Today's Guest

Matt Murray is the Founder and CEO of Evolution Mechanical, Inc., which serves the commercial and industrial HVAC/R market. He is also the founder and CEO of Blue Collar King Coaching & Consulting, through which he guides owners and would-be owners of service-based businesses in the blue-collar trades to succeed personally and professionally. As such, Matt’s expertise goes far beyond “just” his technical expertise in the HVAC/R field. Matt is also an expert in leadership, business development, business systems & strategy, operations, strategic planning, sales, and more. Matt runs his life and businesses based on strong core values and is passionate about helping others live happy, successful, and fulfilling lives.

Resources Shared

• The Blue Collar King
• The Blue Collar King’s Blueprint for Success by Matt Murray
• Thryv
  

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:

Hey, hey, this is Gordon Henry at Winning on Main Street. And today, we're lucky to have someone who can turn your service business into a cash flow machine. Matt Murray, welcome to the show, Matt.

Matt Murray:

Thank you. Thanks for having me today. I appreciate it.

Gordon Henry:

Super excited to have you. So quick bio on Matt. Matt calls himself the Blue Collar King, BCK. He is a successful business owner, coach, HVAC expert, and author. He's also an expert on leadership, business development, business systems, strategy. It spans the gamut. Really knows all aspects of the business. He says all aspects of your life are connected, and how he came to realize that success was about more than just working harder. We're going to delve into that.

He's the founder, CEO of Evolution Mechanical, which serves the commercial and industrial HVAC markets. He's also the founder and CEO of Blue Collar King Coaching & Consulting. We're going to talk about how his coaching and consulting may be a benefit to you, our listeners. So, excited to hear more about that. And his book is called The Blue Collar King's Blueprint for Success: How to Create an Abundantly Fulfilled Lifestyle and Turn Your Service Business into a Cash Flow Machine.

So with that, Matt, excited to talk to you. I'd just like to tell our listeners what they can learn in this episode, what they can take away. And I think the answer is, if they're looking for a better cash flow, you may be the guy. But beyond that, they can listen carefully and you just may offer them the path to not just better business, but also better personal success and fulfillment. So let's get started. Why don't you just tell us about your background, how you became the Blue Collar King?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. For sure. So thank you. So my blue-collar journey started as a young kid. I am multi-generation, blue-collar, grew up in a blue-collar family. My parents worked in the grocery and industries and my dad was a meat cutter. My mom was a checker. And then my dad went on to open up an automobile repair shop, and my mom opened up an ice cream parlor and stuff. We grew up in Southern California in a little town called Cerritos. And I grew up and did my thing, and then I got introduced to the trades in 1997.

So I started off in commercial air conditioning and refrigeration in '97. I did that for about six years, and the company unfortunately got in financial trouble and they closed the doors. They pulled us all in on a Friday and we got laid off. And at the time, I had a little residential side job going on for a friend or a family member or something. I can't recall now.

But anyways, long story short, my journey did not really start by design. It kind of just happened, and then one thing led to the next. It was like side job after side job, and here I am 20 years later and I tell this story. I'm still on my side job and I've been doing it for 20 years, and it hasn't really stopped. And now I've got 40 employees and I've started multiple businesses and a coaching brand now. And yeah, it's been quite the ride. You can get a lot done in 20 years if you set your heart to it.

Gordon Henry:

Right. Right. So we're going to talk about your coaching, but one thing that strikes me is you're a coach, but you've actually done the work. You've been in the trenches. A lot of coaches these days you sort of hear about, they wrote a book or something, but they haven't actually done the work. So that distinguishes you a little bit, doesn't it?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. Thank you. And I appreciate you saying that, and that's something that I talk to people a lot about. It's amazing what's happened with social media, how all of a sudden everyone is a coach and a guru and a mentor. There is so much fake stuff out there. And I talk about that with people and tell them, "If you're going to hire a coach, one of the most important things to do is do your homework." You have to do research on who they truly are, not their highlight reels on Instagram or Facebook, which we all have those, of course, but what's their background and what industry are they in, a specialty, and what are they actually truly built, and how long have they been in the trenches?

