98 | Letting Go to Level Up: What Every Business Owner Can Learn from Tom Jameson

Welcome back to another episode of Freedom Blueprint podcast. The podcast really is all about helping you as a business owner drive and win more. And we do that through really good conversations with other business owners that share their story and are okay with being a little bit vulnerable and sharing not only the wins, but sometimes the the dust and the speed bumps that happen along the way. Today, we're hanging out with Tom Jamison, like the whiskey.

And Tom owns Astro Watt Electrical out of Apex, North Carolina, and if you're watching on YouTube, you can see his logo behind it. He's got a great looking brand and we'll talk about that a little bit. But Tom, welcome to the show, man.

Yes. ⁓

Awesome, thanks Justin. I appreciate you having me on and looking forward to having a good conversation today.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's start out with what is what does the business look like today?

Yep. So today we are we've got about 14 total people and part of the team. So 14 full time. We are 100 percent of residential electrical service company right now.

with this size of company, pacing around like $3 million in revenue. And we've got goals to continue to grow that and next year, at the end of next year, we wanna hopefully be at five. So kind of keep working our way towards that.

Everything we do is residential service. We've got tech, we got three different levels of people in the field. So service tech, sales techs and install techs. A couple of people in the office. I'm in the office full time. My wife's in the office. We have person who handles all of our permits and then somebody that does dispatch CSR and all that kind of stuff. So, ⁓ but.

It's fun. It's very exciting. It's something different every single day. That's what we kind of love about the service world. And that's kind of what kept us strictly in residential service is it's fun, exciting, and we're all about building relationships. And that's what kind of grew this company and the following that we have with it as well through our customers.

So you said something that is not normally used a word and a phrase that is not normally used by business owners. And so I wanted to highlight it and the word was fun. And I think a lot of times business owners forget a, why we started doing this in the first place and B that it's okay to have fun. And quite frankly, if you're having fun.

Yeah.

there's a good chance your team's having fun and then everybody likes what they're doing. So ⁓ good for you for saying that. And I don't even know this yet, but I'm guessing you have a good culture just because you said that word. I'm betting you have a pretty good culture in your business.

Yep.

We do. It's probably, you know, one of our biggest strengths for sure.

You know, I tell everybody if you're not having fun, then like, what are we doing? Right. Because really at the end of the day, we're an electrical service company. Do we think it's the biggest, greatest thing? Sure. Is it, you know, is it a little bit more to me and my wife and my kids? Yes. But like it still is just, it's a job. It's a career, you know, outside of that family health, everything else is so much more important than what we're doing here. So if we can't make this the fun place to be, ⁓ then, you know, something's wrong with us.

So if we can't make this a fun place to be, then something's wrong

And you know and we we do a ton of team events. We've got a ping pong table in the way I mean, there's super competitive ping pong matches happening every morning Sometimes we got to kick them out of the office to kind of get them to go on their first call But you know, we do a lot of team events We meet you know We'll pick a random place for breakfast and the whole company will meet there one morning at 7 a.m. And everybody has breakfast

with us. And we do a ton of team events. We've got ping pong people in the world. mean, super competitive ping pong matches out there. Sometimes we've got to them out of the office to get them to go on their first call. But we do a lot of team events. We'll pick a random place for breakfast, and the whole company will meet there one morning at 7 AM, and everybody has breakfast.

and then heads out from there and one of the most important things with our culture and I've just I've been this way since it started is everyone in the company comes to

⁓

the office every morning. So at the end of the day the guys don't have to. The guys have their vans, take their vans, they go straight home, but every single person comes to the office in the morning.

Yeah ⁓

And, and I've been a part of other organizations that don't do that. And, know, you've technicians calling a dispatcher and they've never met each other and technicians don't know one another.

And, you know, we do. And it's a lot of fun. mean, a lot of guys vacation with each other here, hang out on nights, weekends, and, you know, it's, it's a really, really close group of people. And that's, you know, I think that right there is what makes it fun. You know, I'm not doing it. I'm not going to sit here and take credit for it. Like, you know, I've, I've helped put this platform here, but it's

collective effort from everybody here and you know if you come in it's it we've had people say to us before like we you know I feel like you can never come into AstroWatt in a bad mood.

And we're like, that's what we want. We don't want you to come here in a bad mood. And if you do, like somebody probably knows it and it might not just be me, but someone will walk up and just be like, hey man, you okay? Or hey, everything going on, everything's good. And you know, because you know, that's what makes it fun. You know, is to have the people around you to really look forward to going and seeing everybody. I never, ever, ever want it to be a place that you kind of drag your head and you're like, I gotta go to work today. And yeah.

