Owner Vinny Tingley & His GM Ryan Kerrissey Have Nearly Tripled the Natick, Massachusetts-Based Business’ Revenue at Double-Digit Profitability in Only Five Years by Investing in Training, Managing by the Numbers & Valuing Their People’s Personal Time Away from Work, Ensuring They Enjoy Proper Balance.
by Bob Houchin
Vinny Tingley has a unique perspective on business not often shared by other business owners. Certainly, he hungers for success and has spent more than 15 years of sweat equity building his electrical-service company, Tingley Electric Services. However, Vinny’s quest to grow does not overwhelm his understanding of why people come to work for him each day.
“My attitude is, we’re all working for our families. I value our employees’ time, and we pay attention to what time they get home each day. As much as possible, we like it if they can get home by 4, 4:30 pm at the latest. And when they get home, they’re not bothered,” Vinny said with conviction. “I want them to feel like they can go home, take off their hat at the end of the day, and not have to worry about Tingley Electric until the next morning. That goes for weekends, too.”
“I refuse to do 24/7 service because it’s more important that our people get time to be with their families,” Vinny added. “That’s what’s important to me.”
“When a new customer calls and says, ‘Hey, I have an emergency.’ We kindly ask if they can manage, and we’ll try and book them for Monday morning. Most of the time, it’s not an emergency, and it can wait. What I’m not doing is calling one of my guys who’s been working so hard for us, asking him to leave his family, and have him out in the middle of the night. I choose not to go down that road. I’d rather them be happy and healthy at home. When they come back to work on Monday morning, they’ll be ready to go.”
Happy Employees Lead to Happy Customers
Residents of Natick, Massachusetts, which lies roughly 15 miles west of Boston, have been willing to work their busy schedules around Tingley Electric’s service hours. It’s a testament to the quality of work their rested and happy electricians provide. The business has a stunning 4.9 rating on Google with nearly 150 reviews. Check the other review sites—they all have similar scores. Earlier this year, Tingley Electric Services beat out nine other electrical contractors nominated for “Best of Metro-West.”
This novel concept for many in the residential-service industry—asking technicians to work only during traditional hours—is something Vinny has strived to achieve for years. “Finally, about three or four years ago, we became much more intentional about making it happen,” he said. “Now, every decision we make, it always circles back to one question: How is this going to affect family time? How do we make the company so the employees are happy? We recognize happy employees lead to happy customers.”
Happy customers also lead to financial success. Since 2014, Tingley Electric Services’ revenues have nearly tripled. Vinny and Ryan project sales to hit $2.5 Million by the end of 2019, and those numbers come with double-digit profits. It’s those bottom-line dollars that have allowed Vinny to invest in the business—and its people. “We really believe that’s why our guys have been with us for years,” he said. “We’ve had very little turnover.”
Intentional Listening
“We also stay very in-tune with each of our guys,” Ryan said. “We know what their goals are. We know what drives each of them, and we try and meet those needs as best we can.”
When pressed on how Ryan develops such an understanding of his people, he answered quickly: “It’s nothing more than intentional listening. I try to dial into the conversations I have with them. If you listen to what people tell you, you’ll know what they like to do. You’ll learn their hobbies. I enjoy that part of my job. I naturally want to help people.”
“For example, if a guy says he really wants to get to all his kid’s baseball games, and we know they start at five, we’re going to work hard to make sure he’s done in time to get to those games. Our guys can see that, and they appreciate it.”
“That’s a talent Ryan really has,” Vinny quickly added. “Ryan is very intuitive with that. He gets a natural read of people.”
Both men stressed the importance of daily huddles in learning what’s transpiring with their team on a personal level and how it could impact their professional lives. “We talk every morning to tie up loose ends from the previous day,” Ryan said. “But you also will learn if a guy didn’t sleep because his baby was up all night. You can learn a lot from those quick conversations.”
“We like the huddle because they’re great for building comradery, too,” Vinny stressed. “There’s a lot of laughing going on, too.”
That time in the office when everyone’s together also allows Vinny and Ryan to gauge an interest if morale is low, if the team has been pushing too hard and is starting to feel the effects. “We can always tell when they need some time. It happens every three to four months. They’ve been working a ton and they’re tired. That’s when we’ll have a Tingley Day. We’ll take them bowling; we’ve done an escape room. We’ve just had a cookout. One time we did a city tour—and yeah, beer might have been involved with that one,” Ryan explained and then laughed.
“Sometimes we haven’t told the guys that we’re doing it,” Ryan added. “They come to work ready to go. We say, ‘Here’s some breakfast. In an hour, we’re leaving to go do this.’ You can tell they appreciate it. They know we’re always trying to come up with something for them.”