It's easy to jump into it, into self-employment, and bring in an investor or something like that and whip something up real quick when you have a bunch of private equity money backing you up, and then you jump out of it and you're like, "Hey, look at me." But how long has this coach or guru been on the battlefield, just fighting it out, just duking it out, just learning and trial and error and winning and losing? That's where the real value comes from, is 20, 30 years in the trenches.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah. Absolutely, because anybody who's become as successful as you, I think, has had many moments of adversity. It's sort of, what do they call it, overnight success 20 years in the making. Right?

Matt Murray:

Exactly.

Gordon Henry:

It didn't really happen that easily.

Matt Murray:

Yup.

Gordon Henry:

So let's just peel that back a little bit. When did you go from survival to success, from beating your head against the wall to really getting traction and growing?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. Great question. So starting off in 2003, it was about 14 years of trial and error. 14, maybe 15 years of just rags to riches. I wouldn't say success, but I would make some money. It would feel like, "Okay. I got it," or "I figured it out." Right? And then all of a sudden, it's just ripped out, the carpet's ripped out from underneath you, and it's like, "What happened?"

We did two years where we were making okay net profit and making some money, and then all of a sudden, we crash and burn. So I kept hitting ceiling. So my Peter Principle in terms of business revenue size, my ceiling, if you will, was about 5 or 6 million. And I had just been up and down, up and down over and over again, and I just couldn't bust through that barrier. And I finally, in 2017, it was rough coming out of the recession. I kind of got hit. It was a little bit late for me, 2009, 2010. I had to shrink down and scale the company back and stuff, and then we kind of took off again.

And then in 2017, I had started another company, another refrigeration company. I had all these different divisions from within our industry. I was doing residential. I had a residential division. I had commercial, industrial service, replacement. I had new construction. I had then started, as if that wasn't crazy enough already, not knowing nearly what I was doing, and then I'm like, "Hey, let's join with these other guys and start a whole nother business from the ground up. That sounds fun to do. Let's make it crazier." So anyways, things just really hit me hard in 2017, and I was like, "Okay. This is insanity. I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing here." So I had to reach out for help.

Gordon Henry:

Okay. So why don't you talk us through that piece of it? I think even before 2017, you discovered some type of, I think, peer-to-peer group where you were starting to interact with colleagues in a different way.

Matt Murray:

Yup. Definitely.

Gordon Henry:

Tell us about that more personal side of the journey.

Matt Murray:

Yeah. So that was around 2016, 2017, somewhere in that time frame, where I got introduced to a group called Vistage, which is, it's a peer advisory board, if you're not familiar with it or those of you that are listening, or not. What it is, it's a really cool thing. And what they do is they get groups of business owners and executives together, maybe 12 or 15 people together in a room once a month, and you show up and you get vulnerable and you get humbled and you get help and you start working on your business, and then you start to realize that there's another piece of the puzzle as to why your business isn't working so well.

I remember talking to one of the coaches that I hired and he's interviewing me and we're getting set up, and he's like, "Okay. So let's talk about everything that's working, everything that's not working." And I made all these laundry lists of everything that was not working, this, the market, the vendors, the employees, everything, this long laundry list. He's like, "Okay. This is a really good start, but I see there's one important thing missing on this list of problems."

And I was kind of baffled. I'm like, "Man, this is a really comprehensive list. I put everything together and I really thought this through." And he's like, "Okay. Well, it's really the most important thing that's missing on the list, and it's the absolute biggest problem." He's like, "Do you want me to tell you what it is?" And I was like, "Well, yeah, absolutely. What have I been missing?" And he goes, "I don't see your name on the list." And I'm like, "What do you mean?" And he's like, "Yeah. I don't see you on the list."

