003: Frankie Martinez – Owner of Cisco Electric

Title: Frankie Martinez – Owner of Cisco Electric
Guest: Frankie Martinez

Peter: Welcome to the Biz and Life Done Well podcast, where we explore what it means and what it takes to do business and life well. I’m your host, Peter Wilson. If you’re like me, you’re intrigued by stories of common people who have achieved uncommon success in business and life. Join me as I interview fascinating people about how they got started, their successes and failures, their habits and routines, and what inspires them. Today, I am interviewing Frankie Martinez.

He has a business known as Cisco Electric. Frankie and I have known each other

Frankie: for maybe five years. Sounds about right. Okay.

Peter: So go ahead and say hi, Frankie.

Frankie: Hi, Frankie.

Peter: So, like I said, we’ve known each other for about five years. We’re in a, networking business networking group, together. Give us a little background on your business. So, name of the business, where you’re located, what area you service, stuff like that.

Frankie: Sure. Name of the business is Cisco Electric located in Edmonds, Washington. I’ve been in business since 2000, and I began my apprenticeship actually in 1994, working for another contractor. And I never planned on starting business on my own, but my boss at the time in about 2000 had decided to move out of state and basically told me if I started my own business, could have his customers. So sort of natural, Yeah.

So, and, ever since then, I’ve just kind of rolled forward and kept busy, learned from trial and error. And, basically up till this point have just grown the business through referrals and doing good work for people. Cool. So what type of electrical contracting do you do? We specialize in residential.

Okay. And I’d say probably our our favorite jobs are, you know, home rewires and also home remodels. We really like the custom home remodels. They’re they’re great jobs. Cool.

Peter: And specific types. So you do rewiring. I’m assuming you do other stuff like putting lighting and stuff like that.

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. So from the smallest job, service call. Yeah. Somebody has a breaker that’s tripping or something like that.

Yep. We’ll do the very smallest job. Yep. But, yeah, we will do big jobs too and everything in between. So a perfect job for us, is a breaker panel change.

Right. Yeah. It’s a perfect one or two day job. We’re in and out of there.

Peter: Yep.

Frankie: The guys really like to complete something in a day or two. Yeah. But we’ll do the large jobs too that take weeks and weeks on end. But, you know, those sometimes can be more stressful for my guys and they tend to go on for a long time. They like to get out of there.

Right.

Peter: So they want to change the pace.

Frankie: Yeah. Change the pace is great. And that’s what I really like about residential work too, is that you get a change of pace day to day compared to, you know, commercial work or

Peter: something like that. Where you’re in the same building for a year.

Frankie: Yeah. And you’re running conduit for thousands of feet for months on end. Right. And that’s almost all you learn when you’re doing it too.

Peter: So Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So, so how many folks, work with you?

Frankie: So I have, five guys out in the field. Mhmm. And I’ve got two office staff, and then there’s me. Okay. So eight of us.

Peter: Awesome. And you are, you do the field work and you run the company?

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s about half and half right now.

Peter: Okay.

Frankie: Yeah. Cool.

Peter: Why would I why would I pick you? You know, you have this business. You’ve been around for a while. Is it just that you’re you’re the only guy that answered the phone that I when I called everybody? Or

Frankie: I’d say there’s a few reasons, why you would pick me. One is that not only me, but my guys are trained to pay attention to detail.

Peter: Mhmm.

Frankie: They’re very well trained to work in people’s homes.

Peter: Mhmm.

Frankie: And we clean up well too. So we treat the home as if it’s our own.

Peter: Right.

Frankie: You know, if you do a project at your house, you know, hopefully at the end of the day, you’ve cleaned up so that your wife and kids, there’s no hazards dirt that your kids are getting into. And then we treat people’s homes the same way.

Peter: So You guys put on the little booties and

Frankie: that’s Yeah. We put on booties or we take off boots, whatever the customer prefers. Yeah. And we are always, you know, equipped with a shop vac

Peter: Mhmm.

Frankie: Rags, dust pins, and stuff like that too.

Peter: Right.

Frankie: So those are the main key because you’d be surprised, how many of the electricians are not trained to clean up and and respect people’s property and pay attention to detail.

Peter: What was the genesis of that attitude or approach? Was that the way you were taught or is that something you just picked up along the way and then you just instill it in your folks?

Frankie: It was kind of both. So I was taught to clean up. And when I worked with my old boss, he was very, specific about certain things when he trained me. Uh-huh. One of them was cleaning up well.

Uh-huh. The other one, was communicating well with customers about exactly what they wanted and then trying

Peter: to Yeah. Follow through with

Frankie: So the other part of that is that we work in a lot of very nicely finished homes. Uh-huh. So the when a home is very nicely finished and already cleaned up when you get there Yeah. It’s very noticeable when you leave some specs of dust on the floor. And believe it or not, even at the beginning of my career, I had gotten maybe a little rebuked for not cleaning up perfectly.

