Join me in a raw and real conversation with Greg Christensen, host of CMMS Radio, as we dive into why genuine win-win situations are so elusive in business. Greg shares insights into maintaining integrity, navigating the complexities of rapid growth, and staying focused on adding real value.
Whether you're leading teams, managing facilities, or scaling a business, Greg’s perspectives on accountability, intentionality, and authenticity provide actionable takeaways to keep your mission clear and impactful.
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✅ Subscribe for more real conversations about growth, business, and the blue-collar world.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:04:20):
Good to see you, dude.
You too, Josh.
It's been a while.
I mean, I'm guessing at least a year.
It could be longer than that.
I'd have to go look.
But man, it's good to see you.
Yeah, it's good to see you too, man.
We've collaborated on your podcast a
couple of times now.
But this is the first
time you've been on mine.
Yeah, yeah.
And I'm honored, man.
I appreciate you inviting me.
No, it's a pleasure to have you.
(01:04:42):
And I appreciate our conversations
and what we've talked about over the
years and your mindset
and the stance that you
take, not only on the blue collar
skilled trades, but the
industry as a whole, man.
So I'm excited to
take some of that wisdom,
harness it, bottle it,
give it to my audience,
and see what they can walk away with.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, man.
Let's jump into something.
(01:05:03):
What do you want me to talk about?
I don't know.
Let's take it from here.
So first off, Greg, by the
end of this conversation,
what is it that you
hope somebody takes away?
The number one thing would probably be
changes all the time.
But generally, I want
people to think a little bit more
(01:05:26):
critically about what they're doing,
especially if it has to do with
maintenance, maintenance
management, how they're
running their organization,
those types of things.
I kind of think of my
content and the things
I talk about being useful when it comes
to inspiring critical thinking.
And that includes disagreeing, which
(01:05:47):
keeps us all moving forward,
whether they realize it or not.
So I want people to
learn a little something
and maybe go do some
investigation into some
of the concepts we discuss.
Absolutely.
So on that topic, man, tell
us what your content is about.
Tell us what you're about.
Well, so for CMMS radio, that is about
computerized maintenance
(01:06:08):
management software.
But it's not actually about
the software as much as it
is the two M's in the middle.
I like to say it that way because
maintenance management
is really about people and process.
So having been in the space of CMMS,
I was a co-owner on part
of a company in the space.
(01:06:29):
I spent a lot of time with people
that are on the plant
floors, on the shop floors,
in the facilities, doing all
the things, cleaning buildings,
fixing buildings, fixing
assets, keeping lines running,
all that different stuff, health care,
schools, you name it.
And even from my prior life being in
building maintenance.
(01:06:50):
So through that exposure,
helping people solve problems,
I just got deeper and
deeper into what really matters
when it comes to deploying
the software based on how people
work.
So the content in CMMS
radio, on CMMS radio,
is all around maintenance management,
(01:07:10):
anything related to it,
the people, the process,
and then the technology layered in there.
And then I'm mixing a few things that are
maybe a little bit random.
I might have somebody
that's not exactly in the space.
I might have a founder on.
I like peppering people
up with real questions
and tend to run with low prep, no prep,
grip it and rip it style.
I don't do scripts.
(01:07:32):
I don't like all that because I want
someone to just bring their brain
and let's have a nice conversation.
Because that's what
people kind of need to hear.
It's a little more real,
a little more authentic.
I'm not saying there's
a way to be authentic.
You either are or you aren't, I guess.
But then you ask about
what I kind of stand for.
And I think I'm really
(01:07:54):
interested in integrity
when it comes to how business is done.
I love this pursuit
of the elusive win-win.
And I've been saying the elusive win-win
for I don't know how many years.
Probably a couple of decades.
Because I've always loved this idea that
in everything that you can do,
if you can turn that corner, if you can
(01:08:14):
keep that circle going,
everybody wins.
And that's not supposed to be like a
movement or anything like that.
That's just a good way to
do business, be of service.
Because I think when you
solve a problem for somebody
and you do something to get
them to a different place,
(01:08:35):
there has to be value for everybody.
So that's not about
selling stuff and then moving on.
That's about delivering something and
then supporting that process
moving forward.
So I kind of stand for that.
And I also--
What makes it elusive?
Because there's challenges that come in
to disrupt your intent
around doing that.
(01:08:57):
And those challenges
have to do with profits.
They have to do with regulations.
They have to do with boards of directors.
They have to do with investors.
They have to do with being
beholden to the things that
happen in our everyday lives.
And it takes work to
stay that intentional.
And that's why it's elusive.
Because things will happen no matter
(01:09:20):
what, no matter who,
no matter where.
Things are going to happen
that screw up your process.
Just bullshit happens.
And that can take you away from that.
At the end of the day,
you got bills to pay.
And you might then be
compelled to cut some corners,
to not come through here,
to not come through there.
Because that gives you that extra 2% or
(01:09:41):
whatever it might be.
It's really hard to do the right thing.
But then again, if
you're intentional about it,
it doesn't matter how hard it is because
you get better at it.
So it's elusive in that regard.
If I have a company that does
this great service, whatever
it is, product service both,
and we've got great clients.
(01:10:02):
They love it.
Everybody's happy.
We interact.
We're all going on this journey together.
Everybody's making money together.
Nobody's getting ripped off.
It's all good, right?
And then something happens.
Investment money comes in.
Now we're at risk of that being disrupted
because people are beholden to investors.
(01:10:23):
And that's just how it is.
I mean, I'm not saying
it shouldn't be that way.
I'm just saying it
becomes more challenging.
So it's elusive because people can get
blinded by what they're doing
and lose sight of what
they were originally doing.
That's the best I can do with that.
No, thank you.
Thank you for the explanation.
(01:10:44):
I didn't mean to cut you off either.
You can keep it--
Nah, man.
You're totally good, man.
I think I'm really passionate about it.
And I think it's
because it's so hard to do.
I like impossible things.
I like ideals.
Yeah.
All right, good.
(01:11:05):
I'm sorry, man.
No, that's great.
So if I'm hearing you
correctly, there's an integrity--
there's an underlying integrity issue
here that makes this elusive, right?
It's kind of like in
pursuit of what is right.
And so that is what makes these win-win
situations difficult,
(01:11:25):
or makes them change, right?
So where do you see that in a business
model for somebody who's
running, growing, or scaling a business?
How does this impact them
and their decision making?
Wow, that's a deep question because it
(01:11:47):
can go in so many different ways.
So in my experience, which certainly is--
I don't think it's representative of
everyone's experience.
But I think some of those challenges I
was talking about where you become
beholden to investors or
the problem of the day,
and it takes you away
from your actual work,
or maybe your actual work is so smooth,
(01:12:09):
you kind of get into this autopilot
mode, and you're no longer striving to
grow and improve your organization
or your client's experiences, that's
where it can start to go off the rails.
So for a business that
knows what it is and why it is,
and they're moving forward that way,
what's just picking
(01:12:29):
kind of easy and common
one, growing pains?
Growing pains come with cash flow issues.
They come with training issues.
They come with other types of disruption,
such as the necessity
to slow down for a moment
to do the right things
for onboarding somebody,
putting in a new process,
(01:12:51):
opening up a new market,
or bringing in a new
service into the fold.
Maybe it's not for a new market.
Maybe it's for your existing market.
But now you're going to start doing an
extra service you haven't done before,
because that
opportunity has presented itself.
That's going to disrupt everything.
And that's where the danger lies in the
challenge of business growth.
(01:13:13):
And I think industry by
industry, it's different.
So I'm generalizing in a big way.
This is just a-- it's kind of a
fascinating topic, because we, you, me,
and just numerous other people can call
all these things out.
But then if we start to go
nuanced, this specific business,
(01:13:37):
or we go a little bit bigger, this
industry, it starts
to change a little bit.
And so none of it's cookie cutter.
Anything foundational that
has to adjust, shift, change
is going to disrupt your business.
And it's going to make those goals,
especially if one of them
is to stay a high integrity organization,
(01:13:58):
which a lot of people
like the idea of it, but they don't like
how it translates on the balance sheet.
Yeah.
That's what it is.
I mean, I don't even know
if that really makes sense.
You know what it does?
It does.
You've done multiple businesses.
It does.
It makes a lot of sense.
And I'm going to ask
another hard question here.
And then we can move
on to a different topic.
But this is pure gold to me.
(01:14:19):
I love this.
What is one question that a business
owner could ask themselves
to keep them on the right path and focus
on this win-win scenario in the event
or in the situation, which it gets muddy?
Am I, are we, adding value?
(01:14:42):
Yes.
There it is.
You just added value to this podcast.
I hope so.
That's great, man.
I appreciate that.
That's actionable advice.
That's what I love to be able to deliver
to the audience and the listeners,
because this is real world stuff.
You've been through it.
I've been through it.
They've been through it.
And everybody, as generalized as that
(01:15:05):
was, everybody knows what the hell
you're talking about, because
they bid in those situations.
Do we give the money back?
Do we say something?
Do we do this?
Do we do that?
You know what?
And in the moment,
it's not a clear answer.
But when you ask yourself that
question, it becomes clearer.
And that's why I asked you for that.
Yeah, well, I think what's interesting
(01:15:25):
about the way you've just explained that,
it could potentially-- I believe it does
apply to one's self, one's team,
and the clients, and the market.
Now, it's not like, oh, you say it, and
now you're doing it.
It takes work.
(01:15:46):
It takes mindfulness.
And a lot of people
aren't willing to do it.
I don't do all that.
That's a lot of stuff, right?
But if you talk about how we could ask a
question of ourselves, of our company,
if you will, something like,
am I-- are we adding value?
(01:16:07):
Well, am I, as a leader,
adding value to my team?
Am I giving them the
things that they need?
For example, I bring great people in, but
I don't give them the
tools or the resources
they need to accomplish
what I hired them for.
I have to make a regular practice of
spending time with my team,
(01:16:27):
going where they do their work.
Don't call them into your office.
Get out from behind your desk.
Understand what's really going on.
Now, some people out there are going to
be like, bullshit,
Greg, I got shit to do.
We're making a bunch of money.
This is a multimillion
dollar company and all that.
Good.
You're making great money.
But if you can find a way to make that
time and create some bandwidth for that
(01:16:47):
to figure out what your team needs in
order to be absolute crushers on behalf
of-- not toward, but on
behalf of your clients--
that's a winning combination.
