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Tech-Infused Growth: Navigating Business Evolution in the Digital Age
152 Plays2 years ago
Welcome back to another episode of The Better Contractor Podcast. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this episode provides actionable advice and inspiration for thriving in today's tech-driven world. In this engaging episode of The Better Contractor Podcast, hosts Brent Oberlink and Travis May join Jackie Guin from Oak Bros Trees to discuss the ever-evolving landscape of business in the digital age. From adopting tactical meetings inspired by "Traction" to harnessing the power of AI and innovation for enhanced efficiency, Jackie shares invaluable insights on leveraging technology to drive organizational success. Discover practical strategies for integrating cutting-edge solutions like AI, grapple trucks, and automation into your business model, all while preserving a strong company culture. Tune in for a captivating discussion on the intersection of technology, culture, and business growth.
#BusinessEvolution #TechIntegration #DigitalTransformation #CompanyCulture #AIinBusiness #Robotics #Efficiency #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #PodcastDiscussion #TheBetterContractorPocast #entrepreneur
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Transcript
Introduction of Jackie Guin and Oak Bros
00:00:11
Speaker
Well, welcome back to another edition of The Better Contractor. Today, we have Jackie Guin with Oak Bros, Tree Care and Removal out of Bloomington. Jackie, welcome. Hi, yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm super honored to be here. So yeah, thank you. Awesome, thank you. Travis, no nickname for you today, dude. Just normal guy again. Just normal guy today. He says, Travis, the normal dude. With an epic gray and white beard.
00:00:41
Speaker
It is epic. Awesome.
Jackie's Personal Background
00:00:44
Speaker
Well, Jackie, tell us a little bit about you personally. Who are you, your past, what got you to where you're at today? Let's learn about you. Yeah. Okay. So I am a daughter of two amazing parents that have held me accountable.
00:01:05
Speaker
with my relationship with Christ, with my relationship with people, with trying to strive to be the best person that I can be. I am one of eight children. There are seven girls and one boy. And so accountability there is real. I have phenomenal siblings that don't let me get away with anything. We call it our tribe. And I am super blessed to be part of that tribe.
Transition from Athletics to Family Business
00:01:32
Speaker
I grew up playing a lot of eyeball.
00:01:35
Speaker
I am an athlete, college athlete. I won a national championship in college and I'm a three-time All-American. I am trying to also become as successful in business as I was as an athlete. And I am really excited about that.
00:01:55
Speaker
I started out my career as a cosmetologist. I love to serve people. I love to protect people's image. That's what I thought about as cosmetology, that that's what I did. I protected people's image and their brand by servicing them and trying to make them feel as good as possible with a haircut or color or makeup.
00:02:24
Speaker
And from there, I had to retire my shears and blow dryer. I separated my elbow in 2018, I fell. And if we were not in Bloomington, if we didn't have or in the United States, I'd say and didn't have the resources we had, it probably would have been crippled.
00:02:49
Speaker
So I'm not able to do hair anymore. And it actually was really difficult to see as a blessing in the midst of it. But it was, God made my weakness something that became really powerful and healed me mentally, I'd say. And also physically, I'm probably 95% with
00:03:16
Speaker
my arm and my hand and all the things.
Joining and Improving Oak Bros Operations
00:03:19
Speaker
We don't have to go into it. But Josh wanted me to work for Edmund. Josh is the owner of Oak Broast Tree Carries, my husband for everyone to know. And we are a family business and we love it. We're best friends, business partners, and now parents. So, and husband and wife, of course. But he asked me to come on
00:03:46
Speaker
in 2018 and knew that I had strengths and efficiencies in leadership, knew that getting no's from people didn't completely disable me and I needed to put my mind to work because I think Travis and I were discussing this earlier but Josh and I both came to a realization that
00:04:15
Speaker
putting your net worth and what you make for your family into your body, like your body has to produce, is irresponsible because we learned that. I lost an income like that. And there was no preparation for that, right? And so I'm learning
00:04:43
Speaker
business and I'm learning what delegate means. And we onboarded traction as Josh decided to get accredited through TCIA. And so as we were going through the accreditation process and preparing for that and what that looks like if anyone wants to know TCIA is the Tree Care Industry Association and they're not getting anything for this. It's just something that
00:05:11
Speaker
allowed Josh and I to scale quickly because their requirements for accreditation were so complex, I would say, at least I thought that they were at the time for our business. So some of the things that they required were the business plan, accounting, safety measures. How are you solving problems and issues with clients?
00:05:38
Speaker
And then, Oh goodness, there's so many things, quality control operations. How are you managing professionalism within your company? And then they come out and audit
Growth through EOS and Strategic Measures
00:05:47
Speaker
you. So, um, I use traction and EOS system, uh, to, um, kind of set up our rocks and how Oakbros went from, gosh, I think we were doing 300,000.
00:06:04
Speaker
Um, to now we are projected to do 2.5, um, with me being out on maternity leave the last three years. So it's been, it's been fun. I love it. And I love leadership. I love accountability. I love, um, growing people. Um, I think that's the coolest thing. There's really cool people in this industry that are really transparent and.
00:06:30
Speaker
want to see you be successful. And we've made a lot of really cool relationships, I would say globally now. Josh put himself on the map with the grapple saw truck, the crane. And that's kind of where we are. I'm trying to think. We are now in a place where we are able to start scaling on the rocks that we implemented in 2018.
