I thought automotive management made sense. And within two weeks of that conversation, I had a pay plan change. And so I reached back out and somebody who’s now one of my competitors actually was the person who was looking for an operations manager slash GM. And once we interviewed everything kind of made sense, it was a perfect fit. All the numbers were the same, you know, if you look at your P and L your, you know, your material costs or labor costs, the only differences that I had seen was instead of managing guys under one roof, you were just managing about in the field. And so it was a pretty easy transition and did that for about a year and a half and left and then my business partner, Trevor happened to work there. It’s where we met and he started the company back in June of 16, and we ran into each other and decided to partner up and this has been all kind of a dream since then.

David Heimer: Okay. So that’s the part I didn’t realize before is that you and Trevor worked together previously.

Shawn Henson: We weren’t friends, we were just two people who work together wasn’t a commonality there. So there wasn’t any behind the scenes of us sneaking off and starting our own company. It just kind of organically happened how it did.

David Heimer: So Trevor left to start his own company, and then you ran into him and you guys partnered up. Is that right?

Shawn Henson: Correct.

David Heimer: Tell me how it is structured if you don’t mind. I mean, I know you both, I’ve been around both of you, you guys seem to have a really good connection. You work well together, but partnerships are tricky. They just are. I know a number of consultants in the industry who say, just don’t do partnerships, they ruin friendships.

Shawn Henson: It’s kind of backwards, so it wasn’t two friends that formed a partnership, but two people that did so and then we’ve become really good friends. We’re just kind of a great yin and yang for one another. He’s a plumber by trade and he’s a tradesman. And so his background there, he makes sure the technical side is handled. He was selling a million dollars a year in plumbing prior to this. So he knows the sales side very well, and he knows nothing about operations and marketing when we formed a partnership. And, you know, vice-versa, I’m not the guy to call when you’re running into a problem in the field, but the infrastructure side I’ve got down well. So we both play our roles pretty well, we tease one another that if it’s a mommy daddy situation whose daddy and his mommy. But other than that, we really do a good job of keeping all the kids in line per se, kind of our little joke around here.

And it works well, and very rarely that we have to step on each other’s toes, or if we’ve got somebody that doesn’t agree with something, it’s an easy conversation, in one of the offices and we put it to rest pretty quickly. So I would beg to differ; I think the reason we’ve grown so fast is we take each other out of our own comfort zones, push each other to the next level and then realize that wasn’t even a challenge to begin with once we get there. And so I think that’s why we’ve been able to grow this company and be successful as we have so far.

David Heimer: You guys have sort of the inside, outside as you said, the ying and the yang. Is one of you, the CEO and the other, the chief operating officer, one of you have final say, or do you guys just if you can’t agree, you agree to flip a coin, how do you resolve that stuff?

Shawn Henson: You know if you break down our partnership agreement. We are 50 50, so I guess technically if we come to an impasse, it’s kind of at a stop. But we always put the company first when we get there. So our technical titles sees president on vice president and we have a couple of corporations that we’ve developed. And then, so the next one, I’m president he’s vice president, just the title for us. It’s you know, it’s true kind of one A one B. And you know, we haven’t gotten to the point where we can’t figure something out. We may not always agree, but you know, we take a day or two to kind of sort things out. We re-present to each other and you know, if we have to work, we know we don’t know everything. You know, I’ll lean on some of the other industry titans out there, the Chris Hunter’s or Stan you know, and we’ll get other opinions and that kind of help us make a decision from there. There’s no reason for us, to be bull headed just because, you know, we think one way or the other, I mean, so far it’s worked for us.

David Heimer: You guys have grown so quickly, now you started off at plumbing and then fairly soon you added HVAC. Was that always in the plan or did that just at some point, seemed like you know we really ought to do this?

Shawn Henson: Well we talked about it from day one. And the successful trade companies tended to do at least two or three of the trades. And we just figured it was a natural progression for us. So it happened a little quicker than I think we initially anticipated, but it’s been a very good complimentary service. And it’s allowed us to expand to our clients, giving them a better quality. Once we’ve got that trust, we’ve been able to cross it between two trades and, you know, the thought processes, most people’s homes or biggest purchases in their lifetime, it’s hard to trust people with that kind of investment. So once we’ve got somebody one down as a fan or as a true client, and the fact that we can offer multiple things in their home, it seems to almost put them at ease. So it was kind of a no-brainer for us.

