120 | Then vs. Now: The Shift in Contractor Mindset with Justin and Janeen Norquist (Live at Service World Expo 2025)

Justin is so excited about doing this. Like this is his natural space.

He's so far

inside his comfort zone right now. I can just feel it.

It's.

That's great. And we've got Janeen Norquist. So tell us a little bit about your business.

So yeah, we're heating, air conditioning, and plumbing business, and we're out of Sandwich, Illinois. My wife and I are the owners. Everyone always jokes, I'm just the pretty face of the organization. She's the brains of the operation. I think right now we're sitting about 23 to 24 employees. Thanks to Justin and some hiring events that we did, we got four new hires here just within the last couple weeks.

Yeah, pretty awesome.

Yeah, I mean 15 years you think about it. mean that's a long journey to be in the business and let's think about what that looks like over that time.

Well, I know

20-something years in the industry, just in business in general, but really in our industry, a lot of stuff has changed, right? I know for us, when we first started scheduling, we were scheduling using a salon appointment book, like an actual book. And then we were writing in pencil, because we were moving stuff around all over the place.

when you think about how far things have come and the service titans and all the softwares of the world and dispatching and all the things, there's been huge leaps of advancement, not only in the industry but also in our own businesses as we learn and grow. So, Janeen, for you, ⁓ what is something that you can think of either in your business specifically or just in trades in general that have had major advancements over the last couple years?

Well, I think the first thing that comes to mind is when we started our business, we were like, we need to hire a team that has been doing this, like a plumber, an HVAC technician who's been doing this for 10, 15, 20 years that has experience, because we need them in a truck, and we need them to go. And then we realized that...

that amount of experience doesn't necessarily mean that they have been doing it correctly or to the level that we would like them to perform for that amount of time. They could have just been doing the same terrible job for 10 years. Or that it doesn't make them a good person, right, for our culture. And so you don't want somebody that's gonna bring everybody down every day. So ⁓ that's what changed for us and ⁓ the way we hire and what we're looking for. And it's more culture fit with

the potential to learn.

You train

the skill. You can train somebody how to turn the wrench and how to do the thing, but you can't train them to be a nice person. They either are a good person or they're not. I think it's always interesting too when you bring in technicians who have ⁓ experience, there's always ways that they want to do it, which is probably different than what you want to do, or there's special tools that they want you to buy so that they can use that you might not have previously done.

Well, and for anybody who's either in the audience or listening, since we have people in the audience, usually when we do a podcast, we're staring at a wall. maybe some little bit of participation here. How many of you have hired a technician with, let's say, 15 to 20 years experience that came in and they were absolutely everything they promised they would be? No hands, huh? Yeah, no hands. Goose egg? Okay.

Yeah.

So Justin Norquist, because I always have to make sure that we distinguish between the two.

JJ.

We're like,

you're Justin, my Justin.

So

you're Justin. What's some things that you have seen over the years that have changed in how you're running your business or even the technology?

Yeah, I think one of the big ones is, you know, just thinking about is the from the technician standpoint, right? You get back in the day, I mean myself 20 some years in the industry, like I had to ride with a guy for an entire year before I was allowed to go out and do the stuff on my own. Now.

We have a six week program that we can get somebody up and going with being able to use interplay learning or any of the YouTube videos and all these. I mean, there's so much stuff now that you can get these younger guys and gals into that can get them up to speed a lot faster. Yeah, it just helps. Like I said, we just hired four new people. Three of them are going to be HVAC maintenance technicians and the goal will be in six weeks. They're going to be able to do their own thing that I mean, before it would take us months, if not years. I think the other one thing that

what I wanted it to be done, let alone like each other. They all did their own thing. So when we started going through and putting our forms together, and now all of a sudden we're getting the same pictures, they're getting the same data, they're getting like, we just started to kind of breed that consistency through the guys, and that's been a game changer.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, and there's a cycle of business too, right? So when you first get started, typically as an entrepreneur, you go, yes. Customer calls, they go, you do this? Yes, I will do that. And then you kind of go through this maturity level where you start to realize that, okay, well, even though I hire somebody with what the industry calls experience, they're going to bring their not a game. Right? Their drama. And then all of a sudden you've got a whole team of people doing whatever

Thank you.

they want. And then you get to a breaking point where you go...

