Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Typically the art of mentoring can take several months, but Speed Mentorship optimizes the time needed to get useful and actionable items from today’s top leaders to make you tomorrow’s top leader.
SMP - Episode 12 - Pat McAlear - Edited
===
[00:00:00] Matt McAlear: Hello and welcome to another episode of Speed Mentorship. My name is Matt McAlear, host.
Well, guys, I'm really excited for today's episode. Um, the guest is none other than Patrick McAlear, uh, who is my grandpa. He's also the second generation CEO and owner of Service Spring Corporation, and him and my grandma, who was the CFO both had an incredible impact on our company, on the organization.
And in this episode, we're gonna hear all kinds of different stories and just some of the challenges and. Stuff that, uh, he faced, uh, along with, uh, some of his wisdom and leadership insights, uh, to make it through some of those things. Uh, so without further ado, here is, uh, my grandpa.
We got a really special guest here, Patrick McAlear, my grandpa. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:58] Pat McAlear: Glad to be here.[00:01:00]
[00:01:00] Matt McAlear: Well, for the first question today is going to be about your background.
If you could just tell us a little bit about your background, some of the stuff of what you've done, that would be, that'd be great.
[00:01:10] Pat McAlear: Okay. Um, I won't start at birth, but rather, uh, let's say high school and afterwards. Yeah. Uh,
I went to high school locally here in Toledo. And, uh, after which, uh, went into the Army for a couple of years and I did work, uh, um, Uh, weekends and what have you, uh, prior to that as a cleanup boy and so on, uh, army for two years, uh, 15 months or so in Germany, uh, got out early to go to the University of Toledo.
Uh, worked on a business degree and graduated in, uh, two years, in nine months. And during that period, he got married to Marilyn. And, uh, started a family, [00:02:00] um, prior to the family, went to work for a pharmaceutical company. Uh, spent about three and a half years, uh, selling to doctors, pharmacies and, uh, hospitals as opposed to being a drug dealer on the corner.
Uh, following that went to work for Toledo Scale in the marketing department. Um, uh, promoting, uh, initially, uh, what's the difference between a Toyota scale and a competitor scale? And I got to write some documents and, uh, develop some, uh, procedures as to how to combat sales, uh, of competitors and so on.
Following that, went, uh, to a territory in, uh, Youngstown, Ohio as a sales rep There. Calling on an industry and, uh, selling the industrial side of the scale, uh, business, um, on commission. [00:03:00] Toledo Scale went on strike for six months and so we decided now's a good time to leave Youngstown and come back to Toledo.
At which point, uh, Marilyn, my wife got invited to join Service Spring. Her dad had started the business, Clarence Veigel and, uh, he needed an accountant and she was a good one. So she started as an accountant and, uh, took care of the books and what have you. I was invited in probably within the next six months.
As a starter, come out in and do something. And uh, so that is
[00:03:40] Matt McAlear: paint something,
[00:03:41] Pat McAlear: paint something. Yeah. Drill something, make a spring, do something. And so, uh, that's the background leading up to getting involved.
[00:03:51] Matt McAlear: That's awesome.
Um, So how and why did you get started? Why'd you decide to [00:04:00] accept the kind of, you know, position at Service Spring and, and work in general?
[00:04:06] Pat McAlear: Well, I saw a lot of opportunities. At that time there were probably eight employees total, uh, two manual machines in one oven, and that was it. And, uh, they had no marketing. They had no catalog. They had no way other than word of mouth to get to uh, potential customers. The customers were all, uh, garage door dealers at that time.
And so I helped, uh, cuz of my marketing experience to put a catalog together, get it distributed. Call on people didn't, they didn't have any sales force, of course. Yeah. So I got to do a lot of different things and, uh, even build machines, uh, run machines, make springs, paint 'em, um, A variety of, uh, hats were worn.
[00:04:54] Matt McAlear: Yeah. Yeah. So you just thought it was more interesting, um, like an interesting opportunity to [00:05:00] go and kinda learn a bunch of different stuff and.