David Heimer: You guys have grown. I mean, your growth is amazing. In a few years, you guys are the size that many companies don’t reach for 10 years; so how did you guys do that?

Shawn Henson: When we partnered we were just a pickup truck and a trailer, and it was two employees, and at first Trevor was very hesitant when I made the suggestion. And funny enough, our conversation was, I told him, I said, let me work for free for a month. And if this doesn’t make sense, don’t worry about my cost and let’s see where we stand. And so over six weeks, it went from that to five trucks on the road.

David Heimer: You went from one truck and two guys to five trucks.

Shawn Henson: Correct.

David Heimer: That’s amazing.

Shawn Henson: I started at my kitchen table and one of my first employees is Peter. He’s a graphic designer and I called him up. He was a buddy of mine. I said, you’re going to have to answer phones for me and dispatch technicians and help me grow business. And he thought I was crazy. And I said, you know, in our downtime, we’ll be developing all of our marketing. And so right away we just hit the ground running and luckily we’ve been in the trades both previously and guys had gravitated towards us as positions opened. And it was very easy to fill trucks in the beginning. And the work has started coming in, you know, at the end of the day, you just do a good job and hold a good reputation and people want to work with you.

David Heimer: Yeah, I’ve always been intrigued when your first hire was a marketing guy, basically your graphics guy. I don’t think I know anybody else that started off that way, that’s very unique, but it says a lot about what you guys think about. You think a lot about the marketing, you plan the marketing, you care a lot about the graphics and how you guys look and appear and what your presence is on the web and that kind of stuff. So it makes sense. But I think you’re the only person I know that did that.

Shawn Henson: Sometimes we get, so this is the way it’s always been. And I think the big thing to look at is, is, you know, the way it’s always been, isn’t always the most successful way. And so approaching this differently at the end of the day, if you don’t have a customer to service, you don’t have a business. And, you know, for us, it just made more sense going that way. I wish more contractors – and I get it, you know, their experiences being in the field for 10, 15, 20 years as a technician or as a plumber or as an electrician. And it’s the mindset of how they thought their entire time. So sometimes you just have to look at it from another direction and things tend to open up that way.

David Heimer: The other piece in what you said earlier was you guys have been in the industry, you had good reputations. And so getting people, hiring people, wasn’t a problem. You got good people to join you pretty quickly, a key part of being able to grow those five trucks in six weeks. So I’m guessing these were people that you guys had personal relationships with. Is that true? Or at least you knew them somehow.

Shawn Henson: Yeah, so a lot of the early employees were either somebody we worked with or a plumber recommended another plumber he knew to us. That hey, these are good guys if you’re looking to give them a shot and at least let us fill that initial need. I got to tell you just like everybody else, we look for technicians under every rock that we can kick. So it did let us get that initial growth but going from that five trucks to, we just bought our 19th vehicle two weeks ago, you know, filling in the rest of those was the same challenge everybody else faced. And so the way we’re looking to try to overcome that is for instance, doing two in a truck, kind of building our own guys, and we’re trying to develop our own young talent and go from there.

David Heimer: The ability to hire people quickly says something about building a good personal reputation. If you and Trevor were known in the industry, but you are known as jerks; you guys wouldn’t have been able to hire those guys right away, right? I mean, you might’ve gotten {inaudible 09:45} people. But you wouldn’t have gotten high-quality people. You guys had a good local reputation, right?

Shawn Henson: I’d like to think so. I could tell you that I wouldn’t go work for somebody that didn’t have a good reputation, especially if they’re starting out. So, you know, I don’t want to judge my own. But I would like to think that we’ve done something right in order to attract the people that we have to come over.

David Heimer: And now you said, you guys are just about to get your 19th truck, refresh my memory. What year did you guys start?

Shawn Henson: Our official startup date was June of 2016; so we’re going to hit the three year mark soon.

David Heimer: Oh my gosh, you’re not even in two years yet, it’s just amazing.