Right.

Yeah. ⁓

this

place today.

Yeah, nobody

wants that. You know, that's not fun. And we've all worked somewhere where it was like that before.

So

when did you guys start the business? Okay.

2019.

A little bit of everything. So I've been doing this for a little over 20 years now and you know, people on the commercial side, new construction side, service side, remodel side. And finally, when I started it, we kind of did a little bit of everything and there wasn't enough of a vision in place at the time we started it. It was more so I was kind of fed up with past experiences of how people were treated, how people were paid, culture, experiences. And that's what I wanted to go build. And we kicked it off like that immediately.

people were treated, how people were paid, culture, experiences, and that's what I wanted to go build and we kicked it off like that

but

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's one of those things when you get started in business. I can remember when we first started out in business, it was yes. Like that was our motto. Will we do it? Yes. ⁓ Was it gutter cleaning? Maybe we didn't care. It was really about revenue and getting money in the door and paying the bills. And certainly as you kind of smooth out a little bit, you definitely want to focus because there is a lot of businesses that kind of try to be all things to all people. And it's not a ⁓

Yeah. ⁓

You

That is not a fun business to run.

No, it's really not. And I struggle with that. Some people on the team will come to me sometimes and be like, hey, somebody we did work for really needs us to do X, Y, and Z. And I've gotten to the point now where I'm like, look, you know we don't do it. Just stop asking me. Because if you ask me, I'm going to be like, ⁓ yeah, we'll find a way. It's like, we don't do it. And we got to stick to that. We need to know what we do and what we don't do. ⁓ And we really work hard on having a really good referral program.

as well so that if people do call we're to help refer them and it's kind of cool we get I was telling somebody this the other day we have customers call us every once in a while and they're like hey we used you guys you know we don't need any electrical thankfully but do you have a plumber you recommend like we loved your experience so we trust you guys more so than Google and you know and it's it's nice when we get to refer them and we're very you know picky with who we refer because you know our names kind of tied to that and that's a big that's that's a big thing for us.

Yeah, you're you're definitely tied to it when you when you refer somebody it might as well be your team I know sometimes people think it's not but man the second that that that deal goes awry They're gonna be on the phone calling you and blaming you and that's so it's so good for you for for kind of identifying that making sure that you're putting the right people in front of your customer Like just right off the rip if I wouldn't use them

Yeah. Yeah.

Yep.

Don't put them in front of the customer. So a couple of years in business now and you guys have had pretty good growth, sounds like pretty good sustainable growth. What's something kind of early on that was, now that you look back at a little bit, you go, hmm, I probably could have shifted that just a little bit.

Yeah, we're not referring to. Yep. ⁓

Yeah, getting myself out of the field probably quicker than what really happened. So I guess it was ⁓

You ⁓ know and it's he he gets it and he understands like where I come from

⁓ but you know early on it was kind of like I knew he was ready to kind of take some of the reins of like hey you start selling everything I don't need to do it anymore and once we kind of made that switch to kind of get him into that position and me out of that position it helped us grow a lot faster because you know I don't I don't want everything to come through me if it does we can only grow so big and and do so many things and ⁓ sometimes sometimes we we do feel like

Right. ⁓

sometimes we do

it goes that way and I think some of it is back to what I was talking about earlier is like that our incredible culture has a little weakness and I think that weakness is probably how close we all are and how much the guys do want to be like well just call Tom you know he'll he'll he'll save it he'll figure it out I don't you know and and I do and it's whether I'm on vacation or whether I'm in a meeting and it's so some of that does ⁓

feel like it goes that way. I think some of it is back to what I was talking about earlier, that our incredible culture has a little weakness. And I think that weakness is probably how close we all are and how much the guys do want to get close. Call Tom. He'll figure it out. And I do. Whether I'm on vacation or whether I'm in a meeting. So some of that does. It is nicer when I do see that.

It is nicer to like when I do see them just make

and just make a decision and learn from it. It's never the wrong decision. That's what I tell everybody. It's never ever the wrong decision. It's either the right decision or it's a good learning lesson. And as long as we can focus on those two things, we just keep going.

a decision and learn from it. It's never the wrong decision. And that's why I tell everybody it's never ever the wrong decision. It's either the right decision or it's a good learning lesson. And as long as we can focus on those two things, like we just, you know, keep going and just, you know, we do I tell everybody this all the time. We do electrical work. Yeah, there's nothing we do that we can't fix. We're not surgeons. We're not doctors. It's not life and death stuff. It's like

Right. ⁓

Could we drill through a wall? Sure. Can we fix it? Yeah. Can we drill through a water line? Yeah. And we've done all of it. I've done all of it. You know, I tell the guys if there's a mistake to be made, I've made it. And ⁓ so I think that was kind of it was just early on, I should have done a better job of just getting people more involved instead of at the time, just like following the lead kind of thing.

