Full transcript10 chapters · 9,180 words
00:00Leaving a 16-year job at 3M to join Justin’s HVAC startup
Janeen Norquist: Every employee’s disk profile is actually posted on our conference room wall. Once people can see how differently they’re wired, our conflicts dropped and our communication improved overnight.
Tyler Martin: Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue-collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We’ll dig into their journeys from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line, with lessons and grit that pay off big.
Tyler Martin: Here’s your host, the Blue Collar CFO, Tyler Martin. Why do so many service businesses stall out around that $3 to $5 million mark? It’s usually not leads. It’s people, communication, and lack of structure. Today, I’m chatting with Janine Norquist. She’s president of Just In Time Heating, Air Conditioning, and Plumbing.
Tyler Martin: And we break down how they improve their retention, reduced internal conflict using DISC, and built systems that actually support growth. If you’re trying to scale without burning out your team or yourself, this episode is right in your lane. Let’s get into it with Janine.
Tyler Martin: Hey, Janine, welcome to The Profit and Great Show. How are you doing today?
Janeen Norquist: I’m great, Tyler. Thank you. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited for our conversation today. I love your podcast. I love that it feels like real business, you know, contractor conversations, not just the highlight reels, you know, but the lessons, the strategies, the growth and the scars in some cases.
Tyler Martin: I love it. I love it. Yeah, the scars. Definitely. I think we’re going to cover a couple of those scars today in part of sharing some things with the audience and hoping people can learn from things in terms of your own growth. Where I’d love to start is just learning a little bit about you.
Tyler Martin: Could you tell me a little bit professionally what you do? And then I’d love to know a personal tidbit too.
Janeen Norquist: Sure. So I am president and co-owner of Just-In-Time Heating, Air Conditioning, and Plumbing Services in Sandwich, Illinois. So we are about an hour and 15 minutes southwest of Chicago, but very rural. So our town has about 9,000 people in it. So pretty rural.
Tyler Martin: Wow. That’s small.
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. Justin and I both grew up right around here. We love it here. Love our community. Very active in the community and stuff like that. So love it.
Tyler Martin: That’s awesome. And then how about like a little personal tidbit about yourself?
Janeen Norquist: Sure. Well, before coming into this industry, because believe it or not, I didn’t grow up thinking like someday I want to be in heating, air conditioning, and plumbing. But I actually didn’t grow up thinking this either, but I was an analyst for 3M for 16 years before joining Justin on this entrepreneurial journey.
Janeen Norquist: But I was excited that he invited me along and here we are 16 years later. I guess a personal tidbit that I love to talk about, anybody that knows me, is that outside of Just in Time, my favorite role is being Meemaw, is what my grandkids call me.
Janeen Norquist: and I am very blessed that most Wednesdays I am able to spend the day with them making memories. So I have four little grandkids.
Tyler Martin: That is awesome.
03:25Woman of the Year and why the trades gave her a platform
Tyler Martin: That’s very cool. And then just because I’m always so impressed by accolades and when your peers acknowledge you, during my research, a couple of things came up. One, you were voted 2025 Woman of the Year. That was at the Service Nation Service World Expo.
Tyler Martin: I think that was in November, if I remember correctly. And your peers actually voted you in on that. That’s pretty cool. Like, how meaningful is that to you when you get like that peer validation?
Janeen Norquist: Yeah, that’s really hard to put into words. Obviously, I mean, the award was in my name and I’m grateful for that, but I didn’t get there alone. You know, no one’s ever successful by themselves. My husband definitely, you know, invited me along on this journey, saw something in me
Janeen Norquist: that I definitely didn’t see myself at the time, have had some amazing mentors from this industry. And I just really hope that I can use that as a platform to help other people in the industry see their potential. I think maybe if I had a superpower, it would be being relational,
Janeen Norquist: I hope. And so hopefully people can see, wow, if she can do things like that, so can I.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah. And I mean, you have a whole bunch of them, but the other one that really caught my eye is top 30 influential women in industry. That was the HVACR magazine that honored you in that way. That’s pretty cool. I mean, you’ve got several others. You’re very active in Service Nation. I think it’s a weekly culture pillar that you’re part of. So really, you’re active. And why I bring this up, one is I think it’s super cool.
Tyler Martin: and you deserve to be acknowledged for all these things that people are acknowledging you for. But also like, why? Like, is this, are you doing this because you feel like this helps you run your business better? Is it, why is this community? It seems like it always gives so much.
Tyler Martin: I’m just curious. Like, I’d love to just learn more about you and like what drives you in getting this recognition and to keep doing things that are making an impact in the industry.
Janeen Norquist: Yeah, like I said, I think it gives, it just says a lot about our team, about Justin’s vision in starting our company and about the industry. And, you know, the trades gave me, the way I look at it is it gave me a platform to serve. It gave me purpose. It gave
Janeen Norquist: me confidence that I didn’t have. It’s just been so many opportunities. I just want to get the word out. I want to help other people see what they can do. And I just want to keep growing and learning so that I can, you know, other people can feel this way also, and that I can just serve and help
Tyler Martin: have a bigger impact and do more. Yeah, it’s very cool. It’s very cool. Where I want to start with this, since you brought it up, you talked about, you know, you were at 3M, I think you said 16 years, supply chain analyst. How do you, you and your husband,
Tyler Martin: how do you bridge that gap to going, hey, I’m going to leave this big, safe company, at least probably at the time it felt that way. And I’m going to go start, you know, an HVAC business. Like how do you get there? And does some of your scars interplant, like
Tyler Martin: Share in this journey where those scars popped up and was it early on and were there regrets about doing this? I’d just be curious. Take me through that.