Shawn Henson: And I think we got three more trucks on order for the summer.

David Heimer: Yea so you’ll be at 22 by the end of the summer, fantastic, wow. Way to go, congratulations I mean, that’s phenomenal and I know you guys are such nice guys too, it’s really wonderful to see nice people do well. I wanted to ask you, you’re in an advisory board of Service Nation Alliance advisory board, it’s one that is mentored by Stan Johnson. Would you tell me about the advisory board experience and what that does for you?

Shawn Henson: Absolutely, they’ve been a huge asset for us in growth; there’s nothing like being able to talk to seven or eight people that are walking the same walk and talking the same talk. I am every day and especially with us being new, I probably ask more questions than anybody because I’ve probably got more of them than anybody on our calls. But to be able to curve our trial and error, because somebody can tell me how that was successful for them, or how it wasn’t or how to look at something a little differently. Like I stated before, we don’t claim to know it all. Being able to take from somebody else’s experiences and at least tailor it for us has really helped us tremendously jump hurdles that we probably – if we didn’t have, I don’t think we could be at truck 19 at this point. I mean, there’s just some titans in the business that you know, I get to talk to on a weekly basis. That’s, there’s no better value than that.

David Heimer: It’s pretty gratifying isn’t it how open people are in our industry to sharing best practices and ideas and answering your questions. And especially if they’re in a group where they know that everybody else is going to do the same thing as well, great absolutely.

Shawn Henson: And having, having Stan I mean, obviously, you know Stan’s story, but having him available just for any advice or questions is huge for us. You know, obviously, the other guys on the call are just as important, but the experience that he’s been through and being able to, just reach out if I need to, I can’t stress enough, the value that we have seen in it.

David Heimer: Yeah, he’s a very wise man and has great experience. He is truly a titan in our industry, you’re right. When I interviewed you on the stage of a Success Day, you talked about something I thought was really interesting. You talked about transparency and then later on I visited your office and I saw it in person. And I was wondering if you could talk through transparency, what it means to you and your team.

Shawn Henson: Yeah, absolutely, so the biggest thing that we try to do obviously with transparency is make sure that everybody knows the common goal and how we’re going to get there and then break it down individually. So, you know, if you walk through our offices, there’s a lot of KPI boards and that’s kind of the way that we check each other down. As a company, when we have struggles, it’s very important for people to know where the success is and where the failure is. And I think it’s no different than doing an advisory board, you’re just doing it in-house. Obviously there’s certain personal information. You may not share necessarily with the whole team, but you’d be crazy to think that they don’t pick up on when there’s problems.

And so if you present those problems and you include them in the solutions, you get to that resolution a lot quicker and you get more buy-in from your team on those decisions that are made in order to find those resolutions. And there’s nothing better than when your team can come up with those solutions to whatever the problem is. They tend to own the problem moving forward. And it just makes it a more successful transition. I wholeheartedly believe that getting them involved is another big reason why we’ve been so successful. We have people here that treat the company like it’s their own company and that’s exactly what I like to see.

David Heimer: Yeah, I totally felt that when I was talking to your managers, they were so engaged, such a nice bunch of people too by the way. And they’re just totally bought into the mission. And I had the sense that they felt it was their company. You know, it’s a great feeling you guys have done such a tremendous job; and talk for just a minute about the one office; you have that shared office for the managers, would you talk about that for a minute? I thought that was really interesting.

Shawn Henson: Yeah, absolutely so everybody has got their own day-to-day tasks and challenges, and sometimes, especially with managers and I’ve been in other businesses as manager where you’re isolated to your own department. And I’ve noticed that it almost becomes like our government where everybody’s just out for their own position or they’re out for their own party or their own alpha, their own agenda. And I don’t want plumbing and to be just worried about plumbing and HVAC, to just be worried about HVAC, and operations to just be worried about operations. So we have what we call the bullpen and so there’s no door in the room. So it’s fully accessible at any time, anybody to walk in and three desks for our three managers and they share one room.

