In this episode, Kirk Beaudoin, Award-Winning Facilities Leader, discusses the importance of following the golden rule within the industry, why it’s important to offer the best service for the best price, and why those working in facilities are heroes without capes.
Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar.
A podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance.
On today’s episode, we talk with Kirk Beaudoin. Kirk is a passionate and personable Facilities Management professional with over 20 years of industry experience across multiple global brands such as J. Crew and Nike and the former president of Connex FM, the Multi-Site Facilities Management Network.
In this episode, Kirk discusses the importance of following the golden rule within the industry, why it’s important to offer the best service for the best price, and why those working in facilities are heroes without capes.
Guest Bio:
Kirk is a passionate and personable Facilities Management professional with over 20 years of industry experience across multiple global brands such as J. Crew and Nike and the former president of Connex FM, the Multi-Site Facilities Management Network. Living by the 'never stop learning' mantra, Kirk earned the LEED Green Associate, FMA, RFMP, and CTS designations and certificates in Facilities, Property, Project, & Emergency Management.
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Guest Quote
“So many people operate differently out there. My view, and it's as long as the company supports this view, is you give, whether it's from me or from the partners that I partner with, you give the highest quality service, the most reliable service that you're looking for. At the most affordable rate, right? Not the reverse. You don't go out looking for what's the most affordable rate and then accept what's the highest quality and reliability I can get for that rate. I do it on the flip side, so I know that we're spending a little bit more than the cheapest possible, but that's because I can't dip below a certain level of quality and reliability.” - Kirk Beaudoin
Time Stamps
**(01:44) - Kirk’s journey into facilities
**(05:24) - Commitment to the North Star
**(11:35) - Changing the mindset around facilities
**(17:50) - Avoiding the pitfalls of facilities management
**(28:34) - Tackling labor shortages
**(36:34) - Kirk’s passion for mentoring
**(48:36) - Sid’s final thoughts
Sponsor:
ServiceChannel brings you peace of mind through peak facilities performance.
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ServiceChannel partners with more than 500 leading brands globally to provide visibility across operations, the flexibility to grow and adapt to consumer expectations, and accelerated performance from their asset fleet and service providers.
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Links
Narrator: Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar, a podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance. On today's episode, we talk with Kirk Beaudoin. Kirk is a passionate and personable facilities management professional with over 20 years of industry experience across multiple global brands such as J. Crew and Nike, as well as the former president of Connex FM, the Multi-Site Facilities Management Network. In this episode, Kirk discusses the importance of following the Golden Rule within the industry, why it's important to offer the best service for the best price, and why those working in facilities are heroes without capes, but first award from our sponsor.
Want to rest easy knowing your brick and mortar locations are offering the best possible guest experience. Partner with Service Channel for peak facilities performance. Check out service channel.com today to learn more. Now, here's your host, industry and FM technology, thought leader and chief business development officer at Service Channel, Sid Shetty, along with our guest, Kirk Beaudoin.
SID: Hello everyone. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. I am here today with Kirk Beaudoin, industry and Facilities veteran across multiple global brands and ex-president of Connects. Welcome. Thanks for having me, Sid. Happy to be here. Thank you for being here. It was great seeing you at the Connex FM national conference recently.
Yeah, it was a great show. A hundred percent. Alright, Kirk, so let's, let's dive right in. Kirk, you've had a tremendous career in facilities with some of the biggest names in retail. Can you share, how did you end up in the space in the first place?
KIRK: I'd be happy to share. Uh, I'll go all the way back to the beginning.
Not sure how many people can trace their, their starting facilities all the way back, but I was in high school and my uncle owned a moving company and he asked me if I wanted to make some extra money over the summer. So I started working with his company and over a couple summers got used to how things worked in the moving industry.
This was back in the eighties, nineties when there was a big tech boom and, you know, we weren't moving people's houses, right? We were moving offices, you know, portable offices, cubicles for a lot of the high tech companies that were, that were blowing up at the time. And, uh, after a few years of being out in the field, we were going to the same place over and over it seemed.
And, uh, that that company, um, it was SQL Computer Systems. They were like, why don't we just hire on some of these guys? Why are we using the moving company? So I, I got lucky and that allowed me to join the facilities department. I had a great manager and he gave me every opportunity to grow. He just, every opportunity I had to, uh, grow and expand, I took it fast forward a bunch of years and IBM bought us and then we got outsourced to, uh, grub Ellis.
Toward those last few years, I found myself actually managing the entire corporate campus. That was a, a great experience. All new skills to learn. After that all kind of died down. I moved into retail and that's how I ended up on the retail side of things. But, uh, it goes all the way back to my high school days and, you know, I never dreamed of being in facilities or being a facilities manager, but, uh right.
I can trace it back to that, answering that question. And it was, you know, do you wanna make some extra money over the summer? And if I said, no, no idea what I'd be doing right now. But Plat, I said, yes. Yeah,
SID: I mean it's pretty amazing, right? Like a lot of amazing folks out there, you know, you fell into the space and that's a story that you hear a lot in our space, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And at this point now there's a lot of schools and a lot of programs that focus on, on facilities management, and so there's a lot of different talent and different perspectives in different folks coming in with different ideas into the space. And so, Amazing to watch. Kirk, how do you define the role of facilities in an organization and you being in the space for a long time, what has your North Star been throughout your
KIRK: career?
