Brian & Cheryl Stuller of Stuller Power Solutions

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:37Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs powered by Action Coach Growth Partners. You likely went into business to have more freedom and flexibility so that you could spend more time with your family, do more things or travel or enjoy your hobbies or whatever it is that you like to do in your spare time. We're here to help you find better ways to make more money, build better teams and get that time back so that you can have that freedom and flexibility. We'll help you simplify things and make sense of business, investing, and wealth building so that you can be epic and achieve all your dreams and goals.

1:10And now, enjoy the show. Hello, this is Brian and Cheryl Stuller. We own Stuller Power Solutions in Hendersonville, North Carolina. So, yeah, thanks for being on the show. What exactly is Stuller Power Solutions? We install generators, standby generators for homes and businesses. And we also install battery backup systems for the same reason, backing up for power outages, which we seem to have a lot of in this area. Plenty of lightning and those kind of things to add up. So how did you get into this business in the first place? Well, I was in the Navy. I was an electrician in the Navy. And when we got out, I transitioned into electrical and ended up getting my license and going into business for ourselves.

2:16Was it always the power solutions or were you doing just straight up electrician work? We started out as straight up electrical. We wired homes, large custom homes, specialized in that, service work, and slowly transitioned into generators. How did that happen? Well, mainly because the economy tanked around 2008. We had already been doing generators some and we're building a client base. And we decided that in order to have steady work and steady income, that generators would be a good source of revenue consistently. And so we decided to put a lot of effort into advertising and supporting that side of the business.

3:27So, I mean, that seems like a bit of a shift. And I mean, there was an event that caused it, but was there a thought process or a plan or anything to go that route? Or what was you thinking? Somewhat. We wanted to push generators, so we did. And we started growing that side of the business. And at around 2012, we made the conscious decision to go generators all the way. No more electrical work, no more wiring houses. We wanted to put all our efforts into strictly generators. And that's what we did. We cold turkey, stopped doing electrical. And that's not to say we still did some small jobs for clients that need things.

4:21but 99 % of it went away. It was risky and scary. Risky and scary. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a really, I mean, it's, it's a different business, right? I mean, I mean, I mean, you're dealing with contractors mostly in the, with the, with the electrical contracting business. And then this is pretty much, I mean, you built businesses and, and consumers, but it's a little more direct. and in order to be good at something you really need to focus on it and put all your effort into it as a side as a side gig servicing generators you just didn't have the level of expertise that you need to do it right interesting so we we train our we send our text to school every year to Generac for training.

5:19We have weekly meetings on Friday morning for questions and answers.

5:29So we really focus on the client. We focus on whenever we're servicing a generator that we do the absolute best that we can do for that generator and for that person. Even down to cleaning it. yeah no i love that you're all in on it i mean i think that there's a lesson in there of niching of of being all in on the on on the thing so it kind of leads into my next question you guys have been successful and one of the ways you've been successful you've already hit on a couple was focus and training and and uh cleaning and going the extra mile so you know we have this saying that you've probably heard in Good to Great that good is the enemy of great.

6:18We say that successful is the enemy of epic. So what do you think it takes to become not only successful, but the next level to go to be an epic? Well, you really have to focus on the clients. And staff. And staff. We try to keep our clients happy when we try to keep our staff happy. And if the staff is happy, they're going to do a good job for the client. They represent our company well. And it's a win-win. So do you believe it starts with the staff then? Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. And when we hire someone, we don't hire someone because they know generators. We hire them because they're a good quality person.

7:16They have good intellect and they're the right temperament. So our process of hiring has been different than I think normal. Let's hear about that. Tell us a little bit about your hiring process because there's a lot of people out here who've learned a lot of things about hiring and not hiring in the last four or five years. Yeah, and this is where Cheryl's expertise comes in because she is very good at picking people and knowing who, reading character and that kind of thing, judgment. So what's your process, Cheryl? I think it's important that you talk to them about who they are, what their background is with their families, what they're interested in, what their hobbies are.

8:08Are they community minded? Are they church minded? Are they involved in something? Are they connected? Because I think that breeds people staying longer. And then we kind of talk about ourselves and what we like to do. And we just happen to ride motorcycles and a lot of our staff does too. So we try to get together on Friday afternoons and ride together and kind of create an atmosphere that you would want to hang out with this person outside of work. You would like to talk to this person about what their interests are and their hobbies outside of work. So it's like getting to know somebody that you would want to go have a beer with.

