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Ep 040 – Building Resilience: Lex Mason on Strategy and Innovation

Home / Episode / Ep 040 – Building Resilience: Lex Mason on Strategy and Innovation
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Could embracing water-conserving technology be the game-changer your landscape business needs? In this episode of "Roots of Success," Tommy Cole and Lex Mason explore how Weathermatic bucked industry norms to revolutionize irrigation with Smartline and Smartlink technology. Uncover the principles behind successful hiring, maintaining a positive company culture, and the incredible efficiency gains that come from investing in remote-access systems. For landscape company owners looking to grow sustainably, this conversation offers valuable lessons on modernizing operations and focusing on what truly matters.

THE BIG IDEA:

Innovation and Culture are keys to Success

Key Moments:

[06:32] Tailored market strategy drastically increased sales volume.
[09:33] Affordable smart tech now benefits most landscape companies.
[12:56] Largest field service team; efficient, minimal disruption.
[17:18] Weathermatic valued educational leadership and reputation.
[20:05] Focused catalog on quality, pricing, and uniqueness.
[24:03] SmartLink connects and optimizes landscape business operations.
[27:11] Increased billable hours through efficient management strategies.
[31:51] Weathermatic's "three C's.
[37:02] Quality processes are crucial; accountability ensures improvement.
[38:45] Fast growth demands adaptability; overwhelms newcomers sometimes.

QUESTIONS WE ANSWER:

  1. How to leverage technology like SmartLink for landscape and irrigation management?
  2. What are the benefits of remote access technology in irrigation systems?
  3. How can landscape companies improve their inspection completion rates?
  4. What are effective strategies for business growth in the irrigation industry?
  5. How to integrate water-conserving technologies into service offerings?
  6. What makes Weathermatic a leader in the irrigation industry?
  7. What are the β€œthree Cs” in hiring and team development?
Episode Transcript
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β€Šβ€‹ β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ The Roots of Success podcast is for the landscape professional who's looking to up their game. We're not talking lawns or grass here. We're talking about people, process, and profits. The things deep within the business that need focus to scale a successful company from hiring the right people and managing your team to improving your operations and mastering your finances. We've got a brain trust of experts to help you nurture the roots of a successful business and grow to the next level. This is The Roots of Success. πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ Welcome to another episode of Roots of Success podcast, and I'm your host Tommy Cole. We have an awesome guest today I'm super excited about as I do for all of our guests. They are awesome if you Have no idea who this person is if you've been living under a rock for 75 years you might have been but β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ this is Lex Mason President of Weathermatic. How are you Lex? I'm doing great. And I promise I have not been around for 75 years, but yeah, weathermatic has man. So great to be here. Thanks, Tommy. Absolutely. Absolutely. Weathermatic is let's give you a quick plug leading provider of water conserving technology and services for 75 years, servicing landscape professionals with a full line of products and services. Oh my gosh. It's a lot. I think you guys just started out as like a little weathermatic lawn sprinkler system. I'm looking at this picture with like suits and top hats and looking at the sign and I'm like, oh my God, 75 years later, crazy. I think I've known you since about the 2008 timeframe. We worked together a lot of previous company and. Since then, it's just been an awesome relationship all through the years. And, and it's been great. And I've been like, we got to have Lex on. I think I saw you at NALP last year and we're like, we're going to have you on. And we're finally, finally come to the moment Love it, man. Yeah, the schedule seems to just be getting busier and busier as we go on. But this is yeah, a ton of fun. And it's crazy to look back, you know, we're we're nearing our 80th, you know, 80th year of existence here and thinking about you know, where the business started as a, as a landscaping company, actually, and kind of morphed into doing an irrigation contracting. Couldn't get good parts. And the guy said, well, screw it. I'm going to go build it myself. You know, the original founding the Snotty family, the original founding family of, of Weathermatic. And you know, we were fortunate to buy the business about 30 years ago and I never looked back. So that's it, that's it. So if you've got something around you, you think there's an opportunity there when opportunity knocks, make sure you grab it and run,β€Š What is Weathermatic? jump in, jump in. It's all about taking risks and and keeping the foot down and going. Love it. So let's start off like what in your words, what is weathermatic? It's a nice term but like what is what there's all these components, smart link and smart system and, and, and these controllers and parts, but like, give me the, give me the elevator pitch of what Weathermatic is, is and what they're about. Yeah, absolutely. So, the easiest way to think about it is kind of like how landscape companies will have a construction division and a maintenance division, right? We're, we're basically the same thing. We have a construction division where we sell things like spray heads