HVAC Thrives on People-First Leadership, Not Just Technical Know-How

This is This is straight straight out of Crumpton with your host, Greg Crumpton. Good day, everybody. Welcome to another episode of straight out of Crumpton where today we are coming to you from a beautiful sunny day in Greenville, South Carolina. I'm looking out the window and wishing a little bit that I was outside, but I'll I'll I'll tend to that later on. But I hope everybody is doing well. Great time to be alive. Great time to be a Canadian because we love our Canadian friends, and great time to be an American and, proud to be one. Hey, guys. Today, we got a special guest, a gentleman who I met. I think I met him two and a half years ago or so at a trade show, and he knows some people we know. And then we got to talking and thought, hey. This would be fun to do together. So today, we have Seamus Worry, who is the president of AVR up in Canada and that is a mechanical contracting service company, commercial, and a little bit of industrial probably, and all kinds of cool stuff taking care of business up in the Greater Toronto area. But, Seamus, welcome to the program. Glad to have you this morning. Great. Thanks, Greg. It's a great opportunity and an honor to be here with you this morning up in, Canada. It's Thanksgiving weekend. Yeah. So it's a bit of a long weekend. So I'm I'm having a a pretty chill fry or Monday morning. Well, see, those two words don't go together often, chill and Monday morning. So Yes. When you get the opportunity, you gotta make the most of this. So glad glad you carving out a little time for us. So tell us a little bio about you. You're you've been at ABR for over twenty six, twenty seven years. Give us a little history on that. Yeah. So I started, with ABR. That's kind of our rebranded name. It used to be, Art Lake Refrigeration. So I started here in nineteen ninety nine, And, this is really I came out of college. I did two years of HVAC at a community college. Started here, and it's been this has been life kind of for the last twenty six years, twenty seven years. And I started my apprenticeship here, became a licensed refrigeration mechanic. And, probably about fifteen well, fifteen years ago, had the opportunity. Art decided to retire and asked if me and another gentleman would like to take over, and that's our story. So we took over probably twelve, fifteen years ago or so. And when we first started, we had about six people on our team, and now we're twenty, twenty one people on our team. That's awesome, man. I love I love when people have the opportunity to work for a company, understand the original mission of a company, have a vision of what it could be, and then take it and make it. That's so cool. Yeah. Later this week, I'm I'm doing a panel. I'm hosting a panel. Excuse me. At one of our service logic, my day job, we're having a service operations meeting out in San Antonio. And the session that I and I feel so lucky to get to do this one is, technician to leader. And we I've got five guys who, like you and I, started, you know, as an apprentice and wound up, either running a significant piece of business or owning a business. So I'm really excited about that because to your point You know, when when you get to come through the system And you understand when it's really cold on the roof because you've laid there in the snow yourself. It's a whole different idea, and I I just love the perspective technician, leader, owner, or owner, manager, whatever you wanna put on the leadership solution. But I just I love that. So Yeah. How so, god, I got so many questions, man. They're all this this is right, like, in my freaking wheelhouse because I love this stuff. But, alright, first of all, Tell us about art. You know? Was that Okay. Cool place to order? Was he old school, like, busting the knuckles kinda guy? Yeah. Art was, Art's about eighty three, I believe, now, and he started. There was a large company in Canada named Comstock, and it became, a link Yeah. Group company, and he just didn't like that was going. And broke off on his own and started. So Art was one of those old school Mechanical guy. Like, he was he could tear apart anything and put it back together without even needing a manual. Right? So one of the beautiful things with working with Jaime is I got to learn how to tear apart MICAM Recepts, or five h machines and centrifugals And stuff were on the smaller side that you typically wouldn't do. You just you have a bad semi, you just take it out and put a new one on where we had the opportunity to really learn the nuts and bolts, if you will, of our trade. And he was a he was a sweetheart of a man. Like, he was a man of integrity and a man that would didn't matter if you were a first term apprentice or a thirty five year veteran. Right? He would be a guy that has time, that would explain stuff, and that's kind of where I learned. Like, we we try to lead in compassion and understanding. And as much as I'd say we're an air conditioning company, we're a person company. We're all about taking People from point a and help them get to where that ends up and might that might not