David Heimer: Well, at some point you decided to start your own business. And how did that happen?

Aaron Ruddick: The funny thing is, I worked for him for three months. It was like a little small father and son company. And he hired two kids, me another 18 year old, and we were not very good and he fired me after three months. And so, then I went to another place and was there for six months and that guy went bankrupt. And then I found a home with a small family-owned company named Delmon Heating and Air Conditioning, and really liked it. The old man there had a great way of teaching and helping us learn stuff. And he threw us into, about everything you could imagine. And he taught us how to treat people. Unfortunately, his health, and you know, mark it, he ended up selling to a national consolidator and they taught us how to make money. But they weren’t as ethical as the old man was. So in 2001, we said, there’s gotta be room for people that know how to treat people well and to make money. So Reliable Comfort was born in the living room of my brother’s house, in August of 2001.

David Heimer: You started this off with both your brothers, right? I mean, at some point in time, if I remember correctly, you and two brothers were co-owners with each of you having a third share, is that right?

Aaron Ruddick: That’s correct, we started with, we say three brothers in a van. It was kind of how we started. And then the three of us owned it up until about 18 months ago. The youngest brother decided he wanted to leave. And so then me and Andy bought out Adam in 2018.

David Heimer: I remember when I first met you and you told me that you had two brothers in the business. And, when partnerships are difficult, sometimes family relationships in business are difficult. And each of you owned a third of the business, which to me, made me think that, that sounded like kind of a scary proposition. And then you told me about the mechanism that you used for making decisions, how you would vote on things. Can you explain that?

Aaron Ruddick: Yeah, I definitely can. We always looked at it as we want to do what was in the best interest of the company. And so, when we had a big decision that had to be made, you know, we took a vote, it was a majority rule. And so, let’s say we were going to buy a vehicle, or a building, or do something that was of a significant amount of money. Then we would discuss the pros and cons of it, and then we would vote. And if it came up, two yeses and one no, we would always give the person that was against it, 15 to 20 minutes to plead a case on why they said no, why this is a bad idea, and why we shouldn’t do it. And then we would vote again, and the rule that we had was, the second vote always wins. So if they swayed, one person says, that’s not a great idea, we’re not going to do that, then it would, we would just say no. And what we found is, over the years, that helped us to make some good decisions and kept us away from some decisions that we thought may have been a problem. But it didn’t let us slow down and grow slower.

David Heimer: The other part of that I think I remember was, once this final vote was cast, it was a done deal. And whoever lost that vote, was not allowed to continue complaining about or point out, I told you so or all that. They had to be all in and go along with the vote. Was that right?

Aaron Ruddick: Yeah, that’s correct. We always went at it as, this is the way we’re moving forward. And then a lot of times, the thing that we were split voted against, we would table it and it would come up later. And then if we were in a financial position to do it, we would, or we would more fit to where it would fit into the business at some later time. But yeah, it was never a hard feeling. I mean, although we are physical blood brothers, despite all the emotion and passion that comes with that, we’ve always got along really well. There’s never been any fist fights or any major catastrophes that have come from us, making decisions together.

David Heimer: Tell me about Reliable Comfort now.

Aaron Ruddick: Well, what we’ve done is, over the years we grew from those three, we had an electric division at one time. There’s as many as 28 members, but right now we’re about 20. We don’t do electricity anymore. We’re straight HVAC and we’ve had pretty continuous steady growth. Last year, we clipped our first time at $3 million. We did $3 million in revenue, and just have gone through a kind of a steady progression, focusing on adding maintenance agreements. We have 1600 maintenance agreements now, we have about 5,000 steady customers, and an organization that tends to run fairly smoothly. Now, by that, you know, we all know, in the HVAC industry, running fairly smoothly is a little bit of controlled chaos.

David Heimer: I know you, and you’re a kind human being. But from time to time in this business, we have to make hard decisions and have unpleasant conversations with people, in your case, you had to fire your mother. And I’d always find that a hilarious statement, but tell us about that.

Aaron Ruddick: I will do that, And mom, in case you happen to be listening to this at some point, I’m sorry. But at one point in our growth, we added a second location and we hired our mom to be the office manager in that location, and it didn’t work out. This is in 2005, I believe, so that operation didn’t work out. And so, she was given the option to either go find a different job or come back to work in our main office. And she chose to do that, and then when she got back here, she was here about a year, and it got uncomfortable. There was tension in the office, and we couldn’t get along. And there were things that she would do that we looked at as, okay, we wouldn’t let a typical office person do that. So one springtime, she took about six weeks off to do some house remodeling. And the longer she was gone, her birthday fell on that timeframe. And so we didn’t even call her and tell her happy birthday, we didn’t go see her. And so the longer she was gone, the more we realized that this had become more toxic than we liked. And we decided that we had to make this change. So then we did the three-vote rule, and it was one-to-one to one, everybody voted somebody else to go do it. So we kind of {cross talk 08:28}

David Heimer: Oh you voted on who had to go fire mom.