To me, it didn’t seem like much, but when you put yourself in your customer’s position where they’re hiring house cleaners or they’re doing all that hard work to keep their clean Yeah. Their house clean themselves. Yeah. It’s you sort of learn over time that, yeah, you’d have to do a perfect job. Right.

Even go above and beyond when you can.

Peter: So when you’re working in somebody’s home, anybody’s home, it’s really their their castle. Right? I mean, that’s the one thing that I hear. It’s interesting because I the last podcast we did, we talked to Anna Allison about pet grooming, and she said she was talking about the importance of really making sure that you communicate well with the customer exactly what you said and make sure that they that before you get started, they understand there’s a there’s a good communication about what’s expected, what you’re gonna do. So it sounds like you guys are, you’ve got that down, sounds like.

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. And when we’re doing a project too, we communicate with the customer kind of in different phases of the project. Mhmm. So for example, a really popular job is to install recessed cans in somebody’s house.

Yeah. And, oftentimes, the way the customer requests the layout Mhmm. Doesn’t work because of Oh. You know Raptors. Yeah.

Plumbing or whatever is in the ceiling. So you have to constantly say, okay, this is where we’re at and this is the issue and you come up with a new plan. And then before you cut holes, before you cut any holes, you come back one more time and say, does this Right. Does all this, you know, we’ll put a blue tape where every can is supposed

Peter: to go.

Frankie: Before we cut the hole, we wanna make sure this is exactly what you’re expecting. So we Yeah. Communicate throughout

Peter: the Got it. How did the business ramp up? I mean, you started you by yourself, I take it.

Frankie: I started with five employees.

Peter: Oh, you did? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Wow.

How old were you?

Frankie: 24. Yeah. I didn’t have any experience doing bidding, billing, computers. I’ve never even touched a computer hardly in my life. Yeah.

So, it was a it was a challenge for sure. So day one having five employees, you know, I knew how to wire a house and I just took it from there. Mhmm. Do the best at what I could do and from day to day learn the things that I needed to learn how

Peter: to do. Right. So, if you started there, I mean, what sorts of resources were you using? Like, were there any books you read or any mentors or coaches or anybody you had along the way?

Frankie: So my my previous boss, he was a good teacher. Uh-huh. You know, the Okay. He basically taught me not only how to be a good electrician, but how to treat customers and how to communicate with them.

Peter: Yeah. What about the business side though?

Frankie: Business side of it

Peter: You just figured out?

Frankie: It was, very much figured out as you go. Yeah. I was fortunate enough to already have a relationship with all the customers that I was working with. And they knew that I was taking on the business. Mhmm.

And so they gave me a lot of leeway.

Peter: Okay.

Frankie: So if I made mistakes I didn’t have time to do a bid, they just say, well, come in and do the work and you can charge time materials. So in that respect, I was pretty fortunate.

Peter: Right.

Frankie: So if they gave me some leeway, it gave me a chance at least for a certain period of time to Mhmm. Kinda get my act together.

Peter: Got it. So if I gave you a do over button, you could do it all over. What’s one thing that you might, you know, looking back on kind of where you’re at now, what’s one thing you might might have done differently?

Frankie: That’s a very good question. I I I made lots of little mistakes Mhmm. You know, along the way. Yeah. I would say that at least for the first few years, if I was to do something a little different, I suppose during that period of time, would have focused more on the types of jobs that I really wanted to do.

Mhmm. Whereas my first few years, you know, trying to be a nice guy, I just sort of took on everything that possibly could, but the problem with that is that I was working seven days a week and

Peter: Okay.

Frankie: In certain areas being unproductive even though I was Right. Doing my best. So I probably would have been a little more choosy

Peter: and Selective.

Frankie: Selective in which work I took on. And and maybe it could have made things a little easier. But Mhmm. To tell you the truth, I don’t I don’t even know if I would change that because making those mistakes

Peter: Right.

Frankie: You know, you build on those mistakes later and

Peter: you Yeah.

Frankie: I sort of believe in making a certain number of mistakes is is good for you. You know? Yeah. I let my guys make mistakes too. And then when there’s when there has to be a correction, it’s Mhmm.

You give them a gentle correction. It’s a lot easier for them to realize what the mistake was if you let them make a mistake. Yeah. I I learned the same way working for my little boss and

Peter: Right.

Frankie: Starting the business. I made enough mistakes that now it’s like, know what works for me and what doesn’t work

Peter: for So yeah. The cool thing. I think that’s the cool thing about owning your own business Yeah. Versus working for a big company or something like that. Mhmm.

