Ep 98- Treating Stakeholders with Respect with Jeff Ludy

Transcript

Transcripts are generated by machine learning, so typos may be present.

Chris Hanslik: Jeff, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business. Thanks for taking the time to come in today.

Jeff Ludy: It’s a privilege. Thank you.

Chris Hanslik: So let’s get started. Just by first introduce yourself and tell us about your company, what it’s known for.

Jeff Ludy: I’m Jeff Ludy. I’m the founder of the Window Experts. Locally based.

Jeff Ludy: Started off as a mom and pop company that in 2011 we just worked outta my garage. Grew it into a, I would say, a disruptor in this industry.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: We have a national footprint and we’ve made a difference and an impact in this industry and tried to live by the old fashioned sort of rule of, treat others the way you’d wanna be treated.

Jeff Ludy: And we’ve built the business off of taking care of our clients.

Chris Hanslik: So let’s go back just what was the inspiration to start in 2011, I guess you said to, to get going outta your garage and being a window guy.

Jeff Ludy: Yeah. So I have a history in a lot of things, right? I’ve worked for MetLife for years.

Jeff Ludy: I did investments. I owned a restaurant for years and I’ve also been a vocational minister as an associate pastor at a mega church here [00:01:00] in the Houston area.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: And when that career ended I was looking for something to do and I went into sales. Because I believe that, everything’s sales.

Jeff Ludy: Even ministry is sales, right? Jesus. I think Jesus is one of the best salesmen that ever existed. He tried to persuade you not to go down the devil’s route, choose me instead, and that kind of thing.

Chris Hanslik: I hear you.

Jeff Ludy: And so I went into sales and I was working for a home improvement company and they focused on everything.

Jeff Ludy: I felt like to me the windows and doors was my niche. I felt like I learned a lot and I got really good at it, but I didn’t like the way the owner treated the clients, the way he treated the employees, the way he treated the subcontractors. And I would come home to my wife and complain about it often. She said, “Jeff, why don’t you just start your own window company?”

Jeff Ludy: And I’ve been working for this guy for a little over a year, so I went to him. I said, I’m gonna start my own window company. I’m gonna compete with you, but any leads that I got while I was working for you, I’m gonna make sure I send them back to you if they call me. He said, sure you will.

Jeff Ludy: Within a month, I gave him three of those leads that converted into jobs and we had a call after he said, “Jeff.

Jeff Ludy: I really didn’t think you were gonna [00:02:00] do it right. But the fact that you sent those customers back to me”, which by the way, I was trying to start a business. I could have kept them.

Chris Hanslik: You needed every,

Jeff Ludy: They were buying from Jeff Ludy, not necessarily that company, but I felt it was the right thing to do and he and I got to be really good friends where we weren’t really that close.

Jeff Ludy: Yeah. When I worked for him and I would send him work for things that I couldn’t do, and he would send me complex jobs that he couldn’t handle.

Chris Hanslik: There’s a. We talk about it all the time when people leave leaving the right way.

Chris Hanslik: It is sadly not done as often as it should be, but it makes the biggest difference.

Chris Hanslik: And of course we see in the work we do lots of disputes over that. People don’t leave the right way. And it creates a lot of conflict, usually leads to a lawsuit or something.

Chris Hanslik: And so it’s, kudos to you for

Jeff Ludy: Chris, I

Jeff Ludy: should interject.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah.

Jeff Ludy: That when I was in my thirties, I didn’t always do things nearly as well.

Jeff Ludy: A friend of mine, a dear friend of mine, came to me one time, pulled me aside, he said, Jeff, he said, I wanna say something to you and never forget this, and I have not. He said, Jeff, friends will come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Chris Hanslik: [00:03:00] Okay.

Jeff Ludy: And I thought, I’ve got enough enemies.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: So if at all possible, I’ve always tried to separate on good terms.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah.

Chris Hanslik: And we’ll come back to that because I think there’s a lot of lessons for people to learn. About, and you admitted like none of us are perfect yeah. You made mistakes.

Jeff Ludy: Yeah.

Chris Hanslik: Question is how well do you learn from them and then move on? And I think that’s the biggest differentiator.

Chris Hanslik: Some people don’t learn

Chris Hanslik: from their

Chris Hanslik: mistakes. But I gotta ask this now, ’cause you said you you started this company and you became a disruptor in the industry.

Chris Hanslik: Okay. What do you mean by that? How can you tell us or what can you share with us that would show that disruptive

Chris Hanslik: nature?

Jeff Ludy: It started, I’m a disruptor by my DNA. When I was six years old, I started my first business. I started a worm stand. All my neighboring kids were lemonade stand kids. I was a worm stand guy because I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be different. Not just for the sake of being different, but there was a lake a mile from our house, so all the other kids, their revenue was somewhere under a dollar.

Jeff Ludy: I was two to three bucks.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: Because

Jeff Ludy: I [00:04:00] sold something that my audience wanted. And in this industry, what I’ve learned is that pretty much everyone does it the same way. And I think about when I go to the grocery store, there’s a sea of green apples, right? How do I be the red apple in the sea of green apples so that I can stand out?