00:06:59
Speaker
So yeah, that's a little about me and how I got in. Well, I like it. Your father was a busy guy. Seven girls. Oh my goodness. He's amazing. If you guys need anything, I'll give you his improvement. He's phenomenal. Yeah.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, there's, I just wrote a few notes down while you talk. So there's, you know, part of our podcast, we look a lot at like what makes
Oak Bros Core Values and Mission
00:07:25
Speaker
an entrepreneur successful? What makes them a winner? What traits might that be? And it's oddly enough, you listed four kind of right off the bat. So you talked about accountability. That's obviously huge. You talked about self growth, which is another one that's huge. You are naturally competitive, you know, and you brought that into the business world.
00:07:46
Speaker
And then with the injury, you turn a weakness into a strength. So as entrepreneurs, if you can do those four things, you kind of laid the roadmap out right there for success. Because most people don't want to do the self-growth. They don't like being held accountable for sure. Most of us can be competitive in the entrepreneur space. And talking a weakness into a strength is sometimes kind of hard. So anyway, kudos to those. One thing before we move on, because there might be some people that don't know what it is,
00:08:16
Speaker
What is EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system? What exactly is that for you guys? What does that look like? Okay, so we started with the VTO. It's a vision traction organizer. And you start out with... I'm actually going to pull it up on my side. You start out with your core values. So Josh and I sat down and we were like,
00:08:37
Speaker
What do we want our rocks to be? So with our core values within our family and at Oak Bros, we make decisions off of these core values. If they don't align, we move forward. Same with our vision and mission.
00:08:52
Speaker
So first we started out by building like, what is our why? Like, why? Why are we in this? Why are we separating ourselves from other competitors? What does it look like? So we hold our staff accountable to this. We hold each other as leaders accountable to this. And then we hold every single service added accountable to the core values into the mission and the vision so that we don't
00:09:16
Speaker
add things to our company that actually are aligning with our three year picture or 10 year target. And so our core focus is building company where people love to work while creating leaders within the industry, engaging with our peers.
00:09:34
Speaker
to exceed expectations. And we believe our niche is simplifying tree work environments through disruptive technology. And that's where kind of AI kind of comes in. Are we utilizing everything? No, but I believe that we're behind two seconds ago, right? Because AI is allowing people to compound so quickly.
00:09:58
Speaker
on what's already there. So that's kind of where we started with with traction is getting all of those things down and we call them
00:10:07
Speaker
our core values, and then you put your rocks into place. And your rocks happen
Using Traction for Objectives and Reviews
00:10:14
Speaker
every quarter. So we don't lose track of our goal within the year because we review our rocks internally in strategic meetings every quarter. And then we have priorities that our staff breaks down into, that their priorities align with their rocks within the company.
00:10:36
Speaker
So there's constant growth, whether it's a new way that we can contact our clients or say we've had poor communication with clients and it's starting to become a pattern, right? We would put together a, oh goodness, we'd put together kind of a quiz for our clients and say, okay, can you
00:11:04
Speaker
can you tell us where we, where we faulted? And like earlier, weaknesses to me and the company are actually opportunities for us to be better and stronger and to kind of like set ourselves apart.
00:11:22
Speaker
because we really believe that service is kind of what set us apart from other customers or from other tree companies. But not only tree companies, when's the last time everybody gets really good service?
00:11:37
Speaker
You know, it doesn't happen often. And so we just really want to be that company that they're like, whoa, they provided great service. Not only is it to separate, but we love to serve. We love to serve people. It's part of Josh and I's hearts. It's a part of our mission.
00:11:56
Speaker
So anyways, Traction is the system that I set Oprah's up on. And I became the implementer for our company. Because I will tell you how small we were when I started. It was Josh and me and a crew. And so I started delegating Josh's daily tasks to me.
00:12:25
Speaker
And then I want to set up operations so I hired someone to manage phones and to manage emails and to manage the schedule so I could continue to create
00:12:38
Speaker
what Josh envisioned, if that makes sense. So he had this huge vision for our company, and then I had to break his vision down into actual realistic goals, and even SOPs, you know, so that we could become consistent daily. Because without that consistency, there's not a lot of growth, you can't scale anything.
Impact of EOS on Growth and Efficiency
00:13:05
Speaker
And then without knowing the numbers and tracking what everyone's doing, then are you actually growing 30% or whatever you guys decided or whatever we decided we wanted our growth to be. So out of our rocks, we set up obviously the quarterly review so that everyone can hit their rocks.
00:13:25
Speaker
But then we also broke that down from quarterly review to weekly meetings. And this is called our tactical meeting. And this is where we review our flash report. So everyone has metrics. They have to hit weekly and then they all get measured against each other. So then nothing falls through.
00:13:47
Speaker
and that meeting happens every Monday and it's I love that meeting I don't know if everyone loves it but I love it because we get to keep a pulse on the company um I'm trying to think what else down from traction and I
00:14:04
Speaker
I learned that the 10x meeting was a little bit too dry for our staff. So I onboarded, um, tactical meetings from death by meeting. And these are books, um, for anyone listening traction is a book. Um, and it, it literally tells you how to set this all up. So it's not something that I created. It's something that people did research behind and, um, it's an us system and.
00:14:33
Speaker
I implemented, decided some of the things didn't work, then implemented other things like Death by Meeting is a phenomenal book. If you hate meetings, you need to read this book. Because then you're learning that maybe you're approaching a meeting without the correct vision, I guess I would say. But yeah, so that's what traction looked like. Sorry, that was a lot. But I hope... Yeah, go ahead.
00:15:02
Speaker
Rocks, okay, so rocks are our goals, but they're more of objectives because goals are kind of like, I don't know how I feel about goals. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about goals, because some people obtain them, some people don't, some people set them to where they're not even attainable, but our rocks are objectives that need to be hit.
