Hungry & Humble
Ben & Jaime Carpenter Along with Their Dedicated Team Have Profitably Grown Integra Electrical 317% the Last Two Years by Maintaining a Humble Attitude, Working Hard to Transform the Business, and Consistently Delivering Exceptional Service Backed with a 100-Percent Satisfaction Guarantee They Honor.
by Bob Houchin
“As a young man, I always felt like if I worked hard enough at something, it would work out. I could make it a success. For a long time, that’s what happened. I’ve learned there’s much more to it than that.”
These are the words of Ben Carpenter. He owns and operates Integra Electrical along with his wife Jaime in Indianola, Iowa, a small town 20-miles south of Des Moines. Today, most any person would consider them a burgeoning success story. From 2014 to 2016, Integra’s revenues have grown 317 percent—and it’s done so at a strong profitability. More extensive and rapid growth will surely find the company’s way with the operational infrastructure, culture, and team Ben and Jaime have in place.
This loving, married couple of 22 years will stand and testify the journey to this destination has been filled with obstacles and more than a few setbacks. Ben and Jaime have poured every bit of heart, every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears into their lives as entrepreneurs. Thanks to their sacrifice of time, energy, and ego they find themselves happier and more successful than ever. Ben and Jaime personify the idea that persistence pays off, but the reward comes at a price.
The Tale of Two Young Entrepreneurs
The tale of Integra Electrical begins with the love story of Ben and Jaime, two high-school sweethearts. The moment Ben set eyes on Jaime, he knew. Ben asked Jaime out and they fell in love. Ben graduated first and went to technical school to become an electrician. Jaime had several years to go.
“This was 1993. I’m old-fashioned, even back then. When Jaime graduated, I wanted to be making a living so we could get married and I could support her,” Ben explained. “As soon as she graduated, I had the ring.”
This new, chosen profession appeared to be a good choice for Ben. He led his apprenticeship class, and he proved to be one of the top electricians at a commercial industrial company where he had taken a job. Still, something seemed lacking.
“[Jaime and I] experimented with network marketing when I was a late apprentice. It gave us our first taste of business. While it didn’t really work out, it sparked something in our minds. We thought maybe we could do something bigger,” Ben shared. “In 2001, we opened a health-food store in Indianola, Jaime’s Hometown Health Foods. And it did okay.”
By 2003, the promise of the electrical industry gave way to dissatisfaction for Ben. He didn’t care for the work or his employer. “It was one of those cases where I was hating Sundays because Monday morning was around the corner,” Ben revealed. May of that year, Ben quit his job, quit the trade, and worked at the health-food store.
One successful venture prompted the thought of another. Friday night has forever been date night for Ben and Jaime. The two frequently found themselves in nearby Des Moines at a Maggie Moo’s Marble Slab Creamery. “I’m terrible for ice cream,” Ben says and then laughed. “So we get this crazy idea to build our own marble-slab, ice-cream concept based off of Maggie Moo’s and bring it to Indianola. That’s what we did.”
“In 2004, I was a young man. I felt invincible. I could make anything work. I just had to work hard. I’m guessing you can probably imagine how the story ends?” Ben questioned rhetorically, paused, and then continued. “We lost everything. We lost the ice-cream store. We lost the health-food store. We lost the house. I lost my pension. It was a cash vacuum. It put us in huge debt. It was the most painful time of my life.” All of it gone in less than a year.
“I’m a man of faith. When I was younger, I struggled with being humble. I remember many Sundays praying to God for help. Little did I realize what I would be asking. My prayer was answered. He humbled me,” Ben said. “But you know what? He didn’t take my family. Jaime stayed with me. My kids were healthy. It wasn’t the end of the world. In the scheme of things, all that other stuff doesn’t matter. What mattered was getting back on my feet.”
Integra Electrical Is Born
Ben did what any person might with his skillset: He leaned on his craft and strapped on his toolbelt. However, Ben wasn’t ready to work for someone else. He created the company Daybreak Electric in 2005. At the same time, a friend and former coworker Ben McCord opened Integra Electrical Solutions.
The two Ben’s served as backups for one another for a summer. One would have a job that needed an extra set of hands; the other would happily help. Ben McCord found owning his own business much less appealing than it first sounded. “He was ready to go climb the corporate ladder. I liked his name better than ours. Jaime and I worked out a deal with him. We took the name—and we shortened it to Integra Electrical—and we took his clients.”