[00:05:02] Pat McAlear: That, uh, for sure. And, uh, an opportunity to make some money. Yeah. A salary. Totally. Some food on the table. Yeah. And, um, at that point, um, we had two kids, Mike and, and Tom.
And, uh, your dad, Mike, and, uh, so there were a lot of opportunities there. It was a, it was a company that was quite small and despite the fact that it had been operational for about 10 years at that point. And, uh, so we were growing, we're in a rented building, which was about ready to fall down. And so we looked down the road and said, let's buy some property.
Let's build a new building and let's get this thing going.
[00:05:49] Matt McAlear: when did you become, uh, kinda CEO or president and take over? How did that transition period happen?
[00:05:57] Pat McAlear: Being a a small company, we [00:06:00] didn't have a lot of, um, what would you call it? Um, titles. Uh, you did a lot of different things, so to, yeah, call yourself this or call yourself.
That didn't really make much
[00:06:13] Matt McAlear: president of, uh, manufacturing
[00:06:16] Pat McAlear: President, of cleaning up the larine or whatever. Uh, titles weren't an issue. Uh, you just, you worked out whatever had to be done and, um, uh, your dad, I think was the first real president and he'd been with the company for a number of years. He'd worked through the summers and so on.
And then he, as he got involved and brought, uh, technology to the company, um, he was made president. I'm not sure the date or time, probably in the eighties maybe.
And at that point I said, well, I'm no longer the president, so I'll be, I'll be the ceo. Yeah. But the titles were never important. I had a [00:07:00] business card that had nothing out but my name. It wasn't important to me to have, uh, a title per se.
[00:07:08] Matt McAlear: and how long were you, um, I mean, kinda acting CEO for, I mean, how long did do that?
And how many people did it start with? You said you kind of came in at eight then you kind of handed it over to, mike.
[00:07:24] Pat McAlear: Probably, um, as far as act, acting ceo, maybe 10, 12 years.
And, uh, we went from, like I said, eight people perhaps to 30 at the time that we turned it over to your dad and, um, He of course grew it, uh, dramatically. And as we, uh, retired, uh, Marilyn and I, um, he was, um, able to, um, get through a tornado and, uh, yeah. [00:08:00] Uh, little humor in that, but, uh, I don't know if I can.
[00:08:05] Matt McAlear: Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
[00:08:06] Pat McAlear: Yeah. You, you can, uh, when the tornado went through was, I think it was two o'clock in the morning, your dad called me Mike, and he said, uh, Hey dad, you remember those two shitty buildings you sold me? They're gone. So you may have to cut that out. But none event, that was a, that was kind of a humorous event, uh, that happened after retirement, but none event.
Uh, Uh, your dad did a, a wonderful job of expanding and growing and, uh, being into technology such as he was, uh, I think he majored in, uh,
[00:08:46] Matt McAlear: information technologies.
[00:08:48] Pat McAlear: Computer Science. Yeah,
[00:08:48] Matt McAlear: Yeah. no, that's, that's really good. Do you, do you remember how big, from a revenue standpoint, you guys were able to grow the company to?
[00:08:58] Pat McAlear: No Um, It's been [00:09:00] 50 years now, you know?
[00:09:01] Matt McAlear: Yeah, exactly. It's funny, the things you remember cuz you remember the Yeah. And all these stories and everything, but the numbers as far as
[00:09:08] Pat McAlear: Yeah, the numbers kind of escape you, uh, escape you. It's, uh, I can't tell you. I knew that we grew at a good rate. Um, Um, you know, you could probably say 10, 12% a year, and the business back then was very cyclical.
It was strong in the winter months with the cold in the garage, operating garage doors operating a lot more springs were breaking more and so we were very busy winter months. Plus we had, at that time, archaic methods of getting the springs made, getting 'em out the door, took a long time. Whereas now you're doing it in a matter of hours.
