Episode Information
Episode Number: 54
Date: September 30, 2024
Duration: 32:21
Host: Justin Deese
Website: JustinDeese.com
Contact: Justin@JustinDeese.com
Guest: Chris Gist
Guest Company: Paradise Home Services
Guest Contact: Chris.Gist@ParadiseHomeServices.com
Guest Website: www.ParadiseHomeServices.com
Summary
In this episode, we dive deep into the essential elements of creating and maintaining a positive company culture. We discuss the importance of flexibility, celebrating team milestones, and setting core values that align with your company’s mission. From breaking bread with team members to supporting a healthy work-life balance, you’ll hear firsthand experiences and actionable tips on keeping the camaraderie and positive environment alive while achieving rapid growth.
Takeaways
Flexibility and Core Values: How creating a flexible work environment supported by strong core values can lead to a thriving company culture.
Celebration and Camaraderie: The impact of team gatherings and breaking bread on building bonds and enhancing team spirit.
Visual Reminders of Core Values: Using visual aids to consistently reinforce the company’s mission and values.
Empowering Team Members: Inspiring stories of team members who have grown within the company by embracing its culture.
Maintaining Work-Life Balance: The importance of supporting a healthy work-life balance for overall team satisfaction and retention.
Chapters
[00:01] – Introduction and Welcome
[00:35] – Discussing Company Culture
[02:06] – Core Values and Team Dynamics
[04:01] – The Importance of Flexibility
[10:07] – Outside-of-Work Activities and Celebrations
[13:53] – The Role of Brand in Culture
[18:29] – Work-Life Balance in a Growing Company
[21:36] – Empowering and Rewarding Team Members
[24:51] – Inspiring Team Member Story
[26:19] – Recreational Activities and Team Building
[27:13] – Closing Remarks and Key Learnings
Keywords
Plumbing, HVAC, Air Conditioning, Electrical, Contractor, Company Culture, Core Values, Flexibility, Team Building, Work-Life Balance, Leadership in HVAC, Scaling a Business, Positive Work Environment, Employee Engagement, Chris Gist, Paradise Home Services. Freedom Blueprint Podcast, Justin Deese, Kristen Deese, When Your Business Partner is Your Spouse,
Transcript
Justin Deese (00:01.585)
Welcome to freedom blueprint podcast. We are hanging out today with my, my homie, my buddy, my business partner. We got Chris Gist hanging out with us today and I asked him to come on and talk a little bit about culture. I know that that’s, that’s a buzzword that’s used a lot now, but I think there’s some, there’s some, some tips and tricks that you can do to kind of, improve that. So.
That’s why I ask us to come hang out. So thanks for coming and hanging out, dude.
Chris Gist (00:35.342)
Absolutely. What’s going on everybody?
Justin Deese (00:38.513)
If you can’t see Gist right now, he’s sporting the freedom blueprint podcast swag. Although I think the kids call it merch now, or is it backwards? I think they.
Chris Gist (00:50.486)
I’m not hip enough, I don’t know.
Justin Deese (00:53.105)
Yeah, I think they call it, I think they call it merch now. and as you can see, if you’re watching online, you can see that he is a chief’s fan, which is why I always call him my, my homie.
Chris Gist (01:05.902)
gonna have to repeat this year.
Justin Deese (01:06.485)
So, yeah, well, all right. So, so anyway, so I wanted to talk about culture and I think that, if, if you don’t know the journey of Gist or paradise home services, we, we did an episode. I just wanted the earlier episodes. I don’t even know what number off top of my head, but you can go and check it out and kind of see the vibe and see the growth that happened. But I mean, we, we grew and scaled a business.
pretty quickly in a, in a very small market. And we were able to do it and keep a good culture, which I think is, it’s kind of hard to do is it’s hard to grow in scale and keep everybody liking each other. And, and Gist is just so, is so good at that. And I just wanted to kind of dive in a little bit. So, culture. So when I say culture, what, what do you think of?
Chris Gist (01:51.15)
Yeah.
Mmm!