and nozzles and valves and controllers to new construction projects, whether it's residential, commercial, we call it our turf business, right? So, turf. We don't really do much ag work or golf work, but just commercial residential landscape irrigation. We have a traditional manufacturing business over there. That's the 75 years worth of legacy. That's, that's been around for a long time and we'll be, and we'll be around for, for a long time. The smart link side of the business really is our maintenance side of the business, right? That's the recurring technology side of the business that was born from. A vision that we had to go, Hey, it's one day, this was about 20 years ago. We had a vision that one day there will be a need for every commercial property, for every commercial maintenance contractor, for every high end residential maintenance contractor is going to have to have remote access to the controllers that they manage. Either due to the cost of water, the cost of labor, the crazy traffic patterns that we all live in every day. That that data that that remote connection is going to be so important at some point in the future. And lucky enough, right? We built the platform then and our business today is pretty simply helping to take. Landscape maintenance contractors, irrigation division. Which is a funny phrase that I call it the redheaded stepchild, right? It's a, it's a lot of times out of sight, out of mind. We'll get to it later. Like, you know, I don't care that we're losing a little bit of money on it. Like just let's just make it work. just make it work. Yeah. Keep the fires out and don't lose any customers from it. And what we found out is that if you actually dive in. And we've built a process for it, not just smart link, the technology, but the actual process. And we've hired some of the best people in the industry to help really coach and hold the hands of landscape professionals to implement this system. And our process and turn irrigation into a major leading profit center for the business. So, in a nutshell, I'll, I'll stop at that, but that's that's kind of the 2 sides of our business and, and what we're focused on, yeah, that's, that's great. You know, what's funny is that I don't think we would have thought of 20 years ago of having remote access. And now it has come to like, it's an automatic given deal. I remember early in my career looking at controllers and turning the dial and then running all the way across the building and go, is it running? Wait, was that zone six or seven? Crap. Run all the way back. Turn it off and start back over. Right? And I'm like, so the technology is there. It's great. Now everything is on app based, everything is on, you know, iPad, it's phone, it's laptop, remote access. β€Š Accessibility of Irrigation What's one thing that has basically changed everything because of remote access? you know, I think it's the. It's the accessibility of it and so what I mean by that, and β€Šthis might it's it's a little different answer than probably what what people would traditionally think is it the way in which we price it to make it now accessible for a landscape professional to build this into their contract to make it a standard line in the budget of this is just how we go deliver service instead of. Trying to train their team on how to go do water savings analysis reports and R. O. I. studies and try to talk people into why water matters when they may or may not actually care about it. And, hey, this thing will save us so many trips and make our team so much more efficient. And the customer goes well. Then great for you. What does that move for me? Not my problem, right? I hired you to be out there. And so it's a little bit of a go to market study that that we did about seven years ago of something. Something's not right here. And so really tailoring our package, not changing the technology, not changing the product. But really tailoring the way in which we bring the product to market and the niche that we serve, which we can get into niching later and things like that, which I think is one of the most powerful things to do, getting the pricing, how to do it, not just the cost, but physically how to deliver pricing to make it accessible for our target, you know, for our target clientele, it, I mean, β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ it was 10 X overnight. We went from selling 100 control systems a year to selling 1000 control systems a month. β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ I mean, it was that level of radical change that that happened. Is just making it accessible to the people that actually benefit the most from the product. And now the water savings and the sustainability is awesome. β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ I've got a heart for that. But it's the cherry on top. It's the whipped cream, right? It's the bonus on top of the foundation that it does for a labor starved landscaping business. So Lex, you hit on something the pricing structure I really wanted to dive into that. β€Š How pricing works Yeah You know talk about we can run around the building and push buttons and the in the clients like so cool So what whatever what do you mean by pricing? Like in the line items, so you're saying like include that in your bid For maintenance, include it for the installation and it's a line item. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. So it's an easiest way I can kind of compare it is think about when everyone, you know, the 36 inch push mowers, and then we went to big, you know, 48 inch, you know, ZTRs and the 52s. And, you know, you run your equation, right? When you're estimating a job on, Hey, what's the biggest, fastest piece of equipment.