
Good, good. Super excited about, our guest today. We’ll introduce him shortly here, but, I was good man. Been a bit busy. Continuing to be a busy start to the year, so, very excited. Just, a lot of good things happening. How about yourself?

00;01;04;26 – 00;01;26;10
Speaker 2
Yeah, same. Same, you know, I, I was kind of chuckling to myself earlier because every time you and I get on, the episode before the show starts, we lament about, all the trials and tribulations of owning a business in the current environment. And, you know, it just makes me laugh. It’s like we get we get like, five minutes a, group therapy here every every right for the episodes.

00;01;26;12 – 00;01;44;29
Speaker 2
But no. All good things over here, man. We’re just, you know, trying to work through our plan for the year and and keep things rolling and deal with the the daily challenges, as I’m sure, our guest is going to talk a little bit about with us, too, because all business owners face them. But yeah, I, you know, got a lot to be thankful for.

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Speaker 2
So I’m trying to try to focus on that. So of just pissing and moaning all day, every day. But, I could listen. Hey, I could yeah, exactly. Exactly. So,

00;01;55;24 – 00;02;15;19
Speaker 1
You know, we were also talking about, listenership and, you know, some of the things that we’re doing to, to help grow the audience and, you know, everybody, if you could, who has tuned in and, and does grab some value from the show, if you could, give us a, like, share, send this over to a friend, it would be much, much appreciate it.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. My my team, actually, Derek was telling me we need to get people to subscribe on YouTube. Okay, so that’s our goal right now. We’re we’re we’re we’re in the hundreds on YouTube. But, it’s not where most of our, stats are coming from right now. And, they said we need to get our YouTube stats up.

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Speaker 2
So subscribe on YouTube please. Like subscribe, leave a review, please.

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Speaker 3
My base.

00;02;40;15 – 00;03;06;26
Speaker 2
That’s right. Building the base. Building the base. And if you do subscribe on YouTube, then you can see some of the new formats that we, we’ve got going around. Derek and I actually recording two episodes today and one of those episodes, the one that we’re about to do is our interviews from the field format, where we’re talking to business owners in the field about, you know, where they came from, how they build their business, what they see every day.

00;03;06;28 – 00;03;34;02
Speaker 2
And then, of course, also, and then our next interview is actually going to be with Stacey Spector doing our first women in the trades. She’s bringing it on her guest, Lori Layton from Catamount Consulting. They’re going to talk a little bit about what they see every day. Excited about that interview. Also with Catamount. We do a, monthly roundtable discussion with those guys where a lot of that stuff is going to be, mindset or leadership, growth, talking, personal professional development.

00;03;34;02 – 00;04;04;00
Speaker 2
So really excited to add that to the mix. And of course, our, the other format you guys will be seeing from us is our let’s ask Bill or our lab episodes where we, bring Bill Tansey from the op shop in and, he’s kind of given us some, unbeknownst to him, or maybe it’s been announced at this point, but, given us some free coaching and consulting here and about structuring your business and, building process and org charts and all the things that you need to build and grow.

00;04;04;03 – 00;04;28;17
Speaker 2
Successful business in today’s environment. So excited for all those new episodes. Of course. You know, if you haven’t heard, we’ve got our Patreon side. And that’s, where we each episode, we try to spend a few minutes with each guest, really getting into some of the things that we feel will help businesses, specifically in the trades, help them grow, help them scale, whether it’s marketing, sales, operations, project management, finance, you name it.

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Speaker 2
We’re trying to get you guys some real, real on the ground insight from people that are doing it have done it. And, you know, hopefully where you want your business to be at some point. So, check us out on the Patreon side. Of course, the link will be in the show notes. And then, real quick, do you want to give a shout out to our sponsors?

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Speaker 2
You got the list up or.

00;04;48;11 – 00;05;17;16
Speaker 1
Yeah. As always, you know, we’re very grateful for for all of the local businesses here in the Albany area who are supporting, the show and, and, helping us to be able to put out this content and, and hopefully help some people, along the way. So big shout out to people. Liz Martin, electric MLB construction, banjo construction, Michaels group, Catamount Consulting, the Northeast Construction Trades Workforce coalition, Doug and Pam over there.

00;05;17;18 – 00;05;32;06
Speaker 1
Curtis lumber, Catamount or, Diego cleaning systems. My team, of course, for for allowing me some of the bandwidth to be able to, to jump on the show here and, Mike’s team over at Five Towers Media. Thank you to all those folks.

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Speaker 2
Big thank you. Big thank you. So I guess we should probably introduce our guest,

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Speaker 1
Absolutely. Let’s get to it.

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Speaker 2
So, so rich, so that I don’t mess anything up, which I often do, I tend to go ahead and, just give us a quick, who you are and and what you guys do.

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Speaker 3
Yeah, sure. Thanks. No one’s no one’s perfect. So, you know, we, we appreciate the opportunity to be on the show. Derek. Mike, thank you very much. I’m Richard Russo. I’m the managing partner and and, founder of Shepherd Communication and Security. We are a commercial security services company. We do, fire alarm and access control and inventory, you know, slips, trips and falls.

