James Heck: High Standards & Excellence Attract Top Talent

summary

In this episode, Branden Sewell interviews James Heck, the owner of Stingray Electric, discussing his journey from working on oil rigs to running a successful electrical contracting business. They explore the importance of professionalism, employee retention, communication systems, and maintaining high standards of excellence in the home service industry. James shares insights on building a strong team, the dynamics of working with family, and his vision for future growth. In this conversation, Branden Sewell and James Heck discuss various aspects of business growth, including the importance of mentorship, strategies for scaling a business, and the challenges faced in the construction industry. They explore the potential of acquisitions as a growth strategy, the impact of economic hesitancy on business, and the necessity of creative marketing and community engagement. The discussion also highlights the value of participating in home shows and the importance of building relationships to sustain business during slow periods. James emphasizes the need for effective leadership and investing in personal growth to successfully delegate tasks and improve business operations.

takeaways

• Branden Sewell is the owner of Seal Pro Painting and host of Off the Ladder podcast.
• James Heck co-owns Stingray Electric, focusing on residential and commercial electrical services.
• Professionalism and commitment to excellence are crucial in the home service industry.
• Delegating tasks is essential for business growth and maintaining quality.
• Effective communication systems improve employee accountability and customer satisfaction.
• Hiring through referrals leads to better cultural fits and employee retention.
• Maintaining high standards reflects on the business and attracts quality customers.
• Working with family can enhance business operations and flexibility.
• Investing in personal development is vital for business success.
• Future growth can be achieved through technology and delegation. Mentorship plays a crucial role in personal and business growth.
• Building relationships with general contractors can lead to more predictable income.
• Custom builders often provide better margins than cookie-cutter projects.
• Acquisition of smaller companies can be a viable growth strategy.
• Economic hesitancy can impact business growth; staying connected with customers is key.
• Creative marketing strategies can help businesses thrive during downtur

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:01.205)
Hi everybody, I am Brandon Sewell. I'm the owner of Seal Pro Painting in Central Florida and I'm also the host of the Off the Ladder podcast. And we exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. Today's guest is James Heck and he is the owner and founder of Stingray Electric here in Central Florida, right here in our market. I'm excited to introduce him to you guys and have him on the show today. Welcome, James.

James Heck (00:31.662)
Good to be here.

Branden Sewell (00:32.924)
Yeah, so if you could really quick just tell the listeners about you yourself, your business and a little bit of detail there.

James Heck (00:44.514)
Well, my wife and I both co-own Stingray Electric. We're a state certified electrical contractor here in Florida. And we try to service like Brevard and Indian River counties. We do mainly residential, commercial, new home construction. And we work with custom home builders. Also do run of the mill service calls or generact.

dealer and service center and we take care of people during hurricanes. Make sure they have power on their homes and repair them afterwards.

Branden Sewell (01:26.538)
That's awesome. You know, so we got introduced to one another through B &I here, Space Coast B &I, Central Florida. And, you know, one of the things that I could tell right away from, you know, just observing you and your business is there's a very high level of professionalism, obviously, like a commitment to excellence. And you can see that from, you know, everything from how you carry yourself to your brand.

everything. You can just see that. And so I'm excited to dive into what's really helped to create that in your business. So if you could tell the listeners a little bit about your background in your industry and you know kind of how you got into it, maybe where you got started. I know that you I think you said it's called a real longshoreman. Is that what they call it?

and you worked on, you did electrical stuff offshore on rigs, oil rigs.

James Heck (02:32.406)
Yes, that's where I got my initial start in Canada. I did all the apprenticeship training and on-the-job training in Canada first for the first like eight years of my career. And it started in land-based oil rigs, developing and commissioning drilling rig systems. It was fully automated with touch screens and...

TLCs VFD drives and drive big motors and Have feedback and controlled by drillers and other people on the rigs. So we'd help set that up all around the Based on land and also moved on afterwards to offshore drilling Electrical and electronics so we Take the same thing and just move it upscale and put it in

off the coast of Africa or the Middle East. Of course there's a high focus on safety and quality. You can't really mess around or fake it until you make it out there. You have to have your head in the game and have a high standard for work ethic. It's every day of the week, 12, 16 hours a day. And that's pretty much where I started out and I took that same work ethic and applied it to this company.

Branden Sewell (03:52.044)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (03:58.616)
Yeah, I mean, it's I could imagine that in that process you learned a lot and I'm sure that the stakes are high and that causes something in you to you know, you're you learn a lot about I'm sure leadership and hard work and all of those things that built you into the person that you are and gave you the character to run the business you have. of course, there's like

the need to like know and understand your trade, which I'm sure that's you learned a lot there. But how would you say that that experience prepared you for what you do now? And what are some of the strengths that it gave you that set you apart as a as a business owner? And I would say even specifically, like, let's talk because obviously this podcast is about helping home service business owners

learn how to get off the ladder, like where everything doesn't revolve around you. You don't have to be the one out there going and doing the work, but you can train people to have the same, you know, standards, the same work ethic, to care about your customers, to care about excellence. So how did that translate from like your background, your experience working there, translate into like your leadership and your business here and how you run things?