And the reason for that is so they’re constantly working with each other, one of the bigger structures that we’ve done, even within that own management philosophy, I don’t have a planning manager and an HVAC manager. I have a service manager and I have a sales manager, and so they cross between both departments and that kind of allows them to be inter-tied in with one another. So when a problem does arise, they lean on one, in order to come up with a solution. So it’s no offense or defense, but it’s, it’s the whole team. You know, it really built a brotherhood between our managers, which is exactly what we’re looking to build.

David Heimer: There are no silos and literally there are no walls. So all this growth, what do you worry about?

Shawn Henson: Oh man, I’ve got 36 families that depend on us. So I know it sounds silly, but making sure that these men and women that work for us can provide for their families. I mean, I think that’s always my biggest thing. And I don’t mean it that we always have to worry about having money in the bank, although just like any company especially with our growth, sometimes cash flow can get tight, but we’ve prepared well for that. So that’s not always our biggest concern. But it’s making sure that these guys are continuing their education, so they’re moving up within the company in order to provide, making sure that they’re making smart decisions even out of here in order to do what’s best for their families.

And, you know, we do a lot of mentoring with our younger guys, teaching them how to do finances, teaching them how to look at their credit report. You know, if they have personal challenges, we have open doors that they can come in and talk to us. I almost feel like I’ve got a lot of brothers and sons that work for me. And so seeing their personal success is probably my biggest worry is when they’re not sticking along those lines. Obviously, it benefits us when they’re successful. But you know, I have a personal interest in seeing each one of them succeed and there’s no better self-accomplishment than when that happens.

David Heimer: What’s your workday like, are you putting in 12, 14 hour days, never going on vacation, what’s your life like?

Shawn Henson: I definitely travel. I don’t know that I travel as much as I’d like to. But I’m usually in, anywhere between 4:45 in the morning to six o’clock, depending on how well I did or didn’t sleep the night before. And I usually get home around five or six in the evening. That doesn’t mean I’m at my desk all day. I’m very involved in the chambers, BNI, and different networking groups. We hold several chairs and I actually hold several of them myself, because I think it’s important that I stay connected on that level. So that eats up quite a bit of my day from, you know, running around doing those things. So it’s always doing something, it’s about not always working in the business, but on the business, continuing to build this business to be successful. So we probably do more meetings than I would like, here as far as going for open invoices, our leadership teams, weekly meetings, we have meetings with service techs, like kind of answer in short, it’s a good 10, 12 hour day. And then when I feel a little bit of burn, I don’t have a problem pulling out the golf clubs and taking a half day or a day off in order just to kind of detach and refresh because it’s, it’s important to keep the mind right.

David Heimer: That’s a good answer. And it brings up another interesting point, which is that you’re apparently very connected with the community. You’re on several different boards, DNI, the chamber you’re engaged with the community and your company’s engaged with the community. Is that right?

Shawn Henson: Absolutely. One of the big things we’re about is giving back and helping any way we can. So a lot of times the way that looks like you could be, you know, we just auctioned off a water heater for the church school in order to help them raise money. We’ve done stuff with the Moffitt Cancer Center for one of their fundraising teams. We’ve auctioned off water treatment systems, we’ve donated money for skating nights for them. And the biggest thing is getting our guys involved in that. So we’ve had a couple of times where plumbers come up to us and said, hey I’ve got this customer and here’s the situation.

And we bring it up in a team meeting and we get four or five guys to volunteer and we go out on a Saturday and we just take care of an elderly person who can’t afford repairs or a single mother that is kind of down and out. And, you know, it’s one of the things that I like to highlight my guys as it happens without promoting the situation, to make anybody feel bad about their situation. So the reward that these guys see when they do it is amazing. And it’s amazing for us because the neighborhood tends to rally around us as we do it and it’s a win for everybody.

David Heimer: Yep good for you guys. That’s awesome, well I know you’ve got a lot on your plate and a busy day, so I want to thank you for spending this time with me, insightful stuff and I’m going to be so interested to continue to follow you and see you and Trevor take the company. Can’t imagine at this rate where you guys will be in five years the most.

Shawn Henson: I’m hoping to a beach in Tahiti or something, but thank you, Dave. I appreciate the time and I feel humbled that you even considered me for the interview and we appreciate everything you guys do at Service Nation Alliance for us, a big part of our success.

David Heimer: Well 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.