Send us a textDiscover the inspiring journey of Ted Fox, the dynamic force behind EL Fox Sons Plumbing Heating Limited, as he shares his story of transformation from a humble plumbing apprentice to the leader of a thriving home services enterprise. In this episode, Ted opens up about the unique challenges of expanding a business in a small market and the delicate balance of setting fair prices that support both his employees and customers. Listeners will gain insights into Ted’s commitment to...
Show Transcript
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Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast.
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I'm your host, Corey Barrier.
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I'm here with my man, Ted Fox.
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What's up, brother?
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You know what I am today.
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It's a good day.
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It's a good day.
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It's always a good day to have a good day, isn't it?
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Yeah, I went to a concert last night with my family just a Canadian band that anybody else in Canada probably wouldn't know, but it was awesome.
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We stayed up late and rocked out and then got up early this morning to get back at it.
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So I'm feeling pretty jazzed.
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Love it.
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I saw a guy.
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I wish I could remember his name, name and I'm probably just absolutely not gonna remember it, but you would definitely probably know this person.
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Anyhow, it doesn't really matter because I don't remember his name, but I got to see him live and he was really good, but anyway.
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So who did you go see?
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just curious we went to see a band called the arkells.
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Okay, yeah, they're kind of I'd like, I'd say they're like the Killers.
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They're kind of like the Killers, very similar to that, like the Killers mixed with Dave Matthews Band.
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They really they brought down the house.
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It was great.
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I love it.
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Good show.
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Yeah, I love going to live shows, especially if it's somebody that I really enjoy.
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I don't go typically if it's somebody that I'm half in half out on.
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Yeah.
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So, ted, just for people that may or may not know who you are, just give us a little bit of background about who you are and what you've done in the home services space.
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All right, I don't know, sometimes it doesn't feel like much much and sometimes it feels like a lot.
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So I got into the trades in 1996, as I went into a plumbing apprenticeship and both my dad and my older brother were plumbers and I didn't really want to be a plumber, I wanted to be a teacher, like a drama teacher or something like that, and but I went and went into plumbing so that I could attend university with my girlfriend at the time and so, anyway, got into that, got into plumbing, and I haven't looked back since.
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In 1999, my dad and I started up a company called EL Fox Sons Plumbing Heating Limited and, anyways, with hopes that my brothers would join the company, we called it EL Fox Sons after my dad and none of my brothers did end up joining, and so my dad and I worked together just the two of us with the occasional helper until around 2012.
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In 2012 I purchased the final, like the remaining shares from my dad and and then my wife and I started to look at growing the business.
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So it was bigger, like bigger than just me out in the field and her in the office, because it takes a lot of time when you're the only person there answering the phones and things, and if only I knew how much more time it takes later after you've grown.
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But since then we're happy to say that we've grown to about 100 staff, 100 employees, and we've expanded.
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We do plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical now, which is pretty awesome, and we've done that in a very small market by most people's standards.
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So a little toot of the horn here.
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We serve a total between all the communities that we service of about 170 000 people and and so to be able to grow to where we were like hey, this is pretty great.
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So that's us in a nutshell, that the big stuff with our company is we just we really wanted, like the why changes over time.
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My why originally was I wanted to take a holiday.
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My why now is more like changing the industry, but in a way of allowing young families to essentially stay in these expensive markets and get a house and be able to raise a family, get a house and be able to raise a family, and I just know that if that's my focus, then the company will thrive and our customers will do well, and all that by being able to create these careers that allow I shouldn't just say young people, but essentially trades people to stay and not have to move with the crazy cost of living that there are out there the living that there are out there.
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So how does that make you feel that you're able to provide homes for people and paychecks that'll cover the expenses or maybe more than cover the expenses of daily living.
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That must make you feel pretty good.
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Yeah, I think everything has a tinge of selfishness in it.
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It does like it's.
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Sometimes.
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You have to, you really have to dig through the weeds to find that, to make sure you hold on to that positive, that positive goal that you're searching for, that, that that thing.
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Because whenever you I don't know who, I don't know your listener base and that's fantastic.
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But if I'm talking to business owners, they would understand that everybody around you thinks that you're hiding secret bags of money in your drawers.
