Why Growth Means Hiring Before You Feel Ready

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Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh!

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Unknown
Oh!

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

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Speaker 3
And I’m your co-host, Derek Foster of Digital Cleaning Systems.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s my favorite job. Sorry I missed that. Well what’s up D how are we doing that’s happening man.

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Speaker 3
It’s good.

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Speaker 1
Yeah.

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Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, there’s cool weather is cooling off. A little bit busy, but, you know, all good stuff. We’re, you know, we’re we’re trucking along, and, you know, things are going well, so, you know, it’s, it’s cool. We’ve got a lot of, you know, changes going on over here and some some cool stuff that we’re working on that, you know, we can probably talk about down the road, but,

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Speaker 3
Yeah. Good stuff. How about how about with you?

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Speaker 2
You know, plugging through it, man. Just, another day, another, certainly another dollar, but also another, you know, situation to, overcome. So, you know, grateful for all the challenges that my industry gives me every single day.

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Speaker 3
Another opportunity to get better. Right?

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Speaker 2
That’s it man. A lot of opportunities for that. Real quick, before we introduce our guest today, he’s got a great story. Can’t wait to tell it or to have her tell it. But, before we do that, though, I do want to just take a quick minute and say thank you to all of our sponsors, you know, the sponsors that, are kind enough to give us money every year.

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Speaker 2
It’s not just so Derek and I can, eat out of fancy restaurants. It helps pay for the show, of course, but also it helps us to donate money for tools and tuition to, trades programs. HVC Boces. And we’ve got some other ones that we’re working on as well for some more, you know, national type exposure.

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Speaker 2
So real quick shout out to, Nick and the team over at people. These, of course, the folks at Martin Electric, MLB construction, the construction, Michaels group, you know, of course, our friends at Catamount Consulting, Scott and Stacy and the whole crew over there, and all the support and help that they give us. Pam and Doug over at the, Northeast Construction Trades Workforce Coalition, Curtis Lumber, and then, of course, Dale Cleaning system.

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Speaker 2
Derek’s team, you know, gives him the ability to be able to do the show. And of course, our team over Five Towers gives me the ability to do the show. So thank you for everyone that makes the show possible and for the help that you give us the opportunity to give to people in the trades. So thanks everybody.

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Speaker 2
Appreciate the sponsorships. And now talk guest. Oh God. What I was.

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Speaker 3
Going to say along those lines, I’d be remiss if we didn’t give a shout out to, to Pam and Doug and and the Northeast Construction Trades Workforce Coalition, event happening, November 18th over at River casino. So anybody that’s local here, great event. I don’t know if, who the mic is going to be this year yet, but,

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Speaker 2
I know they haven’t asked. They haven’t asked them, keep my head low. Find out I had low. So. All right, well, let’s get to the show, everybody. Very warm. Welcome to Brianna Ford from All in Heating and Air. Brown. And how are you?

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Speaker 1
I am doing fantastic. Happy to be here.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. And, Brianna, I’m sorry. Is it is it. I know your website is go all in. Is the name of the company go all in or is it just all down?

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Speaker 1
So it’s all in heating and air. The emails go all in heating and air, which is a completely long, ridiculous email address, but it’s what we had available. So.

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Speaker 2
Hey, it’s a call to action every time someone types it, right?

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Speaker 1
Yes.

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Speaker 2
So, Brianna, maybe tell us, you know, get kind of give us a little bit, overview about yourself and your business.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. So I’ve been in the industry, coming up on my 11th year, I started out very young. I was about 17 years old, just my first office job as a CSR intern. The phones while I was in college to be a lawyer. And, I have a very addictive personality. So once I started in the industry, I was just CSR.

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Speaker 1
Then I moved to dispatch and I was like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. Like, I love this. It sounds crazy because it’s AC. But I was at a small shop about, I’d say a $3 million business in New Orleans, and I took it by the horns and talked to the owner, and it was like his play money.

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Speaker 1
He he enjoyed it, but he he was invested in the properties and stuff. And we decided, we talked about we decided to join Nexstar. So Nexstar is really a big piece to my career. I’ve learned so much from Nexstar when we implemented all the processes into the business, and it started growing like wildfire. So about two and a half years in, I decided to let go of my full ride scholarship to be a lawyer.

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Speaker 1
And as I was going to pursue AC, my whole family thought I was nuts. But, that’s the thing that I’ve ever done. Yeah. So that’s kind of where my career started. And I was at that company for probably about four and a half, five years. And we grew from 3 million to 28 million. And I know that about three and a half year heavy growth period, which was insane.

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Speaker 2
I bet it sounds insane, but what were those numbers again?

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Speaker 1
Three and I it was 3.5 million whenever we really started focusing on it. And to 28 million when I left it. 21 more is our years is about three and a half years. Holy moly. Huge growth. But he had been in business for so long, like so many people don’t understand what is capable out of a database.

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Speaker 1
So I think when we started really tinkering with things, there’s about 40,000 customers and the database 50,000 customers. The database being a business for 30 years before really deep diving on the on it, that’s really what gave us the upper hand. Nexstar gave us all the processes and procedures. We stopped, just like patching things up and just doing old school AC work and really took it to the next level.

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Speaker 1
And it was an amazing journey, awesome experience. Every trial learned a lot from, so after I left there, I went to Alabama and worked for an even larger company. So there I restructured a $40 million shop. They were losing $1 million a month whenever I joined on board. They had just been, purchased by a partner.

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Speaker 1
It was it was crazy. And so I came in and restructured the business, and we we did really well there. We grew to about $40 million before I departed and started my own business.

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Speaker 1
You froze on the you I did.

