Speaker 1: Kirk Kaiser
Speaker 2: Mickey Eberts
Speaker 3: Art Huber
Speaker 4: Danielle Young
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Glad you could join us on FM After Hours, the ultimate podcast for all things facility management. We’re here to take you on a journey into the ever-changing world of fm. Don’t forget to check out our gracious sponsor, remediate your trusted partner in fire and life safety, compliance and Granger for the ones who get it done. And with that, let’s dive in.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hi, welcome back to the FM after hours show. My name is Mickey Eberts. I’m one of your hosts. Beside me is Art Huber. Danielle Young and Kirk Kaiser. Really good friends from this guy. I almost called you Kirk Herbst. I’m like, wow. I did. I was like, Kirk, that’s not it. I got to do that again. No, I love it. Let’s keep it Okay, Kirk Kaiser can just power through it. It’s awesome. Our sponsors for today’s show, hopefully I won’t screw this up, is Remediate and Granger. And on our last show we spoke about finance and healthcare and facilities management. Today I’m really excited. I think this is a very interesting topic. How can you become a facility manager slash director? And I’ll turn it over to Danielle and Kirk and we’ll start the discussion.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Sounds good. Well, today’s going to be some storytelling time. I’m excited to hear your guys’ story, but yeah, maybe first just you guys are, we both been facility managers, is that correct?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah. For how long?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Oh, maybe 40, 50 years.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
That’s it.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
That’s it. You don’t even
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Look that old. This is your time. Mickey, I set you
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Up. Come on. No, I don’t think I need to. Last episode, I said I was on Medicare, so
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I always feel better when art’s around because I’m not the oldest one. I started in 2000. In 2000, what is that? 24 years, something
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Like that. Okay, nice. Yeah. Well, man, I really just want to dive in and hear your stories to begin with. So which one he wants to go
Speaker 3 (01:58):
First. Well, first of all, I want to kick this. Last week when we did the podcast, I was wearing a shirt that said, I am an influencer. You sure were. I was. And I forgot to tell you about that because in the prior episodes I mentioned my daughter and how I was embarrassing her, telling her about me being on a podcast and I said, I’m not, I’m an influencer. So she bought me that T-shirt to wear last time, and I wore it last time. I forgot to bring it up. So I had to,
Speaker 4 (02:23):
It was amazing.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Have to embarrass her again. Mention her on this podcast to get that going. Nice.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
We got you, Renee. That’s right. I’ve been trying to keep her name out of it. Now you got her. That’s great. So to kick this off a little bit is my story. Well, I don’t know that I can tell you anybody that followed the same story as mine, so it is a little different. But to kick it off, I want to take a little philosophy thing about, it’s probably any job, but it really works in the facility realm. And one of the, I can remember because it was one of the first conversations I had with Mickey where I embarrassed him or probably set him off on a goal to never let that happen again, kind of a thing. So I don’t even remember the exact situation. I just know he came in my office and told me something couldn’t happen. Something was broke, it wouldn’t get fixed. And I said, well, tell me about it because as being, and we’ll talk more about this, but you feel silly manager, if you do it the way I think you should do it. You learn a whole bunch of stuff about stuff, how it works, and find out way things go and
Speaker 3 (03:42):
How to read blueprints and all this other stuff. But anyway, I asked him, so how do you know it doesn’t work? He says, well, I sent the plumber and the plumber told me it didn’t work. I said, did you see it yourself? He says, well, no, the guy told me it wasn’t working. Let’s go show it to me.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
And again, I’m going to make something up. I don’t remember the exact situation you might remember, but I don’t. I do, but I’m not going to help. But we go and crawl into this mechanical space and he says, yeah, the thing over here, it’s not working. Whatever. It doesn’t get flow or whatever. And I just do what I do and I start going, okay, well it does this and it goes over here and there’s a valve over there and it works. It’s like the advice I gave him at that moment says, whenever you get told something, go check it out. Or if you can’t check it out, have somebody that you trust implicitly to go actually put eyes on it because it wasn’t the guy that he sent that necessarily wanted to trick him or something. The guy didn’t put any effort into it or whatever.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
He didn’t give it the effort it needed and didn’t find out what was wrong because he has 50 work orders and he has to get this one out and say, Nope, doesn’t work. Turn it in and tell Mickey it doesn’t work. And then he can send somebody else. If they can figure it out, call a contractor in because he couldn’t figure out. So that bit of advice to anybody in facilities, in any of the departments I’ve worked in my career goes a long way to getting you to wherever you want to go. But I think in facilities management, when you’re saying how to get into this, use that philosophy, that mantra at all times, make sure you’ve put your eyes on it, check it out because you learn a whole bunch. I mean, sometimes I would do something like that and I didn’t know what I was looking at because when I was very young, I was into this, just got into this. So I’d call a contractor because my boiler operator told me the boiler wasn’t working. Call a contractor. And he said, your guy didn’t even blow off the broiler. This guy’s nuts. He doesn’t even, he’s taking his life in his hands. He’s not even blowing down the broiler when he’s going to check on it and learn something there, and you learn these things. So tell me what’s wrong with it.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
He goes, you’re getting ahead of everything. Art. We want to hear your story, your story, how you become. That’s part of my story. Become
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Fm. I mean, that is really my story. How I did it. I was, well the start from the beginning, I think I did this on my intro, but I was a custodian