00:15:28
Speaker
for the year. So you have a date when it needs to be completed and then you have who is in charge of that action plan, right? Like who is in charge of that? Who do you need to get involved? So for me, that's mine. I need to get our accountant involved. I need to get our P&L. I need to get our balance sheet. I need to get what our sales goals are so that it's aligning with our margin. So that's like
00:15:52
Speaker
one rock for a quarter, right? And then what's so important about the rocks, um, it has to have a deadline. Um, and then you have to have like, okay. So in the tactical meeting, for example, on Monday, I would say, okay, I have a meeting set up with our accountant. I have this, this, and this that I'm going to bring to his table. And then obviously we'll have to be going back and forth with that before we get our compensation structure, um, re
00:16:22
Speaker
like revamp set up, but, um, sometimes it takes multiple people to do your rocks. Sometimes you have to go outside of the company to get it done just because we're, we're little, um, well, we're not little, I wouldn't say we're little, um, we don't have a ton of staff, but we're mighty because we use AI. Nice,
Balancing Roles in Business
00:16:42
Speaker
nice. Just curious what kind of growth like percent wise have you seen since implementing this to today? You know,
00:16:51
Speaker
So our goal was 30% growth every year, year over year. The first year we implemented though, we had 100% growth, 100%. And that's not even, that's not exaggeration. We didn't add any services.
00:17:08
Speaker
We didn't add new equipment, we didn't add new people. It's just because we made our daily consistent. We onboarded a CRM, which was huge. It was huge.
00:17:22
Speaker
Uh, for our first two years of, because I was used to a CRM with, um, cosmetology and like, so how are we keeping everyone's information? You know? Um, and I, I implemented a new CRM and it's, it's been amazing. We're using the same one that we set up a few years ago. So. Very nice. Yeah.
00:17:45
Speaker
So those two books, I've read traction. I've not read death by meeting. So I have that on my list to check out. It is so good. It is so good. You'll be like, Ooh, this is why I don't like this meeting. Yeah. I hear you on that one. I kind of have a goal that every meeting needs to have a purpose. Then you move on from that purpose really quick into the solution and then you end the meeting. Exactly. And who's in charge of it? And then you follow up and make sure there's a deadline with it. Uh, so instead of just talking round and round and round, this gives me good pointers.
00:18:15
Speaker
But yeah, for anyone that's, what I had Josh read was get a grip. So that if you have a visionary, so visionary and implementers are completely different people. I am very task oriented. I like deadlines. I like structure. I like scaling off of what I did last time. I wanted to be better, right?
00:18:38
Speaker
And that's our numbers report, our flash report on Mondays. But Josh is like, this is what I want. And I'm like, okay, I have to break it down. But the visionary has to see, and this is where I feel like they get it with, get a grip. They understand the value of what the implementer is doing.
00:18:58
Speaker
in the book, Get a Grip. At least that's how it worked for us. Because I tried having him read through traction and get on board and get excited about it. And he's like, chat, this is a lot. I'm not sure. But Rocket Fuel and Get a Grip have been really good books for us. Wait, Rocket Fuel? Did you just add another book? Mm-hmm, Rocket Fuel and Get a Grip. All right, we've got four books already. And we're 20 minutes in. You know how I like books.
00:19:28
Speaker
that just added four to the stack. I thought those were all fake books behind you. They came with the package. You can order the bookshelf stock or not stock. For 100% difference. Smart package versus aspirational package. Speaking of aspirational, so goals versus rocks. You view goals as they're more like aspirations in that
00:19:57
Speaker
I see a goal and that's something that we aspire to, but if we didn't hit it, it's okay. That was a projection out there, but a rock would be an objective that is non-negotiable. It is non-negotiable. Exactly. That's a great word for it. Exactly.
00:20:19
Speaker
When you're a smaller company, you're up against, you know, competing with a larger company. A lot of people want to think that the larger company has all these resources. They got all the more money. They got the attorneys. They got all this stuff that these smaller companies don't have, but what you kind of highlighted Travis.
00:20:34
Speaker
And is that really is actually an advantage because smaller companies like us, you, others, we can move so much quicker. We're so much more nimble. Oh yeah. You know, so like we've, so we mainly work in oil and gas, but you know, we've been up against larger companies and hours. We're kind of a medium size.
00:20:54
Speaker
But we try to make sure that even though we're a medium-sized company in our industry, that we're able to move quickly. Because we've taken a lot of business from our competition because we got the quote turned around immediately. Or stuff like that where we're responsive. And we kind of have a rule that we respond to your email, your text, your voicemail that day, as long as it's not like 4.59 PM sometimes. But it's that that people want. And you brought up earlier,
00:21:24
Speaker
Jackie you brought up service We're all service companies for the most part listening to this podcast and a whole bunch of other people in the in the US are but if if you want to not be
00:21:36
Speaker
the cheap person in your room, you have to give that customer an experience. And in the service industry, yeah. So you're in the service industry, whether it's tree care, lawn, hair care, whatever it is, it has to be an experience for that customer for them to want to come back to you. So retaining your customer, attracting your customer, getting the referrals, all of that goes into play. So anyway. So we're at four books.
00:22:06
Speaker
book number five, 26
Agility of Small Companies vs. Large Corporations
00:22:08
Speaker
minutes in. So there was a book, Innovator's Dilemma by Clay Christensen. That was one of the ones that was revolutionary in innovation. And we've talked about innovation stuff before, but it's not necessarily innovation oftentimes gets attached to technology. It can be innovation process, process improvement, changing the way that you do things, procedures. But one of the things that he dissected in there was he went through and looked at legacy
00:22:36
Speaker
companies, companies that were big. They owned the market share. They had innovative teams, they had products, they cornered the market almost in some cases, but they were massive. They had deep management teams that were very smart, a lot of funding, a lot of money, and they ended up getting disrupted by this little startup. And how did that happen? When all, for all intents and purposes, that juggernaut of a company
00:23:04
Speaker
should have been able to crush or move where they had the money. And a lot of times they saw the innovation or the technology or the process, the culture, whatever disrupted them, they saw it before it disrupted them. Sometimes they were offered the opportunity to adopt it and bring it in. But looking at those smaller startup companies that started kind of a seed of an idea, one of the aspects that made them so successful was their agility.