Tingley Electric Service’s Beginnings
Tingley Electric sounds like a sublime working environment. It has taken Vinny and then Ryan many years of struggles and frustrations to build a company and a culture of this magnitude. As recently as 2014, it was primarily these two men working long, hard hours. Vinny and Ryan wanted to grow the company into something substantial, but they couldn’t move it beyond a means to earn a living.
Vinny started in the trade in 1984. As a youngster, he would babysit for a family in those days. The father happened to be an electrician. One day he asked Vinny if he would be interested in helping him for the summer. Vinny agreed and never turned back. “I loved every minute of it,” he remembered.
With his feet wet in the industry, Vinny sought out new opportunities. He worked for several electrical contractors over those formidable years. At his last stop before going into business for himself, Vinny rose to vice president of the company. It left him unfulfilled, as the position held little actual power. Vinny wanted to do something on his own, and so he did. Tingley Electric Services was born in 2003.
“When I left, one of my helpers left with me. He worked for me for a little bit. I started the company with a van that I borrowed from a friend,” Vinny explained. “Thankfully, I had a following of customers that wanted to keep doing business with me. That’s how I got started.”
Ryan’s story parallels closely with Vinny’s. In fact, Ryan grew up across the street from Vinny. Just as an electrician asked a young Vinny for help, Vinny asked a young Ryan if he’d be interested in making a little money on a Saturday. A career blossomed from that moment. “I’ve always kind of followed wherever Vinny’s gone,” Ryan said. “I was a subcontractor at first for Tingley for five or six years. I’ve worked in the company for almost 10.”
Tingley Electric Services always remained in the residential-service and -remodel space. “One of my passions has always been that direct communication with the homeowner and the satisfaction you get in working with the person who benefits from what you’re doing,” Vinny explained. “I always loved getting paid and seeing that smile at the end.”
Vinny and Ryan seemingly made enough customers smile, as the two turned Tingley Electric Services into a company that made money. “We always made a little bit more each year, other than 2009 and 2010 when the world fell apart,” Vinny said and chuckled a bit. “The biggest bane of my existence was something called time-and-materials billing! We’d have these arguments with customers over 10 or 15 minutes! I knew there had to be a better way to do business. I knew we didn’t need to reinvent the wheel.”
SGI Finds Vinny
Vinny recalls getting a postcard from SGI in early 2014 inviting him to a nearby Profit Day meeting. He dismissed it, like the junk mail it seemed to be. Then he got a phone call. It was from SGI’s Patrick Foppe. “Something told me to listen to him. And I did. And I was glad that I did,” Vinny said. “I went to Hartford, Connecticut, and attended Profit Day.”
Vinny brought a friend along with him who he trusts with financial decisions. He felt like he would need a sounding board. “I really wanted someone who would look at it from a totally different angle,” Vinny explained. “I’m glad that I did. We discussed me joining at length. I made the determination that it would be a good fit for us.”
Ryan recalls being a bit apprehensive about the idea of joining this new organization. “I think I played a little devil’s advocate at the time,” he said. “At the same time, I also felt like we needed to make a change from this time-and-material world that we were stuck in.”
“Yeah, we were really just running around without any type of clear goal,” Vinny quickly added. “We were kind of doing what we needed each day. We reacted all the time. We knew that wasn’t what a real business should be doing.”
Vinny and Ryan boarded a plane destined for Sarasota, Florida. At the time, it was the home of SGI, and it would be where the two men would spend a week learning the SGI system at Executive Perspective. They didn’t quite anticipate the massive amount of information they would be served.
“We were happy someone had the answers. But we were a bit scared. We got all the answers at once. It was like a fire hose,” Ryan said and then laughed heartily. “It was overwhelming. Even though they told us what we should tackle first, we didn’t know how we would do it.”
“For me, the best advice we received was, you don’t need to tackle it all at once. Pick one or two things at a time and chisel away,” Vinny said. “You don’t have to fix your business overnight.”
Overcoming Two Big Hurdles
Vinny and Ryan returned home with their minds crammed with information, which left them feeling a bit uneasy. They didn’t allow apprehension to slow their desire for progress. The two took the words of wisdom given to them and began tackling one issue at a time. The first would take Vinny outside of his comfort zone.
“The biggest hurdle for me hands down was increasing our prices. I couldn’t believe what they said we needed to be charging,” Vinny admitted. “It takes a change in mindset. Once you consider all that goes into building that price—how much we offer as companies and the incredible costs to deliver our services—the pricing absolutely makes sense.”
“You have to believe in your pricing before asking anyone else to believe,” Vinny added. “If your guys can clearly see that you don’t buy into it, they won’t. It won’t happen overnight. It will come slowly. I can say this: Money is not the be-all, end-all. But it certainly makes things much easier when your business finally is making it.”