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Speaker 2
I know I’m sad. Sorry. I’m like I’m like, oh my God, I think I froze. I think it’s me. Yes. I’m so sorry. And the last thing I heard, Brianna, was, they’re losing $1 million a month, and I was I had my heart stopped. I was like, oh my God. And then my screen froze. I think maybe it was.

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Speaker 2
You look speechless. Yeah, that doesn’t happen. Very.

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Speaker 1
So yes, maybe know it was crazy. And, you know, I had just come from a very heavy growth company, and I had no idea what I was walking into. I relocated to another state, started working, at this company, and it just it looks scary. I was like, oh, my gosh, like, I need to go in here and be like, the best self I can ever be.

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Speaker 1
Like, I cannot believe they hired me. This is almost double the size of what I was just hung from. And then when we got down to the financials and I realized they were just about to start a big restructure, which there’s nothing more that I love than fixing a problem. So, a lot of time, a lot of lessons learned, but I think it was about nine months, eight or 8 or 9 months before we were heading double digit profits.

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Speaker 1
A lot, you know, there’s a lot of turnover, a lot of restructuring processes and procedures put in place. I took a lot of the stuff that I learned from Nexstar and implemented it there. So that gave me the ability to learn. Okay, so now I, I learned how to grow a company. I learned all these processes from Nexstar.

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Speaker 1
Nexstar teaches you profit from the beginning. So then my next stage was, okay, now, what do you do with the company that’s already losing a massive amount of money? So then that gave me the ability to learn how to restructure, have a company profitable while keeping a really good culture because you have to put your employees first.

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Speaker 1
And that that was the biggest issue on your up and your employees first. It becomes a complete disaster.

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Speaker 2
That’s wild, $1 million. So now you’re there for a short amount of time? Nothing. You said six months?

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Speaker 1
No. So I was there for four and a half years.

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Speaker 2
Oh, four and a half years. Oh, yes. Okay. Yes. It’s so funny because you’ve said two things so far that I could probably fill an entire entire hour with question how,

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Speaker 1
I know, I know, and, you know, summarize it, you know.

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Speaker 2
And you’re so young, like, you’ve already had this wild career, and, it’s it’s amazing that, and maybe we won’t unpack them now because I know there’s more to your story you want to tell them, and we want to get into, all in. But, you know, one of the things is like you’re talking about the power of the database, and can you give me, like, just a quick two minutes on what?

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Speaker 2
You mean, like the power of the database?

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Speaker 1
Yeah. So you have to nurture the database that you have, like you don’t want. So we pay all this money for a customer, right? Like your customer acquisition. Let’s say it’s maybe 300, $500 to get that new customer. Why would you pay that and then not repetitively keep your face in front of that customer? You’ve already purchased that customer.

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Speaker 1
So there’s so many things you can do with your database. Whether it’s mailers saying mailers out once a month, once a quarter, whatever your budget allows. I would highly recommend, making sure you’re doing that, a monthly email. I mean, I pay $20 a month to send monthly emails out to every customer in my database, even if you get a couple that come from that, like there’s customers that haven’t serviced you in six months, having used your service in six months or a year or 18 months, do not let it go over a year or 18 months.

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Speaker 1
You should have CSRs or a database like chirp, software like chirp and or, interacting with those customers. Reach out to them. Hey, we miss you. You know, we call we miss you less. They have that in service Titan if you have that. But reach out to them. We haven’t seen you in a while. Your AC systems must be checked out twice a year.

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Speaker 1
Here’s a little low promo. $49, $59. Tune up on your AC system. You know, let’s get back out there and take care of you. Or even if it’s just checking in, you know? Is everything going okay? Here’s our specials. Here’s the nonprofit that we’re we’re supporting for the month, if you’d like to, to join, you know, just making sure that they do not forget who you are ever.

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Speaker 1
So you never have to pay for that customer twice.

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Speaker 2
Okay. Database, get after it.

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Speaker 1
It’s so huge. And starting like that was I think that was the biggest shock to me when we started our own business. Not that I thought I’d open the doors and just magically have this list of thousands of customers, right. But, that was the biggest surprise is like, okay, I know how to work the hell out of a database.

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Speaker 1
Now what do I do? I had none, like, I have no database. Like, what do you do to start a database? You know, because everything I’ve done in the last ten years was great, but I had the database, like, I feel like I had the cheat code. And starting at zero like, that was, that was a huge job.

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Speaker 1
And that was I knew it was coming, but it’s like, okay, now what? Yeah.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, I want to get into that. But before I do that, now, what does restructuring a business that’s losing $1 million a month look like like that sounds like a huge, like huge. Where do you start? Yeah, where do you start?

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Speaker 1
So there’s a couple, like, big key pieces. Obviously, you got to look at the, the financial side of it. So you can’t look at every single little detail or you’ll go crazy. You’ll never figure out your answers. But, number one, payroll costs what your payroll costs. Number two is your material costs. What? Your material costs. And then number three, what are you doing with the jobs that you’re getting?

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Speaker 1
So, like, clearly, if you’re looking at a 30, $40 million business, you’re getting jobs, right? But like, how many are we throwing down the drain? Like, how many are we not converting on? So those were the three core pieces I focus heavily on. On payroll material cost first, just because that’s where majority of your money’s going in every business that you’re in.

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Speaker 1
Right? So deep diving into payroll. Okay, I know we’re spending it was most weeks for 7,080% of the revenue were payroll. Like that was the number one issue. So now this is 265 employees in this company. What does everybody do. Yeah. So going one by one making an organizational chart see in who does what and why and how many.