even end up working for us for the long term. Like, we've had some guys that leave, and it's great to see them go from where they came to, their wife became a doctor, whatever, and transition to have to move far away. But it's it's great to see technicians or I'm gonna say, I'm I'm forty seven. So young kids, they come in when they're nineteen or twenty years old and transition to be adults. You see them have kids. And just to be able to come alongside and mentor and just talk to them about life. It's a it's a it's a great blessing and an opportunity for us. Okay. I I officially want to apply to work at ABR because that is So funny thing. You're forty seven. That's funny to me that you said they're kids because I'm sixty one. Yeah. It's a whole different thing. But, man, so you said a lot. We we are in the people business. You know, we're in the people business of serving, And we're either serving our people or we're serving the customers. Yeah. And what what's so cool to me, Seamus, right now is that we're in this weird place in life. I could stop right there, but I will elaborate. But we're at a place where everything is becoming more digitized, more of this, more of that, AI, you name it. If it's got a computer hooked to it, we're in it. But I really believe that there's a resurgence of people wanting human connection because I've been an advocate of this my whole career, and and people who know me will tell you. That. And and I've gone through various stages of learning and and and maturing. But when you can take people like like that gentleman that you said, you know, his wife became a doctor. He had to move to to support her. Or with her. It is amazing at the human connections you make, And I I wrote about this in my book That when when you have the chance to help somebody buy their first home or, you know, we we had a college program where we would help people pay tuition, or we would pay their tuition, It alone as they maintain their their score academically. I I've given that money to the wife of the tech because she needed to go to school. And those bonds, man, as you you will attest to Yeah. They're They're they're lifelong. You know? Yeah. Like, yeah, that guy may have moved a long way away with his wife or her job. I I would just about bet a hundred dollar. Well, I bet a hundred dollar US, so that'd be a big boost for you right now. Yep. That if you called him and said, hey. I need you to meet me in in Mexico City tomorrow morning at three AM, the dude would probably be there if I had to guess. Yep. Absolutely. I call it the people factor. Yeah. Right? Where we're a small enough company that we can still have the opportunity to build into lives. Right? So it's it's more than just a job here. It's part of A team. Right now. So Well, I love it. I've got three youngsters that I'm, doing some mentoring with right now who are young and in their they're either union apprentices or nonunion working through a a real apprenticeship. And it's the When I'm able to talk to them about what you and I are talking about, not just peer to peer, but as a a old dude like me with busted knuckles who's been there and grounded out, and get give those guys some guidance of what this should look like, could look like, would look like if. And, man, they're, you know, every generation we hear, oh, this new generation, this, that, or the other. I'm I'm very excited about the new generation because the youngsters who want to work and demonstrate a willingness to work really freaking like to work. Yep. It's really fun to see these these young guys separating themselves from the herd. And, man, they're getting after learning, having a ball. So that's what those kind of guys are what it sounds like you guys build. And Yeah. You tell me about your tenure. I I'm assuming y'all have a lot of people who like to stay with you. Yeah. So most of our all almost all of our employees are long term employees. So we have, so I've been with Art Blake since nineteen ninety nine. Ken, who I actually apprenticed under, and he's a he was a he's a partner here. He has been with Art for, like or in this company for thirty five years, I believe. And the majority we have some newer guys now just because transition. Right. And just growth, but most of our employees are Fifteen year at least employees. So and we're not perfect. Like I always tell people, we make mistakes as much as the next guy, but our doors are open, and let's communicate that and walk through that together. And, you know, it's it's a team effort, A hundred percent. So whatever we can do to make your life easier, whatever they can do to make our life easier, that's kinda what we do. And the the beautiful thing is as much as we talk about mentoring people, And work is a big part of that, but when you build that relationship and you can actually start talking into people's lives that are not work related, that's where I really get excited. Like, hey. What's it mean to be a man? What's it mean to lead your family or your loved ones. So that's that's a big passion for me. It's a it's a hard passion because you have fifteen different people. I think in every