00:23:34
Speaker
And then one of the things that disrupted the large organizations was their inability to be agile and their bureaucracies sometimes totally necessary. If they're in a heavily regulated environment, they got a lot of checks and balances and their audited things are different. But for them a lot of times it was their inability to move and adopt new ideas or challenge the status quo and adopt better ways of doing things or technologies or things.
00:24:03
Speaker
and these little garage startups, it was speed from ideation to implementation was one person, two people, hey, I've got an idea, go do it, versus, wait, we got to get it on the calendar. And maybe next week, we'll talk about these other four teams. And did you talk to IT? And it was their ability to move and move faster. So yeah, the smaller companies, yeah,
00:24:32
Speaker
They got their head on straight and they're looking to challenge a status quo. They're looking to do things better. You'll get some of the pushback on that is, hey, if it was a good idea, these bigger companies would have implemented it. I'd say that the track record for that is not necessarily true in that a lot of the disruption happens from these smaller companies that
00:24:57
Speaker
have great ideas and are able to implement them and implement them fast move that adjust and then pivot. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's actually it's a part of our our three uniques. We actually got from our top five customers that have had used us since we had started and
00:25:18
Speaker
We asked them why they hired us. We literally, I called them. I said, why do you use us over and over and over and over again? And the consistent feedback was we're consistent and reliable. The whole company exudes professionalism and we are specialists. We're educated and we're the most qualified in town. And if you know those things, oh, you could just run.
00:25:46
Speaker
Exactly. And just make sure that you're standing by that in every service that you complete. So like if you don't specialize in something and you start, you know, maybe contracting work out, like is that aligning, right? Or it is because they are the specialists, you know, like they are better at this than you are. And then that's when you can just be like, okay, well, we have someone better and you could set it up that way if you want and get referral work from it or
00:26:15
Speaker
There's just so many things that kind of go back to what you offer from a service perspective and setting yourself apart. And your customers come up with that.
00:26:28
Speaker
I love that. I kind of think one of the main things from like a marketing perspective that people don't talk about enough is what is my customer retention? Because I can market all these other things all day long. But if I'm not doing them, my customer retention is going to be like 20% because they're going to see through all that noise really, really quick. So it's almost like, hey, here's who we are. And we have a 90% customer retention rate. So we're actually doing what we're saying. So I do love that.
00:26:58
Speaker
One point you made earlier that I liked is as you guys grew, like when you came on in 18.
00:27:04
Speaker
It sounds like you did an amazing job and you talked about the visionary person, which is your husband and the implementer, which is you and how critical that is. And that's one thing we've kind of figured out at Lanarkorp in the past few years is that I'm the visionary. That's what I love. I do not like the implementation process. So thankfully I have a team that actually enjoys that stuff and we work phenomenal together.
00:27:32
Speaker
But what you did is you went in and you implemented systems and processes as well. And you implemented that culture so that you did not scale chaos.
Transparent Employee Evaluations
00:27:40
Speaker
So one thing I'm curious because if I'm a listener,
00:27:44
Speaker
I'm wondering, what does that look like a little bit? So like the rocks and the reviews, how do I do that with an employee? So is that, so your review and that you said, I think weekly, and then does that correlate to their pay? Is there a bonus or is this a review process that may equate to a raise at a later date? So at Oakbros, we review off of, um, numbers because I'm very,
00:28:11
Speaker
I've been reviewed by coaches that reviewed me emotionally and I did not take that very seriously. Um, we like to review off of something that is actually production oriented. Um, so you get one, two, three, or four. Um, you're either setting standard, you're not doing the work. Um, you're going above and beyond or, um, gosh, the other one, I don't have it right in front of me. Um, but.
00:28:40
Speaker
We are very transparent with our staff on how they can be successful at our company. And growth is huge. And I guess with the reviews, they are, because reviews sound scary, it's more of like a talking point, like where are you guys at? Do you need support?
00:29:09
Speaker
You're setting standards here. We don't believe this might be harsh, but this is where I come in. You're not going to get a pay raise for coming to work and doing the standards that we've put here. Like this is a part of your job description, right? If you are setting standards and going above and beyond and creating
00:29:37
Speaker
100%, we will immerse you for that. Oh, yes. But someone coming to work on time, hard no.
00:29:46
Speaker
That's the expectation. So there's things like that. And you have to draw a line, right? You have to create a tiered system for people to understand how they're going to scale at your company. And Josh has done that for our crew. We have tiers. You get educated in this. You get certified in this. You get your CDL in this. You get a raise.
00:30:08
Speaker
OK, you might get leadership after you get your arborist and we will support you every step of the way, but you have to do it. And if you're not doing that, you won't succeed here. But here's the thing. It's not off of what Josh and I think it's off of what you've done. And it's. That's. That's my perspective, because that's where I've been the most successful
00:30:37
Speaker
under coaches. I've been coached by more people than I can even explain. And not all of my coaches were good, but I had two solid coaches. One of them spoke at my
00:30:53
Speaker
my wedding and, uh, he, I would call him, he's like a father figure to me. He held me accountable. He lifted me up, but he wasn't like patting me on the back for getting to, to practice on time, if that makes sense. So, uh, he, he also allowed me to be creative. And I think that's another thing is like, if you want your staff to help you scale,
00:31:22
Speaker
You have to give them that opportunity to be collaborative with you and to understand budgets within the company and you being transparent within your leadership and also them saying, hey, I didn't like this.