Jeff Ludy: And the way I found to do that actually happened a little bit by accident. I needed a car after I just started this company, right? I needed a car, a better car. So I went to Chevy and they told me they were amazing. I went to Ford. They told me they were better than Chevy. And then I went to Dodge and they said, oh no, they’re both wrong.

Jeff Ludy: Now. I was confused about who to buy a car from. So I went to CarMax. CarMax said what do you want? Do you want a Chevy? Do you want a Ford? Do you want a Mercedes? And we’ll treat you fair and give you a no haggle price? And I thought, why doesn’t anybody do this in the window industry? Okay, why does Anderson say we’re the best?

Jeff Ludy: And then Pelle comes out after you talk to Anderson and say, no, we’re the best. And now you’re confused. I thought, why not have both? So we have over a dozen brands of windows, including Anderson and Pella and [00:05:00] Marvin, and a bunch of brands you’ve never heard of and that is disruptive in our industry because people typically don’t want to give choices.

Jeff Ludy: They want in and out. They want a high pressure close tonight. In fact, if you’re great at timeshare sales, you could probably work in this industry.

Chris Hanslik: Okay okay.

Jeff Ludy: And so I didn’t want that. I wanted no sleazy salesman. I wanted no haggle pricing and I wanted choices and that really is a lot of companies are doing it now, but when I started this, it was quite rare.

Chris Hanslik: Okay. Did you face any opposition from those distributors? You said, no, if you’re gonna carry Anderson, then you can’t carry Pella.

Jeff Ludy: That was really a part of the challenge, right? Those guys did not wanna do that. I had to pay way too much for it. ’cause I had to do what’s called two stepping.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: So I didn’t have a direct relationship with a manufacturer. I had to buy it from someone else who did. So it cost me a little more money to have those products. So my margins were a little bit slimmer on some of those items I could not buy direct.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: But

Jeff Ludy: It actually helped me establish myself as the person who was the independent party.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: And mostly [00:06:00] unbiased to try to help you find what’s best for you, not what’s best for me. And then after I gained some momentum and my sales were where they were, and then the exploration of what became our YouTube channel, which is the most watched YouTube channel in the world for windows and doors.

Jeff Ludy: That gave us a lot of credentials right now. They were coming to me saying, would you carry our product?

Chris Hanslik: Oh, wow.

Jeff Ludy: Yeah.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah. It turned the tables.

Jeff Ludy: It turned the tables. Yeah.

Chris Hanslik: So the power of I guess the world we live in with the YouTube and the followers and things. It’s rural marketing, right? And gets people’s attention.

Chris Hanslik: So let’s let’s talk about, you start out of your garage, as you said. What were some of the things you remember most about the growing pains and learning pains of really getting this company off the ground that you might be able to share with people that might be doing the same thing right now?

Jeff Ludy: I think that, and I know a lot of people in this industry and some young entrepreneurs, I think we all struggle with mainly the lead generation, at least in the home services industry, finding an audience that you can get in front of and show your goods. So leads were extremely difficult.

Jeff Ludy: [00:07:00] I had to pay for leads, and paid leads are not nearly as good as organic leads.

Chris Hanslik: Sure.

Jeff Ludy: And I also had to figure out a way to be everything. I was a person who would meet the truck, my wife would help with this, meet the truck for deliveries, answer the phone, whether you’re driving down,

Jeff Ludy: you know the truckers that had the big headset with a big mic and all a Bluetooth headset? Yeah, I had one of those, I had a laptop mount, like the police use, and I’d be driving down the road, shouldn’t have done this. Sorry guys. Driving down the road, answer the phone, try to pretend I was a professional in an office.

Jeff Ludy: Yeah. And and I had a recorded call service so somebody could say their name, and I would repeat their name and then I’d repeat the phone number so I could pull over later and play it back and then document it into the laptop to set appointments. So you have to find the best.

Jeff Ludy: I think the struggle is resource management when you don’t have much of it.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: How do I make the most out of the least amount of money? Because I was pretty much broke starting this, I started it with $ 20 grand in my checking account or something.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah. Not much. And is your point, right?

Chris Hanslik: You gotta be smart about how you’re using your resources. ’cause they are limited. [00:08:00]

Chris Hanslik: Yeah.

Chris Hanslik: So as it grew, right? And I think you’re similar to most entrepreneurs that I talked to. Starting out, you’re doing everything.

Chris Hanslik: Over time, if you’re successful and you grow, you have to learn to step back and let others do, or you’ll never be able to scale.

Jeff Ludy: I haven’t figured that out yet. Okay.

Chris Hanslik: But how did you go about building your team as the company grew so that you could do more

Jeff Ludy: for the company? I will say this. I think if I’ve done one thing well, you could go ask my employees. I think I have done a good job of assembling a team.

Jeff Ludy: I have a very rigorous. Interview process, having owned the restaurant and having hired and gone through about 500 employees in that 12 year period, one of the things I did learn was to pretty much identify the traits that I think are gonna work well with the role that I have and. I did do a good job of hiring people.

