A key trait that I look for when hiring salespeople is curiosity. I believe curiosity is the number one thing that you need to grow your business. In today's episode, I interview two people who have partnered to create an incredible system that won the AHR Innovation Award, plus how one of them got this opportunity in part by hiring a former police officer to be a private driver for his limo. Check out today's interview to hear the whole story and learn some sales and marketing tips to help you grow your business to a point where it becomes sellable.
Hey everyone, Jack Jostes here, and welcome to The Landscaper's Guide podcast, where we share sales, marketing and leadership inspiration to help grow the snow and landscape industry. Today, I'm at a warehouse, at a factory for one of my clients out in Wilmington, Delaware. It's a bit different from our normal episodes, but one of my clients has successfully sold his company, and we get to hear about what he did to get it to that point, plus a bunch of other ideas that are going to help you grow your business. If you're new here, make sure you subscribe at landscapersguide.com/podcast. See a link in our show notes, and we're going to instantly send you our top three business podcasts. Let's get into this conversation.
All right, here we are at the AirGreen Factory in Wilmington, Delaware. We just finished doing a video shoot for AirGreen and BMIL's partnership in this new product, the AG 1000. Now, this has nothing to do with the landscape industry, at least I don't think it does, but I'm excited to have you guys on the show because this is just an interesting business story.
I've been working with you, Tom, for nearly 10 years.
Tom Backman:
I think so.
Jack Jostes:
I think it's been close to 10 years. We took over your website around 10 years ago. We helped you with some SEO. Tell us a little bit, who are you and what is BMIL?
02:12: Introduction of BMIL and Integration of Refrigeration Technologies
Tom Backman:
BMIL is a company that does integration of refrigeration technologies, including project execution. We buy components from other suppliers, we design those components into a refrigerated warehouse or facility, and procure the parts, assemble the thing, start it up and turn it over.
Jack Jostes:
You recently partnered with John from AirGreen to create the AG 1000. John, tell us a little bit, who are you and what should we know about you?
John Hammond:
Okay. Well, AirGreen, we design and manufacture novel air conditioning and dehumidification systems, utilizing a brine solution to strip moisture directly out of the air, which makes that system inherently more efficient than standard mechanical cooling equipment. We ran into Tom, gosh, it's got to be 16, 18 months ago. Tom had a need and he felt like we might have the solution that would help him address customer concerns.
03:21: How Tom & John Met and Collaborated
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, I'm curious, how did you guys meet?
Tom Backman:
Well, John's sales manager, Len, picks up the phone and starts calling around the industry and said, I've got this technology and I'd like to find a way to turn it into a product that we can package and ship. I am five miles from here going up I-95 and I get a phone call from this guy named Len I've never met, but other people I know had met him and he said, "Hey, could you come by and talk to us? We've got this technology, we don't entirely have to figure out how we're going to go to market with it." And I said, "Well, I happen to be five miles from you." I literally was five miles from him, but we're 500 miles from my home. I pulled in and I couldn't believe what I saw.
Jack Jostes:
How did Len find you? Is he just cold calling people in the industry or did you guys have a relationship prior to this?
Tom Backman:
Never knew Len before. I know a lot of people in the industry, he knows a lot of people in the industry, he started asking people in the industry who could help us with this problem. I don't know how many people, but some people said to him, hey, call Tom Backman. He and I did not know each other, but we knew people that knew us both and they connected us.
Jack Jostes:
You happened to be within five miles of Wilmington?
Tom Backman:
I happened to be five miles from this Wilmington, Delaware plant, and I travel the country, I travel the world, and I just happened to get that phone call. I was 15 minutes away.
Jack Jostes:
That's incredible. You're based in North Carolina?
Tom Backman:
Yes.
04:54: How Hiring a Former Cop as a Driver Created an Unlikely Opportunity for Business Growth
Jack Jostes:
You were up here on some other business trip. Tell us about your driver, Tom, because I think this is just interesting, during COVID.
Tom Backman:
Right before COVID, we're doing really well in the refrigeration business, and it just dawns on me. I leave, let's say, my home in North Carolina, I drive to an airport, I take a flight to Charlotte, I sit on a layover, I take a flight to Philadelphia, I rent a car, I get in the car, I drive to AirGreen. 10 hours later, I'm coming into my hotel and there's 500 emails waiting for me. I thought, why don't I buy a car with a decent backseat, get a little wooden desk, hire a driver? I did it. By good fortune, I did it right before COVID.