00:31:38
Speaker
And you approaching it with like, I'm sorry, this is something that you and I discussed actually, Travis, is bringing on colors. We're trying to implement colors within onboarding for our staff. And this is another part where, I don't know, I just really think of things as a machine and well-working. There's a verse in the Bible that I just really believe in.
00:32:06
Speaker
2 Corinthians 12, 8. Oh no, it's 1 Corinthians 12, unity and diversity in the body. Without the hand, it's not going to work. Without the eye, it's not going to work. But you need all of it to be as strong as possible, like one body. I believe that in business. Brian's out killing it in sales. Am I going to go do that? No. No, I will support that. I think I could do sales.
00:32:34
Speaker
I'm not going to take his glory at all. He's going to ask me, Jack, can I go get some more education and sales? I really want to do this, this and that. I'm like, yeah, let's do it. Right. And if he does, we're going to
00:32:49
Speaker
give him more money or whatever. Sometimes people aren't motivated by money though within the company. Maybe they want more days off. So we're trying to figure that portion out. Do we have it yet? It's off of what we believe our staff is motivated by and everyone's motivated differently. And we're small enough. This is why it's so cool to be a small business is that like we know our staff, our employees, our friends, I would consider them friends, our family,
00:33:15
Speaker
intimately. We know what's going on and so like the reviews are, they keep us on track to set apart a time, to time block, to discuss where they are with their rocks. Is it realistic? Do you need more time? Should we put this on next quarter? Is it an open project? Is it closed? Do you need support with a different department?
00:33:42
Speaker
So there's, there's that, I don't know if I hopefully answered your question. Yeah, no, that did. That's perfect.
Hiring Based on Core Values
00:33:48
Speaker
Um, you mentioned the word onboarding earlier and it's also in the episode notes. So I had to ask about it. How have you worked to select the right people? So obviously culture is a big deal. So you don't want to bring in the wrong person in tree care.
00:34:04
Speaker
experience is somewhat important, but you can train certain aspects, but obviously hiring someone with the experience is a plus. But what are you guys doing to help identify those right people? So we do, uh, we hire and fire off of our core values and it's known. So when you get hired, you, a part of one of our questions is like, what are our core values or all of these core values? Okay. With you do align with them.
00:34:29
Speaker
We're making sure the boot fits for you, but also for us. Um, so in our interviews, I really try to make sure I'm not in charge of all the interviews anymore. I comment on the second interview. Um, I make sure that everyone coming on knows what, what they're doing because it is a worst going into something and having an expectation that's not
00:34:59
Speaker
accurate, you know. And so I try to be really transparent with whoever we're even thinking about as a candidate. Like this is what you're going to get. We're growing all the time. If you need constant structure, it's there in our meetings daily. I am not going to be making sure you're doing what you're doing. But I'll be able to see it in our tactical meeting on Monday in the flash report. So if it comes up that things aren't happening,
00:35:29
Speaker
That's that. We do two interviews. We hire and fire off of our core values. That's something that Traction implemented, and it's so nice because people know, okay, well, I don't want to continue education. This might not be the place for me. Oh, they want me to get my arborist. This might not be the place for me. Oh, they want me to get a CDL. I have a DUI. Let's be real. That's the thing. There are...
00:35:58
Speaker
Lots of things that the core value people analyzer allows people to come in amped or know that it's not the right fit. And that's one of, that's one of the ways that we, you do plus minus, plus minus, and if they get like three minuses, they're out. First time I came across you, Jackie, you and Josh was, I think it was at the equip expert or was it TC? It was TCIA?
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah, it was the TCIA Expo in November. Yeah. So that's where Heather Dirksen during her, which we've had here on the podcast. She's amazing. She brought you guys up as a case study. And so there's something I actually do want you to talk a little bit about, which was highlighted there, but about culture. And so there were several of the breakout sessions that I attended. And this was one of the consistent things that
00:36:53
Speaker
most people in the industry, regardless of size, regardless of location, it was a challenge for everybody was talent, talent acquisition or attraction acquisition and retention. And so one of the things was a lot of the people that were having challenges with it were identifying, I just can't find the right people, I can't keep them.
00:37:17
Speaker
Um, we've got more things that came up that I was like, Ooh, and it's, uh, we got more work than what we can. We can't grow our company because we can't find enough staff for things up. So there, there's a bunch of different, uh, ways to maybe approach that depending on, on the individual or the specific challenges. But one of the things that when, when I saw some of the people who were speaking on stage or the panels or things, there was, there was, I think I'm good to pick Kim. I said, what?
00:37:45
Speaker
In every one, there was at least one person that didn't seem fazed by it. One business owner or one company in the lineup that was like, that's not an issue for us. And I think it all came back down to culture. And one of the things that was a through line for that too, was they started early on on identifying, one, they knew what their culture was. Two, they didn't compromise on it. Three, they really tried to set the expectations like you were just saying,
00:38:14
Speaker
early on, both for the person that was looking to come into the company, but then also for the company to evaluate them. There was one that, uh, that highlighted what they were doing and they did ride alongs, which I thought was awesome. Um, where they, they took the potential employee and put them out on a truck with the crew, uh, for the job they'd be doing and let them go out, um, from the very beginning of the day, all the way through the end. And.
