Owners Winona & Darrel Furgison Have Doubled Their Revenue & Increased Their Net Profit by Roughly 25% in Only Three Years by “Jumping Both Feet First” into Wholesale Changes in Their Electrical Residential-Service Company. Along the Way, They’ve Improved Their Customer Service, Changed Their Employees’ Lives & Have Been Charitable with Organizations That Matter Most to Them.
by Bob Houchin
What was intended to be a relatively short 8- to 10-minute interview with Darrell and Winona Furgison—in front of a camera in a green room tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the recent Dallas Expo—turned into a 30-plus-minute, in-depth conversation about business and life, where they’ve been, what they’ve endured, and how excited they are about the future.
The longtime married couple and owners of The Shocking Difference in Olympia, Washington, glowed while detailing how much everything has changed in only three years. Often, Darrell and Winona finished each other’s sentences. It was pure excitement and genuine. Their energy reverberated against the walls and filled the room. Once they shared the cold, hard numbers, it’s easy to understand their exhilaration.
“When we joined [SGI in December of 2016], we had $150,000 in accounts receivables with only $670,000 in revenue. We were at a negative 14 percent profit,” Winona recounted. “That January we jumped both feet first. By the end of 2017, we were at $970,000 with $20,000 in receivables and roughly five- to six-percent profit. And by the end of 2018, we ended at $1.1 million at a 14 percent profit. Still with only four trucks on the road.”
Winona paused, took a breath, and continued. “Here we are at the close of September. We’re already at $1.1 million, and we’re doing it at 19.8 percent profit. We’re both taking a paycheck. And the company has paid us back about $80,000 that we had loaned it over many years.”
Saying those words, you could see the satisfaction in Darrell and Winona’s shoulders. The serious stress and uncertainty that comes with a struggling business had been lifted. Now, they have something to be proud of. How did they do it?
“We’re all in,” Winona shouted with enthusiasm. “We rockin’ and rollin’. If there was something SGI told us to do, we did it. I’m not paying weekly dues for nothing.”
Darrell and Winona both burst into laughter with her comments, but it’s true. This couple has whole-heartedly adopted the SGI model—and they didn’t waste a single day to overanalyze or delay action. They moved forward, and now, they’re reaping the rewards.
It has been a long journey to push The Shocking Difference to where it is today. There were many, long nights and frustrating weeks and months. Both questioned if they’d ever get to this point. In fact, Winona thought it best that Darrell went another direction before finding SGI.
Darrell Feels Called to Go into Business
Darrell found the electrical industry a tad later in life. Following 17 years of running his family restaurant with his mother, he went searching for a new career at age 32. He wanted to find an industry that would invest time and training into him. Ultimately, he unearthed that opportunity with an electrical-contracting company.
After 10 years, in 2006, Darrell felt a calling. “The Lord spoke to my heart one day telling me that I needed to make a change. It was a struggle. I had a good job. We had just built a house. Winona didn’t want me to walk away from everything,” he explained.
For three or four months, Darrell said the couple prayed about what to do. Then he was laid off. It lasted three months. Darrell wisely used his time to secure his licensing and prepare to go into business for himself. Then he got a call to go back into work. Darrell would only last on the job for two weeks.
“The Lord beat me up every day I drove to work, ‘Why are you doing this?’ It was a two-hour drive each way. I used that time to talk to Him about my concerns. I felt Him tell me, ‘I’ll provide.’ I came home and told Winona. She said, okay. She couldn’t argue. I started my business with a tool bag and my pickup,” Darrell explained.
Darrell and Winona collaborated to create the unique name, The Shocking Difference. “I didn’t want to use my name because I thought one day I might sell. If you change a name, you risk losing some of your reputation. I was thinking about that,” he continued.
“We had built our house a year and a half before then. We had horrible luck with contractors,” Winona added. “So, we had that in our minds. We said we wanted to be different. We wanted something catchy and memorable. People always say they love the name.”
The Shocking Difference Struggles for 10 Years
Darrell’s jump into the business world was made all that much easier thanks to Winona’s successful and stable career. For 30 years, she had served as a pediatric ICU nurse. “We knew what I was making could support us if it took him some time to get established,” she said. “So, we decided to go for it. But I wasn’t involved at all back then.”