Jeff Ludy: I had, I’ve had struggles. I still struggle a little bit

Chris Hanslik: Sure.

Jeff Ludy: On letting it go because I seek excellence. I’m not gonna say I’m a perfectionist, but I do seek excellence in what we do. And [00:09:00] as I’ve grown to trust these people more and more, and I’ve been able to give them a little more permission.

Jeff Ludy: We’ve been able to grow and that’s helped us scale quite a bit.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah. So let’s go to the interview process. What are some of the things that you feel like you do that helps you maybe give you a better bead on the fact that candidate is actually going to be successful in your culture,

Chris Hanslik: in your environment.

Jeff Ludy: Man, you’re talking about something I love to talk about. Okay. And I’ll try to keep it short.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: First of all, if it’s easy to hire them, if’s easy for them to quit. If they didn’t work to earn this role, if they didn’t feel like this was a tough job interview, then they don’t care for it as much.

Jeff Ludy: Like when you give a kid a car instead of he earns his car he takes care of it better. So the process needs to be rigorous. It needs to be lengthy, but I found that if I find a candidate and the conversation’s going well. I like to use what’s called the four Cs. Okay? This is one of my things I do with everyone, and you can not only use it to hire, but you can use it for managing and coaching them throughout their career.

Jeff Ludy: You wanna hear the four Cs?

Chris Hanslik: I [00:10:00] absolutely do.

Jeff Ludy: Okay. The first one is chemistry. Okay? If we’re gonna spend 40 hours together, we’ve gotta get along and I can pick that up usually in 15 minutes. Easy.

Chris Hanslik: Okay

Jeff Ludy: the second is character. And that’s really hard to detect, right? Sure. It could take 20 years to figure out that their character’s flawed.

Jeff Ludy: The third one is competency. And I call that my golden triangle. If we have a good balance of chemistry, character and competency, that’s gonna be perfect. But I ask the candidate, which of those three do you think is most important to me? And of course, if they get it right, they’re gonna say character.

Jeff Ludy: And the answer is yes, character. Because if you have a chemistry problem. A person with character, you can go to them and say, Hey, you know what you said in the meeting, and I saw how that offended Susan and oh, I’m so sorry. Thanks for pointing that out. Al. Also competency.

Jeff Ludy: If their competency is weak in an area, they’re coachable, they’re teachable. Hey, teach me, I wanna do it. It’s when they have poor character. That, that you end up suffering and those people end up eventually leaving our culture because our culture is such that we really focus on character [00:11:00] and treating people well and treating people right, that it’s almost trying to squeeze a watermelon seed.

Jeff Ludy: If you ever tried to squeeze a watermelon seed it, it shoots out your fingers. If we put ’em under enough of our culture pressure, those who don’t fit self, they Yeah. They go right out.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah.

Jeff Ludy: By the way, there’s a fourth CI know. I was about to ask the fourth CI invented the first three. I didn’t. The four cient is calling having been a man of faith, a minister.

Jeff Ludy: Okay. I believe in calling because somebody could have all three of those Cs in good equal parts, but if this isn’t really where they should be, whether they have faith or no faith, if this is just not really where they should be, then it’s not gonna last either.

Chris Hanslik: There’s a different company for

Chris Hanslik: that.

Jeff Ludy: They’re somewhere else out that can use those

Jeff Ludy: skills.

Chris Hanslik: It’s interesting you say that. You and I may discuss this, but we view the world similarly, but we use our mission statement. Providing counsel beyond expectation, building lasting relationships, and making a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

Jeff Ludy: Yeah,

Chris Hanslik: as an interview tool as well, to say for us, there’s passion in those three things, and it’s what we show up for to try to achieve every day. [00:12:00] If you don’t. If nothing in that statement resonates with you and your heart and your gut, yeah. It’s okay. Does it make you a bad person? It just make, makes this organization’s not the right one for you.

Chris Hanslik: Because it won’t be your calling to use your word. Have to. Be passionate about what the company is standing for.

Jeff Ludy: Yeah, I agree. That’s perfect. And I think the nice thing about this, it’s clear when we talk about this upfront, we talk about it repeatedly and then if we have a coaching moment where we’re having a problem with someone

Chris Hanslik: Yep.

Jeff Ludy: We can point to one of those three things or the fourth one. Yep. To say, this is where you’re not getting that golden triangle for me.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah. That’s great. That’s great. So you mentioned, so this culture. Defined by these, the four Cs, it seems like. What have you done or what are you doing to nurture and keep that culture going so that everyone understands it’s serious and we mean it?

Jeff Ludy: First of all, I think that I’m, I don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room to lead. I have to be the guy with the most integrity in the room. So [00:13:00] when I have meetings with people and I’m with the team, if there’s something that, we, maybe I could lean in and say, gosh, that woman is driving me nuts, or That customer is such a jerk, or whatever I bite my tongue.

Jeff Ludy: I don’t speak evil of our customers. I don’t speak evil of our vendors. Yeah, I’ve got a right hand guy I can go to and vent a little bit ’cause everybody needs that. Sure. But I don’t have a meeting where there’s five or six people sitting around and they see me to let down my character.