Chris Gist (02:06.062)
Really, it’s kind of everybody hears a really tight niche, like not the entire group, but a lot of us feel like family and we wanna play hard together, but we work hard together too, because we know that the reward is we get to play hard together if we work hard together. So I think in the beginning, we as owners knew what our plan was and we created our 13 core values and in the beginning, flexibility is the main one that we pushed on everybody and with our core leadership.
team, we made sure that they knew why they needed to be flexible because our plan was to blow up and every three to six months we’re going to change something because our team has doubled and we’ve got to change it now. So having everybody on board with that ahead of time and giving them a notice of what’s coming, I think helped a lot keep that culture. And we, for a service company, our turnover ratio is not that bad.
people don’t want to leave here and the people that do give it two weeks notice and come back. So our culture is pretty amazing here.
Justin Deese (03:12.977)
we’ve had, yeah, we’ve had a lot of that, like, and that’s always been our thing is, you know, if you leave on good terms, and I know some guys and some companies are like, you leave, you’re not coming back. You’re dead to me. we’ve, we’ve never really done that philosophy, so to speak, but, we’ve always said, Hey, you know, if you, if you leave and you do it the right way, it doesn’t mean there’s always going to be a position here for you, but, we, we do talk a lot about knowing what I know now, would we rehire that person? And so we,
We go through that exercise and if the answer is yes, then we will give the opportunity to bring the person back. And we’ve probably had six of them.
Chris Gist (03:51.246)
There’s been six in the last year and a half.
Justin Deese (03:55.665)
Yeah, you know, that have left for various reasons.
Chris Gist (04:01.07)
Sorry about that.
Justin Deese (04:01.937)
Nope, you’re good.
Chris Gist (04:04.526)
to turn that down. Yeah, so even some of them, we just hear it through the grapevine because they keep the relationships going with team members and we hear that they’re not happy. So we will have eight, 10 of us on the leadership team, just send them a mass text and be like, hey, I heard you’re starting back at Paradise next week. And then they do.
Justin Deese (04:29.169)
We’ve done that twice this year and, well in the last 12 months, we’ve done that, two different times for really key players that, that’s, that’s worked out well. So that’s, that’s always exciting. So what are some things like, what do you think attributed to keeping a good culture amongst crazy growth?
Chris Gist (04:52.878)
So as we refer to it in 1 .0, the first service company that, well, I was a part of with you is we were together. You owned it. I was some kind of manager there. Yeah, it was very much a traditional blue pants, have to tuck your shirt in, wear a belt. And there just wasn’t a lot of reason to.
Justin Deese (05:08.241)
Tune in on the day of the week.
Chris Gist (05:21.582)
celebrate having fun when you come to work. So then when we started this one, we were like, no, you guys can wear shorts. You have to have the proper PPE in your vehicle in case you need it. You should have pants in case you got to get in an attic or a ditch or whatever. But we have a Hawaiian shirt so they don’t have to tuck in because who tucks in a wine shirt? It just created this fun atmosphere just showing up to work before your day even starts. So I think that had a lot of setting the tone.
Justin Deese (05:38.673)
Jimmy Buffett certainly doesn’t.
Chris Gist (05:49.55)
and then the team members themselves are what help keep that going.
Justin Deese (05:54.769)
Yeah, I would say, and obviously he said 1 .0, we do refer to our phases and our stages as 1 .0, 2 .0. But yeah, 1 .0, I would say the words that I would use to describe the business was rigid. And I think that’s a big reason why flexibility was important to us in 2 .0 was because we knew that we wanted flexibility.
Chris Gist (06:10.318)
Yeah.
Justin Deese (06:22.865)
for the culture, but we also knew we were going to be growing a lot. So it, it had a little bit of two meanings.
Chris Gist (06:29.454)
you can have structure with the laid back attitude.
Justin Deese (06:33.649)
And I think we have that. Like, I think, I mean, we, you know, there’s, there’s things that we have that are non -negotiables. And, and I think one of the things for us is it, it’s not a secret, but if there’s a non -negotiable, everybody knows it. it’s not to say that we, we won’t, we’re not flexible in certain things, but then there’s certain things that are non -negotiable that we’re not flexible on. And I think the whole team knows that. And I think that helps, I think because they know the boundary.
You know, it’s kind of like, I’m going to say this and this is probably going to come off wrong, but that’s fine. But you think about kids, right? When they’re, when they’re small kids, you have to give them a line in the sand. and if you don’t, or if they like tip over, like, there’s the line, there’s the line. You’re like, stop doing that. There has to be some consequence to it. So, I think there is some of that.