Yeah. And the same day we couldn't do that then. It was always the next day or longer. We might get 10 days behind sometimes in the winter. And uh, so technology has helped a great deal to improve on [00:10:00] that. What your dad was instrumental in all of it,
[00:10:02] Matt McAlear: What do you think were some of the greatest um, You know, accomplishments. While you were at ssc, some of the things that you look back on that you were like, wow, was, this was, pretty cool.
[00:10:14] Pat McAlear: Well, at the time we thought we were technologically moving along when we got a fax machine, which allowed our customers to fax stuff.
[00:10:21] Matt McAlear: They're still doing fax today.
[00:10:23] Pat McAlear: And, then we had an 800 number. We were the first one in our industry to do that so the customer could call us on our nickel. And um, that helped a lot. Uh, we offered a, at that time, a, uh, 5% discount if they pay in 10 days. don't know if that's still in place or not.
[00:10:42] Matt McAlear: It is, for better or for worse it is.
[00:10:45] Pat McAlear: Uh, that seemed to keep the, keep the, uh, cash flow going.
Uh, that helped that. Um, we built some changes in the plant. Uh, we went from, uh, having, uh, reels sitting on the floor, [00:11:00] eating up a lot of floor space to going to, uh, what I would call a, uh, drawer type of setup where you could load the, the wire on the floor, put it up in a elevated, uh, drawer. Yeah over.
Yeah. And, um, that freed up a lot of floor space. Speeded the things up.
[00:11:20] Matt McAlear: What that your idea to come up with some of those or?
[00:11:23] Pat McAlear: I copied it actually. I've seen it done somewhere else. Oh, okay. And, uh, but we improved on it. Of course. That's good.
[00:11:30] Matt McAlear: Hey, so tell me about, I, I hear a lot of different stories and you know, I think it gets lost sometimes as far as what Clarence Veigel actually did with some of the competition.
Like I, you know, here he was involved in starting Penn Central Springs. Uh, I think there's another company called, like Glass City Springs, and he started up some of these other companies. Do you remember some of the other competition that he started up? Um,
[00:11:59] Pat McAlear: [00:12:00] uh, he had a hand in starting Napoleon Spring.
Uh, he and his brother were involved in that along with, uh, I think it was just the two of them. And they had a, uh, a gentleman that was, uh, kind of the clerk in the office and so on, and that clerk in the office, Ed Overhouse eventually owned the business. Mm. Clarence Weigel stepped aside. His brother Ed sold out. Um, in case of Clarence.
And, um, arriving finally at Service Spring. Uh, he had no source of, um, investors that he could go to. Mm-hmm. Uh, banks wouldn't touch it because it was too, you know, shaky, risky, no, you know, no background, no, uh, no history. So he would, uh, start up other companies for, uh, some kind of fee, build a machinery for them, set 'em up, put 'em in business, get a, get a fee for it.[00:13:00]
And he did that with Penn Central. He did that with, uh, Uh, not Glass City Spring, but uh, a company down in, uh, Florida. Funny story there. Um, but mostly to raise revenue and then he would sell 'em. Then when Marilyn and I got involved, we said, hold it.
We're giving away the store here. Excuse me. So he stopped doing that.
Mm-hmm. Uh, we did it with a overhead door company. Uh, they were buying their springs from a company in Indiana. I can't think of the name of it now. It doesn't matter. And, uh,
So we showed them how to make their own springs and built equipment for them and got 'em started.
[00:13:47] Matt McAlear: And he would actually build all the equipment himself?
[00:13:50] Pat McAlear: Yeah. I helped him, um, in some cases, in fact, one plant up in, uh, Toronto, uh, over a door in Toronto. I went up there and helped them [00:14:00] get it started and, and so forth. Wow. So yeah, we, we, we work side by side building, uh, mandrel machines, and that's getting the bits and pieces for the ovens and so on. And, um, then eventually, um, we got into a, an automatic machine.
Mm-hmm. he had found one somewhere. We took it all apart, put it together to suit our needs, and started rolling long springs automatically and cutting 'em up and so on to, to the customer specification. So that was a upgrade technologically.
