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A frank discussion about starting your own company.
Interview with Rob Fromm
Podcast Produced byNick Uttam
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-uttam-4b33a1147/
I want my listeners to build a teachable point of view for themselves on how techs can have a super
great, happy life...whether as a tech or as someone near a tech.
John Sherk: Hey everybody. Welcome to H vac Joy lab. We're with Rob from today from local mechanical in downtown Oklahoma City. Welcome, Rob.
Robert Fromm:
Hello. Thanks for having me.
John Sherk: You bet. You bet. So, Rob, as with many of our podcasts here, we want to get to know you better. So kind of tell us the story of you kind of your origin story when it comes to air conditioning.
Robert Fromm: How I got in it? Yes. Okay. My mom's best buddy. Her name is Debbie. She's got a dad named Chuck. And he owns a company called Elmore bros Heating Air. And him and his brother used to be, you know, quite the duo back in the day. And so he came over to fix my AC one time. And heck I was, I was, see, I'm 38. I've been in the industry for 14 going on 15 years. And so that, let's see 30 A 20, a four years sauce? Yep. 24. Like I was thinking, and I watched him do it, you know, I was really interested. And it seemed like a quick fix for him, you know, no problem. And he saved the day, we were hot man. We were, we were sweating. I remember I was like, Man, this guy just came in here and save the day, I want to know what he does. So he told me about some schooling and some classes that I could go to. And I looked even further and signed up to a 10 month. Like, VO tech kind of school was called ATI Career Training Center. And there it was, it was what you got out of it. You know, you took home what you wanted to there, there was some good instructors, but then you have like your, your, your laughs that just didn't want to be there, you know, or just wasting time. So I did that for 10 months. But about two months into school, I ended up getting a job as a new construction installer. And so I just hey, I went, I went hard with it, you know, and I've just been living it every day since. So.
John Sherk: Excellent. Excellent. So then at some point, you decided I'm going to, I'm going to launch my own business. So tell us about that.
Robert Fromm: Yeah, I'm from day one, you know, I mean, I seen Chuck come out there. And he handled it all on his own and just seemed like he, he was his own boss. And, you know, he ran his own ship. So I had every intention of starting my own company from day one. Yeah.
John Sherk: Interesting. Interesting. And then, so how did it kind of trigger into that, did you because that we get asked this, I get asked this question a lot. And people who, who reach out about the podcast, somebody started a company, and they you know, there's like, kind of 100 questions there. What When did you know you were ready? The were you ready because of sort of positive reasons. Or you were so fed up? Was there any financial kind of position you wanted to be in before you started? Or you just launched? I know, there's a bunch of questions there. But yeah, tell us about your mindset. And that process of pulling the trigger.
Robert Fromm: Yeah. Well, like I said, I mean, from from day one, I knew I was waiting on mine, my golden moment of opportunity to be able to launch into that next that next level, you know, so always had my ear to the ground, you know, my eyes open, waiting, learning, soak everything up like a sponge. So, it was how business was conducted. Whenever I was an apprentice, I was like, Okay, keep a clean job site, work hard, work late, whatever it takes, you're missing holidays, you're missing birthdays, you miss some vacations, you're having to reschedule this and that around your personal life because you have a walk in cooler call and, you know, whatever time dates are messed up, you know. So you have to find you a good understanding woman and your family. You know, your family comes into play a lot, I'm sure because my mom, my sisters and everybody my dad helped me out with my boys. My two younger sons. So sure. Yeah, it was a it was a tough call to know when, you know, no, to know how because I have that right on the line. You know, whenever I was working for the man, I had a company truck and a company phone and a company credit card and all this kind of just felt like it was easy, you know? I didn't realize how much of a company man I was back then I'll tell you, I used to donate time and half my drive time and you know, just my life literally was worked around my job schedule in my career, I ate, I ate slept, and you know, eating there.