I own this thing and I'm going to have non-negotiables. And here's some non-negotiables I got, right? Whether it's pictures or whether it's how we're going to treat customers. So I think that's, and I think that's great too, that you're bringing in that younger, right? You're hiring the younger generation and teaching them because obviously we all know there's a hiring opportunity that we have in our space right now. ⁓ We as tradespeople have not done the greatest job of showing off how...

amazing our industry is, but it's starting to change now, right? I think it's starting to change where people are going, home services, that seems like a pretty cool thing to do.

I mean, COVID definitely helped that. Yeah. When you realize that you're essential. mean, that's very true. That's the thing. I definitely saw a huge change in the trades, like the trade schools and the programs and all that stuff. you know, I just, think younger kids are seeing like, this is a job that I could have. Like, it really can't get rid of us.

Right. okay, so we can't talk about the evolution of business over the last 10, 15 years, obviously without talking about AI. So are you guys utilizing it? How are you utilizing it? Does it terrify you? Are you excited by it?

I'm gonna let Janeen answer that one, because honestly it terrifies me. I do not use it as much as I should, because it does kind of scare me a little.

I was so curious to see if he was gonna say it terrifies him or if he's excited about it because I think he's still trying to decide. ⁓ think and again I am not super knowledgeable on it but it is such a great tool to help streamline things and you know I tend to talk too much which you might have realized that at times but I can take something and then

can condense it down, know, say, you know, help me define what I really want to say out of this, these key points. And it just, it's almost like a thought partner, basically, where I can have a conversation and it can help me talk things through so Justin doesn't have to listen to that all day.

So what's so

funny about that is I use AI exactly the opposite way. I put in like three words and I'm like, me four sentences of what I can talk about about this thing.

you

I will say the one time that I finally had kind of given into the whole AI thing, Janeen had been going through it for a while and just Magi and all this stuff. She's just taking everything in and loving it. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not really into this right now. So we got talking one day and I had to, team member agreement already made up. And I'm like, I just needed to kind of put some consequences kind of stuff, some responsibilities. They weren't doing, kind of had to hold some accountability things in there. And I'm like, I need to just add

section, but I wasn't sure how to word it and all this. And I'm like, this is going to probably take me a half a day because I would procrastinate. I just finally I walked in Janice's office like, I don't have time for this. Is there any way you can help me with this? She's like, absolutely. One, it's HR stuff. that's also her avenue there. So I'm like, all right, great. So I sat down and I think it was two minutes. She'd already got it pulled up. She had literally gave us a word for word how to and she made a couple of tweaks here and there. All of sudden she grabbed

the document, uploads it, tells AI to add it. I think we're in five minutes. We had that whole entire document completely updated and I was like, okay, this is kind of cool.

⁓

I mean, I think AI is such an incredible tool. The part that gets a little bit scary is when people start using it as your brain. Like it should be an extension. It's a tool in your toolbox. And I know for me, we've talked about this a lot, I write a lot and it's made me such a better writer because I have to, anytime I'm writing, I'm explaining things as if I'm talking to a sixth grader, which by the way, part of my prompt in my emails is, know, eighth grade

you know, write it as an eighth grade comprehension and make sure it's concise. And it just forces me to think, because my brain goes, and I'll get done writing something. I'll say, Kristen, look at this. She's like, I have no idea what you're saying. So really, it saves you time. Because now I don't have to go to you with everything. ⁓

Because before

he would run it through Grammarly and then Grammarly would miss all of these things and I'm like this is wrong and this is wrong and this is wrong. You're paying Grammarly what is happening here, but it's not like that.

And then

the virtual CFO said you need to quit spending $20 a month on

subscription that's not working.

Yeah. ⁓

I could totally

see that. I should probably take your advice on that too, because I'm pretty good. I'll get a whole email sent and in my head and I have it all ready to go. And then I'm like, yeah, I should probably have Janeen proofread this. And then by the time it's completely changed, because I'm terrible with grammar too. It's bad.

How about though if you have some big initiative or idea or vision that you want to share with your team or something that you're changing in your culture? And you can run it through AI and say, me, act as a HVAC residential technician or a plumber and ask me questions. Here's the idea that I have, ask me questions that they may have about this. So it makes you think differently.

things that I probably wouldn't have thought about and then I'm more prepared when we're presenting.

I the AI that we're using or that we're referring to through ChatGDP, GPT, whatever it is. When you talk to people who are really invested in the AI world, that's like the very basics of training wheels of AI, of things that are available out there now. So what's really coming into our industry now is AI answering, ⁓ phones, AI coaching on sales calls. There's a lot of that coming into play now. I'm super curious what

else kind of stance or thoughts on that, all about coming into the industry.