Vinny and Ryan learned if they would charge a premium price, they must deliver premium service. Among the easiest adjustments they could make would be to enhance their image. They contacted ShuBee almost immediately upon returning home. They started using mats around work areas—now they utilize drop cloths.
“The other biggest change was telling the guys to slow down,” Ryan said. “We used to call them constantly and ask, ‘When are you going to be done?’ We constantly pushed them, which meant they constantly pushed our customers into decisions. That’s not doing anyone any good. Now, we hammer home the idea of them taking their time. When they’re done, they’re done. We never push. Everyone is so much happier that way.”
Setting an Expectation for Premium Service
The next wave of core changes further set Tingley Electric Services apart from other contractors in town. “We immediately started implementing a service fee. We only set it at $59. After a year, we said, ‘This isn’t enough,’ and bumped it to $89,” Ryan said.
“There were times when we got a bit slower and we stopped charging it. We immediately would always regret it. Someone who is willing to buy a service fee is much more willing to pay for your services,” he continued.
“You get a better client, to be very honest,” Vinny added. “You get someone who’s willing to invest in their home, versus someone looking for the cheapest price exclusively. Now, we don’t even waive the service fee for our club members. They pay a reduced charge of $59.”
Initially, Ryan and Vinny adopted the Electricians’ Success International Safety & Savings Plan as their club membership. They later modified it and renamed it the Tingley Advantage Program or TAP for short. They estimate to have roughly 650 members—a strong number for a residential electrician. “We just added Lisa to answer the phones,” Ryan said. “Our hope is she is going to be able to call out and get those annual inspections lined up with people who are usually difficult to reach.”
Until Lisa Travis’ addition, their office manager answered the phone. It was too much for her to handle given her other responsibilities. “When we first started with ESI, we had two part-time people answering the phones—one in the morning and one in the afternoon. That just didn’t work. They didn’t communicate and details would fall through the cracks,” Vinny said. “We’ve learned the hard way that the customer calling absolutely must be the first priority always, and you really should have someone whose primary job is answering that phone. It’s just another part of delivering that better service experience to the customer.”
Mastering Training Takes Time, as Does Nurturing Apprentices
There have been several hard-learned lessons along the way. Vinny and Ryan have always done their best to use them as points of growth, rather than stumbling blocks halting progress. Look no further for an example than their initial training efforts. “Our training was awful,” Ryan said and laughed. “We couldn’t figure it out.”
Vinny and Ryan eventually did figure it out—thanks in part to the many training classes they attended. “Getting good at going through the inspection and offering options probably happened about two and a half years ago. That took a lot of time,” Ryan shared.
“Really, going through that Electricians Advanced class, even the basics class, both helped a lot. Almost everyone has been through both. It’s good for them to see that we’re not the only ones doing business like this, too. It helps them buy-in. Then, they get back and they see their numbers soar. Now they want to train to find a new approach or a new way to get better.”
Tingley Electric’s service electricians training occurs twice a week—typically on Tuesday and Thursday. John Brooks was promoted to Service Manager roughly nine months ago, and today he owns the training schedule and selects the content. He will utilize Learning Alliance’s On Demand videos, sprinkle in some technical training, and give the team theoretical situations for them to build options and estimates. “John’s really good at constructively talking to them about how they could improve or sell a job that they didn’t. He’ll explain how to handle tough customers or a tough install,” Ryan said. “The guys respond to him.”
Training for Tingley Electric’s apprentices transpires daily. Every service truck has an apprentice with an electrician. Ryan manages their technical-skills development. “We actually built a wall out in the shop that has a panel, some lighting, some switching, so we can really get them up to speed,” Ryan explained.
“Some time ago, we finally realized the best way we could grow the business and find the type of people we want was to grow them from apprentices. We’ve really struggled to hire licensed guys,” he continued. “It’s frustrating to have to wait for them to get licensed, but we’ve accepted it.”
“The long-haul approach is tried and true,” Vinny added in support. “It’s the coolest thing the next day after they get their license when they literally hop in a van and they’re ready to go. You know they’re going to be fine because they know the system. They know how we expect them to conduct business. That’s when you’re reminded the investment of time was worth it.”
Managing by the Numbers
Three years. That’s the amount of time Ryan estimated it took to get Tinley Electric, “running like a well-oiled machine,” he said. Vinny and he made plenty of phone calls to the SGI offices and spent untold hours on the phone and in the shops of other members, asking questions, furthering their understanding of residential service.
“It wasn’t probably until a year and a half ago that we said to ourselves, ‘We’ve got a lot of the systems in place, we’re making money, now we need to get better at the day-to-day,’” Vinny explained. “We need to get better at tracking our KPIs [Key Performance Indicators] and using our DME [Daily Management Essentials report]. Now, we’re tracking everything daily, if not every half a day.”