Janeen Norquist: Yeah, it was completely out of character for us to do something like this. When we started Just In Time, Justin and I were together, we were living together and everything. I have two daughters that are biologically mine, but definitely ours. And they were young when we started the business.
Janeen Norquist: And so technically we were not married yet. So I was technically kind of a single mom and had the scars of that, I guess. And I really, really liked my stable corporate job at that time. But I guess the best way to say it is I really, truly believed in Justin.
Janeen Norquist: And when he talked about starting this business, he did not say things like, hey, I want to get rich. And why am I doing this for somebody else when I could be doing it myself? I mean, when he talked about the stream, he said things like, you know,
Janeen Norquist: I want to give clients the value and the service that they deserve. I want to get back to our community. You know, I want to wear this uniform with pride and, you know, have it be associated with like, Hey, that’s my go-to company there. They do all this stuff in the community. They
Janeen Norquist: sponsor my son’s t-ball team. You know I think one of the best compliment or a really cool moment that I remember probably two or three years in is all of our daughter’s friends were like, can I get a t-shirt? Can I get a t-shirt? And then like, we’d go to high school sports,
Janeen Norquist: sporting events and everybody’s wearing them. And it was just really cool. Cause it was like, I felt like that was a full circle moment for him because that’s, that’s what it means.
Tyler Martin: You know? Sure. Were there any early on, like when you talk about scars or kind of like, oh my gosh, what did we do? Were there any moments like that when you guys first started out?
08:21Buying the HVAC side of his dad’s company
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. And in all transparency, I didn’t day one quit my job. We started the business January 1st of 2010 and I left my job in October. So for a while there, it was kind of just helping here and there in the evenings. There wasn’t enough phone calls or jobs to really do much. So I would come
Janeen Norquist: home to a clean house. And, you know, if the kids forgot something at home, he could run it to school. He had a lot of free time. So, and then actually Justin’s dad owned a heating and air conditioning company and also a plumbing company at the time. And Justin left that company to start
Janeen Norquist: when we started just in time. His dad came to us several months later and said, Hey, you know, do you just want to buy the HVAC portion of that? So that did help us grow. We have some scars from that transaction, even though it’s family sometimes, you know, we just didn’t really
Janeen Norquist: educate ourselves much on acquisitions back then. So, but like I said, it’s part of our story. It’s part of our journey and it helped us grow. There was a couple other little talk-ins those first couple of years just with people, kind of like a one person truck that was retiring kind of a thing.
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. But then I think, you know, just our community involvement and things like that. Justin is pretty smart with marketing, that kind of thing. So the word kind of got out.
Tyler Martin: But what do you think, like, if you had to say in that first, say, three years, were there any big obstacles like where you’re trying to overcome things or was it pretty smooth
10:06Answering phones from the hospital, then seeing a real P&L
Tyler Martin: sailing from the beginning or does anything stand out that just didn’t go as planned?
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. So we were working out of our house to start out with at the kitchen table. So that presents its own challenges, right? Because technically, you’re not really supposed to be doing that. So we got a little bit bigger and there were some delivery trucks coming. And
Janeen Norquist: so then we rented our first space, but again, that was pretty small and it was just Justin and I. So, I mean, I answered the phones and he ran the calls. So if I was in the hospital, I was answering the phone still.
Tyler Martin: Wow.
Janeen Norquist: I was at a softball game or a school event. I was still answering the phones because back then it was full on 24-7. So that was really hard. The financial side of it was very difficult, very straining on us. And with me, you know, being the sole provider and insurance and everything for the kids at the time, there were some struggles there too.
Janeen Norquist: But, you know, we were all in, I guess. And again, during those first three years, you’re just doing everything right. You’re just trying to fix everything. You’re reacting to things as it comes. You don’t really know what you’re doing. And then, thank goodness, one of our suppliers offered a training.
Janeen Norquist: and they paid 50% of it and we paid 50% of it. So it made it affordable. And we went to this training and we were one of three contractors that took advantage of this, which was crazy. We did have to drive two hours to go to the training
Janeen Norquist: and it was five times a year for two days. And we met John and Vicki LaPlante in that training. And I’m sure you’ve heard their name.
Tyler Martin: Of course, yeah.
Janeen Norquist: Oh yeah. So this is when they had their own consulting company and one of the first times that they retired, for those of you that know them. They still have retired. And then in 2016, they announced their retirement of their consulting company and they were going full-time with Service Nation.
