Jennifer Clements – Mental Health & the Effects on our Family

Josh Crouch: Happy Wednesday, everybody, and welcome back to the Service Business Mastery Podcast. If you are going to follow the live stream, I may have changed the on you a couple of times today. And I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was doing, don’t know what I was thinking, but had the wrong time out there. So hopefully you guys, if anyone wants to catch this, can still catch it. But today we’re going to be talking about it’s actually mental health month. So for Tersh, who did not know that it’s mental health. I did not. And we’re going to be talking with Jennifer, who is the co owner of Clements Electric and founder of League of Contractors, which we’ll get into a little bit later in the show. But we’re going to be talking about her journey of sharing her daughter’s story and what it’s done to help actually grow their business by that vulnerability and sharing and relating to other people. And we didn’t ask her a lot about that before the show. We figured we kind of just like everyone that’s listening, learn the story and hear the story ourselves. And but [00:01:00] I don’t know if Tersh if you have anything to add about mental health and.

 

Tersh Blissett: Well, I find that it’s an interesting fact that 72% of entrepreneurs are dealing directly or indirectly with mental health issues, whereas the general population who are not entrepreneurs is only like 48%. So that’s a wild, wild statistic. And I get it 100% too, because I don’t know if anybody really pays attention to this or remembers that I went to school for psychology and mental health. I really wanted to understand the reason why my team members think the way they do. And so that’s why I went to school for that after I was already an entrepreneur. And I have we have life coaches. Julie and I have coaches within our our selves, our both business and personal life. And [00:02:00] that’s definitely mental health is something as a business owner and even a business manager and technicians, it’s something that you have to deal with, like you need to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. So yeah, that’s what that’s all I have to say on that. And no, I didn’t know it was May. I didn’t even really realize what month it is.

 

Josh Crouch: Honestly was.

 

Tersh Blissett: Cool. So let’s get let’s get ready to start. Let’s get started with today’s show. I thought you were going to say something else, Josh, but apparently, no.

 

Josh Crouch: I was going to get started. I was waiting for you. Use your press buttons. Yeah.

 

Tersh Blissett: Here we go.

 

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Tersh Blissett: Hey, Jennifer, welcome to the show.

 

Jennifer Clements: Hey.

 

Josh Crouch: Good to have you on.

 

Jennifer Clements: Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me. I’m super excited and stoked to be here and just share a little bit of. Mental health.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. So tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, kind of what makes it relevant in your life to talk about this?

 

Jennifer Clements: Absolutely. So I’ll start with the fact that my dad and I co-own and operate Clements Electric. We’re located in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. We service all of DFW. I [00:04:00] came on board in 2006 after I got out of the military, took in a co-owner co operator role in 2016 and hit the ground running. I had my first kid in 2006 after getting out of the military, and I’ve got three amazing daughters from 16, 11, eight and a son who’s eight as well. So a super exciting, busy life. But yeah, so we my oldest is the one who has had the most challenges with mental health. And that’s what I’m here to talk to you about today.

 

Josh Crouch: Awesome. So like we told you before the show, obviously you can share what you feel comfortable sharing. But you you mentioned to us that getting into and sharing the struggles of mental health with your daughter and stuff like that, it’s actually helped you guys as a business.

 

Jennifer Clements: Can you talk to that a little bit? Oh, 100%, yeah, absolutely. So the [00:05:00] first time we ever realized that she had a mental health problem, she had a mental breakdown. I we as adults use that phrase loosely and often. I feel like is, oh, I’m having a mental breakdown. But until you have heard it and seen it on an 11 year old’s face, you will never truly understand what that phrase means. So I challenge people to not use the statement unless you have one truly experiencing it or have seen it and experienced it. Because there’s it’s almost like you’re taking away the validity of the statement when when you use it. So she had a mental breakdown. And I remember standing in her doorway and she had tears streaming on her face and she was legit begging me to let her kill herself. She did not want to live anymore. And as a parent, you’re devastated, you’re crushed and you have no idea where to go. Yeah, there’s a million things [00:06:00] that hit you at that at that time. And I can still feel that doorway. I can still feel the cold of the doorway against my arm as I was leaning on that doorframe, because that was the only thing holding me up.

