Brad Wyant (00:00)
Good morning and welcome to another episode of the Management Under Construction podcast. I'm Brad Wyant.
Dee Davis (00:05)
And I'm Dee Davis. And today we have with us, I'm so excited, my very good friend, Aaron Luce. Aaron and I have known each other for close to 30 years. We grew up in this industry together. He has a strong background in sales and management and working with people, which is what we are all about. So we're going to let Aaron introduce himself a little bit and talk a little bit today about.
partnering with your suppliers and your vendors and how to do that in a positive way.
Aaron Luce (00:38)
Thank you, Dee, and thank you, Brad, for having me on. I appreciate this opportunity to get in front of you and your audience. I've been in the industry for a long time. I currently work for Ryan Herco Flow Solutions, if you couldn't tell with the logo in the background. Ryan Herco, just real briefly, we're distributor of pressure and drainage piping valves, actuation tanks, pumps, whatnot. Dee and I go back many years, like you said, into specialty piping systems.
We got 30 offices plus around the United States plus one overseas. We're also fabricator assemblers of some specialized systems and components, mostly made up of the products that we sell and distribute for. What's kind of cool or different about us is we have a lot of different industries that we work in. Life science, which is where Dee and I met, semiconductor, water, wastewater treatment, metal surface finishing, aquatics, life support, specialty chemical, and some food and beverage. And then
Tying into this, a lot of that we work with through the construction companies on building these facilities out or retrofitting them. So for me, I grew up in the business. I'm currently the technical services manager for the company, but I started out 1990 working in the warehouse, making deliveries to construction projects, worked inside sales, became the supervisor of our inside sales and our warehouse. outside sales, was a product manager for a while.
district sales manager, among other titles. I feel blessed to work for a company and people who believe investing in their people with training and allowing room for growth. So it worked for me. I've been in the San Diego, Los Angeles and Albuquerque New Mexico markets. I did leave for six and a half years, what I call my sabbatical time where I worked for a pipe valves and fittings manufacturer. I specialized in a well-known semiconductor manufacturing company, traveled around plants in the U S a part of the world.
I've worked for a German company that drive motion control. I spent a little bit of time working for an HVAC contractor. I even worked for a nonprofit feeding America partner, gathering in produce and food to help feed people. For about six and a half years now, I've been back at Ryan Herco to this role. I run a small technical support team that helps out with products and applications to solve problems for our customers. And then additionally, I create and deliver training
programs to educate our sales force to be able to help our customers. And then like most people in this world, I have all of the duties as assigned, like I do our LinkedIn technical post, because who doesn't have some time for that in the middle? For most of my 35 years that I've been in the market industry, I've worked with a lot of contractors. It seemed like a great opportunity to discuss management under construction and talking about the contractors I've worked with and my sales.
background and can we talk about those two things and maybe share some lessons learned, talk about some stories and things that I hope Dee and Brad bring some value to your audience.
Brad Wyant (03:45)
Thanks so much for sharing that, Aaron. That's really cool to learn about your background, to hear about the sabbatical you were able to take. That's a really unique and special thing. think getting some perspective on this industry from outside of it and then coming back to it is a very healthy thing. I only feel that way because I've done that myself. I was able to come back after the MBA. But good for you to be able to wear so many different hats and now to come back to Ryan Herco in this role. So it sounds like Ryan Herco is not just your average plumbing supply company that gives you sticks of pipe.
or that orders thousands and thousands of valves and then sells the typical Zurn catalog. You guys are much more involved than that. You're providing a lot more value than a typical vendor, somebody that might be the equivalent of a residential plumbing supply company with the equivalent of a home depot. You guys are getting it and adding value to the process. Is that about right?
Aaron Luce (04:38)
Yeah, that's a great way of putting it, Brad. I love our perspective. Three-quarters of our customers have been the same for 30 plus years. Now there's new companies that come in and go, but when you're looking at it from a long-term perspective, we want to bring real value in that relationship to help drive those sales and to drive that long-term relationships, trust, respect is something that's really important to us. It works for us as well, It costs a lot of money to go find new customers and to
to try to attract new companies out there by having that relationship. We've got companies that we work with that we know pay their bills. We've got companies we work with that bring us value as well that help raise our reputation. We look at not only selling products, but understanding our products, who we are, what we do, and what brings that value. And then trying to match it up with companies that see that as a value as well. There's been times I've sold to companies
that it's just a buy sell. And that's always going to be some of that in business. And there's nothing wrong with the Home Depot or the Lowe's by any stretch for just selling products, but there's so much more that's made this a better way of doing sales, in my opinion, than just trying to get the next order or what can I do to get rid of the old sales guys are all use car salesman approach. I feel good about sales. I feel good about the work I do and the companies I work with. And that to me means a lot.
Brad Wyant (06:06)
think you bring up an interesting point there. You look at the giants of the world in any kind of product sales category. Sears, a long, long time ago, now Amazon, and the leverage that they bring to the market mostly has to do with logistics. They can get it there, the same product, cheaper and faster than anybody else. It's a very different challenge. It's a very worthwhile challenge. think we all enjoy same-day delivery and all the privileges that affords us.
It's not for everybody. It's for a different kind of mind and the kinds of problems you're talking about solving, the kinds of relationships you're talking about building, supersede that to the point of being a different service entirely. And that's much more aligned with the sort of relationship building that we talk about on this podcast instead of the engineering and logistical challenges, which are very quantitative, very math based, very strategy based. How do you pit contractors and people against one another to get the best pricing?
This is much more, how do I build a relationship with somebody, convince them that I have their interests in mind, and how do I demonstrate that?
Aaron Luce (07:11)
say this often enough, it might be my catchphrase if you wanted to put a term to it, but I truly believe my job, my role, currently Ryan Herco, but even before, was to help my customers find the best long-term cost-effective solution. And sometimes that's the purchase order price. Sometimes. If someone's doing a pilot study for six months, what's long-term mean to them? Pricing and availability.