Janeen Norquist: And we were like, all right, well, we’re joining Service Nation. So had we not met them and really started understanding, I remember the first time they put up at P&L and we were like, what? Ours doesn’t look like that. So, you know, just really understanding the numbers, really understanding why it’s important
Janeen Norquist: to break down departments, getting processes in place, that kind of thing. Otherwise you’re just
Tyler Martin: reacting every day. Yeah. That’s good stuff. You know, one thing I am going to circle back on the process thing, cause I think that’s one thing that really makes you guys unique. But before I do, I want to talk about the whole husband and wife type dynamic. In some ways, I definitely can see
12:45Working with your spouse and staying in your own lanes
Tyler Martin: the pros of that. You know, you guys can leverage off of each other. You probably have certain strengths and weaknesses, but then I always, there’s a part of me that’s like, man, like that’s tough because you’re going home to your spouse. A lot of times you’re in the office with your
Tyler Martin: spouse. How do you guys make that work? Like what, and is there ever friction when it comes to like decision-making or do you guys know your own lanes? What does that look like in a, from a
Janeen Norquist: practical standpoint? So is there ever friction? Yes. I don’t think anybody would be telling the truth if they didn’t. But our core values, our vision, our mission, that’s all the same. And that’s the culture that we run every decision through. So the big things we work out, it’s more
Janeen Norquist: like, you know, again, I talked to you a little bit about DISC, but that’s helped us to understand each other better and communicate better because we go about things a little bit differently sometimes. But the end result and the end goal is all the same. But like you said, staying in our
Janeen Norquist: lanes is huge. And sometimes we just have to remind each other of that. I would say Justin’s better at it than I am about shutting off work because he kind of grew up in a family business environment and I have a harder time just shutting it off. So I’m the one that will tend to talk
Janeen Norquist: about it during dinner or bring up something in passing because I didn’t see him all day at the shop. So I caught you. I’m going to talk about this now. And he’ll be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m not in the mindset right now. But, you know, ultimately all the decisions that we’re making
Janeen Norquist: and, you know, we’re building the life together. You know, if I had a bad day or he had a bad day,
Tyler Martin: we typically know why we don’t have to explain it. Do you find like, whether it be service type for service nation or a business coach, do you, does that play any role in terms of like a buffer of when maybe, because sometimes you have like the visionary mind and then you have more of the
Tyler Martin: systems mind and those can kind of clash. Does that play any role into sometimes how you getting
Janeen Norquist: you guys on the same page or knowing which direction to go on something? Yeah. And I think, you know, the dynamic of a husband, wife business partnership too, is, you know, we love each other. We want to, you know, you don’t want to see somebody struggling. So you want to fix it.
Janeen Norquist: Well, that’s not always the answer. And that’s not always what they’re looking for. Right. But the coaches having that third party strategic partner, they care about you. They care about the success of the business, but they’re not emotionally in it. They’re kind of
Janeen Norquist: like higher level. So they’re able to ask questions and get us to think maybe a little bit at a higher level and not so much personally. But yeah, you know, I definitely think that the, you know, networking with and becoming really good friends with other contractors, especially ones that are
Janeen Norquist: husband and wife also is helpful not to share, you know, but how, how do you work through that? And just that level of understanding, because, you know, a lot of our best friends wouldn’t know what it’s like. Right. You run a business and work with your spouse every day and, and they
Janeen Norquist: just kind of get that. We, those have become some of our closest friends now is other contractors, but yeah, having that third-party coach and just that unemotional support has been very helpful.
Tyler Martin: Right. You had mentioned your husband is very good at marketing. Does he tend to be the idea generator guy where he’s always got a new idea? I’m making some inference here, so feel free to correct me. But I’m seeing you as supply chain.
Tyler Martin: You tend to be more of the systems, more of the strategic thinking. Is that fair to say?
Janeen Norquist: Yeah, I would say he’s more operational and the field team. And I’m more the people. And I mean, he’s very strategic also, but I’d say, yeah, people and strategy for me and operations and vision.
Tyler Martin: Okay. Our mutual, we both know Alyssa Rogers and in the show, she was explaining like her husband has a lot of ideas and the way she kind of worked around it because it can easily take you off track with different ideas. She just like notes it down. And once he started realizing like, you know, my ideas aren’t going to waste, they’re getting put on a priority list.
Tyler Martin: It like really helped that friction of staying away from shiny new object type ideas and staying focused on what’s at hand with all these those ideas can come back when the timing’s right. Do you guys have some like system or methodology where you kind of buffer those ideas and directions you’re going?
Janeen Norquist: Yeah, we do have an owner’s meeting pretty regularly. We kind of fell off track on that and we’re getting back on. So it’s good we’re talking about that. But then we also have our leadership team meeting weekly. I think that helps to just keep things on track.
Janeen Norquist: And I’m sorry, Tyler.
Tyler Martin: No, that’s good. I was just kind of taught, I get, you know, whenever I ask a question, I usually ask like 50 questions in one sense. So it’s on me. But just in terms of like the dynamics of, you know, your personalities and kind of making them both,
Tyler Martin: like you have a system, like Alyssa kind of had a way
17:52Short bullet emails and a third party to deliver the numbers
Tyler Martin: to get around her husband’s, I don’t want to say quirkiness because I don’t think it’s bad, but he’s an IGE generator and it’s easy to get off track with that type of mindset. Do you guys have like frameworks? It sounds like your owner’s meeting
Tyler Martin: might be one thing.