It's interesting you mentioned North Star. Oh, what I wanna call it. One of the tasks, one of the exercises I went through was, um, creating my own. Mission statement for the facilities team. And it allowed us to have that North star to know at any given point what our, what our purpose is. So we created a mission statement to provide exceptional, uh, facility support and efficiently maintain the built environment to ensure a premium consumer experience.
Basically saying, I'm here to take care of. Like now that I'm in retail, I'm here to take care of the stores, and that is the single most important thing I have to do. That's the only reason I'm here. That remains that North star. When you start getting into the weeds and, and, and pulled in all separate directions, you just want to glance up and go, Hey, is is what I'm doing helping the store and the people who work at the store, are we supporting them in their efforts to provide the, the shopper or the consumer with a great experience?
Yeah, no,
SID: and I love the fact that you mentioned customer experience in like the first sentence, because I think. A lot of disservice has been done in our space in not tying what we do. And, and the customer experience facilities is not about fixing broken things faster. It's really about the brand and, and, and ensuring that your operators can focus on the customer and that you have a great customer experience.
Right? Yeah,
KIRK: absolutely. Yeah. Not to go off on a little tangent here, but I've made the argument several times that each company has their North star. They, they have their main goal, whatever it is, whether you make widgets or, or shoes or whatever it is, right? So the people that make them and the people that sell them.
Are kind of the, the primary jobs or positions, right? Everyone else, if you're not part of making 'em or selling 'em, you're a support structure and you need to realize that these companies didn't go into business to make sure that they could employ a facilities manager, right? They have a their own North star.
I am here to support that, that vision or that goal, and. Everything that I do and everything that every other support role does should be doing anything and everything they can to the most effective and efficient means possible supporting those people in those primary roles.
SID: That's right. In your mind, what does rate customer experience look like?
Like what, in your perspective as you look at across industries and across different types of brand, what should one aspire to? In terms of a great customer experience.
KIRK: Yeah. So f from my perspective, you know, as growing up how I did, you know, I've been a shopper, I've been a customer, I've been a vendor, and this will tie back to my, one of my first jobs at sequin computer systems.
One of their, one of their maxims or or values was easy to do business with and it was hanging on these big giant posters down the hallway and I. I always remembered that one specifically cuz it was like, well this, this one's obvious, you know, you wanna be easy to do business with. And I think anyone who's worked in the customer service industry knows that it's, it's all about how you, how you not entertain, but how you, uh, work with and, and service and support.
The customers, whether it's a shopper, whether it's a diner, whoever it is, you have to have that positivity. You have to have that eager to please attitude in facilities, right? We do so many things all day long. You know, you might take in a hundred, a hundred work orders or a hundred phone calls, right?
You're go, go, go, and they all might blend together, but, but I point out to people. That one phone call that you get might be that person's only interaction with you ever. Right. Even though you got a hundred different calls and you might nail 99 of them. If you, if you let, let that guard down and, and you have a bad moment, it might be their only experience with you.
And That's right. And so you have to really, you have to really have that top of mind that every time I. Talk to someone, answer the phone, reply to an email I need to have, have my a game on, and this, this is their one experience of working with me. And you want that to be a, a positive one. You know, facilities is, is a, a tough position because you generally only get calls from people when something's wrong.
I've never received a call in the morning from someone saying, Hey, just wanna let you know all the, all the lights came on. Thanks. Or, you know, Hey, it's, it's perfectly comfortable in the store. Awesome job. Keep it up. Yeah. It's, it's always someone with, with something that's wrong. And I have a lot of conversations with people who, they talk about how it's always problems, problems, problems.
And I said, you know what? It's opportunities. It's not problems, it's opportunities. And we have the opportunity. Every call, every work order, every ticket, every interaction to be the hero, right? How often does that get to happen for someone? But we get to solve someone's problem on every ticket, every work order, every, so we, every single day, we weren't the ones that broke it, but we get to be the ones to, to save the day.
And it might be stressful. We've described our job as drinking from a fire hose, right? You know, there is no finish line is just go, go, go. But if you go into it with the right mindset and the right attitude, Man, how great is it? Yeah, it's stressful, but we get to be the hero every time. Heroes without
SID: capes, right?
Yeah. I mean, so you know, where really facilities is a certain brand standard because what that brand standard could mean different things to different brands. You could be a luxury chain, you could be a, uh, value chain. You could be a restaurant, quick service, full service. It doesn't matter like you. Yep.
And then you want to ensure that your physical spaces represent that standard well, uh, ensuring that your customers, to your point, have a great experience every single time, and facilities has a huge impact on that. Can you share your thoughts on
KIRK: that? Absolutely. That kind of ties into wanting to be the hero ties into, to wanting to be easy to do business with, right?
We have the opportunity to support the brand image, whether it's keeping a, a, a space clean or, or the lights on or comfortable space. I don't know if you've ever shopped in a store where the, uh, where the music isn't playing. But it's, it's weird. It's weird. It's weird in a feels weird, a quiet room. Things you don't think about.
So just making sure that everything is working and operational. I've shared with people, facilities isn't the, isn't the sexy job, right? We're not the ones designing cool stuff. We're not the ones that are meeting the, the representatives or the people who advertise. Even the athletes were behind the scenes.