Because you’re so close to the customer. The owner is so close to the customer that it’s you know, there’s not like, when I used to work in big companies, there would be a lot of, like, finger pointing, you know, and Sure. And it was not very productive. Sure. And when you own the business, you have the latitude to just make it right

Frankie: Yeah. As well. And that Exactly.

Peter: That always helps. If there’s a problem, you generally have the ability to make it right. That it’s within your power. Right? Exactly.

Do that.

Frankie: Yes. You know? So Yeah. No. I totally agree.

Peter: Do you give do you, are are there any issues that your guys run into and they may just figure out a way to fix it themselves? Maybe it’s gonna cost a little money, but they just go ahead and do it. They don’t even like, they tell you later, hey. We did this and we had to change this or anything like that?

Frankie: Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay. There’s times when if the issue is small enough, especially, and that they know it’s, you know, they know it’s something that’s, you know, not going to cost a whole lot of money. Yeah.

You know, they’ll they’ll just do it themselves and use it to tell me about it.

Peter: Right. And then you just dock their paycheck.

Frankie: No. And, you know, that’s great. I you know, if they can be, leave me out of the equation sometimes and just use their own ingenuity. I mean, that’s that’s better. Yeah.

And then for the really big issues, they know that, you know, there’s certain things that I need to be involved in and and that’s that’s great too.

Peter: So yeah. Well, brings up a good topic. That’s a great segue to, employees. Yeah. So I know that, I I know you I’ve heard you looking for folks from time to time, new hires and things like that.

What do you look for when you’re interviewing somebody?

Frankie: So probably the first thing I look for is their attitude. So I try to get an idea the best I can what their attitude is towards the work they’re doing, towards the people they’re working with and towards the learning process. So during an interview that’s kind of hard, but I still try to find out, you know, what they’re like. Yeah. And I find that most of the time, you know, when I’m hiring, say for example, an apprentice, usually they’re young, they’re 18 to 20 years old, maybe mid twenties at the most.

I usually find that they’re pretty good and they’re very curious about what the job is going to be and day to day they have a really good attitude about learning the job and they can take correction very well. But attitude is number one. Number two is just that they have good mechanical skills.

Peter: Right.

Frankie: So that’s, very important because, in our job, obviously, it’s very mechanical, very physical. So, number three would just be reliability. Can I rely on them day to day?

Peter: Right. Show up.

Frankie: Yeah. Showing up with a good attitude to learn. Yeah.

Peter: Got it. We’ll have a link to the website ciscoelectric.com, and you can, feel free to look for the information there and apply.

Frankie: So Thank you.

Peter: Please get in touch. Yeah. You know, what I found interesting is, you know, you hear all this stuff about millennials and, you know, they’re they’re not reliable. They don’t wanna be you know, they’re not you know, they have a bad attitude. They don’t wanna work.

I mean, it sounds like you’re finding folks in that age range who don’t fit that stereotype at all. Sure.

Frankie: Yeah. I think, it’s not wrong to say that there are folks out there

Peter: that Yeah. Are like

Frankie: And in fact, we’ve we’ve hired some folks that didn’t work out. It just wasn’t the right job. But yeah, currently, a good example, we’ve got a gentleman who’s, I believe he’s 22. We just hired a few months ago. Yeah.

He’s great. I mean, he, is learning to trade quickly. He’s focused, reliable. Yeah. I’ve hired folks in the past in that age range that definitely had a hard time focusing on the job.

They had a lot of, outside distractions. Yeah. Made it really hard to work with. Yeah. And you can give so many warnings and then pretty soon you have to part ways.

Yeah. Yeah. But no, I I definitely run into that, but I still believe there’s a lot of younger, you know, younger guys and girls that are Yeah. Very willing to work hard. Yeah.

Peter: And you and it seems like from what I know about you, you’re willing to, you know, you’re you’re always looking for, I mean, at least in terms of what I’ve conversations I’ve heard you have that you’re always looking for that person, you know?

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. For the most part. Yeah. And even in times that we are maybe not hiring, I still encourage people to get ahold of me and then I can put them, kind of on my list of people to contact when we do need somebody.

Yeah. So

Peter: Cool. That’s good to know. So, what are the core values of your company? Do you have like, I know you’re why don’t you share your, sort of your slogan or your motto?

Frankie: Yeah. So, I’ve got a couple. So one is the team that you trust, the team you trust.

Peter: I like that.

Frankie: Which is very, very important to me because, you know, to touch back on the fact that we work in people’s homes. Yeah. It’s very important to peep for people to know that they can trust people who are working in their homes.

Peter: Right. Yeah.