That's a winning recipe.
But there's always going to
be things that threaten that.
I don't know if that makes any sense, but
man, I'll get up on the soapbox.
That makes perfect sense, man.
(01:17:08):
I love your position on the soapbox.
Don't you worry about it.
That's why I asked you
to be on the show, man.
No, that's great.
So let's shift gears a little bit.
Let's talk about CMMS, computerized
maintenance management systems.
Right?
Yeah.
All right, great.
Yeah, systems, software,
whatever you want to call it.
Software, systems, software.
OK, so give me the elevator pitch as to
(01:17:31):
what this actually is.
We've got the
maintenance management part of it.
But for anybody who doesn't understand
what CMMS actually is or does
or who it connects, can
you give us that pitch?
Absolutely.
So maintenance management software,
whether it's on a computer or not,
is as simple as work order management.
(01:17:53):
And then that blossoms out or connects to
all the different things
that happen on a day-to-day basis.
Each business is different.
Depends which
industry we're talking about.
But if you have work orders, work that
has to be done on a thing
to a place on behalf of customers, which
could be your internal end users
or your actual customers if
you're a service provider,
(01:18:13):
like you're going on
site to a restaurant,
and you're going to fix that stove, or
you're going to replace that hood system,
or you're going to check the HVAC, you
need a solution that
allows you to capture those events,
schedule those events,
so you essentially can
see, track, and manage
past, present, and future--
not crystal ball style,
but future what's coming down
(01:18:35):
as far as our schedules,
all those types of things.
That's what a computerized maintenance
management system does.
It takes your old school,
hey, Josh, can you go do this?
And then let me know
later how it turned out.
You take that.
Now you put it on paper.
Now you're putting it in some Access
database or an Excel spreadsheet.
Now you want to go next level, and you
(01:18:55):
get into an actual system that
can take in contextualize and house that
data as an accounting system
for your maintenance
processes, the things
that you do.
If it wasn't written
down, it didn't happen.
And then we can spin out
from there and just go bonkers.
Yeah, of course.
So are you able to tell us what CMMS
(01:19:17):
provider you were with,
or is that confidential information?
So I'm not sure--
I don't know that it's confidential.
So the company that I was part owner of--
I was not the founder.
I was a co-founder.
Big shout out to Sean.
Rest in peace, my brother.
So a longtime friend of mine, business
partner of mine as well,
(01:19:37):
but we were friends
first, business partners later.
We started this company
called Net Facilities.
And it's still out there, but I'm no
longer connected to it.
But we built that solution to match a--
you're cool if I spin
into the whole story?
Go for it.
Do it.
Yeah, so we built the solution based on
(01:19:58):
all the different processes
that we learned and developed when we had
a building maintenance company.
Because we were working with so many
different types of clients.
And in that industry,
which is very saturated,
the only way to
differentiate is to be better.
So we went into that
business saying, well, we're just
going to do what we say we're going to
do, which everybody
says they're going to do,
(01:20:19):
but nobody does.
So that was your way of being better?
That was our way of being better.
And then we started to systematize that,
move away from paper processes.
We got a nice system in place that we
were using to manage
bidding, production
rates, all those things that
matter when you're
providing services of any kind.
You have a production rate of some kind,
unless it's some product where you got
(01:20:40):
cost plus pricing and you're doing that.
That's different, right?
But we took all that, and
we packaged it into a system.
Because the systems that were out there
didn't do what we did from an account
management perspective.
So there's the work you do in building
maintenance, in facilities maintenance,
in facilities management, in property
management, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, just fill in the blanks, right,
(01:21:02):
that has a workflow, but it's connected
to some kind of an impact.
So at the center of what we did, aside
from the good work, was the incredible
follow-up, the incredible
level of accountability.
So we built a system that did that,
predicated on based on work order
management for job sites,
(01:21:23):
property sites, locations.
It could be one
location or many locations.
And then we had
everything in there as far as
who can interact, who can communicate,
who can provide details, who can benefit
from seeing the audit trails relative to
who requested this, who requested that.
(01:21:44):
And very quickly we put assets in,
so there was
comprehensive equipment management.
We had other factors, I won't get into
all the different features and functions
because generally
speaking, in the world of CMMS,
you got work order
management, asset and equipment
and all the things
that go along with that.
Pack in whatever you
want, leave out the crap
that you don't need, whatever, right?
(01:22:06):
So we grew that over
about a 15 year period
and then we were sold,
we were acquired in 2018
and good exit, it was successful.
Who were you acquired by?
If we checked the wire,
that would be out there,
public sphere, so that
would have been AMT Direct
(01:22:28):
was a company that
acquired Net Facilities
and then it's their
turn to pick up the ball
and run with it and I
went along for the ride
for a couple of years
and that's why I can't
tell you much about it at this point.
I don't see much about
it, hear much about it,
but I will tell you
this, I do occasionally
(01:22:49):
hear from old clients, I do stay in touch
with a few people and it
was a really important part
of the journey of life for me.
I was very passionate about
it, I was very intentional
about it, I loved pretty
much everything about it.
I didn't care when I
had to work, none of that,
(01:23:10):
it was just go, go, go, go, go.
It's a pretty cool story,
the way it all came to be
and the reason I always
say shout out to Sean,
rest in peace, Sean, is
because man, he was a workhorse
and he's a classic entrepreneurial story.
Not that I'm not, but I
see some differences there,
(01:23:31):
but man, I learned a
lot, I got to help a lot
of incredible people, I got
to learn an immense amount
about industries that
I thought I knew about,
but then I got to really learn about them
and all of that shaped
kind of where I'm at today.
It's a major, major, major,
really long chapter in my life
(01:23:53):
and I'm super passionate about it.
I don't really have any
regret, although I didn't want
to sell it.
(laughing)
That's a great story,
man, and you know what,
it's that journey and those
rides that do, they shape us.
So it sold in 2018, you
spent how many years still
(01:24:14):
on board, two, three?
Two, it was about,
yeah, as a matter of fact,
it was damn close to exactly two years.
It was like a couple days
before the two year anniversary
of the sale, but I did my, I
call it my corporate washout.
There you go, there
you go, all right, cool.
So then 2020-ish is when you stepped away
(01:24:35):
and then what, so what
have you been doing since?
What have you been pouring yourself into
for the last five years?
So first thing that
happened was I went and dealt
with some medical stuff.
I had a major surgery I had to do,
so I went and did that
and then started healing up
(01:24:56):
from that thing and I was
starting to talk to people
about things I could do,
doing a little bit of consulting,
looking at some of
the companies out there,
oh, could I go here, could I go there?
And I was like, I don't
know if I really wanted, right?
So then while I was doing all that,
I started working on another
technology venture with Sean,
(01:25:18):
but he wasn't directly
involved and we put a lot
of work into that, but it didn't launch.
Right now it's sitting on a shelf.
And if people look at my profile,
they can figure out
what that technology is.
It is just sitting right over there.
I'm not actually looking
at it, but pretend I am.
And it's like, I look at it
and I go, one of these days,
(01:25:39):
one of these days you're coming back.
Because when Sean passed
on, we stopped all operations
and we were about to go to
market, we were way past MVP.
So what's interesting about
that is while we were working
on that and I was learning
all, it's a project management,
project execution solution.
(01:25:59):
Very, very well built,
very clean, all this stuff.
I had to go and actually immerse myself
and learn a lot about
enough about project management
and project execution to be
able to kind of walk the walk
and talk the talk, but I
never want to go too far
to be a pretend expert.
I want to lean on the real experts.
And I don't like ever being in a position
(01:26:22):
to misguide someone.
So we were right there.
Prior to us shutting that
down and kind of putting it
on the shelf for a while, I
launched CMMS Radio as a podcast
because my whole life had been told, hey,
you should be doing
something with your voice.
(01:26:43):
You should be on the radio, whatever.
So one day I was like, you know what?
I'm just going to create something.
I'm going to put a monologue out there.
And I went and did it like December--
I think it was December 25 or 26, 2021.
I'd have to go back and look, but that's
approximately when I did it.
And I put that monologue out.
(01:27:04):
And I was like, well,
now you got to keep going.
So I did another one.
And then I did another one.
And then I did another one.
I think I did about seven
or eight monologue episodes,
while at the same time, my days are
filled with doing some consulting,
working on other things.
(01:27:24):
And before that eighth episode, I started
getting people contacting me.
Hey, love the
content, like the messaging.
I'm interested in that stuff too.
Do you happen to be-- and they'd ask me,
am I from this industry?
Do I understand these best practices?
And I was like, well, no.
(01:27:45):
And they said, well, it
sure sounds like you do.
Could I come on your show?
And I said, well, I
haven't done that before.
I was always going to just do monologue,
like some kind of radio guy that
just hits the mic every night and records
something cool, easy breezy,
running gun.
And I said, all right, let's do it.
And ever since then, I've only done guest
(01:28:06):
episodes, video episodes.
Rarely do I do a monologue anymore.
And that's how CMMS radio started picking
up audience and getting me
connected to all these
amazing industry pros.
I mean, I have got literally a stable--
and I mean that in the best possible
way-- a stable of heavy hitter real deal
(01:28:29):
pros in the industry, most especially in
maintenance and reliability,
which was really, for me, eye opening.
Because I had no idea I was going to land
with that community.
I thought I was going to land with a
completely different industry series
of kind of like facilities managers only
(01:28:50):
in an editable landing,
right smack dab in the middle of that.
And now, if you look at my episodes, you
look at some of the experts,
some of the people that are dear friends
of mine now in the industry that
are just amazing, real, high integrity.
And you mind if I shout
out a few names right quick?
Go for it, man.
Shout it out.
Brian Bieski, he's a CMRP.
(01:29:13):
That's my dog, man.
He was the very first one
that reached out and said, hey,
would you have somebody on as a guest?
Because I like the shit you're saying,
man, and we got to talk about this.
So he gets credit for that because that's
when I started doing the video episodes.
I got friends like George Williams, Joe
Anderson over at Reliability X,
Corey Dickens.
He's a CMRP.
The Trenton Chunken, I
(01:29:34):
give a shout out to him.
All these people.
I could go probably--
I could probably go 50 deep, but the core
stable of just monsters,
it's probably a good 10, maybe 15 people
that are complete beasts.
Andy Gager with AMG International.
I'm buddies with Eric
Hupier over in Australia.
(01:29:56):
These are monsters that come through.