You know, kind of, I've, I've shared that we've, uh, we're kind of like the wizard in Wizard of Oz, right? We're behind the curtain and pulling all the levers and nobody knows who we are as long as everything gets done. And so you have to take a little bit of personal pride knowing you're contributing to the end goal, but you're doing it from behind
SID: the scenes.
Yeah. You know, it's interesting you mentioned about the music, right? I'm from the space and. I some sometimes think about that. Like when you walk into a space, like there's a certain expectation of what you're supposed to feel when you walk in and something is not working right. All you know is that something doesn't feel right.
Right. It could literally be the music, I think, to your point. Team that you don't really think of until something goes wrong. Uh, but if everything's working perfectly, that means the facilities team is doing a great job. Yes, and, and continues to stay behind the scenes. I think that we all agree that the facilities industry doesn't already.
Talking about impact as a whole, you know, talking about what we do and the impact we have on the brands that we serve. We usually swoop in when there's a need. We take care of the issue and, and we walk away. And so there's a lot of misconceptions. Facilities management. How do we change that perception and that mindset?
KIRK: That's a great question and I don't think there's anyone single answer to solve that, but I know that a lot of things have changed over the years. When I started in facilities, there wasn't really, there wasn't really facilities, and I know before I was in facilities, Obviously there were buildings and stores.
It was kind of an afterthought. Right. You know, and if people thought of facilities, it was, they probably pictured an a closet somewhere that the handyman worked out of. And now fast forward all these years and there's college degrees on the topic. Right. I mean, so it's That's right. It has changed.
Tenfold over, over that short period of time, which is great. You know, we were talking about it at the, at the conference, you know, when PRISM started. And the reason the founders got together is because they needed to, to network with each other because there wasn't that infrastructure. And, and it's cool to hear that history and how the, the founders of Prism built what is today the Connects FM association.
Man, I can't imagine doing my job. Now, back in those days, if, if we didn't have the support structure that we have here today, so kudos to those guys. We're getting this created and built to what it is today, and to really touch on the what can we do or how do we make our organizations understand facilities.
I think it's just being vocal. Making sure if you have a seat at the table, making sure that you're, you're sharing your successes. If you don't have a seat at the table, it's making sure that you're sharing your wins and successes with, with people who, who might have a seat at the table just to make sure that you're known and not you individually, but the, the department is known and your contributions are known.
Yeah, for
SID: sure. I mean, Audience who don't know Prism, it is P R S M, professional Retail Store Maintenance, which has since been renamed to Connects fm Kirk. You know, you're right. I mean, I think we don't celebrate the wins and we don't necessarily publicize. Act that facilities has on brand, and I think the more that we can do to be vocal and also empower the folks in our space to go and tell the right narrative, the better for the space and the better for everyone who's involved.
Because if you don't. Story, no one listens. And if you don't really emphasize on the impact you're making and you talk about what you do in a silo, meaning it could literally be as simple as making sure that the music plays. What you do to ensure the brand and the experience that the customer has is on point.
It's as simple as that. But if you just say, I fix, I fix the music player, that that's significantly downplaying the impact. And so I. Frame the right narrative and talk about it as it ties to the overall experience. Now, Kirk, you've been very involved at the industry level, and you've served on the board of Connect FM multiple times.
You even served as president, so can you share with our audience what. Outside of your organization that you were working with and say, I wanna be part of an association. What drove you to that? What made you go do that, and what has it done for you
KIRK: at the highest level? I think the, the easiest answer is just to give back.
I've had great managers and, and bosses and leaders and mentors over the years, and they were always very willing to share their insight. There was always associations, you know, and there was always magazines floating around the offices. So I was always aware of everything that was going on. You know, when I jumped onto the retail side and found out about Prism, you know, it started simple, right?
It was, you know, Joined a couple committees. I found out you could write articles. I was like, you know, I, I had mentioned just in passing cuz there was a magazine. I was like, why are, why are we not featured in here? Then they were like, well, well why don't you submit an article? I assumed they did the articles and they picked the topics, but I found out, no, it's just any, any member if, if so inclined could submit.
So I got an article in the, in the magazine. I was like, Hey, this is, this is kind of cool. And I got to share some best practices in the best practice books. And then it led to a white paper. And, and after all that and some committees, I decided, Hey, I'm gonna run for the board, not with like an ulterior motive, like who I need to change things or whatever.
It was just more of that natural progression of I'm volunteering here, I feel like I belong here. And, you know, I got on the board and I was, didn't know what to expect from it. You learn in that first, you know, the first half a year and then the, the second year rolled around and I was voted president and I was like, wow, this is pretty impressive.
Go from not sure what you're gonna be doing to all of a sudden you're the president. And, uh, that was a, a wild, a wild time. I think I've shared with numerous people that that was the year that we voted as a board to change our governance model, change the way that this association had operated for.
Whatever it was, 20 years we had grown and we were much bigger than we were when we started. So we, we tweaked the operating model. That was my, I guess, legacy of what I left with, uh, my time on the board. The next year, I, I turned it over to the new president, officially created the, uh, The charity arm, the foundation, right?
So that, you know, another great, another great accomplishment. You know, you look back to when I was running, I had no idea we were gonna be doing those things. I had no idea those topics were gonna come up. And it's just more of a, it, it's more of a group of people, of passionate people in your industry that are willing to share their time, but also each, each person's individual skill set or, or talent.