world, you have fifteen different ways to communicate. Yeah. So it's it's a hard thing, but it's a passion, so it doesn't really feel much like work all the time. You know, that that's a great little segue into what I think about a lot, Seamus. We have five generations of workers in the workforce right now. More more time more generations in the workforce now than we've ever had before. We we have the the eighteen year old z's, and then we still have You know, the boomers who are like me in aging out, we still have some folks in there that are, you know, seventy five, seventy eight years old who enjoy working. Yep. And they're either working because they need to, have to, or want to. But how you communicate with a seventy eight year old and how you communicate with eighteen year old, there's a there's a bit of a delta there. And A huge delta. And understanding that, makes us better as leaders and and communicators. And we have to study, and we have to watch, and we have to to be able to connect people on their terms. There's a lady, Lisa Austin, who who I've had the pleasure of studying under a couple of times, And she teaches on EQ, and understanding how to read people and communicating with them like they need to be communicated with, Not how I I want to be communicated with. Be because I I'm I'm sixty one. I'm the last year of a boomer. So what works for me is close to what works for you in your age group. Yep. The nuance of the individual and forget about glumping us into buckets of ages. I've got a young guy, Henry, who I'm working with, and Henry, he's an old soul in a young body. So Just because he's twenty, doesn't mean anything other than he can't buy a beer for himself. But Yeah. You gotta you gotta really work on that personality, in that personal communication. And I love the fact that you you pour back into these youngsters. So as you you said, you got, you know, aging out occurring with some of your your folks wanting to retire. Are you able to recruit Well, based on the company's name, sake, and reputation, do you rely on that, or is that a magnet? How how does that work for you? So so to be honest, it it always used to be a magnet. So like anything, times have changed. So back in the old days, If we needed to hire a guy, we just let the the the word no, and we usually get an applicant. But what we're finding now is nothing's changed with the name. Like, we're still recognized, which part of the reason why we've never changed the name is that reason. People always recognize in our in our service area. People always recognize that. But people, I think, are very cautious about leaving companies. From jumping from one to another, whether it be economic uncertainties or Just, You know, better know the devil you know than the devil you don't know. Right? And I know from talking from some of the guys that came from a very corporate environment to kind of what we are, that's the hardest change for them, not being managed with time. Like, hey. Our expectation is when you go and do a job, you do it, a, as safely as you can. You do it as efficiently as you can and properly so the customer it's all about customer experience that the customer's like, Hey. When we think about air conditioning and heating, they automatically think about us. We're the first thing that comes to their mind. So I know for guys that get, oh, you have a rooftop. You have fifteen minutes to do it. A lot of our All of our guys have no idea when we're telling them to go do a job, how much how many hours are on it or how long? Because that's really in in insignificant to us as far as customer experience. Like, we want you to go do the job. The big thing is get home to your family at the end of the day. By hands down, like, make sure you're we're safe, make sure we're efficient, and make sure the customer is always taken care of. Yeah. That that means a lot. And, you know, the the world of private equity coming into the All the trades, for sure. But in particular, the HVAC trade. I've learned a lot, obviously. We Service Electric is private equity backed. Yeah. And the way that we run our businesses is really a hybrid Because unlike some of the name brand, big big national corporations, we don't give our guys a playbook. So we we want them to run their business like they've they've traditionally ran it with a few caveats that we we wanna learn about the business financials and that kind of stuff. But Sure. It it's it's amazing the different structures people work under. Like, when I worked at York International before JCI bought them, and everything was freaking cookbook. You know? You had if you were gonna put a seal in a in a YT machine, it took this many hours. Yep. Well, they they make no differentiation between are you fourteen stories underground in a bunker, Or could you back your truck up to it with a with a garage door? There there was there was no deviation. You still had x amount of hours to do x task. And what what you know, I grew up an independent contractor, love independent contractors, love small business. I love the the twelve, fourteen technician business. I think that's such a freaking sweet model