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Speaker 1
You don’t do anything. And you know what positions are actually necessary. And that’s the hardest part of restructuring because I never in a million years thought that I would be in charge of someone’s livelihood. Like, that’s a big task to take on and restructure. But that’s the three core pieces. Like, what are you doing with your jobs?

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Speaker 1
What’s your payroll costs? What’s your material costs? And deep dive into each one of those. Whatever is the worst bucket, start there.

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Speaker 2
Okay. All right. Well, so now let’s enter into you started your own business. So you you crushed it, for other people. And then you’re going out on your own to tell us that story.

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Speaker 1
So the, like, the last company I was with was the restructure company. So we did, you know, we did a big restructure, had a great team. I mean, like I could not ask for a better team, even through all all the stuff that it took to restructure that business, like great leadership, great employees, obviously a lot of people buy to sell.

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Speaker 1
So that business was purchased to restructure and then sell to private equity. So that business ended up being sold. I stayed on to do the transition, you know, of the, of the transaction to make sure everything went as smooth as possible. I would love to have stay, stay long term, but unfortunately, it just didn’t work out that way.

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Speaker 1
You know, I just didn’t agree with the practices and different things that were done. So I looked at my husband like, what now? Like, I don’t I don’t want to keep doing this. Like, I worked for one company for, for years. And we grew and, you know, now I did this again. And then now they sold. Like, I don’t want to keep doing this every 4 to 5 years.

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Speaker 1
I’m not 50 years old. Like I’m 27. Like I have a long career left. And he was like, let’s start our own business. I’m like, yeah, that’s easier said than done. Like, we have three small kids. There’s no way, in that it was the same week, actually had Stephanie and David Pastel. They owned Anchor Heating and Air, great friends of ours.

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Speaker 1
We’ve known them for a really long time. They called us a long time. Five years, which is like 50 in this industry. They called us, and they came in town, because we’re in the South, you know, they’re they’re south, but we’re in south Louisiana and they’re in South Carolina, and they’re like, hey, what are you all doing?

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Speaker 1
Like, let’s have dinner. And I had already kind of told Stephanie what was going on. Like, we talk regularly and and I was like, I just don’t know what to do on. And so we ate dinner, talked about it, and she said, well, why don’t you just start your own company? And I was like, that’s yeah, let’s just start the own company with, you know, this imaginary massive bank account that I have to go buy trucks and, you know, start a brand and do all these things.

00;15;09;22 – 00;15;30;15
Speaker 1
And, I said not to mention left three small kids, like, like, you know, scary. That is. And I’m making a lot of money doing what I do. It’s a lot of work and it’s hard, but I, I had a real nice salary and bonus program and, she was like, well, if let’s hypothetically speaking, let’s say if I put $100,000 in a bank account for you tomorrow, would you start your own business?

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Speaker 1
And I just love I’m like, yeah. And she’s like, okay, well then do it. Like, let’s do it. You can do it like I’m telling you. And, and and she was like, this is not a handout, Mary. I’ve known you for years. I know what you’re capable of. Like, I know we know what you and Jeremy can do.

00;15;42;14 – 00;16;00;18
Speaker 1
And I wish I would have had somebody when we started our company that would have been able to believe in us like this. And, I mean, my husband drove home in, like, silence and. Like what? Like what just happened? And the next day I called her, like, you know, like, you know, that was a joke, right? She’s like, you know, like, I’m serious.

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Speaker 1
Like, how many times I gotta tell you? She’s like, you know, I know what what y’all are capable of. And that’s that’s really how it started. And then what was a dream was overnight a reality like, wow, we can really start our own business now. Like, you know, because there’s a fear, like, obviously, what if it doesn’t work?

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Speaker 1
Like, that was my big thing, but it’s a whole different conversation when there’s no reason, like God had aligned every piece for us. Like the money. Who who’s going to sit down a dinner with somebody who grew up in the hood in New Orleans. And, you know, my family had never even purchased a house before. And I just sat at a dinner table with friends of ours that just like it was nothing, $100,000.

00;16;38;13 – 00;16;57;16
Speaker 1
Like, that’s crazy. There’s no reason why I can’t say no at this point. Like I have to do. Like, this is what we’re supposed to do. And within 30 days, we came up with the name. We started working on the brand, register with the LLC, and then all in became a real deal. And we open our doors to start our business.

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Speaker 1
So we started August 4th of 2025.

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Speaker 2
Okay, so you’re just a year in.

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Speaker 1
Oh, yes. We’re fresh. Yeah. Right. Yes.

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Speaker 2
Now, so tell us about that first year because, you know, obviously first year is the hardest in business. Of course, you’re you’re kind of operating with, you know, a lot of experience under your belt. So you kind of probably ramped up pretty quickly I’d imagine.

00;17;23;29 – 00;17;41;16
Speaker 1
Yeah. So it was that’s that’s another thing like people be like oh so what have you all done. Our houses like we had a big advantage. You know, I’ve been doing this over ten years, but there’s so much like I honestly did feel like I started in kindergarten, because, like, I again, I know database, you know, like, no one knows who I am.

00;17;41;16 – 00;17;57;26
Speaker 1
Every company I’ve done this with, they’ve been around for over 20 years. Like they have a brand, like, how do you make a brand when there is none? Like, so first of all, our branding was a big piece of it. So I had, thought long and hard about the branding. I wanted pink in the brand. Like, look, this is a this is a man’s world, right?

00;17;58;03 – 00;18;15;05
Speaker 1
Like, I’ve already been through that last ten years. I wanted to stick out. No matter where we’re at, I don’t care what we look like. So our brand is very bright pink, blue, yellow. You can spot us from ten miles away. So that was a big thing, making sure we had a good established brand. And that was that was our starter.

