E19: Building Culture and Navigating Change in a Growing Business | Jon King
Want to know the secret to creating a thriving business culture that retains top talent, embraces change, and maintains momentum in a competitive industry?
In this episode, Bruce Thornton A/C CFO Jonathan King shares insights into the challenges of entering a blue-collar industry from an IT background and building a successful business. Learn how to handle resistance to change in the workplace and the importance of having a champion for new ideas.
We also discuss how to foster a positive work culture, retain employees, and balance personal and professional life. Additionally, the episode explores overcoming significant setbacks and building momentum for long-term business success.
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Kellen Ketchersid
Kellen is a co-founder of Stag Business Coaching, business strategist, and a systems thinker. He leverages his extensive experience in biotech and consulting to empower entrepreneurs to navigate complex challenges with strategic growth solutions.
Albert Gillispie
Albert is a serial entrepreneur, business efficiency expert and co-founder of Stag Business Coaching who has founded several multimillion-dollar companies. With expertise in optimizing operations and innovative systems, he mentors business leaders who want to unlock their business’s full potential.
Jon King is the CFO of Bruce Thornton Heating and Air Conditioning, a company that provides HVAC and plumbing services. He has a background in IT and telecom, having worked in that sector for 15 years before transitioning into the heating and air industry. His entry into the business was somewhat accidental, as he initially thought he would help with IT tasks temporarily but ended up staying and growing in the company.
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EPISODE 19 TRANSCRIPTION
Introduction
[00:00:00] Albert Gillispie: Welcome to the business growth masterclass, where business growth is made simple. Listen as we discuss best practices to streamline your operations, increase your profits, and ultimately create healthier, more stable, and more valuable companies. Today's guest is the CFO of Bruce Thornton Heating and Air Conditioning. His name is John King, and that was a fun interview.
[00:00:28] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah, it was a great time. He's a smart guy and doing a lot of cool things. He's a funny guy. I enjoy every time I get to talk to him. What was your number one takeaway?
[00:00:39] Kellen Ketchersid: Well, John's definitely a systems thinker. I loved how he's always thinking about ways to improve, but he also sees how important it is to get people to buy into that improvement and not just jump in with an idea. He talked about having someone be a champion for what you want to accomplish, and I thought that was so good. A lot of business owners want to throw a big change at their team, and people reject it. He was talking about getting buy-in from that first person and building from there. I thought that was really cool. What about you?
[00:01:13] Albert Gillispie: I like that. My favorite is really the biggest issue facing that industry—and many industries—it's people. How do you find heating and air guys? How do you find plumbers? How do you find tradesmen? They've done the hard work for five years, building this reputation and culture, and now recruiting and retaining people is their superpower.
[00:01:40] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah. It takes care of itself.
[00:01:42] Albert Gillispie: Yeah, and I really think our business owners who are trying to build that team can just sit in what he says, process that, and think about what it means for their business. That was my favorite part.
[00:02:00] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah, that was great. All right, without further ado.
[00:02:01] Albert Gillispie: Here we go.
Entering the HVAC Business by Accident
[00:02:07] Albert Gillispie: Okay, welcome to the podcast. Welcome, John King. How are you, sir?
[00:02:13] Jon King: I'm good. Y'all good?
[00:02:13] Kellen Ketchersid: Thanks for coming on the show today. Appreciate you inviting me. All right. We always like to start with a little bit of an icebreaker, so I'm curious: if you could go to lunch with any entrepreneur, dead or alive, who are you picking?
[00:02:27] Kellen Ketchersid: Steve Wozniak.
[00:02:31] Jon King: The Woz.
[00:02:31] Kellen Ketchersid: The Woz. So why would you pick him?
[00:02:31] Jon King: So growing up, I was a tech kid, and he's just one of those guys. You got Gates and Jobs, but everybody knows everything about them. Woz has been kind of a futurist. He picks out stuff way before it happens and has been brilliant at that. Plus, he's kind of quirky.
[00:02:49] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah.
[00:02:49] Jon King: He's weird. I think he'd be an interesting lunch date.
[00:02:53] Kellen Ketchersid: Cool. Well, that's a good answer. I wasn't expecting that one. So would you mind telling us about your business and how you got into it?
[00:03:07] Jon King: Almost by accident. So a couple of things: I worked in telecom for 15 years, owned a business. The heating mechanical business was not something on my radar. AT&T wanted me to move to Dallas, and I didn't want to, so they surplused me, and I was starting to search for a job.