I actually, we're currently looking into it. ⁓ I can definitely see a huge advantage to that. ⁓ As we are growing and adding more technicians and we do a skill practice once a week and we even try to roll that in with our technicians and salespeople, it's...

It's still hard when I'm in the office. I don't really know exactly how it went out there. And Justin coaches me a lot on, go do ride alongs and spot checks and stuff. And he's 100 % right. Do I do them as often as I should know? So that's where I'm like, this is your virtual ride along. It's literally going to be able to hear what these technicians are saying and being able to help coach these, know, my.

I call everybody a kid now, but these kids through this, because again, it's new to them. They don't know. They've never been through it. So you're trying to train them, but now you can coach them and say, hey, this did really well and this didn't go well. I we're definitely looking into it. I think it could be a game changer.

So you think about 10 years ago, it was weird when you called a place and they said, this call is being recorded. And people were kind of weird about it. And now I don't think anybody gives it a second thought. My guess is in five years, that's gonna be the, and probably less than five years, but in five years, that will be the trend with recording the calls going in the house. Right now, technicians get weird about it. And maybe some homeowners might get a little bit iffy about it if it's not explained right to them. And plus it's new and it's technology.

Sometimes people get weird about that, I think in five years, everybody will just do it. And it's just part of the process.

Now, I will say there are some great tools out there that do this. The one thing I caution people on is be very careful about, you can weaponize it, right? And if they feel like they're being micromanaged every step of the way, then what ends up happening is they don't, well, they don't want to be on your team because nobody wants to be micromanaged. But yeah, I think it's a great tool and I'm excited for you guys to start utilizing it.

I know in our area too, it's not necessarily AI, but when we're talking about technology, it's changed our sales. We have to set ourselves with prices and everything, and we're really rural, so we are competing with a lot of people that are not priced correctly, and they have no overhead. They have one van and it's them. ⁓ So when customers are looking at pricing, we really have to be able to show that value, and things like Conduit and the sales programs that we

have in addition to Service Titan have been incredible and really really sets us apart. We've gotten really good feedback on that.

When you guys were first running sales calls at the very beginning, how were you presenting? How were you quoting? How many options?

pen and paper. ⁓

yeah, I was doing one. And then when Janeen started, it was one. it came from the fact, what can I work on? Like I said, for me, I'm always told in my techs, I'm not a smart technician. I'm not the best technician. So when it came down to it, I'm not on my own.

Justin, that's zero options. 50-50 shot there.

If that thing fails, I have to fix it. So what I'm going to sell is what I know how to fix. So literally, it was single stage basic everything I could possibly imagine. And then Janeen joins on and she gets a phone call and the customer is like, hey, how come I don't know about this rebate that's available from the utility company? She's like, I don't know. Let me check with Justin. So she asked me and I said, well, that's on the higher end equipment. I'm not offering that.

She's like, you know, the customer's asking for it. And I was like. I don't know how to work on it. So they listen to say, start invest a little bit more training, hire people that actually didn't know how to work on it. And then we went into yes, now we're three options and yeah, but it was pen and paper. I knew I was fortunate that I came in like the flat rate side of things. So I kind of had an idea on how to price it. Based on what I was taught at, you know.

They did their own research.

very young age. ⁓ Right now I look back now 15 years later I had no clue what I was doing. ⁓ But yeah was pen and paper and now we're into software, smart quote and all these different platforms.

Remember when we had to decipher our technicians handwriting? I remember during interviews, I would be looking at their application, at their handwriting to see like, are we even gonna be able to read these invoices? And now it's just, now the talk text is pretty funny sometimes though.

Yeah.

that's actually another great way to use AI to get the technicians to run their job summaries through AI first before they go into the summary notes.

Yeah, I heard that. That was an awesome idea.

Yeah. Well, and there's some, I don't know if you guys are using this, but there is some AI programs that you can, that will decipher. Anything we want to know about AI, we just asked her. Five times a day I text him. How do you make this thing work? So aside from AI, what are some other shifts that you guys have seen in the industry over the last 15 years?

Does it integrate right in? Yeah, Torshnoz.

Yeah.

Thank

⁓ this new generation of team members has been...

They just are

so eager to work and excitable and trainable.