00:38:42
Speaker
There was two things. One, so there was no ambiguity about what the day looks like. It's going to be long hours. You're going to see what the crew does. They work hard. They're out in the elements. They're working both with the customers and on projects and the variety of challenges. So they had a clear picture of, yeah, I'm not expecting to be sitting in a truck in air conditioning or have extensive breaks.
Importance of Strong Company Culture
00:39:08
Speaker
So there was very little ambiguity.
00:39:10
Speaker
about what they would do, but then also their staff, so whoever the foreman or the crew leader was, was also evaluating them. So when I'm over here picking up trash or when I'm talking to the customer, are they hanging out by the truck or are they here engaged? What type of work ethic? How are they interacting with the crew? Are they trying to be helpful? Are they trying to find work? Things like that. And those were cultural things and that particular business owner
00:39:38
Speaker
has a very large lawn care, landscaping tree care company in the Midwest. And he didn't have any issues. He's like, we don't have, you guys are focused on the wrong thing. You're hiring the wrong people. And how important that is early on to find the right fit and the culture and bring in the right people. Yeah. Well, I think there are so many contracting businesses, but other businesses in general, especially since COVID where the labor market has been short, there's been so many people just hiring
00:40:08
Speaker
just to be blunt, a warm body, you know, and then they have this insanely high employee turnover. Then they sit back and wonder why, why is my culture not right? Why are we having these incidents? Why is my customers not happy? Cause it manifests in other issues. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense to take the time to do like what you're saying, Jackie and actually onboard people, train them.
00:40:30
Speaker
make sure they're actually a fit for you. Yeah, you have to. I mean, here's just one little thing. If, if people are looking to update how they onboard is, um, ask them to come to your, your, um, interview with your core values and with your mission statement. And if they can't find it, and if they don't, they're not there because you want people drinking the Kool-Aid. If like one of our,
00:40:57
Speaker
one of our core values is family. And if that doesn't live in you, and if it doesn't put a fire in you, and if you're not able to make a decision, because that's what Josh and I say is like, if we are not available, if someone in leadership is not available, go back to the mission statement. And if it aligns, if your decision to move forward aligns with our mission, our vision, and the core values, do it.
00:41:23
Speaker
If it doesn't, don't. Don't do it. Don't do any of it. Run, right? Not really run. But if it doesn't align, move forward in a different manner, professionally, obviously. But if it does align, go for it. Set a standard. Give great service.
00:41:44
Speaker
Travis I know you've been dying asked so those have listened to a few podcasts knows that Travis Really likes tech stuff and I know Travis you've been itching to probably ask Jackie a few questions. So Ask away, bro. Yep So this came out of out of some of this.
Integrating AI and Technology in Business
00:42:02
Speaker
So yes, I do like technology innovation as a human augmentation in the sense that also we're part of the
00:42:11
Speaker
the digital natives in that we've seen technology evolve, but we've also seen life before technology, especially as we know it today. We all have supercomputers in our pockets via the smartphones. I see it as a tool to be leveraged to enhance our capabilities. And we live in a unique time too, in that there's some significant things that have happened through our life
00:42:41
Speaker
time, if you're in your 30s and 40s, just in 50s, the evolution and the compounding effect that we've seen the technology where, and Brent, this is going to be maybe another conversation for another day, but as far as what led us to the time where like we've lived through in the last 10, so it's 2007, the smartphone came out. So that was kind of the delineation point where
00:43:09
Speaker
We've seen technological evolution up to about then. But something happened around 2007, 2008, where all these sci-fi technologies, video chats, AI, robotics, drones, we didn't have it. And then all of a sudden, we did. And it just happened like that.
00:43:34
Speaker
what we're seeing as far as the evolution of them since then, since the 2007, 2008 period, just all of a sudden they're talking back to us and their integration. And there's that integration piece, a whole other dynamic that's both amazing and scary at the same time in that you've got exponential technologies in their own right, whether it's blockchain or 5G or AI, robotics, whatever.
00:44:01
Speaker
in their own pillars, they're incredible in producing massive capabilities and changing industries. But then you're seeing convergence happen, where they're taking two or three of these exponential technologies and combining them. And then it creates whole new frontiers that weren't even fathomable prior to. And it's continuing to do that year over year, where it's just moving the needle so far above what these timeline horizons where we thought, well, that technology is actually like 10 years away is actually
00:44:31
Speaker
three years or it just happened. And so the challenges that that poses is, and what makes it scary for people in our industry is that you go to the equip expo and there was drones and robotics and AI everywhere, video with AI integration and robotics and software. And it can be daunting for people to look at and say, where do I even start? I have no idea what any of that is. I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing
00:45:01
Speaker
because that seems crazy and I don't even know where to start with that. So that was a challenge and there's cultural things in there too, but how do I bring these technologies in? I see that there's something, there's potential there that I can do things that I couldn't do before or answer some challenges or add capabilities
00:45:27
Speaker
But where do I even start is one component, but then two is it's expensive or I don't understand it and I don't have staff that can understand it. If you don't start now, that's the first part that people have to do is you have to start learning about all of these things. Because as they converge and create, you take three or four of these technologies, put it together, you're definitely not going to understand it. And as companies, we're talking about
00:45:55
Speaker
companies, startup companies or smaller companies that are more agile and can pivot, they'll adopt this stuff much faster and implement it. And if you don't know what it is, you don't see how it's about to disrupt you. You also don't see what the capabilities are that you could potentially integrate this and it solves some problems for you. It makes you more efficient or saves you some money or adds capabilities that makes you more competitive.