If I'm doing like a pilot study, I need to know what I'm using is going to work. And I don't have a lot of money to waste, but also we have a lot of companies like some of these pharmaceutical companies or water, wastewater treatment. They're running them for 20, 30, 40 years and they're using acids or chemistries. can't afford leaks. So what's the best value having somebody like myself or others that do the roles like I do who says, yeah, this is cheaper.
but you're going to double your labor factor over the next five years to keep this running. That's different perspective than most suppliers have, right? That this is going to take more work to maintain and upgrade or keep running. So this might be worth the cost. My kids give me hard time about ROI, but what's that return on investment? Is 20 % more cost upfront, far cheaper over one, five, 10 year life or 50 % more cost.
but you also have to find companies that can see that value, whether that's end users, OEMs or contractors. Correct me if I'm wrong, but some contractors don't always see past the one to three year span for products and other things, right? So having those conversations, knowing who to have them with, it's important part of business, I think. And one that I think a lot of times is lacking. There's other people that do great work out there. It's not just saying that's Ryan Herco or me.
It's different way of doing sales for thinking about things.
Dee Davis (09:11)
think for me as a contractor, when I was in that world and I was buying thousands of feet of pipe and millions of dollars of equipment on a weekly basis, the big thing that made a difference to me and the vendor partners that I looked for are the ones that would provide me service. Yes, it's about cost because we all have budgets and we have to be responsible with our own money, with our clients' money, but the service makes a huge
difference. Aaron was a guy that I could pick up the phone and call on a Friday afternoon and go, I am in a shutdown and I need help. I had a lot of vendors like that. Fortunately, I was very fortunate to develop those kinds of relationships with a number of vendors over the years. Now, were those vendors always the absolute down to the penny cheapest vendors? Maybe not, but there's value that you get.
in those relationships. I shared a story with you when we were talking about you coming on the cast, and it was a different vendor. It wasn't Aaron. But I know this could have been Aaron. I had a piece of material that got lost in shipping. He had rerouted it to his house and he was sitting on his front porch on a Saturday waiting for the UPS guy to come. I was at the job site waiting to get the material so we could go install it because it was that kind of a timely thing. And I'm on the phone with him every hour.
You don't get that with just anybody. You get that from people you've developed trusting relationships with. If you're a contractor that doesn't pay your bills, you're not going to get that kind of service from a vendor. You have to pay your bills. You have to treat them right. It's a two way street, no matter what.
Brad Wyant (10:58)
It's almost like the question you have to be asking yourself is, do I need an expert for what I'm doing? And I've worked in very different parts of the business. When I was in LA, I worked on simultaneously a historical restoration project and a typical floor refit of a high rise. And both jobs were putting in tile at the same time. Anybody who's listened to this cast knows that I'm obsessed with tile. So forgive me. On the residential high rise job.
No one cared. The tile just had to be what it said in the drawings. Just go get the cheapest of that. Great. Let's get it. But on the historical restoration project, no, no, no. This is a building on the National Historic Registry. This is a center point of Los Angeles architecture. This is something we're all going to talk about for a very long time. And there I needed an expert and I found those experts and developed relationships with them. And in both cases, we had the desired outcome. People young in their careers, which I still am and was even younger,
not too long ago may not always have the perspective to be able to say, I do need an expert in this context. When we're young, we think we know everything we think we can take on the world. So, Aaron, when you're in that sort of predicament where you know that you're talking to somebody who doesn't realize that they need your expertise, how do you initiate the kind of relationship building that you need to do to have them achieve their desired outcome and for you to have your desired outcome, which is to make the sale?
without coming across in that used car salesman type way of, oh, this guy's bringing donuts again. It's a very fine line to walk. Both my parents were in sales for their entire careers, but I'd love to hear your perspective.
Aaron Luce (12:39)
When I young, my customers were my teachers. As I started growing up and getting older, I literally started this business six months out of high school. I was a kid. I was outside sales. I don't have an education background. I've been fortunate for people I worked for, worked with, and my customers that we started educating each other. Let's say there's a young PE or somebody on a project that's like, here's a spec, just give me what the heck we need.
kind of scenario, I take on an education type role as an educator. So I don't know if you've done with this before, but here's what I've seen, what works or what doesn't work, or here's different types of piping, piping systems. And I don't know if you've dealt with why one's better than the other. And I don't expect you to take my word for it, but let's look at a couple of these things. Let's talk about
For example, this piping is great, but it comes from overseas and is a long lead time. So that might delay the project versus this piping systems made in the US. This piping requires this kind of joining method. This takes longer. Versus this piping system is going to be easier to install. Easier to install usually means less labor. And you're to have less people waiting around on the project and help you complete it on time. And so I try to educate.
not just about a piece of pipe, but what's involved in it. And I take on an approach that I'm doing in consulting. Now in my role, I don't officially sell anything, but listen, it's not about me selling you something right now. It's making sure we're on the same page, making sure we understand the same things. And if you decide that mine isn't the right solution for this project, okay, that's fine. How do I help you figure this out? By having that kind of approach, most people go,
⁓ I didn't know that. Or sometimes they're like, wow, this is what we need to do. Okay, not a problem. Let me give you the information to you so that you make that decision based on all the facts versus just on the purchase price. The high-rise building also probably had a lot more tile in it. So the dollars on that PO was a lot higher or upfront was. But if you had to wait three weeks longer and be delayed on the project, what's that value and cost?
by me trying to understand what was that project's timeline schedule, what was that project's needs, what was your needs on the project, what's your role in the project, help me have a better conversation. I don't know that's a good way of putting it or not, but that's how I tend to handle those kind of things.
Brad Wyant (15:23)
think that's a great way putting it. think that taking on the role of educator in those kinds of situations is very powerful. I remember being a young project engineer, not having any idea what I was looking at and calling people saying, hey, I need pricing for this. I don't understand anything about this, just I need pricing. And they're like, all right, let us teach you, let us show you. And that builds trust, educating people.
encourages them to dive deeper, builds the relationship. And then all of sudden it's not just about, want as much money as I can out of this transaction. Right, the second, it's about we're to build a relationship where we're both going to create value for each other. One plus one is going to equal three in 30 years. And that's the kind of thing that few people have the presence of mind to get immediately. But the people who do get it in construction, especially, are the people who find themselves succeeding, I think.