John Sherk: Yeah, for real. What I hear a lot of guys say is, and this is my, they're not saying these words, I'm kind of summarizing some of it, but there's about an eight to 10 year cycle there. From that first install job, you know, to where you've been there, you've run service, you've maybe even done a little, you know, comfort consultant sales kind of work, maybe. But there's about 10 years there, where it's kind of a lifecycle. And the technician has kind of they know, and what they're doing now, for real, especially in a residential side, commercial is almost a different animal, because tech is so going crazy, and there's so much stuff. But on the residential side, it's a lot of five ton split systems. And so they go out there, they know how to approach the customer, they've got it down, Pat, they're 10 years in or 35 years old, and they're like, I think I've gone as far as I can go, I don't think there's any words to go with this, you know, and they're going to kind of move me around or put me in charge of recruiting or something. But, but this is it, I'm just going to do this now, for 30 more years, and it triggers this thought of, maybe I need to go out on my own, maybe I need another adventure. And it's not so much triggered. Sometimes Sometimes it's triggered by like, I am not missing one more birthday. I mean, sometimes triggered by that kind of thing. But a lot of times guys are just like, look, I I'm not going to go quietly into the night catching one more call, because there's one more on the board, you know, they're gonna they, it's, they want the adventure of going out there and starting the new thing. And that that what I've what I've I've heard enough guys talk, I've talked to enough guys I recruit. So I talked to a lot of tax. And so in 2022, I probably talked to 800 tax. And so I ask these questions to try to get a mindset like where are they at what, what makes them want to go somewhere else than where they are and whatnot. And there just seemed to be this cycle, where the owner of the company needs stability. So they like the idea that this guy is just going to keep installing. But that runs out, that guy needs more challenge, more development, he needs to go somewhere. So now we're going to put them into service, then that challenge runs out, maybe if there's room, we'll put them into catch on the call and doing some sales. But at some point, it just feels like I've run this track a million times now. Is this it? And I think that's one of the more common triggers that gets a guy out there and starting his own thing.
Robert Fromm: You're absolutely right. Even whenever I was in heating, and air conditioning, school, learning all of the components and all of the electrical and pressure, you know, psychrometric charts, and you know, I could never put it to use out in the field because I started as an installer with an installer bag, new construction, ground jobs, lab jobs, added jobs. Sometimes we would do retros, you know, but I started out as a new construction installation, you know, installer. That's just that was so I did that for six and a half, seven years or so. And then learned service for three and a half. And along those six, you know, six or seven years or so I got to do service. And I was always going out on my own and calling my supervisors and asking them, you know, Hey, what's this? And what's that, you know, they were all very supportive, but I could never get on a service truck because they see my value as an installer, you know, not to toot my own horn, but I used to I'm 38 now whenever I was in my mid 20s I used to be able to turn two houses a day. Well that were anywhere from like 1300 to like 14 1500 square feet. I mean, another guy would go set the furnace coil copper lines, flue, drain, all the ductwork framing the returns. It's all flexible ducting here in Oklahoma for the most part, you know, but it's frowned upon on HVAC, you know, not sure Facebook pages of what it's my job to do here, here in the sticks. You know, here in the Great Plains of the United States we do a lot of flexible ducting and that's just all there is we're no stranger to square ducting and spiral and all that good stuff too. You know, we do it all. I got my own little sheet metal shop. So we 10 So I'll go ahead and
John Sherk: Talk some more about that because before we we started, you talked a little bit about your company you kind of go everything from A to and a half ton, you know, unit outside somebody's house all the way to the rooftop of a high rise building. So what talk about that a little bit like the that when you start getting into that level of commercial work, you get into chillers you get into, there's a lot of different technology, even though residential tech is really moving quickly, right now, the commercial side, you know, you bump into 100 ton med chiller, and it's like, whoa, I'm, you know, I mean, put one of my hands on one of these before, or there's all different kinds of equipment out there coming out. So how does that work for you?