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Back in 19 ought six,
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Just about then I was a custodian. I got hired, and again, healthcare is very, nepotistic is even the right way to say that word. Nepotism filled.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
I didn’t find that out until my mother was a manager in the admitting department in the emergency room, and they were hiring custodians. And I was 16 years old coming out of high school and getting ready for college and I needed some money. So she said, get hired into a hospital custodian, a housekeeping department as a custodian. Sure, because you’re going to give me a ride to work and I’ll go home when you go home. So that’s how I started working, mopping floors, picking up garbage and anything else that came up in that area. So I just started doing that a few years and decided, well, I don’t want to do this.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
You don’t want to clean toilets for
Speaker 3 (07:08):
The rest of your life. Not exactly fun, but had a whole bunch of experiences and a few years I did that, things you learn ins and outs of where things are in a hospital, what’s behind all those doors, and you start learning stuff. So I decided, but I want to be in management. I want to do something in management and say things without trying to be insulting anybody. But you’d believe that the housekeeping department isn’t full of a bunch of rocket scientists. I mean, without insulting anybody. But they’re not. I mean, they’re people that work hard and do their jobs, but they’re maybe not educated. I was going to go to college and started college that next year and say, well, I want to be in management. That would be better than actually doing the hard work directly myself all the time working around, I actually created an afternoon position to be a supervisor.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
I had this boss that was kind of my mentor back then, and he got me into management. I was me and one other person, but I was the supervisor. We did all the work. I did all the same work, but I was called supervisor. Well, that’s really the story that got me going because then I said, well, I’m a supervisor. I can put that on a resume. I can fill out an application and put supervisor on there. And I was working in a downtown Detroit hospital, probably a 250 bed hospital, pretty small in today’s standards and out in the suburbs with this huge a thousand bed hospitals. Back then it was about 900. I only say that I helped build the extra a hundred beds on it before I left that place many years later. And it was a thousand bed hospital that had a posting in the paper for a supervisor on afternoons. They said, well, let me throw my was, oh, by the way, I was, was making $3 and 20 cents an hour.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
It was 19 out six
Speaker 3 (08:59):
As a supervisor checks out in a hospital. And I said, well, let me just throw my resume. Or I don’t even, I think I just filled out an application. I can’t remember how I think I sent it in the mail though. And they called me for an interview. I got hired as a supervisor. I was a supervisor and knew all the things that housekeepers did. I mean all the skillset, how to strip floors, how to wax floors and refinish floors, how to use the buffers and the high speed, all this stuff. I had gleaned from this guy who was the director of environmental services. He changed the name to be with today’s standards. And so I was now his supervisor in environmental services at this thousand bed hospital. And so I said, Hey, after a couple years of that, why don’t I try that to go to the next, well, I got to be the director, I’m sorry, assistant director at a hospital somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
I took another job. It was by very three years. I said, Hey, I’ve done everything I can do here. There’s no positions up here unless there were, which there never were. Everyone was pretty stuck in their job and I’m not going anywhere. So I’d go to another place, became an assistant director. That same place I began the assistant director. I ended up becoming the director in environmental services, housekeeping, which does a lot of different things in different places. And the director of facilities left, got fired because he wasn’t doing his job, got in trouble and got fired. And because of my way I work, I had gotten all the guys in the maintenance department knew he had left. And I walked in his office and started looking through the blueprints and said, I could do this job basically because I knew the building, I knew everything. And the guys like me, I was already a director. There was no director. And the guy there said, sure, I’ll give you the job. Gave me a $10,000 raise,
Speaker 4 (10:48):
$3 an hour to a
Speaker 3 (10:49):
10.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Wow. Exactly. He’s really making it, mom.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
I’m way ahead of the game now, but that’s how it started for me. That’s awesome. In every three or four years, when if there was nothing happening, the small places, the bigger places need people.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
And back then, and of course I haven’t followed it today, but Ashe has it and IFMA has ’em, but there’s job boards and all that, but there’s always were positions being advertised. This was when you went in the WA ads in the paper. I don’t even know they do that anymore, but that’s what I’d find a position posted. And I became a vice president in a, again, this is all in Detroit, Detroit area. And then eventually, well, you’re in this community and everybody knows you. You’re already a director, you’re a vice assistant vice president. You’re vice president now. You’re in facilities. You become a program manager. You’ve built big wings on hospitals, took a job with a contractor, and they give you jobs around the country and you learn more, you learn more. Move to Atlanta for a mega hospital system in Atlanta and then move to Wichita for another large system.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
And since that time, I even moved, kind of didn’t move my family, but I moved to California for three years and did California. And we can talk someday. We might talk here about the rules, how they differ from state to state and what you have to deal with when you go from state to state, California and Florida being some of the toughest states to work in from a facility perspective. And then worked outside of the healthcare facility in healthcare support for about five years after that. Fire Door Solutions, which is now was part of remediate and even went down to Houston for a couple for a year and worked in another kind of hospital safety construction type company.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So how old were you when you became the facility manager?