because you're you're big enough to have some money where you can do some stuff, but you're not bound by the bank. And I bet. Such a such a sweet spot to be in as a business. So congrats for for keeping that tradition alive. I love it. Thank you. It's, you know, our country's plural, both of us, are are we're made up of of many, small businesses. And my crazy buddy, Bob Baker, you know, he's a plumber up there in in Calgary. Just watching what he does as a as a plumber and how he runs his business. He's got two kids coming into the business. I just I like that because we're able to instill the values of the company and why you either bought it or in some cases, like me, nineteen ninety nine, I founded my company. And we we set out on these journeys, Seamus, in my opinion, because you have a vision of what could be. And when I was a service tech and a project manager and all that stuff I did for the big company, and and they were independent, great company, still are. But I would I would make these notes in this crazy little black notebook about about, okay. I'm driving down the interstate going to point a. I just left point b, and I passed two of my truck my my my coworkers going the other way on the interstate. And I would always think, I wonder if they could have stayed up there and ran this call that I'm driving forty five minutes for. Yep. Because we were on separate teams, was it a lack of communication? You know? That those kind of things always resonated with me. And so when I started my company, my wife and I, I would just use these nuggets. Like, okay. Let's be an early adopter of GPS. And we're not gonna use it as a whip. What we're going to do is make us better with it so that if somebody is maybe they're driving to pick up a part, but we have an emergency and they're about to pass the building, we could be first responder and and get somebody on-site in fifteen minutes. Just because we can see on a dot on a map that that dude's about to roll by that building. Hundred percent. And and using those kind of techniques and having that personal relationship, like you said Knowing the nuances of your people, knowing the nuances of your customer That's why I just think that that size of business is so awesome because It's so manageable. Well, like you said, you you you're big enough to where you have some mass, but you're able to serve at a very high level, your customer. Yep. Yeah. A hundred percent. And that's that's our goal. Right? Like, we have some pretty nice accounts now that's taken years to, kinda get. And, yeah, like, our big goal is how can we be responding in a timely manner. Doesn't matter that we're busy. That's not the customer's fault. Right? How do we how do we do that? You know, I spend a lot of time thinking about three things, Recruiting, Ret Retaining and retraining. Because those three things are going to be such an important aspect of our industry moving forward. We have to keep recruiting quality folks into the business. There's no doubt. We're we're retiring five. We're bringing in two to three depending on who you ask. Yep. Retaining, to to your point about having a lot of legacy folks with you. Making sure that we're doing what they need to wanna stay with us. Are are we offering the training? Are we offering you know, maybe the guy doesn't need another dollar an hour. Maybe he needs extra day off because he's got a grandkid now that he wants to go pick up. Whatever. Whatever that percent. Whatever that is. And then the the third piece I'm really excited about is the technology coming into our space now through Different different, what's the right word, growth in the electronics world and and making things more affordable, like having monitoring equipment on a rooftop unit. And so that we don't have to I'll I'll tell you one thing that drives me nuts about our industry. Every four every three months, we go out there and we throw away clean air filters, you know, because the OEM or whoever said, we're gonna do quarterly PMs, and we're gonna change filters every every quarter. Yep. Alright. Hey. That's stupid of us as an industry. How about let's put a delta p switch on the filter and change the filter when it needs it? Yep. So there's been some advances over the last, really, the last couple of years that have draw driven cost of electronics down and and, like, in Clarity is a is a controller that I love. Yep. And what Crowder Jim Crowder's doing with that so that we don't have to send a seasoned forty seven year old technician to look at a rooftop unit when we can have real time monitoring of that equipment, and we only need to go change the belt on that unit, now we can send the first year premise. Yes. So so making our efficacy of our technicians high is going to be something that's going to be fun to watch develop. Well and funny you should say that. We we have some of that going right now, and that's completely changed the way we do our service business. So Yeah. We do a lot of VRF work and a lot of chiller, large tonnage machines, and we have remote I call it passive monitoring because we don't have someone sitting in front of a computer watching