He goes, "So are you really ready to grow and fix your life and your business?" And I went, "Whoa. Okay." That was a hit to the ego, right? So that's really when my personal development journey began and my life started to change. So Vistage introduced me to an executive peak performance coach by the name of Nikki Nemerouf, and Nikki really took me under his wing for a few years. And we did a lot of work on not only business systems and leadership and stuff, but emotional intelligence and a lot of personal development work.

Gordon Henry:

Right. So take us through that journey a little bit. I mean, I know it probably was a lot to it, so we can't do it all here. But you started out. You were basically a craftsman, right? You knew a business and you knew the way to do it. You were a craftsman. And you took a journey that turned you into really like a leader, like a business leader, who could help people advance their careers and build a team. How does that happen?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. That's a good question there. And so, when I started off in the trade, obviously, I was a good mechanic. Like you said, I was a good craftsman. Right? I knew how to fix air conditioning equipment. I knew how to do that stuff, but I didn't know anything... I had never in my life been in a leadership role, not even at the entry level, supervisor level, let alone management or director, executive level. So I didn't have any idea about the whole other side of business. And when you're young and you got these big visions and egos and like, "Oh, yeah. I'm just going to build an empire and I'll go off on my own," I didn't realize that fixing stuff was actually the easy part.

Gordon Henry:

Wow.

Matt Murray:

The hard stuff was running the business and then managing other humans and attracting them and recruiting them and hiring them and developing them, and then getting them to go along with you on the mission, and then installing and understanding business systems, tactics, procedures, and then financials and how all that stuff works with regards to reading an income statement and the balance sheet. And then I learned later on in my career about KPIs and leading indicators and lagging indicators. So it was five or six years of just immersive training and development. Once I went down the path and dipped my toes in the river of change and kind of got used to that, I really got attracted to it. I was super motivated.

So I spent about four or five years. I signed up for a lot of different masterminds. I read a lot of books. I went to a lot of workshops and seminars and training, and I worked with three or four different coaches one-on-one and stuff like that, and I just spent a long time developing myself. Once I realized, "Man, there's a whole lot in the tank here that I didn't even know that I had locked up inside of me if I could just get people to show me and help me unlock my true potential." So that was part of my journey, and it's been amazing.

Gordon Henry:

So some of those things that you learned or that you interacted with Nikki, right? Nikki was the name?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. Nikki.

Gordon Henry:

Were on issues like EQ, emotional quotient or emotional intelligence, and resilience and feedback. Right?

Matt Murray:

Correct.

Gordon Henry:

Feedback is a big part of this. Can you talk us through the feedback piece? Like you just said, they presented you with this list of things, or you presented them with a list of things and they said, "Hey, one's missing. It's you." So that was some feedback there.

Matt Murray:

Right.

Gordon Henry:

What did you learn about feedback? I'll tell you, my experience is everybody says they want feedback. Nobody actually wants feedback.

Matt Murray:

Correct.

Gordon Henry:

Nobody really wants to hear what's wrong with them.

Matt Murray:

They don't want to.

Gordon Henry:

Right.

Matt Murray:

Yeah. We all need it. Everyone needs it, but nobody wants it.

Gordon Henry:

Right. Right. Right. "Tell me I'm great."

Matt Murray:

Yeah.

Gordon Henry:

So what did you learn about feedback, and how did you integrate that into your leadership of your team?

Matt Murray:

Yes. So it started with me realizing I think we grow up in today's society and we're taught at a very young age to keep your mouth shut, mind your own business, don't be a tattletale. Right? So we start getting trained at a very young age that feedback and telling each other the truth is a bad thing. And I think we've created a society to where that's why everyone today is so afraid of feedback.

And we have this little mechanism inside of us called our ego, which can be a good driver, but it can also be this massive block for you to be able to get to the next level of where you're trying to go, and then just this training of years and years and years of everyone just minding their own business and keeping your mouth shut. So it feels very uncomfortable to get feedback.