00;06;14;26 – 00;06;36;11
Speaker 3
Right. So it’s cameras. It’s access, it’s fire, it’s perimeter alarm. It’s all the things that, you, you want to kind of keep always, in the forefront as a business owner, right? You know, you’ve got to protect those assets. You got to protect your people, and you got to protect, your business from exposure. And liability and peril.

00;06;36;13 – 00;07;00;28
Speaker 3
So, we bring all of the infrastructure that’s necessary, whether it’s life safety code. Like I said, with fire alarm or it’s, the necessary ability to control your doors. Who comes and goes out of your warehouse? Your office? And what happens, when they’re in that right, with surveillance and AI augmented, camera systems? So that’s what we do.

00;07;00;28 – 00;07;18;15
Speaker 3
We’ve been doing it since 2007. We got our master alarm license in New York State, in 2010. And, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve experienced and grown and seen and got lots of stories to tell. So appreciate the opportunity to tell them.

00;07;18;18 – 00;07;35;02
Speaker 2
Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, it’s funny rich too, because, when the when the, when Derek first put the thing on the calendar, I like looked at it and that was like communications. And I was like, how is that how is that blue guy like, call him? I’m like, hey, bro. Like, what’s the blue collar angle on these guys?

00;07;35;04 – 00;07;58;02
Speaker 2
And what’s, what’s funny about that? And he, of course put me in my place and was like, and but it’s what’s interesting though, and we’ve been having this conversation a lot is people don’t understand all the different industries that the trades are part of. And like you, you may see surveillance equipment and think like, oh, that’s an IT company or a technical company.

00;07;58;02 – 00;08;03;12
Speaker 2
But realistically, when you guys look at what you’re doing, like it’s pretty blue collar, right?

00;08;03;12 – 00;08;25;20
Speaker 3
Oh for sure. And we, you know, we can’t tell you how much we appreciate, the fact that we have, a rich environment of trade oriented folks, you know, whether you’re an electrician, converting to, you know, our kind of it’s Division 27 and 28 and the construction work trades, right? So it’s all low voltage work.

00;08;25;23 – 00;08;53;20
Speaker 3
Or you’re an eight track guy or you’re a, a mechanic. You come out of the service, you come out of some of the, secondary school CCS got a great program for, electrical and electrician, trained, you know, junior, two year degree, trade program. We we will bring all those people and, and, you know, our business is on a ladder on the left, pulling a wire, mounting a device.

00;08;53;20 – 00;09;04;21
Speaker 3
You know, drills Molly’s, you know, black boxes. It’s all tradecraft. And we’ve got some of the best in the business, so.

00;09;04;24 – 00;09;26;23
Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, and it’s an interesting thing is, you know, a few of our interviews recently, it really points out the fact that no matter what the industry is like, the trades are there. And we I’ve had this conversation online and offline with people where they’re talking, they’re, you know, unhappy with their career or what they’re doing. I’m like, go into the trades like there’s so much work in the trades.

00;09;26;23 – 00;09;51;15
Speaker 2
And then when I say that their first thought is always like, well, I’m going to be up on a roof, you know, I’m going to be framing. And I’m like, oh, there’s so many industries these days that the trades are just inherently a part of. And like, it’s it’s you just you can’t just look at at face value and like oh it company because they’re doing video surveillance or like, beset health care we had on a few weeks ago where it’s like, you see health care and you’re like, how is that the trades?

00;09;51;15 – 00;09;58;08
Speaker 2
But then you realize, like, there’s a whole division of construction that goes on in those organizations. So.

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Speaker 3
Yeah, our guys drive around in large. You know, utility vans. Right. And these and, and, pro masters, they’re full of tools. They’re full of ladders. These guys are up in the rafters, you know, getting a wire down a piece of conduit. But then once the ball work, the the roughing, if you will, of of our trade is done, then becomes the tremolo and the programing.

00;10;24;05 – 00;10;52;10
Speaker 3
So our, our particular trade, life safety, electronic security. Like I said, Division 2728 requires you to not only have that ability to kind of get horizontal and vertical with a wire, but you’ve got to be able to pull the laptop out and then program the equipment. So we really span and give trades folks an opportunity to not just be like you said, I don’t want to be a roofer and nothing against the roofers.

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Speaker 3
Right. God.

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Speaker 2
Well, yeah. No, that’s hard as work, man. I don’t want to be out on the.

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Speaker 3
80 pound, you know, tiles up on the roof and working in the sun, and, you know, these guys are in the field. They’re in there in winter conditions. They’re in indoor. They’re in an existing office. They’re in brand new construction. And then they transition, you know, once final finishes are up to finalizing the installation, programing it and making it work.

00;11;19;01 – 00;11;38;08
Speaker 3
And then we’ve got customer training. So we have so many trajectories around what, you know, whether it’s the helper tack helping the pull wire, it’s the intermediate tack that knows the systems and knows how they work. You know, as my grandfather would say, you know, no, no where the hose goes, right. You got to kind of be able to see the mind’s mind’s eye view.