Aaron Luce (16:17)
Absolutely. And that's taking that longer term approach, I think is key in a lot of areas of life, not just construction or purchase orders and other things. I've trained a lot of salespeople. I work with a lot of salespeople. There's times and places where we have to all feed our families. And that means I got to pay my bills this month. So there's a part of that where you've got to try to sell. But if you can take a, I will sell approach.
And let's take a longer view on it. You can build those strong relationships and have people that are in different roles. Heck Dee when you and I met, you were the PE for a project at a beautiful campus in San Diego college campus, this big life science building project. And you're in a different place. I'm at a different place in my life. So I got to deal with the young field hands that became the foreman that became superintendents.
In some cases became the estimating manager. That developed relationship, you don't know where it's going to go, but if you can take that long-term approach with it, you get to climb and you can see people climb and you can grow together and you can develop relationships that can last 30 years.
Dee Davis (17:30)
Yeah. And in the management under construction podcast, we call that playing the long game. We talk about this a lot over various episodes about playing for the short game or playing for the long game. And this is a long game approach. It's not a transactional approach. Who knew when I met you all those years ago, and we were negotiating over pricing and renting of fusion machines and all the different things that we did back then.
Who knew that 30 years later we'd be sitting here? I certainly didn't, but I knew that I was going to be dealing with you or someone like you job after job after job, year after year after year. And it, was in my best interest to learn from you. I just want to pause for a second because we're talking about Ryan Herco is plumbing solutions, mostly plumbing stuff. So I want to say to the audience.
that's listening. Plumbing is way more complicated than sewer pipe and water pipes. Okay, it is. People say, ⁓ plumbing, it's no big deal. It's simple. It is not. When you start getting into commercial and industrial systems, it can get very complicated very quickly. You have chemical compatibility issues. You have a lot of safety issues because you're dealing with all this crazy stuff. And I remember one of the plumbing estimators that I worked with, he had been a plumbing estimator.
forever. And I remember him saying to me one day, I love doing plumbing because there are more systems in plumbing than any other scope and than any other discipline. You could be dealing with 15 or 20 different systems on a single job.
It's crazy. And you don't really think about that. When you think about plumbing, most people just think about waste pipe and water pipe and that's it. There's a lot more to it than that. So getting technical help, especially when you start delving into these commercial and industrial projects, it's more complicated than you think, especially at the beginning. And you don't even know what you don't know yet. So making those relationships with those vendors and taking advantage of people who are willing to
just sit and talk to you and answer your questions and explain to you how does this pipe fuse together? I remember the first time I sat through a fusion class and I'm like, ⁓ now I get it. Okay. Did I need to know how to fuse the pipe? Not technically, but it helped me understand what my crews are facing in the field. The challenge is that they're facing, which helps me be a better estimator, be a better project manager, be a better negotiator for my guys.
Brad Wyant (20:17)
It's not that you didn't need to know it. It's that you needed to know it for different reasons. I think that's the way I would put that. And what you're talking about there, what we're all circling around is the difference between the terms that Aaron has introduced here, vendor versus supplier partner. I'm not going to develop a relationship with the person who's checking me out at Home Depot, but I'm going to develop a relationship with somebody of Aaron's level of expertise and knowledge. And that is the difference between the guy who brings the donuts because you rented your trailers from them this time.
or you're scaffolding or whatever it might be from the person who doesn't need to bring donuts because they're bringing you knowledge, because they're bringing you information that you're gonna build your career on.
Aaron Luce (20:59)
Absolutely. Yeah. Part of my training classes and I am teaching over 400 hours of live training this year, just to Ryan Herco people and some of our sister companies is when I talk about piping, almost everybody of this call has put together some PVC for irrigation in their backyard sprinkler system. And if you have a leak on that, it makes a little muddy mess. You kind of curse under your breath. You run to home depot some parts, make a repair in a day or two you forget about it. Right.
When you get into the kind of plumbing and piping that Dee's talking about, the stuff that we deal with, we're selling piping systems for 90 plus percent sulfuric acid or ultra high purity DI water for pharmaceuticals that go into drugs that people get injected or semiconductor. When you talk about those things, if those leak, we're talking tens of thousands of dollars of downtime, if not more.
We're talking potentially spraying on somebody that could cause bodily harm up to including possibly death. We're talking about huge liabilities. We're talking about systems and components that could waste, that could cost tens of millions of dollars. so plumbing, sure, it's easy. Piping, it's easy. You mentioned tile work. I worked at a facility years ago that had owner in a chemical facility, used facility.
⁓ didn't use proper epoxy flooring. They just painted the floors to look like it was. And after layoffs, there were people that made phone calls and OSHAs and EPAs and others. And one of them became a superfund site because of that. They saved money all over the place. yeah. No. My life experiences in the world open up to my eyes and my industry and across boards has been pretty interesting. I can tell you scary stories.
But it's just plumbing or we're just painting floors, right? But what is that? And you think about tile work and there's specialty tiles that Dee's dealt with that have to meet certain specs. There's a reason for that. The grout or the connecting adhesive has to meet certain specs. And some of that's just historical society to let's match up what was done 100, 200 years ago for looks and appearance, but make sure it lasts versus
What's for this application? That's part of why I have the job I have. Part of Dee I's background, we got to know each other. This is a good college campus. This is doing vital work, training students in the college level that's fed a whole industry for the last 30, 40 years in San Diego, right, Dee? And it still continues to grow and huge companies involved in it. So not taking that short-term look, not just looking at the...
purchase order or what can I buy the cheapest, but what do we need and what do I need experts? If someone doesn't see the value, you try a little bit, you try again, and then potentially you go, I'm not the right partner for you.