Janeen Norquist: Yeah, that’s one thing. Our communication, you know, understanding how he wants to be communicated with. You know, I used to send an email and the way I send an email is it’s like three paragraphs long. It has all the information in it. and he would not respond.
Janeen Norquist: And I would be really frustrated because I felt disregarded, right? Well, we had a business coach that said, Justin, why didn’t you respond to Jeanine’s email? She’s emailed you three times. And he’s like, I opened it. It was like three paragraphs long. I don’t have time to read that.
Janeen Norquist: So now I can either continue to hit my head against a wall and he won’t read it, or I can do a couple of short bullet points. What do you think? And then I get a response. So that’s been a tool that has helped.
Janeen Norquist: And then also, I think one of our biggest struggles, full transparency is, and I hear this a lot at conferences when I’m talking to husband and wife contractors, you know, if the, like I handle, I’m the CFO. Yeah. So I handle the financials.
Janeen Norquist: Right. So it’s easy for me to say, hey, you know, this labor percentage is out of line or we need to raise prices or we need to be more efficient or why is this guy driving an hour on idle? You know what I mean? What’s going on here?
Janeen Norquist: Where I think especially coming from like your wife or your husband, it’s can feel more of like a personal attack. Like, don’t you think I can handle this or something like that? So that was kind of becoming a little bit of an issue.
Janeen Norquist: And I’ve heard that so many times where the wife will say like, yeah, I’m the dream crusher. Like, like you said, he’s the visionary. He it’s like, let’s buy this or let’s move open another location. And we’re like, no, hold on. So, you know, we are actually using like we’re partnering with like third party to kind of go through in really all she does is go through our financials monthly and does a three month comparison.
Janeen Norquist: but it’s kind of like using AI sometimes. It doesn’t feel like a personal attack. It just is reporting the data.
Tyler Martin: Right, right. No, yeah, I’ve seen that. I definitely have seen that in my own client base where one will be the finance mind and the other will be the non-finance mind. And maybe the finance, because they’re married, it just doesn’t come off right.
Tyler Martin: And having that intermediary, even though they’re saying maybe the exact same thing as the other party, It just, it doesn’t have, it doesn’t come off the same way. It doesn’t sting, I guess I’d say.
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. And, you know, when you’re looking at the financials day in and day out, especially with my personality type, I’m learning because that drains me, you know, it’s been my role for 16 years, but I’m like, you know, maybe I don’t need to be in all the day to day of
Janeen Norquist: it because then I obsess about it. I’m like, okay, well, you know, that I get into the nitty gritty of things where it’s Like really, all I need to do is say, is labor percentage in line of where we need it to be?
Janeen Norquist: If it is, great, let it go.
20:59Gross margin by department and a 20% direct labor target
Janeen Norquist: If it’s not, then I can maybe dig in.
Tyler Martin: Yep, yep. On that note, since you’re CFO, I’d love to know, what is it? Do you have a general metric for labor percentage that you’re looking at? Are there a couple metrics that stand out to you that you feel are like the be-all in terms of,
Tyler Martin: hey, you got to pay attention to these?
Janeen Norquist: Yeah, so definitely. Well, we do everything by department.
Tyler Martin: Okay.
Janeen Norquist: But we have, you know, on the HVAC side, we have install, we have maintenance, we have service. And on the plumbing side, we have service and install.
Tyler Martin: Okay.
Janeen Norquist: Because we don’t really do drain cleaning and stuff.
Tyler Martin: And then what do you tend to look at most? Are you looking at GP by service line? Are you looking at gross profit by service line? Are you looking at the labor percentage by service line? What are the variables that go, hey, things are working or, hey, maybe we got a problem?
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. Well, I tend to focus high level. I tend to focus on profit. Justin tends to focus on revenue. But to answer your question, definitely the gross margin by department and then also focusing on overhead for the company
Tyler Martin: and by department. Okay. And then is there a general diagnostic you have from a labor percentage that you’re looking at? Is there a standard or does it vary? What’s that look like for you?
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. Overall, for the whole company, when I run my company numbers, I’m looking for it to be about 20%.
Tyler Martin: That’s including admin or just direct labor?
Janeen Norquist: That is just direct labor.
Tyler Martin: Oh, wow. Okay.
Janeen Norquist: So, yeah.
Tyler Martin: So, I’ve heard, you know, it’s interesting. Each department is so different. Yeah. So, I’ve heard anywhere from 17. So, the general rule of thumb is like 17 to 20. You know, it’s interesting. I’ll have periodically clients come to me and it’ll be like 26, 28%.
Tyler Martin: And their GP will be really low. and it’s usually a combination issues, but their labor is really high, which it’s interesting you look at that because a lot of times I think we don’t look at numbers like that. And then we wonder like why our bottom line isn’t what we want it to be.
Janeen Norquist: Right. Right. Yeah. And I mean, I feel like profit is just like any other bill. We have to pay that bill. It shouldn’t just be whatever’s left over.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good.
Janeen Norquist: But it does depend, you know, if you’re in growth mode. And I think, you know, like Joey and Alyssa, like you mentioned, you know, I mean, they’re in high growth mode.
23:19Posting every disc profile on the conference room wall
Janeen Norquist: So that is going to change things. You know, when we’re, we know our first quarter is not going to be super profitable. We’re in Illinois and that’s just kind of how it is. And we’re ramping up for the heat of the season. So, you know, we don’t want to cut back on marketing just because the revenue isn’t there.