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Right, they, they have that feeling.
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And hey, maybe there are some business owners out there who have figured that out and they got these secret bags of money that they're just squirreling away in the fenders of their car.
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But most that I know, and I know quite a few make a good living and they look after their family but have a real nurturing need to grow and keep the company healthy and to keep the company healthy.
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Healthy you have to keep your employees healthy.
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So there's like this, it's like a symbiotic relationship of everybody, like we call it, a win win.
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Your customers have to be good, your employees have to be good, the company will be good.
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I will bring it up regularly.
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Hey, look at what we're able to provide young people, we're able to provide, and that comes at a, and the cost is you have to charge the right amount of money to be able to provide those things to your employees.
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And so you're always in this constant battle of why are we more money than this other competitor and how can they do it cheaper?
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They do it cheaper because they offer less, and it's not just that they offer less to the customer, but to the employees as well.
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And so, anyways, that's been a long battle, that's just, and you had, I guess you said have the feel I feel good that I've been stoic enough to keep that, keep that fight going in the steel skin against the negativity that comes with it, because the outcome is extremely positive for our community and the trades in general.
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That makes sense.
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It is, and there are a lot of business owners that listen to this show.
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There are also a lot of people in the field and I think it's important.
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What you brought up is important because I think a lot of business owners don't explain that to their employees that you've got nice uniforms and you've got nice vans and you've got nice iPads and all those things come at a price and that's why you have to charge what you charge.
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Like you said, you're not ripping the customer off and you're sitting somewhere with a gazillion dollars in the bank while you're screwing everybody and again, there could be some people out there that are doing that, who knows.
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But at the end of the day, I believe that a service technician would much rather show up at a home in a nice van with a nice uniform on and with equipment like an iPad that works, it's not busted into a thousand pieces or works some of the time, that just makes their life significantly easier.
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I think it's just perspective and if you can explain that to the employees and get them I wouldn't even say bought into it, because they don't really need to buy into having a better place to work and to be able to function better.
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But a lot of times I know that you are up against.
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Why do we charge more?
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And if you explain that to the employees, I'm not saying you have to show them your whole balance sheet.
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But at the end of the day a lot of guys don't understand that when they have to, when you guys have a recall that costs the company three, four, sometimes $500 to ship that van out for a second time Heaven forbid it be a third or a fourth and a lot of guys just don't really understand that.
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They think it's just the gas to go out there.
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But they're missing the boat on all the other costs that are incurred with that second, third or fourth trip that are incurred with that second, third or fourth trip?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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That's why I think it's so important that it's not a worry, that for the text, that it's not something they need to worry about.
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My books are always open.
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My people can look at them anytime they want.
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But I just think I stopped trying to convince people of it.
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I stopped trying to convince people of it Like we, we definitely have what would you call it, not projects, but we have like a work, a work group, or we'll get together and we'll do a project together, like in a classroom project, and work on costings and things like that, so to give people an idea where the prices come from.
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But generally it's uh, I try not to give it too much attention because I think even if it's all laid out and all explained, like even a lot of business owners and a lot of they don't fully grasp it takes a long time.
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It's a whole nother.
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It took me years to figure out my p and l properly and do those things right and at the end of the day you're you know you're trying to hit a 10 profit, 15 profit.
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Wouldn't that be amazing?
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That's what you're trying to hit.
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So you're not talking.
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You're not talking huge margins here, but so if you can just really focus on now what is that value we're bringing to the customer and what's the value we're bringing to our people.
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What is the what are those values at?
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And if you make sure those are, those are higher than everybody else, then it doesn't.
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Then the pricing makes sense, right, like you can only afford to charge more if you're better, if you shouldn't say if you're better, but if you provide a higher value and yeah, so that's been.
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The original question was like how does it make you feel?
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It makes me feel really good Even.
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I think it was two nights ago.
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I was sitting with my family and we were talking about this is awesome, because we were talking about a young I would say young, but a young guy that works for us, who was just able to get his mortgage on his first house, and it wasn't very many years ago that we're in this little pocket town, but we're well five-hour drive from Vancouver Vancouver's one of the highest cost of living places to purchase in the world, apparently, and the overflow from that is where we are.