Frankie: A lot of times they’re not even home when we’re working there. So, that’s one of our core values is that we respect people’s property and that I have employees that I can trust. I know they’re working in somebody’s home and I don’t have to worry about that. Oh, is this person going to be trustworthy

Peter: or

Frankie: not to work in my customer’s home? I know that they are. The other thing is, my other motto is don’t get shocked by electrician, call Cisco Electric, we’re grounded. That’s one of my favorites. Actually, Kelly Meldrum gave me that one.

I don’t know if you know that.

Peter: I do not know that.

Frankie: When I first joined BNI, I didn’t have, you know, any kind of tagline.

Peter: Like a one liner. Yeah.

Frankie: Yeah. And she wrote that down and gave it to me one day and, I tried it out and everybody liked it. Yeah. Yeah. It worked out great.

And, I think, that just goes to speak, actually of you can really interpret that in any way. If you’ve had an experience with a contractor that, was shocking. Yes. You can really relate it to any way you want. Yeah.

It can be priced, but usually that’s not the biggest shocking factor. Usually it’s, usually it’s something like, for an example, like I hired a plumber once.

Peter: And

Frankie: I just assumed certain things about how they were going to treat my house. Yeah. And I was wrong. And I was shocked that I came home and there was this mud tracked through my whole house and I’m just like, wow. And, you sort of get to feel what it’s like to be a homeowner and when your house is disrespected in some way.

Peter: So Yeah.

Frankie: So, that’s one way that I interpret.

Peter: You know?

Frankie: Don’t get shocked by electrician or plumber or whoever it might be.

Peter: So Right. Yeah. That’s, yeah. Definitely. I get that.

I’ve been shocked a couple times. Usually, I’m shocked when they don’t show up. You know? That’s the big one. They just

Frankie: Yeah.

Peter: I thought you were gonna be here. Yeah. Oh, our guy is off on another job, or, you know, there’s just any number of excuses that people hear, especially in this day and age when, you know, business seems to be booming Yeah. You know, that they may be cherry picking the jobs. You know?

They may have said, oh, that was just a little job. We got this big job over here. We’ll get around to you when we can.

Frankie: Oh, sure.

Peter: You know? Sure. Something like that. But you never know because, you know, you may show up for a small job and, you know, that person may have other big plans you didn’t even know about. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Maybe they’re going to try you out on a little job and then, you know, have you do their lake house or whatever.

Frankie: Yeah. No, You know? I’ve definitely experienced that. It is more difficult to get to the smaller jobs.

Peter: Mhmm.

Frankie: But I have experienced that, you know, their neighbors need an electrician. Their Right. Brother needs an electrician. Yeah. And, if anything, it’s it’s free advertising to do a small job.

So

Peter: So so I know you have a little story about this. You’ve already sort of told it. How did you get into the profession? So we talked about how you got to own the business. Sure.

But how did you get into just being an electrician in the first place?

Frankie: Yeah. It really wasn’t my plan. But, you know, things happen Yeah. For a reason. So when I was in high school, 18 years old, just a few months from graduating.

Yeah. I actually really wanted to be an auto mechanic.

Peter: Okay.

Frankie: And I thought, oh, I’m going to go to school afterwards. Of course, I didn’t have any money for school, but I figured I’d figure something out. However, just a few weeks before graduation, a local contractor put an ad in, like a local ad in the school looking for an apprentice, someone who’d like to get into

Peter: an Like in the school paper or something?

Frankie: Yeah. It was kind of a school job board and I happened to be in a class that specialized in learning how to get a job after high school. And my teacher came to me and said, Hey, I found the perfect job for you I think. And I thought, Okay. So she gave me his number.

I I called the local contractor, went for an interview, and within a week after high school, I was working. Wow. Yeah. I had no idea that I was gonna like it. I just figured, hey.

You know, let’s try it and see what happens. Yeah. So I feel like, things might not go according to your plan, but

Peter: Business is sometimes just that one dimension of our lives. As a business owner, it kinda feels like all dimensions of your life sometimes.

Frankie: Yeah. Definitely.

Peter: But, now you’re married, so tell me about, who you’re married to and how long you’ve been together.

Frankie: Sure. We’ve been married since 2005, just a little over thirteen years. Who are

Peter: married to?

Frankie: Adrian.

Peter: Adrian.

Frankie: Okay. Awesome. And, we actually met through work, believe it or not. So Okay.

Peter: Gotta hear this story.

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if I’ve told, you or, it’s not something that comes up much. But, I was at the time in 2003 Mhmm. Just a few years after starting the business, and I was remodeling a house at the time.

Yeah. So not dating, just working and working and working. Anyway Yeah. Boring. Yeah.

Yeah.

Peter: All work, no play.

Frankie: Yeah, exactly. And, so, anyway, I I was doing a bid for a job and usually the way it works is you meet the contractor out of somebody’s house.

Peter: Yeah.