James Heck (05:27.426)
Initially it started out as just myself and you can only grow a certain amount and reach a certain amount of income based on doing everything yourself like wearing every hat. It comes to a point in time where you have to delegate things out and you have to be able to trust other people to do the same quality job that you've developed with the initial customers. it's a very, you have to take like

a lot of structure, lot of training, and be with your employees and make sure that your vision is being applied when they're on the job. And you got to take that and duplicate it and duplicate it and duplicate it however many times your workload or the economy lets you do. Or you scale up or scale down based on what the local economy is doing.

Branden Sewell (06:24.598)
Right.

James Heck (06:25.132)
Sometimes, unfortunately, you do have to let people go because nobody's calling or things get kind of stagnant for whatever reason. And you have to come up with quite innovative techniques to buck that trend. Even right now, kind of feels like we're in a trend of you have to get really creative to get more phone calls.

Branden Sewell (06:30.231)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (06:39.394)
Right.

Branden Sewell (06:47.574)
Right. Yeah.

James Heck (06:48.927)
We want to keep those key people and not let them go elsewhere.

Branden Sewell (06:54.516)
Yeah, you know, our people are so important, especially when you talk about getting off the ladder. Your people, your employees are really like essential to your business and even being able to continue, you know, an upward trend to be able to take on more work because, know, if you don't have the help, right, and you have like, let's say you have like a down month, but then you have a busy month, you know.

And then now you don't have any of your people. It's really hard to keep that business going or like keep yourself out of the field. Because if you let's say you have a down month and then the next month it's like, you know, a perfect example for us is September was or sorry, August was one of our worst months we've ever had in business out of the almost eight years we've been in business. And then.

You know, obviously, like you have a little bit of like panic that sets in. You're like, my goodness, is this like is this going to be a new trend? Are things slowing down? You're trying to like look at data and from like past years, you're looking at the trends. OK, it makes sense like for this month to be down, but not this down. And so you're trying to like work through all of that and make sense of it and make decisions to move forward. Well.

If you let that panic and fear grip you, you could make decisions that make things harder moving forward because we literally the very next month in August had our best month or sorry, September had our best month we've ever had in business. And so it's like, it's weird how that works. But that's what being a business owner involves. You know, it's like so.

Sometimes, you know, you don't know. You try to make the best decisions that you can based off of experience and past trends. But the economy is a crazy thing. You know, it's so unpredictable and yeah, so it's not easy to be in that position. But all that to say is our people are so important. And I'd like for you to go in right before the show, we were talking about

Branden Sewell (09:17.082)
you know how important your people are to your business and like i said obviously you guys are very professional. What are some of the like systems what are some of the things that you do to keep great guys to train them to instill your values and and the culture in them what does that look like for you guys at stingray electric.

James Heck (09:42.35)
You have to go and visit the job sites quite often and make yourself known and that just to have yourself out there to maintain quality, check the jobs and show that you actually do care and they do matter. Constant communication, one of the biggest benefits, one of the biggest things that improved

us was the jobber package that enabled it like easily communicate with customers, the customers to communicate with our technicians in the field, makes them accountable, uploading pictures. Everybody can see all that stuff immediately. Plus it's like even invoicing and quoting everything is quite streamlined, created a lot more time to focus on things that actually matter.

Branden Sewell (10:15.557)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (10:29.978)
Mm-hmm.

James Heck (10:41.966)
that the communication is huge between the employees and customers and yourself if you want to maintain and have a high quality and good morale. Before that, things kind of got lost a little bit and miscommunication.

Branden Sewell (10:42.234)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (10:53.391)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (10:59.579)
Yeah, that's good. I mean, I've literally had people come to work with me. And when they see that we use jobber and how organized everything is, it makes them really happy to see that because I've had guys who have worked for other contractors where they say like, you know, the way that they find out where they're going for the day is like waiting for a text from the boss every morning of like,

hey, this is where you're going today. And it might even be really, I had one guy tell me like one time he got directions that it was like, hey, go down to this light, turn at this road. And then it's like two driveways past the red mailbox. And it's like, that's not a way to run a professional business or to like manage your employees or have them sitting around wondering if they're gonna have work or where they're going that day.