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Let see. I was probably 24, 25.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Really? Something like that. Yeah, man, that’s young.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Yeah, no, I mean, it was incredible to me. What I learned. Of course, I spent a lot of time and one of the things about being a facility manager, at least the way I did it, and I’m not going to recommend this to anybody, I was in it, I mean, 24 7, I mean was when something happened in my facility. They knew. They called me and they knew I’d call, I’d answer Back then we had pagers, the rotor, no such thing as cell phones. You climb up the pole, smoke signals, all that kind of stuff. And then I became known to everybody in the places, the guy that could get it done and that that’s the way I did it. I mean, they knew they could call me even if it wasn’t my area. Could you help us get this? So by the time I left the first place where I became the facility manager, I had housekeeping, food service, all the facilities, management, security were all under my responsibilities as that facilities manager.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
You just wanted to take more on.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Well, you just use I can. You always answered. And that was the first place I ever wanted to join commission when it was again called Plant Technology and Safety Management was what we now call the facilities area environment, Caremark
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Area area.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
And there’s guys out there and gals out there that would know what I’m talking about still.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah. That’s awesome.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Oh, and along the way, as a facilities in environmental services, there was an organization called Ashes, American Society for Healthcare Environmental Services. And as soon as I became a facilities manager took that job, I joined ASH E, and then there’s credentials with an As e construction management. There’s the certification, this C-H-F-M-I got as soon as I was able to, those things are a credential that shows you care and want to know more. And there’s other credentials out there that are aren’t unrelated to facilities management and healthcare, like CEM and Certified Energy Management. Energy Management could be in any organization. And then there’s certified facilities managers in ifma. So there’s other ways to get certifications, but I obviously was dedicated to healthcare and made my career there, and I loved every minute of it.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Nice. And you got a degree in
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Finance
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Right along the way?
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Yeah, when I was in, actually, I got my degree. That’s basically my first leap while I was working at one of the hospitals as their facilities. Man, I didn’t have a degree. I just got promoted because of the can-do attitude. Was going to night school, got my degree, and a year after that I got my first vice president job.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
So it’s like it was a degree that made the difference. When they got my resume before that didn’t have the degree on it, they just kind of probably went in the trash or whatever because the guy doesn’t have a degree. Got the degree. Within a year I had a vice president job.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Nice. Yeah. Mickey, what about you?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, if I can, I’ll make a couple comments in reference to some of the stuff that Art talked about. So first of all, your first story about go look at it. Right. So it really upset me because it was the
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Most fun thing I ever
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Did. I was pushing him. I wanted, we had this title, it was, what the hell was it? Something Superintendent Trade Superintendent Trade superintendent. And he had made this disaster of a hire. It was horrible. We all got it, Nikki. Okay. It was a disaster. I mean in flames all around the organization. So that played itself out. So I go to his office and I’m like, Hey man, let me do that. And he sits me down and explains all the stuff I do. I laughed first he did,
Speaker 2 (16:48):
And he explains all the stuff. I don’t know, but the whole can do attitude, because I exhibited that effort and desire. He started giving me stuff to do. And in this one situation, something broke. It was plumbing. He had to go to a meeting and couldn’t do his thing. So he comes to me and says, I need you to do it. So essentially I’m supervising my peer. So it was my peer, a fellow supervisor that told me. So this guy knew. So it pissed me off. I I was so mad. So just to clarify that, right. But everything he said was right. It was just a valve. So it was embarrassing, but I will never forget that lesson. And it’s something that I tell people as they’re going up. And then this other thing I’ll talk about is the college degree. I’m going to get on my soapbox a little bit.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
There’s all this talk about college degrees and debt, and I don’t think everybody go to college, but you can go to college and you don’t have to take four years of doing nothing to go to college. You can get a job and get a degree. Taking two classes a semester. It takes time and get a useful degree. Don’t go into debt for something that is not going to pay you back. I mean, I’ve got a master’s degree. I didn’t get my bachelor’s degree until I was 26. I worked the entire time. I didn’t get my master’s degree until I was 40. I worked the entire time. Where that comes into play is you’re looking for that opportunity for advancement, and you go up against other individuals that have the degrees, and so you just get pushed to the side. Right. So the soapbox, well, one of the
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Things Mickey will tell you about me is I’m stubborn. I mean, I am. Is it you? Yeah. I know. It’s hard to believe.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Crazy,
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Right? No, you can tell by me. That’s really silly. But I am so silly. That’s right. But back before I had my degree and I would be doing everything I told you I was doing, and I’d send out a resume to somebody. It made me so mad when I would go for an interview and get eliminated because I didn’t have a degree, I’d say, what the heck difference does that make? I’m doing everything you want to do and probably better than anybody you’ve ever had do it. But I don’t have a degree, so you’re eliminating me from the job. And I got so many nice saying I was. That’s true
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Today.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Oh, I’d say more so
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Just asking. So to get into the hospital, you can go get a job and then you can prove yourself of the can-do attitude. But if you’re going to change hospitals, if you’re going to go for a job, then that’s a huge component.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I would even say the mechanism I used by working really hard and taking the cando at the place, it was a smaller place. It was like 300 beds, but I was promoted because I kept cando and no one was questioning whether I had a degree or not a long way.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