I was not used to feedback. The only feedback I ever got growing up was not very constructive. If I did something bad, it was feedback with a hand or with a belt. Right? And then there was not feedback along the way each day as to where I was doing a good job or doing bad. It was just like, they send you off and then you mess up, and it's like, "Well, bam." You know what I mean? It's passive-aggressive leadership.

So I think that's how most people are brought up. We're not practicing constructive feedback at a young age in the family unit. So we all grow up as adults, and once we get to a place where we're working in a company and improving is required, once we start to talk about feedback and having to self-reflect, it's very, very, very uncomfortable, and it was very uncomfortable for me. But Nikki taught me about this stuff, and Nikki started introducing this to me, and I didn't like it for many months. It was very uncomfortable for me.

So he worked with me slowly, in just bite-sized pieces, and taught me to understand we as humans, we don't see ourselves. We're operating almost kind of in a trance, and we have ways of being that we don't see. We have blind spot barriers and we have an ego barrier, and we don't see ourselves. So if you can let someone else in that you can trust, that will tell you the truth, that's the beginning of self-awareness, which is kind of the start of personal development.

Gordon Henry:

And what was the feedback you got? What was wrong with you?

Matt Murray:

So for me, one of the biggest things, like you had asked about earlier, is the EQ piece. So being raised in that kind of hard-core, working-class, blue-collar, spankings, and stuff like that, I had some EQ issues. I was a hothead, if you will. Right? I was very emotionally responsive to other people that would give me feedback and/or wouldn't comply or follow the rules, or once you start running a business, you go from an employee, and most employees don't realize this, but there's leaders on top of you that are keeping you safe and pointing you in the right direction literally every hour of every day. You just show up and they tell you which way to go.

When you go from employee, like I did, to literally out in the middle of this giant ocean of being self-employed, I had all these moving pieces and all these different things coming at me that I've never learned how to navigate. So it was a lot of frustration and challenges and anger, and I didn't have any of those foundational EQ tools to learn how to manage my emotions, for one. And then for two, going deeper, learning more about myself, what was the root cause of why I had these hair triggers and had a very low EQ.

So Nikki took me down that path for several years of teaching me and training me and showing me, A, why am I such a hothead; B, giving me tools to practice to become more emotionally intelligent, do some internal healing and cleanup, and then also how to start to ingrain these concepts into my culture with my team.

Gordon Henry:

Okay. Yeah. So let's turn to that piece. So how did you integrate this into working with the team, and how did the team receive this new way of doing things?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. Love it. So the first thing we did is, Nikki taught me about core values. So we established three very simple core values, and we started talking about what core values meant. Nikki taught me what they meant, and I had to get a real good understanding of the purpose of core values and why and how we could use them to leverage and guide my behavior. And then once I got kind of used to doing those, then I talked to them, rolled them out with my team.

So it started with core values, where we could all decide and agree upon a way of thinking, a way of acting, and a way of being. And then after that, I started very slowly talking about with the team, like, "Let's talk about the future. Let's talk about the vision of really growing Evolution Mechanical and transforming this company and this culture of where we're going and where we're headed."

And to do that, once I talked about vision and change, then I started talking about the idea and concepts of, "In order for us to change, we all have to start getting comfortable where we feel like it's a safe place here and we trust each other and we have each other's back, if you will, so we can start providing each other constructive criticism."

So it took several months of just little, tiny, bite-sized pieces of talking about this future place of growth and opportunity, and then what are the tools that we need to get there once people are like, "Yeah. I like the idea of this futuristic place," and then what tools do we need to get there? And then what do we need to start doing in terms of behaviors and practices to evolve ourselves so that we can then evolve the company?

Gordon Henry:

Now, people listening to this may think, "Well, this blue-collar guy went all touchy-feely." And I guess that sounds nice, but probably what they care about is, what was the result? Did it produce tangible results where your business got better, it got bigger, it got more profitable, more stable? Tell us about the results.