β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ I can, you know, take care you know, perform maintenance on this job. You're not quoting everything like you're pushing 24 inch stand behinds. You're quoting it with the appropriate equipment. You're not going to the client and asking them if they'd like to invest in a 52 inch CTR so that you can perform the maintenance on the job, right? Your equipment. Your people, your overhead are all costed into the project. And that was the major shift. And it's really easy to, you know, Hey, instead of paying, you know, one time upfront, let's spread out payment over 36 months. That wasn't really the ingenious thing that happened here. Certainly helped, but it was more so around coaching, you know, our clients who are going, we need this technology. I've got to be more efficient. I have to turn my irrigation division into a profit center, not just a loss leader. And I don't know how to go sell this thing to my 182 clients, right? There's zero chance I'm going to a hundred percent approval on an enhancement, you know, upgrade. And so training them on how to, you know, take that 30, 40, you know, dollar a month cost and just cost it in as a standard line, I've been in a contract to be now the way we deliver our service. Those two things paired together from a pricing standpoint changed the whole game because now it made really this smart, remote connected technology that used to be only the top 5 or 10 percent of landscape companies had the competency to go and sell based on ROI and sell based on understanding water bills and budgets only to their top 10 or 20 percent of clients that actually, you know, gave a crap about it. All the way down now to where, I mean, the 80, 20 year old 80, 90 percent of landscape companies have the competency to implement this, execute it and benefit from it without having any pushback or kind of any customer required. This is now a tool for the landscape company by the landscape company that benefits them directly. β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ And it just so happens to deliver an awesome by product to their customer, which is compliance, you know, with local water restrictions. Moving dollars from Uncle Sam, right? The Water Authority. Yeah, I think it's the craziest thing in the world. Why on earth do we want to spend as a HOA community or an apartment community? Why do we want to send so much money to Uncle Sam, the utility district, instead of reclaiming those dollars and reinvesting into the property? And so all those things together really took us from being a, you know, a controller manufacturing company now to a trusted advisor to right at 300 landscape companies that have implemented this initiative. So it's It's never one thing. That's the, you know, the silver bullet, it's a combination of it, but pricing structure, and then the way in which we bring it to market and advise those three things together, it just. Tommy man, our, our businesses we're so blessed, but it's, it's a different business today than it was 10 years ago. No, it's great. So if you're a landscape business, say you've got a hundred maintenance clients and you got three, four, five different controllers out there and you're kind of running around. You know, the Nate, you know, the story Lex, but I have seen it in my own eyes. Rip the bayonet off, go with someone like Weathermatic. Actually, go with Weathermatic. Put it that way. You guys have such a great customer service. Cause I know you guys, you're down the street from our office. So, great customer service to set up that entire system. This is, we're going to go all in with a hundred Weathermatic controllers. So it's consistent across the board. We train on one controller. You guys do continuing education in house, out of house, can travel, set things up, be remotely. That, explain why that is such a huge attribute to Weathermatic because I've lived through it and I've seen it and it's way different than your competitors. So explain a little more about that. I Yeah. And I got to give a lot of credit to Mike you know, Mike Mason, my father who probably, you know, I was a little green in the beginning. He gave me a lot longer rope than I was anticipating or frankly, even realized I had. And so whether it was whether it was trust or luck or just a blissful Yeah, exactly. It was a, Hey buddy, you know, gave you enough to hang yourself. Like, let's see what you go get done. And so right off the bat, right. You know, we took on all of the sales and marketing responsibility personally, because I knew that if we were going to try to position ourselves as a consultant, as a partner with these businesses, I, you know, You can't do it unless you have the backend, the structure for it. So yeah, Tommy, I mean, over the past four or five years we've built now, even against our, you know, the mainstream, let's call it construction competitors. We've built the largest field service, field installation, remote monitoring and reporting team structure, technical support in field technical support. β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ Both in regions that were you know, have a lot of presence in as well as a ton virtually. We've built the largest group in this industry. And so, I mean, like right now we're implementing for a handful of clients, we're implementing over 5, 000 controller conversions. In the Pacific Northwest alone, I mean, just see basically Portland and and Seattle between just those 2 markets causing very limited disruption to the internal day to day operations of those teams and people on standby monitoring the process. So it's a, we knew when we wanted to positions ourselves as that partner and this division of the company. That we thought was the largest