it, but it also allows us to triage and actually look at it and see what's kinda going on and tell the guy, hey. This is what we're seeing when you before you go to site, and if you might need something, you can grab it on the way and speed up the, like you said, the efficient the efficiency of how we're handling calls. And that's completely transformed the way we're doing our service business in a lot of aspects. It's it's an exciting time, actually. Yeah. It it really is. And, you know, the And I say the only one of the things that I think about is how the customers traditionally, they're they're conditioned to see us showing up every ninety days. How do we convince them other than through trust that if we sell you a maintenance agreement, you you don't have to worry about how many times you see us because we're on it. And Yeah. You know, a lot of times, I don't wanna have to mess around with us anyway because we gotta get in the penthouse. We gotta get in the basement. Whatever. Yeah. But if if we go ahead. Yeah. So to that point, what I've kinda done on some of our customers that wanna see us log machines, we'll do it. I think there's there's a lot of validity in actually going and put your hands on equipment. Yeah. Totally. Don't think you're ever gonna see remote monitoring taking that because you still have your ears and your eyes to see what's going on. But we're telling our customers, like, hey. We're gonna do, if we have if we have monthly inspections, we're gonna do one month On-site the next month virtual, and we'll shoot you a report with what we found. And they're they're open to it. Like, it's it's, yeah, it's it's a it's a good thing. Well, I I think if we do it well, it's the chance to give them better service. Yeah. For the same money. And I I totally agree with going to the site. I think about I'm I'm looking across the street at a medical office building, and I think, okay. Those rooftop units, we don't need to look at them quarterly. So if we could if we could sell the concept of remote access, however you wanna define it. And go every every four months to do a triannual. And And use that additional revenue that we would have gone out there for and offset the equipment cost with that, I think it's got some some merit to it. Huge carrot. So I'm I'm I'm looking forward to to watching that develop. So Yeah. Alright. Tell us about the future ABR. What's what's that look like for you guys? You got if if I recall, you've got family that may or may not be interested and maybe kids in college? Yeah. My son so I've been I've been blessed with, of course, an amazing wife that is the glue to our to our household. She's a phenomenal woman, and I've been blessed with four children. Four? Yeah. I got two girls and two boys. And which is a big family nowadays, but Yeah. We love it. So, yeah, my son is actually going to school for HVAC, and he, worked for us last summer. And it was, it was an experience, you know, as separating work from, parenthood, but it went okay. And, yeah, if he we're not talking about succession plan because he has to, and he started sweeping the floor, moving all the way up. And then my other son wants to get into a trade too. I'm not pushing them into HVAC or anything. But if that's if that's where they wanna go and they wanna work here and it works for both of us, we'll do that. But as a we're always like, I'm always trying to look five or ten years ahead. Right? We got into the VRF game at the very beginning, and that now has transformed to a large part of our our service work and our install work. So now, like, our big thing up in up in Canada is decarbonization, which Yeah. I think it's going everywhere. So we have some pretty substantial, like, heat pump, geothermal that we've partnered with some companies, and that's like, we have university. We have we're a big university town, and they're doing a lot of deep energy retrofit. Jobs where we're using. Gone are the days of forty five, fifty five, eighty five, ninety five water size. Like, we're heating buildings off of, condenser water, if you will, hundred and thirty, hundred and forty degree condenser water. So it's exciting. For sure. And now the big thing is getting our team up to speed on, like you said, retraining. So part of our part of our training structure is when we came out of COVID where we couldn't really meet and all that kind of stuff, we noticed a disconnect about teamwork. Like, everybody was kind of like an island. So every Monday morning, we have our our shop meeting where all the guys come into the office, and we do Some technical training. We do safety training. We do some code adaption stuff, but there's always a technical aspect about something new or something that we're working on or something that we've ran into on the previous week to bring our team up. But one of the cool things that it's morphed into is one week a month, we all go for breakfast as a team. Oh, man. We just go for breakfast. We talk about fishing or hunting or whatever. We don't talk about work at all. And what I see a significant change in the way our team interacts with one another. Because of