Handle The Sh!T

#5 - The CEO’s Clone: How One Hire Changed Everything at HomeField with Trachelle Simon

• Tanya Wilson & The Crew at HomeField East Valley • Episode 5

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📍 OVERVIEW

In this episode of Handle The Sh!T!, Tanya Wilson, CEO of HomeField East Valley, sits down with the newest powerhouse on the team, Trachelle Simon. From finance to operations, Trachelle’s journey proves the right person in the right seat can change everything for a growing septic and wastewater business.

We talk about making the leap from corporate to small business, learning an entirely new industry, and why culture and systems are the backbone of scaling. Whether you’re drowning in tasks or dreaming of building a team that has your back, this episode will inspire you to rethink how you hire, train, and empower your people.

🧠 TOPICS WE COVER

  • Why Tanya needed to “clone herself” to grow the business
  • How Trachelle transitioned from finance to septic industry operations
  • The importance of culture and team morale in the trades
  • How to learn a brand-new industry without overwhelm
  • Using procurement and systems like Ramp to streamline installs
  • Why building the right team is your biggest legacy as an owner

✨ 5 THINGS YOU’LL LEARN

  1. How to identify when it’s time to hire a high-level operations teammate
  2. Ways to build confidence when entering a new industry
  3. Why documenting processes is essential for growth and franchising
  4. How procurement can eliminate bottlenecks in installations
  5. The power of a supportive, knowledgeable team in the septic industry

🔗 RESOURCES & LINKS


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Tanya (00:02.126)
Welcome back to Handle the Shit, podcast by Home Field East Valley. I'm Tanya Wilson and today I am joined with Trachelle Simon. She is our new resident everything woman here. I'm going to let her give you a little bit of background as to who she is and where she came from. But it was one of those things where as an owner of the business, I was like,

I literally can handle nothing else on my plate. I need someone to help me. I literally need to clone myself and my abilities to be able to bring someone in that is as crazy as I am that will jump in and just kind of help out all over the place. And voila, Trachelle appeared and we're so happy to have her be part of the team. So Trachelle, give us a little bit of your background.

who you are as a person so everyone can get to know you as a member of Home Field. And then also, what are your job skills and why do you love being here at Home Field?

All right, so let's see about me. First off, Trachelle is a learner. I'm a learner and a helper. I think those are like my top skillsets. That's just me. And I come from a finance and business operations background, specifically in what higher education. I have a little corporate experience and obviously small businesses. That was my final stop and that's the industry that I love the most working with small businesses.

Making a switch is big deal. It was something that I actually contemplated for a while because I never thought that I was going to be in finance. I'm not a mental math person. I'm more of a, give me a story problem. I can sit down and figure that out. So I will always tell myself like, I need to get out of finance. It's not something, it was just something that I learned and I just kind of enjoyed and just found my way, you know, in that area. But I'm like, this is not what I see myself doing overall. I'm more of a

Tanya (01:35.918)
Mm-hmm.

Trachelle (02:02.818)
behind the scenes operations type person. I'm like, okay, let me pivot and make my way more towards operations and get out of the finance. Sure. So that's how we ended up here.

Yes, and those were the job skills that I desperately needed some help with. So, and you've been so great at being able to come in and implement some of those things. I think as a creator of a business and a CEO, many times we're like that above level looking down. We're like, yes, we should do this and we should do this and we should do this and we should do this. And then I needed an executor.

which sounds really bad. It's like, I need to hire an executor. Not a killer, but kind of a killer of projects and ideas that someone can take an idea that we've had here and operationally put it together because that has been a struggle we've had here for a long time. And it's not that people can't follow through and get things done. It's just that everybody in a small business,

typically has three or four jobs. And so what we're trying to do is really split those apart. And that's where I thought it was so important to bring someone in. Now, oftentimes as you're growing, you think, where is like, is this person going to be a revenue producing person? Obviously operations people cost more money than a typical, you know, 16 to 20 and at $20 an hour position.

how would I really make sense of all of this? And I had just gotten to a point where I was like, I need to clone myself. I can't do this. I literally wrote a job posting and said, if the CEO could clone herself, that's what this position would be for. And it listed like marketing and processes and finance and leadership and management and all these different things. It was amazing how many people responded to that. I had people from like way up, like had

Tanya (03:56.354)
Ben previous business owners that when I interviewed him, when they came in, I was almost like, yeah, you're just want to come in and take this over. So my pride a little bit wasn't going to hire somebody like that yet. Cause I was like, where am I at this? At some point that person will be very integral to the business. The next maybe even six months that somebody that we hire like a general manager situation. But then we had people come in that were just very like detailed office stuff. But what I loved about your background is you had.

the financial background that you've had, little bit of corporate, which sometimes in small business, we do not want to be corporate, but we want to be able to integrate the systems and processes like corporate does to be able to do this. And when we decided to franchise priority pumping, then we definitely needed to have a systems and processes person in here. And you have been so incredibly great at that, but let's just back up a little bit. Like, what did you think about coming to work?

for a septic business.