Most of those clients were restoration contractors. Over the next 10 years, Integra Electrical evolved into almost exclusively into a subcontractor. Ninety percent of its business concentrated on restoration, and Ben could never seem to grow the company beyond himself and an additional man, whom often was an apprentice.
“The only benefit about being in that type of work is we survived the recession. There’s always going to be fires, floods, and tornados,” Ben admitted. “But the housing crisis grabbed my attention. All these subcontractors were going out of business. I realized we needed to do something to keep us from being dependent on only one or two companies.”
To Ben and Jaime’s credit, they committed to bettering themselves and the company. They hired several different business coaches and adopted a flat-rate pricing model. “But it didn’t matter much when 90 percent of your clients only wanted the cheapest price,” Jaime quipped.
Sadly, in 2014, the couple joined a coaching organization and it proved to be a flop. “They had zero attention to detail. I was completely dissatisfied. We cut our losses and just walked away,” Ben said still exhibiting some anger. “It left a really bad taste in my mouth.”
Eric from ESI Comes Calling
Not long after the negative-coaching experience, Jaime began receiving calls from Eric Opon, a business advisor for Electricians’ Success International. “Jaime finally tells me I have to call him back, he’s called a bunch of times. I was so sorely skewed against any more coaching at that point,” Ben explained.
The call went better than Ben expected. He agreed to meet Eric at a local Starbucks. “We started talking, and I could tell he was genuine. I immediately felt comfortable. At one point, he said, ‘Look. You need to come to this Profit Day.’ So, we did,” Ben said.
Profit Day was in Des Moines. Several Success Group International members spoke on behalf of the organization. “Jeff Bakeris from Bakeris Roofing was there. I knew him from his ‘throw them off the roof ads’ we hear on the radio all the time,” Ben said with a laugh. “And Jake Wheeler with WireOne was there. Jake showed such extreme, amazing grace by coming to this meeting, trying to sell a program to someone like me, who was going to be his competition. I think the world of Jake.”
By the end of the Profit Day, Ben and Jaime weren’t completely sure if they should move forward. “Finally, Eric [Opon] sat down with us and said, ‘Look, we’ll give you your money back if you don’t think it’s for you in the next three days. Let’s talk tomorrow.’ And he gives us his cell number,” Ben remembered.
It didn’t take any convincing by Eric for Ben and Jaime to join. “We quickly decided we didn’t really have a choice. We had to change. If we kept doing business the way we had, we needed to do something else,” Jaime said candidly.
“You get to such a point of frustration. It was a 10-year debacle with nothing to show for it. You’re a good technician. You’re trying to do the right thing, and you’re not making money. This was our last-ditch effort,” Ben added. “I really believe God put Eric Opon in our path at the right time. We jumped in with both feet.”
Ben and Jaime certainly did jump. Profit Day was on a Tuesday. One week later, they flew to Sarasota, Florida, to attend Executive Perspective. “We scrambled to scratch up the last few dollars we had on credit cards to get there, and it was a stressful four days,” Ben said. “We’re in sunny Sarasota. We don’t have our five children. You’d think it would be a great, romantic getaway. It was all business.”
“By that last day, I was broken. I was a mess. [When I was asked to share my story and my Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal], I was in tears, snotting all over myself,” Ben remembered while breaking into a belly laugh. “It’s great that I can laugh about it now. Really, we left that day with a plan. We were ready to do what we needed to do.”
New Call-Taker & New Service Fee
Ben and Jaime didn’t realize it at the time, but their first step in implementing their plan had been taken before attending Profit Day. They notified their general contractors they were done doing subcontracting work. “It was a big leap,” Ben confirmed. “But then SGI came along, and it was perfect timing.”
“When we got back from Sarasota, we immediately went at our other Quick Start goals,” Ben continued. “And we used our Instafix book as our guide. [Today, the Instafix book has been updated and uploaded to your SGI HUB.] It has all the numbers you need to hit to be profitable.”
Jaime didn’t need to reference a manual to know the first change she intended to make. The days of Ben answering and dispatching from the field were over. “It wasn’t allowed,” Jaime blurted out while laughing. “I’d carry my cell phone on my hip while trying to home school the kids and do laundry.”
The phone must be answered by a dedicated call taker when charging a $69 service fee—that was the next immediate modification for Integra Electrical. “When you’re charging to come out, you have to explain why. You have to build that value and set a level of expectation of the service the customer is going to receive,” Jaime stressed. “We’re not running in and out of houses anymore; Ben is going to be there for two-plus hours, really doing a thorough job.”
