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alrighty welcome aboard everybody thank you for joining us today here on the second edition of the HOF Lake security professionals Business Roundtable excited to be back with you this Thursday and we've got a lot of fun topics to talk about today hopefully to help you with your business and through your business strategies in the current situation that we're all dealing with right now throughout throughout the world my name is Chad lingo fell from lock dock security I'm here in Charlotte North Carolina but we've got a great a great roundtable of guests today with us so we'll start kind of in my top left which is Tony Hawkinson Tony you want to give us a little bit of an introduction tell us who you are and where you're from I think your mute dummy sorry about that Tony Hawkinson with Bloomington security solution in Minneapolis Minnesota we owned a couple other companies as well Minneapolis locking key and assured security we are actually in the process of going through a brand change all of our the Bloomington security name will be going away and we'll be coming assured security serving the whole Minnesota area awesome thank you very much for joining us today Tony excited to have some conversation with you and get some of your input on the topics today also over to my right is mr. Lars Johnston Lars welcome from all the way from Canada thank you for joining us today give us a little bit of introduction sure Lars Johnson with Calgary lock and say from Calgary Alberta that is probably north of wherever you're sittin right now it's in a little country called Canada we are very similar to you guys so we just have different kind of money and you'll notice I talk proper English I don't know fee hickel's our security company as as I said Gerlach and safe we have about 250 five team members handle mostly commercial security locksmith services related but also those frames operators that kind of stuff awesome and down in the bottom left-hand corner I see Christy there Christy how are you doing doing well thank you Jay thank you for being back with us today give us a little bit of introduction for those that may were not on may or may not have been on the the video last week sure I'm with HF Lake security hardware I worked for them for a few years down here in Houston I just got a giggle out of Lars about because you know it's proper English I can't even do it right but yeah down here in Houston cycle at some point I'm gonna say y'all and I'm not even from but I'll say it and we'll see you lead time up but that's a little bit about me yeah well I will go ahead and put a y'all counter on my piece of paper here appreciate it and if it will also had an added note on there if if Lars uses y'all then we'll just stop the entire meeting altogether absolutely bottom right hand corner from st. Louis Missouri mr. Ted vice sure how you doing Ted I'm great how are you doing thank you for being here today don't you give us a little bit of introduction to yourself in your business sure um with by Sherlock of security we do traditional locksmithing and electronic security we also have an audio video and home automation division currently have 23 employees and we are in st. Louis Missouri we appreciate you being here so last week we had some conversation about what exactly was happening with with the world right now from the corona virus and kovat 19 and how it was impacting our business and today we wanted to kind of continue that conversation with some different perspective some different different viewpoints but also kind of get into a little more detail on some of the things that we started talking about last week so anybody that's watching right now on YouTube or Facebook we're on the HL flake page on both of those feel free to share that click the share icon in the bottom right hand corner send a text message out communicate this out to your social media I think anybody that's in the industry or anybody that's in small business in general could get value out of the conversation that we're getting ready to have today and so we want to continue to invite folks into that conversation so really glad to have you here I see C and D locksmith is logged in on the YouTube page and checking us out here so thank you very much for being here kind of the topics that I wanted to talk about today I'm just kind of outline those here at the beginning just so people will understand where we're headed number one women to talk about some measurables some KPI some metrics some things that each business is kind of looking at to understand how their business is doing so understanding kind of the health of their business we're going to talk about layoffs what is the outlook what are some things to consider is that something that's happening in our industry and is it something that we need to be mindful of the payroll protection program PPP is it is affectionately known how is that being impacted as anybody utilized it as anybody had any success with it leadership talking about how we're communicating with our employees how we're communicating with our companies and what what we're seeing in that aspect any marketing messages to our customers and what that looks like and then another point of topic is market diversification how is your business structured and how have you seen that impacted if you were heavily heavily in one area of a market maybe heavily in automotive or heavily in residential have you seen that as a dramatic drop-off versus a somebody that may have more of a diversification in all of the different type of clients that you serve so that's kind of the topics that we're gonna jump into today and get some feedback from these folks again diverse areas of the country and roles and responsibilities so I think it'll be a fun conversation so with that let's jump into measurables and kpi's I'll jump to Lars first because I know he is is all about some KPIs and metrics but I get us a little bit idea what are you looking at on a day to day to kind of measure the health of your business um we've we've actually started looking a lot closer on a day to day basis I mean tradition just for some context here my role is more looking at month the month even quarter-to-quarter rather than day-to-day but with the dramatic impact I mean of the last three weeks March 15th was kind of the beginning for us that was when our state of emergency came into play in our province we've one of the key things that we are looking at his dispatches created so I'm gonna use it the term ESC but whatever see our CRM you're using ESC is the the program that we use and we started looking at our demand on a day-to-day basis just how many dispatches that are created everyday so that's like a service ticket or whatever your vocabulary is we were averaging I look at an average about six to nine months and we're averaging about 57 or 58 calls a day since March 15th that average has gone down to about 23 so we've that's well over 50% that's a pretty easy KPI to pick trend we've started graphing it out actually looking at spreadsheets and databases it doesn't seem to have that same net impact but as soon as we put it in a graph just simple Excel dumped it in there it kind of looks like an EKG and then we have a line that goes across the middle it shows us anything that is under the average which has been 15 of the last 16 business days it's been a pretty good indication that things are things are changing so it's a service request demanded per day is what we're focusing on right now a Verity of other things but I'll maybe stop at that per second did per day is a main number that you're looking at paying attention to and you're just just having trouble with your microphone here