I put up an ad on Indeed, we hire a lot of our employees on Indeed. It's been very successful. I put this ad up and somebody doesn't respond to the ad, he calls our office and he talks to people in the office, and one of my employees comes in my office, he says, "Hey, I got a guy here, are you hiring a bodyguard?" I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "Well, some retired cop who's going to drive you around."
I hadn't told anyone what I was up to. The next day he calls me, this retired cop named Tom, and he said, "I'm interested, blah, blah, blah." He sounded right. I said, "Why don't you come down and meet me?" He said, "Great." He lived four hours away. I said, I got a better idea. I have a trip on Monday. This was Friday. I said, I have a trip on Monday, why don't you come on a trip with me, see if you like it. I can tell you, I know him now, this is completely out of character for him, but he came to Morehead City, North Carolina, met me, took a three-day trip with me, and we had never met.
At the end of the three-day trip it was clear to us, we're doing this. Long story short, I get a little wooden desk, I hire the driver. Ironically, he ends up moving to the coast where he wanted to live anyway. He's driving me around. It's how I was so close that day at AirGreen. But a year after I hired him, maybe less than a year, COVID hits, and my competitors largely work for large organizations that said their salespeople can't call on anyone anymore, they got to stay home. Wow, what an opportunity. I doubled our sales during COVID because I was stealing customers, because my main competitors wouldn't come in the door. I'd walk in the door and my customers would say, finally, someone is here, can you sell me this? We really had a good go of it during COVID.
Jack Jostes:
That's awesome.
Tom Backman:
It's just great luck and it was awesome.
Jack Jostes:
You just happened to be up here?
Tom Backman:
I'll tell you where I was at. I was driving by here on my way to the Pepsi Research and Development Center in Valhalla, New York, to calling them about installing an environmental room, which we have now installed. I was just passing by here on my way to go through New York City to get to Valhalla when I got the phone call.
Jack Jostes:
That's amazing. Len worked for you?
John Hammond:
Yeah, Len is our sales and marketing director.
Jack Jostes:
He reached out to Tom. Do you remember the first time that you talked to Tom and how was that?
John Hammond:
Yeah. Well, it was shortly after that. Len called me and said, "Hey, listen, I talked to this guy, Tom, wanted to know if it was okay if he stopped by?" I said, "Sure." I'm always willing to have someone smart and energetic come by and talk. Of course, Tom had knew about the kind of work that we did and how the potential of its technology to be additive to what he envisioned, so we, after spending a fair amount of time again designing and building units with this novel technology, it was really refreshing to have someone come in and immediately get it and be enthusiastic about it. We were able to really just start talking about what the potential might be if we took what BMIL does for a living and what we do for a living and put them together to create something new and different. That's what we've done right behind us.
08:56: How Winning the AHR Innovation Award Spurred Success for Tom & John
Jack Jostes:
For people who maybe aren't in the refrigeration industry, what is ASHRAE and what is the award that you've won together?
John Hammond:
Well, ASHRAE is a technical community of people in the heating and air conditioning and refrigeration business. They, every year prior to their big annual convention, where they start to take applications for innovative technologies in certain categories, we were looking at, well, I wonder if we can do something in the field of refrigeration that we've been targeting by putting his stuff and our stuff together. We filled out the application. This organization, these applications are read and graded by technical experts across a variety of air conditioning and heating and refrigeration fields. You answer a number of questions and they give you scores and then they rack the scores up and really see who's come up with something that's really cool and different.
Jack Jostes:
Well, what is it about this that's cool and different? What problem does it solve, that hasn't been solved before?
John Hammond:
Well, let me tee it up and then I'll let Tom hit it. What AirGreen does for a living, we use a brine solution that allows us to strip moisture directly out of the air, unlike traditional cooling dehumidification where you have to cool all the way down to the dew point in the low fifties, high forties, and then literally reheat to get back to your comfort conditions, again, for the air conditioning world, we're able to do that in a direct path because we are using the salt solution to strip moisture directly out of the air. It makes it considerably more energy efficient. We applied those same principles to the refrigeration space that Tom spends his time working in. Do you want to hit that one home?