untapped profit center. The average landscaper has access to that doesn't require any new hires. That doesn't require a crazy capital investment. They don't have to go recruit new customers or buy, you know, a 400, 000 tree truck or, you know, chemical applicator. It's simply plug it in, budgeted in and then get to work and we hold your hand through the process. And so it's we knew we had to build that back end support team. We call it customer success is the I know you guys do a lot of work on idle alignment. We stole that customer success term from the, I mean, really just the technology software industry of our job is not, you know, to manage a customer, our job. And we truly like, look at it this way. Is we're not happy until the customer is seeing the results. And we have some that are happy with, you know, using the first you hear this about some of the leading you know, business softwares and landscaping where it's, Oh, we're only using 10 percent or 20 percent of it. β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ And, you know, we're happy. We're really not happy until they're at critical mass of using the system, seeing the full results that we know it's capable for. And buddy, the thing that has been the number one testimony to it, that now in the past seven years of launching 200 clients on this initiative, we've had, we've had precisely one turn smart link off out of 200. Wow. And unfortunately that was because they, they went out of business and they were so kind that they actually were able to package the stuff up and send it back to us before the bank put a lock on the gate. I mean, so like, that's the level of relationship and, That's You know, kind of ability that we have and I'm just so grateful for our team and what they've done to really put us in that world class state of service and support. That's great. Let's talk about some specifics. That way we can sort of put everything to rest. So I hear from some, my clients that, you know, Weathermatic versus the competition about the spray heads, the nozzles, the, the rotors, the MPs, like they're a little bit different or it's not, when I go down the street to my local little little distributor and I pick up, you know, a handful of nozzles, Like I'm just accustomed to doing that and so they're like, well Tommy, I don't understand I'm just going to go down the street and grab a few things β€Š What sets weathermatic apart? What would you say to those people that said that they're just kind of set in their ways And they don't really know weathermatic or they've heard like one story. That's probably not true based on weathermatic type deal, but To have 75 years in the business started out as the sprinkler part and now moving also to this reoccurring maintenance thing, what do you say to those people? Yeah. I mean, there's a any 75 80 year old business is going to have some baggage to it. I mean, we, we bought just, you know, Just so everybody doesn't think this has just been easy street over here. I mean we bought Weathermatic when it was doing 5 million in revenue and lost a million dollars a year before. So the word bought is a very glamorous term for we, we were assigned the debt. And so we got the, we got the equity. That was the buying process of Weathermatic 30 years ago. process, but Painful. Painful process a product problem in nearly every line of the business. So, you know, thinking back on it, should we have bought the assets and rebranded and done something else? But we had, like, Weathermatic had such a great reputation, even 30 years ago, for being the leader in education. We were the first state licensed sponsor. Actually, the college of irrigation knowledge is what we called it for the for the old timers out there who remember it. We were the first licensing organization who partnered with the state of Texas to build curriculum to get irrigation into that level of trade, like plumbing and electrician. And so there's a lot of brand equity around that, but absolutely. I mean, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, not the business that we had today. Today, what I'd tell you is again, going back simply on that stat of, you know, out of 200 now, almost 250, you know, clients haven't precisely one turn the thing off. I mean, that, that should speak for itself. The, I mean, the individual turf products, I got to give you guys a ton of credit for that. You know, we've got our warranty statistics that I can quote that are. Frankly better than a handful of the competitors and some product lines are as equal and a couple of the other product lines, I think the real value. To your audience is this whole new wave of digital e commerce platforms cutting out the cost of retail, what McFarland and I mean, the ACE program has brought to your consumers through cooperative buying models and things like that. I mean, it's AVA, I mean, it's happened in aviation, it's happened in hospitality. It happens in insurance every day, right? These co op buying groups that you can leverage the buying power of your entire institution, your entire group to get access to pricing that frankly, the the publicly traded companies of the world, you know, have access to or the top, maybe five on the LM one 50 have access to that crazy level pricing and it just creates an unfair advantage. Your group now has access to it because the collaborative buying power of your team. Yeah. so we stand behind everything with full force. You can come visit us here in Dallas anytime Which I highly recommend, by the way. Yeah. Great facility. Great learning. I mean, what a better way to see the trinkets of how everything works. Cause then you can go back to your shop and go. Not that you know how everything works, but you just know the