thank you so you're you're watching your average number of service calls and that is dropped over 50% but that is and you're measuring that based off of the debate basically the demand for service calls per day that's kind of how you're one of the major components that you're watching for your business right now yeah that's pretty accurate people so demand per day so we're we're trying to get an understanding of what the need for our services truly demand so we're monitoring how many dispatches were created but also the input that's coming so phone calls today emails received the day not that that's a direct correlation but it does give and imply what there is a there is a tie between phone calls you receive emails you receive and the amount of demand that is created so we're looking at those three combined understood I'll get a Ted next to kind of understand what they're looking at and then I'll be very interested Christy from a chillies perspective what kind of KPIs and metrics that you guys are watching as it's kind of the health of your business yes so we've taken a lot of information from Lars and duplicated it we are watching our daily we don't have any historical data for service calls or calls coming in but we have started tracking it as of this week so between the shop and our dispatcher they report every day how many calls came in of those calls how many turned into actual billable hours or dispatches we've also been keeping an eye on we have a retail store so we've been keeping an eye on the retail store and logging how many people come in and at what time to see if there's any correlation their business has as everybody know is severely slacked off we've also been watching you know our inventory and that you know the regular day-to-day we used to look at this monthly then it went to weekly and now it's daily question so you just said you kind of had borrowed some of those ideas and learned some of those lessons from large through a lot of conversations that we've been having my my question for you is now that you're doing that because you mentioned you didn't have historical data so I think a big takeaway from there is it's never too late to start just even just in a quick simple thing here's the phone calls we're getting the service calls were putting in but do you think that will be something that you'll continue on is that a kind of a new rhythm that you guys will be applying as you move forward in business or do you think it's just for right now no absolutely we're gonna continue this there's a lot I've learned during these conversations a lot of good information and they're simple easy changes that can have drastic consequences awesome thank you very much Ted Christy I want to jump over to you and then Tony will kind of hear what you guys got going on up in Minnesota yeah for sure so um just like you guys you know we track sales per day so it might be demand based off your call for us is we don't orders taken right so we're definitely tracking our sales per day we've been doing that for years so we've got tons and tons of data to track against the see how this is impacting us and that's getting distributed to know the decision-makers on a daily basis to see where we need to do a Jaa's going to do one item that we've changed a little bit sort of focusing on for more is our our inbound call ratio so we have a target of what how many called you want to answer per day right and we've been focusing on that for the last year as feedback was maybe learn from feedback from our customers during surveys but now with a little bit more time on our hands because the inbound calls have dropped we're actually now switching in targeting our outbound calls per day it's another KPI and we're making outbound calls to our customers more so letting you know hey you guys we're still open we're still here for when you need us you know let us know what you need maybe announcing some of the different activities we have going on but whatever we feel needs to get communicated now that's a different KPI for us as opposed to the normals like timing tool delivery and more sales gotcha so some of the new ones that you've implemented based off of the current activities are current current situation that we're in right very cool Tony up in Minnesota what kind of what kind of metrics are you guys looking at to understand the health of your business yeah so one thing actually one of our original goals this year was try to develop more KPIs and metrics and this is definitely put a importance on that one thing that we're looking at similar to Lars is inbound service call is actually one of our conferences people people they just started pulling service tickets without even being asked then we started looking at the college one kovat what's happening now we've actually traded a daily scorecard for not only service calls but they are collected cash collected server service amount invoice so kind of looking at some of the financial pieces that come alongside those service calls and just trying to get a daily monitor on what's going on we don't have good historical data on that yet we do in our accounting systems but you know as far as its collection sheet so I'm really curious to see what happens after a couple weeks and then we'll start modeling that data and develop some trends I think you know the two most important things like I said one takes you KPIs and what's coming in but then also are we get getting collected on these customers one thing we've definitely seen a slowdown in the incoming calls our service calls per day we've seen a drop about probably 20 percent twenty thirty percent so not quite as large as what's going on up in Canada we have actually seen we don't have any good metrics around this we have seen still a decent amount of project requests which is very nice people still looking to do things just maybe not at the fact of a rage before it so Tony and Ted specifically because I know you just mentioned that these are new new things that you have started through these that through this process as you don't have a lot of historical data in some of those areas how is that going to change your business moving forward I know Ted said that's gonna be kind of a new Norma is gonna be something gonna be watching look Mike I guess my question is if if if you had not implemented that now what would your process be for monitoring and understanding where your business was right now today when things changed Ted Tony whichever one you want to jump in first so so in the past we had always looked at kind of like you said a monthly snapshot quarterly snapshot yearly snapshot and specifically on the sales standpoint after the fact I think what this is going to give us is a lot more proactive insight to do what's going to happen and I really like having the daily measurement of again okay here's what happened today in effect up to 30 days and might actually even help us in some staffing and some training initiatives that you know we've projected in the future and just give us more visibility into what's to come I think Colette has placed an emphasis huge emphasis on that just make sure that we pay attention to you know not only what's happening now but what's the world gonna be like two weeks from now three weeks from now and that sort of thing so I see a comment in the chat what kind of CRM software is everybody using to track customer information customer purchases and other customer related information so I just go around the table real quick Tony what are you guys using we're currently using a software called kik sir we're actually in the process into migrating into an opening management system from you guys to help us with tracking doors and service tickets and that sort of