Janeen Norquist: So, you know, it’s all percentages. And so if the revenue isn’t there, then the percentages are going to be a little bit higher. But again, as you know, the financials tell a story. And as long as you’re making conscious decisions, intentional decisions, so that you can hit the ground running when you can, depending on the season, I think it’s okay.
Janeen Norquist: But you just need to be aware of it. It can’t just happen.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good stuff. Okay, I want to talk about next thing. That’s just great stuff we just talked about. I want to talk about this. you guys obviously disc is part of your culture and you actually put the profiles. I think at one point it was like 24 profiles. I’m sure it’s changed, but you put the profiles on the wall,
Tyler Martin: I think in the conference room. So everybody can see everybody, coworkers, colleagues, managers, everybody can see their own, their, each other’s disc profiles. Can you talk about that? Cause to me, that’s pretty unique. And it, it, it definitely sets your culture in terms of,
Tyler Martin: I’m sure when someone’s getting interviewed at your company and they see that, they immediately know like, hey, we’re open here. Like we’re going to know how each other operates. Talk about that a little bit in terms of your decision making on doing that and what kind
Tyler Martin: of impact it had to the business.
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. I mean, it gives so much insight into the people. And we all know, you know, hiring somebody is quite an investment. And if it doesn’t work out, it’s very costly. So, you know, we do quarterly hiring events, which we’ve kind of gotten those down now with the help of some coaches.
Janeen Norquist: But they know what we invite them in to a hiring event every time we post jobs, too. And so we go through like the career paths. We go through the hiring. We start out with our vision, our mission, and our core values. because again, we don’t want to waste our time, but we don’t want to waste their time either.
Janeen Norquist: We’re a company that has a lot of meetings. We invest in our team. We do a lot of trainings and things like that. So we want them to know that upfront, make sure it’s a good fit for them. And then part of that hiring process is taking the DISC profile if right before their second
Janeen Norquist: interview. And then we use that information to, for instance, I guess an easy one would be if somebody’s like a super high economic as far as values and attributes, that’s going to make me ask them some questions, you know, because that could be good. Nothing’s good or bad. It’s just
Janeen Norquist: insight. So again, those questions would be different depending on their disc profile, just to get to know that person a little bit better. And then, you know, once they’re hired, I’ll sit down with them and go through like their disc debrief, which that has been incredibly
Janeen Norquist: surprising to me. I mean, I guess I didn’t really know what to expect from that, but people get even emotional going through that. It really is almost like they feel heard and understood for the first time. And sometimes they’ve never even heard of DISC, you know,
Janeen Norquist: and, and I’ll, because before I’m going to post it up there, I need their buy-in, you know what I mean? And I haven’t had it yet where I’ll say like, read this page about how you prefer to be communicated with? Like, and they’re like, oh, oh yeah, that’s me. You know? So we have
Janeen Norquist: everyone’s picture with their disc profile and then we keep it simple. You know what I mean? You can get a 74 page report, but no one’s going to do that. So, and then we say, you know, for this person, this is how they prefer to be communicated with. Do these things, don’t do these things.
Janeen Norquist: But then, you know, if I’m going to send that person with you and you don’t really know them and I’m expecting you to train them, I’m also going to share some insight with you on this is how this person learns best. This is the ideal environment for them.
Tyler Martin: Very cool. And do you have, I’m assuming you’ve never gotten pushback on this. Like has anybody ever felt comfortable with having their disc profile on the wall?
Janeen Norquist: Yeah, no one’s ever had a problem with it. They love it, really. It’s always been positive, nothing negative.
Tyler Martin: So do you, because something you said earlier too, You said, you know, hey, whenever we go through our decision making, we think about our vision, we think about our, you know, what our business goals are and what we’re all about. This disc also plays into that, right?
Tyler Martin: Like just in terms of your overall, how your decision making happens and how you’re interacting with each other. Do you have any data points since you’ve done this in terms of how it’s changed turnover or whether it’s changed productivity? Any type of data points since you’ve done it?
Janeen Norquist: Yeah, I will say retention has been incredible. I mean, just most recently, we hired four new field team people, some plumbing apprentices and HVAC techs. And we hired them at the beginning of October and they’re all still here.
Tyler Martin: Wow, that’s really good.
Janeen Norquist: And thriving. It has changed a little bit of where without the disk profile, I think my husband and our lead techs would have hired someone different. Sure. In some cases or not considered somebody where I’m like, hey, here’s some things that I’m seeing.
Janeen Norquist: Obviously, you know, I don’t know the person either, but you might want to consider this person for this role. But again, it’s not cookie cutter. I don’t like labeling people by any means. Yes, there’s some, you know, certain personality types that can tend to be better, you know, like a high C that could be better in accounting role or something like that.
Janeen Norquist: But it’s not necessarily that.