In those early days Darrell took on any work he could. Mostly friends gave him jobs and referrals. Before too long, the demand for his services necessitated the addition of employees. With more people comes more problems. On time and material, Darrell’s more technically sound electricians worked too quickly and didn’t make any money. His slow electricians could bill more hours but angered customers. And no one would collect at the end of the job. They would leave it to Darrell to mail an invoice.
“So, I slowly got pulled more and more into the office. First, I was doing quarterlies. Then it was payroll. More and more kept getting added to my plate, while I was still working 36 hours a week as a nightshift nurse,” Winona explained.
“And neither of us were taking a paycheck—and this was 10 years into the business,” Darrell shared. The memory of those frustrations wore on his face for a moment.
“Darrell wasn’t making a paycheck because he was too nice. He never thought he could charge more. Finally, in 2016, when we hit that $670,000 with $150,000 in receivables, I told him I was finished with the business. He was taking my nursing salary to make his payroll because this wasn’t a business. He was just a nice guy doing electrical work,” Winona said.
“She was right,” Darrell admitted. “I was an electrician, not a businessman.”
“I gave him until the end of December. He had to have a plan, or I was leaving as a partner in the business. I wasn’t going to help him self-destruct anymore,” Winona said.
“And then we got that little postcard in the mail the next day,” she continued after a long pause. “It’s funny how God works.”
Trying Something Different with SGI
The postcard Winona referenced was an invitation to attend a Success Group International Profit Day. The contents on the card spoke to her, and she immediately knew she wanted to attend. She had to work the night before Profit Day and going would mean sleep deprivation. “I felt like this was important, and I was going to go. Then I got a call. They said they didn’t need me to work that night,” Winona detailed. “I was so relieved. I could go, listen, and have a clear mind.”
“Believe it or not, I didn’t go,” Darrell said. “My mindset was that I was too busy. I had better work. I just needed to work harder for things to get better.”
While driving to the meeting, Winona expected SGI would ask for some type of a commitment or investment. “I kept thinking about what I would pay to get our $150,000 in receivables, and what I would pay for people to stop arguing over what we were charging. I had that dollar amount in my head,” she explained. “And then I listened to them. I thought, ‘Wow, this is going to be really expensive.’ But it was less than I thought. I was sold. I joined.”
“She called me right afterward, and I said, ‘I trust you. Whatever you think is best. We’ve been doing things my way and it hasn’t worked. Let’s try something else,’” Darrell added.
Darrell & Winona Implement Immediately
Executive Perspective (EP) cemented in both Darrell and Winona’s minds that joining this new organization was the right decision. During this conference where they’d be introduced and inundated by the SGI system, they received a temporary StraightForward Pricing® Guide. “We had a customer email us asking for a price to put in a hot tub. Winona said, ‘Use the new pricing!’ I thought she was crazy. No way would someone pay this. It was more than double what I would have charged. I thought this would be our test,” Darrell explained.
After doing some calculations on what the entire job would cost, Darrell emailed the customer back with a price. He reluctantly waited for rejection, but it didn’t come. “Within 20 minutes the guy emailed me back and asked when he could get on the schedule,” Darrell said. “My jaw dropped. That’s when I was like, okay, maybe this will work.”
“We joined in November. We went to EP in December. By the end of it, I said, ‘We’re sending everyone to Service Essentials as fast as we can. Let’s book flights today. We flew all four of our journeymen to Kerry Adkins’ shop in Hoover, Alabama, in January. We couldn’t afford to put them all up in hotels, so I found an Airbnb for $40 a night for all of them. And away they went,” Winona shared.
“That opened my eyes even more,” Darrell added.
By February, The Shocking Difference began utilizing the new StraightForward Pricing® Guide, taking full advantage of the training Darrell and his team received. Several months later, they finally began taking credit cards to help the team be able to collect after every job. “And then we worked on everything else,” Winona said. “We’ve continued to work on something else. We haven’t stopped.”
Among the biggest changes for the business was its addition of ServiceLine™ software. They’ve adopted different features of it, one bit at a time, learning and tweaking as they’ve gone along. “Now, we can see everything that’s going on. I can see every single job. I know our materials and labor. It shows my gross margin!” Winona said excluding excitement. “We’re so happy with everything we’ve done.”
Hiring for Attitude & Fit
Maybe the biggest lessons Darrell and Winona have learned have been the most difficult to implement. The pricing and organizational improvements, while vital to The Shocking Difference’s success, do nothing without the right people. And the task of finding, changing, and motivating people is likely the most difficult challenge of all.