It was interesting. So first, the job application is definitely what drew me to it, the way that, you know, maybe it was crazy to you, but I'm like, think I would be perfect right here. Because like I said, I'm a behind the scenes person. But making that switch, while I've always had an interest in sustainability, I actually worked at the School of Sustainability at ASU for a little while. And that's what, you know, piqued my interest. But I also had to tell myself, Trashyel, you need to learn how to slow down. It's like I

Here's something I'm like, oh, that'd be nice to learn. I should do it. But back then it was like, what use do I have for a sustainability degree or certificate or anything? I didn't. I really didn't know much about it. It was just me, you know, getting into it and just learning about it. Then Syntheseptic, I'm like, huh, look at that. I of course went to the website, looked everything up and I'm like, huh, this will be different for me. But I am always willing to take on a challenge. You know, me saying I'm a learner.

Tanya (05:47.577)
Yeah!

Trachelle (05:52.798)
I love to learn. love putting myself in new situations to where I can learn something new. So it was just a matter of, okay, let me put myself out there and see if you know they have an interest in me. Right, worked out. It worked out pretty

Yeah, well we did It did it worked out great so when you came in and you started working on stuff obviously in the septic industry It's kind of like learning a new language. There's new terminology. There's terminology for the two of the exact same things depends on which era you came from Some of our older employees call it one thing some of the newer employees call it something else and if you're from

The Midwest, you call it something else. If you're from New York, it's a cesspool here. Those are illegal. Like it's just very interesting, the different terminology. Did you feel intimidated by having to like come in and learn new knowledge or what was it that helped you be able to get over that or helped you even learn it better?

Yes, I was intimidated, honestly. Especially because I started talking to like, you know, the office people, obviously they're the ones who got me, you know, introduced and more familiar with everything here. And I'm like, wait, you guys know these terms so well and you guys are the office staff. Like even when me working really close with Heidi and seeing her go through the pictures and she's just pointing out everything, I'm just like, oh my gosh, have you ever been out there in the field? Because you know this very well. And I remember even asking her like, how long have you been here? How do you know all of this?

So it was very intimidating, but our team made it so much easier for me. No one made me feel like I was the new girl and didn't know anything. No one made me feel like, this girl doesn't know anything or nothing like that. Everyone was just so open to educate. And that just makes me think of my first time being able to go out in the field. Just even the service manager coming to me saying, hey, do you want to do this? Or even me having the ability to say,

Trachelle (07:45.836)
That sounds interesting. Can I ride with you? And they're saying yes. Then our techs, they take it to another level of, we know Trishela is new. Let me break it down for her because Isaac was the very first one when we went out there for one of his jobs. He was having issues and you know, when it's hot out here, you know, they want to get through the things, but he actually took the time to show me every single thing and explained it and then ended the conversation with, yeah, I get paid to educate and I love it. And that just made me feel good.

Yeah, I think that's been a really amazing thing in the culture that we've built here at Home

I think what makes us stand out maybe even when people have this, know, how do you stand out from your competition? How do you stand out from other service providers in your industry? Everyone here is extremely knowledgeable about Septic. From the marketing person, from Heidi, like she can talk a mad game with you too, all the way through anybody that's answering the phones. I mean, really in the Septic industry, you're troubleshooting stuff with people over the phone because...

You don't know if I'm sending this big expensive pump truck out there or if you need a new installation and we need someone to come look at it first. So it really is important that everybody learns right from the beginning. Exactly. Yeah. And then when everybody learns, when new people come in, you've got a variety of different people to teach you. Like you sat down with Tim, you've sat with me, you sat with Heidi and marketing, you sat with Lauren and Twyla on the phones and in installations and been out in the field with the techs.

Everybody jumps in to help train the new people which I think is great because you get different perspectives from people

Trachelle (09:36.648)
And they don't make you feel bad about it. Like it's a really great learning opportunity.

Yeah, and I think that's really great here that we have that that whole culture and morale here because we will be a training hub for anybody that comes in that purchases a franchise. If you're anywhere in the western United States, you'll be coming to our place to learn how we run this business. And that's the processes that it's been built off of for the original launch of the franchise anyway. So.

We take that very, very seriously here and you have been an integral part of helping us document all of those things. So with the skillset that you had coming into this, where do you think you've been able to implement and be the most effective?