Now, when you first started the business, were you just the all things to everything? Like were you the one employee and you were driving it?

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, which yes, which is actually kind of cool because it really is like build this thing from ground up, which is exciting. And you know, it takes.

countless hours and dollars and sleepless nights and all those things and we still have some of those. ⁓ But yeah, when we first started, was, you I started on my own. went and hired a guy I knew that knew nothing about electrical, but awesome guy, worked super hard, came in and helped me do stuff for a while.

⁓ Second employee was my brother-in-law, so at the time he had moved out to the mountains of North Carolina. They just had a baby and I was like, come on man, aren't you ready to move back home and be close to family? And so he was, you know, he was number two ⁓ and then kind of started growing from there.

So you started putting some people in place, started getting out of the way. It's, interesting because so many business owners, whether it's intentional or not, they're, they're the bottleneck of the business and it's just letting go. Like so many business owners have a hard time of just letting go and trusting your people and, being okay with the 90 % rule. And I'm going to even to say the 80 % rule, you know, no, an employee is not going to do it.

Yeah. Yeah.

with the same passion and all the things that you are all the time. But man, you can't grow in scale. If all things are coming through you, man, you're going to have a traffic jam, ⁓ for sure.

You really

can't and we've struggled with that a little bit. So as we continued to grow, did, I brought a partner in for a little bit and it didn't, we didn't see eye to eye and it didn't work out as well as we wanted it to. And when he left,

in about a year and a half ago, right? And whenever he first left, we were up to 12, 13 people. The company actually jumped pretty quickly. We got up to like 19 or 20 in December of last year. And I quickly realized that we were at 20 people. once he went out, he and I were running everything, just the two of us. When he left, it was all coming through me. And it was this bottleneck at the top and I was screaming and screaming and screaming. And so

Yeah. ⁓

You we've reduced our size down a little bit and you know, we've were four or five less people than we were in December

doing one and a half times the amount of revenue we did at that time and things are going much smoother. So ⁓ it's it's, know, sometimes you, know, again, not a bad decision or anything. It was a good learning lesson and, know, it helped all of us. And there's no one that's ever been here. ⁓ Whether somebody's been here for years and they're not here anymore or a month, they're not here anymore. Like I've never.

So it's, you know, sometimes you, you know, again, not a bad decision or anything, it a learning lesson and, you know, it helped all of us. And there's no one that's ever been here. Whether somebody's been here for years and they're not here anymore or a month they're not here.

once regretted ever bringing somebody in whether they worked out or didn't work out it's all helped us and continues to help us you know learn and grow but you're right it can't all go through you ⁓ that stuff and when I try to I don't know if I would say I try to make it when I let it all go through me it kills me and crushes me you know

Well, and you're having to make so many decisions and really what ends up happening is your team becomes less and less empowered and it becomes them asking you questions really not because they need the answers, but it's like, if something goes wrong, I blame it on Tom. I called Tom. said to do it. He said, why are this thing backwards? That was his advice. You know, and you're like, you didn't ask me that. Right. ⁓

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a great way to look at it, though. And it's a nice fallback. But you're not kidding about when you can empower somebody and they feel that what they can start doing is unbelievable. You know, when they feel that they've got the I'm not going to call it a permission when they feel like they have the ability to go make these decisions and do that and know that they have the support behind them. Man, it's it's

Yeah.

It's really fun to see when that happens.

Yeah. Empower

your team. That's, that's it. Empower them to make good to sit. And you said it earlier, like, you know what? We don't make huge, like we can fix whatever, but empower your team to do it because, ⁓ they're not a paid audience. Like you don't pay them to stand around and watch you go crazy. They're paid to do a job. They're professionals and you have to empower them in order to go out and, ⁓

Yeah.

Yeah.

do what it is that they can do and sometimes they just have to have a little bit of permission to go crush it and go do amazing things. So good for you as an owner for recognizing that and giving your team the tools and empowerment to go win.

Yeah.