[00:03:27] Jon King: My dad went to Rotary with a guy I grew up with. The business owner had died a few years ago, and he needed somebody to replace himself. That's how I got into the heating and air conditioning business. Like a lot of the things I've done in my life, I just stumble into things, and wow, the Lord looks out for me somehow.
[00:03:44] Jon King: So that's how it happened. He was at lunch, called me, and said, "Hey, I need some help." I thought I'd be there six months, like, "Okay, I'll come help you out, do some IT stuff." I have a computer information systems degree and a minor in finance and just loved it. Going from a company larger than the population of the city you grew up in to being able to make decisions, really run parts of a business, and improve it was amazing.
[00:04:12] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah.
[00:04:13] Jon King: Almost like construction back in the day—building something, looking at it, and thinking, "Man, I did that. That was really cool." I get to drive by it and see it. That kind of satisfaction has been really interesting working in a business like that.
[00:04:25] Kellen Ketchersid: That's amazing.
[00:04:26] Albert Gillispie: What year was that? How long have you been at Bruce?
[00:04:32] Jon King: Since 2017, I think.
[00:04:33] Albert Gillispie: Okay.
[00:04:33] Kellen Ketchersid: So not long, seven years, eight years. So when you first got into it, what were some of the challenges, like some of the hard parts of jumping into this business you'd never been in before?
Transitioning from IT to a Blue-Collar Industry
[00:04:45] Jon King: I was fortunate. I worked construction in high school, so I at least knew some of the trade stuff and had an opportunity to work in a lot of different parts of construction. But that business is really unique. There's a lot to learn just across the board, and having such carte blanche early on was challenging.
[00:05:05] Jon King: I think I started out fixing printers and doing some of their IT stuff because that was my background. Then I was there six months, and they gave me all the office personnel. So, I was really able to make an impact and get broad. That's really where I'm at my best, I think—when I get to see the entire picture and make changes.
[00:05:29] Kellen Ketchersid: So how do you think they saw that in you, like knew you would be the guy to run the whole office?
[00:05:34] Jon King: I don't think they did. It just so happened that the owner was on a cruise, and one of the key folks quit. She quit because she said, "I'm not working for this other person." He was like, "Well, I need these people, so will you take over?" I think, on both of our sides, it was a temporary thing—like, "Okay, I'll take this over for a little period of time." I still wasn't planning on being there very long, and I just fell in love with it afterwards. You understand, these are the greatest people on the planet, just the salt of the earth guys. They're awesome. Cool. I mean, they use the F word a lot, but they're just great people.
[00:06:12] Albert Gillispie: Yeah. That's part of the military and construction, you know, there are a lot of four-letter words. That's amazing. Okay, so being an IT guy in a blue-collar industry, how do they handle that? How has the relationship been on both sides?
Overcoming Resistance to Change in the Workplace
[00:06:32] Jon King: I tell them frequently, you know, when you're a hammer, you see every problem as a nail. So I want to automate everything. Like, you automate, delegate, or eliminate, or just do it yourself. I got that from a book years ago, but that's my mentality. It's been really good for the business. Early on, it wasn’t received well—like, "That's dumb. Why would we do that? We've done it this way for a thousand years. Why would we want to start using this software package to track this piece of our inventory? We just wrote it down on paper yesterday. Why do we need to do it on a computer?" But I think as that progressed, nobody ever likes change, but once they see it makes their job easier and things better, they tend to accept it better. It was a rough six months for all involved.
[00:07:24] Albert Gillispie: That's one of those things, especially with the trades. These are guys who are highly skilled at working with their hands and specialized tools, so bringing in this white-collar MBA "automate everything" mindset is a battle. I like how you articulated that—once they see it makes their lives better. You're a humble guy, and you don't brag on yourself, but is that something you feel is a skill set of yours? Being able to articulate to your teams, like, "Hey, I know this is some fancy computer you're having to deal with, and it could break, but this is why it’s going to help"?
[00:08:08] Jon King: I don't think when I started, I was that great at articulating that, but I've gotten better at it. The communication piece is particularly important when you're making changes. The thing I've always figured out is if you can get one guy to do it, then the next guy will do it easier.
[00:08:30] Jon King: So I was very strategic about picking the guy that I knew would maybe lean towards that—a younger guy that adopted technology a little easier. Then we kind of spread it from there, department by department.