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So our housing prices and stuff are.
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They've gone up crazily to a point where the the conversation in the area was like young people, they will not be able to afford this unless they can right, so that's what we're working on, yeah.
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Yeah, that makes sense.
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So, how do you?
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One of the things I think is vital and for you to have a hundred people inside of the company, that means that the culture in the company has got to be pretty solid, because people don't hang out for very long in a company that has a not a very good culture.
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So how do you, how do you cultivate that inside of your company and keep that a positive thing where people want to come and work there?
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It's a great question.
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We and I don't want to say I'm my worst critic, but I probably am like so culture is something that always feel isn't good enough or isn't great or what, but, to your point, it has to be decent for growth, like it has to.
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And culture is who you are right it's, it's who you are and how you show up.
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I would say the nicest way that, or the best way that we cultivate it, was creating our core values, which I highly recommend everybody to have.
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But more important than creating them is living to them.
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And I would say that the regular conversation I would have with my staff and my team members is for them to utilize those core values as a shield against negativity.
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So I won't bore you with our core values, but when I hear somebody's having trouble with a person or with an item or with something, I'm like listen, everything we do hangs out within our core values and within our code of ethics.
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But if you just take those core values and something's outside, you need to hold that value and be like hey, we're not hitting this.
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This is not a positive attitude thing.
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And're not.
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And I said, and we will all follow suit and recognize that and jump on board.
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Same with if you're seeing some something maybe there's a somebody's grumpy in the parking lot best thing you can possibly do is let them know.
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Hey, this, I don't want to take part in your negativity today.
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You need to be solution-minded to work here, and that's how I come to work with people who are solution-minded.
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And by using it as a shield, you're not keeping people away, you're checking them, because we all bring our own stuff in, and so that's, I think, one of the best tools that I could give out to people.
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For culture is really, don't just make your values or your statement and stick it on the wall.
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Don't just get up in front of a group of people and spew it out there.
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Do those things, but as well, let people know how to use them.
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They are an actual tool and I'd say probably I would maybe the most important tool in your company, because it will make people feel safe to work for you, because they know what to expect every day that makes sense, yeah, and I love that and that that makes complete sense.
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so I want to ask you I know that I've worked with and I've consulted with a lot of companies where it's a family company father and son, maybe a brother, maybe more than that that dynamic is very different than it is with someone who doesn't have family involved, and so I'd like for you to talk to me about.
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I'm sure there have been times that things were not going super smooth.
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Okay, Tell me about one of those times where you know if a family business is listening, if a father or son or both are listening.
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What are some of the things that you had to overcome in that relationship and how did you keep that?
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How did you keep it separate from your relationship with your father, Because I'm sure that can be affected.
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You bet.
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So my dad and I because we were just the two of us, and then with a couple of the people in there we got along really well.
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We didn't have any drama.
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So I was very lucky that way.
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We each knew our roles.
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I was out getting the work done, he was a mentor and doing a lot of office, and then come out in the field so it was good, it worked well for a lot of office and then come out in the field.
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It was so it was good, it worked well for a lot of years.
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Um, but later on what as I grew later like, my dad still worked for me for a while and he ended up having early onset alzheimer's and dementia and we found this out while he was at work and what I found is family, all family.
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So I've had I'm a person, I like to bring people together, I really like that, and so I have had my mom work for me, a sister work for me, a brother work for me, some of my kids, my wife, works with me like it's it's like family's in there.
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But the man, that is your problem.
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You can't make that your.
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You can't make your family drama ever overflow into the company that's.
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Nobody else deserves that.
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If you have family drama, it's got to stay out same with your.
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If you're working with your best friend well, you're going to have.
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It's just them, we'll just with you.
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If you're working with your best friend well and you're going, yeah, that's just them, we'll just, we're just going to work with them, even though they're a jerk, you know you have to protect your culture and that from that side of things, some like life lessons in this.
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In the businesses my, my brother came to work for me, one of my favorite people in the whole wide world.
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We worked together when we were younger on a big construction site.
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We worked for a year or two together, but it was like he did not belong with the company and the company did not belong with him.
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He came, he tried.
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It was an absolute not fit, not good for anybody and it had to end.