Hmm. For, uh, the young company.
[00:14:40] Matt McAlear: So you eventually had to put the kibosh to this after, you know, you're seeing like, man, our competition is getting all this amazing equipment. He better have gotten a pretty dang good fee for some of those things, huh?
[00:14:52] Pat McAlear: Well, I don't know if he did or not. He's a pretty generous guy, Clarence Veigel, and, uh, he gave [00:15:00] a lot of stuff away and, and, um, didn't get compensated for it, which is fine. Uh, but that's the way he operated and that was his thinking.
He was a, you know, a Christian Guy. Yeah. And if he could help you he would.
[00:15:13] Matt McAlear: Wow. Do you, do you remember how many businesses roughly he started?
Um, and he did more than just spring stuff as well, right? I mean, didn't he also, didn't you guys get involved in roll forming and, um,
[00:15:26] Pat McAlear: Yeah, that was, uh, something that I brought, brought up.
Cause I thought we ought to get into, uh, rolling steel doors and making the slats for them. And so, uh, we got a couple of roll formers and, uh, started to go in that direction. And we made the bottom brackets that go under rolling steel doors.
And, uh,
We were putting, um, cones in the end of the machines by hand.
Yeah.
Put the, uh, spring in a vice and take a, yeah, crank 'em in one by one.
[00:16:00] And so, uh, I thought it's gotta be a better way. So I developed a machine to screw 'em in from either end, hold the spring at the same time, and little by little, the improvements is come a long way. And I'm sure the ones you're using now were a lot more sophisticated. But that was a step up. Again, we were always looking for ways of making things easier to do, whether it was loading wire or
screwing in the cones. And then when your son got involved and the volume was there, we went to automatic, uh, ovens where you could, uh, continuous ovens, put the spring in at one end, stress relieve it through the oven and out the other end and 30 minutes or whatever it is, whereas it took us, uh, All day.
We'd put a load of springs on a cart, a couple thousand pounds at noon, put 'em in the oven and 4:30 or so they'd come out. Wow. And you'd hustle through these hot springs trying to get 'em ready to put 'em in the trucks and get 'em out the door. Yeah. So a lot of [00:17:00] improvements have come.
[00:17:01] Matt McAlear: How long did it take, um, you and Clarence Veigel to actually, uh, create some of the, uh, to build some of these machines to sell to, obviously they're competitors now, but just to sell 'em at the time. How long did it take you guys to build like a, a machine a mandrel or.
[00:17:19] Pat McAlear: We got pretty good at building them. Um, there was standard dimensions, they're all the same. Um we'd have, uh, you know, a five horse, three phase motor.
We'd have a electric brake on it. We'd have some, uh, switches. Uh, mandrels, we would order the specific mandrels, uh, different sizes from a supplier. Mm-hmm. We were basically pipe, uh, and we'd take the pipe and put a square drive end on one end, and, uh, perhaps one on the other end.
And so they were made in house [00:18:00] hour-wise.
I, I, I can't tell you it took, you know, three, four days maybe incredible manual.
[00:18:05] Matt McAlear: That it would be three to four days. We need to bring you back in to start building some machines for us.
[00:18:11] Pat McAlear: Uh, Well, you're a lot more sophisticated now, so I'm sure that has something to do with it. We also used truck transmissions to
[00:18:21] Matt McAlear: Oh wow
[00:18:22] Pat McAlear: different speeds. You know, if you wanted to, if you had a big wire and you wanna wind it slow, put it in first gear, it was a small wiring, you can put it in third gear.
And so the operators knew which gear to put it in, depending on the size of the wire. That's cool. And um,
[00:18:41] Matt McAlear: what, what about Extension Springs? Do you guys um, do much with Extension springs?
[00:18:46] Pat McAlear: Yeah, we did. Um, not a lot, but we did, uh, roll 'em and they were a bit of a headache trying to get the right tension.
So we had a, uh, testing machine that would, had a [00:19:00] scale set up and scale 25 42. Yeah. Toledo Scale. Yeah. And, uh, we were able to test them to see if they, um, worked.