Tom Backman:
I want to address this by talking about what happened since the day I walked in here.
Jack Jostes:
Okay.
10:41: Why the AG1000 is a Massive Innovation in Refrigeration Technology
Tom Backman:
I walk in here and I hear about this, what they're up to and I'm interested, but I just don't have my mind around where they're headed. John just mentioned they're talking about comfort conditioning, but dry air. Go back 25 years, I tried to come up with a way to refrigerate air without defrost, especially to cool it down to temperatures that are getting close to freezing. To be honest with you, I tried to do it with a film of oil and let the moisture get in the oil and turn into little balls of ice and harvest the ice off the oil by heating the oil up, letting the water melt, which would put it below the oil and it could drain it off. It just didn't work very well.
We got water out, but it was ineffective, a lot of energy, oil got really thick when it got really cold, it just was problematic, and after a few years of working on this with a friend of mine, we gave up. I walk in here one day, 80 feet behind here, they have a test stand and they're sitting here running it, and they're talking about air conditioning. I look inside and I'm like, oh my God, we don't need to use defrost anymore, they're taking water out of the air with refrigerated brine, and they're using heat to push the water out of the brine into the outdoor air. Suddenly we have a machine that doesn't need defrost.
They knew how to do make-up air. So we got going on make-up air for rooms in a world where we would normally have to have defrost cycles. I got really excited. To be honest with you, I stayed in a hotel here in Delaware that night, I couldn't sleep, I stayed up all night and designed what you see here, came back in the next day and I said, guys, we got to do something about this, and we, that moment decided we'd share the costs, keep track of who spent what, squared up later and get building. We did it.
John Hammond:
Tom sent us some of their equipment and said, let's hook into your pilot plant and let's see what happens. What I really enjoyed about that first day, Tom comes in, serious look on his face, he's like... I asked Tom, I said, "What does success look like?" He said, "Well, if we get our dew points down to 25 degrees Fahrenheit or lower, it's a home run." Within about 10 minutes, and we turned a little knob and it went woo.
Tom Backman:
I'm standing there next to him, he says, slow the air down so we can get colder. Lavinia, engineer standing there, moving all the bells and whistles and tweaking the knobs, turns it a little, turns a little more, turns a little more, and we get to 25 degrees and he's like, let's keep going. 15 degrees, let's keep going. Zero degrees, let's keep going. Minus 10, let's keep going. Minus 20, minus 25. We actually don't know if we can reliably run a machine without defrost at minus 25 degrees, but I can tell you we have done it for hours in this facility in the summer successfully, so we right now aren't stretching this to temperatures below about 25 F, but we're really excited. The potential of this is going to take, in my opinion, 10 years to completely unfold. It's really a great thing we stumbled across.
14:01: Real Examples of Commercial Companies Using the AG 1000
Jack Jostes:
Who's going to end up using the AG 1000?
Tom Backman:
In today's world, when you own a commercial building and you have employees working in that building, by code, you have to provide ventilation. That's not such a big deal at air conditioning, but it's why they were inventing the AirGreen technology is to create ventilation in that situation where you need refrigerated, but dehumidified air. You can't put wet outside air in a building without causing a lot of problems and discomfort. Now, think about this. Refrigerated rooms need ventilation air. There isn't a technology that does it, so we put together what I knew with what AirGreen knew, and came up with a simple package machine that creates this cold dehumidified air for meat cutting rooms, for hazardous material storage room where the material is hazardous so it's got to be refrigerated and ventilated, for pharmaceutical warehouses, for laboratories, anywhere where there's people working in a cold room, you need ventilation, but until now, it's been so expensive to do that. The end users are essentially ignoring the code. We're pretty excited that we think we have a pretty economical solution.
15:16: The Importance of Fast Collaboration and Trust
Jack Jostes:
It seems like you guys met and then very quickly started collaborating at a very deep way?
Tom Backman:
We did, and sort of strangely developed a trust fast, and nobody's betrayed the trust, we're still just working on a handshake, and we've deep dove and spent a lot of money to get here, but still getting along and nobody's gotten sideways with anyone. I'm about to, though. I'm kidding.
Jack Jostes:
Well, how often does that happen for you, where you just get a cold call, you're out in your limo, and you go and meet somebody and then months later you're winning-
John Hammond:
You sound really fancy, in your limo.