Frankie: You meet the customer and you look at what they want to have done. And, it went like usual, submitted a bid. We even did work there. And then all of a sudden out of the blue, the contractor calls me and says, Hey, are you single? I was like, yeah, I’m single.

I’m not dating anybody. Yeah. And I thought, okay, that’s kind of strange. Well, he says, my customer here was wondering if you’re single. She’s wondering if she can give your number out to her friend at work.

What? So I, I thought, well, you know, what can I lose? Yeah, go ahead. So he said, her name is Adrian. She’s a college student and she works with my customer here.

Uh-huh. And apparently, she’s just had a hard time with, finding somebody. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

And, wanted to help her out. So I said, okay. Yeah. Have her call me. So we went on a blind date, walked around Green Lake, had dinner.

Yeah. And then the rest is history. And we got married, yeah, got married two years later. And Wow. Yeah.

So you just never know how you’re gonna

Peter: So what do you do for fun? I mean, you know, now that you’re beyond the formative stages of the business, you know, you’ve gotten married, what what do you do? What what do you what do you do after hours?

Frankie: Yeah. So, we’ve got a few favorites and, one of them is walking the dogs and playing with the dogs. You know, that’s kind of your easy sort of when you got an hour, you know, hour or two you can do. Yeah. When we’ve got more time, we love hiking.

Okay. There’s lots of lots of beautiful areas to hike. I mean, we’re so lucky in Washington state. Yeah. And we like camping too.

So, one one of our favorites is to combine the two and do a backpacking trip, you know, go out for a few nights. Okay. You know, maybe a a lake, Alpine Lake in the Cascades or something like that.

Peter: Yep. I think you mentioned one time you do some winter sports too.

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. So I have a couple of favorites. One is snowboarding, which, I don’t do as often, but it’s a great to me anyway. It’s a great time to get a little adrenaline rush.

Peter: Yeah, I agree.

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. That’s my favorite part about that is just floating down the mountain. Yeah. And then my other favorite winter sport is cross country skiing.

That’s that’s really fun. Maybe not as much adrenaline, but it’s very close to hiking and backpacking. Yeah. So it’s it’s a perfect match.

Peter: A lot

Frankie: more work. Yeah. It’s a lot of work, but, you get that combination of backpacking Yeah. And hiking Yeah. And the occasional little downhill, you know?

Peter: Right.

Frankie: You know, you get to go a little faster sometimes.

Peter: Right. Now aren’t you a runner too?

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. Like to run too.

Peter: You do a

Frankie: little running? I, have never been much into running races. I didn’t do track in high school or anything like that, but I learned that I liked running in my mid twenties, you know, 25, 26. Just following a workout routine that I found in, Outside magazine.

Peter: Really?

Frankie: Yeah. It was, Laird Hamilton. He’s a famous surfer. I don’t Yeah. Know who Laird is.

Yeah. He had a workout routine in there. I’d never even heard of him till that point. But, he had a workout routine. I thought, hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna get in shape.

And Yeah. And the running part of it was my favorite. I just ever since then, I just on and off, I like to go on runs, especially around here with all the hills and stuff. I actually enjoy the challenge of, you know, Main Street or something like that.

Peter: So Okay. So for anybody that’s never been to Edmunds, the Main Street Hill is like, what, at least a half a mile or more of straight uphill. It’s brutal. I mean, my car can barely make it up.

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah.

Peter: It is a significantly it’s like a ski slope, basically.

Frankie: Yeah. Exactly. From from waterfront to the top, it’s it’s a

Peter: That’s a chug.

Frankie: Yeah. It is.

Peter: Way to go. That’s that’s awesome. You know, it’s interesting you mentioned that, running part that you figured out when you were about 25, because I was interviewing Don Kuntz, dentist, on the first episode, and he discovered in college that he found that running you know, he had done track and high school and stuff cross country, but not you know, didn’t really you know, didn’t have a whole lot of success per se, but discovered when he was in college that if he got out and ran, that it really gave him energy. And is that you find the same thing?

Frankie: Oh yeah. Yeah. It provides physical energy, but it also provides a lot of mental energy and a lot more mental clarity

Peter: That’s he was saying.

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. And, I like two things about the mental part because running is I think mostly mental. Right. So the cool thing about running, especially if you’re able to challenge yourself is you get to points where you feel like you can’t run any further.

Yeah. And if you’re keep yourself in the right mental state, you can make your body go further. And it’s kind of cool because if you’re going through things in your life or maybe work is just, or school for that matter is really difficult. Yeah. It helps you mentally, like you’re, you’re sort of overcoming a hurdle in your run.

Right. It really does help you overcome hurdles, you know, in your life too.