Robert Fromm: A lot of research, you know, we definitely have to learn the new systems that are coming out, like anyone else, I just got on board with train and American standards. So we're now a dealer for American Standard and train and Ameristar has got some good models coming out this year. But as far as my diversity, and how far I'm willing to go to perform HVAC greatness, Sir, sir, this is, is I mean, it's pretty broad. It's pretty bought, brought out I was told to be versatile in this industry, and to index. So that's one thing I'm not shy of, I love being able to turn around and look back at something and say, you know, did that that was a challenge, but we got her done, you know.
John Sherk: So let me for the listeners. Because y'all know, I think that I'm a I'm a consultant by trade. So let me do a consultant observation that I just, I just made here, as Rob about different kinds of equipment, different different elements. He's the owner of the company, if you notice, the one thing he didn't mention talking about commercial was money. Clearly, Rob loves air conditioning. And it's not just about zeros on a check. Because if I said to someone, oh, we're gonna put in a, you know, 100 ton chiller. And they're the owner of that company, in a different setting. Here's what I hear about. Yeah, we had to make a real decision. If we were going to start doing that, because I got a front cash, it's a 3060, maybe 90 Day net invoice, I gotta figure out how to cash flow this thing, if I'm gonna start doing that kind of work out of my cash position, man, like, Rob didn't go there even a little bit. He's like, man, give me another challenge. Let me look back on that thing. Let give me one more misty eyed customer saying thank you so much. I mean, that's, that's in your bones. That's, that's an eight fat guy.
Robert Fromm: Man, I tell you what that that is one of the main reasons why I'm still here is the gratitude and satisfaction that I get off of that I get from each one of my customers, my employees being able to take care of them and provide and guide them in the right direction. So their jobs are easier. And so my customers don't have any burdens on their shoulders. Or maybe we can just do it better than the last guys. Sometimes isn't
John Sherk: Hard, which sometimes isn't hard, doing it better than the last guy.
Robert Fromm: I quoted a person a cheaper price for a Wi Fi programmable thermostat. And then the last company, but since I had too many line items on my invoice, keep in mind, it was cheaper, much cheaper. They went with the other company because they had one line item and it was easier to read. And so they chose I don't think
John Sherk: that's a there's something to that, that kind of flat rate mindset, you know, quoting a job with one number or one number per month for five years that you can do, you can get some deals done that way. It's unfortunate, in some ways, because people don't know what they're getting sometimes, but it's, you know, it is what it is.
Robert Fromm: Yeah, you got to know your customers, you know, you got to know. Yeah. But yeah.
John Sherk: So you got to go ahead. I'm sorry. I'd like to
Robert Fromm: Finish on how I made the decision to start.
John Sherk: Oh, yeah, please go ahead. Yeah. Okay.
Robert Fromm: So, I knew it was time. Whenever it all became kind of repetitive to me, in a way. You know, I know it was time. At that time, whenever it started feeling repetitive and just kind of, you know, another day of this was the time that a job offer was was given to me as a contractor whenever I hadn't even gotten my contractor's license yet. And it was, it was a $92,000 project. And I've seen the dollar signs, and I had heard about a couple guys started their own company and what they did and how they took their customers that they took care of with them over to the company that they started. And, you know, so that's, that's what? Yeah,
John Sherk: That's right. That's right. That that process, kudos to you for doing it, by the way. But that process, I've lost track of how many times I've talked to that became owners. And sometimes it's terrifying. And sometimes it's like, home, it's time. But, of course, it depends, too. I mean, if your wife is at home with five kids, and you've got $1,500 in the bank, that's a very different move from you know, I could go six months without making any money, and I'm okay. I mean, those are two completely different, you know, launches. And so it, at least in terms of stress, maybe not in terms of like, the tactics of starting a business, but how much sleep you're going to lose? Those are two different scenarios completely.