Tyler Martin: me. So that’s, that’s what I was going to ask you. I’m still going to ask, even though you kind of answered it is like, when you’re thinking of a technician, are there certain, you know, dominant or whatever that, that I don’t remember all the things where you’re going, Hey, this is going to
Tyler Martin: be a better profile that you have two applicants than maybe someone that doesn’t fall in a certain criteria. Are you finding any patterns like that? When you look at, you know, you say those people from October, they’re being successful. Do they have similar patterns in their disc or are they
Janeen Norquist: all completely different? As far as the disc portion, which is the personality styles, like what you, it really, that gives you insight to if the higher that letter or that personality type, the more often you’re going to tend to see those behaviors or the more prevalent they’ll be.
Janeen Norquist: So I would say like for a technician, we have a lot of S’s and C’s. Okay. So they care about, you know, people and they, I will say that, you know, we didn’t always use this in our hiring process. And so I will point this out when I’m doing training with our team on DISC. I’ll say,
Janeen Norquist: if you look at that wall, we have a lot of people with a high S. Now that means they care so much about people. They want stability. They might be a little bit slow with change, those kinds of things. They don’t like confrontation. They want to feel safe and stable. So I was like, knowing
Janeen Norquist: that Justin and I need to make sure we’re creating an environment that is safe for you to bring ideas for you to challenge, you know, if there’s a process that isn’t working, they may tend to just keep doing it because we told them to, you know, so it just gives so much insight in how you
Janeen Norquist: talk to people and communicate to, you know, if it’s somebody’s more task oriented, I’ll ask them, what do you think about this? And if they’re more people oriented, you tend to ask more like, how do you feel about that? Yeah. Or, you know, different motivators, you know, not everybody’s
Tyler Martin: driven by a dollar an hour more. Yeah. So if someone was interested, let’s say there’s someone out in the audience listening and saying, Hey, I really need that in my business. Like, where do you start it? Like, what would your suggestions be around someone that has no type of disc type
Janeen Norquist: profiling to maybe starting the groundwork of doing it? So the first place I would start is with yourself. Okay. You know, taking the assessment yourself and then really digging in and going through it because, you know, self-awareness is the key. But once you read
Janeen Norquist: yours and understand it, you automatically start seeing things in other people and you start understanding it more because you relate it to yourself. You’re like, wow, how did it know that about me? And so you get real curious about it. So that’s where I would say you start. I know
Janeen Norquist: that there’s, you know, you can Google disk profiles and find some free ones. Excuse me. As being a Service Nation member, they started a couple of years ago. Chris Michelle brought in the Intermetrics disk. And that, as a Service Nation member, is a free tool.
Janeen Norquist: So I tried to tell everybody about that. I’m like, you should be using that. Have your entire team take the disk profile and just start looking through it. And again, I’ve done, I love it. It’s helped our team, our organization, my marriage, my relationship with my kids, everything.
Janeen Norquist: So I have gone further and gotten certified in training and consulting with DISC. But you don’t have to do that. You know what I mean? Reading through it and understanding will give you a lot of insight.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. A couple of years ago, I went, Jobber, they make a CRM software, invited me onto their podcast and they flew me to Las Vegas. And I met with some of the other people that were guests there. And I’ll never forget, there was a guy named Tom Reber.
Tyler Martin: He does some podcasts and he’s in the construction industry. He’s a coach. And the way he was talking about the disc profile, he’s like, you know, as soon as I know someone’s disc profile, I literally can connect with anyone. I literally can figure out what makes them tick and how to interact with them that we’re
Tyler Martin: going to have a productive conversation. and he was like the first person in, I’m not even doing justice the way he explained it, but it was like the first person that I never really looked at it that way. Like I always looked at it as like a scoring system
Tyler Martin: for a personality and I, cause that’s just my brain, I’m a numbers guy and I think I try to articulate it that way. But he was like, no man, he’s like, it’s the way people want to be communicated. When they fill that out, they’re basically saying,
Tyler Martin: and please feel free to correct me if you see it differently, but he was like, this is the way they want to be communicated. If you understand that and you communicate with them the way they see themselves as wanting to be communicated with, you’re exponentially increasing your chances to having a deep connection with them.
Tyler Martin: And it just like, like just stopped me in my tracks and in terms of the value of it. How do you feel about that when you hear it?
Janeen Norquist: Oh, yeah. I mean, I even present on disc out in the community and different organizations and stuff because, you know, we all, everything we do is with people. and the more, the better you can connect with people, the further you’re going to go. Right.
Janeen Norquist: I mean, so I do training once a month with our team in our all company meeting for about 20 minutes and I just keep building on it each time, but they’re starting to see, and, you know, and then I can put it into examples in our industry, but, you know, we have our value statements. We
Janeen Norquist: have, you know, different scripts that we can give, but it’s not, you know, if you’re at a customer’s home and they’re like, get to the point, don’t just keep going just because the script says to go, you know, or if you come to my house, I’ll, you know, don’t just come in and say,
Janeen Norquist: where’s your thermostat? Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m out of here. I won’t like you. And if I don’t like you, then I don’t want you in my house. But if you say, Hey, is that you have horses? And I, I rode a horse once then I’m like, Oh, I love you. Come on in. You know? So, yeah, yeah, no,
Tyler Martin: That’s good stuff. Okay, good. One last thing I want to cover before we wrap up is just this concept of role-playing. I know you guys are a big fan of this as part of your training.