00:46:23
Speaker
So you guys, and one of the things I love about what you've done, Jackie, is when one of our first meetings, I got the first notification said that your AI personal assistant has joined the meeting and is going to take notes. And I love this. So I love that you're very forward on the technology innovation side. So one, can you talk a little bit about
00:46:52
Speaker
what you've done as far as the technologies in a way that people who might be looking at this like, I don't, I see all that out there. I don't even know where to start. I don't know how it would benefit me. I see more challenges than actual opportunities with it. So like for somebody, the things that you brought in, how'd you approach it? How could some other people look at it? But then two is how do you integrate that into the culture without destroying the culture that's made you guys so successful? Especially like legacy companies that have had a business
00:47:22
Speaker
pre, like really edge technology, how do they maintain that family or that culture and their customer and their, uh, in, in corporate technology, uh, they're really cutting edge innovation without destroying the things that made them magical. Yeah. Okay. So, um, for me, I approached it as like return on time. Um,
00:47:45
Speaker
I really believe that AI can help me capitalize on some of my weaknesses. Um, so such as language, it's not where I, um, do the best job explaining myself through writing. Um, so I use chat to UPT often. Um, that is a secret of mine. Uh, if you receive an email from me,
00:48:13
Speaker
that looks real polished and real professional, it is because I wanted my response to be that way. But that, I wouldn't describe myself as being eloquent as a writer. And it's not something that I enjoy.
00:48:27
Speaker
So I try to get my return on time by just throwing something in. And that's just so simple, but it probably saves me legit 10 minutes because it is hard for me to get my thoughts onto paper because I do use a lot of fluctuation in my voice. I can come off extremely blunt. And so I have to tell chat GPT to like warm this response up, right? Like make it more sensitive to things.
00:48:57
Speaker
So that's just one super simple thing that I've onboarded. Another thing, I love saving time. Do I want my administrative assistant at our office wasting her time taking notes and emailing the staff on
00:49:14
Speaker
our action items after our tactical meeting. Oh, especially if AI can do it. Like Fathom. Fathom was listening. I had a whole meeting notes that I sent to Josh. This is what we reviewed in the podcast. Is there anything that you want me to discuss further? Is there things like that? I didn't have to write that up. It did it for me. I did tweak it a little bit. You have to review what it does. You have to. You can't just put things in and then
00:49:43
Speaker
whoops and whoops I didn't mean to do that right but that's with everything um so I approach AI as return on time um some people might return approaches return on investment also because I think it can so I'm not wasting our office administrative time
00:50:04
Speaker
with asking her to be the note taker in our meeting. I can have AI do that now and she can spend time creating a campaign email because we need higher close rates so we're out using our CRM.
00:50:24
Speaker
On Canva, another AI option, you can use Canva. You don't have to hire a graphic designer to do your branding. I believe AI and chat GPT, I mean, not AI, Canva and chat GPT coincide now, I think. I can't remember. But if you're just wanting to get started, I would really look internally
00:50:53
Speaker
at your company and yourself, what are some of the things that I am not the best at that I don't have enough to hire? If that makes sense. Like I don't have enough of this happening to hire for it. Maybe AI can do it for you. Another
Grapple Saw Truck for Safety and Efficiency
00:51:14
Speaker
thing that put us on the map, Josh can discuss about this down the road with you guys, but our grapple saw truck.
00:51:22
Speaker
It's remote controlled. We get people calling and telling us it is like watching a ballet. It keeps our staff safe. It keeps everyone on the ground. And our grapple saw truck drives the job with two guys. That's it. That's the minimum is two men. We like three for safety.
00:51:44
Speaker
But if someone's off, that crew isn't being rescheduled because we just need two. Our grapple saw truck is another person, essentially, doing two people's jobs. So that has made us so much more effective. Time saving, obviously, again, ROT, ROT. So I would look internally, where can you save time? I know that people are sending
00:52:13
Speaker
the drones out, right, to do estimates. It's wild. Insurance companies are doing that. It's so cool. So don't get paralyzed by how much it can offer. Just look internally like, where could I maybe implement? Another place that we're implementing is Tranuel. It's our learning management system. So when we onboard staff, instead of me sitting with every single person, I can just forward them everything.
00:52:41
Speaker
And they take quizzes. Another thing, chatGPT can create a quiz for you off of your information that you already have set up that you can put into training. I don't have to do that. I'm not a teacher by trade. There are so many ways that you can capitalize on AI without you needing a tech department.
00:53:10
Speaker
if that makes sense. But you're leading the AI initiatives, or is there anybody else on the team that's partnering with you on that and can do it? I am right now. I'm hoping that Rachel onwards with me, I know that Aaron, our master arborist is really into a lot of tech. He loves technology. He's like, he's so good at it. So
00:53:40
Speaker
Cause that was, that was brought up. There was some webinar that I was on that I had like six or seven different speakers of people in the industry. And that was a point that was brought up by one and then echoed by the rest that more and more of your companies in the space need to start either hire somebody who's focused on the technology. You can go look at it or identifying that talent internally that can put on that hat and start looking at it through the lens of.
00:54:09
Speaker
What are the opportunities? What are the challenges? What's out there? How does it make sense to us? Because there's so much more happening in the technological realm, even data. So I think John Deere has a new widget to whatever that you can just integrate into the software of your equipment. And it does incredible data analytics, time, position, efficiency. So even just the data on stuff.
00:54:38
Speaker
somebody who has technologically and this is this is where maybe a lot of the younger generations too it can be a talent attraction and acquisition and retention piece of giving them a little bit different career trajectory where they can that they definitely love technology but they also love that the industry shown that they can leverage their time since they were five and six years old with a
00:55:07
Speaker
game controller that they can, there's a place for them. They can help evaluate robotics or something, but that there is a career for them in this where they can leverage maybe a passion in technology, put on another hat, carve out some time, look at this AI or look at the technology, be a technology scout for us, what makes sense, what doesn't. I love that a technology scout. I need a technology scout.