Brad Wyant (24:08)
And that's a very tough realization to have to come to, I'm sure, in your line of work. You want every prospect to turn into a sales conversion, to turn into a long-term relationship. But I think, and this is a tangent that is probably worth a whole other podcast, we're seeing more and more people in corporate America make the argument for cost cutting as a means of increasing profit, because it's easier to make the cost-cutting argument. If you don't spend this much money, you get this much more
profit. That's how that works. But to be the person in that company that you were just talking about earlier that became a Superfund site and say, no, no, the downside on this is we get sued by the federal government. The EPA comes here, shuts us down. We lose this much revenue. We have to pay lawyers this much money and our lives are impacted. And not just to mention we do bad things to the environment. The cost of that, who knows? So I think it's incumbent upon managers
to find the math, find the business tools to make those pro-side arguments for spending more money, to say, no, no, no, this is how much we're going to gain, or this is the downside we're going to prevent by doing that. But again, that's a very difficult conversation to have, especially in today's economy, especially with competitive prices being the way they are. So it's all about building those relationships, I would think, to build the trust that what that person is saying is true.
because it's a scary thing to go in front of a group of people and say, I know that this is gonna cost more money and it's gonna blow our budget today, but this is what we have to do so that we make the money we wanna make for the next 20 years. It's a very risky position to put yourself in. You end up looking like the tallest nail on the board all of a sudden.
Aaron Luce (25:57)
Absolutely. And yet we're seeing companies at times that have lost that focus. We've also seen some companies that only focused on putting in the very best and lost sight of staying competitive and not being cost effective versus other solutions out there. I do a lot of work in semiconductor and the semiconductor market right now, there's a yin yang factor and a couple of the biggest companies in the world are struggling. They haven't kept up with engineering changes or advanced technology as much.
Should there have been more cost cutting? I don't know. I'm not an expert in their business. I've made sure to give them solutions that I thought was the best long-term cost effective one for them. You're right, Brad, to have that conversation, to do that research, to look at quality versus price versus features, what's that yin-yang? What do I give up to get?
Brad Wyant (26:48)
Well, you're talking about a very important topic that one of my marketing professors just a year ago defined as marketing mix. It is the job of marketers and that term should include anybody who goes to market as you do to determine what the right mix of price, features and longevity and all those other things are to supply that customer in that moment. I think we're seeing an interesting shift now back in the fifties and sixties post war period, American cars.
were disposable because something new was coming out every couple of years. This one's got even longer tail fins and it was this whole GM inventing need thing. now we're seeing cars that last 15 to 20 years and we're seeing lower demand for cars and people are viewing cars less as definitions of who they are personally and more as an absolute necessity or a luxury excess that they don't need to have.
like you're talking about in the semiconductor industry, if the need is to beat price and that's where the market's going, that's what your client needs, then you've got to hear their needs and go there with them. If the need is, we're going to make a lot of money off of this for a very long time, it needs to continue making money as long as possible. But it's a lot of things in between. It'll change during the course of a project, the economics of somebody's business that you're building for them. Then it gets really interesting.
Aaron Luce (28:13)
Yeah, absolutely. Can the same semiconductor facility that we built 10 years ago, can it be used to make now this year's latest and greatest without too many retrofits? Can that pharmaceutical lab facility that we built 30 years ago, does that still have value and can be used or does that have to be torn down and completely rebuilt to keep up with products? Is the building shell at least good enough? Can we just retrofit that?
Dee Davis (28:40)
A lot of our listeners are in the US, but we have listeners around the world and from a lot of different countries, which is really kind of fun and exciting because it keeps us looking at the different trends around the world. We have a lot of people right now who feel very cringy about the word salesperson. There's a lot of feelings that come up when you think about even talking to a salesperson, regardless of what it is that you're buying.
It's like when you get that LinkedIn connection that immediately tries to book a sales call with you. I don't know you. Come on, get away, get away. the difference between what we see in the traditional sales person and the difference in what we see in a service market, which is what I think you're really offering Aaron. Salespeople.
You might see them once it's a very transactional relationship. Once the sales made, you'll probably never see them again. Or I did have a sales rep in the industry one time that I kid you not called me every single week. wasn't the kind of thing that you would buy every week. I'm not starting a new project every week. I've already bought that commodity for this project. I'm not going to buy it again until I get a new project. And this guy called me every single week.
And I finally just said, listen, I don't know how else to say this. I'm not going to change products mid project. I may not start a new project for another two years. It's not going to help you to call me every week. Touch base with me once in a while. That's fine. So whether you're trying to be buddies with everybody, you got the naggy salesperson, you got the person that just has that sticky feeling of just.
Use car salesmen, they just want to be your buddy and you know darn well that they have no interest in you or anything about you. How is it different with somebody that's more like service sales?
Aaron Luce (30:46)
That's a million dollar question because it seems like the ratio sometimes is 75 % or greater are salesy versus a vendor partnership. To me, in that service side, as you're describing it, someone who wants to operate with mutual trust and respect, that person who's calling you every single week and wants to sell you no matter what, isn't respecting your time at minimum.
They also haven't respected you enough, in my opinion, to understand who and what you are and what you need to get done. Now, when I was young, I didn't know enough, but I asked questions. Enough so that I didn't ask you every week. Maybe my first project I did, because I didn't know any better, but you learn what's that value and that importance, what drives and motivates them. Because otherwise, what's the point? To go on a project
and try to BS and be a best buddy with a project manager on a serious project. You've got like five minutes to convey a topic and those guys have to be focused back on driving this. You were a PE. You didn't have time for me to stop by every day and look at things or call you every week. You trusted me that when I did call you, I probably had a reason for it. Let's take a few minutes and make sure things are okay. We built that up.
If we could be friends, that was awesome. But that's not my goal or whatever was my goal through this.