Chris Gist (07:26.318)
They keep moving the line if they can.
Justin Deese (07:29.841)
Right, right, exactly. Well, I mean, just another couple feedback, another couple feedback.
Chris Gist (07:34.862)
A lot of times we let people know our non -negotiables in the interview process. So if it’s something that you aren’t interested in, then maybe it’s not a good fit.
Justin Deese (07:38.321)
Mm -hmm.
Justin Deese (07:44.401)
I mean, I think about, you know, so to kind of give a visual for anybody who’s never been to our, to our facility is in our training room, almost like a locker room, we have this shelf. I guess I’m going to call a shelf. It hangs down. I’m sure there’s a construction term for it and I probably should know it, but I don’t. So whatever it’s a shelf that hangs down. That’s drywall and we have all the core values inside of there. And, yeah, I mean, when we’re interviewing, that’s a big part of what we’re talking about is.
You know, here’s the core values and, anything in there that, that you don’t fit or won’t fit, which I don’t, have we ever had anybody look at them and go, Hmm, honesty, that’s just not me. I’m, I’m not an honest person, but, but what it does do for us is it allows us to set the stage so that when something comes up, right. So it doesn’t take long for it to, to shine. If you follow core values or not.
Chris Gist (08:26.126)
Yeah, I’m not, can’t be here.
Justin Deese (08:41.137)
Right? Like you’re either an honest person or you’re not, that doesn’t take long to smoke out. It certainly gives us a good talking point to go back to someone and go, remember that whole honest conversation about, you know, core values. What you just did does not represent that. So fix it, or we invite you to go.
Chris Gist (09:00.91)
I think that the fact that we hold our vendors and our customers to the same core values helps prove to the team how important it is to us. And a lot of times when we’re doing it with vendors and customers, it’s almost in a defense to our team members. So if they bring something up and they’re not happy about it and it doesn’t meet our core values, then we try to address it the same way we would with the team member. Maybe this vendor is just not a good fit for us. Maybe this customer is not a good fit for us.
Justin Deese (09:28.177)
That’s a really good point. I’ve never thought about it from that angle.
Chris Gist (09:30.414)
So they.
But I picture it as, there was so many conversations in the 80s about, you know, do as I say, not as I do. So your mom’s smoking a cigarette in the car with the windows up. And then when you start smoking cigarettes at 16, you’re the worst kid in the world. Well, I’m smoking a cigarette in the back seat. You know what I mean? My mom didn’t do that, for example, but it’s kind of the same thing. I did, but my mom didn’t.
Justin Deese (09:53.745)
Yes, did you start smoking at 16?
Chris Gist (09:59.406)
So I think them seeing us support the core values helps them live up to the core values.
Justin Deese (10:07.537)
Yeah, it’s, you know, core values are one of those things that I don’t think most people, understand the importance of them. Like even from a household, like from a family, like we talk about core values as a family. and I think that’s something obviously public education. I won’t go down that rabbit hole, but there’s so many things that really should be, that should be taught to people and families and, you know, core values is, is kind of a, kind of a biggie. So.
what are some examples of things that you feel like we did in order to, to have a good culture?
Chris Gist (10:47.31)
so as our team grew, we didn’t have room in the building to have a Christmas party that included spouses and kids. So we just did a small one in December for the team members. And then we started doing a Christmas in June. so, which actually we just announced this one at the end of the month. But so obviously we live in an awesome beach community and we rent a pavilion on, on the beach.
on the sound side where it’s a little calmer for the kids. And we have a cookout and a big party. All the families come, all the kids, a lot of people just bring random friends. We don’t care as long as you give us a head count, we’re gonna cook for everybody. So we do a lot of things like that. We’ve done it where we’ve rented bounce houses and had big games for the kids to play on. I think that camaraderie outside of the confines of doing business is something that helps really build the culture.
getting to hang out with people on a personal level.
Justin Deese (11:49.745)
I can remember one of them, I can remember one of them that we had, probably one of the first ones. And, there was a team member and he hadn’t, he hadn’t been with the company very long, but he came up to me, you know, normally I’m in a button up shirt. Like I, I wear button up shirts and, he came up and I had probably a t -shirt backwards hat, you know, my, my beach attire. That’s, that’s how I roll. And he said, I didn’t even recognize you. And I certainly didn’t know that you owned anything besides a button up shirt.