8:53kind of thing. On top of that, do you have the skill set to work with clients? Are you attention to detail? Do you care about the outcome of what you do? And if you check all of those boxes, then that's a good fit for our company because we're all in. We're hands-on. We're here every day. So we develop a relationship and we consider them our work family because you spend 40 hours a week together. We want to make sure we're all cohesive and get along and support each other and have each other's back. Yeah, that's awesome. There's a lot there. There's a lot there. So do you have, I mean, do you do multiple interviews or you just sit down with them for three hours and get all this or how do you actually do it?

9:43No, I start out with a phone interview first because I can tell from there whether I want to bring somebody in or not. And then from there, if that's a good fit, then we bring them in and we get more detailed information about, you know, who they are and all of that that I said before. And we just interviewed somebody last week and we were together for two hours. So it's just being able to have that conversation and have it flow easily. And like I said, would you want to hang out with this person after work hours. Is that somebody you could, you know, respect and get along with? I love that. Would you want to hang out after hours?

10:25Yeah. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good, uh, a good barometer there. Do you do any kind of, um, assessments or anything like that? Or you say it's all, it's all multiple interviews and, and, uh, culture fit. No assessments. Um, we just ask key questions and, you know, learn from that, whether we would want to have them around for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks out of the year. I understand. No, I get it. No, I get it. I just love it. I mean, different. I mean, what works is what works. And so that works for y 'all.

11:07So I know that there's, you've had great success, but along the way, there've been challenges. So there's always lessons and challenges. So what are some of your biggest, I guess, lessons that you've learned that would be useful to other folks who are in business or who are contemplating the idea of going into business? You can't halfway do being in business for yourself. You have to be willing to put in the hours, be willing to work with clients of different temperaments and personalities. You have to be willing to make hard decisions when you need to and stand by those decisions. We you know, there's a lot of blood, sweat and tears in owning your own business.

12:01I lost you. Sorry, we're there. All right. I still got you. OK. What is it for you, Brian?

12:14Well, a lot of our challenges have come from, you know, not having enough employees, either having too much work or not enough work. It's it's a feast or famine. So working through those times is challenging. What have you done? I mean, you obviously felt the pain of 2008, 2009. And you moved the generators, obviously, to take some of that ups and downs off. What else have you done along those lines to even things out? Unfortunately, we were doing about 50 % residential and 50 % commercial at the time when the economy tanked. And this area was pretty well buffered from the economy. We have a lot of retirees that come into here and they're not, they're not affected as much as the rest of the world.

13:19Yeah, that's right. But the commercial side was I ended up laying, I had to lay half my guys off and that was hard. That was real hard. So that's when we, you know, that's when we really decided that we needed to shift. And it was it was you have to change how your vans are laid out. You have to change your business model. We exclusively sell and install Generac generators because we liked that company and what they did. and they carried the market share here in the United States. So that was important to us. They do, they like to have their techs trained. We liked that. They're available by phone.

14:15We have an area rep that we really like. Actually, his son works for us. He wanted, once he became of age, he wanted him to work for us. so it's it's building a relationship in the community as well and we had that relationship we always did what we said we were going to do we were hard workers we were involved in the community early on and we've stepped that up this year so we were a name that people could trust And so when we switched and went to all generators, we kind of took everybody with us. We kept all of our clients that we had and just made sure we took care of them, but with generators instead.

15:00I understand. So is that taking out some of the ups and downs?

15:07It has. I mean, as far as the feast or famine, generators are pretty steady. and the service work is residual. We have the same, we constantly add services, but we're never losing them. Right. So is there a regular, I'm assuming there's, you know, people can buy us regular service contract or something where you come out and check them out every six months, a year or whatever. Yeah. Right. Yeah, perfect. Okay. Yeah, that's awesome. So I want to change, I want to shift gears a minute. And that just occurred to me, I love talking to husband and wife teams because you've got the family and the business dynamic thing going on.

15:52And I've worked with a number of couples over the years. How have y 'all navigated that? We complement each other that way because my strengths are not his favorites and his strengths are not my favorites. So the financial side is my side and the technical side is his side, the skill set side. So I don't mess with his side and he doesn't mess with mine. And then when we need to come together on things is when it becomes something financial that we want to have a conversation about or employees. Otherwise, we do really well that way. I think I mentioned at the breakfast, we kind of came to a point where all we were talking about was business.