Jeff Ludy: It’s, they look to me. And if my character and my chemistry and my competency’s. Then that’s all I have to say. When I come into the office, I make it a point to walk down that hallway. I say hello, good morning to everyone.

Chris Hanslik: Yes.

Jeff Ludy: Because that’s chemistry. That’s chemistry. And then character. I make the tough decisions.

Jeff Ludy: Even if we lose money, we’re gonna do the right thing. And then competency, I hope they look to me and say, man, I need to lean on Jeff. He really, he knows what he’s doing. Yeah.

Chris Hanslik: I like to talk about innovation and it sounds like just from your starting the company, there was some innovative thoughts around having the options of the different products.

Chris Hanslik: Anything else that you have implemented? Over the last several years that you think is [00:14:00] innovative, either for the industry or just for your business to make things more efficient and maybe more profitable?

Jeff Ludy: I think the YouTube channel was definitely innovative, right? We made the YouTube channel specifically because we are different, and I’ll give you a little scenario for that.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: Most window companies and home improvement companies, if they have a professional sales force, you’re gonna call them today and you’re gonna say. Hey I would like to get a proposal for replacing my windows. One of the questions they’re going to ask you after they find out if you’re in the service area is they’re gonna say, will all decision makers be present?

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: What they mean by that is. We don’t want you, when we get all done to say let me talk to my wife about this,

Chris Hanslik: okay?

Jeff Ludy: Or lemme talk to my husband because there’s no way to close the deal, right? So we did not take that approach. We take the opposite approach. We work with you. We trust that you and your wife have a good enough relationship.

Jeff Ludy: If you don’t think she needs to be here, then she doesn’t need to be here. Why? Why should that be my job? To force her to be here. Yeah. So what I found out was there is there are benefits to [00:15:00] having both parties there. There certainly are. So I would spend time with a wife, for example, at three in the afternoon and she would love it.

Jeff Ludy: Oh, this is great. I’m gonna tell my husband about it when he gets home tonight. She couldn’t say it the way I said it so I started making these short videos. I said, you know what? Hey, this product I just demonstrated to you today. I’m gonna send you a video link so you can share it with your husband.

Jeff Ludy: ’cause I figured I could do a better job than she could or vice versa.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: Next thing you know the algorithm Gods at YouTube loved my videos, which I never made for a national platform. I made them to help sell windows to

Jeff Ludy: sell.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah,

Jeff Ludy: And so in a way, our disruption in the industry by not forcing everyone to be there.

Jeff Ludy: Birthed out this new innovative idea, which led to millions of views every month. And literally four to 600 leads a month coming off of the YouTube channel. And that’s amazing. Yeah. Our budget for marketing is 4%. The industry standard is between 10 and 15. Wow. And so we’re more profitable, which means we can give better prices to our clients.

Jeff Ludy: Sure. Because we do have. Yeah. [00:16:00] So this free source of lead generation.

Chris Hanslik: That’s crazy. Yeah. That, that’s a huge advantage when it comes to pricing, I would think. Okay. Yeah. Very innovative. What about struggles or headwinds in the last several years? What are the challenges that, that you’ve faced in running the business and how do you feel like you’ve overcome them, either yourself or as a company to keep things moving?

Jeff Ludy: I almost went outta business in 24. Believe it or not really. Yep. And it’s because we did too well, we couldn’t scale fast enough. We had some great tailwinds behind us. Our marketing was really getting more engagement. The referral business continues to grow, right? Repeat customers.

Jeff Ludy: We’ve been doing it long enough that, most people live in their home about seven and a half years. That’s the average. Now a guy sold Windows two in 20 12, 13, 14, 15. He’s moved to a new house, right? And he wants to call me again. And so what happened is we expected to have about a, somewhere around a 10 or 15% growth.

Jeff Ludy: We had a 57% growth. And 24. And so we don’t use contractors. That’s something else that’s disruptive. Okay? We [00:17:00] use 100% employee installers. We sold more than we could install and and so cashflow became a real problem. And then we ramped up quickly by hiring a lot of people and tried to train ’em really fast, and the quality wasn’t there.

Jeff Ludy: We started making mistakes. We started having to go back to projects because we didn’t get it right the first time. And so our ebitda, our margin dropped us somewhere around 2%, two point a half percent.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: Which is crazy because we’re normally in the 15 to 17, 18% range.

Chris Hanslik: That’s

Chris Hanslik: a big drop.

Jeff Ludy: Big drop. And so we, I hope it’s okay to use a curse word on your, it is. You won’t be the first. I was reading a book and I’ll give you the book name so you can put it in the notes. It was really good. And there’s a chapter called that says, if you’re going to eat shit, don’t nibble. And I had been reading that chapter when all of this happened and I came back to the office and I said, we have got a problem.

Jeff Ludy: You need to go to this department. You need to go to that department. You’re gonna stop doing this, you’re gonna start doing that. We’re gonna back off on marketing. We’re gonna raise our [00:18:00] price like we did everything we could to get the sales and the installation numbers to balance out. Thank God we did that and recovered.