Robert Fromm: Yeah, my ex wife, which was my wife at the time, told me Stay where you are, don't do this, you know, keep your insurance, keep your truck, keep your phone. And I said, No, ask, I will not do that. You know, there's, there's far there's far more for me out there, I believe, because I was willing to go that extra distance. And really, you know, my first couple years, it was all fun. It was all fun. But uh, you know, this caught up with me, and that cut up caught up with me. I've been in business now going on six years. And I'll tell you what, the third year, after the third year, I, I found out how trying it was. And I was like, Oh, God, I gotta do this differently. And that's whenever I started really calculating up all that it took, right. And it just takes a lot. Right? A lot. So it's not for the faint. It's not for the weak. It's yeah, running a business can be fun. But also you have to be organized and do things in a certain manner certain way.
John Sherk: That's right. Irrational find. There's all kinds of issues that come up once your people think and really this is something what intimidates people from getting started that you combined marketing with QuickBooks? And how do I you know, like, where do I find guys I'm gonna hire started looking at a regular payroll, that'll put a quiver in your liver, like that, all that the details of it. That's really what holds a lot of guys up.
Robert Fromm: Mm hmm. And 2021 i That was my, my three and a half year mark three year mark. I had 12 employees. I was just throwing money at it. I had so many huge contracts, and so many huge jobs going on is 10,000 square foot building here. 15,000 square foot building building here. I had five buildings going at one time and my company brought in, like 1.4 million that year. And I didn't profit $1 i It was a loss. And it was because of who I hired in the short amount of time that I had to do the hiring in order to lock these jobs in and get some warm bodies out there on the floor. That's right. So that's what I did. You know, and I know, I messed that up. I messed that all up so much.
John Sherk: So it's tuition, it's tuition. You know, that's, there's not very many guys who just launch and they're like, man, I've been doing everything right from day one. Bam. You know, just that's not the way it usually goes.
Robert Fromm: You got to pay to play. You got to work. Yeah.
John Sherk: So how are you now? How many texts you have now? Four. Okay. And then do you have any back office at all? Or is it just you in the four guys a secretary? Yeah, that's what I've observed in the residential side, and you have kind of a crossover, but it would still apply. There's kind of this early phase or let's call it a smaller phase, where you can most of the people you hire are billable to a job. And you have to keep it organized. But But that's where you can make money. Then at some point, the business model requires hiring people who are not billable to a job and your margins compressed downward. So you need to hire a service manager or a dispatcher or a parts guy or whatever kind of back office role a maybe a bookkeeper or controller. And for a while there, the margins go down. And then once you get past that, you scale back up again and they go back up again. But that phase right There is a classic kind of hump. That's hard to get past because if you don't know that that's happening, it just looks like, I'm not making any money. What's going wrong around here? You know, but it's, you know, and then the in the dilemma of it is, am I going to be working 90 hours a week again, doing it all myself? I mean, do you know, do I have to do all the dispatching? And the books? Do I have to? You know, I'm saying, like, I know, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's a challenge right there figuring out? How do I grow past that first bubble? of back office? You know, cost that is not going to attach to a job.
Robert Fromm: Oh, dude, I flopped. Okay? After, so, almost all of 2022 was a total rebuild of my company, because of how it how it went in 2021. So the first of 2021, I was making all that money and then close to October's, whenever, you know, everything started falling apart. So laid everybody off. hired one good guy rebuilding from there. Yeah, just so me and another guy, you know, and then now we're up to four again, you know, I kept the office and I wasn't able to keep all of my trucks and all of my tools I had to, yeah, times got tough because of me not realizing I was simply throwing money at it, and not realizing where my profit margins were going. And you're right, having a foreman or a job supervisor to make sure that things are going as planned, and quoted, what's key. In my defense, I did hire that guy, but he had no business being out there he was. Yeah, he's a great guy. His name's Roger, a love that dude. Still, to this day, he was just everybody's friend. And didn't make anybody held accountable for their daily tasks. And Sad to say, you know, I'm not I'm not pointing the finger at anyone, but myself be the one that hired. I'm the one that hired the guys that I did. But oh, man, I should have slowed back should have should have, instead of just accepting all these contracts all at once. Sure. Totally.