Aaron Ruddick: Yeah. I mean, I voted Andy, Andy voted Adam, Adam voted me. And so, we really didn’t come to a conclusion on who was going to do it. So we just finally came to, okay, Adam, you’re the youngest, you have to do this. So we sent him to do it. Well, he didn’t do it. And then one day I was just like, look, we gotta get this done. So I called them, we went and sat down, and I tried to do it really well. And, you know, tell her she got a promotion and going back to being just mom. This really wasn’t working for either one of us.

David Heimer: {Inaudible 09:04}.

Aaron Ruddick: Yeah. We tried that, and it was just, it was bad. It really was, in family business –

David Heimer: So all the management techniques didn’t really prepare you for this. Is that what you’re saying?

Aaron Ruddick: They did not. Nobody has a class on how to fire mom. I mean, you guys might want to do that sometime. But yeah, all the management stuff you go through, doesn’t teach you how to keep business, business, and how to fire mom. It worked out well. I mean, I had very little kids then, and we’d be at a family function and they would say, grandma why daddy fired you? And I’m like kids, stop. But it worked out well, I had a good friend of mine that owned an audiology business. She needed help, I said, hey, my mom would be great for you. They worked together for 12 years before my mom retired. And I mean, the family is good. We got past that little hiccup, but it was rough, I mean, She took it hard. It’s never fun to get fired, especially when you get fired from your son.

David Heimer: There’s another lesson in that, and I’ve seen it happen, and I’m sure you’ve seen it as well. She went to another company and she was wildly successful there. And you know, that happens so often, a person can be terrible at one company and tremendously successful at another company. And when you’re asking someone to leave your company, really what you’re doing, is freeing them to go be successful somewhere else. And most of the time it ends up working out well for them. So good for you. That’s a particularly hard one and I’m sorry to make light of it. I’m sure that was difficult at the time, but it is also a really great story.

Aaron Ruddick: We do laugh about it, every now and then we bring it up, or she’ll make a comment about me firing her and we’re able to laugh about it now. And that’s a thing, and we’ve always pride ourselves in, business is business and family is family. Don’t ruin family relationships because of what you have to do in business. When we walked through that door, we put the uniform on every morning, we’re here to serve people and serve an organization. And we can’t do it from a selfish standpoint.

David Heimer: Well said, it’s a good rule and a good lesson. You’ve had some spectacular growth since joining Service Nation Alliance, and you had good growth before that. What have you done to get this recent growth? What particular actions have you taken?

Aaron Ruddick: If you look at our history, we hit $2 million pretty quick, like 2011. And then we hovered from 2 million to 2.5, to 2.2, to 2.1, I mean, we just hovered in that range pretty consistently. And we’ve always had an interest in business coaching. We’ve had a business coach since 2011, we’ve been mildly profitable since 2011. And as we grew, and when we bought Adam out, I had a different goal than he did. I’m a little bit more aggressive than he was. And I think I met you for the first time, about six years ago, in Indianapolis at a Success Day. And we had a decision on coaching then, and I wanted to go Service Nation Alliance side, he wanted to go to different coaching. And we had pretty much committed to the other one, and so we went that way.

And then when he left, I told Andy, I said, “Hey, I want to introduce you to the Service Nation Alliance.” So I brought him to Success Day. He saw the benefit and that’s how we joined in April of last year. And so since then, our growth has been about 22 to 24% month over month. And there’s a couple of things that happened when we took this change. I got introduced to a bunch of guys that think a little bit differently than I did, approach business a little bit differently than I did, and are very hyper-focused on numbers. And we were always, we’ll do what we do and the numbers will be what they are.

Whereas when I got put into my AB group, it was what are your numbers? And what are you going to do to get there? You should know your numbers and strive to hit them. Not just do what you’re going to do and see what the numbers lined up. And so that drove me to a different path and we market a little bit differently. We do a little bit more digital marketing. When we see we’re going to fall short, we go at stuff a little bit more aggressively. So it’s been a big focus and a big change. And, one thing we did starting in, I think August of last year, is, we wrapped all of our vehicles, we wrapped 13 vehicles. The marketing department at Service Nation Alliance designed a really good vehicle wrap. So we went from the plain white –

David Heimer: Yeah I’ve seen it, that’s a beautiful vehicle.

Aaron Ruddick: As Matt calls it, a creeper van to a fully wrapped fleet. That’s made a big difference. One thing I really found great value in, is the marketing department and marketing team.