thing so we're kind of in the middle of changing systems we've used kick sir for two three years it's a nice online web-based portal but we're looking to move toward something that gives us a little more tracking and a little bit more of a KPI don't Mars what are you guys using yes si es cold no yeah electronic service cloud I think is the acronym it's the software based version of field edge field edge is also pretty common I think ESC is probably the most common software in the industry reusing ESC as well okay if it's applicable what kind of software do you guys use to manage your stuff yeah I don't know that it's quite Apple because you know we you know a little bit different of a business model so we use GPB and then we've got certain serums that integrate with that there you go so kick serve ESC we have our own software that we've developed in-house there is several other I've heard of Tiger Paul is another kind of a dispatcher software so there's a lot of them out there service service manager I think is another fusion service fee there's there's a lot of different software out there just depending on your size of your business and exactly what you're trying to monitor so so Tony you just said that you kind of did this on a month-to-month basis and that's how you would have understood that but you may not have known it until 30 days after the fact Ted what would you guys have typically done in the same situation running into something like this and then being able to figure out what a slowdown looks like historically I guess at least a year and a half two years ago I was solely responsible for looking at the numbers didn't have really a management team or leadership team to go over these like I said I guess a year year and a half two years ago we've developed that within our company and started you know measuring more KPIs for certain things and you know it's really helped out if you haven't done it take the time do it set small goals and it's it's been a great eye opener to us and in the entire team it helps us move along and see where we're lacking and you know sales numbers or close quotes put it out that sort of thing yeah I would agree with you on that and that's I think that's a major takeaway you can start very small very simple just start tracking something but I think the typical model for all of us has been to look in the past and see what we did versus understanding where we are from a day to day basis but very similar to it to you guys we're monitoring the calls coming in the site visits coming in per day tracking the number of emails and then the other one is is tracking our new opportunities so the number of quotes that are being created in a given day and that'll continue to help us understand what that's gonna look like 30 60 90 days down the road instead of hoping what's gonna happen or hoping for a turnaround we'll be able to have a better idea of when to project for it Lars did you have something to add on that yeah I would be disgusted with myself if I didn't mention the word cashflow tits the it is the metric that very few small businesses pay attention to they look at sales were all talking about sales and demand and that kind of thing and sales are great but if you don't actually get paid for it and your receivables balloon and you continue to pay out you know you're gonna run dry on cash and cash flow I'd like to take my this isn't live thankfully so we'll just erase what I said before and just focus on cash flow oh this is like perfect no uh yeah but the cash flow is first and foremost number one that we're looking at and that's what has driven us to get to this day to day kind of demand KPI that we're looking at my gosh is King Kenneth yes cash is king that's what I've heard the accounts receivable is definitely something to keep your mind on and your eyeballs on because as that continues to grow that's going to be a difficult thing in your business anything else that anybody would like to add on the metrics our measurables category before we move on to the next topic receivables inventory payables those are the three things pay attention to those three though I'm gonna add one that's not a typical KPI but something that we're watching you know and it's kind of off topic but on topics like if you come to the HR Flake site you'll know one of the things I focus on is safety and I run HR finance so I think it's HR side of my hat and one thing right now we're talking we're tracking this renew is post contact log so if any of our employees come into close contact with somebody else a customer a vendor within six feet for a frequent or prolonged period of time we are now tracking that as well and I think just for measures of safety I think it's a great thing to add not you know a financial indicator for us but it will definitely help keep arms like statement number one things very cool very cool the other thing sorry Tony I was just gonna say one other thing I've actually learned from Lars that he's mentioned before and was something that we're trying to work on is really getting an individual number for people in organizations to come back to so whether you work in a conscious feasible and you're looking at the cash collected in a day whether you're looking inventory and if you daily inventory number whether you be in a sail dance member a quote put out or get people in your organization numbers they can be looking at I'm again we're not at that point yet something we're working towards but I think that's great advice that is to make sure that people have something they can identify and monitor Balian it's just important most definitely so let's move on to the to the next category which is talking about layoffs and we can probably group layoffs and P P P together as as a as a category but what are the things that you're looking at from a layoff perspective is that something that you have had to consider is it something that's come up in conversation and and also the the payroll protection program are you looking at that in that aspect well let's start with Ted yes as of yesterday we have informed our guys that we are going to be furloughing some people we the business that the locksmith site is is down the electronic side is almost non-existent there's plenty of work out there but nobody wants us around nobody wants us in their houses places have shut down they're not letting vendors anybody outside the company into these facilities so that has really killed us we did apply for the P P P have not heard back from the bank well I've heard from the bank but we have not been approved or anything like that it seems to be a struggle in that regards yeah thankfully the guys took it well and understand or understood where we were coming from than what we needed to do it was really the the toughest thing I've had to do yeah most definitely Tony what do you what are your thoughts on this and I know you've you've applied for the P P P as well what are what are the progress that you've heard on this yep we've applied for the P P P I'm talking with our banker it sounds like we've gotten some sort of an approval number whatever that means I'm haven't heard any words and when that what the next steps will be on that and we're hoping to find out more shortly we haven't laid anybody off we've been using this time in the downtime to focus on some projects internally that we've been trying to get done over the last 6 12 18 months so really just kind of reallocating some resources and putting them towards other uses so that way when when this all ends we can come out come out strong we're kind of monitoring the situation day by day but we have a lot of projects to work on and I'm just so far just trying to remain positive and keep going and doing what