John Sherk: Well, I mean, realistically, I mean, let yourself go back to that time. There's no realistic way you were going to say no to work. I mean, no one would do that. You know, I mean, it's kind of like, things like this play out exactly the way they have to, you know, you could go back and kind of kick yourself, but don't, because you wouldn't learn it without that. And everybody starts a business hoping they get a landslide of business. And so when it comes, it's like, it's all coming true. And no one is so disciplined. They're like, No, I'm just gonna have to tell these guys to find someone else, because I'm gonna be disciplined that no one does that. So it just, it's just how it happens. You know, that's how you good for you that you are resilient. You, you know, marched ahead, you didn't, you know, throw in the towel or feel like this doesn't work or, you know, I mean, it tells me you have a strong whether you think of it as a skill or not, but you have strong resilience skills. You know, you didn't, you didn't take that situation and turn it into the apocalypse. And right, you know, I'm saying like, this is, you know, I'm gonna generalize this one bad situation to everything in life. Everything now sucks. I'm a jackass, everything is stupid, I better just go back and work for the man. That that you didn't go there, right. And so and that's the thing. That's like a muscle you got to have, if you're going to run a business, you got to have that muscle that says, I, I'll power through this, and not just with beer and anger. But just with like, your capacity to take a breath. You know, let it wash over you learn from you know, there's old story about the this great fruit tree in a guy's backyard and a storm comes through and knocks a tree over and the owner says, What should I do? And the wise neighbor comes by and says, pick the fruit and burn what's left? I mean, that's the that's what you do in those situations. You know, you pick the fruit, what can I learn from this? And then you burn what's left and you move on? And that's what that's what it means to own a business.
Robert Fromm: Yeah, pick it up and keep going. That's right. Yes, right. Mm hmm. There's tons of stressors every day as a business owner, there's this and that, that's just keep focused on
John Sherk: on tomorrow. You know, so tell me a little bit about the dynamic of recruiting technicians. It sounds like you Haven't where she said he had some guys who weren't crazy about but that the number one thing without it's not a there's not even a close second, the number one thing I get asked about by owners is how do I find good people? I mean, I Where do I find these guys? How do I, you know, how does that work for you? How is it working for you? Are you doing anything, you don't have to sell your, your tell your secret sauce if you don't want to, but what's what's working for you right now.
Robert Fromm: Um, so word of word of mouth is always really helped me I got I got a couple guys that know a couple guys. So that's always how you get your best guys, I think, you know, unless you get really really lucky. tradesman companies such as like, you know, like the lease companies out or lease employees out to you. They're always a little bit higher, but you can you can land some pretty good employees that way as well. And, let's see, I know a guy named Jim, he was my instructor back at ATI, and he throws me some bones every now and then if I call him and ask him, you know, he'll tell me when their class is graduating or if he has any good prospects. So things like that just just basically word of mouth. I'm just calling calling the people I know and asking them if they know of anybody. You know, pretty property management companies also have some pretty good learners or people, people that can pick the trade up pretty quick, because most of the time they have been forced to, you know, replace this contact or that capacitor, this fan motor, whichever. So,
John Sherk: yeah, yeah, that's a good, that's a good point. So so we're having this conversation everybody else can listen in. But I'll I'll throw it I'll throw you some consulting thoughts here from of grabbing the desk here. One of the things that I'm seeing that, and this is for anybody listening, if you're in a mode, I know this is primarily a podcast for technicians. But we're on the topic here. And so this is a good time to talk about it. That this is this business of technicians hiring them, keeping them. This is what I do. I wrote a dissertation on technicians. It's it's the thing I think about all day, every day, how does this thing play out? The dynamics in the last seven or eight years in hiring tax in the labor market for technicians, is unprecedented in the