 

Jennifer Clements: And I held her, comforted her. And then you go into what’s next. So we. Obviously I slept with her. I cared for her throughout the night. And then it was pediatrician in the morning. Pediatrician said, you need to go to your children’s hospital. You need an evaluation. We did that from there. They gave us a long list of resources. And then through that list of resources and the stay at the hospital, we realized where the mental health breakdown came from. She was and at that time I was commuting a lot for work. We lived an hour and 15 minutes from the actual office building that I was going to. So that means your kids obviously ride the bus. They were riding the bus to school and home from school, so I would wait in the driveway. When they [00:07:00] got picked up, I would pull out and I would go to work. They would obviously make it home before I did. And there’s a lot of entrepreneurial parents that do that because we are just trying to make it in all honesty, and we are absolutely doing what’s we know in what we believe is best. And we trust our community that they have our backs for our kids.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah.

 

Jennifer Clements: And, and we have that trust because one, it’s kind of like it’s the only option we’ve got. And two, why would we not trust somebody or something that’s built for our children? So riding the bus, we actually found out that she was the target of of some serious bullying. The I mean, she was hearing things from kids on the bus that were, you know, if your parents loved you, they’d be home when you got home. So why don’t you take advantage if since your mom’s not home, why don’t you go out and kill yourself now? So that because your mom, if she was home, she’d care about you. Like [00:08:00] the things that these children were feeling from their own home lives. They were projecting onto my child.

 

Tersh Blissett: And that’s crazy.

 

Jennifer Clements: No repercussion from the school system.

 

Tersh Blissett: And so and they talk about this like like they talk about it all the time about like we’re not going to tolerate bullying and all this other good stuff, but then whenever they’re presented with it. For them not to do anything at all, that’s why.

 

Jennifer Clements: Or to punish the child’s. Or to educate the children. Or, hey, let’s let’s pull the bullies off the bus and educate them about what you’re doing to other students brain wise. Not necessarily that you need to be punished, but let’s educate you. Let’s give you some resources because obviously you’re dealing with some of your own stuff at home that’s not being addressed. So we after learning all of this. Obviously I went I pulled my kid out from [00:09:00] the district. She had started a mental health program which mental health programs don’t have normal school hours. They have weird hours. They have weird start times, weird end times transportation, sometimes transportation. No other times. And at that point in time, I was like, I’m not putting my kid on anything. Yeah. I mean, I was so guarded for her that I was not willing to put her on another unsupervised ride anywhere. So yeah. And I was the only one answering the phones at the time too, for scheduling. It was just me and my dad. We were a lot smaller than what we are now, so I don’t we didn’t have the resources. So we partnered with a, an amazing company at the time that for our software it was called Call Pro and they had just launched this awesome thing called online booking.

 

Jennifer Clements: So you could go in and schedule your own appointment online, which saved our ass [00:10:00] like 100%. Because when I was in the car and I spent so much of my day driving her to appointments, to therapy, to drop her off, no, I could go in and go to work, laser focus, get some work done, and then I got a plan to leave and go here. Well, the phone’s still going to ring while you’re in the car, so instead of it going to voicemail, I would answer the phone and I would be incredibly honest. And I had a gut feeling of like, this is going to go one of two ways, right? You got a 5050 split. Yeah. People are either going to be like, this lady is nuts and crazy and she’s got way too many, way too many issues for me to want to do business with her or too. They’re going to have empathy and relate because they’re human. And know that we’re not a corporate person and know that we are relatable in that we all have struggles. And I’m going to be honest with you that I’m going through one and it was the second one.

 

Tersh Blissett: I Did you ever serious did you ever experience a time where it was the [00:11:00] first where somebody was like, Oh, no. Right. Never. Yeah.