They deliver on what they say.
They know what they're doing.
They are real pros.
They have been in the trenches.
I'm talking about bona fide maintenance
and reliability and asset management
experts, monsters.
Love those people.
And everybody else that
follows, chimes in, contributes.
(01:30:19):
I get to learn.
I get to showcase what
you can teach people.
And that's my job.
That's my job.
I'm not supposed to be the expert.
I'm supposed to be the
expert at facilitating.
I like that.
That's a really good
lead-in to my next question.
So I want to get a little
more into the CMMS stuff.
(01:30:39):
But before that, I'm
listening to your story.
I'm listening to you speak.
Obviously, we've known
each other for a while now.
And I've gotten to know your personality,
which resonates heavily with me.
I'm going to love you to death, man.
Some of the conversations
that we've had, although brief,
have been impactful and
really, really awesome stuff.
(01:31:01):
So my next question for you is, Greg,
what is your ultimate superpower?
Not necessarily your
expertise, but your superpower.
That thing that maybe you're not an
expert at, but people are always like,
Greg, you got it.
You got this.
What is that?
I want to know.
(01:31:23):
Interesting question, because
I have to think really hard.
I have a very difficult time objectifying
myself, figuring out
what I could say
about myself that's true.
That's why I asked the question.
I think I would probably go with my
connecting and kind of--
(01:31:47):
I like to sit in the
middle and make things happen.
But I also like to wrestle with things
and try to put stuff together in my mind.
I don't know if that's a
superpower-type deal, though.
I think it is.
I think they're two
separate things, right?
I've known people who have had
superpowers of connecting others,
networkers, people that say, hey, I know
somebody who could help you
(01:32:08):
in the effort of service.
And that is something that I've noticed
from you, because you do have this show.
You just shouted out three names, and
you've got 10 more in your back pocket
there.
You literally just 30 seconds ago took
advantage of that ability on this show.
(01:32:28):
So that's number one.
I think that's really great.
And the second thing, that just comes
through in your journey, right?
Who else would want to build what you
built if they couldn't grapple
with that in their mind?
So that checks out, man.
(01:32:50):
Well, thanks.
I think I almost like not knowing what it
is, because if I do,
then I want to try to
do something with it.
But I do tend to think it's the way I
interact, the way I talk,
the way I'm not quite super, super, super
polished professional,
not quite completely out of control,
(01:33:13):
something like that.
I mean, that's probably--
maybe, I don't know.
I have a real tough time taking the
compliments and the feedback.
I still remember--
I don't know if I
ever told you this story.
I still remember the very first time
somebody came up to me at an event
when I decided, OK, I'm
going to go to an event.
This great group
(01:33:33):
invited me to their event.
They're called Reliable
Plants, coming up in June.
And they invited me
to their Orlando show.
And one of my heavy hitter buddies now,
really good friend, man,
and such high integrity.
His name's Matt Knuth.
And he walked up to me
to introduce himself.
And right there, I was shocked.
(01:33:55):
He called me by name.
He came up to me.
Then I asked him.
I'm like, wow, man.
This is-- I mean, I
don't know what to say.
But dude, I just got to ask
you, why do you like the show?
I mean, why do you even like it?
He said, dude, you're
not a fucking talking head.
And that has been consistent amongst the
(01:34:19):
people that kind of follow
and participate in all that.
I always remember that.
Yeah, I don't know
about that superpower thing.
I'm going to have to ask all my friends,
what the hell is my superpower?
No, that's really great.
So I want to get in a little bit to the
CMMS side of things,
just for an understanding perspective.
(01:34:41):
Obviously, it's something
that I use in my business.
And I don't want to
say it's forced upon me.
Now it's mutual.
When it first came down the pipeline, I
was like, what the hell is this?
We've had that conversation.
And I think that everybody who services
facilities in that aspect,
(01:35:01):
when these CMMS
providers started to come up,
they probably all had the same questions
and fears and anxieties.
So I'm curious, from your
perspective, what I want to do
is I want to equalize the
playing field a little bit.
And I want to try to drive understanding.
And what I mean by that is that it's real
(01:35:22):
easy for us as service providers
and skilled trades professionals and
repair people to say,
man, it makes my job so much harder.
It makes it so much more difficult
because now I've got
to do everything twice.
And maybe my system
doesn't link up to it.
And it causes more admin headaches
because I have to do all this entering.
(01:35:43):
And then it needs to be reviewed by
somebody because that's their process.
And I have no control over that.
Tell me some of the stuff.
Tell me some of the struggles that maybe
my customer might have that
put them in a position to
want to use a CMMS provider.
The number one thing is lack of
(01:36:07):
documentation and opportunity
to communicate in real time.
Now, I have to add something to that.
Real time communication is a challenge
because when you call someone,
when you text someone,
when you send them an email,
or you use your CMMS
and put in a work order,
that doesn't mean you're going to get
lickety split instant communication.
(01:36:28):
However, if you're
having a lot of gaps with--
as one of your customers
using CMMS with the communication
and what did I ask WCE for yesterday or
whomever, that serves a purpose.
Now, that's really basic.
But the important thing about leveraging
(01:36:50):
a CMMS is that I mentioned
C track and manage the things, what's
being done, who requested it,
who worked on it, who didn't work on it,
how long is it outstanding?
All those things matter.
You cannot keep those in your brain.
They are worthless if they're sitting in
your email because about six months
or a year go by and
(01:37:10):
then go try to find it.
Well, you would have to remember
something about it that's so distinct
that you could pull that shit up and that
ain't going to happen.
Plus, I will tell you,
email is a brilliant way
to self-train on how
to use a snooze button.
So the CMMS for your
customers is going to give them a way
to communicate, document, send in a
(01:37:31):
request that thereby empowers
their vendor, their service provider,
whatever it might be,
to take that and go do the work and then
document what was done.
They might tell you what
it costs, what it cost them,
how much they're going to bill you, and
then we go a step further
and we get into equipment.
(01:37:52):
You mentioned restaurants, right?
Big mainstay thing
for a lot of businesses.
Well, restaurants have
critical pieces of equipment
for both the facilities, right?
HVAC systems, maybe boilers,
a few other things like that,
and for what they actually do.
(01:38:12):
Clients come to get food.
You've got to have good equipment to not
only produce that food,
but produce it consistently
at the right temperatures.
So a CMMS is going to
help those types of clients
to empower their
vendors to be better vendors,
but for them also to
see, "What do I have?
"When did I buy it?
What's been done to it?
(01:38:32):
"How often did it break? When should
something be done next?"
And the example I'm going to use in the
restaurant industry specifically
is either hood systems or grease traps.
The reason I'm bringing up those two
things is those cost money,
those are a part of day-to-day operations
in those environments, absolutely,
(01:38:54):
but they are also a major
risk point in the business.
Grease traps that are not
taken care of create a hazard.
Hood systems that are not taken care of
properly and maintained
create a hazard, a very dangerous hazard.
So we can start to do this
(01:39:15):
with all the different things,
and some people might say, "Greg, you're
getting too detailed."
You don't have to go that detailed.
Hit the big rocks, right?
So hopefully that helps.
I mean, I... It does.
What happens is when
somebody asks me a CMMS question,
and I don't care which product.
I don't care what CMMS you use, right?
My mind is going on a journey as if I
(01:39:36):
pulled my car into the parking lot,
got out of my car, walked into the place,
whether it's a restaurant or a school or
a hospital, I don't care.
And I'm actually seeing
in my mind all the things
if I were going to walk that facility and
figure out a production rate
on how to take care of it, maintain it,
keep the equipment running
and all that kind of stuff,
and then I'm at the same
time seeing it inside the CMMS.
(01:39:58):
That's an actual
thing that happens for me.
I am, I'm sure.
Yeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense.
That's... I appreciate that answer.
I think that's
helpful to gain perspective,
you know, because it's
so easy to lose it, right?
There's a... I think
there's an underlying...
I'll call it a fear that CMMS platforms
(01:40:22):
can take the relationship factor away
from the interaction.
Make it transactional,
because, you know, at that point,
you're behind a
screen, behind a keyboard,
you can communicate without this.
Ah. What would you say to that?
So, some people out
(01:40:45):
there are going to hate this,
but I seriously mean
this, all right? Yeah.
You can have your CMMS, you can do
transactional nature things
with your clientele,
internal external clients,
whatever you want to call them, work
orders, all this cool stuff,
reports, communicating KPIs, dashboards,
all that nice stuff,
invoices, blah, blah, blah.
(01:41:05):
You still...
You still should, must, and
need to talk to your clients.
Now, it doesn't have to be every day,
but the idea and the
concept that no news is good news
is total bullshit. No news is a risk.
(01:41:26):
And when you call your
client to check on something
and do that step of verification,
you bring back
immediately the human element,
you move immediately away from the
transactional nature
of everything that we already do.
You've hired me for a
service, I've done the service,
where's my money, have a nice day, right?
(01:41:47):
But you've got to keep that in there,
because if you're going to try to
automate that process
of follow-up and account management,
client relationship management, that shit
is not going to work.
It's not going to work at some point.
That is not going to work.
We have to maintain that,
(01:42:08):
at least that connection.
I would add to that now, this
is not easy for all businesses.
Only certain
businesses really can do this.
But the occasional on-site has a value
that's actually intangible in many ways.
When you have a client and
you're in a position, right?
It depends.
(01:42:29):
If you're selling some $22 thing online,
you're not going to go
to your client's house
and all that shit, right?
But I'm talking about
your actual clients.
If you are going to
make an occasional visit,
not just that phone call, but, hey,
we do happen to be in the area this week,
can we come by just to say
hello and shake your hand?
Everything changes, because
(01:42:51):
you get to see for yourself.
You get to look somebody in the eyes.
And I know, look, I've worked remote.
I can't even tell you
how many years of my life.
And when I want to interact with a
client, it's like this,
right?
I'm not going on-site
to every different place.
But if you're in that kind of a business,
you should be doing that.
(01:43:11):
If you can't do that, or
if it's cost prohibitive,
you still got to do the
phone calls and all that.
I'm not talking about cold calls.
I'm talking about
checking in with your client.
And when you do that, you leave a message
for Mr. and Mrs. Jones.
If you're in the
customer success department
or the account management department,
you're not done yet.
So that's another thing.
(01:43:32):
This shit gets me in
trouble all the time.
I'll tell leaders, don't let people just
check the boxes off.