35:25Skill practice, not role-play, filmed in front of your peers
Tyler Martin: I think you might still do it weekly or frequently. Talk with me, how did you introduce that role-playing? When did that come into part of your business? How do you think it impacts your business? Where did you get the structure for it? I just kind of want to dig into that.
Tyler Martin: So maybe just share starting out with like, Talk to me how you handle your role-playing right now, and do you still do it, and how often?
Janeen Norquist: Yes, we do, and we do it weekly to some degree.
Tyler Martin: Okay.
Janeen Norquist: I don’t know if they still do it on the field end, but in the office, we use Service Titan, so all of our calls are recorded. So we can kind of play those through, and then we can talk through some different situations even using that.
Janeen Norquist: But with the field team, first of all, we don’t call it role-play. We call it school practice.
Tyler Martin: Okay, okay.
Janeen Norquist: And, you know, it’s just the language, but it just makes it feel better. Sounds better. Yeah. But we literally have somebody like knock on the conference room door. They have to answer the door. And another key thing that Justin was doing for a while is videoing while they’re doing the skill practice.
Janeen Norquist: Because they won’t notice that you’re walking to the door with your arms crossed or that you say, I’m sorry, 12 times or those kinds of things. So when you’re watching it back, you notice a lot more. And if you can get through a scenario in front of your peers, you can do it anywhere.
Tyler Martin: Right. Yeah, it’s intimidating. It’s intimidating.
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. But they all have to do it. You know, like we’re getting ready to go to the International Maxwell Conference next week. And another fellow contractor friend, you know, we have to do a three-minute speech as part of the certification. and she was getting really nervous about it.
Janeen Norquist: And I’m like, you have to remember everybody at your table also has to give a speech. So they’re going to be really nice to you because they want you to be really nice to them. But sometimes they really challenge each other too sometimes,
Janeen Norquist: but they take it really seriously. Yeah. Because I think they’ve seen the value of how it helps them in real life situation.
Tyler Martin: Have you guys seen anything, whether it be reviews or some type of data where, man, this is definitely paying benefits?
Janeen Norquist: Yeah, definitely. Especially, I think, with technicians that are a lot more technical and like to explain and tell the customer everything that they’re going to do and how the system works and that kind of thing. So it helps them understand that they can be a little bit more relational and focus more on features and benefits.
Janeen Norquist: Yes, there’s going to be certain personality types, which we try to train them on that may want to read the manual and have you explain what that wire does. But most people just want you to get them back to normal and fix it.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, yeah. I, you know, I’ve had a few situations like that where you get that technician that wants to tell you every, and God bless them. I mean, I get it. They were passionate about that, what they do, but it’s like in the back of your mind,
Tyler Martin: you’re like, dude, just fix this. I just want my, I want cool air again.
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. You’re like, I, because you’re here, I think you’re qualified. You don’t have to prove it.
Tyler Martin: Just fix it. That’s funny. Okay. So I think in terms of the only other last thing I kind of want to talk with you about, like just from a business standpoint, I know you guys have gone, I believe it’s from 3 million to 6 million. What’s kind of your aspiration to the business? Like,
Tyler Martin: do you guys, are you the next hundred million dollar business? Is it multi locations? Is it like you’re in a good spot where you’re at? What do you kind of have a vision in terms of where
38:57At $5.5M, building mid-management and a service manager role
Janeen Norquist: you want to go as a business? So I feel like, and I’m sure you hear this a lot. I heard, you know, Alyssa talking about it too, but there’s different levels that are harder, right? What got you here won’t get you there. And we’re at about five and a half million now in revenue. And we’re seeing
Janeen Norquist: that we do work hard to develop leaders. You know what I mean? And, but there is still, we’re still working on that. You know, you can’t, you can’t just always promote your best technician into a leadership role, your best dispatcher into a leadership role, right? It’s a whole
Janeen Norquist: different skill set. And so, you know, in 2026, we are focusing on efficiency, accountability, and intentional growth. But we’re doing that to set us up for, you know, really honing in on our processes. We’ve implemented trainual, you know, a lot of things like that that are making it very,
Janeen Norquist: like, more streamlined and efficient in our, in getting our processes and they’re more accessible. before that. Like last year, we’d be like, where’s that process? Oh, it’s saved in this folder. It wasn’t good. Most of them were fine, but some of them weren’t. So training will be a big thing.
Janeen Norquist: And just really kind of overviewing what’s all in our overhead. Do we really need these things and that kind of thing. But I think that’s what’s going to set us up for growth, I guess, more revenue growth and profit growth in the future. So we want to run a company that private equity
Janeen Norquist: would love to buy. And then we, you know, then it’s a good company, right? I mean, and we can choose if we want to sell or not sell. I mean, I don’t know that we really want to sell to private equity. That’s not really our goal, but you don’t know what’s going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler Martin: And it’s also when you get the offer, sometimes that can change your mind pretty quickly, depending on how many zeros are attached to it. You know, you mentioned train, train you all. So a lot of times, Ascribe, Whale, and Trainual are the ones that all get mentioned.
Tyler Martin: These are like software packages for documenting processes. How do you like Trainual? I haven’t actually used it. Is that a pretty good way to document your processes?