But, but so anyway, so, so the, this team and we’re not like, we ended up talking for 20 minutes, about nothing important whatsoever, but just, I mean, important from a, world standpoint, but important to just get to know one another. And I think that’s what happens is you create an environment for people to get to know. Like we’re normal people, they’re normal people. We want to know their spouses. We want know kid, you know, that kind of, that kind of deal.
Chris Gist (12:47.246)
Yeah, I can vouch that Deese knows how to cut loose sometimes. It’s the same for me too. Like, you know, some of these, as we’ve gotten larger, I’m not as close to all of the team members as I once was. I still try to be, but it’s just a struggle some days. But some of these guys, you know, they’ve been here three, four months before we do a group outing outside of work. And when I see them in street clothes, I’m like, huh, it’s not what I imagined. Just used to seeing you in uniform.
Justin Deese (12:50.961)
I can do it. I can throw the hat on backers.
Chris Gist (13:17.678)
So it’s nice to connect on that level.
Justin Deese (13:23.121)
So I think another thing, so, so I just met with, with, somebody last week, last week, and they were checking out our Facebook page and the guy’s comment to me was, you guys are basically a restaurant. You cook all the time. And, and, you know, I thought it was funny. And what’s funny is, is you and I, if you asked you and I, we would say we don’t cook enough. like we’re bored. We, we would be borderline a restaurant if, if we could.
Chris Gist (13:48.974)
Right?
Justin Deese (13:53.393)
But, I think there’s just something really impactful and powerful, with breaking bread with team members and we do monthly meetings and, you know, everybody, one of the locations. So our main location, everybody comes in and we cook and there’s just something that happens with the cooking. And we went, we went through a period of time where we were like grabbing stuff from McDonald’s. Right. We were so busy being busy.
that we kind of dropped the ball a little bit on the importance of what that, what that was. And I swear you could almost feel the culture shift a little bit. And you and I were talking about it one day and we’re like, we’re duffing this thing, man. Like we need to get this back on track. And, and now that we do, it’s almost like you can see the culture elevate a little bit because now there’s that time of standing by the grill. Plus they see you sweating over that grill. So.
Gist is our, our master chef of the really Gist and Danny. So if it’s the smoker, it’s going to be Danny. And if it’s the grill, it’s going to be Gist. So we have a little bit of a house divided. but I think that, you know, they see, you know, they see us running around and trying to take care of them and serve them and make sure they have coffee and orange juice and, food. And I think that gives, a little bit of a human element to that.
Chris Gist (15:17.39)
Yeah, we during that time of us dropping the ball, we part of it was yes, we were so busy, but being so busy, the team grew so large that it’s just like, my God, I don’t I don’t want to cook for 35 people. We ended up getting a second griddle because of it. And that made it easier now when, you know, the guys from Panama or the team from Panama does come up here, we’re pushing 45 employees. I think now we can fire up a second griddle. We did we did get a.
pizza oven with some rewards points about nine months ago that is still in the box. So we need to use that. I was thinking breakfast pizza would be good.
Justin Deese (15:58.257)
Dan, I know Danny talked about it with the team. He was like, Hey, if you guys get, there was something he said, if you guys do something as a reward, we’ll, we’ll do breakfast pizza. I heard him say that. So I don’t know what the goal was that they needed to get done, but we need to make sure it gets done.
Chris Gist (16:12.27)
I will follow up on that.
Justin Deese (16:17.649)
okay. So we’ve, we’ve got a little bit of breaking bread. we’ve got a little bit of, gatherings. What are some other things that you can think of that are good for culture?
Chris Gist (16:33.134)
Our brand is amazing. So you can’t miss who we are. And if our van doesn’t say we want to have fun, then I don’t know. I’ve got a new neighbor that owns his own plumbing company. And we just met for the first time yesterday. And just talking about it, I kind of let him know what I do and where I’m from. And he’s like, my God, I’ve seen those vans everywhere. And he didn’t even, he lived an hour from our shop before he moved to my neighborhood yesterday. So.