story behind Weathermatic. It's almost like you're bought into that commitment that the Mason family took over. That was the dream when you first bought it, the 5 million company, right? But it's come a long ways. I recommend everyone flying to Dallas and seeing that entire operation. absolutely. You know, and the one other thing I'll just hit on about that is on the turf products, like the, the sprays is we went through a catalog of, frankly, we had kind of taken the bait. Of well, Hey, our other kind of traditional competitors are trying to be everything for everybody. And they're trying to have, you know, 1200 SKUs in a catalog. So that from the beginning of the project to the end of the project, they can sell you every single little thing on there, whether they OEM it, whether they actually manufacture it, whether they're just reselling it from, you know, some of their purchases. And so we whittled down our catalog to what are the things that we believe either a, Okay. We have such a radical quality advantage on that. We're willing to be above average market pricing on because of the integrity and the quality of the product to the performance of the product or be where can we meet or exceed quality standards, but have an incredible, you know, pricing advantage. To bring those thing to market or some other form of intellectual property that others just don't have. And everything else in the catalog that we had tried to me too or, you know, two step or buy and resell and make 5% or 10, we just cut it and we said we don't have to be everything. And so the, we've got about 50 core SKUs that we either personally, you know, engineer, manufacture, and sell. And a handful of real trusted kind of OEM partners that we do some products through as well And we got rid of everything else and tommy doing that right there I think there's probably a story in there somewhere for landscape companies of getting out of the things that aren't core competency Just because you think or just because you think the market tells you you have to Yeah. it like drop Lex, as landscape guys. When we start a business, it's no different than what you guys did. It's like, we're going to service everything. And we got to say yes to people. We'll take care of it. We'll take care of it. And then as the years go by, you start to really tailor the business to more of a Chick fil A model, right? It's chicken, God, don't overcomplicate everything. Simplify process, the products, the services, all that you guys have learned truly, truly the hard way, truly the hard way, You got it. smart line. Controllers and smart link technology. Can you explain like what that means? So if everyone's any kind of confused on what those are. Yeah. So smart, smart line is the controller platform was really the 1st kind of heavy residential light commercial, heavy commercial affordable line of weather based control controllers that hit the market. This came, they came back out and 2004, the 1st year that we released the platform, we won the irrigation association new product of the year. It was in a bunch of magazines, a bunch of articles, had a bunch of awards for taking something that had traditionally been a, you know, seven to 10 to 15, 000 investment to get a weather. Scheduling control system we could do for a couple hundred bucks. And so one, a ton of awards. And that was really our first jump into the electronics or the technology side of our business. Flash forward to 2012, but from the day we released smart line, the controller line, we knew that someday this was going to be connected to the internet. It was going to be remote enabled. We knew that the. You know, the thousand property owners and management groups. We knew that the landscape companies managing hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of properties, we're going to need to have remote access to. So from 2004, if you think about it before iPhone, right. We had a vision of people are going to need to monitor and manage this thing remotely. How insane is that before a freaking Apple got it to market? We were thinking about that then. Yeah. Steve jobs. yeah, right. Yeah. And irrigation, maybe we should have gone a little broader or something but no happy where we are, but that was that was it. And then in 2012, we released the first version of SmartLink super early. And so it has, you know, from that port, smart link is your link to the controller. And so we'll make jokes like, you know, get linked and, you know, go, go link yourself and you know, you gotta get linked up and all that. So those are our smart link is ultimately what powers the whole thing to give you that remote connection access, and then all of the. You know, kind of business operating tools, all the integrations with, you know, folks like, you know, aspire element and boss and QuickBooks and everything kind of stems from that to go from all of the internal operations at a landscape company. From scheduled inspections to you know, documenting repairs, to pricing out those repairs, to getting, you know sending proposals or requests to clients ultimately to flowing through to your ERP system or your, you know, your BizOps system. That whole. Workflow that should happen within the irrigation division, including dashboards of our techs getting their jobs done. Are we hitting our inspections goal? All of those things? You know, we built those systems into smart link. And so that's kind of the smart line is the physical controller. Okay. link is the is really the software platform that powers the whole, the whole Very good. What I like about the smart link, what's one of my, one of my little isms that I coached you all the time is. having constant communication with your clients. And what I mean by