“Sure, we lost customers because of the service fee. These are customers we’d had for a while,” she added. “They said we were too expensive. While it stings at first, you realize you’re much better off not serving people only worried about price.”
Ben Goes to Training & Learns Service
A month after Executive Perspective, Ben insisted on attending an SGI training course in nearby St. Louis. “We had gotten our heads wrapped around the StraightForward Pricing® guide—and we didn’t touch a thing on it. We used the version they gave us at EP,” Ben pointed out. “But now I wanted to be sure I knew how to use it properly.”
It didn’t take Ben long to realize he had made a wise decision. “It blew my mind,” he said. “Step-by-step, they told me what to do. If this is what you’re saying works, I’m going to humble myself and do it.”
Ben described his previous work attire prior to aligning with ESI. He wore work boots, a monogramed t-shirt, and carried an aluminum folder. “I’d stroll into a house and say, ‘Oh sure, I can fix that for $139.41, and I was out the door with a smile on my face,” Ben said. “I can still remember those average tickets; they haunt me.”
The class explained precisely how Ben should be outfitted. “I changed everything. I got black shoes, black pants, white shirts patched exactly as they said,” he shared. “I learned to always walk with a smile. If they said I should start waving at empty houses as I drove down the street, I would have done it.”
“I’m not going to lie. I felt like a goober putting that uniform on for the first time,” Ben said and began chuckling. “I caught a lot of flak for it at the wholesale houses. My guys still do when we go on occasion. We’re still the best-dressed electrical contractor in our town.”
Any doubt Ben might have had regarding his new uniforms quickly evaded him once he returned home and started running service calls. “I was scared out of my mind, and I stumbled through my script, but I eventually made it my own. By the way, that script I left St. Louis with is the same I use to train my guys with today,” Ben said. “Suddenly, I’m racking up these huge tickets that are five-, six-, and seven-times higher. Our sales immediately went through the roof. I’m a one-man-show pumping out $40,000 in gross revenue every month.”
Jaime suddenly stepped in, briefly interrupting Ben. “In six months, we had all of our startup costs with SGI completely paid off. And we paid off all our other debts, too, minus our vehicles.”
Ben then interjected, “It was our best year we ever had in business.” Integra Electrical jumped from $300,000 in gross sales to $435,000, and the boost came after joining ESI only about halfway through the year.
Paradigm Shift in Thinking
Late October of 2015, Ben and Jaime made another massive addition to Integra Electrical. They hired their first electrician with the intention of him also following the ESI service model. It was Shawn Rowles. They found him by running a Craigslist ad.
“I think he was the first one we interviewed,” Jaime said while laughing in disbelief. “We got lucky.” They certainly did. Ben commented that Shawn immediately bought into what the company’s commitment to the highest level of service at a just price.
Training Shawn would be a first for Ben, but he approached it well. He pulled up the ESI website and had Shawn watch a video on how to properly deliver the StraightForward Pricing® guide conducted by ESI member Kent Boll. Then, for the next two days, Ben blocked out his schedule and taught Shawn everything he could remember from his training experience in St. Louis.
“I made him write his own script. I had him follow a very specific format. I made him memorize it, and I made him practice with me over and over,” Ben explained. “Then he rode around with me and watched me for a week. Next, I watched him for a week and critiqued him.”
“Every guy I’ve trained has always fallen on his face the first service call or two,” Ben said. “Not Shawn. He killed it from day one. I could not have asked for a better person to come aboard at that point in our company. He just does a fantastic job. He’s a pretty special guy.”
“Bringing somebody in that humbled themselves to listen to me and do the system like I was—that was a paradigm shift right there for us,” Ben firmly stated. “Suddenly, I was like, ‘Wow. This can be duplicated? We might be able to really make this into a growing business.”
Power of Goal-Setting
Among the many suggestions ESI made that Ben and Jaime took to heart was the idea of having an “open book company.” From the day they began hiring, they’ve shared Integra Electrical’s numbers regularly. Ben and Jaime want the team to know its operating expenses, direct costs, and net-profit target.
Going into 2016, Ben made it painfully aware to Shawn, their only employee at the time, what his goal was for the year. “I told him I thought we could do a million. He said I was a crackpot,” Ben said and snickered. “But we went ahead and stated strategizing how to do this.”
