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Podcast #88

“When Your Business Partner Is Your Spouse”

Featuring Kristen and Justin Deese

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. Welcome to Profiles In Prosperity. Kristen and Justin Deese are here with me today. Kristen and Justin are very interesting people. They’ve owned multiple companies together in and out of our industry. They’ve been married to each other for 20 plus years. They have kids and they currently own and operate Paradise Home Services in Florida. Together they wrote this wonderful book, it’s called “When your Business Partner is Your Spouse” and they do some coaching around that as well. So Kristen and Justin Deese welcome to Profiles In Prosperity.

Kristen Deese: Thank you so much for having us.

Justin Deese: It’s awesome to be on here.

David Heimer: You guys have done a variety of things. How did you end up in our industry?

Justin Deese: Alright, so I’ll give the cliff note version. We owned a restaurant. I don’t know, I was 22, 23, somewhere that range, 21. So we owned a restaurant and we sold it. And when we sold it, we were here in Florida and we were moving back to Atlanta and I knew that I wanted to be around customers. But I didn’t wanna be in the restaurant business. So it was kind of one of those things we were trying to figure out the best way to {cross talking 01:19}

Kristen Deese: What are we gonna do when we grow up kind of thing.

Justin Deese: Which I still do now, that’s fine. So I ended up working for a company, selling outdoor kitchens and designing them and then that turned into realizing that there wasn’t anybody to really install the grills that turned into no one to service them and then clean them. It was kind of like this evolution and then next thing you know, we were in the plant installation business. We had eight locations. We were all over the Southeast. Once we got to where, well we got to complete burnout in that business. But we decided that we wanted to move back to Florida and raise our family here. And part of that, when we got here, is figuring out what we want to do next. Well, the trick with the business that we were in was we didn’t control our pricing. We didn’t, I don’t wanna say control our customers. But the customers weren’t ours, they were end users, they

were the retailers. And so we wanted to do something around customers, around customer service, helping people and to be our customers. So we decided that in our market, there were very few plumbers and that seemed pretty cool. We could go get our own customers, we could control our pricing and that’s kind of how we ended up originally in the plumbing side of the business.

Kristen Deese:It kind of was a natural evolution from the history of appliance installation because we were dealing a lot with dishwashers and washing machines and things that there were so many times that a plumber had to be called to replace a shutoff because we were not licensed or qualified to do it. And so it just kind seemed like a natural progression to the next step in growing and learning and whatever was learning how to do plumbing. And so that carried us through several years of experiences and growth and all kinds of amazing things. And then we ended up selling that and really stepped into coaching and helping a lot of other business centers who are struggling through the same things we struggled through.

David Heimer: And then at some point you guys started Paradise Home Services. Is that right?

Justin Deese: We did. So what’s interesting is when we sold the other plumbing company that we owned, we sort of made a list of if we were to do this again, which by the way we said we wouldn’t do it again.

Kristen Deese: Yes, I said, “I am never doing this again.”

Justin Deese: So, we made a list of six people and we said, if we were gonna do it again, we’d want these people on our team. So, we owned a building and we bought a restoration company. It’s been many years now, but we own a restoration company. We own a building and we started renting space to another plumbing company who happened to be our service manager for the other plumbing {cross talking 03:58}.

Kristen Deese: We owned a plumbing company back {inaudible 04:00}.

Justin Deese: So, I don’t know, we just kind of started having conversations around, you know, what, if we were to do this and what if we launched Paradise Home Services and we had plumbing in HVAC and eventually electrical. And so that’s kinda how it started and then out of the six people that we put on our list to have back on the team, we have all six.

Kristen Deese: Yeah. We have all six.

David Heimer: Way to go. That’s really cool. And Paradise Home Services does a lot more than plumbing, right? You guys do HVAC also, and water damage, mold remediation, etcetera.

Justin Deese: We do actually, we purchased a HVAC company in September of last year, which originally when we launched Paradise Home Services, our goal was to have HVAC added by 2021 end of the year. So we made it in 3 months.

Kristen Deese: Yeah. Well, you know, what was interesting about starting over is just like you do anything. If you do it again and you have the opportunity to do it again, you go at it with a totally different approach in that I know the things that I’m not gonna do this time.

Justin Deese: Right.

Kristen Deese: And I know the things that I wanna do this time. And so when creating Paradise Home Services with our business partners, we were able to sit down and have open conversations about what we all wanted out of the business and how fast and what we wanted to grow to and even how long, like this is not an indefinite thing. So it was really cool to be able to have those conversations at the beginning, not when you’re in the middle of it, up to your eyeballs.