Matt Murray:

Yeah. Absolutely. So just the results, I've doubled the size of the company in just a few years. We're going to add on another 30 or 40% next year. I've created an environment where the company does not run through Matt Murray. I've built an entire leadership team. I've built a management team. Yeah. This touchy-feely stuff, if you are listening, you hear it. And some of it at first too, it'd sound a little hippy-dippy to me, like, "What?"

And I started doing some other stuff too that maybe we can talk about on another show. I'm talking about meditation and some other real touchy, woo-woo-y stuff. And at first, I was like, "No way. What are you talking about?" But yes, it all works. And yes, I know it sounds a little woo-woo-ish, but it absolutely allowed me to create an environment.

Once I, as the leader and CEO, once I started to evolve and change and prove and show, leading by example, show the others that I was open to feedback, and this is the real key, if you're going to start to create this high-performance culture by installing core values and create an environment in which it's safe to give each other feedback, you as the leader or owner of the company, you have to go first.

So I had to start with letting them give me feedback. And yes, I hated it at first, and I didn't like what they said, and I wanted to be defensive and justify and have validations and excuses, but I wasn't allowed to do that. I had to take the feedback, write it down, and swallow my pride, and then go do something with it. And through that, I was able to exhibit what it looks like to be a person that accepts feedback. And as they saw me growing and changing, then they were like, "Wow, that's amazing. We're literally watching Matt change right before our very eyes. I want to do that too."

Gordon Henry:

Well, that's really inspiring to hear, and it sounds like it was very successful. But even in that environment, you still need to discipline people. You still need to probably fire people occasionally. How do you mesh the desire to do all those nice things, the touchy-feely things, the feedback, the coaching, with the hard reality of some people show up late, some people don't perform, some people ultimately can't cut it? How do you do both?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. That's an excellent question. I'm glad you asked it. So that's really where the core values are super powerful. If you learn how core values work and you set up some core values that make sense and you get... When we did the core values, we got everyone on board with these core values. So it wasn't just my idea. It was everyone's idea, and we all agreed, like, "Okay. These are the guiding values that we're going to live by."

So once you have those and you're using them properly, not just hanging the poster on the sign in the lobby, right? That doesn't work. You have to practice the core values. We still today state the core values at every weekly meeting, every daily huddle, every monthly meeting, kind of like the Pledge of Allegiance like we used to do in school. We state them. They're what I will call alive in the organization.

So you start teaching not just the leaders, but you start teaching the other employees too that we are going to align to these core values, and part of the core values is that we have to uphold them. And we all have to be ambassadors of the core values, not just Matt Murray, the owner. But if you all want to create a community in which we're all growing together so we can all have a better future, make more money, get raises, get promotions, have fun, create more abundantly fulfilled lifestyles, you guys have to learn how to call each other out.

And when people are not aligned to these core values, which is going to happen, and people misbehave, we have to get comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. And much like feedback, people are not used to the feedback. They don't like the feedback, and people are not comfortable having these tough conversations. So the next thing behind the idea, the vision, and then the behaviors around core values, and development and growth, then I started teaching people how to have communication, uncomfortable conversations that are productive.

So it's not about an environment of just extreme discipline and being harsh with people, but it's about asking people a question. So if they're misbehaving, this is what we do, "Do you believe..." And we pretty much know where everyone wants to go in the future. So if you're a good leader, you should know where your employees want to go, where they want to be in six months or a year. And when they're misbehaving, showing up late, having a bad attitude, it's a simple question, like, "Hey, Billy, do you believe that your behavior aligns to our core values? Yes or no? Billy, do you believe that your behaviors align to where you want to go buying that new house next year? Yes or no?"