00:55:35
Speaker
I think you're probably serving as it now.
Embracing AI for Scaling Business
00:55:39
Speaker
But yeah, there's definitely opportunity there.
00:55:44
Speaker
I love that. Yeah, I would just say anyone that's listening to this, do not feel that it's outside of your learning capacity for it. I actually think it makes things easier and it allows you to scale quicker. So if you can get ahead of it and learn just a few things that's within
00:56:08
Speaker
your specialty, I would onboard it yesterday because AI is changing as we're talking. It really is.
00:56:17
Speaker
and it's amazing. You brought up the TCIA Expo and I know so we went to it in the GIE. GIE is the lawn and landscape. Okay. This year and Travis and I were talking afterwards like it had been a couple years since I've been to TCIA and several years since GIE and going this year and seeing the amount of technology difference from just five years ago was mind-blowing this year from robotics to
00:56:46
Speaker
I mean, I can actual robotic mower, not just remote control, but actually robotic, you know, and actually a big mower, not a little tiny back door for a, you know, 100 square foot yard. Mind blowing. So there's so much, like you said, so much opportunity and change that's happening, but is going to happen. When you look back in history, where there's been companies not
00:57:09
Speaker
you know, adopt these things early, they do get left in the dust. So even if you're thinking, hey, this is stupid, this is dumb. While there may be opportunity in that, you know, so like, eventually, what I can see with AI is, there may be some human element of things removed. Yeah, you don't want to be
00:57:29
Speaker
Exactly. People want to still have that human element. So you've got to preserve that. Yeah. Like you said, still grab the stuff that it can do easily for you and be efficient and help you there. But even the grapple saw truck, that's still fairly new and trickier. To me, that is the only way to do backyard and tree removal like what you're doing. The only way to do it. And we talked to another company at TCIA.
00:57:55
Speaker
Very similar story to yours. They've reduced their crew size, they're more efficient and they're making way more profit than they were prior. And it's like you said, it's a lot safer as well. So anyway, just my thoughts on kind of the tech a little bit as well, but I love it. Well, as we kind of start to just naturally wrap this up, is there any other questions or comments, Jackie, that you kind of wanted to get out there today?
00:58:18
Speaker
Yeah, I just want to maybe encourage people to just empower their people. I'm constantly surprised.
00:58:30
Speaker
by what people are made of and learning your staff's strengths, but also learning their weaknesses because there's power and a weakness, there's opportunity in it. And just, I guess, sticking to your vision and mission and not swaying at all, at all. Be stubborn in that portion. For sure. I love it. And stick to your core values. Oh yeah, for sure. For sure.
00:59:00
Speaker
But yeah, I don't really have anything else. Awesome. Well, you gave the listeners a lot of books to read as well. So you all got your homework cut out for you on this one. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about that. Attraction, death by me. I just want to make you do it. Like you can do it. I was making a different industry.
00:59:19
Speaker
and empowering others is huge, so. Yeah, and empowering others is a big part of EOS, the entrepreneurial system, so yeah. Yes. I definitely love that, because most people, it's a leadership style. People don't want to necessarily just be told what to do all the time. So when you can hire the right people, they give them the power to kind of have an entrepreneurial mindset on whatever their task is, or their job, or their division, or department. I think that's huge. Travis, what are your final thoughts?
00:59:50
Speaker
whatever they don't have. No way you got it. No, it leads into other rabbit holes. Like it's going to lead into adding more minutes to this. If I say no, no, we got to stop. This can't be a three hour vlog. Um, no, I mean, I love the discussion or this is definitely on, on track with where a lot of people are in the industry. There, there's tons of opportunities. There's tons of challenges. And this is one of the reasons, um,
01:00:19
Speaker
why this podcast exists is to help peel the layers back, find those who are winning, bring solutions and work through challenges and help people win. Entrepreneurially, specifically to the industry, but finding those voices who are on the path of doing great things, who are solving problems and helping amplify those voices and giving tools back out into the community. We all need each other in this.
01:00:49
Speaker
A lot of this, there's some lessons that can be learned historically and through trends and patterns and some principles and things that never change, but there's also overlaying the current times, whether it's technology or market forces or things that are unique and mentorship, whether it's direct relationship or books or learning, but also from those within the community that are experiencing challenges that are working through it, that are finding solutions and giving back into the community is all something that is going to require
01:01:19
Speaker
Uh, what, um, I'm going to butcher it, but for those that have been given great things is great responsibility. So this is part of man quote or something. Um, but, um, it's incumbent upon us. Uh, the rising tide raises all ships in the sense that, uh, we do have a responsibility to give back to those around us and help where we can. Um, and so that's love having you on Jackie. You're one of those warriors out there and Oprah's and very proud of what you guys have accomplished and are doing. And I hope this is just.
01:01:49
Speaker
is the start of a great relationship between all of us. Yeah, I agree. I think there's so much more here. So I'm excited about it for sure. Absolutely. Jackie, you've been an awesome guest in the show. Love your insight, your mindset about business, what you're doing. Love it all. Yeah, thanks. Thank you so much.
01:02:09
Speaker
So thank you for your time and thank you for being on with us. We'll probably definitely have you back on. Maybe you and your husband or one of you are both. Yeah, I'd love that. I think we're fun together. So I'd like to think that. We definitely strengthen each other. That's a thing in our marriage. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, sweet. Well, thank you, Travis. Thank you for all of you listening. Hope you love this podcast. I think there's a lot of good content, good value. So if you loved it, please share it. We'll see you all next time. Bye.