“We have Brent and Angel who do an amazing job for us in the office,” Winona made sure to point out. “If someone calls in looking for a job, they know to immediately transfer them to me. If I’m out of the office, they put their number on my desk and I call them back right away.”
Once Winona has potential applicants on the phone, she verifies they can pass a background check, drug test, and have a clean driving record. She’s very upfront that if they can’t, there is no reason to continue the conversation. If they say they can, Winona asks them to submit a résumé.
Should the résumé look attractive, Winona will setup an interview with the individual. The Shocking Difference currently remains based out of Darrell and Winona’s home. So, Winona directs them to a local Starbucks®. “This particular Starbucks has another one about a half block from it. I’m very specific about which one they should go to. If they end up at the wrong one, I know they may have trouble following simple, basic directions,” Winona said.
Darrell and Winona will interview interested candidates together. In addition to what people have to say, they want to see how they’re dressed, and Darrell and Winona pay attention to body language. “We’ll eventually ask them to take a DiSC® test so we get to know their personality better,” Darrell said. “We’ll also ask them to take the [Technical Assessment] that’s on YourSGIHUB to gauge their knowledge.”
The last step before employment has proven to be the most difficult. Darrell and Winona require four days of ride-alongs. Every day, an individual rides with a different journeyman. “We pay them to do it,” Winona was sure to add. “We want our crew’s opinion on any new guy. Once they’re in a truck, they will act much differently than when in front of us. A lot of things come out.”
“Hiring journeymen has been difficult for us,” Winona continued. “Our experience has been that they don’t want to adapt to the SGI model. Or they think they know everything. When you work with us, you need to be teachable.”
“Recruiting is a much bigger issue for us than marketing. We’re already turning calls away today,” Darrell added. “We decided early on that we needed to grow our own.”
“We only have one journeyman today who came to us with a license. The others we’ve hired from outside the industry,” Winona said. “And every journeyman has an apprentice. We’re at a one-to-one ratio.”
“I can teach anyone how to do the job. It’s their personality, their attitude, their fit within our organization. That’s the key,” Darrell stressed. “We have a great group of guys because we’ve hired them based on those parameters.”
Making Training Relevant & Fun
Everyone who begins working at The Shocking Difference immediately begins training, like the rest of the team. “We have our trainees in class, too,” Darrell emphasized. “I think that’s why our homegrown techs do so well. They hear how we do things from day one. You can never get enough education.”
Training happens three times a week. Darrell works hard to keep it no longer than 20 minutes. The topics often vary. “If we’re struggling with code, we’ll talk about code. If there’s nothing in particular to work on, we’ll hit on the price guides. I’ll give them scenarios, and I’ll ask each of them, ‘What would you charge?’ We want to keep everyone consistent. That time where we’re all talking and bouncing idea off of each other is so valuable,” Darrell said.
“Other times, we’ll review videos on YourSGIHUB, or we’ll watch safety videos. I’m trying to put new information in front of them all the time,” Darrell continued. “My brain is going all the time. Usually, I get up early in the morning. I’ll look over the schedule. That’s when I’ll decide what we need to work on. I don’t necessarily keep a tight schedule, but I always find something we should talk about.”
Darrell and Winona also try to keep training lively. “Oh yes, we have a prize wheel. Every Wednesday, if you get a five-star review or sell a club membership, we tally them up, and you get that many spins. They can win anywhere from $1 to $50,” Darrell said. “It’s a lot of fun. You have to have some fun when you can.”
The Value of Outside Training
As someone who worked in the medical industry for more than three decades, it should come to no surprise that Winona echoed Darrell’s sentiments toward investing the time and money into training. “I’m a big proponent of education. We believe passionately in outside training. Before Learning Alliance rolled out Total Access, we would go to Expo and always take advantage of the show deals. I’d buy $10,000 in training that night because I was saving $10,000, and I knew how much it would benefit us. I didn’t even know what courses we’d attend,” she said and laughed.
Outside training isn’t only available for The Shocking Difference’s team in the field; Darrell and Winona invest in their office staff, as well. Their office administrator Brent Dean also has served as their primary call-taker for years. Winona originally flew the both of them to Dallas for Telephone Essentials. She estimated that he’s attended the online version of the course four times. “Every time he attends it, he gains something. He gets even better,” she said. “We recently hired Angel. We’re planning on sending her through the course soon.”