Cuz everyone's different. So everyone brings. Something different to the board. We talk about diversity and the needs for different perspectives, and that's what's great with having a dozen people on the board because it, uh, it gives you that, uh, that diverse perspective of, of the member
SID: needs. It's a great way to contribute back, but also help the whole industry because you're, you're part of an association that has a loud voice and then you.
Industry forward. Now in your, in your capacity where you get a chance to speak to a lot of people, you've heard a lot of different challenges that folks in our space face, in their roles. Can you share some of the challenges that either you've heard about or. Being in facilities or as a facilities leader, how do we overcome that?
Yeah. How do we talk more about it so that more people can avoid the same pitfalls and, and be better prepared? Yeah.
KIRK: So I'll give you two, two perspectives on that. The, the first is like the generic, what the facilities, people. Are gonna deal with, and everything breaks. We're always very busy. There is no, there is no finish line.
You're never done. There is no, Hey, I, that's right. Checked that final box. Okay. We're done. With facilities, it's just a cycle. Everything is gonna break and it's like drinking from a fire hose. And I, I shared that, that little snippet with everyone I talked to just to try and get the point across, you know, it's hurting cats and drinking from a fire hose.
And I don't think there's really any answer how to change that. It's just more of making sure that you've got the right. Attitude that you're doing it right, as long as you go into it knowing that this is what it is and you've got the right attitude and you, you embrace. That storm. Right. Embrace that chaos and know that you're gonna come out the other end, like I said before, you get to be the hero solving all the problems.
That's, that's a big one that every facilities team is gonna deal with. Probably more specific, industry-wide, the challenges of doing more with less right Budget cuts. Limited funding, the skills gap. Supply chain issues. The long lead times are, are painful material shortages. I think some of those will, will correct themselves over time.
I think some of them we might be in this new norms windows time. That's right. You know, your job is to, to get that, that building or store or whatever, back to a hundred percent. And in, you know, pre pandemic, you could order a brand new H V A C unit for the roof and get it in five weeks. Now it's. You know, you're pushing a year, half a year, depending on, you know, what you're buying.
You know, and that's a huge change because you know where, whereas before you might have been suffering for a month, now you're suffering for multiple seasons. And, and it's hard to explain that up the ladder when people are suffering. There's ways to work around it, but is it. Realistic, you know? Yeah. We could buy 'em ahead of time and have, have 'em sitting in a warehouse and pay storage and then hope when one breaks that the one you bought is the exact replacement.
Right. For what you need. Right. So, I mean, there's things you can do, but you're gonna, you're gonna spend a lot more on the front end and there's no guarantee that it's going to going to be the solution.
SID: Yeah. I mean, things have gotten a little better. Yes. But, Enough where it's back to normal. Right? I mean, like you said, you still, you're still waiting for parts for a couple of months.
In some cases, six months and sometimes even more. And organizations I think have forgotten. Like they, they sometimes forget. Yeah. With that challenge, it's not done right. Yeah. We have to just keep reminding the organizations that while we've kind of moved on over the past year, year and a half, to getting to some sort of normalcy.
Yep. Some of the challenges that. Three years continue to linger. And we'll talk a little bit more about the labor shortage as well, and supply chain as well. But one of the things you mentioned is like doing more with less, or like the expectation of doing more with less. How do you balance the need for.
Cost effective with all your initiatives, while also like keeping the high quality customer experience that you're aiming for in the space that you're, you are taking care of.
KIRK: Yeah. Boy, you've thrown out some tough ones. Syd, I, uh, really on, on this view, I, I look at it like, and this goes. This, this depends on each each company, right?
Because every company has a different operating model, so there's not just one answer because so many people operate differently out there. My view and, and it's, as long as the company supports this view, my view is you, you give, whether it's from me or from the partners that I partner with, you give the highest quality service.
The most reliable service that you're looking for at the most affordable rate, right? Not the reverse. You don't go. You don't go out looking for what's the most affordable rate and then accept what's the highest quality and reliability I can get for that rate. I do it on the flip side, so I know that we're spending a little bit more than the cheapest possible, but that's because I can't dip below a certain level of quality and reliability and, and if I go far enough back in my career where the procurement departments are going out to.
It every, every couple years, right? And they're trying to shave. Pennies, pennies per square foot. You cut yourself way below what's realistic, right? And then once you suffer through poor performers for a year or two and then you go back out to bid, everyone's focused on here's the rate we're used to paying.
And they, and it's difficult to get them to say, oh, we need to pay double, triple that to get what we're asking for. Procurement departments don't wanna hear that. They're like, no, no, we got it for this before. We just need to find someone else that. They can provide it for that, you're just buying more problems, right?
And if you are not happy now, you're not gonna be happy in the future. So each company has to make their own decision, right? At what level are they comfortable, uh, with the spend. And it's usually not just a simple decision of here's the number I wanna spend. It's more of a. Here's the number I wanna spend.
Okay? Let me go execute that. After a year, look at what that got us. Are we happy with what we're getting? Right? And if they say no, then that's when you have to kind of reassess and go this price point that you want us to operate at, this is what it gets you holistically. I don't have a, you know, a silver bullet answer that applies to everyone, but.
