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Podcast #99

“General Manager”

Featuring Jenn Shue

Intro: Welcome to Profiles In Prosperity, the leading podcast for residential service contractors, sponsored by Service Roundtable and hosted by David Heimer.

David Heimer: Hi, this is David Heimer and welcome to Profiles In Prosperity. Today I’m talking with Jenn Shue. Jenn is the general manager for Barbosa Plumbing and Air Conditioning in Dallas, Texas. Jenn has vast experience in management, consulting, HR, project management, business analytics, and a lot more. She is an advisory board mentor for Service Nation Alliance and she’s a coach for Service Nation Premier. So Jenn Shue, welcome to Profiles In Prosperity.

Jenn Shue: Thank you for having me.

David Heimer: You’ve had an interesting and long career. So tell me a bit about your career and how you ended up in our fine industry.

Jenn Shue: You know, there’s this standard joke among an industry, either born into it or fell into it. I fell into it and just never got out. I fell in love with it. I was looking for a local job, something simple to get involved with once my children started entering high school and there was a company not too far from my house that was looking for a CSR and I was like, that’s great. I don’t want to be responsible for anything. I just want to answer phones and file papers. And 20 plus years later, here I am responsible for a whole lot. So I was fortunate enough to find a company that really just allowed me to grow and learn while I started with them.

David Heimer: Well, where did you start off as a CSR? Because you’re in Texas now, right? But that wasn’t where you started, right?

Jenn Shue: No, I started out in Maryland. I am from there, lived there my whole life, until I transplanted to Texas. So I started out there as a CSR with them. I eventually became their parts manager and then went into the retail side of just trying to keep them on top of their pricing and then into dispatching and office manager and just got my hands in every aspect that I could.

David Heimer: Wow. Very cool. So tell me about Barbosa.

Jenn Shue: When I moved to Texas, I worked remote for the company that I was working for in Maryland. And after about six months, I knew I just needed a break and I started looking for a company that would fit the goals that I had for myself. And I found Barbosa. They’re a small family business, you know, they’ve been in business for over 40 plus years now. And I just wanted some place to call home, I didn’t want a job. I had just left home, I needed a new one, and they opened those doors and let me in. And they do plumbing, which was new for me. So it’s still a growth process every day, just learning the ins and outs of that. But Drew Barbosa’s just been amazing at taking me in and allowing me to grow and giving me the room to grow, and make the changes that I’ve made without really fighting against them but embracing them.

David Heimer: Yep. I’ve known the Barbosas for a long time. They are wonderful people, it’s a good company. And they are an interesting company to me because they used to be only air conditioning, they added plumbing, which is not unusual to add plumbing. But what is unusual is, correct me if I’m wrong, plumbing is now a bigger part of Barbosa than heating and air conditioning, is that correct?

Jenn Shue: Absolutely. We’re about 60/40 now.

David Heimer: Wow, that’s amazing. So you are the general manager there.

Jenn Shue: Yes.

David Heimer: And so what does that mean? What do you do?

Jenn Shue: My hands are in everything. I still play a CSR role, I still answer the phones, talk to customers, you know. But I do a lot more engagement with the employees, keeping them happy, working with them, just trying to make life smoother, trying to streamline our processes, eliminate the redundancies sometimes that we tend to throw into the mix and create processes and procedures so that we can continue to grow.

David Heimer: That’s an important part of growth, isn’t it? And so you are a very successful advisory board mentor at Service Nation Alliance. And tell me about the experience of being on a Service Nation Alliance advisory board, and then tell me specifically about being a mentor.

Jenn Shue: So I didn’t start out as a mentor. I actually joined Drew’s AB4 group with him and got to experience what that’s like with an active board group, where they’re all participating weekly, sharing their numbers, giving advice, sharing the failures and the successes. And then when I was asked to become a mentor to an AB, you know, the advisory board group, I tried to take a lot of those processes with me and learn very quickly that not all advisory boards are the same and they’re not all looking for the same input. So I had to take the time to get to know the members of my board and see where their strengths and weaknesses were and give them advice where I could and just kind of give them the space to learn to trust what I was bringing to the table.

Because I’m a lot younger than some of the members on my board. And getting them to believe in what I was saying and buy into it was a process. But I’ve definitely seen the change in the last three to four months. There’s more camaraderie between them, more communication. We’re leaning on each other for that network support that we sometimes don’t get as business owners and managers from people in our private lives who just don’t understand the industry or the world that we live in every day. But it’s also been great to have people buy into me because it’s a growth process for me as well. I don’t feel like I don’t belong or don’t fit in. I actually feel like I’m contributing and bringing something to the table.

David Heimer: So you’ve been able to convince a group of old crusty contractors that you’ve got value and you can help out, huh?

Jenn Shue: Absolutely. And that’s always a turning point. It’s the same thing when I came to Barbosa. Some of their employees have been with them over 20 years and they’ve seen many people come in and sit in that desk and say they know what they’re doing. But to actually realize the turning moment when they decided they trusted me and that I knew what I was doing and I was capable of learning whatever they were trying to teach me that I didn’t know already. It’s a really cool feeling when that tide turns and you suddenly become accepted because they value what you’re bringing.

David Heimer: Yeah, we’ve gotten a lot of compliments on the advisory boards, from our members meeting once a week, one hour every week. It’s a commitment, but it doesn’t seem like it is an overly burdensome commitment. It’s like going to church or going to the rotary or going to something that you do once a week and it provides a lot of benefit if you can make that commitment and throw yourself into it. The camaraderie, I think, is fantastic. And have you seen a lot of growth from your advisory board members?