that. Right? So, yeah, we take an hour. Every week, it's an hour, and then we also send our guys for we do a lot of lock of our boiler stuff and like, some carrier startup work. So we we invest in that as well. But on a weekly basis, we always need to be picking our guys up and trying to help move them to the next building block, if you will, on their on their training plan. I love that, Seamus. Yeah. I hosted a a group of fifty last week in Denver for our, we do a semiannual safety meeting. Yep. We do in in person training, try to get one person from each company. Sure. Yeah. Know, we had two excellent keynotes, and we had really good presentations throughout the day. But the magic happens either at the bar or Yeah. One on one conversation sitting and talking with each other, the human aspect of what we do. And think about, you know this, as a tech, We spend a lot of time talking to the windshield. Yep. But it doesn't always tell us what we wanna hear. No. It does tell us what we wanna hear, not what we need to hear. Exactly. When when you're, when you're with your your like minded people That that strong, and and congrats on on doing that. I think it's super important. And do you order is it pea meal? What's the bacon? Yeah. Yeah. You gotta you gotta have the pea meal. Yep. I had female bacon last or two weeks ago when we went, but it's definitely not Canadian bacon. It's female bacon. Yeah. Your your boy's up there at I was with Alex, and we were at Chamberlain. Mike and Alvin, we all went to breakfast last time I was up there, and they educated me on PMill. And I'm I'm a fan. I'm a fan now. I hope they paid for you. I hope they paid for your breakfast. They did not pay. I I paid for theirs. So but good stuff. But, look, I know we're we're running up on our time, but Sure. I hope I hope that people will enjoy this conversation because it's so it's so important that all of us remember to to take care of our our Our friends, family, and and one layer deeper are coworkers. Because so many coworkers, we we don't know what's going on in their lives hour to hour. We only see them for a bit. Yep. And and, you know, I was listening to the news this morning, and, you know, they had the hostages released from Hamas and Israel and all that. I was so proud to see. And Dana Perino on Fox said one thing that I thought was really cool. And George Bush, who she worked for, one of our presidents, said to her one time, when things are not going well for your friends, that's the day you need to call them and and hug them mentally or physically, however you can. And Yeah. That is so important, you know, just because, you know, you you see these memes all the time. People are going through something hour to hour that you have no idea about, and that is so true. So Yeah. And I would even say on that, it's not even hour to hour. It could be minute Five minute. Right? Good call. Yeah. You know? Like so that's the thing. Like, we just have to love people up and walk with them and encourage them. And, you know, I look back twenty five years ago on some of the the trials that we've been through as a family, and I would've never thought that we would've done that. But I remember my wife telling someone, you know, you just gotta do it by hour by hour. My wife actually says, some days, it's minute by minute. Right? Just get through to the next minute and You know? So Well said, my friend. Yeah. Well, folks, thank you all for for tuning in today and sticking with us and learned so much about AVR, and I I just love the the the word that comes to my mind is groundedness that the company operates on and being real and not being a fluffy company with a bunch of BS, but just good people serving good customers. So, Seamus, thank you for taking that time with us, my man. No problem, Greg. Thank you. My pleasure. So how can people learn a little bit more about ABR if they want to? We have a website. It's w w w dot art flake dot c a, Not dot com, but it is dot c a. You can look us up. Our number's on there. We they can call, I'd love to chat. It doesn't even have to be work related. Right? I'm happy to chat about life, about what we do, and if I can help, I'm I'm not a genius or but I have some life experience. So if I can help anybody in any way, we're happy to do whatever we can do. Awesome. Awesome stuff. Well, I can't wait to get up there next time and have a p o peameal breakfast with you. So And I'll and I'll buy for you. Deal. Deal. I'll take you up on it. Well, folks, thank you all again for staying with us. If you want more of this, go to greg crumpton dot com, not dot c a, but dot com, and check us out. We got a lot of cool stuff. I think, Seamus, I think you're, like, number one hundred and fifty something episode. So there's a lot of fun content that we've had over the last few years. Check out the book, guys, deep knowledge dot me. Deep knowledge dot me. You can buy yourself a copy coming up on the holidays, so buy your friends a copy. They'd love it, or at least I will, to help Yeah. Share share the message. But for now, Greg Crumpton signing off with Straight Out of Crumpton, and we will see you next time. Thank you.