Tom Backman:
Yeah, I was going to say, please don't call it a limo.
Jack Jostes:
Oh, it is a limo. It's a limo. What's that movie that the guy has?
Tom Backman:
Lincoln Lawyer.
John Hammond:
The Lincoln Lawyer?
Tom Backman:
It is The Lincoln Lawyer. Back to the limo thing, and then I'll answer your question about how often do I stumble on these situations. The day my driver, Tom, retired cop started, we get in the car and we take our first trip and we stop for the first time and he says to me, don't be thinking I'm opening doors for you, which was never even a thought in my head. We have this standing joke probably half the time he puts the car in park, I'm like door, and of course he's never opened it. That being said, it's amazing, on a very regular basis, we're driving down the highway, we're a thousand miles from home, and I'll get a phone call for somebody out of the blue, and I'm 50 or 60 miles away from whoever's looking to find me. It's just amazing. I don't know why it happens.
18:53: The Importance of Curiosity in Business and Partnerships
John Hammond:
If you go through life being curious and having an open mind, these things will go by, you'll notice them, okay? If you're not curious and you don't want to know how the world works, then those things go by and you don't notice them, so I don't think it's that odd that what has happened to you is happened more than once because of your outlook, because you are curious, because you want to know how things work. The people that don't do that, they just don't notice that those things were there, because they went just right by.
Jack Jostes:
Well, speaking of curiosity, what did you ask Len before you decided to come here? You had to have asked him something to make sure that it was worth even entertaining a trip over here.
Tom Backman:
I did. I said, "Len, is this another liquid desiccant system?" He said, "Absolutely, but we've solved the problems." Biggest one being the liquid desiccant, didn't stay in the unit. I came here quite stern and serious, convinced they wouldn't have solved that problem, but they had. When I saw that they had and how they were doing it, that's when I said to myself, oh boy, I can do cold ventilation air without defrost. By virtue of the fact that they had a brine, the brine was taking water out of the air, and without a defrost they were expelling that water back into the air. But step one is, they had to create a technology where the brine wouldn't leave the unit with the air, which no one had done, but they accomplished it.
Jack Jostes:
Tom, you've been very successful in business. You've sold your company and you still own part of it. You've reached a level that many people listening aspire to. What are some of the things that you've done that helped you get to that point that you think might apply to business in general to become sellable?
Tom Backman:
I'll tell you something. I'm not the kind of entrepreneur that easily allows himself to hire a consultant. Comes hard to me, has always come hard to me. The number one thing I did, and you were part of it, is about 10, 12 years ago, for a period of about 10 years or eight years, probably eight years, I brought in consultants to just look at me and my company and what I was trying to accomplish, but it wasn't happening fast enough or wasn't happening at all, and asked, what are you seeing? It got my head screwed on.
The consultants that got me there, I think in the most case, would've liked to have been part of my world for longer, but I bought from them some things I needed. I got those things and I moved on my own and certainly morphed those things into what works for me. But one piece of advice I'll give is, be open to the idea that somebody outside, that you don't even know, can step in and see what you don't see. That was a real big part of my development. As an entrepreneur in a small company and you own and operate that company, it's real easy to convince yourself that anything is true. Sometimes you need somebody that doesn't work for you to have the courage to say, I don't think that is true, I think you're wrong.
20:27: Business Tips for Creating a Sellable Business
Jack Jostes:
What were maybe some of those things that maybe they were difficult to hear at first, that somebody helped you realize you were wrong about?
Tom Backman:
I didn't have written operating procedures for my company. I came from that background, from big companies that had written operating procedures, and I thought my little entrepreneurial company didn't need that. It didn't, as long as I stayed small, but it was way in my way because every time we got a little bigger, my employees would make massive mistakes because things were in my head not in writing, and there was less time to get things out of me.
Second thing I did is, I had to admit, I can't sell everything this company ever sells, I've got to develop a rep network, and I did. Third thing is, tracking leads. I didn't track our leads, it was all in my head, and I woke up with it in my head and I knew what was going on. Well, we hit this point where I didn't, nobody in my company had the habit of tracking leads in any way. We didn't have a SOP for tracking leads, so I looked at some maps, adopted a way to envision this, which was a baseball diamond and the leads follow first base, second base, third base, homer out, and put those things together that were common sense suggestions from consultants that I had surrounded myself with, and all of a sudden it starts going better and we've just built from there. Those are some of the big ones. I can't sell everything. I can't be the only one that knows anything, and I can't remember where every lead is.