Jenn Shue: Yes. In the last, again, in the last three to four months, there’s been some growth. My particular advisory board, they’re smaller companies, some of them are just starting out, some of them, they’ve been in business for years, but they’re looking for new ways and they’re ready to buy in to help make those changes for them. And to be able to convince, I convinced half of the group to come to Service Nation, all at the same time, for a success planning event.

David Heimer: Oh, that’s great.

Jenn Shue: Some of those members have never done success planning. They haven’t set up a budget, they haven’t broken it down so that they get their actual per call ratio. And they’ve never realized if they do that, it factors into where they need to focus their marketing so that they can grow those areas to help the business grow. So just laying out that foundation for them of, this is our starting point and we should go from here to here to here, sometimes that’s a big deal. People need step A, B, C, and D in order to get to Z. Other people just pick it up immediately and run with everything.

David Heimer: Yeah, it’s a great opportunity. I mean, I don’t think there’s anybody who believes that planning is a waste of time, but it’s amazing how many people won’t take the time to create a plan for their business, a detailed plan for the next year. And when you get a bunch of people in a room working on it together in a workshop kind of environment, you really get some great growth and people will understand what they need to do. So have you guys already done that or is that coming up?

Jenn Shue: It’s coming up on the 15th and 16th.

David Heimer: Yeah. Well, good for you. That’s going to be fantastic.

Jenn Shue: Because I know the difference it made for me the first time I sat in {Inaudible 8:13}

David Heimer: Good. Well, you’ve been through it already, so that’s fantastic. So you’ve worked with a lot of contractors, you’ve been in our industry a while. I always like to ask people, what general advice do you have for contractors? What do you think people sort of overlook and that they ought to think about that they’re not thinking about?

Jenn Shue: The first piece would be to keep it simple. Sometimes we overcomplicate things. We try to address too many issues at once, where if we list them out and determine which of the top three of those issues are the ones we need to deal with. If we focus on those issues, those issues being corrected and fixed will help change the other issues.

David Heimer: So kind of a Pareto effect, that is that 20% of the things are creating 80% of the bad things that happen to us.

Jenn Shue: Yes, absolutely. And sometimes we get so hyper-focused on the one specific thing when that’s not really the problem. It’s a problem somewhere else. And that an issue that other companies may be having in different regions is not necessarily an issue that your company may be having. A good example of that is we hear all the time that companies have to have a certain amount of installs a week and they need to be install heavy. But ours is a different situation. We are not a company that is based off of install and needing a certain amount a week. Our focus is service, and not heavily on installs. But that’s how our company functions, it’s not necessarily how the next one’s going to function. And when we were trying to stay on the same level with all the other companies, that was creating bigger issues for us and we weren’t hitting the numbers that we needed, so we changed our focus. And it made a huge difference, not just in our numbers, but with the employee morale and the buy-in for what we were trying to accomplish.

David Heimer: Yep. Makes sense. What else?

Jenn Shue: Understand that your technicians, your plumbers didn’t get into the industry to be salesmen. So while we continue to push, they need to do this, they need to present a certain way, greet at the certain door a certain way, give multiple options, we can say that all day long, but if we’re not providing them with the training that they need to do that and reinforcing it, not just sending them and then not touching it again and expecting it all to suddenly be a magic Band-Aid. Give them the time to do that. It took them time to learn the trade that they have, we should also expect to give them somewhat of the same type of time standards to learn the new trade that we’re asking them to learn, being salespeople.

David Heimer: Yeah, that’s a good point. If they had wanted to be salespeople, they would’ve gotten into sales, right?

Jenn Shue: Right. They didn’t. And that’s why so many of the older generation of plumbers are having a hard time with utilizing new tools like the new flat rate. Because that’s not what they’re there to do. They’re there to fix it and go.

David Heimer: But they can be trained and you can provide them with the information and tools to provide a better experience for the customer. And the result of doing that is that you do end up increasing sales and the average ticket goes up. Has that been your experience?

Jenn Shue: Absolutely. And the more training you provide them, the more comfortable they are with the process and they don’t fight the system anymore. If anything, they’re going to come to you and say, wow, I did it the way that we’ve been training and my day was smooth. There were no complaints, there were no upset customers about pricing. So once you train them and you focus on the training and you reinforce it, their reasons for not following through will just disappear.

David Heimer: What’s next? What makes you excited? What are you looking forward to at Barbosa?

Jenn Shue: Our three to five year growth plan that we’re putting in place right now is very aggressive for us. We’ve been pretty complacent, hovering around the 2 million mark, so we’re putting some things into place to get to that next level. We’ve built a training room, we’ve also built onto the building with a call center, and looking to implement that hopefully within this year, get the call center up and running and get that process started. And I feel like that’s going to make a huge difference to us getting to that next hurdle of the $5 million mark that we’re looking to hit.

David Heimer: Awesome. So when are you looking to hit? 5 million?

Jenn Shue: Two years. So we’re looking at 2024/2025.

David Heimer: Very good. I’m looking forward to hearing more about that and when you guys get that call center up, I’m going to come over and visit you guys, take a look.

Jenn Shue: Awesome. Thank you.

David Heimer: Sounds exciting. Well, Jenn Shue, thank you so much for doing this with us. It’s really interesting to hear about your career and your perspectives on the industry. So thanks for talking.

Jenn Shue: Thank you.

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.