00;11;38;08 – 00;11;55;09
Speaker 3
You got to know how it works. And then programing requires some technical capabilities, beyond, you know, how to use your screwdriver or your punch down tool. And we’re really proud of the workforce that we have and that we’ve developed over the 15 plus years that we’ve been, you know, really in business.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. How many people do you guys have, working for you over there?

00;11;58;13 – 00;12;20;11
Speaker 3
34. And I think we’ve got, headcount. I think we’re going to add three more this year. We’re accelerating. We’ve really gotten some traction in the last few years. And like any business, you know, we we didn’t struggle early on. We just every dollar was a good dollar. And anything that came our way, we did.

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Speaker 3
And it took us a while, you know, to kind of figure out you should focus, focus on the core stuff and be really good at that. You know, and in the last five years, pandemic aside, and even then, you know, people have come to us, they know that we’re experts, they know we’re getting quality, high quality, and we we deliver on what we say.

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Speaker 3
And, so, you know, growing headcount now has become, part of what our annual forecast is, and, and it’s hard to find, you know, the quality people, despite, as I said earlier, you know, some really good feeder programs out there, trades and people in general are in high demand. So it’s not because they don’t exist in our marketplace, it’s because they’re already fully gainfully employed in most cases.

00;13;11;08 – 00;13;36;08
Speaker 3
And so, you know, you talk about, you know, going to the trades and I know that’s what this podcast is, you know, focused on. Yeah. You know, if I got an undergraduate degree from Suny Albany and I got a master’s from RPI, and I’m proud of those sheepskins, but I wish I didn’t, I but I could have gotten got farther if I just focused on the trade right from the get go.

00;13;36;11 – 00;13;56;04
Speaker 3
But, you know, maybe I wouldn’t be the business owner either. Right? So, you know, some of that I don’t take away, the, the college, or the, you know, the masters in honing your ability to have a good business mind, but, don’t push the paper, you know, get out there and and understand your trade and do it in a light alongside with your team.

00;13;56;04 – 00;13;58;13
Speaker 3
And then and then kind of go from there.

00;13;58;15 – 00;14;06;04
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, I I’m curious, as far as you said, you started in, was it 2007?

00;14;06;07 – 00;14;28;10
Speaker 3
Yeah. Or that’s when we first, my partner and I got together and, and, we both worked, in professional services. We worked for a large bank on the technical side. So we both came from a completely, like I said, you know, college graduates, you know, hey, we’re going to go be part of the executive management program for a certain banks that we would all know.

00;14;28;12 – 00;14;46;10
Speaker 3
And, we did that a few years. And, my partner, I got an opportunity, kind of laid out in front of him, and he came to me and said, hey, I don’t want to go in business unless, you know, I got somebody like you. I guess he thought I was smart. I don’t know why, but, and, and he and he said, you know, is this interesting to you?

00;14;46;10 – 00;15;02;27
Speaker 3
And I said, sure. And we, we, we kind of part time that for a little bit. And then he jumped in full with both feet. And then I followed him a couple of years later and, yeah, we came out of a professional services and hey, we can do this and develop it from there.

00;15;03;00 – 00;15;17;04
Speaker 2
Well, and that was going to be you kind of touched on both of the questions I was going to ask is one like what was what? Like what how or why did you guys get into this industry? And then the other one was going to be, what did that transition look like when you would decided to become business owners?

00;15;17;04 – 00;15;34;13
Speaker 2
You know, like you, I think you said you worked part time kind of doing it on the side and then. Yeah, so, let’s unpack both of those real quick just so I can hear it. As far as getting started, what was it that really? And what’s your partner’s name? I’m sorry.

00;15;34;16 – 00;15;36;19
Speaker 3
His name is Bob. Bob Darrow.

00;15;36;21 – 00;15;43;12
Speaker 2
So. Well, is Bob came to you? What? What was it that what an opportunity was put in front of Bob, and that’s that’s what it was or.

00;15;43;14 – 00;16;13;18
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah, he had, not to take up, a lot of, time, but he had a neighbor, who had, he was in the telecommunication space, delivering what we would call tap to set infrastructure. Right. And that’s coming from the telephone pole to the house and delivering services, for, MSOs or system operators, we would know them today is Time Warner, Verizon, Comcast, those types of telecommunications operators.

00;16;13;21 – 00;16;45;17
Speaker 3
And he had a business out of his garage, and, he had a couple guys working for him part time. 1099 not doing anything right. You know, the labor laws, you know, be damned right. You know, other managers go to work, right? And I buy his six pack at the end of the day kind of thing. Right. And, it came to us one day, we were all up at the lake, you know, this goes, and said, I got an idea, and, and Bob was the first one to say, I think we can make a go out of this, right?

00;16;45;21 – 00;17;10;09
Speaker 3
You know, he’s got a couple of guys. What he needs is professional, you know, I don’t know, forecast a he needs. You know, he literally is just kind of bouncing from one job to the next on a day to day basis. He’s not looking out, you know, in front of him. And I think we could bring that. And I said maybe, you know, and of course you know, when you’re 30 something, you know, the world is, you know, like, doesn’t matter.