But once you’re in there, it’s
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Different. Right? It’s different. But I don’t know that in today’s environment that they would promote somebody without a degree can do doing everything you want into a director, because they have HR departments today that put requirements into a job description that says you must have to get the job and they won’t let you. I don’t care where you’re coming from unless you have it.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
No. If that’s what it is,
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Just justify or not. And I still, I’m getting
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Back my stubborn self here is an associate’s degree seen in the same light as a bachelor’s degree. Not
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Even close.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
No,
Speaker 4 (20:30):
No. I come from a recruiting background and I can speak to validity.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
It was you.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Yeah, it was Don’t put me, you’re
Speaker 1 (20:36):
One of people.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
I wasn’t around for the stone age. Okay, I’m just kidding. But no, coming from a recruiting background, it holds true. More so now than probably ever. There’s been quite a few roles that I’ve had to hire for that. The degree is mandatory.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
But I’m going to take off on what Mickey said. It isn’t something specific to, because we talked, I think at the very first time we talked, maybe the second episode where we said, my degree is in business. It’s not in facilities because it’s really hard to get a, but there are a lot of postings that go up into or these other organizations that are healthcare facilities, and they will put in their bachelor’s degree in engineering or related field. I will tell you, and again, back to my stubbornness, that nothing makes me more mad than that. Seeing that on a posting, because it has nothing to do. This job has nothing to do with needing an engineering degree, but it’s helpful and it’s a degree and it will get you the job, but it doesn’t require engineering degree. It requires a bachelor’s in business, not even requires, it needs that knowledge in business knowledge in facilities related stuff, from air handlers to plumbing to garbage to take your pick. But that engineering degree isn’t helping you necessarily. Now, I will tell you, and I’ll let you talk. I know you were talking, but No, it was good. There’s this one thing that you’ll find that I found again several times when I’ve gone either for interviews or taken a job for someone that was an engineer, they will focus their efforts on what their expertise is
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Because there’s many engineering type degrees, engineering and electrical engineering and mechanical and civil. So they’ll have that background and they got it in school. And so they’ll focus all their efforts on HVAC because they’re a mechanical engineer. Or the guy, probably one of the guys we may have talked to about the electrical in the one building that was 12 seven coming in and it was in the building, was saying, this is crazy you guys. This is dangerous. He’s probably an electrical engineer. That was his knowledge. But you can’t just have electrical engineering and run a hospital, everything. But it’s a great learning experience to have engineering, the troubleshooting, knowledge base problems, base problem solving, all that’s great, but that’s not the requirement for the whole thing. So I get real animated about that because I’ve seen too many engineers take the job and really hate it. Because something I’ll let you talk about is the people side of the business.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
It’s
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Not business administration, nor is it engineering.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah. We’ll get into that after we hear Mickey’s story. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Alright, so this is so boring though. All right. Well, I got one more point to make. So the can-do attitude. Okay,
Speaker 2 (23:41):
I am on LinkedIn and I’ll see a post. It’s like a motivational thing. It’s like never say it’s not my job, and I’m always interested in the comments. And then you’ll see a comment where it’s like, no, no, no. You should differentiate between what’s your job and not your job because you’ll get taken advantage of and then you’ll have 9,000 people. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. That’s right. Nothing drives me more crazy. You talk about being stubborn, right? Never say it’s not your job. Extend yourself, do the work, show you’re interested, go after it. And if you’re at a company that doesn’t recognize it, go to another company. But don’t stop doing that. Otherwise, you’re just going to sit where you are. I’m the CEO of a company. All I look for are individuals with can-do attitude. So got to say that. Okay, now I’m my story. I’ll start with before I got into facilities management, because I think it was important. I graduated high school, went to a job fair, got a job at UPS when I was 17. I was a knucklehead. Just straight knucklehead, nothing but trouble.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Wow. Surprising.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, exactly. Nothing. There you go. Now that’s surprising. Yeah,
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Soft-spoken. Sweet Mickey,
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Troublemaker.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Nothing
Speaker 2 (25:02):
But trouble. Right? And UPS is a fantastic company. They give you a lot of structure. I needed that. I went into management with them in 19, same type thing. I was one of their best employees. I said I wanted to go into management. I had really long hair at the time. What? Yep, down to my back. They said, you got to cut. Your hair won’t even talk to you until you cut your hair. So I went out that weekend, got my hair cut, got promoted. That’s really important because what I learned at UPS was like a degree. They teach you all sorts of really important concepts, how to deal with conflict. You learn legal, you learn hr. There’s all sorts of stuff that you learn. I left there after 10 years, I ended up going into healthcare by happenstance. I had sold a construction company, had a little bit of money in my pocket. I was going to walk the Appalachian Trail. I was actually researching how to walk the Appalachian Trail, and I was working part-time as a counselor at a Jewish summer camp. It was a fantastic job. It was amazing. There’s
Speaker 1 (26:04):
So many sidebars there.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
I played kickball with kids. It’s so
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I played kickball with kids and all this stuff. It was great, man. I love that. To have that job today and then we can arrange it. Yeah. A buddy of mine called and said, Hey, I’m working at this massive hospital system in Atlanta and I need help. And so he knew. I knew how to manage. He didn’t know how to manage. So I started there as a lead technician making $15 an hour. Now, when I was working at UPS, I was making a hundred grand
Speaker 2 (26:38):