I know for me, I want my employees to be able to get on Jobber and see their schedule and see they're booked out several months. They don't have to worry about whether they're going to have work or not. They know where they're going. They can look at the job. They know what tools they need. They know what they're going to have to take that day for the job. And, you know, I think that creates a better experience for our employees when we have that organization and that structure. It's just a

a better experience for them. so I can definitely say that to like, jobbers been a big value add for us. I'm curious, like with, you know, with being an electrical contractor, obviously, the the stakes are a little bit higher than with painting, and not to like devalue what we do. But, you know, with being an electrical contractor, it's dangerous, there's

James Heck (12:42.709)
you

Branden Sewell (12:57.88)
Obviously, think a lot more education that is needed and training and licensing and all of those different things. How do you find qualified people? How do you retain them? And what is the training process look like for them? You know, when they come to your company?

James Heck (13:22.188)
I the most successful way we had obtained or found employees that were worthy were just word of mouth. Just somebody will hear of somebody looking for work or looking to move on to somewhere they actually fit better. So that's where we got introductions to most of them. We've tried online job boards and that and it seemed to be just really expensive and produced.

nothing of quality. We would have like McDonald's workers applying to be lead electricians, which is, I don't even know why.

Branden Sewell (13:54.108)
Right.

James Heck (14:03.8)
But once you get the good people and you give them a grace period of like three months, see what they can actually do. And after that, we usually give them a substantial pay increase above what other people are paying. And that seems to hit home quite hard with a lot of people. They want to go home and provide for their families. Plus they get branded.

Branden Sewell (14:04.517)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (14:19.611)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (14:28.892)
Mm-hmm.

James Heck (14:31.17)
like newer company vans all stocked with good items, not chaos inside the vans. We buy all the big ladders and equipment for them and make them responsible for maintaining these things without treating it like garbage. It's personal accountability, you make them proud. You show up on job sites and communicate with them and they all know what to expect.

Branden Sewell (14:49.798)
Right.

James Heck (15:01.1)
what they have to do to set themselves above other companies.

Branden Sewell (15:05.809)
Yeah.

James Heck (15:06.318)
And you have a lot, same thing with the customers. We have like over 100 five-star reviews and we'd like to maintain that and it just keeps constantly coming in and it's tough to maintain that kind of status if you don't have people that care.

Branden Sewell (15:24.73)
Yeah, that's really good. You know, there's a couple things that I'd say is, I will echo what you're saying, is we used to do, you know, Indeed and even put out Facebook job posts and things like that and none of those hires ever stuck. You know, they'd come in, they might even be skilled.

But it always seemed like they weren't the right fit as far as culture or like caring about our customers. It's like they came in and their only concern was the money or it was like all about them and they couldn't see the bigger picture of the company, the culture, the customers and caring about what we do. And then what I started doing is I implemented like a referral

system where like my guys could refer somebody that they believed would be because like my guys who have been here for a while they know the culture they know what we're about and You know, obviously they've stayed because they like being here and they want to work with people who have the same you know heart and vision and want to be a part of the same culture the same values and

So they refer people who they believe are gonna be a good fit for that. And those have been my best hires that have stayed around the longest is those referrals. by far the best, in my opinion, the best way to go about hiring people is definitely through referrals. the other thing I was gonna touch on is, you you mentioned how important it is like,

when you have a high standard from like, you you said having like your branded vehicles and, you know, outfitted vans or trucks, with, know, you, you apply that same high standard and excellence to like every area of your business. And then that, I think people who, who care, they want to, they want that. Does that make sense? It's like someone,

James Heck (17:47.009)
Yes, yes they do.

Branden Sewell (17:48.932)
someone who like, it's like somebody who cares about your customers, they're gonna care about having a clean truck, having their tools organized, they're gonna care about the business. so I think you set that tone as a business owner of like what's expected through those standards of excellence. And like I said, I can clearly see like just on the outside,

and observing you and observing your business, I can see that standard of excellence. And so I think that's really powerful and important for business owners to understand. Like if you want to get off the ladder, if you want to be able to be a leader and employ people, you have to have a high standard for yourself and for your company and just how you do things. This might sound funny, but

I, not to say like I'm like super judgmental of people, but there's like things that I look at to determine somebody's character and whether they have like excellence. And it's like, you know, do they, are they well groomed? Are they well put together? Or do they just like look a mess all the time? You know, it's like if you're wearing a shirt, is it pressed or is it wrinkly and look like you like?

It like sat in a pile of clothes for six days and you just threw it on like, you know, what does your vehicle look like? I look at people's cars all the time and I feel like if like, is your car decent, you know, or like, do you just like have trash all over it? Is it a complete mess? Do you never wash it or take care of it? To me, that's indicative of like how you handle things. Right. So like if if you buy a

$30,000, $40,000 car and like that's a good chunk of change and you treat it like it's garbage. Well, how are you going to treat somebody's home or their customers? Does that make sense? It's like, yeah, think standards of excellence leave clues and people who value that look for that if that makes sense.

James Heck (19:59.756)
Yeah, complete sense.

James Heck (20:09.442)
Definitely. Believe the same thing.