we can be doing and yeah at this point we haven't laid anybody off gotcha Christy what are you guys seeing in Texas oh well between you know copan 19 and the oil crisis right now as well we're seeing some really down numbers so unfortunately we did have to take some measures and it was a really tough tough decision so we did have to lay out a couple people here and there no never easy so I feel for you Ted it is one of the toughest conversations you'll ever have to have you know and the best we can hope for is that this turns around and you know quickly and we can get those people that you know back in their roles absolutely most definitely large I know you guys have had this conversation as well what's what's the situation there what we've as crazy as it sounds we I had a meeting with my partner's Tuesday morning at 9:15 or 8:15 circuit and we had a plan for how we were going to move forward and we put some thought into what we call the essential services within our company that was needed because our revenue literally jobs in hassle with like a snap of a finger overnight it dropped so we had a meeting at 8:15 and by 10 o'clock it completely changed so a newer version of PPP we have a few different programs I'm not sure how many Canadians are watching but I will mention the CRB that's Canadian emergency response bursary that is for staff and specifically there's the Seba Canadian emergency bang I'm not sure that's one where there's actual lending from the federal government that's forgivable loan to a certain extent and then there's the Canadian emergency wage subsidy so those are three programs that have come out since Tuesday that are dramatically changing the way we're planning so we're rather than reading meeting weekly with our GM and our partnership group we're actually meeting every day and it's just we're not scheduling calls it's just a you available phone call web chat continuing on that way because we have gone from a staff of 57 to a staff of 31 in ten days so yeah it's a it's a it's not even a day-by-day thing it's honestly an hour-by-hour thing up here it's just having everyone paying attention to the information that is out there and planning based on what you can afford being ready to change that in an hour if you have to oh it's definitely so things are happening and changing very rapidly there's obviously in America there's some programs that are available I think the the general consensus across all small business right now is that it's the the offerings that they have available are not easily accessible at the current moment whereas it sounds great in theory but there's still a process in a time period and it's not gonna be anything quick and immediate and so I think I don't know about everybody else on the call but I know from our perspective it was this this thing as we were walking into it thinking that it was gonna be something quick and it was gonna become available read quickly and readily available and that obviously is is changing the tone very very quickly so it's just a continual conversation of what does this look like how are we going and how are we progressing which I guess go ahead large sorry I was gonna say so Chad leave it on that note you know our in our world our federal government has posted details to be announced so our strategy has been effectively is we're talking upstream with our suppliers and just saying you know we are going to make these payments generally speaking our suppliers are larger larger companies than us and they you know we've been a good customer there's a virus and and they they understand where were coming from everyone's in the same boat so we just had these conversations said listen we're not we're not in trouble now but we don't want to be in trouble and so we're waiting to hear what the government has to say about these and a release date specifically and they've all been under the same you know we we get it that makes sense so that's really lessen the pressure on us the other Avenue we took is we've been talking to our bank and right now I can't speak to the American banks but the Canadian banks they're they just basically throw up their hand and say hey if you can if you have money great and if not don't worry about it we don't know what this looks like we don't really have a plan yet but we'll do whatever we can to keep you in business sure and that that was a message right from March 15th absolutely must call your banker talk to them talk to your accountant because they're usually the front line external accountants are usually the front line to know what programs are coming out because everything does have a tax implication now thanks for you but those are absolutely the first first calls to me most definitely so there's a lot of variation obviously in this I think that's one of the really impactful things to understand when you start talking about business as a whole because we're all in different segments of the country and in two different countries and so we have such a unique perspective across the board that we can all apply so maybe what if folks that are watching this may see something completely different in their area maybe their state or their city and I would imagine there's gonna be a great divide even amongst cities and states so it's it's really understanding what it is and sharing up kind of those resources at your local level is going to be the main priority and objective for everybody so is is there Christian I would imagine that you follow some of this stuff on the P psi R P P P side have you seen anything any changes have you heard anything different than what has already been kind of been discussed no you know we obviously have been watching it closely you know in my peer group as well so I think the best thing you can do is just keep checking back at the government site there you know they have the fa Q's there's still a lot of ambiguity kind of in in the forgiveness process of what this is going to actually look like on the road I think there's still a lot of research and clarification to come out so just keep your eyes on it kind of interestingly as I was I was thinking about this call thinking that we have most you know a lot of silver hire ships on this call and or $2.99 or whatever it may be the sole proprietors they kind of from what I understand that I thought their applications don't start until tomorrow but they can actually apply now and then those the us that you know have the 299 they or applications open up tomorrow and I was looking online look there's tons of videos out there people accountants especially giving information and I saw this one Jay Jay the CPA I think it was kind of entertaining fella if you want to google them I don't know him at all okay you're really vouch for him but he had some good information and for the smaller businesses so if you're interested or just some people that way as well awesome thank you very much so I don't want to kind of move along any other closing thoughts on that before we move on I know go ahead Tony one thing I would add to that I know you guys talking about this last week on your call but in case there's any new people also look into the Eid elbow and the economic injury disaster loan through the SBA I'm going to know you talked about that last week but just something else that it's not as forgivable there are some grants associated with it but it's also a good form of financing but people to look into that again it's one of those things that's hard to get right now but it'd be probably good to look into for future and stay on top of it and the other thing I was gonna say large mentions your accountant your banker I would definitely say to reach out to them if you haven't but also make sure you have a good