Jeff Ludy: Wow. Yeah.

Chris Hanslik: Good for you. Yeah, I know that. It’s interesting because you hear it a lot, but not, maybe not everyone does, is you can actually grow too fast.

Jeff Ludy: You can grow out of business.

Chris Hanslik: They can kill your company. Yeah.

Chris Hanslik: I, and I think what I heard you say, and maybe expound upon it, but you have to, as the leader, you have to recognize that’s going on, and then you have to act fast because slow changes and dragging your feet will sink everything.

Chris Hanslik: That seems like what you learned, outta that chapter and what you implemented.

Jeff Ludy: I grew up as a missionaries kid in Mexico. We moved 31 times in 10 and a half years. I have high adaptability skills. I am quick to change. In fact, I enjoy change more than I do stagnation.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: And so it actually energized me when I saw this is the problem. I spotted it. I can fix that now. Everybody else who was on a rollercoaster ride probably didn’t enjoy it as much as I did.

Jeff Ludy: I think I had some employees who ended up throwing up a lot.

Chris Hanslik: Most people resistance to change.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah. So especially if [00:19:00] it’s gonna be, fast, but so you’re right. But someone has to be the leader. Yeah. Say, no, this is what we’re doing.

Jeff Ludy: I brought ’em in and I said, look, we’re in danger here. Yeah. If, think about a captain on a ship, and we see a storm. Take action.

Jeff Ludy: Indecisiveness is not, that’s not your friend in a place.

Chris Hanslik: No. That’s the thing that I would guess it helped. That is the culture you had built

Chris Hanslik: Was the culture of the, of character and chemistry and character and competence. And so if you don’t have a strong culture, you’re not gonna survive that.

Chris Hanslik: So think you’re right. So somebody you have what seems to be very strong relationships with these vendors and I guess distributors. What are some of the things you’ve done to nurture those relationships so that they’ve become really good partners to your company?

Jeff Ludy: I should start by saying that in addition to the forces we talked about, our outward facing statement to our clients and to our vendors and to our team, is that we treat people the way we’d wanna be treated if we were buying windows for our own home.[00:20:00]

Jeff Ludy: With honesty, dignity, and respect. Those are the three key words we use. Honesty, dignity, and respect. What I’ve told our team is. It’s easy in industry, of any industry to look to your client and say, oh I’m gonna treat them well because that’s my bread and butter, to turn around internally to your office team and treat them like crap because they’re not paying your bills.

Jeff Ludy: And then to look up to the people who you give your money to and treat them like absolute crap because you’re making money from me. I didn’t want that. I wanted a level playing field. I said, we’re gonna treat our peers in the office with honesty, dignity, and respect. We’re gonna treat our clients with honesty, dignity, and respect.

Jeff Ludy: And we’re gonna treat our vendors with honesty, dignity and respect. Everyone is your customer. And so the vendors will tell you that they love us because we don’t come to them and say, you screwed it up. We come to them and say, we, we have a problem. We have a client we want to make happy, right?

Jeff Ludy: How do you and I do this together? And one of the things I do every time I meet with a vendor every single time is at some point in that conversation, I say [00:21:00] to them. Tell me, Chris, what can I do to be a better partner with your company? And then they may have something like, Hey Jeff, if you could not order every week, maybe order every two weeks so we have more stuff on the truck that would help us be more profitable.

Jeff Ludy: Whatever. Yeah. We work like that. Eventually in that conversation, they lean over to me and say Jeff, and what can we do to, and that’s where I’ve got a list. Oh, I’m glad you asked. Yeah.

Chris Hanslik: We talk about that as well. I think if people perceive that you are being genuine they’re much more likely to reciprocate that back to you. Oh yes. Absolutely. Yeah. And so if you’re building that relationship out of mutual respect

Chris Hanslik: And you actually care about them.

Chris Hanslik: More times than not, they’re gonna reciprocate. And I think in my experience, when they don’t, you’ve identified one of those character issues that you’re like, okay, that’s not who I’m gonna do business with.

Jeff Ludy: I don’t think I wanna work with this guy. Yeah. And actually, we have fired some vendors.

Jeff Ludy: They just, they don’t get it. Yeah. And maybe someday we’ll bring ’em back because they got their team together.

Jeff Ludy: But we wanna have relat. If we’re gonna have relationship, we’re gonna make sure it works. We wanna [00:22:00] be on good terms.

Chris Hanslik: Very good. Lots of lessons in that, I think.

Chris Hanslik: Now let’s talk a little bit about leadership, just with you as the leader. How would you describe your leadership style and how do you think that’s maybe evolved over time as the company’s grown?

Jeff Ludy: One of the things I did learn in the restaurant industry is that you have to be a situational manager.

Jeff Ludy: The things I could say to, Tom might make Susie cry or vice versa. And so you don’t have one size hammer for everyone. I’ve found that, what I don’t like is a bunch of Yes. Men. I hate Yes men. I had an employee one time who. I was talking about something. He agreed about everything and I said, stand up.