Everyone has to go through their own learning curve and find out where that that threshold is of acceptable, unacceptable.
SID: Hey, I'm your host Sid Shetty, and I hope you're enjoying this conversation so far to make sure you're up to date and have access to. All our episodes. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast.
Also, if you have thoughts, comments, or questions, be sure to follow Service Channel on LinkedIn so you can be part of our community of like-minded folks as well as have access to a lot of other great content. Feel free to also connect and follow me on LinkedIn. I'm your host, Sid Shetti, and now back to the show.
Every brand has their standard and every brand has a balance between how much they're willing to spend on facilities, maybe for lack of a better term, like compromising on some things. Yeah. Cause that's how budgets work, right? You don't Exactly. You never get more than you, you need, it's a balancing act, and I think as long as, you know, we keep the north star in in mind, which, The best possible customer experience, whatever that experience is, you are able to at least have the conversation with the right departments to say, here are the outcomes we want and here's how we can get there, and here's the budget we need to support
KIRK: it.
Yeah. I think it goes back to what we talked about a little bit earlier, and I mentioned about the seat at the table and singing your praises. I have several topics and one of them is sing your praises, and the emphasis is on. Making sure other people know what you're accomplishing, right? Your boss probably doesn't know everything you work on.
Probably have a pretty good idea, but they can't possibly know what you're working on. I, I pose the question to people at the end of the year, if you look back and say, give me your your top 20 accomplishments, are you gonna forget some I. Possibly if you're not writing 'em down or keeping track over the years, you can't even keep track of everything you've done.
How is your boss or someone, two layers removed from you or another group? Completely? How are they gonna know what you're working on? So, that's right. You wanna make sure that you're singing your praises. It may sound that may not be the right term, cuz that sounds like maybe you're bragging right, but you need to keep everyone up to speed.
On what your accomplishments are. So that goes back to expectations and spend, and is the brand image where it needs to be at the beginning of the pandemic, or not the beginning, but when? When everything kind of went sideways. Right. And we started going back. We heard right away from, from all our vendor partners, Hey, prices are increasing, turnaround times are increasing.
Lead times are increasing. There's shortages. We can't get things. And they said, so here's our metrics that you're, you've been accustomed to measuring us on. Be aware there's less people out there. Companies went out of business, right? Right. So when you come to us, along with every other retailer that opened at the same exact moment, right?
Running all this exact same services. Just be aware all these numbers are changing, and I proactively took that and I shared that internally. Said, Hey, I know you're ex you, you've become accustomed to this level of service from our team. Be aware, we're being told this is gonna change, this is gonna change, this is gonna push out.
Come the middle of middle of summer when you were used to putting in a ticket and you were uncomfortable, and we might have been able to get that done. It might have taken too long and it took two days. Right now too long is gonna mean three weeks, right? Or two months. You share that information to be proactive and people hear it and they acknowledge it, right?
But months and months later when, when the first experience hits, it's like, it's hot. I need this fixed. Hey, sorry, we don't have the parts. It's gonna be months. Well, what can we do? We need this done tomorrow. And so it's, you can, you can preface and you can share, and you can emphasize, but. The truth is the end result is the end result.
And everyone still wants that, that quick turnaround time, and you don't want to impact business. And so everyone has to try and do their best to get things done as fast as humanly possible. But times have changed and it's not as realistic anymore. Yeah, I
SID: mean, look, organizations are people and people forget.
You gotta keep reminding them, right? Yes. That's what we have to do, you know, otherwise, you know, if you don't set the expect. It's, your job's gonna be really, really difficult. Yeah. Like, cause you're always gonna feel like you're underwater communicating what is the reality in like real world. Yeah. Is super, super important because it sets the stage for what is.
Success criteria for you and your team. And I think it also, I think, improves your relationship with the operators in the stores because they understand the challenges that you are dealing with. It's not magic. Things didn't just suddenly improve. Back to SLAs that we had pre covid. Covid changed a lot of things.
Yeah, we're getting there. We're getting better, but I think there, there's some ways to go. Let's talk about some specific challenges around the labor shortage. Right. I mean, we know right now. Of talent out there, and I wanted to get your perspective on what you are seeing. How is it impacting service providers and, and in turn, how is it impacting the facilities
KIRK: teams from a very, very high level, speaking across, you know, multiple.
Multiple people that I've, that I've heard from over, especially at the conference and over the years, a lot of teams are impacted, you know, from the, from the labor shortages and, and the turnaround times with their vendors. It, it is a concern. Right. You know, so much so that there were educational sessions and topics that were being talked about at the conference.
On, on, on. Just that, on a more isolated. Level. I work closely with all my partners, all, all our vendor partners that are out there. And just like we mentioned EAR earlier, you know, the easy to do business with. We've got our own teams, you know, mantra, right? And, and how we operate and how we interact with our, with our vendor partners.
And I, I feel like we've built great long-term relationships with our. With our vendor partners and suppliers, and we don't call them, you know, you're the vendor, right? You're, you're a partner, you're a vendor partner. That's right. Right. It's, we, we are, you know, we need each other. Right? I need you, for me to be successful, you need the business to be successful.
Right? That whole attitude of, you know, the customer is always right. There's people out there that have that attitude and they'll pick up the phone and they'll scream and yell and demand. It's not, it's not our style, right? And we just try and build those, those true relationships where it's like, look, you know, I know you're challenged.