David Heimer: So you’re talking about our content development team that puts together all the marketing and the other stuff for our members?

Aaron Ruddick: Yeah. I was working with {inaudible 13:42} on our project and his attention to detail on this, and anytime I’d made this suggestion, he would come back with exactly what I’ve asked for. He even asked me one time for permission, he said, “can I have permission to go outside the box and give you a couple of designs for you to consider?” And of course, I told him “sure, I’d be open to that.” And then he sent me a couple of very modern designs that did not fit within what I could say yes to. One of which, we joked around, looked like our van ran into a Pepsi can, cause it had red and blue and I mean, it was pretty far out there.

And I told him I appreciate that, but that is a no for me. Now, when I would ask my 23, 24-year-olds in the building, they loved it. But it was just something that I’m like, I can’t go that flamboyant at this stage of our career. So that was just a great experience with us, because wrapping a vehicle means the different shades of colors, and designs, and logos that you can do. And it’s such a big investment and a permanent stamp that they really knocked it out of the park with that. So I really appreciated how well they did that.

David Heimer: Alright, so nice to hear.

Aaron Ruddick: It’s been a good service, and we’ve used it for a few other things too, it’s been a great resource for us. And that’s such a needed thing with what we do, because we get so busy day to day, doing the work of what we do that sometimes the marketing side, design side is something that we’re just not well versed at.

David Heimer: Yeah, there’s a lot of things in business that are like that. And it took me a long time to understand that I needed to consult experts, and it was worth paying them for their expertise, that they could just do something better than I could do, and it was easy for them. And they had spent time learning their skills and their trade. And it was better just to turn it over to the expert. The results of that have always made my life better and the results have been good. See, it’s worked out well for you as well. What’s the next big thing that you’re looking forward to doing in the business?

Aaron Ruddick: The next big thing for us is, we’re looking at another location, right now where we’re located, we’ve kind of earmarked a section in the north of us, and south of us, to slowly add, probably two more locations. We sat down with our team and set up a long-term goal of, you know, $15 million in 10 years is where we want to be. So, we’ve kind of got that mapped out and what we have to do every year. So 2020 is kind of a refining process for us here, 2021, we’re going to add a location, either north or south, depending on market research that we’ll do later in the year. And then 2022, we’re going to build a building, move into it on the other side of town that can help us serve both areas. And so it’s just focusing on numbers. We looked at our equipment brand and made some changes to that. And now we’re actually looking into private labeling, and by the end of the year, we’ve had this conversation a couple of times. I can see the next step for us will be private labeling of our own reliable, comfort, branded piece of equipment.

David Heimer: I think that’ll go over well, that’s a good move. And the members of Service Nation that have done that, have uniformly done well with it. And I’m sure you will as well.

Aaron Ruddick: So that’s kind of the long-term plan for us. And then every week, we’re just adding and tweaking a little bit of stuff to continue growing. That’s one thing that we’ve always focused on, is continual growth. How can I get a little bit better each day? One thing I learned, oh man, 15 years ago is, I learned at a business seminar, when somebody’s telling you an idea, use the phrase, that’s interesting, tell me more. Instead of, I know that even if it’s something that I feel I’m well-versed in. No matter what position somebody else takes, I’m like, well, that’s interesting, tell me more. Because you can always expound on your own knowledge, or, believe it or not, there’s people out there that may do things differently than the way we do, that may be successful.

David Heimer: Yeah. I might learn something from somebody else. Wouldn’t that be great?

Aaron Ruddick: Yeah. And what’s the best practices group that Service Nation Alliance is, there are so many guys out there that have had such good success, and they’re so willing to share what they’ve learned. That it’s an infinite resource, that you can always tap into, that no matter what struggle you’re having, there’s somebody there that’s having it and there’s somebody that’s willing to help you.

David Heimer: It really is a great group, smart people, and so kind, and willing to share. It’s fantastic. So rewind for just a second. So you want to be at 15 million by what year?

Aaron Ruddick: It will be 10 years, So 2030.

David Heimer: 2030, that’s a great goal. And I’m looking forward to it. You’re absolutely gonna make it. Well, Aaron, thank you so much for taking this time. I really appreciate it. It’s always interesting to talk with you, and I know you’re going to be at a couple of our Success Days in the near future. So I look forward to seeing you there As well.

Aaron Ruddick: I look forward to that too. That’ll be great. Thanks David.

Outro: We’re always looking for good ideas and interviews for our podcast. If you have an idea or maybe you think you should be interviewed, just shoot an email to profilesinprosperity@serviceroundtable.com. That’s profilesinprosperity@serviceroundtable.com. If you think what we’re doing has any value, it would be very helpful if you would give us a great rating on iTunes. Thanks for your support. Hope to see you again soon. Bye.