00;17;10;09 – 00;17;28;18
Speaker 3
You’ve got all the energy. And and we it was exciting. And so he, we decided that, if we could get a contract, with another one of those operators that I mentioned earlier, we could, we can make a go out of this. And that’s exactly what we did. We went out in typical entrepreneurial style.

00;17;28;18 – 00;17;49;12
Speaker 3
We we hustled, and we beat down the doors of, some folks out in central New York. And, you know, we are, you know, living in Saratoga and Schenectady, respectfully, and we were, you know, the first opportunity we got was in Sarah Cruz, and we just said, so, we’ll drive to Syracuse every day, and, that’s what we did.

00;17;49;12 – 00;18;14;16
Speaker 3
I, you know, my partner and I, drove to Syracuse, like, you go to, you know, to Crossgates Mall from yellow went right, you know, like, no big deal. And we went out there and we hired some folks, and we got a contract, got a contract, hired some folks, and just built it from there. And, a couple of years in, we, we decided that, you know, just doing the work for a system operator.

00;18;14;16 – 00;18;36;00
Speaker 3
Maybe we should be more, you know, focused on what it is that we can, you know, what’s our brand, what’s important about what we’re doing? Because really, we’re just taking an order and doing a job. It’s transactional. And, we formed, we got our master alarm license and formed Shepherd, as a, as a brand off of the the original LLC.

00;18;36;02 – 00;19;03;25
Speaker 3
And just, you know, very slowly started to work on the shepherd, the why Shepherd. What do we do as shepherd fire alarm, electronic security cameras, etc.? And it wasn’t truly until probably we had about 2000, 17 or 18 that, we recognized that we really needed to be in control of our own destiny and not relying on the system operators to be like, hey, here’s a bunch of work, you know, go hire ten people and go do it.

00;19;03;27 – 00;19;30;13
Speaker 3
Because you’re really at the whim of their own business cycle. And as an entrepreneur, you really want to be in control of your destiny, and you want to be in control of your cash flow, and you want to be in control of, you know, your liability exposures. Right? So, it, it was an eye opening experience to have what we consider built a business, but we really built the business around, another another business.

00;19;30;13 – 00;20;00;13
Speaker 3
And we were a true remora fish, you know, just waiting for somebody to hand me. You know, when at our peak, I think we did about 60,000 installs a year. For some of these operators, we did a lot of work. We had we had probably 80 vans on the road. And it wasn’t until we got smaller and more intentional that we actually really started to move from a lifestyle business to an enterprise business.

00;20;00;16 – 00;20;22;25
Speaker 3
And we went backwards for a few years. Right. You know, we thought we were so cool and made some money and, it was great, but, you know, I just said it. We had 80 plus people on the road. That’s a lot of moving liability. That’s a lot of exposure. Seven days a week, 365 a year. And when we became more intentional and smaller, we took a lot of that liability off the table.

00;20;22;25 – 00;20;45;04
Speaker 3
And that made our lives better. Right? You know, quality of life kind of came back. And as an entrepreneur, in the trades, you know, you got to balance that. Is it me grinding every day and chasing every day, or do I want to you know, do I want to set up something that, again, is lifestyle is great in the beginning.

00;20;45;06 – 00;21;13;03
Speaker 3
But you if I had to do it over again, I would have been building enterprise the whole way. Right? What do I how do I systemize? How do I make sure we’ve got a great training program and we’re cross training, and we’re not just responding to the immediate need. We’re thinking about what’s out in in the in the future and forecasting, and, and so, that would be, a really that would be one of those coaching moments that I would bring to the table.

00;21;13;03 – 00;21;36;14
Speaker 3
Right. How do you how do you think about tomorrow, even though the demands of today are taking up all of your brain space and all of your capacity? Because it took us a while to be able to unwind and get back to our core and what we can, we can truly do, in terms of, like I said, Division 27 and 28, and now, you know, we have a couple thousand customers.

00;21;36;19 – 00;21;58;17
Speaker 3
Most of them are on a recurring subscription. You know, we own our destiny. We have enterprise value and every day we’re increasing that enterprise value. Now we’re building something, and now we are. Now we’ve built something and we’re continuing to build it. That’s that’s a great, experience not only as an entrepreneur, but to be able to now bring folks in.

00;21;58;17 – 00;22;22;11
Speaker 3
Right. You know, we’ve got a couple of of young kids that we hired, out of HPC space program, to, to to plug them again. They’re great. Right. And they’re building their trade skills. And, you know, my, my, my, my grandparents were a tradesman, my, my grandparent grandfathers, they taught me the value of, you know, no, the tool.

00;22;22;14 – 00;22;31;26
Speaker 3
No. The work mind’s eye view. And it’s great to now be a business where we’re kind of bringing some of those values to bear as well.