It was cool to hear that. I mean, it’s just a big tiki hut and wood paneling. We’ve got a turtle and palm trees all over it. So it just screams good time to me. It screams where we live.
Justin Deese (17:16.785)
And I, and I think that it, it really shows, our culture. Like I think we did a good job on brand culture match. Okay. This is who we are. We’re going to have a good time. We’re going to get, we’re going to get stuff done. We know we have a job to do, but business is supposed to be fun. And I, and I feel like for the most part, we forget that, especially when you’re.
In it, doing it, doing it, doing it. And you’re in growth mode and you’re all the things, man. It’s easy to get bogged down and forget that like, shit, we started doing this because we enjoy doing it. And, I know that you and I have, there’s been more times than I care to count that we’re kind of like scratching our head. Like, what the hell are we doing? Like, is this, was this what we signed up for? And then normally, normally as we kind of go through the problem solving process, we usually uncovered that there’s something from, you know, a leadership, like it’s normal.
Chris Gist (18:06.606)
Right?
Justin Deese (18:14.833)
things to go top down, right? So normally it’s like a, crap, there’s something we’re not doing or something we could do or support or whatever, in order to bring the brand and the culture, back up, back up to where we want it.
Chris Gist (18:29.134)
Yeah, I mean, there’s been plenty of weeks that you and I have put in 70, 80 plus hours. Nobody enjoys that. And if we don’t enjoy it and it’s ours and we’re building it, you know that the techs don’t want to do it. So another thing that we do for our culture is we’re not a 24 -7 company. I’m not going to answer the phone at midnight. I don’t expect you to run a call at midnight. It’s just that simple. So some things can wait and you can’t like…
Justin Deese (18:44.529)
Fair statement.
Chris Gist (18:58.478)
greed control everything. Obviously we want to make money and be profitable, but there has to be a line so that everybody has their own personal time for the families and enjoy where we live, right? That’s why I moved here. I like where we live. I want to go have my feet in the sand and I expect our team to enjoy it too. That’s why they’re here. Most of them aren’t from here. So assuming they came for some reason or another and it probably wasn’t to do plumbing or HVAC. You can do that anywhere.
Justin Deese (19:28.081)
So I’ll attest to this Gist on every interview, you kind of have this speech you give. And I don’t even know if you know, I don’t even know that you realize you do it, but you kind of just said it now. You’re like, you know, we live in paradise. We like to enjoy paradise. We want you to enjoy paradise and you can’t do that if you’re working all the time. and I think the guys respect that. I think they, they dig it. I mean, who wants to be running calls at two o ‘clock in the morning? Not anybody I know.
Chris Gist (19:55.182)
Mm -mm.
Justin Deese (19:57.777)
And we’re not going to do it. So we’re damn sure not going to ask them to do it.
Justin Deese (20:04.305)
So, so I think, all right. So from a culture standpoint, so one thing I think that, we do well and these two things kind of tie together. And I think when I first say them, they’re probably not going to seem like they’re a good culture. but I think we have team member commitments for everybody in the company and team member commitment is a fancy way of job description. And we call it that because nobody wants a job.
But everybody wants to be on a team. So we have that for every position that includes what a win looks like. Like, how do you win when you come to work? How do you know if you’ve crushed it or how do you know if you need to sharpen it up a little bit come the following week? So I think that us giving them the tools of knowing if they want or not, I think that helps. And then on the flip side of that too, we do one -to -ones on a regular basis and that gives good honest two way.
two way feedback, what I need from you, what you need from me. and, and I do think that that helps with the culture. Cause I think a lot of companies just kind of, I call it wish they would management, you know, WTW management, like, man, I really wish they would fill in the blanks versus I think with us, we, we dial it in a little bit where we’re like, Hey, here’s what is expected. Here’s what we need you to do. And here’s what we need you not to do.
So, what’s your thought on that?
Chris Gist (21:36.366)
a lot of those expectations have to do with their bonuses. So we’re driving them to make more money to take home to their household and they’re excited when they hit it. Like it’s, I mean, come that last week of the month, they want to know how close or two weeks before the end of the month, they’re like, I’ve already hit it, I’m killing it. We’ve got a kid, I think we talked about him briefly on the last call, but he’s young. He just got in his own truck a little over a year ago. We just recently lost.
one of our lead installers. So this kid’s kind of taking the reins now. And I think this is only his second or third re -pipe that he’s been the lead on by himself. And this re -pipe was a massive re -pipe, three bedrooms, water main, water heater done in two days. He got on the job site and was basically barking orders at the homeowner. Okay. I’m going to need that move. And I’ve got to cut a hole behind that. I need this moved. I need you to get this done over here.