So rather than just telling people, "Stop, stop, stop. Don't, don't, don't," we're asking more emotionally intelligent questions around core values and around their future to get them to see for themselves that the behaviors they're engaging in, the decisions that they're making, they're taking away from themselves. So, therefore, I'm not managing people's behavior and forcing them and tugboating them to go someplace. I'm giving them tools to grow and then showing them for themselves where they can see when they are making a mistake and they are steering their ship in the wrong direction on their own. So I call it managing focus versus managing behavior, and it's extremely powerful.

Gordon Henry:

Wow. So you had this revelation, really, in how you approach being the boss, the leader. Sounds like you had some real substantial success, continue to have substantial success, and then you turn to coaching. So what made you sort of turn this page from, "Hey, I can run this powerful organization that's growing, that's getting bigger every year, and suddenly I want to be a coach to share this vision with people outside of my organization"? Why did you do that, and how did you do that?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. Love it. So what I found through my personal development journey is that I'm a very good coach and leader, and I'm passionate about those activities, and I'm not a very good manager. So I like to lead people. I like to motivate people. I love teaching them the process. I love showing them how to create a new process to fix a problem, but I'm not a good leader that's good at the monotonous stuff of telling people, "Just row, row, row." I'm not good with that consistency. I'm a mover and a shaker. I'm a high visionary.

So what I learned is that... And Nikki helped me with this too. He said, "You need to start acting as a coach within the framework or context of your own company because you're a..." Nikki just told me flat out, "You're a really good leader. You're a terrible manager." So I brought some people up, and what I did, it actually was fun for me and kind of motivated me, and it was very invigorating. I started acting like a personal coach or private coach, if you will, consultant for my leaders.

And they love it, and we still do this today. And that got me on the path of like, "Wow. Okay. So I'm coaching people in my own company. What would it look like if I just went out to the market and started helping people?" Because I know what it's like to go off on your own, and I know the pain and struggles that people are going through right now and that they're going to go through. So I found a real deep-rooted passion in coaching and also connecting to purpose, another layer or level, if you will. It gave me real strong identity and purpose to coach and help people.

So that's what kind of birthed the Blue Collar King. I don't really remember how the Blue Collar King name came to fruition. I didn't invent that myself. Someone else suggested it. And I was actually just talking about this on a show the other day. I was like, "I didn't really like the name at first. I thought it was kind of corny and tacky and weird."

But then the more I talked about it, and I have a friend that does branding, we kind of put the idea together and all the sauce and everything and the vision, and I went, "You know what? I like it. Let's go with it." So the Blue Collar King was born and it kind of aligned to who I am, and I like the idea, and I say like, "Hey, I like building kingdoms and businesses and stuff like that." So it all just kind of fit together.

Gordon Henry:

Right. So if someone is listening to this and nodding their head and saying, "I want to become part of this. I want to take the course. I want to meet Matt. I want to read the book," what are the steps they take? Just nuts and bolts, someone listening. How do they find you? Do they go somewhere to a convention hall for three days? What does it look like?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. The first thing to do is just go on Google and just look up Blue Collar King or go to bluecollarking.com. My website's there. I talk about what I do. You can also look me up on Instagram. @therealbluecollarking is my Instagram handle. Blue Collar King on Facebook.

Please shoot me a private message. I love to talk to people. I love to help people. Anyone that's curious or wants to know or has questions, or if you'd like a free copy of my book, shoot me a private message. I would love to send you a copy of my book, where I talk about this journey of all these different concepts and ideas that I learned and spent a tremendous amount of money on getting through some of my barriers, if you will.

Gordon Henry:

Terrific. Okay. Let's hope some people do that. Before we go to a break, I want to ask you one question, a little bit different topic, but I'm sure you must have some thoughts on. Whenever I talk to somebody in the trades these days, their number one problem seems to be getting help or getting good help anyway, getting good labor. I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on that?

Are kids not being taught the trades these days? Do we have a supply shortage of young people coming up in the trades? And what should we, as a society, be doing? Because there's all sorts of... You hear about people going into high tech and finance, everything, but a lot of these jobs are going to get offshored. But I still need a person to come fix my air conditioner.