My view anyway is we try and treat everyone the way we want to be treated. That's the way we want our stores to be treated. And we, we hope, and I'd go so far as say I feel like it's unique enough. With many of our partners that we, we get moved up to the top slot because of that, that interaction, how you treat people is how they want to be treated.
Equates to priority service. So even though some, some vendors might be having problems and struggling with staffing, they still have, you know, a certain amount that they get to issue out first. And I think if you go into a queue, And you're not one of their top, top partners. You might be the second visit or the third visit or the fourth visit.
And as long as you treat people with respect and the way we try and interact with our vendor partners, I feel like we get a. We get quality responses and timely responses still, and granted it may not be like, like the old days, but I still feel like we're, we're at the top of their dispatch lists, so That's right.
We may not be suffering from the same pain points that, that some of those other customers or clients. Are suffering from, especially if they were ones that didn't have that same mentality of treating people as your partners.
SID: Be nice and respectful. What a novel concept, right? Yes. It's really that simple.
I mean, you know, I think if we all just do that, Much better place. Going back to like the, the labor shortage piece you and I have discussed in the past, there's a cyclical event that's going on right now, which is because there's a lack of talent out there, providers are having to charge a lot more Bec.
More to get the same talent within their organizations, which is then driving up prices for facilities teams, which of course has an impact on budgets and so on and so forth, right? We need to bring in more talent into the space. There's some. Up there in terms of what percentage of the workforce is gonna retire in the next five years.
It's pretty scary. We're talking, you know, 40, 50% kind of numbers, right. That's crazy. And we need to kind of get ahead of it and bring in more people into our. What are your thoughts on that? Like what can we do as an industry to encourage more talent to, to come in with the technicians, the trades, facility managers?
We'd love to get your take on that. That's
KIRK: the $64,000 question, right? It's a big unknown. I know. We need to attract more people. I know that, uh, a lot of people are talking about it, you know, it's, it's top of mind for everyone, but it's, none of those conversations seem to be around, well, what's that solution?
You know, I've joked around, kidding around going. Hey, we need to take the association's budget and do a Super Bowl ad, you know, or something. It's like, how, how do we get that message out there? I look at my own personal situation and I remember back in, in high school and you know, whether it was career day or talking to your counselor, here's all these jobs that are available.
There was always, whether it was a poster that was there or there was an actual table for the military. Everyone knew back then that it was, Hey, I could go to college or I could go into these different fields. Or one option is always I could go join the military. And at that time they were saying, join and we'll pay for your college.
But it was like, I am pretty sure that poster was in every high school. And I'm picturing how do we get that same message? About the trades to every high school, right? Not just in passing, not just in, Hey, we sent out a note and asked every counselor to mention it in an assembly. Or said, how do we, how do we get it in front of every kid?
Now, I'm not saying everybody should skip college and go into the trades, but I wonder how many people. Actually know that that's an option. Even if they, oh, hey, my buddy's dad is a plumber. Or my, you know, my friend's aunt is an electrician. Whatever it is, someone might know about it. But unless someone's sharing the, the realistic side of it, of what you know, how do you go about it?
Right? Like if someone called me right now and said, Hey, I'm interested. How do I do it? I'm not sure I would know the right answer. It would be like, see if one of your local trades, depending on which one you want to get into, do they have an apprenticeship program or Right. Is there a union hall or something that you need to go through?
How do we get that information out there? Because I'm sure even five, 10 years ago, there was plenty of people, everyone, everyone's parents were like, you're going to college, you're going to college, you're going to college. Right. And there was probably a ton of people that were like, that's not for me.
What do I do? And unless you can give them a nice. Here, have you thought of this? Especially along with the, you know, the pros, right? You know, hey, you can make six figures in some of these fields, right? Some people are gonna go college, and they're gonna, they're gonna walk away with a 40, 60, 80, a hundred thousand dollars bill, and they're not gonna use their degree in the, in the field that they, that they got it in.
That's a huge starting point. Deficit.
SID: That's right, that's right. I mean, I think the more we can do to encourage the youngsters out there that you can have a great life and, and you know, if, if you are interested in the trades, that there's a real path to great careers out there. Had conversation with a few people on this show about what's possible and, and the kind of life that you can expect.
It can really make a difference. Like the more schools, uh, have a way to place their students into jobs that today. But we can't find the right talent. Like if you can just make those connections, it will go a long way. Because today I think it's somewhere along the, the way something's broken, there's, there's folks that are either going into these trade schools and they're not finding the right jobs.
I. Entering into the trade schools because they don't think there are enough jobs, and neither of those are actually right, because here we are as an industry struggling to make sure that our providers are well staffed and if they're well, Are more realistic, which then affects every facilities, team's budget.
And then you can end up doing everything that you have to do, right? And then in the mix of all that you throw in inflation and, and the supply chain disruption and all of that. So, um, there's a lot going on. I think as a whole we can start to chip away at these problems, um, and figure it out and help the industry move forward and come out stronger.
I know that you are very passionate and, and, and involved in mentoring and. Talent and trying to like be a mentor for folks that are in our space who want to kind of follow the path that you've taken. Tell me more about that and why do you do it? What has that helped you achieve and what has it done for the person you're mentoring?