Oh, well, they called
and they left a message.
Keep trying.
You don't have to do it 24-7.
But for each one of your clients,
they represent something that's part
of the lifeblood of your company.
What you're doing for them probably
represents some part of the
lifeblood for their company.
(01:43:54):
That kind of stuff matters.
If you have pure
transactional opportunity
and it can live and
thrive that way, that's fine.
But in service
businesses, that's not a thing.
I appreciate that candid response
as if you'd give me anything else.
You said you tell leaders this.
(01:44:17):
Is that part of your consulting,
coaching, just regular, nice?
I would say regular instigating.
Regular instigating.
So I don't consult
with leaders necessarily.
Okay.
Like I just say this stuff
because it needs to be said.
Got it.
(01:44:37):
Like I step up so that I
can get fired or whatever.
Walked out of the building.
That's what I'm talking about.
I love it.
Hell yeah.
And I think, well, I mean, I just,
I can't get away from it.
I have tried to play the
game and do the soft skills
and all that and it's really hard for me.
It's really hard for me.
I don't, maybe that's a flaw.
Let's just say that's a flaw,
(01:44:58):
but it can also be a
good thing in certain ways.
So I don't like
playing the game very much
because if I have to play it that much,
that means there's
something wrong where I am.
Sure.
If that makes any sense.
So when I do consulting,
it's consulting around computerized
(01:45:19):
maintenance management,
software, facilities
management challenges,
maintenance management challenges.
Logistics.
And one thing that,
well, maybe with the logistics,
but maybe with how
they're structuring workflows,
what might be missing from
their process or processes.
And I just wanna give
some good general guidance
and help them solve a problem,
(01:45:41):
maybe find a problem,
or maybe we can find out
you don't really have much of a problem.
And the other thing is,
remember I mentioned
the people that I have
that I can reach out to
and pull into these things.
As soon as it gets out of
my realm where I'm like,
I need to try to figure this out,
that's when I'm
typically phoning a friend.
And then if I can figure out
that they can actually solve the problem,
(01:46:02):
then I'll put those people together.
So I don't do like leadership
training or stuff like that,
because I think there's people that are
really good at that.
And I don't think that's my thing.
I think my thing is getting into the mix,
seeing if I can hear something
or get a clue about something,
that I know enough
about that we could solve it
(01:46:23):
or find a good solution.
And that thing about instigating,
I love a good rant.
I love a little bit of--
I know this about you.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think most of the time,
it falls on deaf ears.
So the other stuff I do is occasionally
a little bit of voice
work or something like that,
but I'm not out on any platforms
(01:46:44):
doing all that kind of crying.
I just do like little projects,
maybe some videos and stuff like that.
But I'm pretty knee deep in CMS radio,
getting to a few conferences,
doing some good promotion for people
and getting great stories
that are real as real can be.
Love that.
(01:47:05):
Greg, how big did net
facilities get before it was sold?
That one, I don't think I'm
allowed to talk about, but--
Like, I mean, just give me
something like an employee count
or something that gives us an idea
of the size business you were.
Okay, all right.
So hundreds upon hundreds of clients,
(01:47:29):
thousands upon thousands of locations,
total number of users in my time,
40, 50, 50,000.
Wow, okay.
All users, right, counting them all.
And then from an employee perspective,
(01:47:50):
this is the most interesting
thing about what we did for me.
We built a very high
retention CMMS company.
We were almost always in the high 90s
as far as percent of retention.
100 is really hard to do,
really, really hard to do,
but we were, it was important to us
(01:48:13):
that we could stay in the
mid to high 90s on retention.
But here's the kicker,
this is what I was
always so fascinated by.
We did all this with what I think is an
incredibly small team
because of the way we
structured everything
and the way we allowed
people to do their job.
So in the front office
(01:48:34):
for us prior to being sold,
we were, I'm positive we
were never more than 12,
and usually around 10 in the front office
because we would push resources
to what we call back office operations
for ongoing, like
(01:48:55):
development programs and stuff.
When people hear I was
in CMMS and all this,
they're like, "Oh, do you
know how to build this, that,
and the other, and do you
know about Ajax and Python
and all that?"
I'm like, "No, man, I'm
a button clicker, dude."
There's people that know that stuff
a million times better than I ever could.
So don't even go there with me.
But what we focused on, and
the reason this was possible,
(01:49:16):
was we were very focused on how,
a lot of people call it customer success,
we didn't use that.
We didn't call it, we had a support
training department,
one and the same.
Deployments and implementation, same.
We were more so
plugged in with our clients
than the way it happens when you have
(01:49:38):
multiple departments
and turnover and all that.
We didn't want turnover.
We wanted people that would
stick for a long, long time,
but not because they're stuck,
because they're thriving in their job
and they love working with our clients
and they love solving the problems
and they love doing all this stuff.
So I don't know if that tells you
anything about size,
because I don't think I'm allowed to,
(01:49:59):
I've never really checked this,
I don't wanna go pull up my
non-fiercierd so damn long ago,
but like revenue, what was sold before,
those two I know I'm
not allowed to talk about.
No, don't even sweat.
You gave me a good idea.
And that retention rate is wild.
So if you could roll that retention piece
(01:50:22):
into a short piece of
advice for somebody,
like the one thing or the three things
that they can focus on
from your perspective
to increase retention in their team,
what would that look like?
Man, remember I said earlier about,
is what I'm doing is what
we're doing, adding value.
(01:50:43):
What you do is you take that,
you couple it with the intentionality
and you have to actually
be relentless about it.
As an organization, it's
going to cost you money and time
to do that, but all
you're doing is caring,
actually caring.
(01:51:03):
And that's the thing
that can very quickly
and easily get eroded
when we're moving really fast
and we're growing exponentially.
It's all great, it's all exciting.
But when more and more of
what we do is happening,
we need more and more
resources to deliver
at that same level.
And that puts white glove
service and caring at risk,
(01:51:26):
naturally.
Like if you're suffering this,
if you're a company out
there and you're suffering this,
that is kind of how
it's supposed to happen.
And if you're growing
and stacking on clients
and bringing in
revenue and you still have
that high retention and you
can maintain that intentionality
about adding value and
actually caring about your clients,
(01:51:47):
you're doing great.
You're probably dodging
some bullets along the way
because there are actually a ton of them.
You see them far better after the fact.
When you look back, you
don't necessarily see them
while they're happening in real time.
I'm talking about
these bullets that come up.
So think about a software company.
There's so many things that can go wrong
(01:52:08):
any minute of every day.
System can go down, data integrity,
on and on and on, all of it, right?
So we're all out here, big
companies, small companies,
everybody in between,
basically dodging bullets.
And if somebody
thinks you're gonna create
this perfect system
that's just gonna be a set-it
and forget it,
organization that's gonna run itself,
(01:52:30):
get out of here, that's nonsense.
That's not a thing.
It's just not a thing.
You know what works like that?
If your CD player works and
you actually still use CDs
and you plug it into the CD
machine and it just plays,
that works like that.
But companies just
don't work that way, man.
The Gen Zs listening
are gonna be wondering
what the hell you're talking about.
(01:52:51):
Oh, that's a good point.
(laughing)
Joke, it just--
Set it and forget it is just not a thing.
Yeah, TPT it.
Well, they know what it is
because they use it against them.
(laughing)
Yeah, go listen to some of your CDs, man.
You probably still got a DVD player.
Oh, that's funny, man.
No, I appreciate that advice.
That's really good advice.
(01:53:13):
So I gotta ask, yo, go ahead, go.
I was gonna say, I know I
didn't really package it up
as a canned response, but
when I'm in these conversations
with you, Josh, I'm just like, man,
I like having
conversations that are like,
nobody's listening.
Yeah.
Just chopping it up, man.
And don't worry about that.
I mean, leave the packaging to me.
(01:53:34):
I'll package these clips as necessary.
You just be you, 100% authentically you,
which you do a great job of.
So what haven't I asked
that can impact our audience?
Do you think that they took away
what you wanted them to take away from
this conversation yet?
Well, I think they
might've gotten some of it,
(01:53:54):
but things I would add
to it is with anything
that you're dealing with,
especially if it's in the
maintenance management realm,
facilities management,
you're providing services,
you're receiving
services, you're using software,
maybe you're gonna
look at a CMMS or an EAM,
which is enterprise asset management
and all this different stuff.
(01:54:17):
Always know that it's about the basics,
the basic fundamentals.
And when it comes to the
resources you're going to leverage
for learning out there,
that's not gonna be a real easy thing.
I could tell you, hey,
listen to CMMS radio,
if you want the real deal and you wanna
see some heavy hitters
that are actually gonna help you, sure.
(01:54:38):
But that's not the point.
The point is whatever
you're doing in any business,
maybe even in life, I'm
not a life coach, man,
they would never certify me on that.
The thing you have to
focus on is these basics
because those are the things
that set the foundation of what you do.
You've heard this your whole life,
you've heard this in work
and in business and whatever,
(01:55:00):
but it's actually a thing.
So be careful of the shiny stuff,
the shiny new technology,
the buzzword stuff, your AI,
I much prefer actual intelligence
as opposed to artificial intelligence.
However, caveat on that, there's some
good stuff about it,
some of which is yet to be seen,
there's gonna be a
washout, but focus on your basics.
(01:55:23):
And always, when you're
working with a vendor of any kind,
buying a CMMS, getting services for your
restaurant equipment,
getting a plumber for your house,
whatever it might be,
put them to the test.
What I mean is ask them questions that
are important to you.
Make sure they understand
you, that's what matters.
(01:55:45):
It's not the other way around, ever.
And for this time, in this moment,
I'm gonna leave it at that, but yeah,
check out CMMS Radio too.
That's fantastic, man.
I truly appreciate that advice.
And I know that that's gonna go along
with my audience too, man.
I hope so.
(01:56:06):
I just wanna help one person at a time.
That's the reality.
Yeah, well, that's where you
and I are aligned, my friend.
One listener or a million, you know,
as long as somebody can get some value.
Add value, man.
That's the name of the game.
Add value and be real about it.
Absolutely.
Where can people find you?
(01:56:27):
On LinkedIn, you can find CMMS Radio,
follow that company page.
CMMS Radio is on Spotify and it ends up
getting out via RSS to
a bunch of other places.
There's a YouTube channel
you can check that out too.
You can find me on LinkedIn.