Peter: So you’re, you’re, you’re activating some part of your brain that realizes that you can overcome challenges and that it kind of expands your horizons or

Frankie: something yeah basically. Like For me, I think it just helps me overcome, you know, those points in your life where maybe you’re feeling a little burnout at work and you’re just feeling like, I got this to do list that I really don’t want to do because I just feel like I can’t. And it actually, I’m sure there’s some science behind it, but going on a couple of runs, I can get back to work and just do it. I feel good about it. Wow.

So, yeah,

Peter: That’s good. That’s great. Yeah. That’s, maybe you should become a trainer. How do you feed yourself spiritually?

How do you get your spiritual grounding?

Frankie: So, yeah, there’s there’s a few ways. I really didn’t have much of a faith until, about eight years ago. Okay. Although I’d gone to several Christian churches and stuff like that. Yeah.

I really didn’t have a solid grounding in faith until I started going to the church I currently go to, which is the World Mission Society Church of God. And the way that they were able to teach the word of God, it really actually gave me a lot of hope knowing that, you know, despite everything that we go through here, there’s so much more to it. And now day to day, just making sure that, you know, I pray and try to absorb the word of God when I can. Yeah. But also keeping God’s commands, you know, going to church.

Yeah. And, you know, keeping the Sabbath day. Mhmm. A lot of people are surprised that I go to church all day on Saturday. What do you do?

I pretty much study the word of God and have worship and have good fellowship. And that really keeps me grounded because up until, know, you know, seven, eight years ago, you know, most people do experience sort of like a, kind of a void, you know, you kind of have a void and you don’t know what it is and you feel like there should be a better purpose no matter how hard you try to do your daily duties. Yeah. Up until that time, I sort of had a void and now it’s not there anymore, which is great. I feel like no matter what happens, how hard the day is, you you have, you have strong faith in God and you can rely rely on Him.

So

Peter: So you, apply biblical principles in your work?

Frankie: Certainly. Yeah. Especially, so there’s biblical principles that are between us and God,

Peter: you know,

Frankie: keeping worship and praying. Absolutely. But Bible teaches all kinds of other moral principles too.

Peter: Like love each other.

Frankie: Love each other, number one. Yeah. But also, you know, treating others how you would like to be treated. Mhmm. Giving in to others too.

That’s a really good one because people have a hard time giving in for one another, especially in business where you’re doing business for a customer and conflicts can happen.

Peter: Sure. Yeah.

Frankie: No matter how hard you try, a customer is not happy. Yeah. And they may request things.

Peter: Even though you’re right.

Frankie: Even though you’re right or you think you’re right.

Peter: Yeah.

Frankie: They may request things that, in your mind are above and beyond. Maybe you shouldn’t have to do that. Yeah. But I feel like when I give in for for a customer to say, yeah, I’m gonna do it. Yeah.

We’ll take care of it. Things go a lot a lot better. Yeah. You know, when you can give in for a customer or a coworker or whatever it

Peter: is. Yeah.

Frankie: That’s just one example, obviously. Yeah. There’s a lot of teachings.

Peter: So Yeah. Yeah. That’s, how do you view marketing and, you know, the expenses associated with that and all?

Frankie: Oh, sure. I would say the most powerful marketing is word-of-mouth. And pretty much up till this point, word-of-mouth, referral has been, 90% of our business.

Peter: Gee.

Frankie: BNI, you know, being at BNI actually, that’s the main principle is referral marketing.

Peter: Yeah.

Frankie: Was a perfect fit. Yeah. And we do get quite a bit of business through BNI too, which is which is great.

Peter: Yeah.

Frankie: Not only that, but the networking, you know, possibilities through BNI is is really awesome too.

Peter: So Yeah.

Frankie: So when it comes to other marketing strategies, we use a HomeAdvisor. You’ve probably heard about that. Yeah. Which we don’t use a lot. HomeAdvisor is great when there’s a little low and you just want to you can actually turn it on and off.

Okay. It’s like a faucet. It’s pretty cool. You just turn it on and all of a sudden you’re getting you’re getting leads, which is kind of cool. They’re not as good as a word-of-mouth referral.

Right. That is one way that we help fill in the gaps. But other than that, you know, we’ve got a website. Yep. We’re using the reviews of us, which is great.

Peter: Yep.

Frankie: But the marketing that I’ve tried in the past, I’ve tried radio advertisement, which worked pretty good for a short period of time when we needed it. One time I tried phone book ad, was like ancient history.

Peter: Phone book. What’s that?

Frankie: That didn’t work at all.

Peter: Frankie doesn’t look that old to know to advertise a business. Yeah. Okay. So you’ve tried some other marketing in the past, but it seems like word-of-mouth and then maybe a little of HomeAdvisor.

Frankie: I think, doing good work for people and going above and beyond is the best marketing. Yeah.

Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and the reviews program that you talked about is really just figuring out a way to make sure that you get the positive reviews that you deserve from your customers. Exactly.