Matt Murray:

Yeah.

Gordon Henry:

I can't have somebody in China do that for me if I live in New York. Right?

Matt Murray:

For sure. Yeah. Good question. So there's definitely a shortage of talent in the industry. Right? We've got baby boomers retiring and we've got these younger, newer generations that don't think blue collar is sexy, if you will. They want to be gamers. They want to be programmers. They want to work at Facebook and Google and Apple. That's the cool thing to do right now. So there's absolutely a shortage of talent backfilling the void, if you will, in the blue-collar spaces.

Now, is the problem insurmountable? No. Is it catastrophic? No. You just have to market it a little bit better. You have to position your company, your leadership, your culture, your benefits, what you're doing. You have to create a kingdom, if you will, and attract people to that kingdom and be different and better than your competitors. Another thing that we do is we go out and we form relationships with the local trade schools, and we have people that are coming to us and the instructors and stuff. They're like, "Hey, here you go."

We've hired a lot of technicians out of one of the trade schools locally here, and we have the people that have been working here for years that are giving referrals out there in the market, if you will, saying, "Yeah. I came out of the trade school. I went to work at Evolution. They took me out of school, and I went from level one to level four in half the time." And that word of mouth and reputation is huge. But the biggest thing is, what's your secret sauce? As a company, if you're going to be successful, you have to know what makes you different, not only to attract talent, but also to attract clients.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah. And I would think that the first thing we talked about, that whole story about how you become a better leader, how do you create a better environment, how you have those better relationships, how you lift your employees up to make them better, that that ties into the second thing, which is attracting people. Right? If I'm a young kid coming up and I'm hearing this and thinking, "God, this Matt Murray guy sounds amazing. I'd love to work for him," that's a great way to attract people to you as opposed to, "Oh, I can just go out and fix a bunch of air conditioners."

Matt Murray:

100%.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah.

Matt Murray:

Absolutely.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah.

Matt Murray:

Yeah. And that's what we do here. We develop humans here. We don't fix air conditioners. We develop humans. We grow humans. We train, we teach, we lead. It just so happens we also fix HVAC and refrigeration equipment.

Gordon Henry:

Right. Right. Right. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back in 30 seconds with more from Matt Murray. Don't go anywhere.

Thryv:

This episode of Winning on Main Street is brought to you by Thryv, the small business management platform that you and your customers will love, no matter where you are. Thryv helps you run your business, keep organized, and get paid faster, all from one login and dashboard. Thryv makes it easy for customers to find you online, instantly interact, and stay engaged. And with free, unlimited support 24/7, there really is no comparison. Go to thryv.com/pod for a quick demo to see everything Thryv can do.

Gordon Henry:

We're back with Matt Murray, the Blue Collar King, and a fascinating discussion about his own personal journey in becoming a better leader and how this may help you either become a great employee working with somebody like Matt, or take his coaching class and become better at running your business through some of the techniques he's learned. So lots to pick up on here.

I'd like to ask you about technology, Matt, because we're actually a sort of technology-focused show. And a question I have for you is, in becoming a better leader running a better business, what have you learned about, I'll call them systems in your business, whether it's your operational systems or your computer systems or your CRM system? How have you adapted technology to the business to make it more successful?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. I love that. So we just launched a new software, a new CRM software called ServiceTitan, which ties into an ERP backbone to run all of our accounting. We ran for about four years, kind of not the best front-end CRM software, and it's growing very quickly with technology and AI and stuff. And what I found is that the interface software we're using to manage all the work orders and the paperwork and the field and dispatching and invoicing and stuff was very old-school.

The market in terms of technologies and automations and making things simpler for not only employees, but also for the customer-facing side of things had really gotten way far out there. So we had to make a change, which can be excruciatingly painful when you have to go from one CRM software to another in a decent-sized company. But we had to pull the trigger, because just basic types of customer service things and follow-up and reviews and how we upload pictures and information was just moving too slow.