 

Jennifer Clements: No, not on any of those phone calls that I was honest with. No. And even if they didn’t book after I talked to them on the phone, they never vocally express their negativity towards me. So maybe they didn’t go online and book, but they weren’t like. Hateful either. Yeah. Yeah, which is surprising. Right? Like, but the vulnerability behind what I did is something that people are, like, so frowned away from. So we’re like, don’t do that. Corporate doesn’t do that. Don’t do that. And it was like, Let me try.

 

Tersh Blissett: So many people want to appear to be larger than what they are, whereas that in that scenario, it was it was your advantage to be the size that you are, be the vulnerable person that you are.

 

Jennifer Clements: Yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: Jennifer So can I ask you, can I ask you a opinion based question? [00:12:00] So do you feel so like your story about the stuff that happens during school between classes? You know, all this is like I feel when the kids that do the bullying do their bowling. Right, when the teacher’s backs turn. Yes. And do you feel like our schools are like especially public schools and some of the singing? I don’t want to throw all public schools into a bucket, but they’re like, they don’t know how to handle this. I feel like this story happened and we see documentaries, we see different shows and things online. And I feel like I think there was I can’t remember it was a really good Netflix show, 13 Reasons Why I Think We’re Well Done.

 

Jennifer Clements: Which is honestly, I’ve never watched because it’s too close to my heart. Sure, there’s a lot of things on TV that I just I shy away from just for the pure fact that it could have been me and for people.

 

Josh Crouch: That’s my point is my question is, do you feel like the school’s [00:13:00] just like like they don’t know how to handle these situations? Like, they just they want to be educators of the curriculum that they’re assigned. And that’s like they outside of that, they just don’t have the resources to actually handle this type of stuff.

 

Jennifer Clements: Yeah. Yeah. Mental health is not addressed in school systems. I, you know, there’s so many things in classes that need to be added to the public schools and mental health is one of them. I there’s so many resources that are lacking and teachers absolutely are doing the best that they can. But why don’t we take away the state testing and add in a mental health program? Because our society is going to benefit from being at a benefit from being taught how to handle an anxiety feeling versus how to take a stupid test. Because let me tell you, there’s more value in knowing, hey, this feeling is not permanent. Then I made it 80 on a test or I made I made a test that shows that my teacher taught me what she said. She taught me. Yeah. [00:14:00] No, I mean, I, I do not. And here’s the thing about me as a parent, I do not expect perfection for my children. I do not expect perfect attendance. I do not expect you to wake up in a perfect mood. I do not expect you to be in all of these sports and all of the things. But I do expect you to be a kind human. And if you start to fail at being a kind human, that’s where the disciplinary comes in. That’s the tried and true value and stigma that we live in, in our home daily. We do not yell. We there is no violence, there is no rest like wrestling, like we ask, Can I give you a hug? I would like to give you a hug. May I? Like we ask permission before giving a simple hug. We there’s so many things that I’ve learned just from traveling with my daughter through her mental journey that are simple but matter. And no, I don’t think the school systems are one. They don’t have the budget for it. Two state regulations need to back the fuck off with the testing. [00:15:00]

 

Josh Crouch: And I agree.

 

Jennifer Clements: And and do more and do more with mental health and.

 

Tersh Blissett: They call stress with the with the testing. I mean, my kids just went through this this testing. And for three weeks, that’s all we heard about. And it’s like. If you’re stressed, you’re going to put this kind of pressure on kids at this point in the in the school year. You failed the rest of the year. Like, why stress them out right now? Like, don’t put all of this pressure on the kids and they get it. Like, I understand that that’s how they get their budgets and that’s how they get their grading.

 

Jennifer Clements: How they’re measured and everything else.

 

Tersh Blissett: Which is not obviously not good because, I mean, I have kids that are advanced, one that’s a year ahead. And most of the subjects and I mean, he was stressed and I’m like, seriously, man, like, you’re going to aced this thing because you are legit taking the next [00:16:00] year’s math and social studies courses already. And but they still we’re we’re putting a lot of pressure on him to make sure that he performed his best on this test.