They're 130 pounder. Were they within 10% or 5%? And then we had to hand dip 'em. We didn't have any, uh, Spray equipment or, or, uh, powder coating or what have you.
Mm-hmm. So that could get exciting. If you drop the spring at the wrong time, you'd get a bath of black paint. So, um, a lot of things were done differently. That's cool. The cones that we had back in the day were sand cast, and so when we got 'em, we had to drill 'em. For the, uh, winding bars, you had to drill 'em for the set screws, uh, and put in, uh, threads for the set screws.
Make sure that the hole through the middle was an inch so you could get it on a shaft. And there's only right hand and left hand. Yeah. There's no [00:20:00] combination, so yeah. You painted reds and the blacks and so you could designate what was what.
The castings are also sand cast here locally. We got 'em in White House as a matter of fact, where you live. And, uh, they had to be again, cleaned up and, uh, drilled and tapped and so on.
[00:20:19] Matt McAlear: wow.
[00:20:20] Pat McAlear: that's so now they're all die cast stuff and yeah, it's just so much quicker.
[00:20:26] Matt McAlear: What if you would've stayed at the company another, you know, another 10 years, what would, what would you have done next? What would've been the next project that you would've said, Hey, this is, this is really interesting. I want to, I wanna see this come to fruition.
[00:20:42] Pat McAlear: Well, your dad had a di a different vision and one of the things I was trying to do was, uh, do the slats for the rolling steel doors.
And so we hadn't quite figured out yet how to roll painted the slat material cuz that was necessary to, uh, [00:21:00] most people didn't want to just plain galvanize. They wanted some kind of paint on it so they could paint it to match the building. Uh, some of the slides were insulated. We hadn't learned how to do that yet.
Mm. And I thought at some point we're making everything else. The bottom bar, uh, we were getting the slides that go on the side that I can't remember the name of. Mm-hmm. Um, we're making the springs, you know, why not go for the whole door?
Yeah.
And it was an industry that we would not. Compete directly with the Wayne Doors necessarily or the big boys.
But there was a market for rolling steel doors
one of the other things over the years, uh, we kept adding things to our product line. You know, we, we always had rollers and what have you, but then I, I looked at, um, trailer doors, for example. Mm-hmm. Here's another opportunity. Nobody else is doing it.
Why don't we, our dealers can do this. [00:22:00] yeah.
And uh, as you see with a lot of dealers, they're into all kinds of stuff. Windows doors, passage doors, and probably other things I'm not even aware of. Um, so there's, there's opportunities to help them go in different directions if you can be a supplier. Yeah. And back it up
[00:22:24] Matt McAlear: Totally. Yep.
I, I think there's a ton of strategies like that that still make a ton of sense that, that we're looking at.
[00:22:32] Pat McAlear: We got into the, um, drain cleaning business that way. We looked at it as, well, it's a big spring. We can, we can make those totally a long spring. And so we had an opportunity to buy a small company and get into that market, backed into it sort of.
And uh, now you've made something out of it, which is great.
[00:22:51] Matt McAlear: For sure. So what would you say is, um, the hardest thing about being a ceo?
Or, you know, somebody running, you know, the [00:23:00] company, you know, family owned business. What do you think were some of the most difficult things? Some of the most challenging things?
[00:23:04] Pat McAlear: I think, um, being the boss or CEO or, or owner, uh, most of the issues were with, uh, people trying to get good people. Yeah. On board to stay on board and, uh, if you need a, a new HR person tomorrow, uh, where, where you come up with somebody. And so those kinds of issues were probably the most complex. Customers were easy. I always thought as long as we kept the customer happy and worked hard to uh, service them, they were always glad to see you.
I was glad to talk to you. But, uh, the people in the building, uh, you had to handle differently and work harder to get good folks. And, [00:24:00] uh, I've heard some just encouraging news when I talked to uh,
Tom Martin. Very enthusiastic about things that are happening and, people moving up in the organization, which is great.