Frankie: All you

Peter: have to do is ask. And it just makes it easy to ask, basically. You know? So Yeah. That’s that’s kind of a virtual word-of-mouth in some respects.

You know?

Frankie: Certainly.

Peter: So that’s good. So what, what areas, oh, know what I want to ask you. So, are you a reader?

Frankie: I’m really not. Okay. Unless you count the Bible as a book.

Peter: Well, it is a book. I do count the Bible as a book.

Frankie: That’s my main read.

Peter: Alright. Okay. So any favorite entertainment? Any other, you know?

Frankie: So when it comes to entertainment, I would say, the occasional movie. Yeah. You know, I do have some favorite movies. Yeah.

Peter: What would that be? Yeah. Do you care to share that with us?

Frankie: Yeah. So one of them would be the matrix. Oh. Yeah. The first one.

Peter: I knew I liked you. Yeah. Matrix. Yeah. Okay.

We got snowboarder and matrix. Wow.

Frankie: That’s one of my top

Peter: That that was yeah. What do you like about it?

Frankie: You know, what I liked about it, and I still watch it about I try to watch it once a year, is, you know, gosh, if I were not to get back into the Bible again, but to me it was seemed very kind of spiritual and biblical. Yeah. I’ve heard that. The parallels are so close, that it just every time I watch it, I’m just like, this is closer to the Bible than I watched it last time. You know?

Peter: So you see more and more clues.

Frankie: Yeah. And the fact that, you know, Neo, the main character, is living in a world that he doesn’t realize is just kind of an illusion. He doesn’t realize there’s a whole bigger world outside of that. That’s actually the real world. It’s a perfect parallel to us spiritually.

We’re living in a physical body, but actually our real life is our soul that belongs in the real world. This is more of a temporary illusion.

Peter: And

Frankie: the fact that people don’t remember that their soul was once in the heavenly realms is the perfect parallel too. Yeah. Because the Bible says that we will return to heaven. Right. Which means we were once there before we came here.

Peter: Right. Right.

Frankie: We just don’t remember it.

Peter: Right.

Frankie: Anyway, that was my biggest realization. Interesting. Yeah. And to me, learning the truth throughout the Bible is sort of like Neo taking the pill. Yeah.

The pill that opened up his eyes. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the bible. Yeah.

The truth in the bible will open up your eyes and you’ll realize that no matter what happens in this life, there’s there’s something better.

Peter: There’s one scene in the movie that I remember, the guy sitting there eating the steak and having Yeah. Glass of wine, and he’s like, this steak tastes so good. I know it’s not real, but, oh, it tastes so good. Yeah. Yeah.

I always thought that was pretty comical, that little scene.

Frankie: Yeah. And I sort of see him if you were to compare him to a character in the Bible. It’s like Judas Iscariot. Yeah. He he knew what the truth was.

He walked with Jesus, but he still chose to

Peter: Right.

Frankie: To Take the be tempted by the 30 the 30

Peter: Yeah. The pieces of silver. Silver.

Frankie: Yeah. And betrayed, you know Right. Betrayed others

Peter: Right.

Frankie: Just for a moment of pleasure. Yeah. So yeah. I

Peter: never thought of that.

Frankie: Yeah. Wow. There’s

Peter: I’m gonna have to go home and watch.

Frankie: If we watched it together Yeah. Alright.

Peter: K. We’ll we’ll we’ll we’ll plan that. That’s after we go snowboarding.

Frankie: Yeah.

Peter: Yeah. Perfect. So I’ve got a DVD in my car. We can watch it while we’re driving.

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Peter: Might not be legal, but so, that’s, yeah, that’s fascinating. So what else about, what else about your success? Like, what does success mean to you, you know, in business and life? What does it mean?

Frankie: Boy, probably a couple things. You know, the, I suppose the end game of working and having a business or even working for somebody is that you’re providing for your family and for your well-being. But you know what a successful looks like, successful business looks like. Yeah. You know, to me means that you’re sort of working smoothly within a kind of an ecosystem.

Mhmm. Mhmm. You’re serving others. Yeah. And in that process, hopefully you’ve created a good enough system that is serving everybody equally.

So you’ve got employees, you’ve got yourself, you’ve got customers, and then you’ve got all the sort of infrastructure in your business. To me, having a business that just works well smoothly and serves everybody equally is, I guess to me is success. Right. It doesn’t matter how big I get or, or, maybe even how many good reviews I get, but

Peter: sure.

Frankie: The, the fact that I’ve been able to reach a lot of goals and the business runs well Yeah. And the employees are happy. Yep. Customers are happy. That to me, that’s that’s success for sure.

Peter: Yeah. So you see, so one aspect of business success is, having employees that are happy and thriving as well. Yeah. Sounds like you take that seriously.