The good thing is they're like the same age as our daughters and I hear our daughters are very transparent with us. So like they'll say like and one of our daughters works with us and she is out at four o'clock to pick up her kids from daycare. You know like I never did that.

when my kids were young. was work, work, work, work, work. We started the business and it was crazy hours, seven days a week. Even when I was at their games and stuff, I wasn't fully present. I was on the phone or on the computer. We created, I create, my generation created that. It has been a good thing. It's taught me a lot.

growing and learning in your own self-awareness and leadership. You can't tell them all the stuff they're doing wrong. You can't just tell them to work harder. They have to understand why. They have to buy into your vision. We are constantly putting our vision, mission, core values, starting from the hiring event, every interview, every company meeting, everything, because they have to feel...

part of something bigger, they have to know how their role aligns with that and why what they do matters and feel cared for and then they do need their time off.

I mean, you definitely have to lead in a different way. And it's interesting because the generation now, they just have so many different options than we did, right? When we were growing up, if you had a job, you didn't leave that job till you had another job. Well now, if they don't like something you said or didn't say or whatever, they're getting in their truck, they're on their phone and they're door dashing by 30 minutes from now. this whole gig economy, it just gives them so many more options.

which makes it tougher from a stick rate of your team members, right? It's harder to keep them around because they do have more options, but when you do the things that you guys do, right? So for anybody listening or watching, if you've never been to their shop, they have core values everywhere. They do lots of training. is an amazing shop. And you guys live all of that, right? So it's, you talk about it and your team. And then what happens is now you have the team that has all these, they have the same opportunities that any other person has, but they.

don't want to go anywhere because they 100 % buy into what you guys are doing and how you're doing it and they're excited to come to work every morning. I think it's awesome.

I think there's so much of that, way that the workforce has changed in general is forcing us as business owners to be better business owners, better leaders. 100%. Yeah. We're being held accountable to our employees just like we're wanting to our employees accountable. So I think that it's just as much our responsibility to figure out how to connect with our team now as it is for them to figure out how to get plugged into us. Like think it's more of a two-way street than it used to be.

So for those in the audience, how many of you, when you were coming up in the trades, had somebody throw something at you? A tool, a part, right? That was just part of it. you did the throwing? How's that culture thing going? Right, but I mean, it was just a completely different world aside from the technology. I don't want to say people have changed, but people have changed and their expectations are different.

Yeah, I mean how many of us were 24-7? I when we started, was, I was answering the phones and I was waking him up next to me to go run a call. And we have to listen to our team. I mean we have to please our customers and we have to please our team. Like you said, we're responsible to them. So now we cut off on call at nine o'clock. They know, you know, or during the week and five o'clock on the weekends. Like they know after that time, that's their time.

I can remember, it's probably been 15 years ago now, I at a conference and we were talking about 24 seven, because everybody was 24 seven and one of the speakers said something about who's not 24 seven. That was the only dude to raise my hand. And he's like, why would you not be 24 seven? You're giving all this work away. I'm like, here's the deal. I'm not coming to your house at two in the morning. And one of the things that I've always said to my team is I'm not ever going to ask you to do something that I won't do. And I'm not getting up at two in the morning to go fix somebody's problem. Turn the water off.

off. You're the homeowner, should know where you're shut off. Now I'll come at four in the morning when I wake up, but two in the morning I'm sleeping.

Now,

my Justin was very nervous about that switch. We have not lost any customers because of it. Now, we don't advertise that we're not 24-7. There's the key. But we just, I mean, our wording is that we are at capacity and we can get our technician out tomorrow morning. No pushback, ever.

Well, and that brings up the point of all customers are not your customer. I think sometimes people forget that. Everybody's not your customer.

I think there's a lot of times that we can talk somebody out of thinking that it's a true emergency too. Depending on restoration, that was different, but plumbing and HVAC, I think a lot of times a perceived emergency can hang tight until the morning.

I

mean, how many times have you gone to a house and like my whole house is flooding you go and there's like a drop of water. You're like our definition of flood is a smidge different.

My

favorite was as a heating and air conditioning tech was I have no heat. I need you out here as soon as you can. It's one in the morning. You get there. They have two furnaces and I'm like...

And then you wrote a system about asking qualifying questions before you run the call.

I would say one

of the other big things I think we've seen changing with especially with our employees not just technicians but even ⁓ internally and Janeen does a great job with it is the like the disc profile I think that is something too as you guys talked about like It's not just I need to find a butt, know something to put in the seat the whole joke of can you know, here's my phone Can you fog the mirror? Here's the keys go ahead and run a call it's really just

using that information to make sure you're hiring the right people, but also

being able to use that information to help yourself as a leader or as a man, you know, as a service manager or lead, you know, team leader, whatever, to make sure that you're communicating and training them and the way that they're going to take that information the best. Yeah. Because like I said, everybody takes information differently. Jenny and I joked and we've joked with you guys, we've all worked together long enough to know is like, Janeen will send an email and it's a two paragraphs. And then she'll be like, send me a text. Well, did you get my email? And I said, yep.