In my twenties, right? 15 bucks an hour. And I learned dampers. I learned doors, I learned fire stopping. I learned fire alarm systems. I learned fire suppression systems. Building automation was one of the best things that he asked me to get involved in, because that touches everything. You start learning about HVAC, you learn about electrical. So my knowledge grew. I had him as a mentor and I was pushing it, trying to do more. He left and took a job at Sodexo, which is a worldwide company. It’s headquartered in France. Most of what they do is like food and EVS, but they have clinical engineering division and they have a facilities division. So I took a job for him traveling around the country, and I’ll say this, whatever field you’re in when you’re younger travel, it will catapult your career. You learn so much, you get paid more. You’re viewed as an expert. And I think just the experience just matures you, right? So I did that for I think three years.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Just to add to that, I didn’t say it when I was talking about it. I did mention I moved from Detroit to Atlanta to Wichita. But that was the same concept was look outside of your home if you really want a catapult. That’s what happened to me.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Go ahead. Yeah, same thing. So I’m in Atlanta all this time. I think I was 36 when I left Atlanta. Now Sodexo, I could travel out of Atlanta. That was fantastic because of the airport, right? Then my wife says, so he had left Sodexo. My wife says, we’re having a baby. You got to quit traveling. And oh, by the way, I’m not working.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So I freaked out, right? I’m like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? So I call him and I’m like, Hey, you don’t happen to need a director where you are, right? And he’s like, just so happens. I do. So I moved to Wichita, take that job very similar to his story over time. So I started out in this facilities over time. I took on construction, biomed, security, EVS food. I end up becoming a vice president. Somewhere around 2013, I moved to Indianapolis. I take on a senior vice president’s role at the largest, not-for-profit healthcare system over all their facilities. Then I get into the private equity space where I’m running businesses.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
But the themes to me though, I moved from Atlanta to Wichita, from Wichita to Indianapolis, from Indianapolis to Kansas City. So when he said, Hey, here’s EVS, here’s security, here’s such and such, you’re a vice president. That’s not how it worked. It was here, go do this. Here, go do that. Here, go do this here, go do that. And I would do it, take things off his plate so he could focus on other things. He would see, I could do it, then I would get promoted, then I would get the money. And I understand how in today’s world that that might seem upside down, but the thing that blows me away is why do you think you should get promoted if you have no idea or no experience in the job that you’re getting promoted to? Now, there are some worlds where that probably doesn’t apply, right? It’s like a pilot. You go through all this training, you have so many hours and you get promoted.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
So how often does someone come in from the outside non-healthcare into an FM role versus going up through the ranks? Not if they’re successful or not, but does that happen a lot or not?
Speaker 3 (30:32):
You’re saying coming not in healthcare, coming into an FM role as a leader? I’d say rarely. Rarely. I mean, an engineer will happen. Sometimes they post it as an engineer required and then they throw. They always say 10 years experience, five years experience in
Speaker 5 (30:48):
Healthcare.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
But if you’ve got the engineering degree or an MBA, sometimes they’ll throw that away and say, okay, come on, because we need somebody with your skillset. Huge mistake to me, but it happens. Sometimes
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Working in a hospital is extremely different than a medical office building or just an office building or college.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I got two quick stories about Mickey that I have to tell. This goes to the combination of the can-do attitude or we’re going to get it done, or there’s no limits on what I can do. I mean, I don’t care what it is. I’ll do it. So one day, and I’ll find out about this with pictures only after the fact, right? We have a, I don’t know, 250 foot antenna on the top of this huge mega hospital.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
It was 23 stories,
Speaker 3 (31:47):
23 stories, and then on top of it, antenna that has a blinking light at the top so the helicopters don’t hit it. When they come over to land on the roof, it goes out. It has to be replaced. He climbs up that tower because the company won’t come out and it’s too dangerous or they aren’t a bit too busy or whatever, and somebody dares him. Of course you can get anything done by Mickey if you dare, by the way. But he climbs up here and I got pictures. I still have pictures of him at the top of this thing. Changing a light bulb.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Okay, Daredevil,
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Let me add something to that. So here’s how that played out. The first day I was there, I’m walking outside the hospital with another guy and we’re looking up there because the helicopter’s landing. We’re looking up there and he says, Hey man, those bulbs go out. It’s like $10,000 to get ’em replaced. And I’m like, that’s ridiculous. Next time they go out, I’ll climb up there. So that’s how it happened. So that day they go out and they come find me.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Oh yeah, you made the comment.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
And the second story is this is very short, but we worked, the company we actually worked directly for I mentioned was Jacobs Engineering.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
They owned the company that we worked for in this healthcare management team. We did construction and like I said, making construction facilities, management, everything, capital biomed, the whole thing at this large healthcare organization in Atlanta. So he’s eager and wanting to move up and do more. And it’s like, I’m there. There’s not much other to go until I leave. And he’s now taken on this other positions. But Jacobs Engineering, they have things around the country. Like I said, they have 35,000 engineers working around the country and they do all kinds of stuff. So somehow, I don’t even know how he got the posting, but there’s a posting to work in a nuclear facility. And Nick, he says, can I apply for this? He comes and brings it to me and wants to apply to work in one of their nuclear facilities. I said, I think you might need some qualifications for that one. It
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Was a long flight. I was going to get a
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Book. I
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Was going to read the book on the way. What are those for dummy books if you can. How do you run a nuclear power plant for dummies? Homer Simpson does it? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Oh my gosh. That’s a true story.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
All right, so we talked about your guys’ pathways, and so in terms of stacking the deck for someone to be successful to be go get one of those FM jobs, we talked about getting, getting some experience in healthcare, running up through it. You talked some about certifications, right? What else? And the can-do attitude. Those are the three so far just me taking away what else is
Speaker 3 (34:43):