constant, is it weekly? Is it monthly? Is it quarterly? Whatever that is in your business. Okay. One of the things I always use, cause I love Weathermatic so much, is the feature of the inspection report. β€Š Updating technologies and reports It is fascinating because you guys are way advanced than anybody else. And what I mean by that, I have, I have seen it off of multiple landscape companies. Your tech can go in there, do a full audit, come up with a report, with itemized zones that are working or non working, and their, their, their, their failures of each zone, along with pictures. You can put your company logo on it. And that document can go straight to the client as a communication platform to them and say, this is what we notice in your system. We're doing the repairs because what happens, Alex, every month or every quarter you're doing an inspection. You're like, well, that's wrong. And that's wrong. And we fixed this miss method. Here's your bill for 800 bucks. And she's like, Well, I don't understand it Yeah, I thought you fixed that last month. Yeah. you fix that. I got another invoice for 200. What happened this time? Three months later, this, a picture is worth a thousand words. Am I right or wrong? Or I'm just crazy. But that is like game changer technology for your landscape business. No, it's a thousand percent. And the, I mean, and the, to simplify it, we can geek out about the details on this thing, but here's the, I mean, here's the quick start guide, right? When I bought this new microphone equipment, did I read the whole Cadillac? No. I read the three step quick cart, right? Okay. You're a landscape company. You're managing a hundred, 200, 500 sites, whatever. I think Jeffrey johns, a client of y'all says it so well, right? His team, his irrigation team went from an average daily billable capacity of about six. I think it said 5. 5 to 6 hours a day to 9. 5 bill billable hours a day. Because of all the capacity, all the firefighting, all the, can you go change this? The color struggling that we got to do our overseed program. The snow is rolling in earlier. There's a, there's a cool front. The rain is coming. There's so many things when you get under the covers and understand how many non value add tasks you're not just your irrigation tax, but your account managers, your VPs are running around town to try to, you know, keep from getting fired on a job when they're sensitive, that stuff is running when it shouldn't be, or vice versa should be running and isn't. All of those things add up to such an internal distraction that gets eliminated when this comes in. And so now, what usually is the first thing to get cut when life gets busy and fires come up are your inspections. And so the vast majority of companies that we work with have 40 percent inspection completion rate. And so you might think about that and go like, oh, okay. Well, you know, they're saving money not saving guys You know go out there and they're not getting fired for not meeting the spec of their contract. So they're okay Well, an inspection guys is the funnel. That's your sales funnel And so when we're complaining about, you know, that thing, not being profitable or irrigation, not being a very big part of the business. So why would I spend so much time focusing on 5 percent of my business? Well guys, that's the problem. It shouldn't be 5 percent of your business. It should be 20 to 25 percent of your business. Because every time life gets busy, we stopped doing inspections, which means you stop filling up the sales funnel, which means you're delivering a worse product, a worse service to your client. Instead of staying on top of repairs, I had a, I had a wise old guy. One time we were, we were walking through the deal and he goes, you know, the two reasons why I ever get fired and I go, what Jim, and he goes, water and weeds. Yeah. Yeah. there's a lot of truth in that. Yeah. issue around water, some issue around weeds. And so we we at least solve half the equation and I'll argue that getting Well, I think you can solve it all. So my, my recommendation, here's it, two reason you always get fired from a maintenance contract, Okay. irrigation and communication. I love that. You're not wrong. I mean, I'm telling you, and you, if you're in the South, man, for, for, for four to six months, you better be ready to go with that in the off season so that you're prepared for the real true growing season, that and communication. And when you line up with the inspection reports and you, you know, Get the data and the reports to them that nips those two things and you keep going and you keep your clients for a long time. I'll tell you what, what peak and Pacific and seventies and and all those guys and DeSantis up in the North the Pacific Northwest taught me, I had no idea how dry they were for like two, two and a half months a year. I thought it was, you know, just wet year round and I'm going, why are you having us come up here? How does this makes any sense? Bob goes, you have no idea. The hair on fire, which I thought was a funny joke coming from Bob the hair on fire situation that it is for two months to keep this stuff green. And I was like, okay, okay. He goes, cause all of the judgment comes those two dry, dry, dry, arid months. If this stuff doesn't stay green, if we're not ensuring that stuff is running when it should be, he goes, and you can kiss that renewal goodbye. correct. Love it. Let's shift gears a little bit, Lex, and talk about the team that has built over there at Weathermatic. I've never met anyone grumpy, anyone that's not a good culture fit. Not at all, ever, never, never, never in all the years, since 20, so 2008. β€Š What are the three C's Yeah. There's things, there's this thing called the three C's that I really, really love and maybe you guys have got lucky and maybe you really tried and trued by this, but it's the guiding principles of our people. You talk about the three C's, you talk about those three and what it's built of a team of people at Weathermatic. Well, you know, Mike and this was really what Brody championed almost 20 years ago when him and Mike, I mean, it was them too. And and a, and a rag tag group around here and they were, you know, the kind of the skunk works group, right? If we got to turn around this little 5 million dollar business, losing a million dollars a year and.