Branden Sewell (20:12.834)
Yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, as business owners, that's why it's so important for us to invest in ourselves, you know, like investing in our own leadership, our own our own lives and being the best that we can be because that obviously reflects in our businesses and things like that. You know,

You talked a little bit about having the branded vehicles and wraps. How much do you think that's affected your business's success, like through your branding and like how you handle that with your business? I think it becomes like a hot topic with business owners of like whether it's necessary or whether it really makes a difference or if it's a waste of money. Could you speak to that and you know what your thoughts are on having, you know,

the vehicles that you have and having them wrapped in just your branding in general.

James Heck (21:07.724)
Yeah, my wife and CEO of the company, she spearheaded all the branding and communication with customers and setting up the job. Also, she was immensely helpful in developing the website, communicating with the website developers. It's a huge, huge, huge step above what

I initially came up with. So it's like, that's all hers. She does all the branding and all the creative stuff that goes into it. Communications with the customers, like talking nicely on the phone, very professional. She has like a really good, like kind voice and that kind of thing. She develops a big part of the brand is her, which is immensely helpful.

Branden Sewell (21:40.525)
Mm-hmm.

James Heck (22:05.902)
She takes pride in everything. Everything has to be a certain way and a certain look and if it's not then it's just like you said, it reflects on you. People that want quality want to see quality. Clean, organized, easy to communicate with, not like a big jumbly mess.

Branden Sewell (22:26.381)
Right.

Yeah, that's good. You know, I want to kind of jump into this really quick. So you and your your wife work together and I think in a lot of home service businesses that tends to be the case where it's like a husband and wife team. I've honestly like I've thought about like what would it be like if my wife worked with me?

What did your wife do before? Why did you guys decide to do it as a team? How does that work? How do you maintain a balance between business and your marriage? I'm just curious to know how that dynamic works out for you guys.

James Heck (23:19.214)
Her background is in a home health physical therapy, physical therapy assistant and now yoga instructor and like she goes into people's homes or facilities and heals them, helps them out. And it's always communicating with doctors, you name it, and the customers, making them feel safe and comfortable. And it's a very hands-on.

Branden Sewell (23:34.213)
Mm-hmm.

James Heck (23:48.44)
hands-on approach. But she took all of that and applied it to our business. Got into it right before COVID started. we use technology. We both work from home or wherever with our answering service. We use like a grasshopper service where you don't have to be tied to a landline. You can just assign it to whoever's phone for different extensions.

Branden Sewell (24:17.478)
Mm-hmm.

James Heck (24:17.538)
Yeah, you can even be in another country if you want to and still operate your business. The job and the grasshopper and all that.

Branden Sewell (24:25.946)
Right.

James Heck (24:27.38)
And she can maintain still working as a therapist, yoga instructor, you name it, and still operate business from wherever. Vehicle. You're not like stuck to an office. I'm mainly heading up the office and communicating with the crews and stuff, but she can be anywhere.

Branden Sewell (24:40.741)
Right.

Yeah, sure.

Branden Sewell (24:51.686)
Sure. So does that, I'm curious, would you ever see a time where you would hire someone to like work in her place or would that not, what do you think's like, like for example, in my business, I've always had like, I've hired employees who are administrators, but I've always thought in like the back of my mind, like,

my wife could do this. Maybe we should just both run the business together. But I'm just curious, like, like, how do you make that decision on which one is more beneficial? Or have you guys ever considered having somebody else do that role? Or what's kind of your reason for deciding for your wife to do it?

James Heck (25:41.458)
You always want somebody that's an officer in your company or with a real vested interest to be the first person to communicate with your customers and do all the branding and that kind of thing. It'd be tough to hire somebody else and expect a quality of care and concern that somebody that owns a company can actually do all the time.

Branden Sewell (26:02.567)
Mm-hmm.

James Heck (26:08.876)
I don't think we would hire somebody else, actually, unless it got insanely busy and we had like 30 crews and it'd just be overwhelming to not delegate some parts of that out.

Branden Sewell (26:09.18)
Right.

Branden Sewell (26:20.352)
Sure, sure. So there, it's not necessarily that you're saying you wouldn't do it. It's just, it would take like that certain level of growth for that to be necessary. Gotcha.

James Heck (26:32.084)
Yeah, it would have to warrant hiring somebody full-time and I couldn't do like a part-time thing because you just the care and concern isn't there

Branden Sewell (26:42.632)
Sure sure. Yeah, that makes sense.

James Heck (26:44.14)
You want consistent people to be like the brand. Some people are brands in the company.

Branden Sewell (26:51.046)
Yeah. What are your goals as far as your business goes? Are you comfortable with where it's at or are you one of those people who you're looking to take it to some crazy level? I'm just curious to know what drives you as a business owner and what your plans are.