00;22;31;29 – 00;23;03;24
Speaker 2
Can we? It’s just a little bit of a divergence. But I just feel like there’s really something impactful in what you’re talking about. And, and, what I want to understand is that refinement of who you are and what you do as an organization. I would love to understand what that process looked like for you guys, because it sounds like you you kind of built one business for about ten years, roughly speaking.

00;23;03;26 – 00;23;23;20
Speaker 2
And then you you made some decisions. We were like, hey, we don’t want to continue to do this for a host of reasons, right? Whatever those reasons are, but we want to do something else. I would love to hear what the process you went through was when you decided, like, hey, we’ve been going in this direction for ten years.

00;23;23;24 – 00;23;34;28
Speaker 2
We want to change direction now and do a different kind of work. Similar, but a different kind of work and for a different target market. Yeah.

00;23;34;28 – 00;23;39;19
Speaker 2
I, I would love to hear about, like, what that transition was.

00;23;39;22 – 00;24;02;20
Speaker 1
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00;24;02;22 – 00;24;13;04
Speaker 1
Visit people easy. Com or call (941) 224-8981. To learn more, make sure you ask for Nick.

00;24;13;07 – 00;24;15;27
Speaker 2
I, I would love to hear about, like, what that transition was.

00;24;15;29 – 00;24;38;24
Speaker 3
Sure. Well, they say that, you know, what is it? My mother of, of innovation is, you know, the adversity, right? So we came upon a moment in our own in the business cycle, I think, both for our client, at the time, our clients, they were moving from a by, a build versus by.

00;24;38;24 – 00;25;04;02
Speaker 3
In other words, they most of their delivery method was through service partners like us. And at some point, they decided that, they were going to start delivering those services through their own in-house technician contract. And yet they were still going to need us, but they’re only going to need us, in certain instances, in certain parts of maybe the region, and only for certain types of, of, of work.

00;25;04;02 – 00;25;32;07
Speaker 3
And that took, you know, a revenue stream, you know, fully loaded, let’s say, X amount and it carved it into maybe 15 or 20% of what we were, you know, just yesterday and, and almost that quickly, too, and in that moment of, of vulnerability, you know, we were like, we’ve got all these employees, we’ve got the work vans, we know how to use the tools.

00;25;32;10 – 00;25;52;02
Speaker 3
And we have a master alarm license, you know, what are we doing? We’re doing a few jobs here, a few jobs there. We need to really focus and and and kind of term. Let’s understand who wants to be in this trade. Right? Because it’s one thing to, do telecommunications from, from, like I said, tap to set.

00;25;52;02 – 00;26;15;06
Speaker 3
And that’s another, as I pointed out earlier in the conversation today, to be able to run the wire, melt the equipment program, the equipment, train, the the customer. Right. You know, there’s some extra elements there. And not everyone was, you know, aligned to, to, to to that, in the workforce at the time. So, you know, we really, started to focus.

00;26;15;06 – 00;26;38;10
Speaker 3
We hired a couple of salespeople, you know, we kind of we recapitalized. If you will, and said, okay, we need to invest in this channel. And, and, and then we started all over again with, you know, making mistakes and you don’t really have the right person going after, you know, the, the, the, the opportunities. It required a lot of relationship building.

00;26;38;12 – 00;27;06;29
Speaker 3
And, it was a strenuous, stressful, and quite frankly, we probably were. We probably ran the ship aground, you know, a dozen times. So as we transition from we have all this work coming at us, you know, from a couple of concentrated client sets to we have to go out and do it on our own. But we made it through, and we made it through because.

00;27;06;29 – 00;27;33;14
Speaker 3
Yeah. Perseverance. We’re both, you know, both myself and my business partner are, you know, grit. And we don’t give up. And, you know, when you’re on the goal line, you you punch it up the middle. And that’s what we both kind of came from. And, and, and we hired some great people. Pandemic in our case, quite frankly, opened the door on a couple of folks that we hired.

00;27;33;16 – 00;27;55;28
Speaker 3
And I guess, you know, the other coaching element here is, is, you know, when you’re hiring, it’s so critical to really understand who you’re hiring. We didn’t even know that. We hired a couple of superstars until they emerged within our organization. They were looking for an opportunity. The pandemic created a ripple effect. They needed a job, and we were willing, you know, we were like, okay, well, that’s good.

00;27;55;28 – 00;28;21;28
Speaker 3
Let’s do this. And we hired someone on the sales side that brought an enterprise mindset, and, to the two of us who were very transactional, tactical, chaotic, just do this moment’s right, you know, which a lot of, you know, again, when you’re a startup in the trades or when you’re a startup entrepreneur, you’re just trying to get through the day.

00;28;22;00 – 00;28;43;25
Speaker 3
And, and we carried a lot of that forward, even though we had ten years of business experience, we carried some of that, a lot of that forward. And, the individual that we hired came on and started to transform our business from, hold on, let’s think this through and here’s how we can approach this, and here’s how we should focus and here’s our core capabilities.