β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ We need a strategy around people. And so Mike and Brody got together and they read a bunch of books and they talked about it and they came up with this philosophy that we call the three C's and it's the, and it's the screening process, almost like a report card, an evaluation card, if you will, of, No one enters these doors at Weathermatic unless multiple, and now we have a, which I got to credit our guy, Anthony Herrera here, who has really leveled us up on the, on the internal screening and, and all that process. But everyone has to come through these 3 and so it's character, competency and chemistry. None of them are negotiable. And so to expand a little bit, so character, right? I went to a private christian high school here in north texas attorney christian academy for any, you know, pinkies up fans out there. But they had what they called a 24 7 policy, right? And it was who you are at school is who you are at home. As long as you're a paying registered student here and so very much the same the way that you represent us here. At the office is what we expect to be represented. We're at when we're at trade shows when we're at after hours events at trade shows when we're doing dinners and entertaining. if you're a, if you're a drinking carousing person on the weekends, and then show up here and want to button your top button and come through the door and all that stuff goes away. Doesn't work for us and that's okay. There's plenty of places out there where that's encouraged and not necessarily a bad thing, but just for here, it doesn't work. And then we get to chemistry. Right? And so chemistry is the, the Chick fil a thing, right? They don't, they don't hire people. If you don't greet the interviewer with a smile you can't train someone to smile instinctively. And so you're either a smiler or you're not a smiler. And so they don't, they don't accept the interview past that unless you greet the interviewer with a smile. So is it a pleasure to see you? When I walk down the hallway, do I smile at you and say, Hey, how's your day going? Like, are you a good team player? Are you collaborative? Are you are you Basically, you're either a culture builder or you're a culture detractor. There's really no room in the between to go, Oh, you know, they're, they're fine. And they're this, and they're not going to really be a, you are either a culture contributor or you are a culture detractor. And then finally is the competency piece. And this is the one that most people spend the most time focused on. And really from what I've found, it is we say all three on our own level playing fields. I think that most people are pretty good at figuring out, Hey, can this person do the job or not? Do they have, you know, references that can do the job, but we take a little different spin on it. It's not just about if they can do the job. It's that every hire that we make has to make the team better. Right. And so it was you know, Anthony shared this, this idea with me of buddy, do you realize that every time, let's say that you have five customer success, you know, managers and, you know, in, in, in our world, account managers. Right. Every time you're hiring one, you're either hiring one worse than the best person on the team or better than the best person on the team. And so are you making a decision that you're going to pay somebody, you know, the same or a little more, a little less, like whatever it may be, you're either raising the bar of the team with your future hires, or you're lowering the bar on the team with every hiring decision that you make. And so are you the best at your job, or are you working your tail off to become the best at it, that continual improvement kind of mentality? So that's our. That's our three C's and do we get it right? 100 percent of the time. No. But we have we have a pretty, pretty hard look, you know, after six months and we got to make sure that we are on track on those three things, regardless, frankly, of corporate gain or impact that they're making.β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ If, if we can't stack up on the character and chemistry piece, it's just, it's now I've painted myself at a corner, right? It's, we can't proceed if they're not hitting on those things. Right. Love it. Three C's. I love the culture you guys are building over there. It is absolutely contagious. I can see it when we're at shows and events and even just walking through the building. Lex, what's what's a word of advice? Anyone out there that is a small, tiny company just getting started all the way to, you know, The biggest and baddest, you know, top one 50 across the board. Is it the work hard, play hard? Is it the, what's the model that you sort of live and die by? That's a great question. I am naturally like an instinctual person where I can find my way through situations. I can relate to people pretty easily. I can find a way to get things done. And what I've learned more and more over the past, you know, five years in this position is. Right? The team is only as good as your worst process. And I'm not naturally