Jeff Ludy: He said, what? I said, stand up. So he stood up and I shoved him and he went like this, said, why’d you do that? I said, push me back. He said, I can’t do that. I said, no, push me back. So he shoved me back. Then I shoved him, then he shoved me, and then we did, we hugged each other. I said, dude, I’m human.

Jeff Ludy: You’re human. We’re trying to solve a problem. You must have an idea somewhere in there, right? You wanna hear it? So I think what I’ve done [00:23:00] unique if it’s not unique, I guess I’m confused, but is I invite everyone into the decision making process no matter who they are in the organization. Okay. I don’t think I’m the only guy with a good idea.

Jeff Ludy: And so my leadership over time has developed to where I still feel like I want excellence. And so maybe I still hold on a little too tight to some areas, but I do encourage them to participate in what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and how we should do it.

Chris Hanslik: I love that. I think if their, if your employees are seeing you do that consistently, then they’re more likely to contribute, I would think, as well, rather than being reserved like the other guy.

Chris Hanslik: Just said yes the first time, all time.

Jeff Ludy: And I’ve also learned to not lead with leading questions where I’m gonna shape your opinion. So for example, I used to say, wouldn’t you agree that we should probably, and don’t you think it would be a good idea if instead of just saying, can I get your thoughts on this?

Chris Hanslik: Yes.

Jeff Ludy: Versus, don’t you agree or don’t you,

Chris Hanslik: I think there’s a book called Leading With Questions. Oh, is there something like that around those [00:24:00] lines, but about the idea Because if you’re at the top, open-ended question is gonna get you more information. Then the leading question is just gonna get you confirmation of what you just said.

Chris Hanslik: Which it may not be what you need.

Jeff Ludy: I read a book many years ago called nine Traits of Great Generals, or something to that. I’m sorry about the name. It’s been 50 years, but the only one I remember out of there is that great generals fix the problem, not the blame. And I’ve tried to use that.

Jeff Ludy: What’s the problem? Why don’t we fix it? I don’t come in and say, who did that? I’m like, okay, how do we fix that now once everything’s settled down, what can we learn from that? Yes.

Jeff Ludy: Sure. There has to be that. Yeah. So I think doing that as well and dearest people to Jeff’s not gonna be angry with me if I come and I say, this is what’s broken.

Chris Hanslik: Yes.

Jeff Ludy: So that invites ’em into a solution conversation

Chris Hanslik: And be, you want. To be ahead of those as much as you can. So what you don’t want is someone to be scared to admit there’s something wrong.

Chris Hanslik: Try to hide it. ’cause it only gets worse. It rarely will go away. So let’s be proactive [00:25:00] about it so we have a chance to fix it and save a relationship or save a situation.

Jeff Ludy: We spend all of our time inside people’s homes. We’re not like a roofer who’s outside. We’re not like a pest controller or yard guy. We’re in your personal space. We’re in your closet.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah,

Jeff Ludy: we’re in your daughter’s bedroom. So there’s a lot of trust that has to be granted for us to come into the home and be there for a day or two or three.

Jeff Ludy: And we tell our employees all the time, you know what? We won’t fire you for making a mistake and break in something, but we’ll fire you for lying about it. Yeah, and so last thing we want is if they’re working somewhere and they knock a lamp over and it breaks. For them, if they stand it up and put the pieces back together and say nothing and walk on and then a homeowner comes in and discovers it, we’ve lost our trust with the homeowner.

Jeff Ludy: So I’m like, we’ve got a budget for this. You break something, come to me and say I broke it. It’s okay. Yeah. You’re human. You install enough windows, you’re gonna make, it’s gonna happen. You’re gonna break something.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah. That’s great. That’s great. So let’s talk a little bit about just what’s going on.

Chris Hanslik: Texas economy maybe economy at large. What are some [00:26:00] headwinds that you think are out there that you’re either planning for or trying to develop strategies around to keep the company moving forward?

Jeff Ludy: I’ll tell you, it goes back to where it started, which is lead generation.

Jeff Ludy: We’re grateful for the YouTube channel. We’re grateful for references, referrals, but I do think that this, the impact of ai, how it affects searches, I, I see myself and others. And the stats show this, that people are starting to gravitate more towards asking ai, who’s, what should I be looking for when I’m trying to find a good window company?

Jeff Ludy: Or, where should I stay if I’m gonna travel to this city? And how we adapt to that, how we make sure that we’re included in AI responses Yes. Has been something that’s been on my radar for a couple of years. We’ve made some real, concerted efforts to, because no one I think knows how to do it, but we’ve, we feel like we’ve always won by creating great content.

Jeff Ludy: So instead of creating content on our website that’s designed to sell windows, we create content that’s designed to help provide great information instead. For example, I almost felt

Chris Hanslik: like [00:27:00] thought leadership

Jeff Ludy: around. Yeah. So I don’t know if you hate it as much as I do, but if I do a search for a question like.

Jeff Ludy: What altitude do you need oxygen on an airplane. Because I’m a private pilot guy. Yeah. I hate it when the page I land on writes for a thousand words about what can happen if you don’t have oxygen. Hypoxia can occur. You could this, you could that. No, I want the answer. What is the altitude?