Yeah, I had a business coach that helped me with that because I asked him one day. I was like, why does it just not feel like they don't care the way I do? And he was like, Tommy, they don't. And he said, look, he said, I don't want to say this in a bad way. If you decided tomorrow to close Astro on.

Because they don't.

they would all have a job the following day. You would spend the next six months to 12 months meeting with attorneys and accountants and bankers and and selling things off like so they don't they're never going to as much as they love it and they don't want to think of any other business. They're never going to feel the same way that I do. And you know and I'm not going to sit here early on and be like entrepreneurship is the easiest funnest thing in the world. I there's some really hard times about it and those are like when those times happen sometimes I'm like

Right. ⁓

Man, why don't they just you know, and it's not them doing it. It's probably me causing the issue ⁓ But they don't it's not their company, you know And it's it I'm fortunate enough to have a team around me that treats it as if it

is theirs which is very cool on a daily basis, but ⁓ You know, it's it when he told me that I was like, yeah, you're right and think of it that way

And it's, and it's not to say that they don't, that they don't, mean, you know, but yeah, for sure. They're not going to come hang out with you with the attorney and the bankruptcy lawyers and you know, they're going to go, and I'm going to go get another job. And you're like, that sounds good. And listen, the truth is I would imagine like, were you a technician somewhere before you start? I mean, it's the same. I mean, you've been on both sides of it now.

Yeah.

yeah.

Yeah,

exactly.

which certainly gives

you a good perspective.

Yep, and I feel like there's times where I'm like, you know, I, I, feel like I was a phenomenal employee at the time at other companies and did all that. But you're right. There are definitely times where I was like, Hey, my family's going on vacation. I'm going on vacation. I'm not, I'm not worried that. Yeah. I'm not worried that there's two other guys on vacation as well. Like, you know, that's, it's not my problem.

Shutting it off. ⁓

⁓ We really do. I mean, I probably my brother-in-law is probably as close as you can get to get someone that cares I mean because he really does I mean if I if he sees a picture of quality of work that wasn't done by him But done by somebody else he'll be like he'll call him up and be like turn around go back and do that and it's not you know They don't report to him necessarily but he truly does and it's nice to have that one person ⁓ That really cares so much about it. Like it kind of feels like it's his as well. So

someone that cares.

Yeah.

Thank

Well, and being early on, there's probably, there probably is a lot of ownership, but one, he was an early on employee and two, he's family. So that can go one of two ways, right? So that's good. So tell me, what are some things that you like to do that are not work related?

Yeah. Yep.

love going to the beach.

Speaking of fun...

Yeah, so love love playing golf, right? So the US Open is at Oakmont this year. Huge golfer and I had the opportunity to go up there last summer and play flew up flew up there and played with my brother and my cousin. They want to raffle through through something and playing with a member up there. My uncle is supposed to go and he couldn't make it. My cousin called me on like Monday night and it's like hey, what are the chances you can get here tomorrow to play Oakmont on Wednesday? I was like, yeah done. I like that. I remember walking into the

I'm on. Yeah. ⁓

kitchen I said to my wife I'm like I'm flying to Pittsburgh tomorrow and she's like you can't say no to that and it was one of the coolest experiences of my life but so golf for sure I love fit we have a boat love to fish go out take the kids sandbars things like that and

And honestly, I also just like love to spend time at home and be with my wife and kids. know, when I was younger, I was the guy like, you know, when we first moved into the neighborhood, if guys were playing cornhole and hanging out and be like, I'm there, hey, cool. And now I'm kind of like, they joke around, they're like, you're like the old homebody now.

I'm there, hey cool, and now I'm kind of like, they joke around, they're you're like the old homebody now.

It's not, you know, I spent a lot of time here, so it's really nice. My daughter rides horses and does competitive competition dance. My son plays hockey and

It's not, I spend a lot of time here, so it's really nice. My daughter rides horses and does competitive competition dance. My son plays hockey.

I try to be involved as that stuff. Like I don't, I don't ever miss any of it, but if I can coach, I want to coach as well. So yeah, but I'd say golf boat, you know, and then family more than anything.

Good for you.

So what's the handicap on golf?

Yeah, you know, so I had it to like a three for a little while. ⁓ It's closer to like it's right around nine right now. So nine or 10, ⁓ which still good and I can get myself around. We can have fun and you know, I played in and out in just this Monday and there were a lot of really good shots and a lot of shots where I was just like leave that ball over there. Let's let's keep going. But yeah.

OK.

What ball? I didn't see it. What ball?

I didn't hit that.