Then he went outside with the two helpers or apprentices and gave them goals to have done by noon. And then afternoon he gave them goals to have done by the end of the day. And they finished that reply in two days. It was impressive.
Justin Deese (22:46.545)
So I think it’s worth, because this does go with culture too, I think it’s worth you telling the story of how he came on the team.
Chris Gist (22:57.23)
Justin Deese (22:58.993)
Listen, I mean, how many people say, nobody wants to work these days, you know, all the trash, which I don’t, I disagree with every bit of those statements about people don’t want to work and there’s no good people. And I disagree with that. I think that that is a, a lazy way for us to, play the victim. Yeah.
Chris Gist (23:19.374)
Yeah, complain. Yeah, this we, you know, our, our building is right on the main drag here in town and there’s a neighborhood behind us. This kid had his experience was chimney cleaning. He had no plumbing experience at all. There’s kind of some pine trees and four foot tall native grass going back to before you get to the neighborhood, probably, I don’t know, 60, 70 yards. So he took his riding lawnmower from his house and.
Cut himself a trail to where he could walk to our building and he walked to our building every day for two weeks until we hired him and he worked here as an apprentice for just under a year before he got into his own truck. I mean the kid was going home off the clock watching YouTube videos researching online just doing everything he could to be a good plumber and he’s done it very quickly and he’s making pretty good money for his age too doing it. I think his bonus this month was
14 or 15, I don’t know, like he’s just killing it.
Justin Deese (24:21.361)
Yeah. Again, he’s early twenties and I mean, the dude has got such a bright future in our space. I don’t honestly, I don’t even think that he understands, some of the opportunities that he’ll get by just, just keep doing what he’s doing, right? Just grind it out, work, work, work. There’s, there’s so many opportunities that are going to be, out there for him. So.
Chris Gist (24:51.406)
Yeah, really proud of them. It’s been cool to watch.
Justin Deese (24:52.817)
Yeah, he’s good dude. So, okay, so any other thing you can think of as far as culture? Like what’s a, I don’t know. Any other thing you can think of?
Chris Gist (25:05.134)
So we obviously we live on the beach so we have beach volleyball and there’s with two teams because Some of the wives play on one team some of the husbands playing the other but just just in those two teams. I think there’s six seven employees But then on top of that there’s usually anywhere from two to another eight that just show up to come watch
Justin Deese (25:10.865)
yeah.
Chris Gist (25:34.478)
And then they end up subbing out or they stay afterwards and want to play some more. Honestly, I think next season we might have three or four teams. It just keeps growing because of the time that we spend together and the fun that everybody has doing it. So.
Justin Deese (25:48.369)
So a little bit of backstory, how we ended up on beach volleyball, which is great. A couple of years ago, we actually had, we had a softball team. We had a coed softball team and we were, it is according, like, if you look at the standings of the, if you looked at the standings, we were in last place for, wins, but we were first place for parties. So we had a good time, but we ended up having.
Chris Gist (26:13.838)
Yeah.
Justin Deese (26:19.345)
Nine injuries?
Chris Gist (26:21.838)
I’ve got the scars to prove it, yeah.
Justin Deese (26:26.801)
We had a lot of injuries, so we figured that for the safety and health of our team and, and the growth of our company, we should take up something a little less impactful.
Chris Gist (26:39.022)
The sand is softer to fall on than dirt, yes.
Justin Deese (26:42.385)
Yeah, yeah, and less running around.
We’re cool. Well, guess I appreciate you coming and hanging out, man. And, it’s always good catching up and yeah, culture, man, culture is important. Make sure that you’re paying attention to your culture. Make sure that you, cause there there’s a culture in every company. It’s good or bad. That’s kind of up to you. And, and you got to make sure that you’re keeping an eye on that. So, I guess appreciate you coming and hanging out, man.
Chris Gist (27:06.03)
Good or bad.
Chris Gist (27:13.966)
Good to see you, buddy.