And there is cmmsradio.com,
but I'm really heavily
focused right now, just on LinkedIn.
(01:56:48):
Cool.
All right.
Well, Greg, it's always a pleasure, man.
I truly appreciate the conversation.
I appreciate the transparency.
And until next time.
Thanks, brother.
Good to see you, dude.
You too, Josh.
It's been a while.
I mean, I'm guessing at least a year.
It could be longer than that.
I'd have to go look.
But man, it's good to see you.
Yeah, it's good to see you too, man.
We've collaborated on your podcast a
couple of times now.
But this is the first
time you've been on mine.
Yeah, yeah.
And I'm honored, man.
I appreciate you inviting me.
No, it's a pleasure to have you.
(01:04:42):
And I appreciate our conversations
and what we've talked about over the
years and your mindset
and the stance that you
take, not only on the blue collar
skilled trades, but the
industry as a whole, man.
So I'm excited to
take some of that wisdom,
harness it, bottle it,
give it to my audience,
and see what they can walk away with.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, man.
Let's jump into something.
(01:05:03):
What do you want me to talk about?
I don't know.
Let's take it from here.
So first off, Greg, by the
end of this conversation,
what is it that you
hope somebody takes away?
The number one thing would probably be
changes all the time.
But generally, I want
people to think a little bit more
(01:05:26):
critically about what they're doing,
especially if it has to do with
maintenance, maintenance
management, how they're
running their organization,
those types of things.
I kind of think of my
content and the things
I talk about being useful when it comes
to inspiring critical thinking.
And that includes disagreeing, which
(01:05:47):
keeps us all moving forward,
whether they realize it or not.
So I want people to
learn a little something
and maybe go do some
investigation into some
of the concepts we discuss.
Absolutely.
So on that topic, man, tell
us what your content is about.
Tell us what you're about.
Well, so for CMMS radio, that is about
computerized maintenance
(01:06:08):
management software.
But it's not actually about
the software as much as it
is the two M's in the middle.
I like to say it that way because
maintenance management
is really about people and process.
So having been in the space of CMMS,
I was a co-owner on part
of a company in the space.
(01:06:29):
I spent a lot of time with people
that are on the plant
floors, on the shop floors,
in the facilities, doing all
the things, cleaning buildings,
fixing buildings, fixing
assets, keeping lines running,
all that different stuff, health care,
schools, you name it.
And even from my prior life being in
building maintenance.
(01:06:50):
So through that exposure,
helping people solve problems,
I just got deeper and
deeper into what really matters
when it comes to deploying
the software based on how people
work.
So the content in CMMS
radio, on CMMS radio,
is all around maintenance management,
(01:07:10):
anything related to it,
the people, the process,
and then the technology layered in there.
And then I'm mixing a few things that are
maybe a little bit random.
I might have somebody
that's not exactly in the space.
I might have a founder on.
I like peppering people
up with real questions
and tend to run with low prep, no prep,
grip it and rip it style.
I don't do scripts.
(01:07:32):
I don't like all that because I want
someone to just bring their brain
and let's have a nice conversation.
Because that's what
people kind of need to hear.
It's a little more real,
a little more authentic.
I'm not saying there's
a way to be authentic.
You either are or you aren't, I guess.
But then you ask about
what I kind of stand for.
And I think I'm really
(01:07:54):
interested in integrity
when it comes to how business is done.
I love this pursuit
of the elusive win-win.
And I've been saying the elusive win-win
for I don't know how many years.
Probably a couple of decades.
Because I've always loved this idea that
in everything that you can do,
if you can turn that corner, if you can
(01:08:14):
keep that circle going,
everybody wins.
And that's not supposed to be like a
movement or anything like that.
That's just a good way to
do business, be of service.
Because I think when you
solve a problem for somebody
and you do something to get
them to a different place,
(01:08:35):
there has to be value for everybody.
So that's not about
selling stuff and then moving on.
That's about delivering something and
then supporting that process
moving forward.
So I kind of stand for that.
And I also--
What makes it elusive?
Because there's challenges that come in
to disrupt your intent
around doing that.
(01:08:57):
And those challenges
have to do with profits.
They have to do with regulations.
They have to do with boards of directors.
They have to do with investors.
They have to do with being
beholden to the things that
happen in our everyday lives.
And it takes work to
stay that intentional.
And that's why it's elusive.
Because things will happen no matter
(01:09:20):
what, no matter who,
no matter where.
Things are going to happen
that screw up your process.
Just bullshit happens.
And that can take you away from that.
At the end of the day,
you got bills to pay.
And you might then be
compelled to cut some corners,
to not come through here,
to not come through there.
Because that gives you that extra 2% or
(01:09:41):
whatever it might be.
It's really hard to do the right thing.
But then again, if
you're intentional about it,
it doesn't matter how hard it is because
you get better at it.
So it's elusive in that regard.
If I have a company that does
this great service, whatever
it is, product service both,
and we've got great clients.
(01:10:02):
They love it.
Everybody's happy.
We interact.
We're all going on this journey together.
Everybody's making money together.
Nobody's getting ripped off.
It's all good, right?
And then something happens.
Investment money comes in.
Now we're at risk of that being disrupted
because people are beholden to investors.
(01:10:23):
And that's just how it is.
I mean, I'm not saying
it shouldn't be that way.
I'm just saying it
becomes more challenging.
So it's elusive because people can get
blinded by what they're doing
and lose sight of what
they were originally doing.
That's the best I can do with that.
No, thank you.
Thank you for the explanation.
(01:10:44):
I didn't mean to cut you off either.
You can keep it--
Nah, man.
You're totally good, man.
I think I'm really passionate about it.
And I think it's
because it's so hard to do.
I like impossible things.
I like ideals.
Yeah.
All right, good.
(01:11:05):
I'm sorry, man.
No, that's great.
So if I'm hearing you
correctly, there's an integrity--
there's an underlying integrity issue
here that makes this elusive, right?
It's kind of like in
pursuit of what is right.
And so that is what makes these win-win
situations difficult,
(01:11:25):
or makes them change, right?
So where do you see that in a business
model for somebody who's
running, growing, or scaling a business?
How does this impact them
and their decision making?
Wow, that's a deep question because it
(01:11:47):
can go in so many different ways.
So in my experience, which certainly is--
I don't think it's representative of
everyone's experience.
But I think some of those challenges I
was talking about where you become
beholden to investors or
the problem of the day,
and it takes you away
from your actual work,
or maybe your actual work is so smooth,
(01:12:09):
you kind of get into this autopilot
mode, and you're no longer striving to
grow and improve your organization
or your client's experiences, that's
where it can start to go off the rails.
So for a business that
knows what it is and why it is,
and they're moving forward that way,
what's just picking
(01:12:29):
kind of easy and common
one, growing pains?
Growing pains come with cash flow issues.
They come with training issues.
They come with other types of disruption,
such as the necessity
to slow down for a moment
to do the right things
for onboarding somebody,
putting in a new process,
(01:12:51):
opening up a new market,
or bringing in a new
service into the fold.
Maybe it's not for a new market.
Maybe it's for your existing market.
But now you're going to start doing an
extra service you haven't done before,
because that
opportunity has presented itself.
That's going to disrupt everything.
And that's where the danger lies in the
challenge of business growth.
(01:13:13):
And I think industry by
industry, it's different.
So I'm generalizing in a big way.
This is just a-- it's kind of a
fascinating topic, because we, you, me,
and just numerous other people can call
all these things out.
But then if we start to go
nuanced, this specific business,
(01:13:37):
or we go a little bit bigger, this
industry, it starts
to change a little bit.
And so none of it's cookie cutter.
Anything foundational that
has to adjust, shift, change
is going to disrupt your business.
And it's going to make those goals,
especially if one of them
is to stay a high integrity organization,
(01:13:58):
which a lot of people
like the idea of it, but they don't like
how it translates on the balance sheet.
Yeah.
That's what it is.
I mean, I don't even know
if that really makes sense.
You know what it does?
It does.
You've done multiple businesses.
It does.
It makes a lot of sense.
And I'm going to ask
another hard question here.
And then we can move
on to a different topic.
But this is pure gold to me.
(01:14:19):
I love this.
What is one question that a business
owner could ask themselves
to keep them on the right path and focus
on this win-win scenario in the event
or in the situation, which it gets muddy?
Am I, are we, adding value?
(01:14:42):
Yes.
There it is.
You just added value to this podcast.
I hope so.
That's great, man.
I appreciate that.
That's actionable advice.
That's what I love to be able to deliver
to the audience and the listeners,
because this is real world stuff.
You've been through it.
I've been through it.
They've been through it.
And everybody, as generalized as that
(01:15:05):
was, everybody knows what the hell
you're talking about, because
they bid in those situations.
Do we give the money back?
Do we say something?
Do we do this?
Do we do that?
You know what?
And in the moment,
it's not a clear answer.
But when you ask yourself that
question, it becomes clearer.
And that's why I asked you for that.
Yeah, well, I think what's interesting
(01:15:25):
about the way you've just explained that,
it could potentially-- I believe it does
apply to one's self, one's team,
and the clients, and the market.
Now, it's not like, oh, you say it, and
now you're doing it.
It takes work.
(01:15:46):
It takes mindfulness.
And a lot of people
aren't willing to do it.
I don't do all that.
That's a lot of stuff, right?
But if you talk about how we could ask a
question of ourselves, of our company,
if you will, something like,
am I-- are we adding value?
(01:16:07):
Well, am I, as a leader,
adding value to my team?
Am I giving them the
things that they need?
For example, I bring great people in, but
I don't give them the
tools or the resources
they need to accomplish
what I hired them for.
I have to make a regular practice of
spending time with my team,
(01:16:27):
going where they do their work.
Don't call them into your office.
Get out from behind your desk.
Understand what's really going on.
Now, some people out there are going to
be like, bullshit,
Greg, I got shit to do.
We're making a bunch of money.
This is a multimillion
dollar company and all that.
Good.
You're making great money.
But if you can find a way to make that
time and create some bandwidth for that
(01:16:47):
to figure out what your team needs in
order to be absolute crushers on behalf
of-- not toward, but on
behalf of your clients--
that's a winning combination.
That's a winning recipe.
But there's always going to
be things that threaten that.
I don't know if that makes any sense, but
man, I'll get up on the soapbox.
That makes perfect sense, man.
(01:17:08):
I love your position on the soapbox.
Don't you worry about it.