Justin Deese: Right.

Kristen Deese: Completely overwhelmed. Trying to just figure out how to make it work.

David Heimer: Having the previous business in the same industry gives you a great perspective on what you wanna do the next time, right?

Kristen Deese: Right.

Justin Deese: Yes.

David Heimer: Makes sense. This book, I want to talk about Your Business Partner is Your Spouse: How to have a successful business and a happy marriage. We know a number of people that have one or the other, but not both.

Kristen Deese: Right.

David Heimer: I read it. I got a lot of good information from it. I enjoyed it a whole bunch. I’ve recommended it to a bunch of people. It certainly has a lot of applicability in our industry. There’s so many people that are husband and wife or families that are running businesses. So, what led you guys to write this book?

Kristen Deese: We started to recognize several years ago that there seemed to be a trend in our industry where you’d have a really good technician who worked for another company and he eventually would decide that he wanted to do this on his own because he could make more money, work less. And the only reason that we decided that we wanna be business owners. And so he would strike out on his own. And then shortly after that, he would realize that he needed some help from the administrative side because it’s hard to send invoices and call customers when you’re actually doing the technician work also. And so a lot of times the wife would get roped in, right because that’s the next best person, right? They’re like right there all the time and you trust them with your money and all that kinda stuff.

So it’s like, it just seems to be natural to rope the wife into it and then before they know it they’re in business together. And so that puts a whole different dynamic in the partnership from the marriage perspective and from the business ownership perspective. And so when we started to see this trend that it wasn’t just us that did this, that was our story. That was also hundreds of other business owners stories. Then we got to a point where like, okay, well I kind of feel like we’ve figured out a lot of the dynamics between the two so that we can have a healthy marriage and run the business together at the same time. And then we got to a point where people would approach us and be like, “how do you do that?” Or it was the exact opposite approach of, I could never work with my wife. I could never work with my husband. There’s no way. So we kind of started seeing that we were like, well, you know, certainly there’s got to be books out or people who are talking about this. This is not a new concept. And it turns out that there really wasn’t.

Justin Deese: We literally searched for months looking for a book. Because in joking, in passing, people would make comments like, oh, you guys should write a book. I thought, okay, that’s not what we do. And then that turned into, you know what, no one’s done it, what the heck. We got five years spare, right?

Kristen Deese: Oh my gosh. Right, that was way longer {inaudible 07:57}.

David Heimer: Did it take a lot longer than you thought?

Kristen Deese: You know, you start a project like that, which there’s statistics that says that there’s a certain percentage of people who want to write a book and then there’s only a very small fraction of those who actually do.

David Heimer: Right.

Kristen Deese: Because it is a big project.

David Heimer: Yeah.

Kristen Deese: And we weren’t necessarily anticipating how long it was gonna take. Although we were working with a writing coach and she helped {inaudible 08:17} us forward basically. And there were times where we both were like, oh my gosh, we do not wanna work on this stinking book and she would kind of keep pushing us. So I’d say all in all it took probably a year.

Justin Deese: Yeah. At first when we started doing it, it was more like a hobby. We, you know, jotted down some ideas and what would go in the book is kind of just evening conversation. And then once we finally got serious about it, once we hired a coach, things went fast.

Kristen Deese: Well, it was also interesting too, because like all of the stories and all of the things in the book are actually things that happened to us.

Justin Deese: Oh yeah.

Kristen Deese: We spent a lot of time trying to forget a lot of that stuff when we kind of got past it. And so we basically had to relive a lot of these events that happened in our life that were significant because we had to be able to put the storytelling into it and draw out the details and draw out the feelings. And so as we’re remembering all of this and as we’re writing this, we’re reliving these events that we tried so hard to forget.

David Heimer: Relive the pain.

Kristen Deese: Right.

Justin Deese: It’s a lot better to relive it.

Kristen Deese: Right.

Justin Deese: You’re first going through it for sure.

Kristen Deese:Definitely true.

David Heimer: I thought your book had a lot of great ideas and we don’t have time to discuss the whole book. But if you had to give us just three ideas, rules or suggestions from your book, what would those be?

Justin Deese: I’ll give my biggie. When we got started, what I was struggling with the most was boundaries, defining lanes. I think that was for me the hardest thing, I was trying to get into accounting and you’re like staying away from the money, but I wanna know and so I think for me, that was a biggie.