Once I've established that trust and respect, let's be fair with each other. Let's treat each other well. You count it on, here's the specs, Aaron. Let's go through. And you tell me, does it meet the specifications? If someone's just salesy,
I wouldn't trust them to properly read through a document that ⁓ back in our day, Dee was three inch binders, right? Of specs, let alone documentation and some metals. Thank God we've got computers that now manage and track all that and store that for us.
Brad Wyant (32:57)
of control F holy cow
Aaron Luce (33:00)
Right? Right Dee would have a huge shelf just full of these three inch binders. Full of them.
Dee Davis (33:09)
And everybody's catalog on my shelf. used to have this big library case in my office trailer with all the catalogs from all the vendors that I used all the time so I could look things up quickly. Cause yes, we had computers, but things were not online. It's so funny. Cause it seems like that was a million years ago. It wasn't really all that long ago guys. It really wasn't. I go to my office now. All I have is a desk and a computer and
All those books and binders don't exist anymore, which is fantastic for the environment because, that was a lot.
Aaron Luce (33:42)
Heck, I used to print out 12 copies of my submittals to bring to a project. Oh God. And Brad FedEx, Kinko's wasn't around initially when I was doing that. I spent all day trying to make copies of stuff. it was horrible. Nobody liked that part of it. In a partnership, a partner needs to verify the needs of the project and the people.
Brad Wyant (34:02)
You
Aaron Luce (34:08)
And what Dee needed was different than the PM necessarily. Sure as heck was different than the superintendent needed. There was overlaps, but there was different needs. And so to understand on a project, what's the timeline? What's the needs? For me to gain an understanding of labor versus material cost, because the reality, even though I sold expensive drainage piping or pressure piping, it wasn't the driving overall force.
I could have a thousand dollar part, but if there's five guys standing around waiting for that part to be able to install, what cost you more money that day? Right? It wasn't my part that cost you more money. It was the lack of having my part in the labor standing around or the crane on site that was waiting to lift that and other things in place. When I look at the stuff I started developing as I grew as a salesperson in the industry was looking at a cradle to grave approach on projects and contractors.
What is the material? What's on the specs? Look at things, verify specs. What does the estimator need? If it's available five days or seven days out, the estimator probably doesn't care. If it's seven days or 20 weeks, estimator cares, right? What's the actual cost? I got to know the engineering firms. I would do lunch and learns. Why? So when specs came out that part of the piping was this spec, but part of the piping was this spec,
and it had three manufacturers or four that were jumbled together, you couldn't get out all at once, I'd call the engineer, go visit him and help clarify that. That might not have brought perceived value to the superintendent, but the PM had it easy, the PE then, if we could clarify it, had it a lot easier, the estimator knew what to do and get that verified. You mentioned fusions. Well, there was fusion machines. And if it was
Electrofusion, needed these machines. If it was socket fusion or butt fusion, we needed these machines for the pressure pipe and different joining technologies. What was needed to put it together? It could be simple like, hey, you're gonna need bunch of flanges to put this together, because this piping we build here on the ground, or you prefab in your shop and then you put it up. So then we can make mechanical joints because that machine is 500 pounds and it's $70,000 if you break it.
Whatever the number is, I'm not exaggerating Brad. Unfortunately, on some of those machines, but here's why and how that makes sense. And this saves you labor in the field. Do you remember this where most people weren't prefabbing? Most of that work was in the field. They were doing work up above or here and let's lift it.
Dee Davis (36:48)
Yeah, we had little fab set up out in the field all the time.
Aaron Luce (36:52)
I remember the contractor you're working with at the time started utilizing that fabrication space in the back. We've got projects in semiconductor that are built all over the United States and shipped on site and connected on site by different contractors on projects now.
Dee Davis (37:08)
from the purchaser's perspective, developing that relationship with your vendors, learning from your vendors, it goes beyond just the price and getting the material on site and getting it fabbed and installed. Stuff happens after. Like, no, I bought more pipe valves fittings than I ended up needing maybe because of some changes or.
I think almost everybody who's worked in the construction industry has had that foreman that really likes to buy 10 % extra just in case. And now you got a bunch of returns. The beginning of a job is Disneyland. Everybody's in the car, we're going to Disneyland, we're all excited. Well, now things are wrapping up. Disneyland is over, we're over sugared, we're tired and things still have to get done.
Now we have to do returns. got to start rolling things up on the job site. Have the bills been paid? Can we return material? What about all those machines we rented? Did we break any of them? And things happened during. I, I definitely had fusion machines during the middle of a project that stopped working. Something happened. So we broke it. just wore out whatever. And now I need another one and.
it's impacting my ability to produce on the site. So ongoing relationships all the way through to the very end. And then guess what? You're going to have to deal with these people again, potentially on your next job. So it doesn't help anybody to be transactional and to scream at your vendors and to beat them up.
I definitely have encountered people in the industry who just think it's okay to scream at vendors and to beat them up and beat the price down because they want to feel like they've gotten a deal early in my career. I was not long out of the military and it was a big adjustment for me when people didn't follow through with their promises. Like I'll have those submittals for you Tuesday. Tuesday comes and goes.
Nothing. I call them on Wednesday and they haven't even started it.
I yelled at more than one vendor early in my career.
Brad Wyant (39:35)
Well, I think that you bring a really important point there Dee about beating down on price and about trying to feel you got the most value out of something. And Aaron, you brought this idea up earlier of what is a fair price. I think that's a really important point of discussion in this zone of relationship and information added value added. When you're buying a three by three floor drain that's going to go in a shower or the middle of some area, the cheapest one is probably
fine. Whatever one that fulfills those dimensional requirements and is not made out of cheese is going to be what you buy. In most circumstances, let's say. But if somebody's going to come along and ask you, I need you to work through these specifications with me to make sure that my engineer has not said A, but also B, and A and B conflict, that kind of pricing for that kind of an exercise, that kind of partnership becomes different because you're putting more of your own
blood, sweat, and tears into the project with that person. You're offering more expertise. So how do you have that conversation when you know that you're not going to be competitive on price compared to somebody else, but that your price is fair? How do you make the argument that the price you've prepared is fair?