The company utilizes ServiceTitan. Even with the software’s impressive interface, the men break it down by using their DME. “We drill it down, so we know how each tech is doing that day, for the week, and for the month,” Ryan said. “We have all their numbers on a TV screen that updates itself. We even run pulseM on it so they can see their review stats.”
“They all know how they’re doing against one another,” Vinny added. “It adds some friendly competition—in a good way.”
While making sure the Tingley team has a positive work environment remains a core focus, everyone knows those benefits come with an expectation of performance. “I definitely review every option they give. I review every ticket. John will check them, as well, but I really get into them in detail. I always want to make sure we didn’t do something accidentally we shouldn’t have. I look at every line item,” Ryan said.
“They definitely know they’re being monitored. We’re always watching. They know how they’re doing against their goals. Even John, as service manager, gives himself a goal, even though he’s not in the field all the time. He knows when he is out there, he needs to produce.”
Five-Year Goals Accomplished in Three
Over the course of this almost two-hour interview with Vinny and Ryan, the friends and associates reflected about many things that transpired during their years with Tingley Electric Services. Near the end of the discussion, Ryan mentioned a specific memory that still resurfaces from time to time. It popped up once more, unsurprisingly so given the nature of our conversation that day.
“I wanted to be sure to add this. On our plane ride back from Executive Perspective, Vinny and I both wrote down our 5- and 10-year plans. Where we wanted to be. It’s funny to think about, but we crushed our five-year plan within those first three years. It’s really cool to be able to reflect on that accomplishment.”
Yet, these two feel like they have so much more they could accomplish, and they’re eager to tackle the challenges ahead. “One of my next big, hairy, audacious goals is to stop leasing. I want to own our own building, a bigger one that we could grow into over the next 10 or even 15 years. I’d love to have a training room designed exactly for our technicians,” Vinny said. “Maybe we’d have a lounge or an exercise area, a place the guys can come in and make breakfast. They can feel like home when away from home a bit.”
Culture of Service to Others
Vinny also mentioned another long-term goal near and dear to his heart. It speaks to both his and Ryan’s core values of service, wanting to help others improve and grow, much like they have over these few years. “I’d really like it if our new building could become a training facility for SGI. We really don’t have anything in this area. I’d love it if we could make that happen.”
“I obviously want to grow Tingley Electric. We’re both very passionate about that,” Ryan added. “But I’m also passionate about helping other members. Being on the Executive Advisory Board, I’ve been able to help other companies start to grow after they go to EP. I can tell them that I remember what it was like to be scared about those initial hurdles. That’s a big thing for me—giving back. All us started from the same place—our companies needed change. When you see someone else succeed, it’s such a great feeling.”
Tingley Electric Services is part of a Profit Platoon, which is a group of fellow SGI members near one another geographically. The platoon members take turns hosting a meeting in each other’s offices every other month, talking with employees, and looking for ways to enhance the other operation. “I appreciate everyone in our platoon’s willingness to share information,” Vinny stated. “We all are trying to help each other.”
Now, their Profit Platoon’s call-takers meet a day earlier so they can compare and benefit from each other’s experiences. “We call it the Office Platoon,” Ryan explained. “It’s a great support group, especially for those offices that have only one call-taker. They don’t have to feel alone. They can pick up the phone and call another call-taker about how to handle a particular problem.”
On those days the Office Platoon meets, at least at Tingley Electric, Vinny and Ryan know they may have to dust off their phone skills. “It’s a day that brings us back down to earth,” Ryan said and then heartily laughed. “We quickly realize what they go through on a day-to-day basis. But we’re happy to do it because I know our two get so much out of it.”
Always keeping their people in mind in everything Vinny and Ryan do is why the Tingly team works as diligently and passionately as they do. Tingley Electric Services is not just some ordinary job or place of employment. These men and women notice and appreciate Vinny and Ryan’s efforts to build a culture that values them as individuals of a work family and values their actual families. And they’ve responded to it.
“One thing that’s happened organically the last couple of years is the guys really support one another. If they’re done, but they know the others aren’t, they’ll check in with them. They’ll ask if they need an extra hand. They’ll all go to that home,” Vinny proudly explained. “We didn’t set that up. That evolved on its own. That’s something I love. I think it’s so cool.”
“It’s a no-man-left-behind mentality,” Ryan echoed. “They refuse to go home at four if it means the other guys are out there working until eight. They want those guys to get home to their families as much as they do. It’s become part of our culture.”
“You go into business wanting to build something. You want to support your family. Then you realize how much it can impact others. It’s a really rewarding thing,” Vinny said in retrospection. “I think we’re doing that at Tingley Electric.”