The, well, I think if that’s your goal, and there’s a lot of good reasons to have that as a goal in my opinion, but if that’s your goal, you have to start somewhere inside the organization. Like you said, get the job, get some experience, but find yourself a mentor, somebody that you can go to and express the can-do attitude too. I want to do whatever you got. Give it to me. I’ll take it. So just so I can learn more, just keep even if it’s just to follow somebody else so I can learn more. I do want to move on and be very, I guess frank and open with that mentor. You’re going to be leaving them if you’re good. If you’ve got the say the engineering degree or the business degree or whatever, and now you’re going to get the work experience to get up there. I think a key component is get someone that’s going to help you, give you the opportunity that you’re looking for.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything he said. I think what’s so fascinating about facilities management is there’s so much opportunity and the money’s there. So to, we had a college that I would go to and I would talk to their graduating engineer class. What I’m trying to do is recruit ’em. A couple years before that, I’d pull interns. It used to make the professors really mad because my spiel was this, you, you’re going to graduate from engineering and then get an engineering job. You’re going to come out of college, you’re going to make 70 grand, and then you’re going to sit in a cubicle and you’re going to draw stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Now, if you go get a master’s degree and you run a part of the business, then you’re going to get, I mean, can make big jumps, but it’s rare for people to do that. Most of the time what they do is they just kind of inch along overtime. They start making a little bit more money. You come to work for me out of college, I’ll hire you as a supervisor. I’ll pay you 70 grand. Do that for two years. Move to a manager. Now you’re making 90 grand. Do that for three years. You’re going to have to go somewhere else, the director, but you can make 120 to $200,000.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
You got to know how to manage people. Where engineers are going to be really good is figuring out the systems. They’re going to excel at that. So there’s that path, college degree path. The other path though is just get in and go get a journeyman HVAC license. You don’t have to get on a truck and drive around and work outside when it’s a hundred degrees outside or when it’s freezing outside. Come to work at a hospital. You’re going to have work orders. For the most part, it’s manageable work. You’re in environmentally controlled environment or what is it conditioned
Speaker 5 (37:41):
Environment
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Most of the time. And you’ll have opportunities. You can get other certifications. You study, you work, you go into management if you want to. And then once you get into management, you learn how to manage people. You can start moving around and if you’re willing to move, you’ll go faster.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Do the hospitals pay for the certifications or are you just doing that on your own?
Speaker 3 (38:02):
No, they’ll
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Pay
Speaker 1 (38:03):
For ’em.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Most of the time. If you’re going for your journeyman or your master plumber, master electrician, whatever, most of the time, unless you can’t prove it to your HR department that it’s something you need in the hospital, you can get it all paid for. Even some just getting a degree in business, you can get that. I got mine paid for when I went to school.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
And if you’re working for an organization that doesn’t leave, again, it baffles me. Sometimes the way attitudes are shifted, if you work for a crappy, go somewhere else. So if you go to, I’m sure there’s a hospital system that’s going to say, no, I’m not going to pay you for your certification. We don’t have the money. Okay, what are we talking 400 bucks, right? Yeah. My name’s crowd. I’m out, right? I’m out of
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Here. I’m not, again, it goes back to that director having the skills, the people skills. And we haven’t talked a lot about people skills yet, but you need a ton of that,
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Not just the upward where you’re managing up, but you have to have the skillset to deal with a whole bunch of stuff that goes on on the other levels. But the point of having a director that can go speak to your finance person or your CEO and say, Hey, I understand we don’t because the HR just kicked it back. We’re not paying for it. I understand you don’t want to pay 400, whatever, it was a thousand dollars to have this guy get certified as an electrician. If I have to hire that outside, it’s a whole bunch more money. If I have my own guy, I don’t have to pay that anymore. You have to be able to sell that because it’s worth something to the organization. And yes, eventually this person may leave, but I’ll be ready for that. We’re going to have this open discussion and we’re going to bring somebody else up through the ranks or another intern or whatever, have somebody in their apprentices program. There is scale that gets into that sometimes, but still, you have to have that skillset to talk to ’em and not just say, oh, HR said I can’t do it.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
And then even go to a different direction. Managing your guys. You’ll have master electricians. You don’t walk up to a master electrician and tell ’em how to do electrical work. It doesn’t happen. I mean, that whole incident where we had the 12,480 volt issue with the, we were on generator power and we’re trying to fix this issue and everybody’s freaking out. And I’ve got this master electrician, Dale, and he’s there with me and he’s working on it, and I’m like, Dale, what do you want me to do? And he says, I want you to go stand at that door and don’t let anybody come in here. And so the CEO comes in and he’s like, what do you want me to do? I’m like, go stand at that door, make sure nobody else comes in. Now, to his credit, he did it, but you had to give him space. I’m not going to be able to do what he’s doing. So you got that. And then another story on the other end, when we were in Atlanta, we had a guy that had a cart and he just had light bulbs on it. And this place was so big that his full-time job was to go around and replace light bulbs.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
We talked about benchmarks earlier. So it’s really important to document the work that you do. So we put forth an initiative that said you had complete your work orders, so you had to put who you were, what you did, how long, who you talked to, all this stuff, how much materials you used. He couldn’t read. A guy was 55 years old, maybe never had an education, he couldn’t read. So I’m in my office, one of my supervisors or leads come and grab me and say, Hey, we got an issue, guy’s. Not even in my department, but somehow he told one of my guys he couldn’t read. So we kind of got together and talked about it. I was like, okay, Leroy, every day you show up here at this time and we’ll do your work orders. And then I asked him, I said, do you want to go into a class and learn how to read? And he’s like, no, I’m good. But he was a great employee. He was fantastic. He was a great guy. He came to my wedding.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Nice. Yeah. So another thing you mentioned was compensation, right?