And then also, how do you, I think part of being a business owner is being kind of like self-aware of what makes you happy and fulfilled as a business owner. And so I think that's different for everybody, obviously. Like me, I wrestle with this thought of like, okay, do I want to grow this like huge multi-million dollar painting company?

That's obviously going to bring with it a lot more responsibility and probably more of my time. Or am I comfortable with like where I'm at and do I want to maybe grow a little bit. But is there like a limit to that. I'm just curious to know if if you have that internal wrestling yourself and what do you kind of feel like you're you're going to do with your business over time.

James Heck (28:13.142)
I'd say we could grow at least three times what it is right now and still have like a work-life balance that's the same by utilizing technology and delegating some stuff out. And eventually when you really want to get off the ladder and get out of the office and just do focus on more family oriented stuff or activities, then you just have like passive income and kind of sell a portion of the company's tier.

Branden Sewell (28:17.661)
Mm-hmm.

James Heck (28:43.018)
lead dedicated people.

Branden Sewell (28:45.918)
Yeah.

James Heck (28:46.83)
So they run it for the most part and take partial ownership. And a lot of that off of you so you don't have to just come into work every day.

Branden Sewell (28:52.275)
Yeah, that's good.

Branden Sewell (28:58.505)
Right, right. I'm curious, do you have anyone like in your industry that you've looked up to as a business owner and maybe learned from or are there guys that you, you know, maybe have relationship with that are where you want to be that you're consistently like communicating with? What does that look like for you? Any type of like coaching or mentorship?

James Heck (29:27.342)
Again, my wife is pretty much the person I look up to with that and does a lot of the coaching and behind the scenes growth, like personal growth or company growth and make it stable and a lot of respect out to Tia. And other than that, just other past bosses in that.

Branden Sewell (29:34.025)
Mm-hmm.

James Heck (29:55.064)
that I've had up in Canada or out in Texas or international, but a high quality of standards that kind of made me the person I am today with work ethic anyway, and teaching me what they know.

Branden Sewell (30:10.599)
Yeah.

Sure, So as far as getting to that next level that you talk about, like let's say to grow three times where you are now and still be like comfortable work-life balance that you mentioned. What do you think are some things that you guys are trying to do or implement into the business? What do you feel like are areas that you could strengthen

I'm to get there and what are you guys doing to like trying push the needle forward. think we're all like always trying to like come up with like okay what do I need to do next to grow or what's that what's this thing that I could do to take my business to the next level I know there's things that I look at that I'm like really striving to try and do an implement just curious to know what that looks like for you.

James Heck (31:08.799)
Besides like expanding the branding redoing the websites and

That kind of thing, just building up enough rapport and relationships with other general contractors to be able to get more steady income. So you can do service calls and that and one-off things, but it's not really that predictable. But if you become a preferred subcontractor for bigger builders who are constantly busy, that's...

very predictable and you can scale up from that. think that's what we really have to focus on is just more relationships with bigger general contractors.

Branden Sewell (31:54.795)
Yeah, what does it look like for like the, industry? I know for us, like we have a lot of people who will come to me and they're like, you know, who aren't in my industry and they'll say like, hey, you you should, you know, get into doing like new construction or you should, you know, work with builders and.

I found that that's super challenging for me because it seems like they want things done for like nothing or they get they get it done so cheap with cheap labor. I'm just wondering is that a little bit different for your industry because of the I would assume like because of the requirements, you know to be an electrical contractor and and that maybe there's

you know more of a in for you into that. What does that look like or do you find the same challenge.

James Heck (32:58.17)
It's the same kind of challenge and you have to be picky on your general contractors. If you want to do cookie cutter homes and stuff like that or just fast turnaround things or things for flippers, there's no... They don't have any margins in it for high quality subs. They'll hire the cheapest of the cheap and they just want it done fast and...

out the door. And that's where you run into a lot of quality problems with homeowners afterwards. They complain that things weren't done right. Those are the builders that you don't want to work for because you won't make any money. It's stressful. And you can't even pay. There's no money in your budget to pay people well. That's why we stick with custom home builders or like custom commercial contractors that will build like

Branden Sewell (33:28.747)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (33:36.129)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (33:42.026)
Right.

Branden Sewell (33:47.925)
Right.

James Heck (33:55.264)
whatever their customers want and have high communication with the customers. go and pick out locations of every switch and device and appliance and lighting packages and stuff.

Branden Sewell (34:07.104)
Mm-hmm.

James Heck (34:08.302)
That's where we like to stick with and they have bigger budgets so we can afford to keep our good people.

Branden Sewell (34:15.638)
Yeah, I know that's exactly why it doesn't work for us and that's why I've taken my approach to if I work with contractors, they have to be custom home builders and there's margin in that because like you said, it's like people are choosing to build custom because they want that custom experience. They want to be able to pick their own colors. They want to be able to use better products.

and not use cheap, you know, contractor grade stuff and they want it done right. And so that's definitely been my experience. But I've also found that that's there's not as much volume for that. But I guess it you kind of make up for it in your margin and your and the price that you can charge. But I'm curious, have you ever considered growing through like buying up other smaller businesses and acquiring?

smaller companies and kind of just like pulling them into your your fold buying out local competition and stuff like that.