HR or legal guidance as well because there's so many employment laws changing if you don't have someone you reference for HR consulting or legal advice I recommend you find someone because it's changing so quickly and there's so much stuff changing we have a Aaliyah that we've used for the last two three years that's been great and I basically have her on speed dial at this point and I just recommend that people make sure they have some of their checking with because there's a lot of new stuff that's coming out from Dayton stickler I don't make six-time policies and all those stuff so just recommend that if you aren't talking to an HR person start most definitely on that note I think it is it's also very important to reach out to all of your other contacts from if you have any vehicle loans or any lease for your facilities because I spoke with a commercial real estate broker earlier today and he said that he was having a lot of those conversations and he's seeing it on the leasing side that the the conversation is being drawn very mutually understanding that everybody is going to have to work together to move through this so if you haven't already make sure you ask those questions and start those conversations I know for us personally with with our organization we reached out to some folks that are doing some financing on some of our fleet and they were happy to be able to to shift some of those payments towards the end of the the lifetime of that of that financing so there's opportunities out there there's there's possibilities out the e just don't hesitate to ask I want to move on to the leadership capacity of the conversation and I really want to dive in for folks that are listening or that are watching this going hey you know what does this mean how do I need to communicate with my organization I've heard outside of our company some of some some spouses businesses that they're working for how they are not hearing anything from their company and they're just they're just kind of we don't know what's going on and so I'm interested because I feel like it's an it's a natural obligation that we just were communicating to our team but I don't know that that's the natural case for everybody so from a leadership perspective what are you communicating to your employees how often are you communicating to your plays what is that conversation actively looking like right now and what are the things that you've had to change since this process started so I want to jump down to Ted and then we'll go to Lars just to kind of keep this conversation going sure we we do communicate with the art team daily we have some you know the one thing we've never done in the past sir are these video meetings so we had to get up to speed on that we do handle those every day you can do it with it inside the team's app and we are keeping them informed daily of what's going on progress asking them to a look for work look for something that we can do we've also asked all our team members if there's anybody that has marketing skills or video skills or anything like that so we can prepare for the uptake of this and you know and it will be here so we have that marketing material out there we're keeping in touch with them right now just you know in the hopes that this is gonna end soon most I think Ted you mentioned that a couple of days ago in a conversation we had it was either yourself remark had mentioned I thought that was a really good idea really talking to your team and saying okay if these are the things that we can't do right now but what are the things that we can do and what skill sets do you have that are that we're not normally utilizing and how can we mutually kind of work together on that so I think it's a really a really good thing to think about in these times Lars what are your thoughts on on the the aspect of leadership in these times you know it it's one of those things you're not really prepared for obviously the leadership just kind of happens and you know the one thing I try and I'm trying to take the positive out of this you know it's still terrifying what's happening there really is the other side of that is there's a lot of opportunity to really see what your people are capable of I love what Ted is talking about it it's amazing when you throw it out there man I wish we could do a video you know to say something and you know one of the one of the team members says oh actually yeah I used to do that another gulp I could do that and you know you're just blown away at the capabilities to the rest of your team so having that conversation you know I I really struggled when this first happened if we went back to say three weeks I had a conversation with I hate to do this publicly Chad but I was speaking with Chad and you know and I was I was really struggling with how much transparency I wanted to to go with and it was because I because the information was changing so quickly I felt like I would say one thing and then it would start getting through the organization but it meant it would change and I was contradicting myself constantly so I didn't want to say anything and chad referenced a book and I don't remember which we said basically in times like this the approach he's taking is over communication over transparency and and I thought about that and thought you know what the heck you know I showing a little bit of vulnerability and just saying you know I I really don't have a flip I don't have the answers and I don't know what's gonna happen but I'm gonna tell you what I'm thinking I'm gonna tell you the strategy of the company and I'm gonna give it my best so what we've done that has received incredible feedback from our group is at the end of every day we use slack internally so just an internal messaging system I send an announcement to everyone on the company and it follows the same guidelines every day first and foremost it's a thanks to everyone is working together to make this possible it's always a thank-you because honestly I'm I'm sitting at home I'm not at the highest risk level of our guys that are still out in the field doing what they can and we depend on them and we have a support team in our community and we talk about the feeling of safety that's what our company provides is a feeling of safety and so it's the greater good and it's been a rallying cry that's you can you can tell by the messages and the feedback we get that our team is really coming together and we are better as a team and a culture right now than we've been in ten years because everyone is rallying behind this common animal so we talk about feeling of safety and then followed up with policy change that we have a wellness procedure the Cova 19 wellness procedure that everyone follows includes it's essentially a spray and spray out what we call it till we clean doors when we get there we clean doors after we leave we wear gloves we wash our hands after everything and don't touch your face that's the nuts and bolts of our wellness procedure it's just an outline that we reference every day we give to our customers so they know what we're doing then quickly change to the benefits so this is all like three or four paragraphs it's very short I talked to the benefit so any of the programs that are available any of the health benefits that you can use that the company pays for and then just a quick update on Kovac 19 the reason why I do that I try not to focus on the negatives but there is so much information out there good bad and otherwise the frustration is you will read or hear something from a source that just doesn't have the credibility and so the message that we say every day I finish every announcement every day we educate yourself no unnecessary risks and flatten the curve and it's the