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
So as you’re both coming up through the ranks and then as an FM relative, I mean, is that a competitive paying job? Is it not? Do those people get poached a lot? Just what
Speaker 3 (42:49):
I guess in healthcare in any industry, but because we’re talking healthcare,
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Right? Correct.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
You have to understand your place in the pecking order, if you will. You’re not going to be the highest paid executive or director because you’re not medical. But you also back to the same conversation we’ve had, you have to have benchmarks and justify when it’s not right that it should be higher, if it should be higher, but it’s a good salary. I mean, it’s competitive with directors in healthcare, which is not bad. I mean, I don’t know what it’s today. Again, I’ve been out for a while, but everything goes up and it’s higher than it used to be, but Mickey kind of quoted some ranges earlier. I mean, those ranges are good salaries. That’s a good living.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
120 grand at a smaller facility up to if you live in New York, oh gosh, you’re making 3, 3 50.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
If you get up to that executive level, senior executive level, you’re making more than that. And then down in, you want to say the ranks as a supervisor, you can make anywhere between 50 and 70 a manager, anywhere between 70 and a hundred grand depending on which specialty you’re in.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Those are good jumps. If you’re in that job for three years and you’re jumping to the next, that’s a good step up, a good step up, a good step up. Which is nice. Like you mentioned some engineering deals where you get in and you just sort of slowly ride it out. Unless you, well talk
Speaker 3 (44:22):
About making enemies, which I’m going to do right now with our directors out there. They don’t want to say this to their staff, but if you’re in an organization even, because again, back to the HR world,
Speaker 4 (44:38):
He keeps looking at me when he says that you, I out my dirty little secret.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
You said you were a recruiter. You are limited to that jump
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Unless you have a really good negotiating director somehow. But if you’re moving between the jumps, you have to go to the next salary range and you can go to the bottom of the new range and all these, my recommendation is after I get people going and I have a good team, is if you need more money, you’re going to have to leave. You’re not going to come in here as a manager. If you’re hero as a supervisor and you want to go to a manager, you’re going to go to bottom the manager level. You go apply down the street, you’re going to go in the midpoint.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
And I think that’s true for any industry. Exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
True. But nobody wants you to tell you that.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Yeah. And I will say the companies that have figured that out and are like, well, we’re going to do what you said. If you can control that environment like you can as a CEO and be like, Hey, look man, I’m going to lose this person if I don’t do something different than what you just said. My dad had two jobs his entire life. People were, I’m a Ford man, or those days are gone. I mean, period. So unfortunately, because of employers and employees, the equations changed. It’s no longer people looked at as lifetime employees or not, or what. And it is the environment that we’re in.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Well, one of the things Mickey did again through our times is built relationships with the HR team, and I mean literally so much so that invited them into the department to have influence, even though that’s the last thing you really wanted.
Speaker 5 (46:24):
You
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Didn’t really want ’em in there in the middle of your stuff, but invite ’em in anyway. And then you could make the case because now they would know some of your people and you’re constantly talking about ’em. There was Dale or
Speaker 3 (46:37):
One of our other people, Justin ran to Justin Seer the other day. It was weird. And you’d make these jumps and you can make the case that you move people. And when, unless you’ve been in the business for a while, you do these salary studies and the HR department decides you need to look at all the job description to rewrite ’em all and do all this stuff and put everybody in their places and all that. Well, when you’re doing that, if you don’t do it right and you don’t understand it, you end up with everybody at the bottom and you never can hire anybody above ’em or move somebody above. So you get all this mess going on. So you got to structure that the right way to start with and then work with that HR team to understand you don’t want to lose these
Speaker 2 (47:19):
People. So a couple of thoughts. So one, you can circumvent all of these issues just by, he said it earlier, just by willing to move and you have to vocalize that I did it a bunch of times. We got to a point where he believed I was ready to be a vp. Well, his title was vp, so it was like, Hey, man, I got a job offer or job interview or somebody, a recruiter reached out to me. He would say, well, you got to take the interview. So I’d go and I’d interview and I’d get a job offer and I’d come back and I’d show him the job offer, and he’d say, I can’t give you the title, but I’ll give you the money. I was open. Now again, we had a great relationship. I’m kind of open anyway though, whether I like you or not, you’re going to know.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
I thought it was an interesting dynamic. Like you go too often. It’s not. You’re just, okay, you’re going to get pushed out the other way,
Speaker 5 (48:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (48:30):
But it’s like you need to be paid market competitive. And if they’re not aware of that, then bringing that to their attention is a different matter. But if you’re constantly just, I need more money. I need more money, I need, well, it’s like, well, then go get, do more, get more money, get another job, go do whatever. Yeah. But it is a yin and yang on that deal.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Well, there’s a time that if you’re like him that open and you’re working to work with your boss can be career limiting. No, that’s in a bad way. I mean, not in a good way. No, exactly. You’re being open and telling what you’re trying to do. And they go, well, okay, we’ll
Speaker 4 (49:05):
See you later.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
No, a hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
I’ll tell an interesting story. I was a supervisor and we were starting up a building automations department, and we needed a bright kid to run the department. So we were interviewing and the kid was interviewing with another manager, and the manager asked him, where do you want to be in five years? And the kid said, I want to be in your job. I,
Speaker 4 (49:39):
I’ve said those exact words to my manager before, I want your job.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