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And that was just like.
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You just have to be able to make those choices.
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You have to be able to recognize it and make those decisions based on the good of everybody that's there.
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So I would say that the family dynamics can be one way or the other.
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What I see more than anything with the companies that I speak to regularly is generally they let their family get away with murder or with more stuff and everybody in the company knows it, watches it, sees it happen and understands that it's happening and nobody's happy about it.
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So you can absolutely work really well with family, but you have to treat the families the same as everybody else there Really.
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Yeah, 100%.
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Sometimes I've met, I've worked with people before where they're that they're treated sometimes worse, and I think because they're trying to make sure that people understand that they're not getting special treatment.
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And that's the other thing is the yes, especially when the kids come to work.
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I see people that like where, yeah, they treat the kids, or whatever, like they're way harder on them than everybody else and they cause they have these expectations and so you, or whatever, like they're way harder on them than everybody else and they, because they have these expectations.
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And so you, I say you can absolutely navigate this.
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And the nice thing about having family, like the family that works for me, there's serious trust that goes beyond trust that you can just build in a working place depending.
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But we all have family, that we know that there's some family we trust and some family we don't trust.
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So it's it's you has to be a smart hiring thing.
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Your business is not a charity, it's a business, right, you have to make sure it's mutual and it's beneficial for everybody in it.
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And and generally, I've made sure that my, the family that I've hired in, report to a different manager.
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They don't report to me directly, they report to another manager and I still interact with them in that, but it's they have to stand on their own two feet and and also they need to be protected from me and my expectations of them as a brother, a father like I say.
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So yeah, it's a very good point.
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Yeah, okay, yeah, that's it's just.
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It's always.
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It's always an interesting dynamic, but it sounds like to me that your perspective is pretty solid, One of the most solid I've heard To grow from now, give me an idea of when your real growth started to happen, when you went from and I don't know the numbers, but let's say when a lot of people scale from 5 to 10 million.
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That's a tough road.
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10 to 20 million is also.
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It's just a very different ballgame.
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Ballgame and there's.
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I think, if you're like a normal business owner, there have been times where you weren't sure if you were even going to make payroll.
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Yeah, those are terrible times.
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I'm not laughing because I know there's probably a bunch of people out there struggling with that these days.
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Yeah, no, that's, that is something that's so.
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Hey, knock on wood, I have not missed payroll yet, but sometimes that's come at like some real creative thinking as to how do we not miss payroll right over over the years.
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So, scaling, yeah.
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So, as soon as I bought my dad out in 2012 the because he was anti-advertisement very much as we do word of mouth only, and that's it, and it was.
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We were in a 51 49 partnership, right, so he had 51, and if I wanted to advertise, he didn't.
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But the first thing I did is I put out an ad and we started making money, which was cool, cause, up to that point, we had never done more than about $300,000 in a year and we were always just breaking even and paying herself most of the time, but very low.
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And so, anyways, pretty quickly, we scaled up.
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And so, anyways, pretty quickly, we scaled up.
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I think I don't know, it took us a year so to break the, the million dollar mark, and then we've basically been growing at about 30, roughly 30 per year since then.
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I would say that super dangerous part for me for fox was was breaking the two to 4 million mark, because around that it's and I realized I'm old now, so inflation is different and everything but it seems to me that around if you're in a home services company, around that $2 million mark somewhere in there is where you've got to start hiring managers.
00:22:59.384 --> 00:23:09.871
It's right in there that you're probably got 10, 12 employees, 13 maybe, and you're like, okay, I need a field manager, I need this other manager.
00:23:09.871 --> 00:23:21.329
And for me the danger there was yeah, I got that, I got a good manager, but I didn't know how to cost properly and set my pricing right and figure those things out to make sure that.
00:23:21.329 --> 00:23:32.820
Because I just thought, if I pay him this amount of money, he's going to make me more than that by keeping people working like I was working and it doesn't generate that way.
00:23:32.820 --> 00:23:43.785
And I took a high performing technician who's making the dollars in the field and moved them into a management role, which then so you've taken it, you're taking positive and putting it into a cost.
00:23:43.785 --> 00:23:45.451
So those are.
00:23:45.451 --> 00:23:47.180
I know a lot of people.