Having a Champion for Change
[00:08:42] Kellen Ketchersid: That's a great pro tip because I think a lot of people out there, especially business owners or people who are more systems-oriented in their mindset like you, know what they’re aiming for. It's like, "Okay, but how do I get all these other people who are stuck in their ways to go with us on this journey?"
[00:08:56] Jon King: You've got to find a champion.
[00:08:57] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah.
[00:08:58] Jon King: Otherwise, that stuff—you can get enough pushback that it just— I mean, you see that all the time. We're going to deploy this new software package, and they push it down folks' throats, and they revolt against it. And it doesn't work. The thing I learned real quick is that I’ve got to pick somebody who’s going to be a partner with me, but also teach me the things I don't know, because I'll tell you, going in and selecting parts coming off a truck, I didn’t know half of what those parts were.
[00:09:29] Jon King: So, them telling me, "Yeah, this is good, but this piece isn't going to work," and us changing what we were doing to make that work—that’s the point, right? You're trying to put software packages in people's hands that make the business better and life easier for them. If you can accomplish both at the same time, you're going to win, but you have to get input from the people doing it every day.
[00:09:53] Jon King: I don't make a dollar for our company. I mean, literally nothing has been made by me for this company. My job is to make it more efficient, better run, better financials, but those guys make the money. I'm a support cast.
[00:10:06] Kellen Ketchersid: So you're doing a lot of listening.
[00:10:08] Jon King: Yes. Lots of listening.
[00:10:10] Jon King: Unlike this podcast where I'm doing a lot of talking.
[00:10:12] Kellen Ketchersid: Hey, that's all right. That's why we want you here. Well, maybe you're already talking a little bit about it, but I'm curious. What's the "why" for you behind what you do? Is it that continuous improvement or is it that plus something else? Like what drives you every day?
[00:10:26] Jon King: Curiosity. And, like, there's some weird efficiency in me that I don't understand. I completely automated my house so that I could walk out, and the lights turn off. I spent days, I mean months, doing this so I could save five minutes every time I walk out of the house and not have to run around turning off lights. So those two things combined, I guess, are what drive me—a new problem every day is the best thing that can happen to me.
[00:10:51] Kellen Ketchersid: I mean, I got three kids. I want to learn how to do this lights thing you're talking about, right?
[00:10:56] Jon King: You walk out of the house, and my wife was like, "You're insane." But now, we just hit a button as we walk out, and all the lights go out.
[00:11:03] Albert Gillispie: What's your catchphrase to describe yourself about being really lazy?
[00:11:09] Jon King: I'm the laziest guy you'll ever meet. But I think that laziness is what drives my efficiency. If I was just lazy, then I'm probably not sitting here doing this podcast. It's not very useful, but that laziness drives efficiency.
[00:11:23] Albert Gillispie: I like it. It's tongue-in-cheek, but you're describing that, like, "Okay, how can we automate, delegate, right? Eliminate?"
[00:11:34] Jon King: I have spent my entire career, at least at BTAC, trying to work myself out of a job. I'm never going to do it. But that's the thing that drives me—building that one piece that I don't have to do again, whether that's a process, automation, or software taking over a piece of my job. I would love to just not do anything. I mean, I think as men, that's our goal, right? Just to sit on the couch and watch football and do nothing.
[00:12:00] Kellen Ketchersid: Sure. And just sit in peace.
[00:12:02] Albert Gillispie: But have everything else still go and work.
[00:12:04] Jon King: Yeah. That’s hilarious.
[00:12:06] Albert Gillispie: Briefly describe a little more of Bruce Thornton. It’s a heating and air company. Do y’all have electrical, plumbing?
[00:12:15] Jon King: So we don’t have electrical. That's something we’ve talked about forever, but we have residential and commercial plumbing service, residential and commercial HVAC service. We have a refrigeration department that not many folks are familiar with, but everything from a tortilla machine to a walk-in freezer to a Coke machine—we fix all of that stuff.
[00:12:35] Jon King: So that's commercial only. You don't really run into that in somebody's home. Occasionally somebody will have a high-end ice maker or something that we can work on, but primarily commercial. Then we have a construction division that specializes in schools and hospitals. So big construction, multi-year jobs. And then we've got a metal shop.
[00:12:53] Jon King: Those guys are freaking artists. If it's made out of steel or metal, they can build anything. They blow my mind with some of the stuff they put together. And that one's unique because we not only do that, it’s really designed to support our commercial construction HVAC side—putting up ductwork. You don’t see it here, but a lot of restaurants, it's become common to just hang it up there where you can see it. And that division sells not only to us but to our competitors.