00;18;15;05 – 00;18;36;05
Speaker 1
And from when we open the doors, when we started our business, I just went out and knocked on different businesses and went in, hey, I’m Bree with all in heating and air just acted like we’re somebody, like we’ve been around forever. Like, this is who we are. And it was hard. It was very hard. The hardest thing I ever did, but the best thing that I’ve ever done, I went from having 200 employees needing me all the time.

00;18;36;11 – 00;18;52;06
Speaker 1
And not a bad way, in a way, of that I needed them to need me like this. This is what I love to do to now. It’s just me and my husband. It’s just, just the two of us, you know? So that was that was a really. It was really hard, mentally, for me to to make that big jump from a large company to startup.

00;18;52;08 – 00;19;08;13
Speaker 1
But it was it was awesome. Like, we’re a year in and you won’t find any someone in our parish that doesn’t know who we are. Oh, that’s all in heating their. They know our brand. They know who we are. They know they can trust us, that we’re local, but we’re in the community 24 seven. We’re in the community.

00;19;08;15 – 00;19;19;17
Speaker 2
This is a small aside, but we just interviewed, a fantastic lady from Lemon Seed Marketing. Are you familiar with those? Yes. Did they help you with your branding?

00;19;19;19 – 00;19;36;11
Speaker 1
So we actually, we did meet with them. I love them, they’re awesome. But I had kind of already done a lot of what they are. They offer. Yeah, but just because, like I said, I had that experience like I did a they, like a data market analysis on every business in our market and compared it to, okay, this is what they offered.

00;19;36;11 – 00;19;49;25
Speaker 1
This is their colors. This is what they do. That’s how our generated our brand. So our brand like psychologically the color patterns are perfect because they make you feel a certain way and they’re not in the color patterns of any of the other brands. Like I went a little crazy over it because I was like, I cannot fail.

00;19;49;25 – 00;19;52;20
Speaker 1
Like everything has to be perfect.

00;19;52;22 – 00;20;07;28
Speaker 2
Yeah. What? So what did you do? So you you didn’t have a database. So what did that look like for you to start to create that database for your work so that you could then do what you knew knew how to do. Right, which was like the database.

00;20;08;01 – 00;20;22;29
Speaker 1
Yes. So I believe when it comes to marketing, and like, I’m a marketer just by trade, just by learning it, you know, but I really get into I love it. So I believe that actually you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. Most people start a business and they put all their money into Google. We don’t put a dollar into Google.

00;20;23;06 – 00;20;42;27
Speaker 1
Like, obviously we have a great marketing company that does our website and our SEO, but we didn’t put a dollar into Google, none of that. So we I signed up for Angie Leads that. Everybody loves thumbtack. We have our next door page Facebook page. Like we just were hitting every bucket that we could subway. It could generate leads.

00;20;42;27 – 00;21;01;23
Speaker 1
And the number, the number one thing that we we found was Facebook groups. And being in the community, those two things went hand in hand. So we went to every community event that we could get in like we were Saturday and Sunday. That’s when we started our business. It was like 21 weeks in a row that we were in a community event.

00;21;01;26 – 00;21;19;16
Speaker 1
We were whether it was, I mean, we did a fashion show. I mean, we set up a tent and had a fashion show, and I gave out little branded mirrors, like a little fall festival. We did about eight trunk retreats in October. So remember, we started a business in August. So, yeah, October was filled with nothing but trunk or trees.

00;21;19;16 – 00;21;39;20
Speaker 1
We took our branded truck out. We built, like, a little spooky AC condenser that had arms. And the kids ate it up. So the not everybody’s taking pictures of our spooky AC with all in in the background. And then all of a sudden through we started in August. So through the fall we were able to be in the community 24 seven now people know who you are.

00;21;39;22 – 00;21;57;00
Speaker 1
So that was that was the biggest thing. And the Facebook groups, now they know who you are. Now they’re tagging everybody. I knew I’d send the post if they asked. Gracey, hey, can you tag us on here? And I think it was like the first three months or four months, we did $100,000 off Facebook groups.

00;21;57;03 – 00;21;58;17
Speaker 2
Wow.

00;21;58;19 – 00;22;09;20
Speaker 1
Now, we were heavy in the Facebook groups. But that was that’s a big part. And that’s free. And, like, you don’t pay anything for that. Like, that’s free marketing. Imagine what I would have paid to Google to get those leads.

00;22;09;22 – 00;22;22;10
Speaker 2
Yeah, I feel like Stephanie had said a similar thing to that when when they first launched anchor, that she spent all the time that she possibly muster in those groups and on Facebook and. Yeah.

00;22;22;13 – 00;22;40;10
Speaker 1
That’s that’s a it’s a huge beast. Next. What we’ve done really well on Nextdoor app too. So I think in the last 60 or 90 days, we’ve just started to really focus on next door. And last time I checked it was like 70 or 80,000 we’ve done on Nextdoor. Wow. And that’s just anyone asking for recommendation. Just comment on there, sending them a message, reaching out to them.

00;22;40;10 – 00;22;55;15
Speaker 1
You know, it’s essentially I pulled out my guerrilla marketing book of all the things that we do when it was slow. And, you know, you don’t really have had the funds and used all of those. And that’s what we had to do until we actually had a database and we still do that 24 over seven. I mean, we’re only a year in, right?

00;22;55;17 – 00;23;09;26
Speaker 1
But people think we have 20 trucks. They think that we’ve been around for ten years and we just made a year. It’s it’s absolutely insane how quick, how quick it happened. It feels like a slow roll, but it was we came up pretty quickly.