00;28;43;25 – 00;29;04;19
Speaker 3
And we knew at all, but we just didn’t. And I was the biggest offender, right. Any job was a good job. Any contract was a good opportunity. Irrespective of what the net outcomes were. And it changed, it changed how we look at things and how we talk about things and how we are mindful now of what we’re doing.

00;29;04;22 – 00;29;23;06
Speaker 3
So that was really I don’t think I got into the detail of the transition that you’re looking for, but that’s kind of the the cliff note version, right? Yeah. The the main client we had said we’re going to do it a little differently. That took us from 10 to 2, you know, in terms of scale. And we went, what do we do?

00;29;23;08 – 00;29;45;25
Speaker 3
And and then an opportunity then, you know, a door opened, for someone to walk in, and help, and we gate and we had being closely held, entrepreneurs, you know, close to closely held business, private enterprise, no capital bootstrapped. The thing from day one, you know, this is all about us. It’s not about you.

00;29;46;00 – 00;30;12;19
Speaker 3
And somewhere somebody looked down on us and tapped us both on the shoulder and went, open your minds. Right. Be a little more, aware of that. You’re going to you’re going to need some help here. And I’m not trying to be too, ethereal, but I believe that, you know, we had we had a moment where, you know, a couple people who joined us really had been impactful to the business, and we were able to embrace it.

00;30;12;22 – 00;30;46;04
Speaker 3
And I think that’s, again, another coaching moment. If you are like, no, we’re doing it like this. You know, we use the recipe and don’t change it. You, you got to be a little more open to that because people, whether they’re tradespeople or administrators or, managers or staff members, whatever the case may be. They, they, they want to be able to give the up or they want to be able to bring contribution to the table, and to give them that pathway and that ramp, typically good things can happen.

00;30;46;07 – 00;31;09;28
Speaker 3
You know, and you set maybe some goals or standards, and then you let them be broken. Right? You know, you cannot you just be flexible. And I think that’s been the key that now our our our act to success flexible, open and trusting. And that was probably the hardest thing to do, right. Get over the trust.

00;31;10;01 – 00;31;31;21
Speaker 3
This is our business. You know, all of our personal investment, all of our, you know, something goes wrong, the liability falls right in my lap. Right. But so an LLC and we’ve got structure and we’ve got all the necessary insurances, but, you know, the work comp, Department of Labor, they’ll pierce right through and, you know, and grab you by the neck.

00;31;31;24 – 00;32;00;09
Speaker 3
And you know, those are those are scary moments when those things, you know, might truly happen. And so that’s, that that’s how we kind of transitioned, right. People being open, and, and, you know, still bringing that hustle and grind to the, to the, to the table, anybody who thinks it’s just kind of, I got a better mousetrap and it’s just going to fall in my lap.

00;32;00;09 – 00;32;22;07
Speaker 3
Not the way it works. You got to go out and get it, prove it, deliver it, and prove it again. And then you get some traction. And we’ve got big customers, that. I think if we didn’t prove we didn’t, we weren’t tenacious. And I didn’t, you know, I, I sometimes think about some projects, I think I had a personal ego in this.

00;32;22;07 – 00;32;40;02
Speaker 3
But early in that transition, there was some big projects going on in the region. And I’m like, I’m going to drive by this location every day on my way home. And if we are part of this project, it’s kind of it’s, I know for a fact it’s going to eat at me, you know, and and I’m not going to be a failure here.

00;32;40;05 – 00;33;08;00
Speaker 3
And I hounded, and I went after it and we landed it, at a time when we probably weren’t capable. No, sorry. We they took a chance on us, and we and we and we delivered and we scaled as a result of it. And, you know, that’s again, that’s one of those entrepreneurial moments, that, if you’re not willing to jump off the cliff and not knowing whether it’s water or trees, you know, you got to be able to do that.

00;33;08;02 – 00;33;23;00
Speaker 2
And what do you say that what I’m hearing is the the job that you were trying to getting was probably beyond anything you had done to that point, even though you knew you could do it. Yeah, right. You had the skill sets, but you hadn’t done anything like that yet. And you’re like, we’re going to figure this out.

00;33;23;02 – 00;33;42;24
Speaker 3
It’s the classic, classic act as a fry. It’s ten acts bigger than what we’ve ever done. But but it’s what we do. So yeah, you know and and I need it and and when and and I knew that if I didn’t get the opportunity like I said, and it was going to be a mushroom, I was one of those locations where first this went up and that went up.

00;33;42;24 – 00;33;58;02
Speaker 3
Then another thing went up and, you know, 15 buildings later, you know, it would just drive me nuts, right? It’s like, you know, it’s like the stock pick that somebody tells you to buy, like, nah, I’m not doing that, you know. Yeah. Passed law. What Apple?

00;33;58;04 – 00;33;59;01
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;33;59;03 – 00;34;05;08
Speaker 3
I’ve been.

00;34;05;10 – 00;34;28;23
Speaker 2
I, you know, I’m curious now you guys, like, go to your website. You have a lot of stuff on there. You guys do a lot of things. And I’m curious as to how when you made that transition from, you know, act one to act two as you, as you called it. I’m, I’m sure you didn’t add all of that stuff right at the beginning of act two, right?