Part of the strategy involved investing heavily into marketing, something Ben and Jaime never had done previously. They found a small agency willing to work closely with them and address their specific needs. Integra Electrical received a complete branding facelift, which included a new logo, new wraps for three trucks, a new website with SEO support, and some radio advertising. Jaime took on the task of mastering Google AdWords.
“You have to remember, the year before we soaked up every credit card to fly to Sarasota. That was like six months before. Now, at the beginning of 2016, I’m investing $35,000 into marketing. We went from broke—to that. I still can’t believe it!” Ben exclaimed.
Filling Integra Electrical’s third service truck proved to be much more difficult than filling its second with Shawn. Ben hired and fired several guys. Ben speculated they roughly ran two-and-a-half trucks most of 2016. “We did bring on an apprentice in April of last year, Trevor Perrigo. What a great young man.”
“As we got closer to the end of 2016, I was saying to Jaime and Shawn, ‘We’re so close to this ridiculous goal!’ Now, we did miss it, but not by much. We sold $945,000, which more than doubled our sales from our record 2015!” Ben said enthusiastically.
“To me, that was insane. I would have never imagined hinting that number. And I don’t think we would have if we didn’t set that big goal. I learned having something to shoot for, it makes all the difference.”
Daily Training
Integra Electrical’s field team today includes two journeymen electricians along with Ben running three trucks—and three apprentices waiting in the pipeline. Many of these individuals have been added within the last six months, which means Ben has needed to pay even greater attention to training.
“It’s why we train every single day, about 30 minutes,” Ben explained. These trainings aren’t always formal, in-depth sessions. Huddles may be a better word for them. They certainly seem to follow a routine: Ben goes over the numbers. The group will discuss their calls from the day prior. They will role play or go over their scripting a bit; then, they hit the field.
One topic often discussed is safety inspections. Safety inspections provide significant value to the homeowner by identifying problem areas, and they generate revenue for Integra Electrical. “Safety inspections have been instrumental to our business—absolutely,” Ben confirmed.
Another critical component that gets discussed is Safety & Savings Plans, their club membership program. “We have a few hundred members, and it’s something we work on,” Ben explained. “We spiff the guys $20, and we always stress the value they provide the customer and our business.”
Often Ben’s training topic of the day comes from what he’s observing by watching his team’s performance. Using their software program, he tracks in real time their closing ratios and average tickets. If something looks unusual, it’s addressed immediately. Ben doesn’t allow problems to become trends.
“That’s the other benefit of meeting daily. I can keep a pulse on the company, see what everyone is doing,” Ben insisted. “We can discuss openly problems anyone is having, and we address is proactively and positively. We can learn from it.”
100-Percent Satisfaction Guarantee
“Training is important, Safety & Savings Plans are important, but I feel like the thing that’s been really instrumental to our success has been our written, 100-percent satisfaction guarantee,” Ben emphasized.
“I’ve scripted it when talking to the homeowner. I say, whether it’s $50, $500, or $5,000, I’d rather pay that money back to you than have you write a bad review online. We’re that serious about taking care of you and your home, period—even if that means writing a check to make sure you’re happy.”
The only way Ben and Jaime know if a customer is dissatisfied is to ask. Integra Electrical conducts Happy Calls immediately after the technician leaves the home, and they follow up using PulseM to generate reviews. “We don’t let people slip through the cracks. If the girls suspect something isn’t right, it gets forward to me or Jaime immediately so we can deal with it,” Ben said.
“We’ll contact the customer, and say, ‘It sounds like you weren’t completely satisfied, we need to make this right because of our 100 percent satisfaction guarantee. What can we do to make you happy?’ In a couple of instances, it’s hurt to write the check. We wrote a $1,700 check to a woman who I know we serviced well, but a general contractor got in her ear that she paid too much. That was frustrating.”
Jaime quickly added, “Thankfully, we haven’t had a bad online review, but I know we will. When we do, I want to be able to say, ‘We’re so sorry you are unhappy. But we gave you your moneyback, and we apologize again.’ Once people read that, they know we stand behind our word. There’s nothing they can say negatively after that.”
“The nice thing is we can afford to write those checks,” Ben said vehemently. “By being priced right, it allows us to offer the best guarantees in town. It’s led to tons of great reviews. We’re the best reviewed electrician in Des Moines.”
Building a Culture
Ben and Jaime have worked incredibly hard to seemingly make all the appropriate moves to wipe away their debts and grow Integra Electrical into the company it’s become today. However, they admit to making some missteps along the way. “We’ve not always hired right. It’s our fault because in the past we’ve been so desperate for people,” Jaime explained. “We no longer say, ‘Please, come work for us.’ It doesn’t work.”