00;23;09;29 – 00;23;20;02
Speaker 2
Pretty quick. Yeah. I know in your husband, is he on the install side on the business management side with you or where is he operating? Inside the company.

00;23;20;04 – 00;23;41;08
Speaker 1
So he is out. He’s been out in the field from, from the day that we started. Obviously long term, eventually, I would hope, you know, it would move him and he he helps with the guys a lot too. He does install service the first, I’d say eight months of business. He was the only person we had like after hours, weekends on call, like, you know, he was he he ran everything he still does.

00;23;41;08 – 00;23;44;02
Speaker 1
Like this morning he did an install and now he’s got five service calls. Run.

00;23;44;05 – 00;23;46;28
Speaker 2
So I get him out there.

00;23;47;00 – 00;24;04;02
Speaker 1
No, I mean he and he’s a workhorse. Like. God, if I wouldn’t have had him, I don’t know what I would have done because I can help with anything. AC in and out and like, I mean, I know enough to be dangerous, but like, I’ve never I never actually fix an AC before, you know, out in the field and you can’t do you can’t do all the field work in the office side of things.

00;24;04;02 – 00;24;10;07
Speaker 1
It just it’s impossible to grow at the pace that we would. We wanted to grow. Yeah, I do that.

00;24;10;09 – 00;24;20;12
Speaker 3
To be honest, you you wait the law school and then left that for your career. Did Jeremy go to trade school or how did he learn the trade?

00;24;20;15 – 00;24;36;08
Speaker 1
So his it that makes our story a little bit more interesting. So Jeremy had nothing to do with AC because his dad’s an electrical engineer, right. So he had that part of it. Like, his dad is an electrician and all, but he worked in the, he he was a crane operator when we met, like in the plants.

00;24;36;08 – 00;24;54;02
Speaker 1
Like he didn’t do this type of trade work, at all, like he had from, you know, his childhood and from his dad, the stuff that he would help his dad with and stuff. So he’s mechanically inclined. But as far as the industry HVAC goes, now, and I’m telling you, he can go up against any ten, 15 year vet that you will meet today.

00;24;54;04 – 00;24;56;21
Speaker 1
And we’ve been in business a little over a year.

00;24;56;23 – 00;25;01;21
Speaker 2
That’s amazing. You guys have had a busy year. A lot of stuff going on there.

00;25;01;24 – 00;25;11;17
Speaker 1
Yes, yes. We, we didn’t think it’s funny. Our first week of business, we’re like, you know, we’re new, we’re prepping, you know, trying to get everything. We didn’t think we get any calls. And the first day we got, we got three service calls.

00;25;11;19 – 00;25;12;17
Speaker 2
Oh, wow.

00;25;12;19 – 00;25;27;21
Speaker 1
And then we had looked at each other like okay now what. Like it, like we just got these calls. Like what? And he goes out. And of course his first service call is a low voltage issue. Like, great. It couldn’t be a capacitor or floats which, you know, like low like the worst low voltage problem that you could possibly run into.

00;25;27;25 – 00;25;44;26
Speaker 1
So like we were up to like one in the morning, like looking at the wiring diagram of this system. And so is it like it builds so much character? It’s crazy to think that that was only a little over a year ago now, but, yeah. So we picked up pretty quick from the jumps, and we had our first real employee start about a month in.

00;25;44;28 – 00;25;49;15
Speaker 2
About a month. And that was going to be my question. Yeah. How long until you hired your first hire?

00;25;49;18 – 00;26;05;15
Speaker 1
Yeah, probably. But I think it was about one month in. Right. About a month. We started a new employee, maybe 3 or 4 weeks, maybe not quite a month, but. And he was a 30 year, but. So which is exactly what we needed at the time. Okay, so now he knows install service, you know, like to a tee.

00;26;05;21 – 00;26;19;03
Speaker 1
And we brought him on board. Jeremy have learned so much since then because my knew before we started Jeremy when got a CPA like he did do, he did do some online schooling and stuff like that. He had done a lot of practicing. Like we didn’t just start day one of like, okay, now what do we do?

00;26;19;04 – 00;26;19;23
Speaker 2
We’ll figure it.

00;26;19;23 – 00;26;40;29
Speaker 1
Out, right? Yeah. Right. So so he did a lot of learning, but it’s different when you’ve been doing it hands on for for so long. So we started our first employee for about a month in. And our first month I think we did, 3 or 4 installs. I know we did. We did 63,000 our first month of business, and we started fourth, so we didn’t really have the full month.

00;26;41;00 – 00;26;54;13
Speaker 1
But yeah, yeah. So we did 63,000 our first month of business. And it was like, Holy crap. Like that’s a lot when you just start and it’s just like dear, you know, like, what do you do? Like it was the that’s amazing.

00;26;54;15 – 00;27;14;27
Speaker 2
I’m curious, you know, everybody that starts a small business. You know, one of the first things they struggle with is when and why to hire a first employee. What what what advice would you give there? Like was there any certain kind of thing where you’re like, we’re so busy, we need to hire someone? Or like, what was the catalyst or the reasons of why you were making your first hire?

00;27;15;00 – 00;27;28;25
Speaker 1
We would have made our first hire the day we open the doors, if we could have. Yeah. So. And it has zero to do with the fact that, that Jeremy hadn’t been doing this for 20 years. Everything to do with the fact that I know that with growth, you have to add people like your people are your business.

00;27;29;01 – 00;27;51;15
Speaker 1
If we want to do $100,000 in September, me and Jeremy can’t do $100,000 in September. Just me and him. There’s no way it’s possible. So, like, what do you want to do? I know what I want to do. So therefore, we’re going to start properly for that because it takes time to get that employee trained on your systems and your processes down pat to where once that business does come and get there, then what?