And

it's funny this I enjoy golf today more as a 10 than I did as a three. You know, if I go out there and you know when I was that if I didn't if I shot 80 I was furious and like why I'm playing out of like a local Muni getting upset about my score. Now it's just you know it's fun to just get out there and play with whoever you get to play with and be out there. My kids are really getting into it as well, which is fun.

Yeah.

⁓ Kid playing golf with kids is so much fun. My daughter just graduated high school and there's times where she's like, Dad, let's let's go play golf. I'm like, yes, let's go. ⁓ So it is it is always fun to do that. That kind of stuff with kids. ⁓ Let's do. Let's do some lightning round stuff. What do you think? All right.

Yeah.

Yeah, let's do it.

Throw it at me.

You ready?

as much as I'm gonna be.

Don't worry, no curve balls, but no mulligans either. here we go. All right, so what is one thing that people would be surprised to know about you?

Yeah. Yeah.

⁓ that I am a big guy but I'm like a big teddy bear. Like emotional teddy bear.

Okay.

Good answer. What does freedom look like to you as a business owner?

⁓ Time to be able to go do what I want to do whenever I want to do it. It's not necessarily all about money. ⁓ Right? So it's not, hey, I want to go on the biggest trip, but it might just be, I want to get the business to a point where if my wife and kids are like, hey, let's go do this, I can just go do it because things are in place. So it's really time more than anything.

Right?

What's one decision you made that created more freedom in your life or business?

getting rid of my partner.

Sounds like that might have gave some freedom and some free headspace, huh? Yeah. Yeah. It was a tough decision.

Yeah, it was a tough decision, but yeah,

going back to running it myself, I would say for sure.

Yeah. What's one leadership lesson that you wish you would have learned earlier?

Continue to invest into the business even when it's a smaller company. So when you're starting out, just invest, invest, invest and dump everything back into the company.

That's a good one.

All right, last one. You're doing amazing. Last one here. What advice would you give a business owner right now?

to focus more on the experience and solving people's problems than trying to sell anything.

and kind of give a backstory to that. just talked to one of my technicians about that earlier. When we go out to people's house, the number one thing you should be doing is focusing on solving their issue. And sometimes solving their issue does not mean doing electrical work. We had a client that called us out a few months ago that just purchased a sauna and put a sauna all the way upstairs in their room. And we started talking about prices and this and that. And they're like, my God, we may have to return this. And we're like, why don't you just move the sauna to your garage? You have enough

down there and they were like holy cow that's amazing and that's what they did so yeah my number yeah that's what I would say is like focus on like

Develop the customer experience and focus so much more on that because that's what people remember. They're you know, they're not going to remember how good of an electrician you are. They're going to remember how you treated them, how you treated their home. Did you care about them? Did you clean up? Things like that. and that I don't know enough about other businesses and trades or other industries, but I do know about the trades. But I imagine it would be the same for any business that you would that you would have that if you focus on the customer experience and take

care of people, everything else falls into place.

Yeah, I mean, definitely educating customers should be priority one. And yeah, to your point, customers remember how you made them feel as it and if it was good, just like with that. I mean, you guys cost yourself a lot of money, but you gained a customer for life. So from a from an LTV standpoint, from a lifetime value of that customer, right then you didn't make it, but you will definitely make that up on the back end. So good, Tom, and I appreciate it was great to jump on here.

Yep.

Yeah.

Let

me ask you any kind of last nugget you'd like to share before we ⁓ call it good for the day.

No, just, you know, we talked about it earlier, just like continue to empower your team. of the, one of the coolest things that we do here at our company is we do a book club every month and everybody's involved with it. And, you know, each person gets the book, read it at your own leisure. And then Friday mornings, we spend 30 minutes as a team. sit in one big room and everybody just chats about it and shares it.

And you know, I would just say like that nugget right there has allowed me to become so much closer with my team and understand because nine.

Nine out of 10 times what the stories people share aren't related to Astro WOD. It's how it impacted them at home or something growing up or with their wife, kids, girlfriends, things like that. that's kind of, know, if I could throw one nugget out there, it's like whatever you can do to involve your entire team together, it just helps create that culture that's really, really difficult to break.

That's great. Doing life as a team, because I mean, let's be honest, typically you spend more time at work than you do. You know, when you start breaking up, you know, between sleep time and work time and home time, a lot of times you spend more time at work. So Tom, I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for jumping on here today with us and sharing a little bit about your story,

Yeah.

Yep.

You're welcome, man. Thanks for having me and hopefully we can do this again in the future sometime. Thanks, buddy.

Absolutely, thank you, man.