I think
KIRK: this topic is probably one of my, my most passionate, and it's simply from doing a lot of soul searching and looking within and. As I mentioned earlier, I've had a lot of great managers and mentors over my career, as well as some not so great ones, right? But I've learned from all of them, right?
I've learned what to do and how to do things from some, I've learned what not to do and how not to be or how not to act From some of them. The saying goes, uh uh, I never lose. I either win or I learn. Right? And so it's Right, right, right. You gotta have that right attitude. All you know, my career has been filled with these people that were so willing to share their tips and tricks, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of professionals out there, not just in facilities, but they keep their cards close to their chest and they won't ever share what those tips and tricks are that they learned over their career.
And, and for whatever reason, maybe they feel they won't be as valuable if everyone else knows the same thing. And I kind of have the opposite view. And a rising tide raises all boats. Right. I will share. All my tips and tricks that I learned over my, over my career. I've mentioned before that when I was young, I was in conference rooms, just looking around the room at all the old people, just going, man, they've got all the answers.
It is amazing. It doesn't matter what comes up. They know the answers. And then I don't know where it happened over my career, but all of a sudden everyone would, the questions would come up and they would all turn to me and I'd be like, when did I, when did I go? You get that guy now? Yeah. When did I become the old guy in the room And, and I realized, you know, I'm on the, I'm on the back half of my career.
Right? I've always had a never stop learning mentality, and I think everyone should have that, right? No one knows everything. And even now, even on the back half, I'm always trying to learn still, but I also feel like. I have the opportunity and, and even obligation to share everything that people were kind enough to share with me, with, with other people.
And if it gives them a head start. When I look back, I'm like, why did it take me so long to amass all this knowledge and experience? And if I can transfer that to someone younger and it gives them that much farther of a head start, it's like, how much farther can they go than I go? I want to help anyone who's willing to.
You know, listen, who, who's passionate about certain things. And the other piece is, is at some point, you know, and it's another part of my mentoring topics, but at some point you have to ask yourself what do you want your legacy to be? Right? And, and this helping other people and, and mentoring and, and you know, I have people call me just from, from the association, they'll pick up the phone and they'll call me and be like, Hey, I got a question for you.
What's your thought on this? And it was like, I think that's cool that we have this type of network built up to where you can just reach out and bounce ideas off people. And I wish I had that when I was starting my career. And so now that I know that it's here and we have it, I'm gonna try and participate as much as possible to, to share and network.
And, you know, I did a mentoring one-on-one pilot with, um, with Connects My mentee was super excited and, and shared at the end that, you know, he learned a lot. And I was like, you know what? I learned a lot as well. Every question that he posed. Not necessarily shooting holes in my opinions, but it was like every, every point, counterpoint made me think and, and sometimes you have to adjust, adjust your position.
SID: I love that. Let's pivot a little bit and, and look towards the future, right? There's a lot of change happening right now with how, what brands are. How we're leveraging technology. One to solve for a lot of the, the challenges we see today, whether it's labor shortages or the higher expectations of the consumer.
Things like robotics, automation, like that's not going away. So, I mean, we need to embrace that. Do you think the facilities industry is ready to handle all of that? You know, as we move forward? Because a lot of robotics, whether it is front of house, you know, facing the consumer or. With your warehouse or whatever that might be.
That's a lot of things that are gonna break and then, you know, it's gonna basically be for facilities to to, to be on top of it and stay ahead of it. What, what are your thoughts on that? I
KIRK: mentioned before, you know, there's such a wide range of, of people out there, I think technology and even robotics.
Some people out there are gonna embrace it and they'll be on that bleeding edge. There's people out there that still don't run with a C M M S system and haven't converted to l e D lighting. So it's like, right. It's amazing the, the span and the difference between those who are, who are on the forefront and those who are strangling behind.
Yeah. I have a feeling there's gonna be a number of, of, of people out there, whether it's companies or individuals or whatnot that are going to say, yes, show me more. No different than the first. Unmanned floor scrubber or you know, your, your little, little eye robot or whatever, you know, vacuuming the floors, right.
You know, there's people that are gonna embrace it and then there's people that are like, Hey, it's probably another decade or two before they convert to l e d. It's the bleeding edge, to cutting edge to, to normal acceptance to the, to the other side of the bell curve. So I think those that, that are gonna test this stuff out.
Kudos to them because it's, it's those groups that, that will make the headwinds or headway to making it more normalized. Right. Like just you're looking at That's right. Big screen TVs. Right. You know, you go back 20 years and everyone, oh my God. We could get rid of the tube tv, which you get this one we hang on the wall and this That's right.
This 32 inch ones only $30,000 right now. That's right. Now there's one in every, you know, every room in the house and, you know, you get 'em for a hundred dollars. So, you know, I, I keep an eye on, on where the technology and things are going and I, you know, I have a feeling that if you leap forward 10, 20, 30 years, you know, I'm kind of excited to see what.
You know what the standard or what the majority of people are, are doing and using, and is it, do we catch up to that, that bleeding edge things have come a long way in the energy management spot, right? You know, before it was just, you know, hey, we're just monitoring what our usage is. Is now. Now it seems like iot and everyone's monitoring every, every ounce of consumption everywhere.