James Heck (35:21.57)
Yeah, I don't think we're at that point yet.

Branden Sewell (35:25.197)
you think you would consider it in the future as like a strategy for growing and kind of like taking up more market share or.

James Heck (35:33.9)
Yes, that is one way to do it for sure.

Branden Sewell (35:37.474)
I know that we like I recently bought a company this past year and you know it's not it's not like when you buy a company that's smaller and maybe not like the size that you are but I mean you can you you buy it for a really great price so that's a bonus. The downside is that there's maybe not as much structure but.

We were we were we were able to take up some market share by purchasing that company and adding to our bottom line and You know, so it's it's it was definitely valuable so I know for me going forward that's Definitely gonna be one of my ongoing strategies is to like try and Look for deals, know buying out

other companies because then you get all of their customers, you can acquire the equipment and everything and it's kind of like then you just, you might be able to purchase with the employees too or you might just be kind of buying like everything to be able to put employees in place and make it run. But I think it's definitely a way to grow.

James Heck (36:58.99)
Who do you go through to purchase these companies?

Branden Sewell (37:04.29)
Well, so that one was just like, I would call it like an off market deal. It was somebody that I knew. I was interested in their business when they were still operating it and they were still doing it. I had reached out to them and I said, Hey, would you ever consider selling your business? And at the time they, you know, said they weren't interested at that time, but they would

You if they ever considered getting out of business they would keep me in mind. And so it was probably you know a couple years later that person reached out to me. And. They reach out to me and they said like hey you know I have decided to. Close my business I'm going to be moving away and I.

I just wanted to see if you're still interested in buying it. And so, yeah, I just did a off market deal where I negotiated the terms and the price and and that's how I bought it. And essentially, it was just a friend of mine that I ended up buying from. And and it wasn't super it wasn't super expensive, you know, and I did

James Heck (38:17.185)
Okay.

Branden Sewell (38:27.215)
seller financing. So doing the seller financing, it was like a no-brainer for me to do it.

But I'm gonna, so just really quick, I think I might've lost you for a minute. I can edit this out in the final, but did you lose my audio for a minute?

James Heck (38:52.906)
Yeah, maybe like 10 seconds.

Branden Sewell (38:55.575)
Okay, gotcha. I'll edit this out, but I keep losing your audio. Like, I can't hear you. So I didn't know if it was going out on your end, too.

James Heck (39:08.482)
Yeah, the internet's kinda like popping in and out here, I don't know.

Branden Sewell (39:12.621)
Gotcha. No worries. We can edit that. So no worries. But anyway, so yeah, as far as you know, we were just talking about, you know, growth strategies and things like that. Is there anything else that you find is like maybe a struggle to growing right now that you like are trying to figure out or overcome?

James Heck (39:41.236)
About the only thing right now is the, just with customers or past bids, it's like the election hesitancy or economy hesitancy.

Branden Sewell (39:51.31)
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's.

James Heck (39:55.16)
That's a definite stepping stone right now to any kind of growth. We're just trying to maintain what we got right now.

Branden Sewell (40:03.148)
Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how the next like couple months play out for businesses. mean, obviously, you know, it's you know, as we stated earlier, it's so unpredictable. mean, you can have like your your thoughts, your educated guesses about how things are going to go. But one thing that I found, especially after covid, was

A lot of the things that I thought were going to happen didn't. They played out completely different. Like during COVID, I thought we were going to suffer and it was going to be really bad. And I'm not to say it wasn't challenging, but we actually ended up growing during that year.

And then we grew in 2021 and I was like, okay, I think we're on the up and up. then 2022, I was like, okay, well, you know, we're good. We're out, we're in the clear. And then, you know, in 2022, when I know there's a saying that as the real estate industry goes, so goes the construction industry because they're kind of like,

interconnected, know, like when people are buying and selling homes and there's a lot of transactions happening, people are needing trades, you know, all the time because, you know, obviously homes are getting inspected, things are having to be updated, you know, more new homes are being built. And so I know that's kind of like the connection with the home service industry.

And so I think around like May or June of 2022 when the interest rates jumped and the real estate slowed down, we noticed that we slowed down too. so, but I wasn't really, didn't see that happening. And so it kind of caught me off guard. So it's like, who knows?

Branden Sewell (42:16.079)
As business owners, lot of us are, like for myself, I'm thinking like this election could cause us to either do really well coming out of the other side of it or maybe it could end up being really bad. But who knows, you know, it's hard to say. All I can do is like hope for the best. But it's like, how do you plan for that, you know? It's a...