Jeff Ludy: And I have to scroll scroll. Finally, they’re buried at the bottom is 12,500 feet for more than 30 minutes. That’s the rule. We take a question on our webpage. We immediately put the answer underneath it, then we give all the reasons why, all the explanations. So you get your answer immediately.

Jeff Ludy: Now a lot of companies don’t do that on purpose ’cause they want you to spend more time on the site, which signals to Google. Oh, they must have found a great website.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: But I’m not interested in that as much as I’m interested in AI being able to get a great answer from my website to that question.

Chris Hanslik: It’s all you say we, we’ve been doing the same thing at our firm.

Chris Hanslik: With our website, with our marketing, with the content to. [00:28:00] Make sure we’re showing up. ’cause people we know what people Google and search for everything now. Oh yeah,

Jeff Ludy: sure.

Chris Hanslik: And and we see the results that we’re starting to be the number one answer for Oh, nice.

Chris Hanslik: Certain questions and things like that. But it takes, to your point, a concerted effort. To make sure the whole marketing team is behind. What’s it gonna take to do that. And I agree with you. As people maybe joke, the lawyers, we don’t answer questions, but we try to give. Is it yes or no? Or even a maybe Uhhuh.

Chris Hanslik: And then why? Because

Jeff Ludy: right,

Chris Hanslik: if you don’t answer the question first, all your people aren’t listening to your explanation. They’re waiting to hear when you say yes or no or whatever. Yeah. I want my answer right? Yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh, you give the answer first, right? They’re more likely to listen, right? To the reasons.

Chris Hanslik: So I think that’s and to your point, there’s no fear in your business of ai ’cause you’re still gonna have people go out and install. Windows. I don’t think you’re at risk. It’s hard

Jeff Ludy: to replace an installer, at least at this point. Yeah. With a robot.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah. What what about just the being ba, a Texas Houston based company, was [00:29:00] there anything that you felt like was an advantage to, being in.

Chris Hanslik: Environment. Yes. And starting a company and having the opportunities, the leads or whatever it was to grow that company.

Jeff Ludy: I think there’s a, a great thing about being in, in this client, first of all, Texas, but specifically Houston. I’ve seen a lot of other window companies that I’m familiar with across the country feel more of the pressures of the economy, politics, the fed rate, those sort of things.

Jeff Ludy: We’ve seen. Less of that, maybe we’re a little more insulated. Because I do think that Texas overall has a good, strong economy, especially for business. Yep. And when the markets are way down, when money’s hard to get, when rates are through the roof for building a new house, we found that people decide let’s just stay in this house and fix it.

Chris Hanslik: True. So there’s a

Chris Hanslik: lot of

Chris Hanslik: that going on in

Chris Hanslik: COVID.

Jeff Ludy: So that helped us, right? It helps us a lot. And then when rates are low, interest rates were great. Like in 20 18, 19, back in that area era,

Jeff Ludy: people decided to go build a house. Now they wanna buy windows to build a bigger, nicer [00:30:00] house, right?

Jeff Ludy: And every time somebody gets a razor promotion, they go to a nicer zip code. And now they wanna buy windows from me again. And so we found that at least in my industry, the Texas environment is terrific for now. It does. It’s a double edged sword. We do not have general contractor licensing in the state of Texas.

Jeff Ludy: So in some ways, if you, what we call chuck and a truck, right? If you’re a chuck and a truck and you go down to Home Depot and you got enough cash on hand to buy a few windows and a caulking gun. You can be a seller and imagine no licensing when it came to law. Or professional medical therapies. So we do deal with some of that because it’s hard for in homeowners who’ve never, ever replaced windows in their life to understand why we’re at $50,000 compared to $30,000 and they think it’s apples to apples and it’s

Chris Hanslik: not. Yeah, I get that. So the, I guess the. Price to enter the market can is low.

Chris Hanslik: But then the quality over time pro has got to win out. ’cause people don’t want windows leaking and

Jeff Ludy: Right.

Chris Hanslik: All the things that happen from that.

Jeff Ludy: Sure.

Chris Hanslik: But I think you’re right. I think the diversity of the economy in Texas and in [00:31:00] Houston has helped businesses survive the good and the bad times because people still come to this state and there’s been, yeah.

Chris Hanslik: New home growth and all the things that. Your company would take advantage of?

Jeff Ludy: And if you contrast it to places like California, I know a lot of private equity firms that are wanting into the home services space and they want California last. It’s like when there’s nothing else to snatch up, right?

Jeff Ludy: Because it’s so regulated, it’s so difficult and it’s so expensive to actually just do your job. And thankfully we don’t have to deal with that in

Jeff Ludy: Texas.

Chris Hanslik: I came into that. So as we wrap up, I just, think about one or two things you might. Pieces of advice to an inspiring entrepreneur or anything you might share with them to say, if you don’t do anything else, do this one thing.

Chris Hanslik: Or, here’s a mistake that I made and I learned from them. Don’t, avoid it if you can.