same message every day and then I put the source that is our government website that is a chief health officer of the province of Alberta and this is all coming from her because I want people to use facts not opinions focus on the facts stay educated stay safe and the amount of feedback that I've had internally from this method is more than I've got in the eight years of doing this yeah I think one of the the interesting things about all of that is once you ramp up your communication in times of crisis what is the new rhythm and it kind of goes back even to the KPIs and metrics what is the new rhythm that you're gonna that you're going to work off of as you move forward Tony will come to you next to kind of get your thoughts on the the changes in leadership or maybe how you've had to adapt in this process on how you're communicating with your team but I do think that it is interesting in every one of these scenarios so far it's creating a new rhythm a new process and then what are we looking at on the on the outside of this are we gonna go back to the way we were are we going to be able to apply some of these things moving forward Tony how are things from your perspective it's the one thing I was going to say as I'm gonna touch on normalcy and you kind of just hinted at it there's we've been trying to a try to just develop some sort of normalcy people are used to being in a rhythm they don't like being stuff changing every day and unfortunately stuff is changing every day and one thing I've been saying to our team lately the last couple days is we seem to have settled into a new norm it's a much different norm than we were at a long time or you know a couple months ago but it is a new norm and we're trying to at least develop some sort to see with that we're also trying to still do some of the stuff that we used to do which is all company meetings so we had our all company meeting last week and we did it through a conference call format which is the first time we've ever had to do that but I think that was that was really good to keep that normal thing we have out of meeting the first wing does a month everyone dialed in and what we did at the end of it was just everyone go around and say one good thing that's come out of Kovac one silver lining and it was actually very valuable just to focus on the positive I myself tried always remain positive and be optimistic and I think it's good to keep that in mind that out of this we are going to develop new processes and new norms that are going to be good another thing we've been focusing on and with communication is just being in tencel and making sure that we are doing that communication I think before we kind of just did it you know when it was convenient and now it's not convenient at all because people are home people are working remote I haven't been to our main office in Bloomington for almost a month but I've been very intense about making sure call employees communicate with employees ask them how things are going just kind of check their temperature on what's going on with situations and we've been encouraging our leadership team to do the same and really everyone to just kind of check in on employees know now more than ever I think it's important for people to delegate and rely on their team to solve problems and I think that goes back to communication as well but just we can't physically gauge everyone's temperature we have 43 employees I can't call all 43 employees every day but you know it's important to delegate to your team members and let them know that we're thinking about them and that we're planning for them and engage their opinion engage their reaction they're out in the field working for and I just want to make sure that we're getting their feedback because there's being a totally different world than creating opportunities to hear from your team as well as communicate the consistency so that everybody understands the objectives and perspectives Christine what is a what has been the changes with HL flake and on it on a totally different scale ah you know it's been it's been you know as much fun as it can be we were actually talking just the other day that this is creating for the leadership team itself so much more trust within the group because you know we're all being pulled in a million directions and it's kind of like we're being very candid with one another we're asking for exactly what we need when we need it is setting priorities and I think that's huge process as a leadership team but that's trickling down into the the other teams as well so I think that's one thing obviously like the rest of you are communicating you know very frequently so Marc is sending weekly emails and then we post those on our Paylocity strike so callosity is our payroll provider but what's kind of what I love about it is it's got a good internal it's called community it's a facebook but for only the employees of the company and so it creates a feed and there's different groups within that and so we also post our announcements there we're 12 which works really well for a lot of our employees that are in the warehouse they don't have an email so they can't see it so this has become extremely extremely valuable in these times because now all of our employees can see any written messages and we can also post video updates as well which is you know obviously needed right now what's kind of bloomed out of that is one of our associates at our sister company IKS who for all the same fee she started a corona amusement group and so what's going well in your day what can we have you know just message of positivity it might be a kid spinning around in the office chair at home whatever it is just something that brightens your day and so I think that's one huge takeaway if I can encourage anyone of you always start the meetings with something positive because there's a lot of fear out there there's a lot of aspects that look doom and gloom and whatnot but we will come out of this we will come out stronger we're going to come out of better teen and so we are always trying to put the positive message and that's one thing that marked us really well in his written communications is starting with a win where did we have a win this week or this day and that is beautiful to focus on and then focusing on the future wins I think that's just as huge as well I think it's interesting and and just from the experience being around the industry for the past 15 or 16 years I think it's very typical for our industry to have a high level of cynicism and to be a little cynical because we are constantly working and fixing other people's problems and so it's it's a it's not a it's not a normal or a regular thought process to go to the positives first and so I would issue that out as a challenge to our entire industry especially right now find the positives be intentionally this was a message to our leadership team the other day be intentional about finding the positives because it's easy for us to point out all the negatives very very quickly these are the negative things that are happening these are the things that are going wrong these are the things that we can't do but if you start with the positives find positive ways to or look be intentional about looking for those positives and highlighting those going to make everybody's day a lot better and easier to deal with so anything else any other thoughts on leadership that we have that we missed out on anything else we wanted to add Jana would throw in there we've all kind of mentioned it but it's we talked about video video voice versus voice and where normally you walk around and see people maybe a chat and you're in the office and that kind of thing you know three weeks ago I probably didn't