Jack Jostes:
I agree, those are really basic things, but I can tell you that most companies aren't doing them. Even the big ones, sometimes I'm amazed by how big of companies are where they don't have those things in place, but once they do, things can really open up for them for growth.
Tom Backman:
I'm going through some changes in my company right now, which is a separate discussion. Good positive growth oriented changes, and I sit back to myself and say, those things have almost made my job easy now so I can go expand into new things, I can spend time on things like this because I've got those things resolved and my machine operates without me better. Really, that's a summary of what I learned, with the help of outside consultants is, stop being the hero, stop being the driving force, make sure it runs without you. That's really what it's about.
Jack Jostes:
Well, thanks so much for sharing. John, I was curious if you had any other tips to add about sales and what works for you?
John Hammond:
Well, I'd like to expand a little bit on what Tom talked about. He talked about bringing in consultants. When I hear that, Tom, I think more of it is, Tom found other smart people that he trusted and learned things from them and then applied them to his business, because the term consultant, sometimes it has a negative connotation, right?
Tom Backman:
It did for me.
John Hammond:
But going back to his curiosity, which forged him showing up one day with a lot of enthusiasm to see what we do for a living. That same curiosity related to not only his strengths, but also his weaknesses, which is, there's some things I don't know and now I have to find some people that know how to do this so that I don't have to invent it myself. Or there's only so much Tom that in a single day that you can use, right?
Tom Backman:
Yeah.
John Hammond:
Those of us who have started up companies, we've all had that same experience where it's like, I can't do everything and I've got to build some capabilities and I got to figure out some shortcuts, and there's certain things that I want to partner on because we can't do it all of ourselves. We like to think that what we're doing with BMIL is an extension of that. We are going to partner on certain parts of this new enterprise that we're building together, and it's going to be a fun ride. It really is. I think it's going to solve a lot of problems for customers.
Jack Jostes:
Well, I'm really excited about what you guys are doing and wanted to thank you for having me out here-
Tom Backman:
Happy to have you.
Jack Jostes:
To work with you on this. How was doing the video shoot? Have you been on camera like this before?
John Hammond:
Not in such a fun way. I spent the first, as an engineer, I spent in the first part of my career as a chemical engineer working for DuPont, and so the video training that I had was usually related to some sort of catastrophic event, and you're on CNN trying to explain what the hell happened. It's great, great training, but they come in and then you have to watch yourself and they tell you everything that you did wrong. Good preparatory work. I've been on webcasts and podcasts before, and have spent most of my career in business development on top of engineering, so I'll talk to an empty room if I need to.
Jack Jostes:
You did great today.
Tom Backman:
Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Jack Jostes:
It was fun interviewing you guys and making some content, and I'm super excited for you to win that award and tell people about this amazing technology.
John Hammond:
It was a team effort.
Jack Jostes:
Thanks for working with me.
Tom Backman:
Thanks, Jack.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, thanks for coming on The Landscaper's Guide.
John Hammond:
Thank you.
Jack Jostes:
All right, everyone, thanks for watching The Landscaper's Guide podcast. One of the things that I talk about in my book is having a Hell Yes Customer, a really clear focus in your marketing. Sometimes people hear that and they get really afraid, well, what about my referrals? What about these other businesses that I work with? I think that this is an interesting story today because I often work with landscape companies and I also work with companies outside of the landscape industry. The people in this episode happen to meet partly through networking, and now they're doing an amazing collaboration together. I think in marketing, having a clear focus in your outbound marketing doesn't always mean you're not going to get other referrals and things that might be a good opportunity through networking.
I hope you enjoyed today's show. Make sure you subscribe at landscapersguide.com/podcast. My name is Jack Jostes, and I look forward to talking with you next week on The Landscapers Guide.
Show Notes:
Watch the full episode + see the transcript at: https://landscapersguide.com/podcast/
Tell us where to send your beef jerky: https://landscapersguide.com/toolbox
Check out BMIL’s website here: http://bmil.com