That's why I asked you
to be on the show, man.
No, that's great.
So let's shift gears a little bit.
Let's talk about CMMS, computerized
maintenance management systems.
Right?
Yeah.
All right, great.
Yeah, systems, software,
whatever you want to call it.
Software, systems, software.
OK, so give me the elevator pitch as to
(01:17:31):
what this actually is.
We've got the
maintenance management part of it.
But for anybody who doesn't understand
what CMMS actually is or does
or who it connects, can
you give us that pitch?
Absolutely.
So maintenance management software,
whether it's on a computer or not,
is as simple as work order management.
(01:17:53):
And then that blossoms out or connects to
all the different things
that happen on a day-to-day basis.
Each business is different.
Depends which
industry we're talking about.
But if you have work orders, work that
has to be done on a thing
to a place on behalf of customers, which
could be your internal end users
or your actual customers if
you're a service provider,
(01:18:13):
like you're going on
site to a restaurant,
and you're going to fix that stove, or
you're going to replace that hood system,
or you're going to check the HVAC, you
need a solution that
allows you to capture those events,
schedule those events,
so you essentially can
see, track, and manage
past, present, and future--
not crystal ball style,
but future what's coming down
(01:18:35):
as far as our schedules,
all those types of things.
That's what a computerized maintenance
management system does.
It takes your old school,
hey, Josh, can you go do this?
And then let me know
later how it turned out.
You take that.
Now you put it on paper.
Now you're putting it in some Access
database or an Excel spreadsheet.
Now you want to go next level, and you
(01:18:55):
get into an actual system that
can take in contextualize and house that
data as an accounting system
for your maintenance
processes, the things
that you do.
If it wasn't written
down, it didn't happen.
And then we can spin out
from there and just go bonkers.
Yeah, of course.
So are you able to tell us what CMMS
(01:19:17):
provider you were with,
or is that confidential information?
So I'm not sure--
I don't know that it's confidential.
So the company that I was part owner of--
I was not the founder.
I was a co-founder.
Big shout out to Sean.
Rest in peace, my brother.
So a longtime friend of mine, business
partner of mine as well,
(01:19:37):
but we were friends
first, business partners later.
We started this company
called Net Facilities.
And it's still out there, but I'm no
longer connected to it.
But we built that solution to match a--
you're cool if I spin
into the whole story?
Go for it.
Do it.
Yeah, so we built the solution based on
(01:19:58):
all the different processes
that we learned and developed when we had
a building maintenance company.
Because we were working with so many
different types of clients.
And in that industry,
which is very saturated,
the only way to
differentiate is to be better.
So we went into that
business saying, well, we're just
going to do what we say we're going to
do, which everybody
says they're going to do,
(01:20:19):
but nobody does.
So that was your way of being better?
That was our way of being better.
And then we started to systematize that,
move away from paper processes.
We got a nice system in place that we
were using to manage
bidding, production
rates, all those things that
matter when you're
providing services of any kind.
You have a production rate of some kind,
unless it's some product where you got
(01:20:40):
cost plus pricing and you're doing that.
That's different, right?
But we took all that, and
we packaged it into a system.
Because the systems that were out there
didn't do what we did from an account
management perspective.
So there's the work you do in building
maintenance, in facilities maintenance,
in facilities management, in property
management, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, just fill in the blanks, right,
(01:21:02):
that has a workflow, but it's connected
to some kind of an impact.
So at the center of what we did, aside
from the good work, was the incredible
follow-up, the incredible
level of accountability.
So we built a system that did that,
predicated on based on work order
management for job sites,
(01:21:23):
property sites, locations.
It could be one
location or many locations.
And then we had
everything in there as far as
who can interact, who can communicate,
who can provide details, who can benefit
from seeing the audit trails relative to
who requested this, who requested that.
(01:21:44):
And very quickly we put assets in,
so there was
comprehensive equipment management.
We had other factors, I won't get into
all the different features and functions
because generally
speaking, in the world of CMMS,
you got work order
management, asset and equipment
and all the things
that go along with that.
Pack in whatever you
want, leave out the crap
that you don't need, whatever, right?
(01:22:06):
So we grew that over
about a 15 year period
and then we were sold,
we were acquired in 2018
and good exit, it was successful.
Who were you acquired by?
If we checked the wire,
that would be out there,
public sphere, so that
would have been AMT Direct
(01:22:28):
was a company that
acquired Net Facilities
and then it's their
turn to pick up the ball
and run with it and I
went along for the ride
for a couple of years
and that's why I can't
tell you much about it at this point.
I don't see much about
it, hear much about it,
but I will tell you
this, I do occasionally
(01:22:49):
hear from old clients, I do stay in touch
with a few people and it
was a really important part
of the journey of life for me.
I was very passionate about
it, I was very intentional
about it, I loved pretty
much everything about it.
I didn't care when I
had to work, none of that,
(01:23:10):
it was just go, go, go, go, go.
It's a pretty cool story,
the way it all came to be
and the reason I always
say shout out to Sean,
rest in peace, Sean, is
because man, he was a workhorse
and he's a classic entrepreneurial story.
Not that I'm not, but I
see some differences there,
(01:23:31):
but man, I learned a
lot, I got to help a lot
of incredible people, I got
to learn an immense amount
about industries that
I thought I knew about,
but then I got to really learn about them
and all of that shaped
kind of where I'm at today.
It's a major, major, major,
really long chapter in my life
(01:23:53):
and I'm super passionate about it.
I don't really have any
regret, although I didn't want
to sell it.
(laughing)
That's a great story,
man, and you know what,
it's that journey and those
rides that do, they shape us.
So it sold in 2018, you
spent how many years still
(01:24:14):
on board, two, three?
Two, it was about,
yeah, as a matter of fact,
it was damn close to exactly two years.
It was like a couple days
before the two year anniversary
of the sale, but I did my, I
call it my corporate washout.
There you go, there
you go, all right, cool.
So then 2020-ish is when you stepped away
(01:24:35):
and then what, so what
have you been doing since?
What have you been pouring yourself into
for the last five years?
So first thing that
happened was I went and dealt
with some medical stuff.
I had a major surgery I had to do,
so I went and did that
and then started healing up
(01:24:56):
from that thing and I was
starting to talk to people
about things I could do,
doing a little bit of consulting,
looking at some of
the companies out there,
oh, could I go here, could I go there?
And I was like, I don't
know if I really wanted, right?
So then while I was doing all that,
I started working on another
technology venture with Sean,
(01:25:18):
but he wasn't directly
involved and we put a lot
of work into that, but it didn't launch.
Right now it's sitting on a shelf.
And if people look at my profile,
they can figure out
what that technology is.
It is just sitting right over there.
I'm not actually looking
at it, but pretend I am.
And it's like, I look at it
and I go, one of these days,
(01:25:39):
one of these days you're coming back.
Because when Sean passed
on, we stopped all operations
and we were about to go to
market, we were way past MVP.
So what's interesting about
that is while we were working
on that and I was learning
all, it's a project management,
project execution solution.
(01:25:59):
Very, very well built,
very clean, all this stuff.
I had to go and actually immerse myself
and learn a lot about
enough about project management
and project execution to be
able to kind of walk the walk
and talk the talk, but I
never want to go too far
to be a pretend expert.
I want to lean on the real experts.
And I don't like ever being in a position
(01:26:22):
to misguide someone.
So we were right there.
Prior to us shutting that
down and kind of putting it
on the shelf for a while, I
launched CMMS Radio as a podcast
because my whole life had been told, hey,
you should be doing
something with your voice.
(01:26:43):
You should be on the radio, whatever.
So one day I was like, you know what?
I'm just going to create something.
I'm going to put a monologue out there.
And I went and did it like December--
I think it was December 25 or 26, 2021.
I'd have to go back and look, but that's
approximately when I did it.
And I put that monologue out.
(01:27:04):
And I was like, well,
now you got to keep going.
So I did another one.
And then I did another one.
And then I did another one.
I think I did about seven
or eight monologue episodes,
while at the same time, my days are
filled with doing some consulting,
working on other things.
(01:27:24):
And before that eighth episode, I started
getting people contacting me.
Hey, love the
content, like the messaging.
I'm interested in that stuff too.
Do you happen to be-- and they'd ask me,
am I from this industry?
Do I understand these best practices?
And I was like, well, no.
(01:27:45):
And they said, well, it
sure sounds like you do.
Could I come on your show?
And I said, well, I
haven't done that before.
I was always going to just do monologue,
like some kind of radio guy that
just hits the mic every night and records
something cool, easy breezy,
running gun.
And I said, all right, let's do it.
And ever since then, I've only done guest
(01:28:06):
episodes, video episodes.
Rarely do I do a monologue anymore.
And that's how CMMS radio started picking
up audience and getting me
connected to all these
amazing industry pros.
I mean, I have got literally a stable--
and I mean that in the best possible
way-- a stable of heavy hitter real deal
(01:28:29):
pros in the industry, most especially in
maintenance and reliability,
which was really, for me, eye opening.
Because I had no idea I was going to land
with that community.
I thought I was going to land with a
completely different industry series
of kind of like facilities managers only
(01:28:50):
in an editable landing,
right smack dab in the middle of that.
And now, if you look at my episodes, you
look at some of the experts,
some of the people that are dear friends
of mine now in the industry that
are just amazing, real, high integrity.
And you mind if I shout
out a few names right quick?
Go for it, man.
Shout it out.
Brian Bieski, he's a CMRP.
(01:29:13):
That's my dog, man.
He was the very first one
that reached out and said, hey,
would you have somebody on as a guest?
Because I like the shit you're saying,
man, and we got to talk about this.
So he gets credit for that because that's
when I started doing the video episodes.
I got friends like George Williams, Joe
Anderson over at Reliability X,
Corey Dickens.
He's a CMRP.
The Trenton Chunken, I
(01:29:34):
give a shout out to him.
All these people.
I could go probably--
I could probably go 50 deep, but the core
stable of just monsters,
it's probably a good 10, maybe 15 people
that are complete beasts.
Andy Gager with AMG International.
I'm buddies with Eric
Hupier over in Australia.
(01:29:56):
These are monsters that come through.
They deliver on what they say.
They know what they're doing.
They are real pros.
They have been in the trenches.
I'm talking about bona fide maintenance
and reliability and asset management
experts, monsters.
Love those people.
And everybody else that
follows, chimes in, contributes.