And how do you streamline it? How do you shut it down? How do you eliminate or. Avoid the peak spend and it's, it's cool to see all the innovation taking place. I, I don't have a a set answer on how much is facilities management gonna be affected by it. I mean, cuz I. There's such a, from, from the, from the leaders in that category to the stragglers, such a wide gap.
Right.
SID: You know, you're right. You know, I think there's massive advancements that's that's happening right now in the space, and I think it's only gonna get crazier. The things that we are seeing with automation and robotics is phenomenal. Some of it is. Ensure that, you know, the labor that you do have in your store is actually spending more time with the customer and is not spending time on repeatable tasks.
Yes. And so robotics is taking over that, and in some cases it's adding to the experience of the customer. Robotics in the store, but that is to order things while you're walking through the mall or you know, or robots to come and bus your tables. Or order drinks. Or deliver drinks. Those are all amazing things.
I mean, then you look at all the technologies with just. Technologies, you have an experience with a customer where they don't have friction. Yes. They walk in, they take whatever they want, and they walk out and they have to wonder, there's thousands of cameras on in that ceiling, making sure that you know every single thing that you pick up is being.
As the consumer, right? If five of those cameras go out, that's a blind spot. And you know, the consumer doesn't know. The consumer just walks out and lo and behold that they haven't paid for something. But that's all gonna be facilities. And so I think the more we do, To adapt and stay ahead and stay relevant.
The more we are gonna be able to control the impact we have in a positive way, we wanna make sure that we are not left behind. Wondering if there's a new department that. It's handling all of automation and robotics, like that's all facilities. Yeah. And we as an in, as an industry, as a people need to come up to speed, stay ahead of it, educate ourselves on, on what the new advancements are, and find a way we're taking care of the store, taking care of the consumer, and taking care of the operator.
KIRK: Yeah. I, I think you, you hit it on the head when you were talking about there's a whole new group. If it's not facilities, as soon as you introduce something, and I won't go into specifics, but many years ago in my past, we rolled out some technology that was supposed to save and reduce, uh, avoid rolling trucks and things like that.
And it did, but we also saw an increase. And calls to fix the technology that didn't exist before. We didn't ever have any calls about that because the technology wasn't in in the location. So when once you introduce something new into the building, you might get the benefit that it was promising, but you've introduced something new in the building that's going to take and require your or someone else's attention to maintain it or troubleshoot it, replace it, repair it.
There's nothing ever, ever free. Right? It's not like, Hey, here's the end all, be all solution to everything. Because once you put that in, it might have pro given you everything I promise. But now you've got troubles with the end all, be all thing.
SID: For sure. For sure. What advice would you give to the folks in our audience who are in the early stages of their career, are thinking of joining the space or want to take the next step in their career?
What advice would you. In terms of how they should look at what they do, why they do it, and the kind of narrative they should have within their organization. Or maybe how do they think about the impact they have Yeah. In their, in their space. And that's a
KIRK: pretty wide range question in there, right? And it depends on who I'm talking to.
Is this someone that's going into facilities management and, and wants a role like mine? Or am I talking to someone who's gonna get into the trades, who would be working for one of the vendor partners that we, we hire? I mean, it's, it's a wide range of people. If I'm speaking to someone following my path, kind of jokingly, I'd say, get in, sit down and hold on.
Right. You know, it's, it's, it's fun. But, uh, go in with a positive attitude. Be a sponge. Learn anything and everything you can, anything that anyone is willing to teach you, absorb it. You, you might feel like, Hey, I've learned everything. Where's my next opportunity? There's things that you can learn in the first few years, and then there's other things that you can only learn through experience, and only time will, will, will teach you those things or, or allow you to experience those things.
There's issues or hiccups or incidents. That maybe happen every five, 10 years, that it's, you know, I've been doing this for what seems like, you know, 50, 60, 80 years. Every now and then something new will pop up. Be like, well that was a new one. I've never dealt with that before. It's like, wow, okay. Over all those years of experience and interacting with people, never heard of this.
So don't, don't think that you have to amass this ball of knowledge. And once you do, then you're complete. It's an ever, ever growing, always learning, uh, experience. And even if you learn something, There's always, there's always a way to look at it and go, is there a way I could have done that better?
SID: I love that.
Keep learning, keep adapting. Mm-hmm. That's the way. Perfect. Well, Kirk, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you joining me today and, and having this conversation. I'm sure. Um, have enjoyed our conversation as well. Kirk, can you tell our audience where they can find
KIRK: you, Kirk, on, on LinkedIn?
You can look me up there. Um, I'm based out of Portland, Oregon. Born and raised here. Been here my whole life. You can find me at, uh, any of the Connects events. I'm kind of a
SID: staple for folks in our audience. If you ever see Kirk walk up and say hello, I guarantee you you'll have a great conversation. Well, again, thanks so much Kirk.
Really appreciate it and I'll see you very soon.
KIRK: Thanks for having me, Sid.
SID: Well, that was my good friend and industry veteran Kirk, talking about our industry and the impact we can have by mentoring and encouraging new talent to enter and stay within our space. He also talks about the power of being nice. And being respectful, I could not agree more. Whether you're a facilities manager or a service provider, this is a two-way partnership and being kind, respectful and a good partner in general might just get you prioritized higher when you're in need of emergency service.
With that, I'm Sid Shetty, and I'll see you on the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar
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