Frankie: Yeah. Certainly.

Peter: Yeah. So, is there anything you do in particular to, encourage that happiness with your employees? I mean, sounds like you have some pretty strong core values in your business. Yeah. Are there any other things that you do in the business that really tell the employees, Hey, we really care about you.

Frankie: Sure, sure. Well, I can tell you I probably lack in a lot of ways in that respect, but, one thing that we’ve tried to do over the last year was to have pretty, you know, month, you know, once a month get together, have a meeting, a very relaxed meeting where it doesn’t feel like, you know, it’s all business. Yeah. And just kind of have a kind of a it’s, it’s, it’s business, but it’s also kind of a kind of a powwow where we just get to get to know each other more.

Peter: Yeah. So casual.

Frankie: It’s very casual. Yeah. That’s that’s one thing that I feel like helps us at least get along well and get to know each other well and get on the same page. Yeah. Other thing too is just providing some of the basic, benefits or perks that make them feel like, you know, they’re worth, worth a lot in the company.

We’re willing to go a little above and beyond to to make sure they get vacations and Yep. They get paid holidays and, health insurance and stuff like that. So Wow. That’s great. I would say there’s definitely, I could do a lot more.

I feel like I probably don’t show them enough appreciation, but, but,

Peter: That’s, that’s big though in this day and age.

Frankie: Yeah.

Peter: That’s, that’s the health insurance. That’s a big, that’s a big, that’s something pretty special Sure. Especially for small businesses. I mean, that’s a huge, cost, that I know it’s associated with businesses.

Frankie: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Definitely.

Peter: Good for you. Any other folks outside of business that have really been instrumental in your life, your journey, your walk, any any, you know, young or old or maybe even somebody you don’t know personally, but who who has really inspired you in your life?

Frankie: You know, I would say that, you know, through high school and kind of, you know, twenties, you know, kind of earlier when you’re, you know, you’ve got curiosity and exploring the world, you know. I had, I had probably a couple of, role models that helped a lot. I don’t know if you know, but you know, when I was all through high school, I was an avid skateboarder.

Peter: Okay. I

Frankie: did not know that. Yeah. There was plenty of bad role models, you know, you know, but you know, I did have at least, at least one that was really good. And and he was, he was for a while actually a professional skateboarder and I had sort of the the, benefit to be able to, you know, skate with him. The cool thing is he was a little different than than everybody else.

Yeah. He was a hard worker, straight A student. Yeah. You know, went to college at the same time of working hard in school and doing well. Yeah.

Here’s this guy who was amazing, amazing skateboarder. Yeah. And it made me just kind of think, you know, I can be a good skateboarder and do what I like and be successful, you know, in other ways too. Yeah. And then I suppose after high school, you know, there was my first boss.

At least in the electrical industry, he was my first and only boss actually. He was a good role model too. He basically, not only showed me how to be a good electrician, but also I kind of knew better by following his example, how to conduct myself in business and with other people and how to solve problems and how to react to problems too. Just being levelheaded and approaching problems with a levelhead.

Peter: Don’t freak out.

Frankie: Yeah. Don’t freak out. Talk to people and listen to people.

Peter: Get the facts.

Frankie: Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, if I were to name a couple, at least that was a couple of things that got me started early. So, yeah, I would say that, you know, he was a successful person. Yeah.

And yeah, I guess from that time on, had, you know, family members too that were successful that I looked up to. So, Cool.

Peter: Cool. Anything else you wanna say before we wrap up here? Anything else? You know, we’ve covered a lot of ground.

Frankie: Yeah.

Peter: Yeah. Anything anything we don’t know about you? I’m sure there’s a lot, but you know, anything you wanna share?

Frankie: Yeah. There’s probably some other things that, people don’t know about me, but, I really don’t have any secrets. You know, it’s one of those things where, I feel like, throughout my life I’ve had good opportunities and been able to in certain ways live on the edge and do things beyond my comfort level, which really helpful. I think we should all go beyond

Peter: our comfort Start a business at 24. That’s way over the edge.

Frankie: Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, I guess I can’t think of anything that, people don’t already know about me, but, I would like to just give thanks to you for interviewing me.

Peter: I

Frankie: give thanks to God too for everything’s gone well because I really cannot say that I’ve done anything successful on my own. So, yeah, it’s all due to, you know, wisdom and abilities that God gives us.

Peter: Absolutely. Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks for being on here and, we’re really glad that, we got to get to know you and, we may hear from Frankie again in the future. You never know.

Frankie: Thank you.

Peter: Thanks for listening to this episode of Biz and Life Done Well with Peter Wilson. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most of the other popular podcast platforms. Please tell your friends about us and leave us a review so even more people will find out about us. Thanks again. We’ll see you soon.