Cause other people see that know, make sure whole operation, I think, uh, totally more legitimate, more likable, uh, more possibilities. Yeah. People need to have that kinda hope all the time.
[00:24:31] Matt McAlear: Yeah. The opportunity to progress in advance.
Mm-hmm. And, um, Yeah. And, and I, I think we have a lot of stories like that at the company now, which is fantastic.
I mean, there's so many people. Um, I mean, there's people who are running service centers as a service center manager, the highest level who started out on the shop floor, you know, territory managers running this, uh, person in charge of our maintenance, uh, started out on the shop floor. I mean, there's so many different people who've started, [00:25:00] you know, doing one thing and have really progressed and advanced.
And I, that to me is just really cool to see.
[00:25:06] Pat McAlear: Yeah. That gives meaning to their life and, I think other people see it and they see opportunity.
[00:25:13] Matt McAlear: Yeah, totally. What would you say are, uh, just, you know, we talked about, you know, some of the things that you were like most proud of, but what about some of the biggest challenges while while running ssc?
were you, what do you think was the most challenging part of running SSC?
[00:25:29] Pat McAlear: Well, we went through some uh, uh, stuff that you're going through right now where you couldn't find people.
Uh, the economy was such, you couldn't find people. Uh, we had, uh, periods of high inflation. And so what do you do about that? How do you handle it? How do you pass it on? Um, surcharges, whatever. Uh, went through things like that. Uh, we went through, um, fuel shortages. Uh, were if you were [00:26:00] getting, uh, If you were running propane, which we were at one time for our ovens and what have you, you couldn't get natural gas.
Nobody could. Um, then we had the, uh, double nickel on the highways. That was when they were trying to slow down the consumption of gasoline. Everything was 55 miles an hour. Of course that screwed up, uh, deliveries. And, uh,
[00:26:27] Matt McAlear: Oh, I see.
[00:26:28] Pat McAlear: Receiving, uh, all the stuff that you're going through right now. Interesting. With
[00:26:33] Matt McAlear: the, uh, the ports being clogged and the trucking driver, you know, truck driver shortages
[00:26:39] Pat McAlear: and Yeah.
All of that stuff has happened before. Blizzards and you know, you go through a lot of things that Yeah. you don't anticipate necessarily, but you have to deal with 'em anyway. Cuz here it is.
[00:26:52] Matt McAlear: totally, were there times where you guys, um, were not able to make payroll at all? [00:27:00] Or like financial challenges where you were close to not being able to make it? Um,
[00:27:04] Pat McAlear: yeah, we had financial challenges early on, before I was even involved. The banks would. Uh, want to see your receivables before they would lend you any money, and they would hold the receivables as collateral.
They had a name for this and I forgot what it is. Um, when, uh, Marilyn and I got involved, we were stable enough that we could make payroll. We had some debt. Um, we also had stockholders. That was another way of Clarence Veigels raising some money. He would say, you know, you give me some
$10,000 and I'll give you so many shares of stock.
Mm-hmm. Plus this kind of a dividend. For example, they might, uh, give somebody a, a penny a pound on every pound of wire that went out the [00:28:00] door, so and so would get a penny of the whatever you charged for. So there some people did very well. That's interesting. And so, uh, we said, well, we gotta do something about these stockholders.
So we bought 'em out. Yeah. Got rid of 'em. So that helped strengthen our financial position. Um, it was a little more hard to, uh, Make payroll and have any kind of real balance during the summer months. Cause it slowed down dramatically. Uh, we weren't selling manufacturers, which would be stronger in the summer months, so we had to keep everybody busy, keep everybody on the payroll.
So it was a little bit of a strain there, but we always, we never shorted anybody. Never let anybody go. Never laid anybody off. Ever. Yeah. Incredible. 40 some years. So we're, uh, proud of that. Keep, shine up the machinery, clean the floors, paint this, paint that, you know, keep [00:29:00] busy. So, um,
[00:29:03] Matt McAlear: okay. So, um, what were, what were some, what were some great memories that you had from SSC or fun memories just in general that you could think of? Maybe any quirky stories or something to.