[00:13:20] Albert Gillispie: Okay. So two different trades, mainly plumbing and HVAC. So what does the staff look like? How many people do you have? How many journeymen, apprentices?
[00:13:34] Jon King: We have 125 employees.
[00:13:37] Albert Gillispie: 125? That's a big operation. That was not the number I thought you were going to say.
[00:13:40] Jon King: Probably have 20 or so support staff between AR, AP, receptionist, dispatchers, folks that work in the warehouse, delivering materials, stocking our warehouse so that we can restock our trucks, that kind of stuff.
[00:13:56] Albert Gillispie: Okay. And then what's your breakdown as far as journeymen and masters?
[00:14:02] Jon King: Well, I mean, you only operate under one master. We have three or four, I think. But there's only ever one master of record. Journeyman, I don't know the exact number. We probably have, let's see, seven on the service side and then probably another 10. So probably 17 or 18 licensed plumbers.
[00:14:23] Jon King: You have to be a licensed plumber to have work being done. So on a job site, you've got to have a licensed plumber there that's operating things.
[00:14:30] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah. So you have a lot more personnel than most people we talk to. I'm curious, how do you structure your communication, like your meetings? Is it necessary to have regular meetings in your organization and how does that go?
[00:14:45] Jon King: So I guess it depends on the trades. I’m not in charge of the construction division. We have a construction supervisor, plumbing supervisors, and so on. I’m just in charge of the support people. But typically, on a construction site, you've got a meeting every morning before you go out and do work, kind of lining out, "Okay, here's what we're doing today, this is where we're working." On the service side, they have a meeting about once a week just to go through updates, training, safety stuff, all the things that go into running a dangerous job. And then on the office side, we probably have fewer meetings like that—more one-on-one conversations.
We probably have one a month where we bring everybody in and have those conversations. But it’s really hard to do that because you almost shut down operations—guys can’t get POs, things are being dispatched, customers aren't being answered. So we try to keep those to a minimum. Then we have a company meeting once every quarter. We bring everybody in, give broader updates, try to keep those positive, announce employee of the month, stuff like that, who’s got a license, who had a kid—just so everybody connects. A lot of those guys don’t see each other because, you know, one guy's working in Wink, another guy's working in Shallow Water, and another guy's working on a fire station over here.
So they may not see each other all the time. It gives us an opportunity to catch up. You know, this guy used to be on my crew, it’s good to catch up with you. We feed everybody breakfast. We also have a company event twice a year, we do a big Christmas party with giveaways. Then we do a summer event. Like, we took everybody out to the Attledoo Farms corn maze, or we’ve done Joyland, rented out Main Event—just depends on the year.
[00:16:33] Albert Gillispie: You're blowing my mind—the number of employees in a service company. How many trucks is that?
[00:16:39] Jon King: We run, well, in just the insurance stuff, we have a hundred vehicles.
[00:16:42] Jon King: Golly, I think 75-ish of those are powered. Then we've got trailers, back trailers, backhoes, skid steers, and all the things you need to work in the dirt.
Retaining Employees in a Competitive Industry
[00:16:53] Albert Gillispie: Okay. The number one question, the biggest problem in trades—how do you recruit, retain, and build up your people?
[00:17:05] Jon King: Culture is probably the biggest piece of it. We've spent the last four years between myself and a few of the folks I trust in the business, our HR director, really working on that culture. I mean, if you've got somebody who is a jerk in the business, that can really affect everybody. So we weren't surgical about it, but I fired three or four people just because they were great employees, did their job great, but they were difficult to work with, and nobody wanted to be around them. We managed them out of the business, and having a good reputation about that is a big piece of it. People want to come work for you. Benefits, I mean, all the other things too. At the end of the day, dollar per hour is a big piece of that for these guys, right? But all the other things, I think, are what we have spent a lot of time working on. Because if you're going to spend as much time with your coworkers as you do with your family, right? Riding around in those 75 work pickups, goodness gracious, you don’t want to be around a bunch of jerks. So we've spent a lot of time focusing on that. I think it's probably one of our biggest keys to success.
[00:18:13] Albert Gillispie: Where do you go to find these guys? That's all over the news—no one's going into the trades. Where do you even start? I mean, don't give away anything proprietary, but how do you find them?
[00:18:26] Jon King: Five years ago, it was a complete struggle. We were really struggling because we had a bad reputation. But since then, we have guys that come to us.