But it freaked the manager out. So he comes to me, I’m like, how’d it go? I was about to interview him. He goes, no, we’re not hiring him. So I didn’t have time. I go do the interview. I love the kid. It’s Will Roddy, right? I love the kid. I come back out and I’m like, what? And what happened, man? And he goes, well, he said he wanted my job. I’m like, give me the context. And so what I did was I went and Googled something like
Speaker 3 (50:13):
Best things to say in the
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Interview. I’m like, look, that’s all he was doing, man. He did some research. Oh my gosh. So that’s the kind of boss that you really got to be careful with. You don’t have to read people. And the other way to circumvent all of this, most of the time is to have the can-do attitude. Again, if you have somebody that’s knocking out of the park as a leader, you need to champion them. You don’t need to wait for them to come to you and tell, I firmly believe this. Don’t wait for somebody to come tell you they need more money. Fight the battle before that’s up.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
So one of the things we were talking about here is how to become an FM director, manager, leader, whatever. So I’m going to go just for a second, go the other direction for a minute. Because we all need workers. Not everybody wants to be leaders. So you also have to be careful on that side where you’re giving someone responsibilities that starts getting ’em into an area they want nothing to do with managing people. I’m going to use some of our most talented, and that’s the Peter principle. You keep promoting them until their highest level of in confidence. So you start promoting them and they don’t want it, and so you lose them. But they were one of the best technicians you’ve ever had, but you just ruined them because you thought they wanted that. You have to have those conversations. Don’t ruin ’em because
Speaker 1 (51:42):
For sure
Speaker 3 (51:42):
They just want, they love the place they’re in. They want to work there the rest of their lives and they just like doing what they’re doing. Leave them alone. Don’t
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Hurt him. I talked about this guy, his name’s Dale Martinson. So a shout out to Dale Martins, he’s in Wichita. I love the guy. He was a master or probably still is a master electrician. I was so scared of losing the guy. So I would go to him, I don’t know, probably drove him crazy quarterly. And I would say, man, you doing okay? Yeah, I’m doing fine. If you need more, I’ll move you into management. And he’s like, I see what you do. I don’t want anything. I see your agenda. He’s like, I don’t want no part of that. Okay. But I think he appreciated the fact that I was checking in on him and I was looking out for him. I mean, I think he would’ve been a fantastic manager, but he didn’t want to do
Speaker 1 (52:34):
It. So every week when we get done with this podcast, art goes, man, I can’t believe where the time went. Guess what Art? It’s time. It’s about that time. Awesome. So Mickey, you want to sort of summarize it up for us again if you would.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
Do we have a couple seconds extra?
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Well, I guess so.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Okay, couple seconds. I just want to say this because we’ve talked about this Cando and everything that we’ve mentioned to go along this way, but one of the things, this is for me, you guys all say the absolute truth, that it’s always correct, but a lot of times saying something goes along with the check it out that I told you, check the
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Valve, check it.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
Just because we say it here doesn’t mean it’s fact all the time. Sure, for sure. One of the advice I would give anybody listening, whatever, if I said this is true about Medicare today, that was true maybe 10 years ago when I last did it. Follow up, check it out. Don’t go running off saying, Hey, I know this is fact.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Yeah, we learned that about the fire door thing. Remember? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:37):
I still didn’t know. I didn’t go back and check on you because I don’t trust what you said. Yeah, we were supposed to correct. I know we did. That’s
Speaker 4 (53:44):
Interesting. I’ll hold ’em up to it, you guys. We’ll have an answer next week.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
That’s
Speaker 2 (53:48):
Awesome. I’m too lazy to go check it off. Yeah, you’re retired.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Alright, so key takeaways, right? So first of all, healthcare facilities management, it offers a lot of opportunities. There’s a lot of levels to it. You can come in sort of at the ground level if you need to and grow from there. You can come in at the management level. The pay is good, right? Again, not the pay is relative to the job you’re doing, right? But you can make a living and take care of your family. The benefits are great. You get fantastic PTO, you get your benefits are typically cheaper than other companies. And we talked about this. Degrees are optional, right? It depends on the place. Now, you may be limited as to how high you can go. I don’t know a lot of vice presidents that don’t have degrees.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
If you exhibit arts tenacity, you might be able to get to a director level without the degree, and I would advise you if you’re stuck. Quick story. UPS, I’m 22 years old, get passed over. Why do I get passed over? I don’t have a degree. So I went to go get a degree. 22 to 26 is how long it took me. You can do that. They’ve got online schools now that are much easier to do. So don’t get yourself stuck if you’re trying to get to that next level, I need to stop preaching. That’s not what this time’s for. So we’ll wrap it up with, yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
Alright. Well thanks everyone. Do we got a topic for next week yet? Do we
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Do not? Alright, so here’s what I’m looking for. We need some feedback, right? Give us some questions, challenge us. We may, I don’t know if it’s going to be the next, I think it’ll be next episode. We’re going to start bringing on some guests.
Speaker 1 (55:42):
Nice, very, we
Speaker 2 (55:43):
Have tossed
Speaker 3 (55:43):
Around things like energy management or maintenance strategies, strategies and things like that. That might be the next subject.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
I love it. Let’s hear from you guys. What do you guys want? Yeah,
Speaker 4 (55:53):
We’ve got some polls up on our social medias, so go follow all of those, of course. But then also leave your feedback on what you guys think we should talk about next.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
Sweet. Awesome. All right. And with that, we thank you guys. Thanks for joining us. Thanks so much. Thanks. Bye bye. Thank you for hanging out with us on FM after hours. Make sure you follow us on all of our social media platforms for your regular dose of Facility insights. As always, a big shout out to remediate and Granger for their gracious sponsorships. Catch You next time on FM after hours.