00;34;28;23 – 00;34;51;24
Speaker 2
We didn’t know what I, I, I guess what I want to ask about is how you’ve been moving and evolving through your marketplace and adding services based on different factors. I’d love to hear about what that decision making looks like for you. You started with what whatever the one services, and then you started to grow and other things.

00;34;51;27 – 00;35;06;26
Speaker 2
I guess the question I want to ask is when you’re looking at the market and what’s happening, what tells you, hey, we should look to move into this. We should start doing this as well. Yeah, that’s my question.

00;35;06;28 – 00;35;41;06
Speaker 3
Yeah. No, thank you for the question. So, we recognized we grew up in this business, around whatever it was at the end of The Wire is, you know, is what what what were the meat and potatoes is. Right. But everything has a wire going to it, right? Like, truly. And so whether it’s a network Cat five, Cat six line or, you know, cat six got seven now, or it was a coax line way back in the beginning, or it’s an 18 four conductor link when we, you know, The Wire is what we focused on originally.

00;35;41;07 – 00;36;02;15
Speaker 3
Hey, we can do all the wiring and, you know, you can have somebody else do the rest of the work. And then we we recognized that that was it was impactful to the conversation. But people didn’t want two trades to kind of, you know, okay, they’re going to do The Wire because they’re really good at it. But somebody else is going to trim it out and finish it.

00;36;02;17 – 00;36;22;11
Speaker 3
So we recognized early on that we needed to kind of get some of those skill set training. So, you know, we got Honeywell certified on the fire alarm side and the perimeter alarm, we had some camera manufacturers that we got certified on, access control, same thing. Right. And and so we were able to we made the decision.

00;36;22;15 – 00;36;47;29
Speaker 3
And so those are the kind of the 3 or 4 core elements. And the in the low voltage world, Division 2728 is about copper or fiber data cabling, right network wiring access point, you know, anything to make data transmit. And then it’s about the life safety system, fire alarm. And then, you know, all your other electronic security, access control, surveillance camera, perimeter alarm.

00;36;48;01 – 00;37;10;16
Speaker 3
And so we just looked at those two divisions and kind of said, okay, let’s get certified. Let’s get some of our technicians certified in some of this activity. And then I’ve always been kind of the guy I can sell, but I need to sell knowing we’re experts and when I can I when I’m confident in who we are, I’m I can portray that.

00;37;10;16 – 00;37;30;07
Speaker 3
I think that’s compelling on the on the sales cycle side. So that was kind of how we got down the path of what do we start with? And those are the four things. But we really we, we kind of always started the conversation off with, we can do the data cabling. We’ll, you know, run all your phone lines, we’ll run all your network jacks, we’ll do all your access points.

00;37;30;10 – 00;37;48;04
Speaker 3
And then customers kind of came back at us and said, hey, can you will you, do your cell phone systems, which, by the way, you know, we did that for a minute, right? Some of the things that are, I think, on the website are now like, sure, we can, but let me, you know, we focus on really those core elements.

00;37;48;07 – 00;38;20;11
Speaker 3
And I just said that. Right. Data cabling, whether it’s fiber or copper or fire alarm, access control, control, cameras and and perimeter alarm during the pandemic, we had, a gentleman, join our team, a young guy, but he was wicked smart, and he was always playing with, you know, hey, I had, you know, this manufacturer send me a camera, and I connected it to a box, and I think we can do, you know, elevated temperature sensors and, you know, we can make our own.

00;38;20;11 – 00;38;42;03
Speaker 3
And so we did that, and we kind of created our own kit, and we went and we put them in Hvac, and we put them at, a couple different large institutions. And, you know, we got some traction. And so for a minute we had our advanced technology group and, you know, we had some kind of cool technology stuff that was helpful during either pandemic or coming out of it.

00;38;42;05 – 00;39;05;09
Speaker 3
We actually had this, DNA product for a minute where, you know, if you were a jewelry stores were our target market, and we had this kind of, invisible or not invisible, but this colorless liquid, it’s not, not odorless, rather smelted spray than if you came through the entry way of the of the, high value target, like a jewelry store.

00;39;05;11 – 00;39;26;28
Speaker 3
When the alarm was on, it would spritz you and would actually, you know, irradiate. You’re sure your had your hair or whatever with, a nanoparticle and then under a microscope, the the the the canister, you know, had a serial number one, 298654. And then if I look under the microscope, you’re sure it’s got one, two, nine, eight, six, five, four.

00;39;26;28 – 00;39;42;24
Speaker 3
So there was this whole chain of custody and, you know, like, yep, you’re the perpetrator. Because, you know, we, you know, kind of like the old fire alarms. You, you know, if you pull the fire alarm, it got your fingerprint right. Similar kind of but modern technology. And it was kind of cool. We got this thing out of Europe.