[00:18:35] Albert Gillispie: Oh, man.
[00:18:38] Jon King: You meant it when you said culture. Yeah, it's a big deal. Those guys all know each other. It's not like, I mean, it's like the Church of Christ thing you talked about—everybody knows everybody. They all went to the same school. They all see each other at the supply house all the time, and they either worked for a company together or know somebody who worked for one. Those guys move around some. We've been really good at reducing our turnover, but they all know each other.
[00:19:17] Jon King: We do a lot of community events. We do a big deal called Heat the Town, so they're all connected. The company's reputation goes a long way. If they're at the supply house badmouthing us, they probably aren't going to come work for us. But if they're at the supply house saying, "Hey, look at this van they just set us up with—automated inventory and everything," then they might call us when we've got a job opening.
[00:19:31] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah, it's like, they've got a great culture, they pay well, and things are automated. Who wouldn't want to be part of that?
[00:19:39] Albert Gillispie: I'm just processing that for a second. Spending time like that takes time. This is hard work—hiring the right people, taking care of people—is just hard work. And when you do it for a number of years, and you've got them in the most comfortable work pickup, making their lives easier...
[00:20:03] Albert Gillispie: Yeah, it's hard work.
[00:20:05] Jon King: It's manual labor. And we're not done. I think we're 50 percent of the way to where my ideal picture is. We're moving in that direction. Once you get movement, something happens with movement.
[00:20:18] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah.
[00:20:18] Albert Gillispie: Momentum.
[00:20:19] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah.
[00:20:19] Albert Gillispie: Big Mo.
[00:20:21] Kellen Ketchersid: Well, it sounds like you're having success building that momentum, and that's awesome. But tell us about a time when the wheels fell off, or when something went wrong. You had these grand plans for momentum, and it just didn’t go your way.
Managing a Family in the Workplace
[00:20:36] Jon King: Oh yeah, I remember it vividly. It was my birthday five years ago. We had a family that worked for us—two sons, the wife was accounts payable, the service manager was the dad, and he was also a service tech. That was kind of the beginning of the end of us being really bad, in my opinion. He was just... he was a jerk.
[00:21:01] Jon King: And our owner made the decision that we were going to move in a different direction. We still wanted him as a service tech, but not as a leader. That lasted about six weeks before they all quit at once. All the projects I had moving just stopped because I had to take over. Two of them worked in the office, and they both worked for me, either directly or indirectly.
[00:21:23] Jon King: So I had to stop everything and become an AP clerk for six weeks while we found somebody else. And then our controller died a few months after that. So, yeah, I was busy. I didn't see a whole lot of my family that year. Oh, and we converted software packages at the same time.
[00:21:40] Kellen Ketchersid: Wow. The triple crown.
[00:21:42] Jon King: Yeah. So a mass exodus, a death of a key employee, and a software change all at once.
[00:21:47] Kellen Ketchersid: I'll bet that you are glad you went through that storm, right? I mean, it sounds like it wasn't fun at the time, but you're better now. You learn a lot from hard things.
[00:21:57] Jon King: I don't like doing them. Nobody likes doing them. I try not to make them harder than they should be, which I think a lot of folks tend to do. But yeah, I learned a lot from it. I'm still here.
[00:22:13] Kellen Ketchersid: They say things come in threes, so yeah, you got the big three.
Balancing Personal Life with Business
[00:22:20] Kellen Ketchersid: So how do you balance being a dad, a husband, and running this business?
[00:22:29] Jon King: Poorly. I think if you ask my wife, she'd say I've gotten better at it. I was awful at the beginning because, I mean, this is the weird thing: I want to be lazy, but when I get to work, I love work. I enjoy it. The best thing I ever did to balance that was I got roped into coaching when the kids were little. So I coached all the sports they played until they moved on to high school or junior high, and I was supposed to sit in the stands, which was really nice.
[00:23:00] Jon King: I miss it now, but I think that scheduling those things so that you have to be home for something, whether that's dinner, a game, or whatever it is, sports was it for us for a good period. But yeah, that's how I balanced it. So even when everything was falling apart, I would come home, coach football, and then go back.
[00:23:21] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah, that's good. We all need that. We need to remember to be real people.
[00:23:27] Albert Gillispie: Yeah. You've always struck me as being really intentional with what you say yes to, and I'm sure that wasn't always the case.