[00:29:17] Pat McAlear: One that comes to mind is, um, when we got our first computer, which I think was a Radio Shack version that your dad brought in, and we started messing with that, you know, trying to get.
Find ways to use, utilize it and so on. Anyway, I was sitting on a desk and, uh, Saturday morning, uh, Clarence Veigel, the founder, uh, would come in on Saturdays and mess around. He might be building something or,
uh, whatever. And he came and he found a computer sitting in the office. He turned it on it said password, and he looked at that.
He turned it off. That was the, that was the last time he messed [00:30:00] with, uh, technology, although he was always interested in the latest cameras and blah, blah, blah, blah. So, that was kind of a cute story.
[00:30:08] Matt McAlear: Um, so, you know, what do you believe while you were, either while you're running the business or just in general, what do you believe are some of your top, most successful habits? Things that you are, things that have helped make you successful or you to be productive and efficient?
[00:30:26] Pat McAlear: Um, I think for any person, not only myself, you have to be a self-starter. You gotta be able to get out of bed in the morning and get going and be where you're supposed to be at the time you're supposed to be there. Um, and that takes a lot of self-discipline. uh, some people have it, some people don't.
Some can't find a door, you know, to get out of the house. Um, so self-discipline is important and I think you learn that as a kid, uh, your family, [00:31:00] uh, how they operate, your parents and how they bring you up. Uh, You know, when you come home, you change your clothes and da da, you have all these rules and regulations.
Yeah. If you start with a young, you know, young kid and bring 'em along, it sticks with them the rest of their life.
Yeah.
Uh, one of your questions I think you're gonna ask sooner or later is, have I read any books about leadership?
Yeah.
And the answer is no. Um, I read one book recently. I've read a lot of books, but not about leadership. But I read a book by, um, baseball player. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Cal Ripkin, and he played for the Baltimore Orio shortstop third base. But his, uh, baseball claim was he played over 2,600 games in a row. Without missing [00:32:00] a game, whether he was hurt, sick or whatever, he showed up every game.
[00:32:07] Matt McAlear: It's powerful.
[00:32:08] Pat McAlear: And the name of the book that he had written was Show up.
[00:32:13] Matt McAlear: Yeah.
[00:32:14] Pat McAlear: And uh, that's so important. And it's not just showing up for your job, but. Showing up in so many other things. If you tell somebody you're gonna do something, do it. You tell somebody you're gonna call 'em back this afternoon, do it no matter if you gotta stay there all night. Yeah. Get, do what you're gonna say you do.
Mm-hmm. People are impressed by what you do, not what you say. you don't. If you don't let your customer down, they have a lot of confidence in you, and that's the important thing.
[00:32:48] Matt McAlear: I think dad always said that was one of his greatest takeaways from you and, you know, just, um, some of the wisdom and leadership that he received from you was that your, your [00:33:00] actions are more powerful than your words. And, um, to do a little bit yet less of this and a little bit more of doing. And he told me that all the time.
[00:33:10] Pat McAlear: That's, uh, that's particularly true of your customers. Um, anytime if you've been out on the field yourself, I'm sure you have, and you're calling on a customer, they're happy to see you. You're not just another insurance salesman. You Yeah. Somebody that can help 'em has helped them. Yes.
[00:33:28] Matt McAlear: Yeah.
[00:33:29] Pat McAlear: Been a good supplier. And, you work hard no matter if they screw up or you screw up, you work at. getting it resolved quickly.
[00:33:40] Matt McAlear: I think another question just along the lines of top most successful habits, just to get even a little bit more granular, is, um, you know, how many hours of sleep do you get on average?
And, um, how many hours, you know, when you were. Working full-time. How many hours were you working a week as well? did you keep track [00:34:00] of that?