16:48And we said, oh, we need to we need to find something else to talk about after date night. And that hasn't happened. We still always talk about the business because it's our it's our lifeline. And it's and we're taking care and they are taking care of us of 12 families. And that's important to us. So we always want to make sure we're doing the right thing. Well, it's working for you. Yeah, that's awesome. I just think it's interesting how people sometimes will make rules and try to, you know, I worked with a couple one time who they had a breakfast once a week where they went out to breakfast and they didn't talk about family.

17:30They talked about the business and they could talk about the family and the business any other time. But that was just the time where they had to had to do it that's what worked for them so i just say i find it interesting it seems to be working for you i think it's a lesson for all business uh medium and small size businesses is that at some point you got to divide and conquer you you can't have just one person people in in in the business it'll get it's going to outgrow you at some point So, cool. Well, I want to dig in. I'll do a little bit of a quick round here. What are your thoughts? I'm going to go through the EPIC acronym.

18:08So what are your thoughts on the importance of education? that's uh very important um one one thing is on the job experience and that's important our guys get a lot of that but being able to go in a classroom setting with generact and sit down and learn the ins and outs of these generators that's you can't replace that. Yeah, y 'all are big on having well-trained, well-educated, intelligent staff. I think that's a big plus that you have going for you there. How about the importance of planning? Planning is very important. We have to line up our generator installs. We have to line up the gas company, the inspections and startups, and all that has to be scheduled and planned out.

19:08It's not a fly-by-night deal. And servicing is the same way. They're on a yearly schedule or bi-yearly, and they have to be planned out and scheduled. The financial side too. And the financial side too. It has to be planned out. The money doesn't always come in at the same rate all the time, does it? Right. Right. And you've got purchase. You know, when you're purchasing a generator, that's an expensive purchase. Right. And we have to make sure that we balance having enough inventory and enough cash flow to take care of everything. So the planning side of that is important as well. Yeah. Yeah.

19:57I think it's very, very important. How about the importance of inspiration?

20:04I think we do that with the Friday morning meetings. And we are bringing in speakers also. It's not just about what are your questions from the week. We have a guy coming in in July that's going to, Tim Paulus is going to be talking to us about what your communication style is and how does that work with everybody else's communication style. We have different nonprofits coming in to talk to us about what they do in the community and what their needs are so that we can try and get our staff to be interested in helping on the community side to not just, you know, doing your job, but being a part of the community and supporting that.

20:52I love that. I love that. Having people in to train. It's more education and inspiration. It all kind of works together. How about the importance of commitment? it. Oh, it's huge. I mean, like I said, if you're going to own your own business, you've got to be all in 24-7. And we have managed to do that for more than 23 years. We started in our garage, and it was just he and I using our family van. So we'd take the car seats out when we needed to pick up the kids and put the tools in the back. I love that. And our very first employee, Artur, was with us for 19 years until he passed from cancer.

21:40That says a lot right there. Yeah, that's pretty amazing.

21:48Community. You guys have been conscious to do more in the community you said in the last a little while. You've ramped up your efforts. What are you doing? We're a big supporter of SafeLight and everything that they are about and do for our community. They kind of gel with, I'm a guardian ad litem. So I use their services a lot for the kiddos that I have. So it was a good partnership to support what they are doing with putting all of the services and one under one roof, um, the training that they do, um, for women in need. Um, I just love everything about what they do and the staff that they have there.

22:36Um, and we have other partnerships with other organizations, but that was a big one for us. So we feel like as we do better as a company, we should do more in the community. And so that's, that's been our commitment all along. Yeah. Well, I love what you're doing. You're getting out there more, You're out and people are seeing you. You're working with safe light. I mean, I think it's just wonderful. So if folks would like to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you if they're looking for generators or help with generators or just would love to chat with you? Well, they can go to StullerPowerSolutions.com online.

23:18They can ask us questions through that. They have a phone number. Give us a call. Facebook and Instagram. Right. We're on that as well. Sure. And then you stopped by our new office on Asheville Highway, which we're really proud of, which was Brian's inspiration. Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant stuff. Well, listen, thanks for being on. It's great. All that information will be in the show notes. And it's been great having you. And to all you entrepreneurs out there, we'll look forward to chatting with you in another week. And until then, all the best. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs.

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