(01:30:19):
I get to learn.
I get to showcase what
you can teach people.
And that's my job.
That's my job.
I'm not supposed to be the expert.
I'm supposed to be the
expert at facilitating.
I like that.
That's a really good
lead-in to my next question.
So I want to get a little
more into the CMMS stuff.
(01:30:39):
But before that, I'm
listening to your story.
I'm listening to you speak.
Obviously, we've known
each other for a while now.
And I've gotten to know your personality,
which resonates heavily with me.
I'm going to love you to death, man.
Some of the conversations
that we've had, although brief,
have been impactful and
really, really awesome stuff.
(01:31:01):
So my next question for you is, Greg,
what is your ultimate superpower?
Not necessarily your
expertise, but your superpower.
That thing that maybe you're not an
expert at, but people are always like,
Greg, you got it.
You got this.
What is that?
I want to know.
(01:31:23):
Interesting question, because
I have to think really hard.
I have a very difficult time objectifying
myself, figuring out
what I could say
about myself that's true.
That's why I asked the question.
I think I would probably go with my
connecting and kind of--
(01:31:47):
I like to sit in the
middle and make things happen.
But I also like to wrestle with things
and try to put stuff together in my mind.
I don't know if that's a
superpower-type deal, though.
I think it is.
I think they're two
separate things, right?
I've known people who have had
superpowers of connecting others,
networkers, people that say, hey, I know
somebody who could help you
(01:32:08):
in the effort of service.
And that is something that I've noticed
from you, because you do have this show.
You just shouted out three names, and
you've got 10 more in your back pocket
there.
You literally just 30 seconds ago took
advantage of that ability on this show.
(01:32:28):
So that's number one.
I think that's really great.
And the second thing, that just comes
through in your journey, right?
Who else would want to build what you
built if they couldn't grapple
with that in their mind?
So that checks out, man.
(01:32:50):
Well, thanks.
I think I almost like not knowing what it
is, because if I do,
then I want to try to
do something with it.
But I do tend to think it's the way I
interact, the way I talk,
the way I'm not quite super, super, super
polished professional,
not quite completely out of control,
(01:33:13):
something like that.
I mean, that's probably--
maybe, I don't know.
I have a real tough time taking the
compliments and the feedback.
I still remember--
I don't know if I
ever told you this story.
I still remember the very first time
somebody came up to me at an event
when I decided, OK, I'm
going to go to an event.
This great group
(01:33:33):
invited me to their event.
They're called Reliable
Plants, coming up in June.
And they invited me
to their Orlando show.
And one of my heavy hitter buddies now,
really good friend, man,
and such high integrity.
His name's Matt Knuth.
And he walked up to me
to introduce himself.
And right there, I was shocked.
(01:33:55):
He called me by name.
He came up to me.
Then I asked him.
I'm like, wow, man.
This is-- I mean, I
don't know what to say.
But dude, I just got to ask
you, why do you like the show?
I mean, why do you even like it?
He said, dude, you're
not a fucking talking head.
And that has been consistent amongst the
(01:34:19):
people that kind of follow
and participate in all that.
I always remember that.
Yeah, I don't know
about that superpower thing.
I'm going to have to ask all my friends,
what the hell is my superpower?
No, that's really great.
So I want to get in a little bit to the
CMMS side of things,
just for an understanding perspective.
(01:34:41):
Obviously, it's something
that I use in my business.
And I don't want to
say it's forced upon me.
Now it's mutual.
When it first came down the pipeline, I
was like, what the hell is this?
We've had that conversation.
And I think that everybody who services
facilities in that aspect,
(01:35:01):
when these CMMS
providers started to come up,
they probably all had the same questions
and fears and anxieties.
So I'm curious, from your
perspective, what I want to do
is I want to equalize the
playing field a little bit.
And I want to try to drive understanding.
And what I mean by that is that it's real
(01:35:22):
easy for us as service providers
and skilled trades professionals and
repair people to say,
man, it makes my job so much harder.
It makes it so much more difficult
because now I've got
to do everything twice.
And maybe my system
doesn't link up to it.
And it causes more admin headaches
because I have to do all this entering.
(01:35:43):
And then it needs to be reviewed by
somebody because that's their process.
And I have no control over that.
Tell me some of the stuff.
Tell me some of the struggles that maybe
my customer might have that
put them in a position to
want to use a CMMS provider.
The number one thing is lack of
(01:36:07):
documentation and opportunity
to communicate in real time.
Now, I have to add something to that.
Real time communication is a challenge
because when you call someone,
when you text someone,
when you send them an email,
or you use your CMMS
and put in a work order,
that doesn't mean you're going to get
lickety split instant communication.
(01:36:28):
However, if you're
having a lot of gaps with--
as one of your customers
using CMMS with the communication
and what did I ask WCE for yesterday or
whomever, that serves a purpose.
Now, that's really basic.
But the important thing about leveraging
(01:36:50):
a CMMS is that I mentioned
C track and manage the things, what's
being done, who requested it,
who worked on it, who didn't work on it,
how long is it outstanding?
All those things matter.
You cannot keep those in your brain.
They are worthless if they're sitting in
your email because about six months
or a year go by and
(01:37:10):
then go try to find it.
Well, you would have to remember
something about it that's so distinct
that you could pull that shit up and that
ain't going to happen.
Plus, I will tell you,
email is a brilliant way
to self-train on how
to use a snooze button.
So the CMMS for your
customers is going to give them a way
to communicate, document, send in a
(01:37:31):
request that thereby empowers
their vendor, their service provider,
whatever it might be,
to take that and go do the work and then
document what was done.
They might tell you what
it costs, what it cost them,
how much they're going to bill you, and
then we go a step further
and we get into equipment.
(01:37:52):
You mentioned restaurants, right?
Big mainstay thing
for a lot of businesses.
Well, restaurants have
critical pieces of equipment
for both the facilities, right?
HVAC systems, maybe boilers,
a few other things like that,
and for what they actually do.
(01:38:12):
Clients come to get food.
You've got to have good equipment to not
only produce that food,
but produce it consistently
at the right temperatures.
So a CMMS is going to
help those types of clients
to empower their
vendors to be better vendors,
but for them also to
see, "What do I have?
"When did I buy it?
What's been done to it?
(01:38:32):
"How often did it break? When should
something be done next?"
And the example I'm going to use in the
restaurant industry specifically
is either hood systems or grease traps.
The reason I'm bringing up those two
things is those cost money,
those are a part of day-to-day operations
in those environments, absolutely,
(01:38:54):
but they are also a major
risk point in the business.
Grease traps that are not
taken care of create a hazard.
Hood systems that are not taken care of
properly and maintained
create a hazard, a very dangerous hazard.
So we can start to do this
(01:39:15):
with all the different things,
and some people might say, "Greg, you're
getting too detailed."
You don't have to go that detailed.
Hit the big rocks, right?
So hopefully that helps.
I mean, I... It does.
What happens is when
somebody asks me a CMMS question,
and I don't care which product.
I don't care what CMMS you use, right?
My mind is going on a journey as if I
(01:39:36):
pulled my car into the parking lot,
got out of my car, walked into the place,
whether it's a restaurant or a school or
a hospital, I don't care.
And I'm actually seeing
in my mind all the things
if I were going to walk that facility and
figure out a production rate
on how to take care of it, maintain it,
keep the equipment running
and all that kind of stuff,
and then I'm at the same
time seeing it inside the CMMS.
(01:39:58):
That's an actual
thing that happens for me.
I am, I'm sure.
Yeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense.
That's... I appreciate that answer.
I think that's
helpful to gain perspective,
you know, because it's
so easy to lose it, right?
There's a... I think
there's an underlying...
I'll call it a fear that CMMS platforms
(01:40:22):
can take the relationship factor away
from the interaction.
Make it transactional,
because, you know, at that point,
you're behind a
screen, behind a keyboard,
you can communicate without this.
Ah. What would you say to that?
So, some people out
(01:40:45):
there are going to hate this,
but I seriously mean
this, all right? Yeah.
You can have your CMMS, you can do
transactional nature things
with your clientele,
internal external clients,
whatever you want to call them, work
orders, all this cool stuff,
reports, communicating KPIs, dashboards,
all that nice stuff,
invoices, blah, blah, blah.
(01:41:05):
You still...
You still should, must, and
need to talk to your clients.
Now, it doesn't have to be every day,
but the idea and the
concept that no news is good news
is total bullshit. No news is a risk.
(01:41:26):
And when you call your
client to check on something
and do that step of verification,
you bring back
immediately the human element,
you move immediately away from the
transactional nature
of everything that we already do.
You've hired me for a
service, I've done the service,
where's my money, have a nice day, right?
(01:41:47):
But you've got to keep that in there,
because if you're going to try to
automate that process
of follow-up and account management,
client relationship management, that shit
is not going to work.
It's not going to work at some point.
That is not going to work.
We have to maintain that,
(01:42:08):
at least that connection.
I would add to that now, this
is not easy for all businesses.
Only certain
businesses really can do this.
But the occasional on-site has a value
that's actually intangible in many ways.
When you have a client and
you're in a position, right?
It depends.
(01:42:29):
If you're selling some $22 thing online,
you're not going to go
to your client's house
and all that shit, right?
But I'm talking about
your actual clients.
If you are going to
make an occasional visit,
not just that phone call, but, hey,
we do happen to be in the area this week,
can we come by just to say
hello and shake your hand?
Everything changes, because
(01:42:51):
you get to see for yourself.
You get to look somebody in the eyes.
And I know, look, I've worked remote.
I can't even tell you
how many years of my life.
And when I want to interact with a
client, it's like this,
right?
I'm not going on-site
to every different place.
But if you're in that kind of a business,
you should be doing that.
(01:43:11):
If you can't do that, or
if it's cost prohibitive,
you still got to do the
phone calls and all that.
I'm not talking about cold calls.
I'm talking about
checking in with your client.
And when you do that, you leave a message
for Mr. and Mrs. Jones.
If you're in the
customer success department
or the account management department,
you're not done yet.
So that's another thing.
(01:43:32):
This shit gets me in
trouble all the time.
I'll tell leaders, don't let people just
check the boxes off.
Oh, well, they called
and they left a message.
Keep trying.
You don't have to do it 24-7.
But for each one of your clients,
they represent something that's part
of the lifeblood of your company.
What you're doing for them probably
represents some part of the
lifeblood for their company.