It's tricky. It's one of the challenges of being an entrepreneur is having to work through those seasons of business and having to try and make the best decisions you possibly can. But it's like you can't predict the future and how people are going to respond to things like a national election and what's the economy going to do. But I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or what you think is going to happen or how it's going to play out.

James Heck (43:11.948)
I think you just have to be creative and try to keep contact your old customers again. Like you mentioned the other day to use the job or marketing tool. we implemented that with like a 20 % discount and it seemed to pick things up a little bit over the last few days. So things like that, you have to get creative and people still want to do stuff. They just don't want to spend so much money right now.

Branden Sewell (43:28.358)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (43:33.233)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (43:41.735)
Yeah.

James Heck (43:41.88)
So we can get rid of some of the profit and keep our people. That's all that really matters right now. Eventually things will pick back up and either grow or stay the same or go down a little bit. But I don't think there's anything catastrophic going to happen. Either way.

Branden Sewell (43:49.116)
Yeah, mate.

Branden Sewell (44:00.453)
Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. mean, so my business coach, you know, one of the things that he and I talked about is what you're saying is like, it really comes down to like getting creative. And really, think the businesses that survive, you know, downturns or challenges are those who can get creative with marketing, who

work those different strategies like doing the email marketing and staying in touch with your customers, staying top of mind. We also do like postcards. So we'll send out postcards or thank you cards to our customers to stay engaged. We also, obviously like a big thing too is like the network marketing, you know.

Being involved in your community and building community, that's been a really big strategy for me over the past couple years and has proved to be very beneficial is like really building relationships. So I know you've been a part of BNI for a long time from what I understand. And I think you'd probably say like that's

pretty valuable, like the relationships and, you know, referrals and stuff that you get through building relationships. But I think doing those type of things are like what will sustain you through, you know, those challenging times, unlike, you know, paid marketing or digital marketing, you know, it's going to be relationships with your customers and your partners that really.

You drive your business through slow times would you agree with that.

James Heck (45:51.662)
Yeah, definitely. or like a community outreach, like a charity event. You can sponsor charity events. I think the next one that, next one that Tia set up and did a lot of promotion for and got even like promotional items is the, the body walk that's coming up here in Viera. So it's a Down Syndrome body walk where you-

Branden Sewell (46:04.242)
Yeah, so you guys do that?

James Heck (46:21.038)
donate a certain amount and you can have like a company booth there and have played games with the people there and really show your support for the community. And it's a good opportunity to have little branding things to give out gift bags and things to all the guests. It's real fun. You can involve your whole family, kids, kids, everybody.

Branden Sewell (46:32.425)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (46:40.104)
Yeah. Do you guys, do you?

Branden Sewell (46:46.132)
Do you guys ever sponsor like any 5Ks or anything? Like I know there's a big one in Cocoa Beach, the turkey trot. Have you guys ever done anything like that?

James Heck (46:57.998)
Yeah, yeah, we can do that through the running zone usually. We've done a couple of the 5Ks where you get sponsored the 5K and you get name on the shirt or drop off swag and stuff at the running zone and they'll distribute it to all the participants.

Branden Sewell (47:01.845)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (47:09.833)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (47:20.629)
Those are things that I have not really gotten into yet, but it's definitely something that I want to do more of. did my first one this year. sponsored a, it wasn't a 5K, they called it a 0K, but anyway, we did that where we like sponsored the event and had our logo on the t-shirts and stuff like that.

I want to definitely expand and do more of that from like a branding standpoint and getting involved in those events. I'm curious, have you guys ever done any home shows?

James Heck (47:58.062)
Not yet, no.

Branden Sewell (48:00.041)
Yeah, that's actually something that we did a lot before COVID and we're about to get back into. I didn't do it for a while because it was after COVID. was really I wasn't sure how it would do, effective it would be. But before COVID, we would do multiple per year. And really in each home show, we'd come away with like

you know forty forty estimates on to do which was you know pretty amazing and if you can land a you know forty to fifty percent of those it's a you know it's just a no brainer to do on and some shows are better than others the big ones are you know those ones where you'll come away with forty fifty leads and forty fifty estimates in your schedule.

And then there's some where they're smaller, where you might only get like 15 or 20. But yeah, we're about to get back into doing that. It seemed to be pretty effective for us.

James Heck (49:08.014)
Which home shows do you do?

Branden Sewell (49:11.175)
So I was doing the Orlando home and garden expo. I would do that twice a year And then there was another like home show group called I think they're called East Coast consumer shows and They had a show in Daytona Beach So we would do the home show in Daytona Beach So those are those are the ones that we're looking at doing again is the home and garden

and then doing the Daytona show in the Melbourne Beach home show. I know that the East Coast consumer shows are a little bit smaller. So not as big of a turnout and not as many leads, but still worth the money that you spend to have a booth and make all the connections. And there's a strategy to home shows. You can't just like...