do that was it was uncomfortable now it's the new normal like video chat get popped in there's all kinds of apps but the the personal connection from a video versus just phone call is a thousand times if you're not doing a chat right now absolutely should using slack you can lose ring central you can use zoom there's house party there's FaceTime there's a bunch of different ones doesn't matter pick one and use it it's infinitely better than just voice most definitely good good add on I know we're kind of pushing up towards an hour mark so I want to be mindful of that I one of the ideas that we talked about was marketing messages to customers I want to skip past that and I really want to talk about market diversification because I think this is one of the things as an industry that some of us are struggling with in different areas those structure of your business the clients that you serve based off of the diversification that you have so in the what I'm saying with that is if you're heavily in automotive or heavily in residential and those things just cut off you know it's like a water faucet and it just shuts off all of a sudden what are your other ways to adapt and pivot what are the other what are the other markets that you can serve so I want to get some thoughts on that is kind of how your business is split up how you've seen those different segments impacted and what are what are your thoughts on making sure that you're keeping keeping that very diversified especially now but as you move forward anybody's can free be free to jump in on that to get started I'll start out we have a pretty diverse business we do pretty much everything in the after market we do residential locksmithing we do Safe Work we do commercial property managers commercial locksmith things we do multi-family locksmith things we do commercials electronic security we kind of do a little bit everything doors and frames and you keep operators just saying it is kind of a mouthful and complex but I mean it's one challenge that we have in our business is kind of streamlining all of those things but I think now more than ever I think well we have all those different diverse businesses and one thing we're doing is really trying to take a look at which businesses are affected most during this and in almost us ng it as an opportunity to look at okay where's our business going to be three years from now five years from now I just had a conversation this morning with one of our employees about you know what's our business going to look like 15 years from now and what's still going to be around and where should we be focusing on it but it's kind of weird to think about that far in the future but I think some of the changes that are happening right now are gonna have long-lasting effects on people are gonna go to the office well people might I just saw something this morning that they recommend that you never shake hands again which is just a weird thing to think about but I think now more than ever it's important to think about how is our business going to change and what they're gonna look like in the future and take another look at diversifying a little bit yeah I it was awkward yesterday I walked up to somebody and shook their hand and it soon as it happened we both stared at each other like what have we just done you know it's like immediately running - hand sanitizer but it is it's it's a natural reflex that you have and now you're having to break that and change it so there's gonna be some new normal associated with it all your face is just like was oh my god what just happened but yes it was true I think is very very interesting so thinking about future proofing your business from a from a or as best as possible from a diversification standpoint is a good thing a good exercise to go through Ted what are you seeing from that aspect from your business diversity I know you have kind of two separate arms of your business but what does that look like for you guys well regarding what we have going on now that the electronic security side is is pretty much nothing anymore we diversified just a little bit we started supplying churches with video streaming for mass that's we're in the AV site there's a quick learning process we're still marketing it but I think we've done three or four churches that are you know happy about that and it can also be used in the future when this is all over for people who can't make it to church but stolen attend mass that's that's really about it other than that we're just we're struggling and trying to look for whatever we can it was and and for you guys that was kind of a very easy pivot or an easier pivot cuz you were already in the a/v world for a part of your business and so it was just kind of learning a new component of that which is was this was a definite good move and it provides a great value to a completely different market large what are you what do you guys see from from a diversified market standpoint well well for once the procrastination and maybe laziness kind of worked out for us we've been talking about focusing specifically on commercial for years and just cutting residential and cutting automotive I've just never got comfortable of pull my trigger pulling the trigger on that and now it's turning out to be our commercial no one's leaving your house no one's actually going to work so there are no commercial requests coming in we're still seeing some residential what we're trying to do is advertise that some niche markets one of them I've talked about we're about to roll out an operation thank you aimed at first responders specifically anyone that is on the front line you know basically we'll do whatever we need to do to do something nice for them it does keep us some of our guys someone busy that's the hope but you know just just to thank you to the community in general as well we're trying to take care of ourselves right now we're moving to some lots of hands-free stuff you know are you ever going to open the your door with your hands anymore are you gonna move move to a nap that kind of thing we've talked about operators quite a bit or automatic doors and wave-wave to open you know how many bathrooms and restaurants when they do open again how many bathrooms are gonna be okay with restaurants gonna be okay with their bathrooms being pushed to open we've had a couple strange pivots that I'd like to say was planning and it all came together but you know we just answered the phone but we've had a couple customers asking that we install plexiglass or lexan or that over top of their security entrances just to remove that this so we've actually installed a few of those now which is I mean we don't have a clue what we're doing but you know we we figured it out the the biggest maybe change we've had I mean we've done fat and lazy you know see is the expression but we've gotten fat and lazy as a business we just answer the phone that's really all we have to do as far as work for sales go these days let's turn to the phone yeah oh you need something sure we can do that for you you know that that's kind of the way we're gone so actually going out and selling is almost like almost like a challenge browse book the thing we have been looking at right now is the one again the one of the nice things a silver lining of kovat is there aren't people leaving their houses which means there are a bunch of empty buildings around after his empty buildings you can get a lot more work than that so what we've been talking about is we've been reaching out to the major property managers that we work with that you don't have the 50 60 storey buildings and say any your for instance your key system is a real mess why don't you let us go in and do an audit for you tell you