Only a few months ago, all but one of The Shocking Difference’s journeymen attended Electricians Advanced with Darrell at fellow SGI member Trent Urban’s shop, The WireNut, in Colorado Springs. “The class was tremendous. It just further helped the guys understand that they’re not salesmen—they’re educating homeowners. They’re informing customers of the condition of their electrical system, giving them options, and then letting them make the decision,” Darrell said.
“Why wouldn’t we be big believers in the training?” Darrell asked rhetorically. “Everything has worked for us so far. We went from a losing business to a profitable business in three years. Training is an investment that gives a return. If you’re a new member reading this, go to class. You have to learn how to do this.”
“Absolutely,” Winona immediately echoed. “If you’ve just gone through EP, you need to get to the next Service Essentials class. I don’t care if it’s in Alabama and you have to get on a plane. It’s that important.”
Giving Back to Their Team & Community
Darrell and Winona have put in countless hours of hard work to get to where they are today. The Shocking Difference has more than doubled its revenue and seen a 25 percent upswing in its net profit. That success has allowed Winona to leave her nursing career about six months ago to focus exclusively on the business. However, Darrell and Winona know they’ve had help along the way. They have a tremendous team who they value greatly. They continuously look for ways to enhance their lives.
Last year, Darrell and Winona flew almost the entire The Shocking Difference company to the New Orleans Expo. Learning Alliance was offering an Emotional Intelligence course immediately before Expo began. “At the end of the class, we all sat around and had a four-hour-long conversation about the business and what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what they thought we should do,” Winona said. “One of the things they said is they wanted to work less days.”
“We brought up the idea of them working 4, 10-hour days,” Darrell interjected. “The guys jumped up and down they were so excited. It took some figuring out, but we made it work. We have some guys working Monday through Thursday, and other guys are working Tuesday through Friday. Everyone gets a three-day weekend.”
The Shocking Difference already provided an incredible work environment—even before the advantageous schedule. Their people are among the highest paid in the area. Darrell and Winona have established retirement plans for everyone, and the company will match four percent of any contributions. Employees and their families also enjoy full healthcare of which The Shocking Difference pays 75 percent. Everyone also gets a week of sick time and a week of vacation from Christmas to New Year, and if you’ve been with the company for three years, they get a two-week, paid vacation plus Christmas time off.
As revenues accelerated in the business, and Darrell and Winona saw incomes of each of their employees escalate, the couple identified another opportunity to help. They enrolled everyone into Dave Ramsey’s “Smart Money,” nine-week course. They hosted the course in the morning—on company time. They even paid those employees who completed their homework.
The course made an impact. One employee had been saddled with considerable debt and other burdensome financial obligations. He followed the outlined system, and he’s since become debt-free. He recently purchased a car with cash. It was a proud moment for Darrell and Winona.
“We do fun stuff as a company. We host everyone at the house for a prime rib dinner around Christmas. In summer, we’ll go to an amusement park or go paintballing. But we really value the opportunities to help our people grow,” Winona said passionately. “We firmly believe that the more personal growth someone is exposed to the better people they become. We can give our employees better lives. That trickles down to how they perform on the job, too.”
“We always have had an open-door policy, too,” Winona added. “When we see someone struggling or that something is going on, we tell them that they can come talk to us. Darrell will help them fix their cars.”
Without missing a beat, Darrell quickly retorted, “And they’ll ask Sheila what their rashes are!” Both Winona and he then burst into laughter.
After the belly laughs stopped, Winona composed herself and continued. “I think we’re a pretty family-oriented business. One of our employees told us this is the best place he’s ever worked. That feels good when you hear that.”
Darrell and Winona have been intentional in giving back to their team—but also their community. “We feel beyond blessed,” Darrell said. “I just wanted to be able to have a small business that provided for us. Now, we’re helping families, and it’s allowed us to help others outside the company.”
Darrell, Winona, and their son, Jacob, prayed deeply after the success The Shocking Difference enjoyed in 2018. Collectively, they decided to anonymously donate a significant sum of money to charitable causes close to their heart. They plan on increasing those donations soon, as 2019 is coming to a close.
Darrell and Winona are living proof of how having an “All-In” attitude in life can impact a business, its employees, and its community. “Our philosophy is, ‘Lord, this is yours. Take us where you want to go. And through you, we will help others,’” Darrell said. “Five years ago, I would have never imagined being in this position. You can’t help but feel the blessings.”