a process oriented guy. I have to force myself to go do it. And I can look at the divisions of this company that are winning. And I can look at the ones that are struggling or behind that we're trying to work on and get better. And it almost always comes down to not just Process for process sake, but the quality of the process, the trial and error that we went through to create something that we then document and hold people accountable for, you know, for following. And so I've had to really. Work on myself to become. A process person almost that maniacal level of focus of I'm a broken record on, Hey, well this, you know, this team isn't doing it. Like what's their process. Can I see their SOPs? Like who's holding them accountable? And if I go ask them a question about, Hey, what happens after this? And if they don't know that, then I'm going to the team leader going Hey buddy, like, what is, what is, what are they supposed to do after this? And it's like, Oh, let me look it up. Or I don't. Okay. I see where the breakdown is here. That's on me. Let's, we got to dive in and we got to make sure that our team knows what our expectations are and go do it. Is, is one and I think a second one is, I think this is really important to the different sizes of businesses and where they are in landscaping and it applies directly to us is not only is competency important from do they have the skills to do accounting or do they have the skills to do you know, to do the manual labor, to be an irrigation technician or to be an account manager, they've got to come out Of previous work experience, that either mimics the environment that you have from like a pace. We've hired a lot of people that are on paper. Excellent character, competency, chemistry, you know, all those things, flying colors, but they get here and they, they don't think it's, it's real that the company's growing, you know, 40, 45 percent a year. And that's like a hair on fire. You're doing, you're, you're doing whatever job pops up, whatever new problem pops up and like that flexibility to jump in and solve problems and build process behind. So it doesn't break again and go do it. a, you know, multinational corporation or something like that, where You know, they're aiming for to beat inflation, right? To get to 5 percent or 6 percent or 3%. Like it's too, it's so different the environment and we see, we see people, you know, in the past that have come here. They're like, I really want to go to a fast paced environment. I really want that. I really want that. And then they show up and it's like, Oh my God, like it really is at fast pace. And I don't know if I'm ready for this or vice versa. Right. We'll have someone leave and go, Hey, you know, I want to I want to spread my wings and go work for this fortune 500 or go work for this national company. And we go, awesome. Great. And they get over there and they get put in this tiny little box of, you know, the hyper exaggeration here, but you're going to click, you know, return on the screen 15 times or 150 times a day on this Excel document. And they're gone. Crap. I miss the autonomy. I miss the problem solving, getting to use my brain versus just, you know, my brawn here and they'll, and we've been so fortunate to welcome a couple of those back into the organization. And so finding, making sure that the, the, the pedigree of what they're used to, the pace of work is just as important as those other things. And so we're trying to come up with another C. That can help us look for that. Cause that's been our biggest miss on personnel lately is we'll nail the three C's. I don't think it's three C's and a P for pace, but we got to come up with something that reflects that. Cause that's been our, that's been our next. know, it's, it's a process, it's a process and you grow, right? It's never going to be perfect with the three C's for the, for another 50 years. Right. So it's kind of that evolution. The journey you know, it's, it's a marathon race for as long as we're on this earth and that's the beauty of it. So I got a few Tommy's takeaways. So bear with me, Lex. If I, if I'm something up interject, but what I learned about neck Lex and the weathermatic team is let's go 80 years of being in this industry. Boom. Check one out of like 200 clients that you service and install products. Went out of business. That's like a proven track record of your products. Love it What sets you apart in your competition? The two things that I love the most is Warranty, right? Actually three things. I'm gonna make it three things warranty, you know, that's digital e commerce buying power you've got a simplicity of 50 or more or so skews You've simplified the business made it tailored to the landscape and irrigation companies out there And the third thing is the customer support. Love it. It's amazing. The products are great. Inspections generate revenue. Like I love that. That's it's just awesome. Without geeking out on all the parts, the three C's, character, competency, and chemistry, you're looking on a fourth. I love the screening process. And my, my biggest other takeaway is the most amazing person out there that I've met in a long time, Brody Bruner, may him rest in peace. This episode is 100 percent dedicated to that awesome, amazing person. I think he's built such a great law of attraction of culture coming into Weathermatic. I love the guy a lot and we'll dedicate this thing to him. Love that. you're amazing. Keep doing awesome work and we'll see you on the road. Love All right, buddy. Appreciate you. Thanks, Tommy. Thanks everybody. This was a lot of fun. β€Š πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ πŸ“ Ready to take the next step? 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