You can't just go to a home show and set up a booth and just sit in it and wait for people to come to you. Like when you do a home show, it's work. It's all day for two to three days, depending on which show. Standing up and literally stopping, trying to stop every single person that walks by and talk to them. And, you know, we've done we've done different things like, you know, we've raffled off.

things, we've offered discounts on, you know, if you like a home show discount and things like that. What I found is raffling is a terrible idea. So like in the future, like when I do home shows again, I'll never raffle something off again because you get people that. So the strategy and it was like, OK, you you you set up, you have something to sign people up for a free estimate.

and the way that they were able to enter the drawing was signing up for their free estimate. But I'd have so many people who would sign up for the free estimate and get the estimate just to be a part of the raffle, but they had no intention of actually using our services. So I would never do that again, I would, you know, but they are valuable to like get in there and engage people who are really interested in using your service. So.

James Heck (51:11.424)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (51:33.92)
I think that would be great for you guys to do even if you did it from like a like my thought on like your end would be really promoting like custom lighting and maybe generators because that's such a big need here in Florida, especially on the on the coast with hurricanes and stuff. I think it's something that you could drive urgency. I don't know if you guys would be able to like

set up displays of generators in there. But I think.

James Heck (52:07.254)
Yes, the weight of the generator is kind of prohibitive.

Branden Sewell (52:11.835)
Yeah There's I'll tell you what in the home shows there's some pretty I've seen some crazy stuff there's a When I back when I was doing them there was a company who did outside hardscapes and You're able to come in like so you have like setup days before the home show starts so that you can come in and like build your booth or Bring in whatever you're gonna do. Well, these guys would buy like this

Huge section like pay like a lot of money for this section out in the open and they would build a custom hardscape right there in the exhibition center, so they were like doing like custom stonework and masonry and working with like concrete and building like big waterfalls and It was yeah pretty elaborate

James Heck (53:05.159)
wow.

Branden Sewell (53:09.114)
display or set up for their booth. It wasn't really a booth. was like a... Yeah, it's just crazy. So, I mean, I don't know that it would be... You can drive like trucks right into the exhibition center and, you know, there's people who like bring in heavy stuff. I don't know how heavy a generator is. But I'm sure you could...

James Heck (53:34.316)
Yeah, you just need a trailer and roll it off.

Branden Sewell (53:38.99)
Yeah, that's how I mean, there's guys that that's what they do. They drive their trucks right up into there. And obviously, they're like the guys who do the early setup. But they'll drive their trucks right into the exhibition center and right there at their booth offload, like really heavy stuff. I know they have like, you know, they have they always have the hot pool or hot pool hot tub.

displays and so they bring in these huge hot tubs and stuff and have You know 20 30 of those and they're big and heavy so But anyway, my my might be something to look into I know we're gonna start doing it again and Maybe I can be a guinea pig for you and do it and let you know how it works

James Heck (54:16.13)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (54:30.672)
But anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and bring us to a close. And what I usually do is just ask like here at the end, is there anything that you'd like to share on or something that you think is of value to the listeners to help them with taking steps to get off the ladder, whether that's like marketing advice, sales advice, leadership advice, anything like that, something that's really

helped you to be successful.

James Heck (55:02.318)
The biggest thing is just to, if you want to get off the ladder, you have to be able to clone yourself as many times as possible and pay that person well and treat them well and then they will represent you the same way that you represent you. And that's about the only way you're going to get off the ladder.

Branden Sewell (55:26.458)
Yeah, that's good. That's the name of the game right there is, you know, make many use. And, you know, if you can do that successfully, that's the name of the game with getting off the ladder and thinking of the different things that you do as a business owner and then delegating, you know. So it obviously takes leadership ability, ability to influence and lead people. So like just to...

James Heck (55:32.512)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (55:54.758)
piggyback off of what James is saying there is invest in yourself. You know, make yourself better so that when you duplicate you, you're duplicating a better version of yourself too. You know, and invest in your leadership, invest in your personal growth and then hand that down to the people that are under you.

It works. There's a lot of people out there who are running amazing businesses that have high standards, have great reputations. And James, think yours is one of those companies. Obviously, you're doing something right. You've got a great reputation, a great business. You can see the excellence.

Yeah, I hope that for you who are listening to this, I hope that this interview helps you. I hope that you're inspired to go out there and implement these things and grow your business and get off the ladder. If you're watching on YouTube, please like, like this video, comment, share your feedback, subscribe to the channel if you're watching or if you're listening on Apple or Spotify or any other major.

podcast platform, please rate and review the show. I greatly appreciate that so we can reach more people. And as always, thank you so much for listening to the Off the Ladder podcast. It's an honor for me. And we'll see you next time on the next episode of the Off the Ladder podcast.