Aaron Luce (40:54)
I select my customers, my contractors, number one. I look at the customers in the industry, companies that are bouncing around from project to project that don't tend to do work for the same owners often, even though there's more work there. Those are red flags. Customers that don't pay their bills regularly, that's a red flag. Customers that don't treat your machines well, they want everything for free.
⁓ that yell and demand all the time without anything reciprocal. Those are all red flags. So not only are the suppliers, contractors picking who they want to work with, but it works the other way around. ⁓ I can think of a contractor in San Diego that years ago, third project, told them, thank you.
Cause I also did math on my side. I literally calculated up on a project that was this contractor held up to VE value engineer and took all the specialty products out of it, out of our project. was out of town. Never wanted to pay their bills. I always had to chase them at 90, 120 days. And additionally, they always had problems on projects. One out of three projects they found a way to backcharge on. And
they were going to split up the business between myself and another supplier that has similar products. Okay. I did the math. It was $60 and pay to me for this one order. And I go, it's not worth my time. I don't care what the dollars are. It's only worth X to my company. When I think about in 90 to 120 days getting paid, is there actually any profit in it? So I called up the owner and said, thank you so much. I appreciate it, but
This isn't going to be profitable for us, so I don't want to take the order. But I really appreciate working with you. That was great.
So the company I work for, offices around the United States, we buy as good or better than anybody else on most things, right? It's a fair market. We're not the lowest price, but we typically are buying this at least the same as everybody else, if not better than a lot of small companies. So if people brought up pricing and go, listen, we can be competitive, we're nationwide, we buy really well. My job is to make sure that this project, if we work together, is successful for both of us.
Well, you if you're not the best price, okay, well, let's look at it and see. And there's times where the first project, if I look for that opportunity was when their current supplier dropped the ball. Then I actually got an opportunity. There's also times some of those people would just use me to beat up their current supplier. If I was the low price, I don't want to work with them yet. I don't trust them yet. So then I would do things like, let me call in the estimator for a while.
And show the estimator that I understood the products. I understood how they were installed. I understood their business. Once I got that and they use my numbers on a project. Then I would say, hey, I'm going to go talk to purchasing. If you guys are successful, this comes around. I love for you to use my number and I'd love to work with you on it. Demanding anything never seemed to really work very well. I would slowly get into it and try to show the value first if I could.
before trying to drive that sale.
Brad Wyant (44:22)
And there's a reciprocal human nature that plays into what you're describing here. There's a book I read a couple of years ago called Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, who's a FBI hostage negotiator. It's a great book about negotiating. And he says that in negotiations, when you can demonstrate partnership by taking that first step, by doing something just out of the goodness of your heart, because it's the right thing to do, because you know you can provide value, then
that is gonna make that person realize, okay, there's value here with this person. They know what they're talking about and I want to return their generosity. It's a much grander, better version of the donuts. When a salesperson shows up with donuts, that's because that's all they can offer is the 12 bucks they had in their pocket to go buy a dozen donuts. And that was the best sales pitch they could make. When you show up and say, I have the expertise to demonstrate value right away, cause I know this business, that is...
the highest form of the donuts. And it works because it's not trite, because it's meaningful.
Dee Davis (45:27)
salespeople everywhere just went ⁓ no all they just discovered my secret
Brad Wyant (45:31)
I'm not anti-donuts, I love donuts, I just wanna say I like donuts.
Aaron Luce (45:37)
There's nothing wrong periodically with donuts or treats or I say people going where's my pizza? I don't buy from anybody doesn't buy pizza. I gotta buy pizza for anybody doesn't buy from me. I gotta pay for the pizza somehow, right?
Dee Davis (45:51)
Let's talk about that philosophy for just a minute. When I first got into this industry, that kind of attitude was rampant. You as a vendor, you want my business, you have to do all these things for me. You have to bring me donuts every week. You need to send me to football games, baseball games, hockey games, take me on fishing trips, laundry list. That really offended my sense of fairness when I started in the industry and I put a stop to that on my projects.
I sat down with the foreman that were doing that and probably had been doing that for many years and you're smiling because you probably know who I'm talking about. I don't know how much that still goes on in the industry, but talk about cringy. To me, that is way cringier than a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today.
Brad Wyant (46:43)
from what you've said, the way to be a good customer is to pay your bills on time, to listen when people speak, and to build relationships first, rather than demanding, beating down, forcing people to try to bend to your will. Being curious, being educational, being open to partnership, which requires a lot of confidence, requires a lot of time, and emotional intelligence, those are steps that you can take to be a good customer.
To be a good salesperson, to be somebody who's good at doing your job, you have to also be curious, learn about your client's business, how to solve your client's problems, but you don't need to compromise on your price once you've established that what you're providing is of the value that it's priced at or more. And you don't have to resort to donuts if you're providing value. And if the people that you're selling to observe that value, if they don't, if they're gonna not pay their bills on time, if they're gonna...
do charge backs, if they're going to demand kickbacks, then they're not worth your time. They are not going to be profitable customers. You're going to re-examine the market and see you can make more money spending your time other ways.
Aaron Luce (47:55)
Absolutely. I think there's still some of that that goes on, but I think a lot of the industry has cleaned up. Heck, when I started, it wasn't that uncommon. Some of the liquid lunches were still going on when I first started in the industry. I think some of those things have died out a lot. There's still salespeople that the only excuse they could think of to be on a project or visit a customer is I have to bring something. And to your point, Brad, if they don't bring other value, they feel like they have to show up with something.
I've run into companies where three quarters of people are great and they see your value and they're willing to spend some time because you're bringing value with them. They're giving value to you, but you find one person in the company that doesn't that maybe the key holder for the castle play the long game. But for example, the San Diego marketplace, we looked at how many contractors in general around and five or six in the San Diego market were the best ones to work with some of that.
It's because they had great reputations and had steady business. looked at people that were doing business in areas that valued my specialty products more than my commodity products that I sold. I looked at companies that were hired over and over again, that have paid their bills. But the estimating group came out of years in the field. They actually knew how piping went in. They understood those factors. That's amazing value.