[00:23:37] Jon King: No, but I got real good at saying no. Yeah. That's probably the biggest lesson I've ever learned—how to say no. And I'm still not very good at it because I think I'm a people pleaser. I want to say yes. I try to find a way to say yes, but I also don't hesitate to say no when needed.
[00:23:55] Kellen Ketchersid: How do you get better at that? Because I think a lot of people struggle with that and get too much on their plate.
[00:23:59] Jon King: You get too much on your plate, realize you just have to, or you're going to suffocate. Yeah. I would love to say that I've learned from other people's mistakes, but for the most part, I have not, and I've overloaded myself and then just got to the point where you say no. And there's some great books about it.
[00:24:16] Jon King: The Art of Not Giving a F is brilliant. I would highly recommend it. I mean, there's some that you can train for, but a lot of it is just making mistakes and getting older. You know, old guys have no issue saying no. Some of that's just maturity. I'd love to give you the secret for that, but not caring about what people think and getting older makes it a whole lot easier.
[00:24:39] Albert Gillispie: And that's so much of business. There’s no magic pill or secret that makes everything easy. So much of it is showing up every day and continuing to take action. Be intentional with that. Eventually, you're going to learn to intentionally say yes to the right things, and you build this. Whether it's your culture, hiring people—you take action every day, you take care of people every day, and eventually, you learn. You've broken stuff, learned stuff.
[00:25:00] Albert Gillispie: You've probably made some people mad, made some people happy, and you learn the difference. Then you look up five, 10 years from now, and you know what you're doing.
Building Momentum and Managing Setbacks
[00:25:24] Jon King: Yeah. I still, to this day, say, "How did I get to the point where I know what I'm doing in this business?" And I still don't on a lot of things. But you just do it long enough. Some people call it practice.
[00:25:36] Albert Gillispie: It's like the three or four C's: you commit to something, you have the courage to suck at it, you have the courage to keep going when you're bad at it, when the wheels are falling off. And eventually, that courage and persistence develops into capability.
[00:25:45] Jon King: Well, and I came out of the software world. I wanted to be a coder.
[00:26:01] Albert Gillispie: Oh, gosh. Yeah. We need to sit on that.
[00:26:02] Jon King: And was and am still, but one of the methodologies is fail fast. That's a big thing I brought to the business. It's like, dude, we don't need to make plans for six months. Let's just find one person that'll try it with us, and let's do it, see how it works, and learn from it.
[00:26:20] Kellen Ketchersid: Being action-oriented like that is such a big deal. Yeah. I run into that over and over again with business owners and leaders. It's like, have a bias toward taking action.
[00:26:30] Jon King: Yeah. We used to plan stuff forever, and it wore me out. I think that's just the ADHD and impatience in me, but let's just do it, see what happens.
[00:26:38] Jon King: There are some things you can't do that with. I mean, you can't do that with employees—like, "Hey, let's hire this guy and see if he works out." You could, but it's not a very nice thing to do. But for the most part, we just say, "Hey, this is a great idea. Let's see if it works."
[00:26:52] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah.
[00:26:53] Jon King: A lot of times it doesn't, but we learn something.
[00:26:56] Kellen Ketchersid: And sometimes you need to think through some of the details before you jump. But if you sit around doing that all day, you're never going to take action, and it's never going to get off the ground.
[00:27:06] Jon King: That's right. We build a lot of airplanes while we fly them.
[00:27:11] Jon King: Have you ever done Enneagram?
[00:27:13] Albert Gillispie: Oh, nevermind.
[00:27:14] Jon King: Is that like the personality test?
[00:27:16] Albert Gillispie: Yeah, it's like a personality test.
[00:27:16] Jon King: I've done a thousand of them. I don't know if I've done that one. Dad's got a degree in human development, family studies. So I was like his guinea pig for years.
[00:27:25] Albert Gillispie: You've always struck me as like an Enneagram seven.
[00:27:29] Albert Gillispie: You're always trying new things, always have ideas.
[00:27:33] Jon King: Yeah. I had this conversation today with a girl I really trust. I’m like, "Hey, here's my idea for this thing, but you've been good at telling me over the years when something's a terrible idea." So I also have trusted partners. I find people who are either veterans—like there was a guy I miss so much, Pat Stevenson, who worked with us. He was our service manager. I’d come up with all these great ideas in my mind, and he'd be like, "That’s never going to work." And I’d make him explain why.