[00:34:00] Pat McAlear: Last night I think I slept four hours cuz I kept waking up. I'm thinking about this, uh, I normally, um, I would get, uh,
Eight hours close, I seem to need eight. myself. Some people get less, some people require more, uh, working, uh, always there at eight o'clock and never left before five. And that was to me, important to, uh, set, you know, example. And if the yard needed to be snow plowed, I'd get there at four in the morning and do the snow plow.
Before we hired Jeff, he got that responsibility.
[00:34:50] Matt McAlear: yeah,
[00:34:50] Pat McAlear: So, um, and in the plant I would do anything, uh, that needed to be [00:35:00] done. Uh, whether, whether it was building a machine, rolling springs, if we were short help. I remember your dad and I were out rolling springs together on an automatic, trying to see how much we could get done. It was kind of a goal, you know, just as fast as we could all day long. Yeah. I forget what the number is, but it was, it's nothing like, which you're getting now, at that time it was, uh, we were proud of what we accomplished in a, in a shift.
[00:35:28] Matt McAlear: Okay, so you know, another, you know, another interesting thought is life principles. You know, what, what are some, you know, do you have life principles that you live by? And what are some of those life principles? You talked a little bit about it from a work perspective, and, and I think that's good. Is there anything else, other life principles that you, that you live by?
[00:35:48] Pat McAlear: Um, as I get older, I realize I don't have a whole lot more time. The time that you had is behind you. The [00:36:00] time in front of you, you don't know, and it could be all over tomorrow. So you think about things like that. Anyway, from a principal standpoint, um, treat everybody, uh, fairly.
Try to control your prejudices, whatever they are, whether it's, you don't like cabbage or you don't like somebody that's got a tattoo or whatever it might be, um, the real, um, truth about people is in them and you gotta get to know them. You can't just look at the cover and say, aha, I know who this person is, because I found that that's not happened.
Uh,
you misjudge people if you do that. And I've seen that with, uh, Clarence Veigel and I, we walked into a Pontiac dealership. He [00:37:00] wanted to buy a new Pontiac. He had his coveralls on, and I had my dirty work clothes on, and salesman never came near us. we walked out the door and he bought his Pontiac somewhere else.
And, uh, so we all make, uh, judgment sometimes. That's good for the wrong reasons.
[00:37:21] Matt McAlear: Yeah. Man. What about regrets from the past? Do you have any regrets at all?
[00:37:29] Pat McAlear: Uh, business wise? No. Uh, I felt that, um, was very fortunate to end up at Service Spring to have the opportunity,
uh, to experience all of the experiences, to do all of the different things. I really have no, uh, regrets, um, that I can point to. [00:38:00] We're very fortunate.
[00:38:01] Matt McAlear: Wow.
[00:38:02] Pat McAlear: Um, the company did very well.
[00:38:07] Matt McAlear: What about anything not business related? Are there any regrets, not business related that you have at all?
[00:38:15] Pat McAlear: You know, I, as I said, I had a fortunate life. I was able to do all the things I wanted to do Maryland as well. You know, we got to, uh, travel around the world. I got to play with all the toys that there are. Um, and we got to do a lot of that stuff together as husband and wife.
[00:38:41] Matt McAlear: Super blessed. um,
[00:38:46] Pat McAlear: there isn't anything that I can say, gee, I wish I would've done that, or that, that was on my bucket list and didn't get to do it.
Uh, perfectly [00:39:00] content at the moment. so
[00:39:02] Matt McAlear: That is incredible. Well, that is what I wanna try and that's what I want to try and get to.
So that's, that's awesome. But Grandpa, appreciate you being on the podcast today.
[00:39:14] Pat McAlear: Thank you. Well, thank you very much for inviting me.
[00:39:16] Matt McAlear: Well, hopefully you guys found value in today's episode. Um, probably my number one takeaway was, uh, to do what you say you are going to do and to live and be someone, um, with integrity. I just thought that was very powerful and simple. Yet powerful. Uh, if you guys found value in today's episode, make sure you hit that like and subscribe button.
And just wanted to say thanks again for being a part of our leadership network and look forward to seeing you on the next episode.