(01:43:54):
That kind of stuff matters.
If you have pure
transactional opportunity
and it can live and
thrive that way, that's fine.
But in service
businesses, that's not a thing.
I appreciate that candid response
as if you'd give me anything else.
You said you tell leaders this.
(01:44:17):
Is that part of your consulting,
coaching, just regular, nice?
I would say regular instigating.
Regular instigating.
So I don't consult
with leaders necessarily.
Okay.
Like I just say this stuff
because it needs to be said.
Got it.
(01:44:37):
Like I step up so that I
can get fired or whatever.
Walked out of the building.
That's what I'm talking about.
I love it.
Hell yeah.
And I think, well, I mean, I just,
I can't get away from it.
I have tried to play the
game and do the soft skills
and all that and it's really hard for me.
It's really hard for me.
I don't, maybe that's a flaw.
Let's just say that's a flaw,
(01:44:58):
but it can also be a
good thing in certain ways.
So I don't like
playing the game very much
because if I have to play it that much,
that means there's
something wrong where I am.
Sure.
If that makes any sense.
So when I do consulting,
it's consulting around computerized
(01:45:19):
maintenance management,
software, facilities
management challenges,
maintenance management challenges.
Logistics.
And one thing that,
well, maybe with the logistics,
but maybe with how
they're structuring workflows,
what might be missing from
their process or processes.
And I just wanna give
some good general guidance
and help them solve a problem,
(01:45:41):
maybe find a problem,
or maybe we can find out
you don't really have much of a problem.
And the other thing is,
remember I mentioned
the people that I have
that I can reach out to
and pull into these things.
As soon as it gets out of
my realm where I'm like,
I need to try to figure this out,
that's when I'm
typically phoning a friend.
And then if I can figure out
that they can actually solve the problem,
(01:46:02):
then I'll put those people together.
So I don't do like leadership
training or stuff like that,
because I think there's people that are
really good at that.
And I don't think that's my thing.
I think my thing is getting into the mix,
seeing if I can hear something
or get a clue about something,
that I know enough
about that we could solve it
(01:46:23):
or find a good solution.
And that thing about instigating,
I love a good rant.
I love a little bit of--
I know this about you.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think most of the time,
it falls on deaf ears.
So the other stuff I do is occasionally
a little bit of voice
work or something like that,
but I'm not out on any platforms
(01:46:44):
doing all that kind of crying.
I just do like little projects,
maybe some videos and stuff like that.
But I'm pretty knee deep in CMS radio,
getting to a few conferences,
doing some good promotion for people
and getting great stories
that are real as real can be.
Love that.
(01:47:05):
Greg, how big did net
facilities get before it was sold?
That one, I don't think I'm
allowed to talk about, but--
Like, I mean, just give me
something like an employee count
or something that gives us an idea
of the size business you were.
Okay, all right.
So hundreds upon hundreds of clients,
(01:47:29):
thousands upon thousands of locations,
total number of users in my time,
40, 50, 50,000.
Wow, okay.
All users, right, counting them all.
And then from an employee perspective,
(01:47:50):
this is the most interesting
thing about what we did for me.
We built a very high
retention CMMS company.
We were almost always in the high 90s
as far as percent of retention.
100 is really hard to do,
really, really hard to do,
but we were, it was important to us
(01:48:13):
that we could stay in the
mid to high 90s on retention.
But here's the kicker,
this is what I was
always so fascinated by.
We did all this with what I think is an
incredibly small team
because of the way we
structured everything
and the way we allowed
people to do their job.
So in the front office
(01:48:34):
for us prior to being sold,
we were, I'm positive we
were never more than 12,
and usually around 10 in the front office
because we would push resources
to what we call back office operations
for ongoing, like
(01:48:55):
development programs and stuff.
When people hear I was
in CMMS and all this,
they're like, "Oh, do you
know how to build this, that,
and the other, and do you
know about Ajax and Python
and all that?"
I'm like, "No, man, I'm
a button clicker, dude."
There's people that know that stuff
a million times better than I ever could.
So don't even go there with me.
But what we focused on, and
the reason this was possible,
(01:49:16):
was we were very focused on how,
a lot of people call it customer success,
we didn't use that.
We didn't call it, we had a support
training department,
one and the same.
Deployments and implementation, same.
We were more so
plugged in with our clients
than the way it happens when you have
(01:49:38):
multiple departments
and turnover and all that.
We didn't want turnover.
We wanted people that would
stick for a long, long time,
but not because they're stuck,
because they're thriving in their job
and they love working with our clients
and they love solving the problems
and they love doing all this stuff.
So I don't know if that tells you
anything about size,
because I don't think I'm allowed to,
(01:49:59):
I've never really checked this,
I don't wanna go pull up my
non-fiercierd so damn long ago,
but like revenue, what was sold before,
those two I know I'm
not allowed to talk about.
No, don't even sweat.
You gave me a good idea.
And that retention rate is wild.
So if you could roll that retention piece
(01:50:22):
into a short piece of
advice for somebody,
like the one thing or the three things
that they can focus on
from your perspective
to increase retention in their team,
what would that look like?
Man, remember I said earlier about,
is what I'm doing is what
we're doing, adding value.
(01:50:43):
What you do is you take that,
you couple it with the intentionality
and you have to actually
be relentless about it.
As an organization, it's
going to cost you money and time
to do that, but all
you're doing is caring,
actually caring.
(01:51:03):
And that's the thing
that can very quickly
and easily get eroded
when we're moving really fast
and we're growing exponentially.
It's all great, it's all exciting.
But when more and more of
what we do is happening,
we need more and more
resources to deliver
at that same level.
And that puts white glove
service and caring at risk,
(01:51:26):
naturally.
Like if you're suffering this,
if you're a company out
there and you're suffering this,
that is kind of how
it's supposed to happen.
And if you're growing
and stacking on clients
and bringing in
revenue and you still have
that high retention and you
can maintain that intentionality
about adding value and
actually caring about your clients,
(01:51:47):
you're doing great.
You're probably dodging
some bullets along the way
because there are actually a ton of them.
You see them far better after the fact.
When you look back, you
don't necessarily see them
while they're happening in real time.
I'm talking about
these bullets that come up.
So think about a software company.
There's so many things that can go wrong
(01:52:08):
any minute of every day.
System can go down, data integrity,
on and on and on, all of it, right?
So we're all out here, big
companies, small companies,
everybody in between,
basically dodging bullets.
And if somebody
thinks you're gonna create
this perfect system
that's just gonna be a set-it
and forget it,
organization that's gonna run itself,
(01:52:30):
get out of here, that's nonsense.
That's not a thing.
It's just not a thing.
You know what works like that?
If your CD player works and
you actually still use CDs
and you plug it into the CD
machine and it just plays,
that works like that.
But companies just
don't work that way, man.
The Gen Zs listening
are gonna be wondering
what the hell you're talking about.
(01:52:51):
Oh, that's a good point.
(laughing)
Joke, it just--
Set it and forget it is just not a thing.
Yeah, TPT it.
Well, they know what it is
because they use it against them.
(laughing)
Yeah, go listen to some of your CDs, man.
You probably still got a DVD player.
Oh, that's funny, man.
No, I appreciate that advice.
That's really good advice.
(01:53:13):
So I gotta ask, yo, go ahead, go.
I was gonna say, I know I
didn't really package it up
as a canned response, but
when I'm in these conversations
with you, Josh, I'm just like, man,
I like having
conversations that are like,
nobody's listening.
Yeah.
Just chopping it up, man.
And don't worry about that.
I mean, leave the packaging to me.
(01:53:34):
I'll package these clips as necessary.
You just be you, 100% authentically you,
which you do a great job of.
So what haven't I asked
that can impact our audience?
Do you think that they took away
what you wanted them to take away from
this conversation yet?
Well, I think they
might've gotten some of it,
(01:53:54):
but things I would add
to it is with anything
that you're dealing with,
especially if it's in the
maintenance management realm,
facilities management,
you're providing services,
you're receiving
services, you're using software,
maybe you're gonna
look at a CMMS or an EAM,
which is enterprise asset management
and all this different stuff.
(01:54:17):
Always know that it's about the basics,
the basic fundamentals.
And when it comes to the
resources you're going to leverage
for learning out there,
that's not gonna be a real easy thing.
I could tell you, hey,
listen to CMMS radio,
if you want the real deal and you wanna
see some heavy hitters
that are actually gonna help you, sure.
(01:54:38):
But that's not the point.
The point is whatever
you're doing in any business,
maybe even in life, I'm
not a life coach, man,
they would never certify me on that.
The thing you have to
focus on is these basics
because those are the things
that set the foundation of what you do.
You've heard this your whole life,
you've heard this in work
and in business and whatever,
(01:55:00):
but it's actually a thing.
So be careful of the shiny stuff,
the shiny new technology,
the buzzword stuff, your AI,
I much prefer actual intelligence
as opposed to artificial intelligence.
However, caveat on that, there's some
good stuff about it,
some of which is yet to be seen,
there's gonna be a
washout, but focus on your basics.
(01:55:23):
And always, when you're
working with a vendor of any kind,
buying a CMMS, getting services for your
restaurant equipment,
getting a plumber for your house,
whatever it might be,
put them to the test.
What I mean is ask them questions that
are important to you.
Make sure they understand
you, that's what matters.
(01:55:45):
It's not the other way around, ever.
And for this time, in this moment,
I'm gonna leave it at that, but yeah,
check out CMMS Radio too.
That's fantastic, man.
I truly appreciate that advice.
And I know that that's gonna go along
with my audience too, man.
I hope so.
(01:56:06):
I just wanna help one person at a time.
That's the reality.
Yeah, well, that's where you
and I are aligned, my friend.
One listener or a million, you know,
as long as somebody can get some value.
Add value, man.
That's the name of the game.
Add value and be real about it.
Absolutely.
Where can people find you?
(01:56:27):
On LinkedIn, you can find CMMS Radio,
follow that company page.
CMMS Radio is on Spotify and it ends up
getting out via RSS to
a bunch of other places.
There's a YouTube channel
you can check that out too.
You can find me on LinkedIn.
And there is cmmsradio.com,
but I'm really heavily
focused right now, just on LinkedIn.
(01:56:48):
Cool.
All right.
Well, Greg, it's always a pleasure, man.
I truly appreciate the conversation.
I appreciate the transparency.
And until next time.
Thanks, brother.
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