what you need you don't have to spend the major dollars to upgrade it right now but while there's no one there we can do this at an effect of an affordable price because there's no one in the building and we here's our procedures and we follow our wellness thing and that generally qualms it but we've we've really started focusing on doing security audits because and really highlighting hey there's no one around we don't have we're trying to do stuff on the door and there's no one walking through the door in five minutes this is going to save us time which will save you money so you can plan for when and if you do decide to do something so that's been really effective for us without three or four larger projects come down that way and it was just you know all the things that was on your to-do list and all the customers all I meant to reach out to this guy and reach out to this guy and this this lady I haven't spoken to him now is the time to do it and it's actually working well we're just making the suggestion there Sam yeah that's a good idea yeah can you be there tomorrow yeah perfect I think that's a very value and it's a it's a valuable service to offer and just kind of understanding that it's going to be a lot less stressful on the tenants and the building management and your folks at the same time your personal at the same time is going to be less stressful because you're not gonna have as many interruptions or disruptions in that process but I think understanding that as a whole you know you mentioned several different kind of opportunities to move into as things start kind of getting back to to more normal States but it is going to change the way that we all interact with our door handles with our our openings as a whole so I think it's something to be intentional about I know for our business years ago it was very reliant and this was back when the economy had major struggles back in you know 15 16 years ago and it was very heavily tied to new construction and to up fits and so the entire business model was really run by Riki's for new up fits for new tenant move ins and then all the sudden that crashed and so that entire business was just kind of like well this is nothing's happening and it was a very interesting and eye-opening experience that the business has continued to understand and adapt as we've gone forward not to say we're perfect at it by any stretch but mindful of diversifying into having some business in k-12 some in university some in healthcare some in new construction some in upfit construction and being just very intentional about where we're at because when one area dies or one area is struggling other areas may not be or they may rise up you have understand right now health care is is still kicking they have all of their facilities over capacitated you've got manufacturing there's a lot of manufacturing happening there's a lot of warehousing happening and so just understanding where kind of your market segments are located in and you're going to you're going to have some opportunity there at least Kristi what are you guys seeing from that I know your your business is diversified into supplying materials for a specific segment but as your customers I guess are diversified you'll see those those different things happening what are your thoughts on that we do care 101 to use so please get diversified if you're not already I think it's a very smart move with that last year we made the intentional move to get a little bit more strategic around access control and we felt we were you know not as strong as we could be there so we invested in some human resources some people that had some talents they're a little bit more than we already had in the business that can really help out our customer base so we're looking always looking for those opportunities as well as making sure we've got the right product idea for your diversification so making sure that we're stocking the right items and we actually just got in a really cool tool yesterday we're trying to get out in our warehouse and I couldn't tell you what it is to see my life because good but if it takes your picture when you walk in it can clock you in it takes your temperature this is free so it's beautiful because we actually turned off our punch in time clock because we want people all touching the same time clock right and so now you can just walk in it sees your face at those who you are a teacher to the turn tells you you're okay but she knows kind of important these days so it's just making sure we've got the right things the right tools you have them coming stuff you'll need so if there's something we don't reach out for sure well it's interesting that you mentioned that we were having a conversation with with one of the groups that we were meeting with the other day and one of the ideas came up that biometric readers were a big big thing and they still are a big thing right biometric readers well the thing is with biometric reader is you have to touch with your finger your hand or something on on a particular device and so we've started to get calls that people go and hold on a second what do we need to do to revert back to a key fob or a card or a mobile credential because we don't want to touch these these these these biometric readers anymore which I would have never guessed to be the case but again that's something else to understand there's a lot of that opportunity that people are going okay well we were really going down this path and you got to think biometrics it's at least fingerprint or handprint stuff is probably going to go to the wayside as we move out of this you know Chad it may be it's a challenging thing to bring up but you know something that's very realistic this is a time of distressed assets there are going to be unfortunately some people that aren't going to make it through on the other side of this and that is an opportunity for companies with stronger balance sheets and honestly just with better luck to look at some of these distressed assets and add to their portfolios and increase their market share in that to not matter if there are gonna be people looking to sell what they can and get out of it what they can and that is something that you know we we haven't actively pursued yet but we're still trying to get a grasp but I think in the next probably month six weeks two months three months you're gonna see a lot of companies that weren't you know that ran on a thinner thinner cash flow mark they're going to need somebody or something to get them out or just close a shop so distressed assets is certainly something that is on our well we appreciate the the insight and input on that I do want to be mindful of time we're right at a little over an hour mark I appreciate Tony lars Christie and Ted all of your insight and input any closing thoughts you'd like to share as we as we kind of head out of here today awesome well encouragement there we appreciate everybody's perspective and input I think this is valuable information for any small business but also for the security industry I'm not exactly sure what the future looks like for this call but hopefully we've got some continued interest we never did really get into the marketing messages so maybe that'll be a future conversation that we can bring some folks in and have a conversation around but we appreciate that again if you're watching this if you're listening to this if you're seeing this share it it should be posted on the HL flake page on YouTube and Facebook and you can share that out and and allow those folks all the other folks in the industry to be able to see it as well so again thank you very much thank you for HL flake for helping to host this and push this out and we'll see you guys next time