So it's really amazing to see what's out there now. I'm really glad we made the move. We went live June 1st on the new software, and it took several months to get things set up properly. We're just adding on now another piece of technology which is going to allow us to... In terms of the service and what the guys do, as you can imagine, these blue-collar workers, they don't really like typing up these reports and doing all this paperwork and stuff.

So we've just integrated an AI software, where the guys will have checkboxes, basically, of what they did. They changed the motor, changed the relay, did some electrical, whatever. They'll just check the boxes, and then AI is going to go in there and write a really nice report and summary with some other information, that all the guys have to do is provide little bits and pieces. AI is going to build out a nice little report of what actually got done so the customer can be told a story that they like and that makes sense for them, so they'd be happy to pay the bill.

So that's one of the biggest things that we're working on now. I also implemented a new CRM for the sales department to make things easier for them. So you have to be up to speed with technologies. With AI coming in, if you are not getting on the bus, your competition's going to eat you for lunch. This industry, or all industries, just the general day and age, in any industry, it's moving faster and faster and faster. So companies are getting more efficient and more profitable, more efficient and more profitable. So if you're moving very slowly, the competition's going to eat you for lunch.

Gordon Henry:

Right. Yup. Makes sense. And I think, as you said, that's true in virtually any industry, is adapting. You can't do it the old way-

Matt Murray:

You cannot.

Gordon Henry:

... if you expect to keep growing and keep things under control.

Matt Murray:

Yeah. What I would suggest, Gordon, for people to do is, I spend time reading trade magazines and going online and researching and watching. You could sit on the sidelines and things are going to pass you by. I proactively am going out there and researching HVAC technologies, blue-collar stuff. I'm just looking and I'm reading magazines and just seeing what's happening in the market and the trends with new technologies and new services and what people are doing, because I have to keep pace. You have to.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah. I'd like to just close with a success story of one of your coaching clients. Can you tell us about maybe one of the people who have been attending your coaching sessions and what it's done for them in a positive way?

Matt Murray:

Yeah. Absolutely. So the coaching is very new. I just started doing it this year. I currently have about seven or eight clients that I'm working with. I'm not doing a huge coaching model where I'm going to be working with hundreds of clients. There's different models in coaching. Some people have hundreds of clients that they plug into prerecorded courses and stuff like that, and they get 200 people on a Zoom call once a month. That's not my model. I'm more of a boutique model.

I tell people on my calls, "I'm not creating a learning environment. I'm creating a results environment. So I'm going to give you the right amount of information at the right time to help you move the needle." So that's what I love doing. I love getting in the trenches with entrepreneurs that are either just starting off on their journey, and I've got some that have been in business for five or 10 years that they're at different places, and I'm building different tiers now to meet people where they're at on their journey, depending on the size of their company and where they're at in terms of their leadership levels, if you will.

But I love measuring results not by emotion and not by conversations, and not by rah, rah, rah on a Zoom call or in a mastermind room, but by measurables. So everything that I do in coaching, much like I do in my core business, everything's based on numbers. So we're constantly looking at numbers weekly and monthly and making sure that we're seeing the results analytically, not emotionally.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah. Fantastic. So he's Matt Murray, Blue Collar King. You can look him up online. Google bluecollarking.com. And there's a lot to learn here about your business from your operations and your systems to more of this personal side and how to be a better leader. Matt, thanks so much for joining us. I think this was really useful information for a lot of people.

Matt Murray:

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Gordon Henry:

Okay. And I want to thank our producer, Tim Alleman, and our coordinators, Diette Barnett, Daniel Huddleston. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends, and family to subscribe, and please leave us a five-star review. Really appreciate it. It helps us with the rankings. Small business runs better on Thryv. Get a free demo at thryv.com/pod. Check out our new free product, Command Center, at thryv.com. Until next time, make it a great week.

Listener Reviews