history of this technology, the there's never been a bigger gap between available work and available technicians. And to use a metaphor to compare before 2016. It was already getting exacerbated. But if you go back to say the early 2000s. Again, as a metaphor, so forgive me technicians, I'm going to bet I'm going to compare you guys loaves of bread, so forgive me. But if if you can imagine that was the economy would kind of go up and down. And if there were 100 loaves of bread and a supermarket, a strong economy meant there were 110 people who wanted those 100 loaves of bread. When the economy slowed, it meant there were 90 people who wanted those 100 loaves of bread. And you can imagine the natural fluctuation up and down around what was a relative balance of availability of labor, right? Well, you get into the late, you know, 2000s, early 20 teens, the gap starts forming a lot. And then in 2016, the Trump administration, there were things that happen, you can love him or hate him, I'm neutral on the issue. But there are things that happened that ignited the economy in a big way. Plus, we reduced the number of people available to work construction because of some borderline bordered, like between countries between Mexico and US border stuff. And, and we ended a lot of mindset of globalization. There's a lot there's supply chain, there's a lot of stuff there. But what happened was that 110 people who wanted those 100 loaves of bread turned into about 1000 people. And the the A just turned the whole labor market upside down. And the the number of tech, I mean, I have clients that are my regular clients down here in South Louisiana. I put if I put 15 supervisors in a room, and commercial supervisors, and I say, Who here is being recruited right now? All 15 hands, who's who? Who realizes if you wanted another job, you could have it in 15 minutes or 15 hands? Like there's no the idea. This was part of my dissertation, but the idea that used to be true, that like this fear of losing your job, like it cost me too much to lose this job. That's just vanishing among technicians. No one, no one has that going on anymore. They all know, it's just changing fun. Like, literally the experience of work is changing. And so it used to be when you're recruiting, you'd say to somebody, I have a job, I'm offering a job, who needs a job. And so to go, I need a job. And this would kick off a relationship. Problem is today, rob this true for you, for anybody. If you're recruiting a technician, every technician, you're recruiting already has a job. If they don't already have a job, you probably don't want to hire them. Right. And so, so the game has changed from offering jobs to saying, what how am I going to compete for this talent? Right, what am I offering that they don't get somewhere else? How am I going to, were they on call every other weekend? And I'm going to turn that into one weekend out of 10? Were they? You know, is it a classic benefits retirement package that I can offer? And they can't? Is it relationships? That was me, they feel like they're on a team? And over there it was every man for himself? You know, do they get respect with me? And then we're over there, they just get talked down to by a dispatcher? You know, do I offer them the opportunity to do what they do best every day, like that clearly drove drives you rob like that. That feeling of how it feels to do quality work? And look a customer in the eye who's looking you right back in the eye and going thank you so much. Do I get to do that every day? Or am I getting chased off the job by a dispatcher saying you got two more calls? Why aren't you done yet? Right? All of this stuff is where the recruiting game is now. Right? And so it and I do this talk a lot, but but I think it's for people, especially in your position, it's that one, change it that one thought, no one I want to hire needs a job. Just just take that and then work from there. So that anybody, if I interview someone, and they're like, Man, this would be great. I've been really looking, I can't find anything. They're not the guy. Right? Not in this labor market. Not at three and a half percent unemployment, not not in this not in this labor market. So, but the reverse is, how do I go get that guy? I mean, it can get a little cutthroat. And like, what do I do to get a guy who's already working for somebody else to come work for me instead? It's not all the answers to that question in this conversation. But that is the question. And it's the only question. If I'm gonna grow my company, I want technicians to come work for me. What is the offer I can make to them? Financial or non financial? That just sounds so good. I feel like an idiot. If I don't say yes to rob and go to work for him.