I'm going to say alongside the service manager for sure, getting a lot of things together for our techs, better reporting, better tracking, figuring out exactly where everything is. Even with him bouncing ideas off of me like, is it possible to do this? I'm like, yes, it is possible. Let me sit down and figure it out. And then now I have a deliverable to go take to him. So I honestly, I would say yes, that's my...

top place that I think I've implemented them on.

Tanya (10:50.574)
Yeah, it's been great and as you grow as a business you realize you like get to this hump and you're like, okay We've hit the same ceiling the last three years in revenue Like we have the ability to do more like what the hell are we not doing with stuff and I will tell you a million percent It's paying attention to your numbers Where are we at? I mean even when we sit down and we dive into the text

Like, okay, so you clocked, you you charged people for four and a half hours today, but you're on the clock for 12. Like what the fuck? conversation about what is happening here. And that's not necessarily just the technician's issue at all. Like, hey, are we being efficient with getting the trucks together? Should we be doing that the night before? You know, time wise, that's going to be about the same, but we'll see how that actually works out if we tweak things a little bit.

Exactly.

Tanya (11:40.5)
Maybe it's the dumping situation. What do we need to work at that we're sitting at the dump? Or maybe we need to raise our prices on the labor to cover those other eight hours of administrative, if you will, in the field work that needs to be done still to get the job done. Because you think about it, we go out, we pump a septic tank, we charge onsite labor while we're out there. Well, great. Well, we still have to take all that shit to the dump being facility. Sometimes you're waiting in line for two or three hours for this.

where is that revenue, you know, that money coming to pay for that expense. So you have been incredibly helpful for me and being able to sit down and look at numbers. And I know it's just going to get better and better and better. So if you don't have somebody in your team and you're listening to this podcast and you're like, my God, I need somebody to help me with this. Sometimes it can even be our software that we're using. We use a software and I have to tell you the reporting in it is pretty crappy.

You can pull very, very bare minimum stuff out of it. And many times you're working out of a tech stack that doesn't all talk to each other. So you have to create reports that actually will talk to each other with a little bit of manual data entry. So you've been really great at doing that. And I look forward to what else we can put together with that. What is another big project that you're looking forward to working on here in the next couple of months? Procurement.

I'm excited.

Trachelle (13:03.288)
so happy about the procurement. I think procurement is going to be that bridge that we need for installs specifically. am very eager to get installs together for Lauren. It makes me happy every time I come in and tell her like, hey, I think I figured this out. And she starts smiling. she's like, even though I don't necessarily know, but I know you're going to sit down with me and teach me. I'm like, yep, I sure am. But thank you for listening.

What's about procurement?

Tanya (13:31.307)
Yeah.

Procurement, think, let's see. I don't know, I just feel like once we get it in order, lot of, it just feels good to be able to take some tasks off of Lauren. That was my biggest goal going into this project, how can I make Lauren's life easier? How can I insert myself in this process where she don't have to teach me a whole lot. We can do a basic crash course and I can still be able to.

You know, do all those things that she needs to make her life easier. Sure. I am really looking

to it. Yeah, I think it's really going to be great. procurement, we're actually working with a program that's called Ramp. And I love on this podcast being able to share the things that we use that are helping us run a successful business. use Ramp even at the franchisor level to process all of our financial things, keep excellent like receipt management, really be able to

organize our bills and who we need to pay. And also it gives you a really great opportunity to issue cards out to spending cards like a credit card out to your employees with incredible restrictions. people aren't buying their own groceries or taking their spouse to happy hour. You can even lock it down like you can only use this at Home Depot. Like it's a really great opportunity. We'll put a link to ramp in the show notes. So if you want to check it out.

Tanya (14:58.606)
It's a really great opportunity for you to do that and they actually will pay you if you use that link I think they get like 250 bucks in your first ramp account So basically what it is is that you can feed money over from say like Chase Bank into this account that you've pre-funded Where people can have basically credit cards to come out of it You can pay bills out of it, but everything goes in there as a management system

So when someone spends with a credit card, then they upload a receipt and you don't have paper receipts and shit all over the place. In procurement, it is an opportunity to issue POs for work that you know is coming up. So this has been a massive bottleneck for us in our business is that we do installations. So we work with some subcontractors or we have suppliers that bring things to the job sites. Think like the septic tanks, the drilling company.

even our excavators that come in, like we need to know, like how much do we need to pay you out of this job? When Lauren is issuing an estimate, I don't know for sure how much all that stuff is right off the bat, but now we'll be able to go into procurement and be like, okay, so for Dennis Wu's job, right, I can go in and say, there's a tank for this much, there's a pit for this much, it's rock for this much, and I owe the installer this much. I can take those expenses out, set them aside, or

even prepay them, which are vendors with love, and get them out of the way so that you're not taking from one job to pay for the next job, which happens so much in construction. Billing can be slow from vendors. we get, we got an invoice from a tank set in August of last year at the beginning of January this year. I didn't know it was outstanding because I'm not involved in the day to day of everything in installs.