That's a company I want to partner with. Let me continue to invest in them and vice versa. And then continue to find out what drives them and what can bring more additional value. I did a startup job on this project for this Fuseal Acid Waste Piping System with a fusion machines and DI Water Piping. It was pretty typical, these pharmaceutical lab projects. And we did a whole training class. had the vendor come in, let's make welds together. Let's look at stuff. Let's talk about it.
A week or two later, stopped by this project. I walked up to the foreman and go, who are these guys that are working on my machines and doing that piping? Not that I was egotistical, I don't think, but it was all these people I hadn't trained.
Dude, I committed to your estimating, your purchasing, to your project management, to your superintendent, that I would make sure this project was successful with everything I could do. You taking some yahoos off the street and maybe you showed them how. Listen, the projects that are successful, the people we train that do the work have almost zero leaks. Little mistakes happen, different things. Sometimes a fusion joint's not made or something or whatnot, right? Life can happen.
The projects that don't take that serious is where there's problems and leaks and these are expensive to fix. Dee, I don't know if you have a number, what is it? 10 times the labor and the cost to fix something? Even if it wasn't a major thing, I don't know if there's exact number on that.
Dee Davis (50:52)
Very much depends on what it is and when and where you catch it. So it wasn't your products. wasn't plastic fusion pipe. It was a different kind of pipe, a different kind of joining method. My husband was working on a project that was a high rise type project. They got some of the people trained in that joining method, but then they didn't train all the people cause they figured, it's easy. It's not that big of a deal. It's fine. Well.
They found the leaks after it was installed in a shaft on the 20th floor. You can imagine. Okay, so now you have a waterfall. You have wet drywall. All kinds of things. He's telling me this story. My very first question was, was every single person that was doing those joints trained by the factory? As I know it says in the specifications. And the answer was, well,
Maybe not all of them. Well, I've been through that exact training for that joining method five or six times. I can tell you without even going and looking what went wrong. And it costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
Brad Wyant (52:09)
And this is where I think the challenge that you're describing of going out to the field, training all the people who we thought were going to be doing that work and then stuff changes and there's another cast on our agenda here of things to talk about where we talk about turnover from one stakeholder to another. And once the chain is broken, once one bad handoff occurs in a project where the
Success or activity is delayed where the schedule pushes where something big impacts the project whatever the cause might be Everything gets thrown off. Let's say the contractor had people out to train on those machines and They thought those were gonna be the guys but then something happened and those guys got called away because something else happened on another job and maybe didn't have to do anything with that job change to the plan disrupts for progress and That's one of the
greatest challenges we have to face where all of a sudden when things change that we didn't plan for, it just costs an awful lot more money. And this is a perfect example of that ramification. But for you, in your position, you've got to be able to go to that foreman and say, like you did, you're messing me up. I've guaranteed things to people. I've guaranteed a result. And your actions are preventing me from achieving that result. And we need to circle the wagons and undo that right now. That's a...
Tough position to be in because the foreman is like, hold on, aren't I buying this from you? No, no, no. But you need to see here.
Aaron Luce (53:42)
Absolutely. So here's one of the things. If you're into having a supplier relationship, trust and respect, and you're into providing upfront cradle to grave value, then you've got to be able to have difficult conversations. So many times people avoid them. Some people are not wired to really want to be that way.
I'm the oldest of a large family. So I really have no problems being confrontational. My, my trick has always been, okay, how do I be just enough, but not too much. Right. But for some people that's really hard. And when you look at a lot of salespeople, people that are attracted to sales, sometimes it's people that are people pleasers, not necessarily wrong. There's a part of that in me and they, and they want to be the good time guy. They want to be the fun person, right? That, Hey, bring donuts. Everybody likes me or here's your hat. We've been joking about this somewhat, but same point time.
You have to have these conversations. Beginning of a project with project leadership, with estimating, purchasing, project management, even superintendents when they're assigned to a job. Here's how projects usually go. Here's how mistakes happen. Here's what we are trying to do to avoid it. What can you do to avoid it? Including over buying, right? I've got done with projects and dammit, if someone didn't want to return 50 % of the piping they bought from me. ⁓ And it looked like crap.
It was over in this basement of this building and it was covered with paint splatter. You're going to give me credit for it, right? No, I can't resell it. No. But if I set the expectation upfront, here's what's fair and reasonable. Do you agree? If you don't agree, let me know. Let's talk about it. If I see a mistake on a project, if I see product being put in wrong,
And I still see that in my life. I still go around periodically and I visit projects. If I'm dealing with chemistries and leaks and someone's not doing a proper solvent cemented joint on even PVC, I owe it to the owner or the contractor to say, hey, this is a problem. If someone chooses to say, you know, they're talking about get off my project, go no problem. But I want to be upfront and honest with you from day one through the end of the project. Here, I'll take back this many returns, this percentage.
It's gotta be in great shape. Does that make sense? Anything more than that, this is what we can expect. You hold me accountable too. We're gonna make deliveries within this timeframe. I'm gonna show up on your job site periodically. Not cause I have nothing else to do. You've already committed the project to me. So in theory, a lot of salespeople and these sales guys will get an order and then disappear and ghost you for the rest of the time. Invisiting a project doesn't necessarily get me more business on that project.
Visiting a project is verifying the machines are working, verifying crews got what they need, verifying that we're doing what we said we would do. Hold me accountable as well. I'm going to hold you accountable, but that's about trust and respect, right? That's a relationship that's not just about transactional. I'm selling your buying. Have a nice day. I got my PO and now I'm going to go out and play around a golf. Not the same thing. I'm not trying to knock most salespeople, but as a sales guy, most salespeople bug me.
I hate being sold. It's like Spidey senses going up. Someone says, hi, how are you today? here it comes. Totally can tell it. But you've got to be able to have these conversations and be able to look at a foreman or superintendent. And there's some that are gruff as heck. And again, Dee back to the comment, you know what I'm talking about. No, dude, that's BS.