00;27;51;17 – 00;28;05;26
Speaker 1
Because I’m going to tell you, we hired this guy and he was making a lot of money. Like he was a very Excel technician. Like we were like, Holy crap. Okay, we have to hire him. We know that in order to do what we’re looking for, but, like, how are we going to pay him? Like, you know, like what?

00;28;05;28 – 00;28;18;25
Speaker 1
Let’s be honest, we didn’t have a whole lot of money, you know, like, how are we going to pay this guy? Like, you know, he’s making a lot of money, like, way more than we’re paying ourselves. But we needed him to take us to the next level. And, you know, we just work that much harder to make sure we had the jobs.

00;28;18;25 – 00;28;33;19
Speaker 1
We had the money in order to make sure that he was paid. So if you want to grow, you can’t you can’t even let yourself get to the max of, oh, my God, I can’t take another job on now. I need to hire you. Waited too long like you. You’re losing money now.

00;28;33;22 – 00;28;39;16
Speaker 2
Interesting. So.

00;28;39;18 – 00;28;45;18
Speaker 2
I have a few questions on that.

00;28;45;21 – 00;29;10;04
Speaker 2
How did you commit? But. And this is probably more of, like, a mindset thing. Mike is like, how do you commit to paying him the salary that he’s got to get paid? And then knowing that, like you, you have to count on something that you can’t necessarily control, which is how many jobs come in the door, right? How many times, if I like you, that’s not an you can control the activity of where you’re getting on Facebook.

00;29;10;04 – 00;29;19;13
Speaker 2
You’re doing these things, but the results of that is really out of your hands. Like how do you how do you shoulder that pressure and stress? And, you know, all the anxiety that comes along with that?

00;29;19;16 – 00;29;34;00
Speaker 1
It was tough because I’m a control freak, right? So when you have a database of 40,000 people, I can guarantee you I’m going to get four calls per technician on the board because I know I can generate it from this database when you don’t have a database and stuff. So I had to kind of create my own, like KPIs, so to say.

00;29;34;07 – 00;29;54;22
Speaker 1
So when we brought him one, for me to keep my mind straight and know that, okay, this we’re doing, I added a couple things to my list like, okay, I’m going to go in two businesses, two big businesses a week and bring donuts and make conversation. But I’m going to go to one business a day, every single day, minimum that I’m going to go and and just talk.

00;29;54;23 – 00;30;11;05
Speaker 1
Maybe I can’t afford to buy donuts five days a week, right? But at least once a day, I’m going to just go talk to at least one business in the area. I’m going to go knock on 20 doors a day with with door hangers and hand up fliers. I’m going to make a post in every single group once a week, so that way I’m not like this crazy person.

00;30;11;05 – 00;30;36;24
Speaker 1
Posts in 24 seven, you know? And then I would pull like list customer list to call them, I think it was Sales Genie. I was paying like $99 and they would give me like 500 or 600 whole call. So then I made like a number for myself. Okay, I’m going to call 50 of these cold lead today and just give them a call and reach out just to see, you know, just we’re all in heating and air, you know, it’s it’s coming up on heater season.

00;30;36;25 – 00;30;55;02
Speaker 1
So, to get your heater checked out, we got special running. So I created my own, like, metrics of what am I going to do to make sure I generate enough business. And then oh, community piece with that was we had to make sure we did at least one community event every single week, which we ended up doing two, most weeks getting out there.

00;30;55;09 – 00;31;14;15
Speaker 1
And every community event I did where I required myself. I have to walk away with four leads. There’s no reason why I set an event for five hours, and I cannot get four people convince, to to let us get on my own schedule. Like, there’s no reason. Like I don’t care what I gotta do for people. We’re doing events where we’re seeing 1000 people.

00;31;14;22 – 00;31;35;29
Speaker 1
There’s no reason why I can’t get four on schedule. And me and my husband got really good at that. So. And it became kind of like a game, like the first couple events, we got one, you know, and then two and then, the fourth event, it was like we’re getting 4 to 6, sometimes ten and 12 leads from a fashion show or like sitting at the fall fest, you know, or Christmas market just by talking to people.

00;31;36;01 – 00;31;51;23
Speaker 1
And me and my husband are very people. People, right. Or we have a very outgoing personality. We’re extroverts. That helps a lot. It really does. You have to I mean, we’re in the business of sales. You got to be able to talk to people and make relationships. So that really that really helped us. But that’s how we created like the metrics behind, okay.

00;31;51;23 – 00;32;00;21
Speaker 1
If we generate these leads from doing all these things, we’re gonna have enough business to pay him. We have to. We don’t have a choice.

00;32;00;23 – 00;32;28;10
Speaker 3
Look, so, Brianna, when you were in your your previous company sounded like you were more on the operations side, fixing problems, because you already had a book of business. But now walking into having zero book of business, was that a big adjustment for you having to put on your sales cap and generate customers, make cold calls, or was that something that came naturally to you?

00;32;28;12 – 00;32;47;09
Speaker 1
So I have always been the very active like leader, like I’ve never been like I’ve if, for instance, whenever I was running a $40 million shop, if the CSRs had trouble getting customers on schedule that they were calling and it’s like, oh, nobody wants to schedule like I’ve been, I’ve always been a leader. I’ll have to CSRs come out of office, watch me make a couple calls and see how I do it.

00;32;47;12 – 00;33;04;04
Speaker 1
Like, let’s let’s get through the hump, you know, like, because, like, I’m never going to ask anybody to do anything that I’m not willing to do myself. I’ve always been a big believer in that. So the transition was not wasn’t that hard for me. Because I had already I’ve been so active in doing that, and I am such a people person.