00:23:47.180 --> 00:23:51.430
It's going to sound like what a dummy, but that was a lesson to learn that.
00:23:51.960 --> 00:23:53.804
And right in that area you're adding managers.
00:23:53.804 --> 00:24:00.713
Then I would say around man, around 12 or 13 million somewhere in there, if we're just talking dollars.
00:24:00.713 --> 00:24:13.719
Somewhere in that range you start adding your second layer of managers, where you have, like, your leadership team or your general managers, and then you've got managers that report to those managers.
00:24:13.719 --> 00:24:26.461
And so I'm not saying managers are the root of all evil, but when you are, I'm just going to say like non-educated, not that you need the education, but it's like when you don't know.
00:24:26.461 --> 00:24:38.859
Basically every day I come to work, I'm running a bigger company than I've ever run in my life, and so sometimes you'll scale, you're like I need this leader over here, but then seven or eight months later you realize that was the wrong move.
00:24:39.851 --> 00:24:58.663
So around that 12, 13, $14 million mark, somewhere in there, we added some secondary level of managers and once again, same kind of thing You're inflating your costs, your overhead inflates and your profits go down.
00:24:58.663 --> 00:25:03.184
Or your profits might not go down, but your overhead inflates and your net profit goes down.
00:25:03.184 --> 00:25:09.336
So yeah, then all of a sudden you're having trouble making payroll again, even though you've done, you're doing more work than you've ever done.
00:25:09.336 --> 00:25:12.480
You've got all this like amazing management out there.
00:25:12.480 --> 00:25:23.758
You're doing all your leadership training, doing all the things right, but it's you want your org chart to be a bit like a Christmas tree, right, like with your field staff here.
00:25:23.758 --> 00:25:35.732
But the idea is, if your field staff is too large for the management you have, then your field staff feel unsupported, so your technicians will feel like they don't have anybody to talk to.
00:25:35.732 --> 00:25:49.074
So if you hire managers out first and bail out your middle so that you've got lots of support for your field staff, then your profits go away and you can't make payroll maybe, or whatever you're going to do so.
00:25:49.074 --> 00:25:51.419
So there's this juggling act there.
00:25:51.439 --> 00:25:58.491
So, yeah, I would definitely caution people between when you're one to two million dollars.
00:25:58.491 --> 00:26:00.538
That's a healthy, that's's a healthy company.
00:26:00.538 --> 00:26:09.394
You're making good dough and I'm sure everybody who's there is running with they've got two, three, four techs with them and they're running around doing everything they're probably doing really well and I love that time.
00:26:09.394 --> 00:26:13.272
That was a great time and I'm not sorry that I didn't stay there.
00:26:13.272 --> 00:26:17.557
But when I see some people and they want to grow, I'm asking them what are you after really?
00:26:17.557 --> 00:26:31.621
Because, depending on what you're after, it doesn't get easier and you might not make more money, but you can do a whole lot of good in the industry if you want to do this Around that $10, $12 million mark, it's another crazy one.
00:26:31.621 --> 00:26:41.296
It's almost like every $5 million jump that you do and I believe personally it's a management process.
00:26:41.296 --> 00:26:50.326
That is the reason that the costing stuff gets crazy, because you have to reinvent your company again with management to cover that section.
00:26:52.211 --> 00:27:03.145
And so you mentioned making and I think anybody listening to this can identify with making a bad hire someone who you thought really was going to do a great job.
00:27:03.145 --> 00:27:11.048
How, at this point, hiring is a big problem I shouldn't say a big problem in the trades.
00:27:11.048 --> 00:27:23.739
Hiring is a big conversation in the trades because there's either not enough people or everybody sucks, or there's a whole list of things and I can get into why.
00:27:23.739 --> 00:27:30.757
I think people are saying that without calling out leadership or whatever.
00:27:30.757 --> 00:27:38.784
How do you now mitigate making some of those bad hiring decisions?
00:27:40.951 --> 00:27:43.220
Yeah, no, that's, that's cool.
00:27:43.220 --> 00:27:47.871
Hire slow and fire fast, right you like?
00:27:47.871 --> 00:27:53.083
Do more research more, get as much data as you can ahead of time, as much.