You guys are in this because you're really good at what you do. You promote and you train your union contractor. And there's some very good non-union contractors as well. Some very good ones, but you're about quality. I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't supporting you in that. I also walked in another job with the same kind of product. The end user called me in on a little lab project, something in LA, it was dealing with oil and gas. They hired the wrong company to install it.
Almost all the joints are leaking. They hired a, let me unclog your drains type plumbing company to install. this acid waste piping has clamps on it to dry fit. And then you come back and you electrofuse it, it together.
Dee Davis (58:20)
For those of you who are only listening and not watching, my eyes got really big and my hand went over my mouth because I know exactly where this is going. This is a horror story. I just thought it was like you just planned.
Aaron Luce (58:31)
⁓ yeah.
It's
like a mechanical joint, little snapper clamps like put together and they're like, this stuff is great. We should do more of this. They call the factory. The factory says, talk to Aaron. Aaron knows this stuff. They never fused it and started leaking. Tripping chemicals. And this was in a bottom floor in a little chemical lab.
Dee Davis (58:43)
no.
like a worm drive clamp, like you could just clamp like a drain.
Aaron Luce (58:59)
And they never fused it. And then I had to try to figure out, go, where'd you get this from? They bought it from a supply house. This company did who bought it from us. Every project we offered startup, the supply house didn't want to give it away that they were buying it from us. And it was the wrong contractor or plumbing company that was hired in the first place. They had no business doing that. I don't mean to be mean to them. Very good at unclogging drains and doing residential light industrial. So it's
not picking on certain contractors or certain industries. I've also had end users that said, I can install it myself. Can you? Let's talk about what that really takes.
Dee Davis (59:39)
Well, that's kind of going back to my earlier point about when you're talking about commercial and industrial plumbing systems, it is not the same as the stuff in your house. And could you go put drainage pipe together in your house or landscaping irrigation? Like you were saying, that is not the same. One of my little go-to sayings is leave it to the professionals. Well, it sounds like this company thought they did.
because they didn't even understand it enough to realize that they were hiring the wrong kind of professional.
Aaron Luce (1:00:14)
I've been on projects, big, huge projects where there's a thousand contractors in sight. The easiest piping system in the world that everyone thinks they can do is how to solvent cement, not glue, PVC together. Everybody thinks they know how to do it. ⁓ looks easy. I've trained 300 people a week for weeks on stuff and walked through and made everyone make solvent cemented joints. And I've walked up to foreman dude half your crew.
looks like they were doing residential stuff a week ago. They have no idea what they're doing. If you want them as a helper, fine. But I don't want them next week to train them on my $60,000, $70,000 infrared butt fusion machine. Because those guys aren't even taking care of this. They're sure as heck are not following every step for that. They think they know what they're doing, but I'm telling you, on this project, that'll get you guys kicked off.
Brad Wyant (1:01:07)
Perhaps the most dangerous thing in any environment, especially a job site, is somebody who thinks they know what they're doing and does not. That is a truism that is as old as time.
Aaron Luce (1:01:20)
talking about getting the right people to work together on what are the right products for a project, what's the right training needed to do a project successful, hiring the right experts that know what they're doing. Sometimes it sounds easy, but it can be quite difficult. Or whether it's an owner trying to select the engineering firm that's involved with selecting the products and things, if there's an engineering firm, which sometimes there isn't on some of these things.
But even for a contractor, it's a tough scenario how to properly do that. I didn't know enough early on. I knew a lot about products, but I didn't know about the customers and their needs initially. How can you until you start dealing with it? Between my curious nature, ⁓ me trying to do the right thing and dealing with some of right customers, I had companies and people that helped educate me and show me that.
And so that's one of the things that I get into a lot. My current role is the technical manager for my company. Don't just throw a price over the fence. Don't just quote something or send a data sheet. Let's really figure out what are you doing? What's involved with that? So many times I deal with whether it be customers or salespeople. For those that can't see, I put my hands on my face and putting blinders on. They get hyper focused on what's exactly in front of them and just trying to
get an answer for this. And part of my job and part of what my education that I teach to Ryan Herco people, but also the customers is take the blinders off. Let's take a step back. Let's look around. And what is really happening here? Thinking which piping to use for an application. I've got questions. What's the chemistry, temperature, pressures, all those kinds of things. What's the application of the industry? Because if I know it's
a pharmaceutical life science or semiconductor or chemical project plan that helps me ask more questions and figuring that out. And so when companies come to me and they don't know, sometimes I drive the conversation by going, you need to understand what you're trying to do. What's really needed for this. Once you understand that, then I can help you with a basis for design. We can start talking about individual components or what's necessary to put in.
Brad, I think that's something that's important for a lot of us, right? That to try to understand that and slow down enough to say, okay, let's figure that out. To just rush and buy material.
Can you succeed in business by not understanding your customer?
Dee Davis (1:03:59)
Thank you so much for joining us. This has been an awesome episode. I want to go back to the very beginning where you said that you guys had an overseas location. Where's the overseas location?
Aaron Luce (1:04:09)
Singapore Singapore and Malaysia we have salespeople in both and we're there for the semiconductor industry primarily
Dee Davis (1:04:18)
We actually have a lot of listeners in Asia. So if you are a construction industry person in Asia, Ryan Herco Flow Solutions can help you there. How do people reach you, Aaron? What's the best way to find you?
Aaron Luce (1:04:36)
Linked In is probably the best way to find me. We're on there quite a bit.
Dee Davis (1:04:41)
I'll include your LinkedIn profile connection, your link in the show notes.
Aaron Luce (1:04:46)
if I can help somebody, I'm happy to do so. It's been my pleasure, and Brad. Great spending this time with you guys.
Brad Wyant (1:04:53)
Thank you for the privilege of your perspective and your expertise.
Dee Davis (1:04:55)
Thank you so much. We'll see you guys next time.