00;33;04;06 – 00;33;23;11
Speaker 1
Now going into a bunch of businesses in person and people telling me no or like, kicking me out like that was very uncomfortable. Like, but I mean, if I don’t go in and try, what about all the ones said, yes, I would. I never got those yeses. I had to keep reminding myself of that, to keep myself from like a whole look like, oh my gosh, this is terrible.

00;33;23;13 – 00;33;26;15
Speaker 2
Well, especially with that cold calling, right? Because everybody loves cold calls.

00;33;26;16 – 00;33;32;02
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. They just eat it up, you know. Absolutely.

00;33;32;04 – 00;33;33;09
Speaker 3
The best educational.

00;33;33;16 – 00;33;34;00
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;33;34;06 – 00;33;34;23
Speaker 1
Yes. Yeah.

00;33;34;29 – 00;33;35;26
Speaker 3
Really is.

00;33;35;28 – 00;33;57;23
Speaker 2
I’m curious about so obviously you had all this background with process work. What did that look like for you on day one. Like did you when the minute that you guys decided to open the company, did you start documenting processes that you were going to follow, or did you kind of like start day one and then be like, all right, we’re going to start building processes as we go.

00;33;57;26 – 00;34;17;12
Speaker 1
So I didn’t start with 100 processes already pre-built. That’s something that I kind of in a way, which I would have had enough time to prep that, but we built them as we went. But I will say that our processes that were built from day one were built as if I had 100 employees. So like, my community events, I built a two page document of how do we do a community events from what supplies we take, what do we do?

00;34;17;13 – 00;34;30;21
Speaker 1
We get business cards from all the other vendors that are out there. So that way that adds to our database. Like I built it out as if I had a large team. So that way once we did have a large team that’s already this is what we do. This is how we do it. It’s set in stone.

00;34;30;24 – 00;34;35;20
Speaker 2
Amazing. So you built the system for where you wanted to be not where you were.

00;34;35;22 – 00;34;36;24
Speaker 1
Yes.

00;34;36;26 – 00;34;55;01
Speaker 2
Okay. And what about as far as like the cold calling and like you said, you built the document for the community events and you know, like even going into businesses where you’re going into businesses a couple of times a day or a couple of times a week at that. Did you have that like, all scripted out, like, here’s what I’m going to do.

00;34;55;02 – 00;34;57;01
Speaker 2
Here’s arm and say, yeah.

00;34;57;03 – 00;35;12;28
Speaker 1
Yeah. So those things I scripted before I did it just to like kind of roll through it. And my husband, I did a lot of roleplaying and, you know, that’s a training tactic that I love to use as role play. So we, we did that ourselves. And then I’d go do a couple and then be like, okay, like, this wasn’t real good.

00;35;12;28 – 00;35;28;29
Speaker 1
Let me go ahead and edit that up and change it a little bit, because that’s something I hadn’t done before. I’d never like had, we always had a database and never had to, like, cold call a person who’s never heard of me before or go into like, a business who does does not know me at all and like, kind of give them a pitch, so to say.

00;35;29;01 – 00;35;31;20
Speaker 1
So there’s a lot of editing on the go when it came to those things.

00;35;31;20 – 00;35;55;08
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. So you weren’t just, you know, a robot following a script, but it was, it was more of the guidelines and then. Yeah. Yes. What situation? What about, you know, as you’re looking back, you know, you’re just over a year in and you’re looking back over the, the last year, like, what is something that you would have done differently knowing what you know now in that first year.

00;35;55;10 – 00;35;59;16
Speaker 1
Something that I would have done differently.

00;35;59;19 – 00;36;14;12
Speaker 1
Oh, that’s actually a good question because I don’t I don’t really know. How do we prep the processes in advance? I think was a big one. Like been a little bit more prepared, had more time to like, write things out of what, because you’re going to tweak it as you go. But starting fresh to redo everything, would have been really tough.

00;36;14;12 – 00;36;29;07
Speaker 1
But that’s actually that’s a good question. That was just so it was it was, well, I wish I would have no more people in my community to start. Only person. I have my hairstylist. I work so much, so I and I worked in a different state, so I was commuting every day for the last four and a half years.

00;36;29;07 – 00;36;47;01
Speaker 1
So we didn’t have, like, a community presence. I wasn’t on the team I like, you know, I knew my kids teacher. Our kids went to school there. But, really been well versed in my community. I think that would have been a big thing if I would have we it would have helped us even further because we kind of came in, are strangers to the community and strangers, as a new business.

00;36;47;01 – 00;36;52;21
Speaker 1
So that was a little bit more difficult for us to not we really didn’t know anybody when we started. Yeah.

00;36;52;23 – 00;37;12;06
Speaker 2
And it’s really a cool story. I, you know, not going to lie around. It’s like, you know, you really sound like you just figured out what you had to do and had the discipline to do it and the perseverance to muddle through. And it sucked, you know, like cold calling and going to networking when you don’t know anybody.

00;37;12;06 – 00;37;29;26
Speaker 2
Like, like, how did you handle that? You know, Derek and I talk about sales stuff all the time because we both love sales and we do all the sales stuff, but that’s most people are not that way. Right? Like they go to an event, you know, you’re being forced to be charming and social and, and talk to strangers and, you know, like, how are you?

00;37;29;29 – 00;37;35;05
Speaker 2
Are you naturally charming and social, or is it, you are. Yeah. That’s. So it was.