Janeen Norquist: It is. And it’s very easy to categorize them. It keeps them standardized. If a process or SOP is updated, it will automatically notify anyone that that process is relevant to. and you can either have them acknowledge it or sign off on it, depending on how big of a deal it is,
Janeen Norquist: but at least acknowledge so that they know something has been updated. Very cool. And again, it’s very easy to find even on HR issues. So they don’t have to ask myself or my assistant, they can just go into train you all and say,
Janeen Norquist: oh yeah, how much PTO do I have? Or what is the policy for this?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, very cool. Yeah, just in closing here, those, I’m always fascinated by the levels of a company because there really is, I guess I’d call it a maturation process from like 3 million or let’s say 1 million, you have, you know, maybe a
Tyler Martin: little bit of a chuck in the truck getting out of that a little bit, but you’re still the primary person. You get into that 3 million, it changes a little bit. 5 million, you have a new kind of ceiling. And I would argue 5 million is maybe the hardest because you’re bigger, but you don’t have
Tyler Martin: necessarily the resources to have this full-on management team, but you’re trying to build infrastructure. And so you’re kind of caught in this weird, you know, you’re kind of like a teenager that, you know, is stuck in this phase of becoming a goal. Yeah, awkward. And then I think once you
Tyler Martin: blow through that, maybe seven plus, I do feel, I don’t want to say it gets easier. It just, I think you have more resources to do things at that point.
Janeen Norquist: Yeah. And that’s why we’re focusing so much on the efficiency and developing that mid-management role. If we can get some, like, I really feel like we need like a service manager. And right now, Justin is refining that. You know, he just really has on his heart that he wants it to be set up perfectly to
Janeen Norquist: pass that on. So he’s working on some things there so that the handoff and that team member expectation for that role is very clear.
Tyler Martin: And I agree with that. I mean, clarity, you have to know what winning looks like in that position. When you get into a mid-management role, you’re now responsible for your team’s results, not just your own individual results, like all of those things. Yeah, I think that’s really wise because a lot of times what I’ll see is people get kind of an idea about adding someone.
Tyler Martin: They’ll do it. They don’t really have a plan. They don’t really have a vision. And all they’ve done is just added more overhead but don’t really have any way to say, I’m going to build infrastructure around this or I’m going to make it pay for itself.
Tyler Martin: And it just ends up kind of hurting your bottom line and oftentimes doesn’t work.
Janeen Norquist: And right now, we do have a great team. I mean, they really care. They make great decisions. It doesn’t have to all go through us. But again, to get much bigger, we are going to have to have more mid-management level. So right now, it gives us the opportunity to, like, we have lead positions, and we can start giving a little bit more responsibility here and responsibility there. So they start learning and growing and developing. And then we’re also able to see kind of what their capacity and what their, you know, skill set is in the area of leadership.
Tyler Martin: Very cool. Well, this has been a great conversation. It sounds like, and then is it next week or two weeks, you’re actually doing this three minute speech? Yes. Next week? Yeah, next week. Oh, how exciting. Well, I’m wishing you the best of luck.
Tyler Martin: I hope it goes smoothly. I would be, even though I know everybody else have to do it, I still would be as nervous as can be. So hopefully it sounds like you’re, this is one of your, we all have superpowers. It sounds like maybe one of your superpowers.
Janeen Norquist: Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
Tyler Martin: Thank you for your time.
Janeen Norquist: It’s been awesome.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, it has been awesome. Just your websites. I’ll put your LinkedIn in the show notes. Your business website is justintimeheroes.com. justintimeheroes.com. I know you’re a fan of Service Nation, so I imagine if anyone wanted to learn more about that, would you be open to them reaching out to you
Tyler Martin: just to kind of understand it more?
Janeen Norquist: Absolutely. I’m open to anything. We’re completely transparent. We’ve invited contractors from all over the country or if they’re right down the road, You know, there’s enough work for all of us. So if there’s anything that we can help with, we’re happy to do that.
Tyler Martin: So cool. Hey, thanks, Janine, for taking your time to spend with me today. And I really appreciate the conversation. There were a lot of great takeaways from this podcast with Janine. I think the biggest one is this. You don’t scale a business by working harder.
Tyler Martin: You scale it by getting more intentional. From how you hire, to how you communicate, to how you train your team. Everything compounds over time. And what stood out most is that companies that win aren’t just chasing revenue. They’re building structure, clarity, and accountability underneath it.
Tyler Martin: So, hey, if you’re a shop owner and you’re trying to turn growth into profit, better cash flow, and clearer decision making, I’m your guy. Go ahead and book a no-pressure intro call at cfointrocall.com. dot com. That’s CFO intro call dot com. Or check out my website at CFO made easy dot com. That’s
Tyler Martin: CFO made easy dot com. But most of all, thanks for taking your time out of your day to listen to the show. I sincerely appreciate it. And I will catch you on the next episode. Take care.
Related Episodes
- Fired at 19 to Running a $3M Service Business – Brandon Saiz
- What Numbers Drive HVAC Growth? – Lawrence Castillo
- From Family HVAC Shop To Scalable Company – Ray Isaac
- Thinking Too Small Is Costing You Millions – Alyssa Rogers
Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: HVAC accounting help from a fractional CFO for HVAC contractors. For where your business sits right now, read the $3M to $15M scaling breakdown.