And then she's mad and I'm like

in the man of

many words.

Because he said, I didn't read it. I didn't have time. It's like, free paragraph.

Like so she's learned though like for her like it's like send me really quick high-level things and I will come and I'll respond but if you're gonna send me paragraphs you're gonna have to give me eight o'clock when I go home like I just I'm not reading

All you have to do though is run her email through ChatDTVS.

Okay.

Actually now Google will do that. It will summarize it now. one of the things, so earlier I said you guys do a really good job of core values and all the things at your shop. The other thing you guys do is you hang everybody's disk profile in the training room and it's really cool because it teaches them how to communicate with each other. Because that's normally when two people don't get along, it's normally because they just speak a different language. And if they understand how the other person communicates, then it becomes an easier

Yeah.

Yeah, they

don't take it so personally and they feel respected. Yeah.

So, wanna tell a little story about this. So, our business partner, ⁓ he is a high D, right? And ⁓ he's so awesome. Anyways, but there's times where we would be in what we call board meetings and we're sitting there and we'd have to go, hey, Gist, your D's showing. Right? hope I didn't offend anybody with that.

But at that point it was like this click where he was like, okay, I know I'm being way too aggressive in this conversation. I need to dial it back a hair and that was that was always fun.

I think ⁓ it's that level of awareness. When you can draw awareness to ⁓ how you naturally are, how you naturally communicate and receive information, and then also how the awareness of how the other people that you're interacting with are receiving, ⁓ how they want to receive communication. It's made a huge difference in just in our relationship over the years, and I think probably you guys would say the same thing of...

Definitely.

Having some understanding

of ⁓ he wants fewer words and less details. want all the details. want to know all of the everything about it and what we're doing and why and where and how and all the things. And he's like, give me the high points. ⁓

I don't need the details. It's not my jam. So we've only got a few minutes here until we wrap up and I want to share something ⁓ and hopefully you're okay with it but we're here, we're on stage and we're recording so it's really not anything you can do about it at this point. So I want to give a shout out to Justin and I know this is gonna make you uncomfortable, it's fine. Justin started about a year and two months ago.

Maybe three months ago? Every morning, Monday through Friday, Justin gets up, he hits the treadmill, and he reads a book. And I know that because every morning...

year or two.

he sends me a text message with a picture of the book and the treadmill. And you have not missed, now there's been a couple times I'm like, hey bro, hey, where you at, what's up? But has not missed a day in whatever, 13, 14 months. So I think that there's so much good that comes from that. And I know that you don't share that enough, you should share it more. But it's incredible when you think about the implementation and what that took for you to do that. ⁓

Thank you. And what's rippled from that? Like our entire team now has joined in. Because I happened to mention it in a company meeting when he hit it a year. And they didn't even know he was doing that. And everybody's been inspired. Everybody's been walking a mile now. They write their name on the board every day. It's incredible how contagious that has been.

mean, people want to be inspired and that is an incredible way to do it. So, good job.

I do, I will add, I know we don't have a couple seconds here, but wouldn't have done it without you. I really do appreciate it. In the beginning of the whole thing is I was going through a pretty rough time and I was in a really bad rut and Justin called me out on it. He's like, what can you do every day to try and help get out? And I was like, well, I guess I can walk a mile on a treadmill. guess. And then I started.

appreciate that, but you did it.

Yes you can. You

will send me a picture?

And

then it turned in, well that was yeah, the best was just Monday. get, ⁓ good morning, it's Monday. It's like two o'clock in the afternoon. I'm like, ⁓ crap, I forgot to send him the picture.

Even

this morning you sent me one. did. Hanging out in Vegas you still got up and by six you sent me a text.

Just so you know, Roy and Ryan both beat me there. ⁓ So I got there. They're both sweaty. already been 35 minutes in before I got there.

Brian probably got there at four in the morning.

Yeah, that's the key to this though is relationships like that who support, encourage, lift each other up. Thank you.

Network is your net worth for sure. so thank you guys so much for coming and hanging out. Justin, I know that was... See, you didn't die. And thank you guys for coming and hanging out and watching. So thank you.