00;37;35;05 – 00;37;56;25
Speaker 1
Yeah. That was. Yeah, that was a lot more natural for me. What I wasn’t used to is not being known. That was a different. So I was, you see, you know, have running companies that were branded being in areas that I knew the people really well. So I at least knew some people. So what was new was walking into a room with 200 people I didn’t know one, walking, you know, and having to, like, kind of explain who I am a little bit more than what I was used to before.

00;37;56;28 – 00;38;12;23
Speaker 1
But like everybody, I feel like that’s a it’s a character build, like it was. It was a big improvement that I needed to make. And the new thing for me to learn, I take a lot of my social skills from childhood. I had a really rough upbringing, so we moved around a lot. I lived in, like, 28 different states.

00;38;13;01 – 00;38;42;23
Speaker 1
We moved every couple of months, so I was always in new neighborhoods and new areas. I changed, I probably went to ten elementary schools. So the change and people and environment and being the new person really wasn’t that different for me. So that’s really what helped build that character as an adult. I’ve been known the places that I’ve been until we started our own business, but as a child, I was so used to that change and having to reintroduce myself to people and make friends that it created it created a really good character trait.

00;38;42;23 – 00;38;54;04
Speaker 1
Me in my opinion. I’m very outgoing. I can walk into a room with 200 people when I leave. I promise you I’ll know at least 50 and the other if you. You’ll probably know about me because I’ve talked so much to the person I’ve been.

00;38;54;06 – 00;39;06;28
Speaker 2
What? What would be a piece of advice that you would give the people that don’t have that skill set, naturally, and they’ve got to go out and do these things. They’ve got to go in that rooms full of people they don’t know and and make them make their presence known.

00;39;07;00 – 00;39;22;00
Speaker 1
Growth is uncomfortable. If you want to stay the same, don’t be uncomfortable. If you if you really want to grow and you want to take the next step, you have to do the things that make you uncomfortable every single day. You should be doing a doing at least one thing that you don’t want to do, and that’s going to help.

00;39;22;00 – 00;39;40;23
Speaker 1
That’s going to help build you. It’s going to help grow your business and grow who you are. Because we’re in a people business, you will never, ever be the top of what you’re looking for if you don’t become a people person, even if it’s fake, like when you go home to shut it off, right? You don’t have to be your own people, you know, coach or something, but you have to have the relationship with your staff.

00;39;40;29 – 00;39;56;21
Speaker 1
You have to have a good, culture with your with your people, and you have to be a people person. You know, you’re going to have to meet new people, get out there, let people meet you. People want to do business with people that they like and people that they know. They don’t want to do business with strangers.

00;39;56;23 – 00;40;15;29
Speaker 2
I know we’re getting short on time. But we got to ask, you know, the big magic question here of, you know, there was one piece of advice and maybe you just gave it, but, if you were to give one piece of advice to somebody listening about starting their business, growing their business, especially in the trades, what would it be?

00;40;16;02 – 00;40;36;21
Speaker 1
Take the leap of faith. Take the chance. I would have started years ago had I got over the fear that wasn’t, I let fear hold me back for so long. And you have to believe in yourself or nobody else will like it. The confidence is fake. That’s okay. Fake it until. Until the confidence is there.

00;40;36;21 – 00;40;45;08
Speaker 1
Until it’s real. But the biggest piece, I would say is take the leap of faith. If you’ve really been wanting to do something, and the only thing stopping you is fear, you have to just do it.

00;40;45;11 – 00;40;46;05
Speaker 2
You just do it.

00;40;46;08 – 00;41;04;19
Speaker 1
You have to do it. And it’s hard, you know, it’s harder. It’s better. Easier said than done, but you have to do it. I, I am so blessed and so grateful to Stephanie. And I had that conversation because I would still be working for someone else and not really fully living out my dreams. And we’re I’m we’re living out our dreams like, we have an amazing brand.

00;41;04;26 – 00;41;25;12
Speaker 1
We’re growing like crazy. Our community is amazing, and I support us so much, we’re able to employ people in our community that would have never had the opportunity that they’re having now to create jobs and change people’s lives. If I wouldn’t have taken fear out of that and just taken the chance, then I’d just be doing the same thing that I was doing before.

00;41;25;14 – 00;41;30;13
Speaker 2
If people are to learn more about you on more about All In, how do they find you guys?

00;41;30;15 – 00;41;51;06
Speaker 1
So our Facebook page is all in heating and air. You can’t miss us. We have a pelican or pink, blue and yellow. Very bright colors. My personal page is Brianna McCrary Ford. So that’s MCA driving. If you have any questions about business or anything, I love to network. Networking is literally what helped me start my business to this day.

00;41;51;08 – 00;42;15;18
Speaker 1
My cell number is (504) 944-4488. Hi. Let’s just text. I promise I’ll get back to you. May not be immediate because I do still wear multiple hats. And my husband’s pages. Jeremy Ford. Jeremy. So we we love to work with other businesses and network. You know, it’s it’s really what helped us become who we are today. Yeah.

00;42;15;20 – 00;42;18;29
Speaker 2
Amazing. Briana, thanks so much for coming on the show. Yeah. Thank you.

00;42;19;02 – 00;42;20;25
Speaker 1
Thank you for having me. I really do appreciate it.

00;42;21;00 – 00;42;41;22
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. And of course, you know, thanks everybody for listening. Of course you can find this episode, all of our episodes at Blue Collar Startup, Dot, IO, Rumble, Apple, Spotify and YouTube. You can see our episodes or listen to them there as well. Appreciate everybody for listening. And, you’ll hear from us next week. Thanks, everybody.

00;42;41;24 – 00;43;09;24
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;43;09;24 – 00;43;22;20
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;43;22;23 – 00;43;31;26
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh!

00;43;31;28 – 00;43;33;04
Unknown
Oh!