[00:28:00] Jon King: Sometimes I’d be like, "Oh yeah, you're right. That’s never going to work." And sometimes, it was just that "this is the way we've always done it." But he was willing to hear me. So that was a big piece of my success—having someone who could tell me, "That’s never going to work. That’s a stupid idea."
[00:28:15] Albert Gillispie: Okay.
[00:28:16] Jon King: Finding people you trust and who are collaborative has been really valuable for me since I’m a very collaborative person.
[00:28:22] Kellen Ketchersid: There are two important things I take from that. One, you're the kind of guy who wants somebody to be a truth teller with you, even if it's not what you wanted to hear. And I think a lot of people need to know that—we need to be the kind of people who just want to know the truth so we can move forward.
Truth Tellers and Constructive Feedback
[00:28:38] Kellen Ketchersid: Well, and I want to be that for other people. I think that's a responsibility we have in business. But the second thing is, if you can get to that place where you're willing to accept it, then you need to find somebody who's that truth teller for you and find that mentor.
[00:28:51] Jon King: And not have your feelings hurt when they say, "That's a stupid idea."
[00:28:55] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah, but they're right. They’re saving you a lot of trouble that you're going to learn one way or the other. That humility goes a long way.
[00:29:03] Albert Gillispie: Yeah. Not taking yourself too seriously, and that's one thing I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs, especially visionary people, struggle with. They have a lot of ideas.
[00:29:15] Albert Gillispie: They're a little, you know, cerebral isn't the right word, but nebulous is the word I use.
[00:29:19] Jon King: They're very cloudy.
[00:29:21] Albert Gillispie: Yeah, they have these ideas and these visions that aren't quite clear yet, and they want to try things. Being self-aware enough to build a team is key, because if you just walk in and say, "Hey, we're going to try this new idea today," you're going to make everybody mad.
[00:29:38] Albert Gillispie: You're going to make their lives miserable—done it—and create chaos. Maybe 15 minutes after a conversation, you're like, "Oh, well, I'm not going to do that. But here's this idea that maybe we should try." Having a personal sounding board before you go shout it from the rooftops, you've been intentional with that.
[00:29:58] Albert Gillispie: And I want our listeners to hear that—if you are that person, build your little inner circle that you can bounce those ideas off. People who can poke holes in it, and once it holds water, then you can take it forward.
Building a Collaborative Team
[00:30:15] Jon King: One of the mistakes I made early on was being collaborative with people who aren't ready for it. Some people aren't that way—you give them an idea, and they take it as, "Well, this is what we're doing now," and it's like, no, we're just testing this out. Figuring out those people who are going to be truth-tellers for you is important.
[00:30:35] Albert Gillispie: One more question—what are you excited about at Bruce Thornton? What's on the horizon that you're excited about? Maybe it's one of those harebrained ideas, but what's next?
[00:30:48] Jon King: Oh, it's so nerdy. We get these invoices from our suppliers, right? It takes us a long time because you have to know what part number that is. We have dozens of suppliers, and they all call things a little differently. They're cryptic—like, "quarter inch by three-quarter inch reducing tee." What is that? It's a tee that has one side smaller, but that kind of stuff is hard, especially for those who haven't been in the industry. They have to ask a thousand questions. So I figured out our software package can import their codes. They have a product code for everything, and we're just going to match them up to our stuff.
[00:31:30] Jon King: So when our folks go to receive it, they can just type in their product code—boom. It’s that automation thing, but that's the nerd in me that wants to take everything and make it easier. If we can do it—which I've got a pilot case running right now—it’s going to make their jobs so much easier. It's going to make our inventory so much more accurate, and it's just going to be good for the business.
[00:31:46] Albert Gillispie: Cool. Well, the nerdy things. That's what I'm excited about—data optimization.
[00:31:55] Kellen Ketchersid: What a nerd! The self-described lazy guy that isn't lazy at all.
[00:32:01] Albert Gillispie: Yeah.
[00:32:01] Kellen Ketchersid: Well, the nerdy things that make people's lives better—I see why you’re getting excited and nerding out about that.
[00:32:05] Albert Gillispie: I think it’s time for a fire round.
[00:32:08] Kellen Ketchersid: All right, time for a fire round. Let’s do it.
Fire Round
[00:32:11] Jon King: What's your favorite movie? Like, which answer do you want—the best movie I’ve ever seen or the one I go back to watch over and over?
[00:32:19] Kellen Ketchersid: This is your answer—you choose.