The changed mindset seemed to have come after Jaime read the book, The Ideal Team Player. “I made Ben read it, or I told him he couldn’t hire anyone else,” she said and laughed.
“The book talks about the ideal team player being hungry, humble, smart, and easy to get along with,” Ben shared. Its message resonated loud and clear with him; enough so that he created a personal analysis for his team. “I asked everyone to grade themselves. They wouldn’t have to share it with anybody, not even me. I asked them to answer: Would your team members say you’re hungry? Would they say you’re humble? Would they say you’re easy to get along with?”
“I started talking about being hungry and humble almost every day. Like clockwork, the one problem employee we still had quit about two weeks later. He said he couldn’t fit,” Ben said with a smile. “Humility and hunger are really what we struggle with the most in finding people. Some people want to be off every day by three. We can’t guarantee that as a service company.”
“We absolutely believe in honoring our guys’ time. That’s why we don’t run weekends and rarely run nights. We want them to come back refreshed and ready to go on Monday,” Jaimie added. “If that’s not good enough, this probably isn’t the place for you.”
Ben’s new accountability exam has become a regular exercise at Integra Electrical, and it’s become more sophisticated. He rates each employee on a scale from 1 to 10 on average ticket, closing ratio, attendance, and attitude. “I’ll ask them, ‘Do you think you’ve been a 10-point electrician this week?’” Ben explained. “Now, if somebody gives me attitude, I’m not afraid to drop their rating way down. You simply cannot have bad attitudes in your company. It becomes a cancer.”
“I firmly believe we have an amazing team right now. They’ve bought-in,” Ben said enthusiastically. “Once you clear your business of the bad attitudes, you can see the culture really blossom. It changes everything.”
When asked what Ben’s long-term goals were, he felt compelled to celebrate his current group once again. “I’d love to duplicate them all. In 10 years, I’d like to have 40 or 50 people just like we have now. All of us driving to make Integra Electrical into something really special and really profitable.”
Ben stopped for a moment, and then said with an exhale, “I’ll be honest, my number-one goal this year is for Jaime and me to take a vacation. We haven’t had one in years. I think we can make it happen. I’m excited about it. Maybe we’ll go to Yellowstone or something.”
Given Ben and Jaime’s incredible past 24-month journey, it’s safe to say this hungry and humble couple has earned some time to recharge and celebrate what they’ve accomplished in so little time.
Ben and Jaime wanted to pass along a few comments about their superstar team members who are committed to making Integra Electrical better every day.
Employee Spotlight: Trevor Perrigo
Trevor cut his hair, shaved his beard, removed the gauges from his ears, and read Who Moves My Cheese? after meeting Ben and Jaime—and he did that all in one day. Ben and Jaime knew Trevor had to be a part of Integra Electrical. “He communicates really well; clients love him. He’s top of his class in his apprenticeship. I wish we could get him in a truck sooner. He’s an amazing story, and I know he’s here for a reason,” Ben said.
Employee Spotlight: Lucijan Grbavac
“I call him Lou or Lucky Jan when we’re having a good time,” Ben said with a laugh. “Lou was doing cookie-cutter apartment work for a contractor in Des Moines. Jaime and [electrician] Shawn [Rowles] interviewed Lou, and they immediately said we needed to hire him. He’s a real soft-spoken young man, and he does a great job for us.”
Employee Spotlight: Caleb Hugill
“Caleb came to us from Oregon. He’s another guy who’s very soft-spoken, and easygoing. He’s been an absolute blessing for us. He puts up great average tickets, and people love him,” Ben explained. “What I appreciate most about Caleb is he’s not afraid to question me, if he sees something he doesn’t agree with. I want that openness.”
Employee Spotlight: Paige Morlan
“Paige is a go-getter. She is a quick learner and has no fear when it comes to calling 200 customers in one week to offer a special. She will find a way to get the job done well without being asked,” Ben said. “She has quickly adapted to the company culture after I gave her the ‘Fred Factor’ to read. She’s also great at encouraging the guys. It’s not uncommon to find a gigantic picture on the white board on Monday morning.”
Employee Spotlight: Rachael Carpenter
“She has such a sweet and accommodating demeanor,” Ben said. “She’s good at taking charge and seeing where improvement can be made. She thrives in a team atmosphere.”