but the checks and balances just weren't there. And this is going to allow everyone on the installations team to have that checks and balances. We make sure on that final payment, everyone has been paid before any of that profit goes into just the general spending account for the business. So I'm very thankful that you have set this up. You can also run bill pay through it, everything. So invoices match up with POs and they get sent out of one thing and it's just like,

Trachelle (17:23.348)
Exactly. And it's very automated so we don't have to worry about doing so much manual.

Yeah, and the AI built into that they can read invoices and categorize reader

Estimates to and create those line items on the POS I love it. Lauren loves it too. She played around with you. So it's just like as long as she's happy. I'm happy. Yes

Beautiful

Tanya (17:46.51)
So that can be a lot of paperwork. I know I've considered like, I need to have somebody that just works in finances, but I really don't have anything for them to be like full time. So if I hire a full time person, they're going to be bored out of their minds because they don't have enough to do all day. But this is something like, you really got to start looking at the tools that are out there for you to implement in your business. Maybe it's outside of what you've used before and don't get hung up on, oh my God, it's going to take me so long to set this up. I just don't have time.

because the time it saves you on the back end is so incredible.

Yeah, and I love that rent you don't have to worry about having all of these different programs It's everything right there because I've seen business have this one thing that reads their receipts and then it talks to QBO and yeah They have this that does this then it talks to QBO versus rent. Everything is right there. I love it

Sure. And then you can have people on your team that are helping you out and not everyone's in your QuickBooks, which is a good thing to do. Your accountant will thank you for that. So what is it something share with us in closing? Like what is something that you have loved about working here?

The team, the environment, the work vibe. I'm not really big on the culture thing, but the work vibe, it's amazing. This team is amazing. It's just the feeling of, you're scared of, oh, I'm gonna be the new girl. I'm gonna be the new person. And I never got new girl feeling here ever. Good. Whatsoever, everyone open me, open arms. Oh, let me show you this. Oh, are you interested in this? It's just like, I don't have to necessarily go digging around. I remember when I first like stepped out of college into my-

Trachelle (19:22.606)
professional life, someone tried to tell me that when it comes to your career, you might get a position, but don't expect someone to break everything down for you. You're going to have to find it. And I don't feel like I have to go find anything. Granted, get those like, we'll talk and you'll like, I need to do this. I'm like, dang it, I need to do this. I'll just go ahead and do it. And then I'll send it over to her so she can review it. So it's just things like that. I don't mind doing stuff like that, but it's more ideas are brought to me and I love it. Sure. Absolutely love it.

We just have an amazing team. It starts with the team, honestly. starts with the team. Awesome. You've built an amazing team.

Yeah, we really,

Tanya (19:59.662)
I have good people here. And I think that's something to be very, very conscious of if you're in the septic industry, if you own your own independent, or if you're thinking about coming into home field as a franchisee is spending the time to build the team will be your legacy of that company.

Yes, and we have, you know, a testimony on that when we, our photo shoot and the guys just looked at me and was like, oh my gosh, you have great company morale. And it's like, yes, we all work very well together. work.

That's amazing. But people will say that even in reviews that we have like, my gosh, even when we get the photo shoot that was like so cool that people understand that because people don't expect that, especially in the trades business. It's almost like you got a bunch of misfits that come together and we try to, you know, not knock heads with each other.

And we just don't have that hair. Everybody really wants to see each other win, which I think is really, really cool.

Yeah, and our techs actually stop into the office and talk to us.

Tanya (21:07.51)
Yeah, that's a great thing to have. Yes, so too. Really, really great thing. Anything else big that you would share with somebody that maybe if they're considering getting into the septic industry or coming into home fields, just some words of wisdom for them or maybe some optimistic outlook for them.

I think.

Trachelle (21:29.102)
Absolutely be open just be open be open-minded Be open be ready to learn that's my biggest takeaways I think that's what's made me successful so far here. It's just been open be ready You never know what might happen. Yeah

Very good.

New day, every day. That's what we in the job post. It's crazy every day.

It's crazy every day and I love it.

That's good. I love it. You never get bored because there's always something else.

Trachelle (21:58.712)
You never get bored. I was just thinking about that yesterday. I'm like, wait, I had a full day of meetings and the things that I put in my planner to do, I actually didn't do, but I still felt productive because I had a full day of other things to do. Yeah.

That's great. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for being with us Trichelle and until next time, keep handling the shit.

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