[00:32:19] Jon King: Okay, so the best movie—probably Shawshank. But you're not going to watch that over and over, you know? Once you see the ending, it blows your mind. But the movie I still go back and watch every once in a while—probably the one I watch more than anything else—is The Saint. Y’all remember that with Val Kilmer?
[00:32:41] Kellen Ketchersid: I watched that one time.
[00:32:41] Jon King: Okay, there’s just something about the criminal that becomes the redemption story. Plus, it’s got Elisabeth Shue in it.
[00:32:49] Kellen Ketchersid: Okay.
[00:32:50] Jon King: Sounds like we need to rewatch that one.
[00:32:52] Albert Gillispie: I don’t think I was interested in girls when that came out. What were you interested in?
[00:32:57] Albert Gillispie: Okay. I'm sorry. You alluded to this, but what's your favorite nonfiction book?
[00:33:06] Jon King: Probably Freakonomics. That was a fun one. That was one of those books that just changed my outlook on things. When they broke some of that stuff down, it was like when I took statistics in college. You're like, "Oh, that's different." I'm a gambler, so I was using it to try and count cards, but it just changed the way I looked at things.
[00:33:21] Albert Gillispie: I've never read it, but listening to it, it's amazing.
[00:33:34] Jon King: Yeah, McConaughey does a good job on that one, but Freakonomics reminded me a lot of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. There’s a lot of stats that you wouldn't think would be correlated, but they were. It was fascinating.
[00:33:42] Kellen Ketchersid: Okay, that’s a good book. What’s one piece of advice that’s common in your industry that you don’t agree with at all?
[00:33:58] Jon King: That’s interesting. I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of common wisdom in our industry that's wrong. I mean, you’ve got to take care of your air conditioner. Don’t run stringy vegetables down the garbage disposal. I don’t know.
[00:34:13] Albert Gillispie: That’s a good one. I don’t have a great answer for that.
[00:34:13] Jon King: That’s all right.
[00:34:14] Albert Gillispie: That’s okay, that’s an answer. And then, what words of wisdom or quote do you try to live by or has impacted you the most?
[00:34:25] Jon King: I mean, for me, like personal motto, I've never been outdone as a friend or as an enemy. Genghis Khan.
[00:34:33] Albert Gillispie: Okay.
[00:34:34] Jon King: Something that I heard years ago in college history that just stuck with me. I think there’s a loyalty piece to that.
[00:34:40] Kellen Ketchersid: But say it again.
[00:34:41] Jon King: I've never been outdone as a friend or as an enemy.
[00:34:44] Albert Gillispie: Okay.
[00:34:45] Kellen Ketchersid: Right. Genghis Khan.
[00:34:46] Jon King: Genghis Khan. Timotian.
[00:34:49] Kellen Ketchersid: I forgot that was his Mongol name.
[00:34:51] Jon King: Yeah. I’m not sure if that’s a direct correlation, the professor may have given it some latitude, but it stuck with me. Then we’ve got the family rules, like the things you’re trying to pass down as wisdom to your kids. If you can’t be good, be good at it. Never break two laws at the same time.
[00:35:10] Albert Gillispie: You have another one?
[00:35:12] Jon King: There’s a long list, but I’ll spare you.
[00:35:13] Albert Gillispie: In the construction world, you’ve probably got some West Texas sayings that you shouldn’t repeat for everyone to hear.
[00:35:18] Jon King: Yeah.
[00:35:20] Albert Gillispie: Well, man, that wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was fun. And man, I appreciate you coming on. I know there are some service industry folks that are going to enjoy this. Thank you so much.
[00:35:31] Jon King: I appreciate y’all having me.
[00:35:33] Albert Gillispie: Thank you.
[00:35:34] Albert Gillispie: Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that podcast and conversation. I know we did. It was a lot of fun. If you got value out of that podcast and you want more like that, go ahead and click subscribe, leave us a five-star review because that’s how we tell more people about our podcast. Please do that.
[00:35:53] Albert Gillispie: And if you are a business owner who is feeling stuck, if you’re feeling like you’ve hit a plateau or your hair is on fire and you’re out of control, go to our website at stagcoaching.com. Click in the upper right-hand corner and take our free business assessment. In just a few minutes and a few questions, it can help diagnose what’s going on in your business, what needs your attention, what’s going well, and what isn’t. It’s on our website, stagcoaching.com. It’s free and it’s easy.
[00:36:35] Albert Gillispie: Thank you guys, and we’ll see you on the next one.
[00:36:36] Kellen Ketchersid: Thank you.