 

Jennifer Clements: Yeah. And I even told my 11 year old who is prepping for the state testing, she was like, I’m going to fail. That’s going to be mad at me if we fail. And I was like, I’m not. I was like, Let the school call me. I would love to tell them that you have made a be on a roll all year long and I don’t give a shit about the test and they could shove it with some buckshot. Like, I don’t care. Like you being a good human is all I care about. Do you know how to love others? Do you know how to identify when someone’s having a bad day? Do you know how to view someone who has no friends on the playground and approach them? Do you know how to start a conversation with someone? Like, that’s what I care about. That’s what matters. Because. Everything else you can learn if you need to learn it or want to learn it. But no, the schools are not prepared. They they [00:17:00] honestly are not prepared for a generation where there is no escaping. There is no escape anymore. I mean, they bring it they bring it.

 

Josh Crouch: Home on their phones. I mean, that stuff, literally Snapchat and all these other apps that they use it, it just continues on with them the days over. They don’t get that break anymore now. Like, it’s just it’s nonstop. Like I mean there’s there’s been or 14 year old goes through times where it’s I mean literally you talk to your friends all day at school. You see them all day at school. You’re still talking all the way until bedtime. And then you wake up, you talk to them again. It’s like there’s like we used to have breaks. We used to like they’ll play with the kids in our own neighborhood who didn’t necessarily go, weren’t in our grade or didn’t go to our school or whatever. You took breaks. You didn’t have to be plugged in all the time to this stuff. And it’s just it’s it’s it’s it’s like hard to figure out how to pull them. Like, show them it’s okay. Yeah, it’s okay to put this thing down. It doesn’t define your life. [00:18:00]

 

Tersh Blissett: Now, that’s easier said than done. The kids.

 

Josh Crouch: It is. It is. Especially with kids. I mean, even adults sometimes like you walk around and they’re like this. They walk down like this. The whole they don’t even know it. They have no idea what’s going on around them walking.

 

Tersh Blissett: No signs.

 

Jennifer Clements: Right.

 

Tersh Blissett: Is there is there for the people who are listening? Is there some way, like looking back, that you could have like, okay, so if I notice this at this time or this or like or advice for anyone else that may have a child that that they don’t think they’re going through any issue, but maybe they are. Is there something they can be looking at?

 

Jennifer Clements: Absolutely. So one of the big signs for us was was for her was withdrawal. Teenagers do it. It’s just a natural thing. Parents aren’t cool anymore. They know everything that matters will move out.

 

Josh Crouch: We never were.

 

Jennifer Clements: Yeah, exactly. So, like they. She withdrew quite a bit. She talked less, she interacted less. [00:19:00] Her appetite went down with other kids. Their appetite will go up because they’re eating their feelings. For her, it was she was avoiding eating cookies. No food allowed your room. And that meant that you had to eat at the table. And if you were at the table, you had to be around us. And I was going to ask you questions and that wasn’t okay. And then the other thing was, is asking better questions for your kids. I was really, really, really bad at this.

 

Josh Crouch: I suck at some examples of that because I feel like sometimes I don’t quite know how to you ask the normal questions, but if they don’t give you anything, like how do you dig deeper without being a total pain to them? Like how do you dig? Dig deeper with good questions that they actually have to give you something, right?

 

Jennifer Clements: So for me it was who do you sit with at lunch? And they would tell me who sat across from you. Okay. What activity throughout the day did you enjoy the most? But you can’t tell me. The activity you told me yesterday has to be a new one. What is it? And [00:20:00] then I got this really awesome, cool conversation deck. It’s by a company called Best Co, and it’s a deck of cards that legit sat on the table. And we would they would draw a card and read it and everyone had to answer it. And it was stuff from if you want $1,000,000, what would you spend it on? And if you had one person at school that you didn’t like. Who is it and why? I mean, but there’s conversation cards in there that help you learn how to communicate better with your kids and make your kids understand that you are one. Not going to scream at them, not raise your voice. You’re calm and you’re understanding, and your conversations can be more of like a debate style where you go back and forth. You don’t have to agree with everything that’s coming out of your mouth, but you got to at least hear them. Don’t be combative. That was one of the things I sucked at with her, was taking the time to be like, okay. And just saying that like, I didn’t have to say I don’t agree.