Jeff Ludy: Absolutely. I say this to every single entrepreneur I’ve ever met. If they ask me what advice would you gimme? You’re not charging enough, charge more. Okay. Should always charge more. So lemme tell you a quick story.

Jeff Ludy: Yep. I’d been in, in this business, owned my own company for about a year and a half. [00:32:00] And I went to see this guy and I gave him a masterful presentation. I had this guy eaten outta my hand. He and his wife, they just loved it. I knew they were gonna buy windows from me. So I said lemme go outside and measure, and I’m gonna go make a quote for you.

Jeff Ludy: And I had a printer in my car, I was professional, I had a printer. I printed it out. I came back in, showed the sample, showed him the quote. I could see his temperature change. And he’d gotten it, got quiet and I thought, what happened here? And I didn’t get the job. So I followed up with him a few times, wouldn’t answered my call.

Jeff Ludy: I finally got, I’m on the phone about a month later, he said, yeah, Jeff, I just wanna let you know. I went with another company. I said, listen, I could use your help. I’m young, I’m dumb. I’m trying to figure this out. What advice would you gimme? What could I have done differently? And he said, Jeff, lemme tell you what happened.

Jeff Ludy: I said, what? He said, Jeff, you presented your company and what you were gonna do so well, he said, and then when you came in and showed me the price, I thought, this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s gonna go outta business. He said You were too cheap. Too cheap. I bought windows from a guy who was twice your price.

Chris Hanslik: Unbelievable.

Jeff Ludy: So it made me think, if I said to you right now, Hey Chris, down in the parking [00:33:00] garage, I’ve got a 2026 Bentley Continental GTC convertible with the W 12 engine over a mile of handit leather in the seats. Okay? Virgin, beautiful leather from the mountains of Switzerland. And I’ll sell it to you for $50,000, what would you say?

Chris Hanslik: It’s stolen.

Jeff Ludy: Something. Something’s wrong with this car, right? Something’s wrong with this car. So what I encourage entrepreneurs to do is track your closing ratio. If you’re going, meeting with a client, how often do you close a deal? If it’s over 35 or 40%, raise your price. I talk to these guys all the time, they brag about, oh man, I’m a 70% closer.

Jeff Ludy: I said you know what? Raise your prices. We’ll see how damn good you are, because you’re just an order taker is what you are. You’re winning on price only, and if they bought on price, they’re gonna crucify you on that same cross.

Jeff Ludy: The cheapest jobs I’ve sold are the ones that end up costing you the most.

Jeff Ludy: They’re the difficult people.

Chris Hanslik: That is amazing advice. I think it’s so true, and you’re right, people are hesitant. They want the job or the deal so bad. They worry about charging [00:34:00] too much. Yeah. And losing it. I love that you shared that because I think it’s true.

Jeff Ludy: Now I’m one of your clients, so forget everything I just said about price.

Jeff Ludy: Okay.

Chris Hanslik: Everyone

Chris Hanslik: says

Chris Hanslik: that. Except for the lawyer.

Jeff Ludy: Except for my lawyer.

Chris Hanslik: Boy, I’ve heard that a lot. No. Look, this has been great, Jeff. I really appreciate the time. I wanna do a few things as we wrap this up that are less serious and, what always like to ask people, what do you like to do to recharge so that you can be there and available and show up for your people, your customers, your vendors.

Jeff Ludy: So to me, one of the things I love to do is work, right? So I never feel like. I’m running on empty. So I have to be very intentional to recharge and for me, recharging is going to the mountains. Okay. My wife and I, usually when it gets hot, first part of June, yeah. We have a motor home and we go up to the mountains and we take our starlink.

Jeff Ludy: So I’m never too far away from doing work. And we’ll spend about 60 days up in Colorado area. Oh, cool. Off the grid. Yeah. With a big motor home. And, man, that really restores my heart. Being out there and waking up in the mornings and it’s cold outside. Yeah. When it’s a hundred degrees [00:35:00] back home.

Jeff Ludy: Yes. Feels great.

Chris Hanslik: That’s great. Okay. Then the next question is, when you come back from being out of Texas for that long, do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? When you get back,

Jeff Ludy: Tex-Mex for sure. Yeah. Actually Indian food.

Chris Hanslik: Ah, there you go. There you go. Okay. I may have to add that one to the list.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah, you should. Jeff, again, thanks for taking the time to kinda share your story. It’s an amazing story. And just, congratulations to all the success you’ve had and I know you’ll continue to do.

Jeff Ludy: Thank you. I wanna say one more thing.

Chris Hanslik: Sure.

Jeff Ludy: I’ve had a great experience with Boyer Miller.

Jeff Ludy: Anyone listen to the podcast? I know that’s not why they’re here specifically, but if they are in this market my experience has been the equivalent to the window experts.

Chris Hanslik: Okay.

Jeff Ludy: I would say you guys are in my opinion you guys are up there as a, as the premium law destination for this area.

Jeff Ludy: You guys do a terrific

Jeff Ludy: job.

Chris Hanslik: I certainly appreciate that you, thanks for saying so.

Jeff Ludy: Yes,

Jeff Ludy: thank you.

Chris Hanslik: Take care.