00;39;42;24 – 00;40;03;07
Speaker 3
We got an exclusive deal to to be the integrator. And they were going to catch on fire and take the world over. And we saw the couple systems and, you know, didn’t go very far, but it put us on the map. We had some great press. We, we, we we recognized the value of investing and a little bit of PR at the time, and we caught some traction.

00;40;03;07 – 00;40;28;00
Speaker 3
And then that caught the eyes of other large customers. And those large customers said, hey, you know what? What we need is access control on our, you know, 15 story building and, you know, 200 doors. Just focus on that. And then we really kind of just home that scale. So if you come into our office, you know, I think I learned this, you know, walking into any, ASC, you know, mechanic shop, right?

00;40;28;00 – 00;40;47;12
Speaker 3
You know, all the certifications are on the law. I’m, like, proud of the sheepskin kind of thing. Right. And, and we’ve got some highly trained and highly capable guys now, and we are experts in, you know, it doesn’t matter how that door needs to be controlled. We know how to do it. Whether it’s a mag lock, electric strike, rim lock, whatever the case may be.

00;40;47;15 – 00;41;11;09
Speaker 3
Cameras, we carry now, camera lines that are highly augmented with, artificial intelligence. And they’re smart about what they’re looking at. You know, when they’re isolating, you know, if you want to find video from a week ago, the guy in the plaid shirt like you’re wearing today, I’m only going to bring back video of the guys in the plaid shirt that came to this field of view.

00;41;11;11 – 00;41;32;01
Speaker 3
So instead of taking two hours of I wonder if they’re in this video clip, you know, I’m going to look at all the video I have from this particular camera. I can return images in three minutes. You know that that that, you know. Yep. Right there. There it is. That’s where it happened. So that’s pretty impactful to our clients.

00;41;32;04 – 00;41;57;20
Speaker 3
And that’s kind of what, you know, again, the client has said, how can I do this better? So we’ve gotten good at listening to the clients pain points, if you will. And in the security space, in the electronic security space, the conversation is more relevant than ever, you know, and not to catastrophize the conversation right now, but, you know, we are we everything’s a soft target potentially.

00;41;57;20 – 00;42;19;13
Speaker 3
And I don’t leverage that in anyone’s you know I don’t put that out there. I’m not a, I don’t sell with fear, but it’s real. And people want to know that they’re protected. Employees want to know that they’re coming to a building and what the employer or the owner of the building has taken steps to make sure that when they’re head down, not paying attention, they’re safe.

00;42;19;15 – 00;42;49;00
Speaker 3
And, and that’s really, you know, well beyond the, the, state code of having a fire alarm in a given building, depending on occupancy and classification, people now demand, you know, at the grass at the at the very bottom of the organization to know that, my employer is taking steps to protect me, that, you know, no one can just get in the building, that if I’m out in the parking lot, you know, I there’s a camera that maybe, you know who hit my car.

00;42;49;07 – 00;43;00;08
Speaker 3
So these are, you know, kind of basic things. Now, and we’ve just kind of continued to augment or enhance each one of those systems to be smarter.

00;43;00;10 – 00;43;08;12
Speaker 2
Richer. I know that we’re we’re pressed for time, and we gotta we gotta wrap up. I have like 100 more questions for you, though, so we’re all going to have to do this again, man.

00;43;08;14 – 00;43;09;06
Speaker 3
Yeah, well, it’s.

00;43;09;08 – 00;43;10;08
Speaker 1
Good to have you back.

00;43;10;10 – 00;43;24;18
Speaker 3
I’m happy to do it. I hope I didn’t, overtopped everything, but I’m happy to go on and and, and then, you know, we can we can kind of deconstruct, every phase of what we’ve done or deconstruct certain portions of the business. I’m happy to share.

00;43;24;20 – 00;43;37;28
Speaker 2
Yeah. No, I, I definitely feel that there’s a lot more that we could unpack in that conversation. I’m really grateful for you to come on the show. If, if people want to learn more about Shepherd communications, where do they find you guys?

00;43;38;00 – 00;43;57;06
Speaker 3
Yeah. So they, we’re in the Albany area. Our main office is, in Colony on Railroad Ave. We have a physical brick and mortar. We’re always happy to meet with people, where they stand. So we’re always able to come to your office or your warehouse or your location, but, digitally, it’s, Shepherd cny.com.

00;43;57;06 – 00;44;13;29
Speaker 3
So shepherd cny.com, you can find us on LinkedIn and and Facebook as well. So, we’re, we don’t do a lot of social media. LinkedIn is probably the best connect to our come right to our site like you already have.

00;44;14;01 – 00;44;22;25
Speaker 2
Awesome. So thanks again. Really appreciate it. We’re actually going to circle back around here to get you back on the show. Appreciate the time today.

00;44;22;27 – 00;44;28;20
Speaker 3
Michael. Thank you very much. For, insightful conversation. Derek. Thanks for making sure I showed up tonight.

00;44;28;20 – 00;44;30;07
Speaker 2
So thanks.

00;44;30;09 – 00;44;58;07
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

00;44;58;07 – 00;45;11;05
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00;45;11;08 – 00;45;21;05
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.