Kristen Deese: Yeah. If you were to pin down three ideas from the whole book itself, I would say, know your vision, define your lanes and set your boundaries. And I think that lanes and boundaries are actually two totally different caveats. We were fortunate in that we have different strengths and weaknesses, so where he’s strong, I’m weak and vice versa and so that compliments really well. It creates a nice synergy between us. So defining the lanes wasn’t necessarily all that difficult. We were able to get that kind of sorted out early and it was easy for us to be like, okay, you’re in my lane back up. The boundaries to me was the harder part because the business, if you let it, will take over everything in your life, every waking moment, even the moments that {inaudible 10:39}.

Justin Deese: {Cross talking 10:41} conversation.

Kristen Deese: It will steamroll the kids. It will steamroll dinner. It will steamroll holidays and sports and all the things that you let it. And so the boundaries to me is probably the hardest one to do. But it’s also the one that will allow you to have that balance so that you can have a separation between the business life and the home life.

David Heimer: Do you have rules around the boundaries? Like we will never talk about work after five o’clock or once we get home, there’s no talk about work unless there’s an emergency. Do you guys have some specific well defined boundaries?

Kristen Deese: When we first started exercising boundaries, yes. There were very clear lines drawn in the sand and I’m pretty sure I drew them. But then once we created that new habit of what the boundaries actually looked like, we could read each other well enough that we knew it’s okay to talk about business today, right now at this moment after business hours. But you can also read the ‘I’m not in the mood to talk about it so let’s just stare through the TV’, you know? So yes, at first they were clearly defined, but now we know what each other’s boundaries are really without having to say it.

David Heimer: Okay. So the three rules, have a vision, create lanes, make sure you stay in those lanes and then have boundaries to separate work from personal life.

Kristen Deese: Yep. That’s it.

David Heimer: Small promotion here. This book for those of you that are listening, it’s really good. I think many people in our industry would benefit from reading it. So, if any of you guys are interested in getting the book, you can find it. First of all, it’s on Amazon, right? You guys have it on Amazon and in audible I think, right?

Kristen Deese: Oh great.

David Heimer: And you can also get it at shop.serviceroundtable.com our online store. And by the way, I just wanna say that my wife and I are not in business together, but this is just a good business book. You don’t have to be working with your spouse to get great value from this book. I gotta tell you, I underlined a lot of stuff. I implemented some ideas in there. It’s a great book. So congratulations on it. I think you guys did a fantastic job.

Kristen Deese: Thank you.

Justin Deese: I appreciate that. Also too, we did a nine part series podcast that’s on wherever you get your podcast. We kind of went through each chapter and told a little bit of behind the scenes stories.

David Heimer: Oh, cool.

Justin Deese: Check it out as well.

David Heimer: What’s the name of the podcast?

Kristen Deese: It’s the same as the book.

David Heimer: Awesome. And then I just saw that you guys joined Service Nation Alliance. Congratulations, welcome Service Nation Alliance. Why did you guys decide to join Service Nation Alliance?

Justin Deese: So we’ve been part of Service Roundtable, even from the other business that we own for years. This business, we have some pretty big hairy, audacious goals of growth and really getting the training part of it was important. The rebate part, I mean, I think honestly it’ll pay for itself in just rebates.

David Heimer: Oh yeah.

Justin Deese:So matter of fact, we have some of our team going to one of the training.

Kristen Deese: {Cross talking 13:31} training. Yeah.

Justin Deese: Coming up here, we’ve got some tax register for the sales. So the training and the rebates, I would say are two big things. Plus the peer to peer groups are very important to me.

Kristen Deese: We’re learning the hard way that just like with parenting, you can tell your employees and your children something over and over and over again until you’re blue in the face and it does not resonate until somebody else says it. And so a lot of times with these trainings is we are in line with the trainers and it resonates with the employees better when it comes from somebody other than us.

Justin Deese: I mean, so I’ve done a lot of training over the years and a lot of coaching as you’ve done as well. And yes, wehave to bring outside people in because when we do it, it’s always the ‘you’re the owner.’ So actually we’ve already tapped into some resources that you guys have and started doing weekly training with the guys. And we’re already starting to see a difference in that.

David Heimer: That is so true. I’ve said the same thing many times. I can say this until I’m blue in the face, but they’ll start believing and implementing as soon as I bring in the expert from the outside. Well, thank you guys for doing this. I look forward to seeing you at our events in the future and hearing more about how your business is going and thanks again for the book. It’s a fabulous book, and I think you guys have made a real contribution to the industry. So thanks for doing that.

Kristen Deese: Thank you.

Justin Deese: Thank you.

Outro: We’re always looking for good ideas and interviews for our podcasts. 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 had give us a great rating on iTunes. Thanks for your support. Hope to see you again soon. Bye.