00:27:53.083 --> 00:27:56.039
And we still make bad choices because we all get desperate.
00:27:56.039 --> 00:27:57.614
You're like all, you're like man.
00:27:57.614 --> 00:27:59.560
We really need this person and this guy seems greater.
00:27:59.560 --> 00:28:00.634
That girl seems great.
00:28:00.634 --> 00:28:05.258
Let's go more data, is it okay?
00:28:05.258 --> 00:28:07.622
Can I talk about who hire for a second?
00:28:07.622 --> 00:28:10.192
Yeah, please, is it, do you mind?
00:28:10.192 --> 00:28:11.596
Okay, I think it's super relevant to the.
00:28:11.596 --> 00:28:14.450
It's obviously relevant to the hiring question, but I was.
00:28:17.015 --> 00:28:22.325
We had a manager, so we use whoire, maybe a little differently than most people.
00:28:22.325 --> 00:28:37.246
We're going to really get into a whole bunch of other things, but one thing we were using it for is building profiles on all of our people to figure out their flight risk, their happiness, all those things.
00:28:37.246 --> 00:28:38.695
We were looking at it and going okay.
00:28:38.695 --> 00:28:44.674
Now, from a promotion standpoint within the company, like who should we be working with?
00:28:44.674 --> 00:28:48.910
So, anyways, long story short, I'll get into here.
00:28:48.910 --> 00:28:53.078
There's a manager that we had on staff who checked everybody's boxes.
00:28:53.078 --> 00:28:55.104
We were like this guy.
00:28:55.104 --> 00:28:57.233
We all loved him and he's great hard worker.
00:28:57.233 --> 00:29:00.680
I was good, he's happy just nailing it.
00:29:01.842 --> 00:29:14.691
And my wife, sue, she's like very analytical with a lot of this stuff, and she kept coming because I'm like I'm gonna take this guy to this training, I'm gonna take him here, and she's I don't think you should be doing that.
00:29:14.691 --> 00:29:16.493
And it's like why?
00:29:16.493 --> 00:29:31.980
It's because, like our who I report shows that he's a flight risk and that he's unhappy, and I'm like there's no way though it's got it wrong, because we can't all be wrong, we can't.
00:29:31.980 --> 00:29:44.691
And so I was taking him, he was the person I was putting in and then, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, he turned in his notice and was like thanks very much, I'm heading to a different industry.
00:29:44.691 --> 00:29:50.242
And it was like, right after flying him out to a, to another city to go through.
00:29:50.282 --> 00:30:23.176
And so it was one of those moments where this hundred thousand dollar a year manager just dumping resources in because he's got all these skills and had been with us for he had also been with us for a while like this, he's been with us well over a year, and so that who hire had nailed it like it nailed it if I had just looked at what the data brought back to me on this person instead of what my gut and heart and you got to keep the humans in it, like we're.
00:30:23.176 --> 00:30:28.718
You and I are here having a conversation because there needs to be humans here, but don't ignore that data.
00:30:28.718 --> 00:30:35.122
So that's like when you ask about hiring and that, yeah, take all the data, you can look at it and utilize it.
00:30:35.122 --> 00:30:59.542
Because had I utilized the data that was right in front of me, that that we honestly paid to get, not only would I I don't even like I would have saved the money that I spent sending this fellow around and doing those things, but, more importantly than that, all of those resources would have gone to another more more deserving or more beneficial to the company person on staff rather than that person.
00:30:59.542 --> 00:31:03.676
Do I know if it'll always get it right?
00:31:03.676 --> 00:31:09.942
I don't know, but so far it's nailed it for our for that stuff.
00:31:11.473 --> 00:31:12.684
Sorry, shameless plug who hires?
00:31:12.684 --> 00:31:13.150
Pretty awesome.
00:31:13.529 --> 00:31:23.442
Well, it's interesting because one of the things that you're right the data is so dialed in and it's been.
00:31:23.442 --> 00:31:37.963
We've done so much research through the Nextar network and utilizing the companies in there and the employees that it is as accurate as anything that you're going to find more accurate in my opinion. +(1400+x+1400+px)+(1400+x+1400+px)+-+1.PNG)