 

Josh Crouch: I mean, judging.

 

Jennifer Clements: Yeah, [00:21:00] there was absolutely no judgment behind any of it. I had to learn that. And then one of the other things is there’s a couple of things. There’s a couple of different versions of it, but it’s called the Eminem game. And so you go and you buy a big bag of women ends. Everybody takes a handful. And based on the color of the M&M, there’s different questions that go with it. So what’s one negative thing that happened to you today that you want to talk about? One positive thing you want to talk about? What’s one awkward thing you don’t want to talk about? What’s one embarrassing thing you don’t want to talk about? Name something that makes you feel happy. Tell me. Tell me a funny memory that you have of us from the summer. It’s really weird stuff, but like, you’ve got to communicate with them on their level and you’ve got to drill into these questions. You can’t just take their answer of Good. What does that mean? What part of your day was good and why do you call it good?

 

Tersh Blissett: Can I interject something here? Jennifer So what you’re describing also for for those and I’ve done this for years and I [00:22:00] didn’t do it for that reason. If you force them to recall situations throughout their day, they become amazing storytellers because they have to relive that entire emotion and everything else. And that’s the reason that I did it and forcing them because that’s I was like, Josh, I was like. I don’t want to keep asking you. What did you learn today? What? Did you have a good day at school? Yes, I had a good day at school. Okay, bye. I’m. I’m. I’m back at my. Go back to my desk and work. Asking them those deep, probing questions that are that are not necessarily prying questions. It’s just questions that force them to think, especially if they’ve gotten off the bus. So our kids are there. Bus drivers used to be an hour, almost hour and a half. Now they’re the first kids to get dropped off from school. And. But they were just mentally [00:23:00] zombies. They were exhausted from the ride home and long day at school. And you’d say, How was your day? And they’re like, It’s good. And then they just go to their rooms or go outside and play. And my wife, Julie and I, we were like, she’s super into like she wasn’t ever going to think that was okay. But me, I was like, okay, if they’re, if, if they have an issue, they’ll come to me. If they don’t have an issue, they won’t come to me. And, and I knew that wasn’t right. But that was just me being lazy, honestly. But then it was like, okay, I have to stop. I have to ask these deep probing questions and I still joke around with them and I’ll say, What’d you what did you learn today? And they’ll say, Nothing. I’ll say, Well, then why do I pay for you to go to school? Then they’re like, You shouldn’t you should just let me stay home.

 

Jennifer Clements: You’re so right.

 

Tersh Blissett: But. But it’s them knowing that it’s like you’re not getting in trouble. And don’t [00:24:00] be afraid if you had a bad situation today. Like to tell us because they do that and we go to bat for them and we’ve gone to bat for them. And even if they were wrong in the scenario, at least they knew that we were good at bat for them, you know, up front and we’d have a full conversation about it.

 

Jennifer Clements: Yeah. And the other thing I challenge you to do too, as a parent is have lunch with your kid once every six weeks or once every nine weeks. Whatever, whatever your school district is set up with, go and sit with your child at lunch. If it’s elementary school, typically you guys sit by yourselves, but you’re still going to see they’re be like, Oh, that’s so-and-so and that so-and-so. You’re going to learn who your child’s network is at school. And then when they get to middle school and you sit at the table with them, all of their friends congregate because you’re the mom and the parent that showed up have lunch with them once every six weeks. Take that time off, have your lunch break with that child, eat lunch with them and figure out what’s going on in their world and not. And I guarantee [00:25:00] you, you’re going to talk more to all of those kids at that middle school table than you are your own kid. But you’re going to know that circle. And then that’s going to be like, Hey, what did Sarah do today? Or, Hey, I saw Sarah. She had a really cute outfit on or like know your kids circle. And that was my one of my failures was I didn’t know my kids circle and she was falling into because she was retreating she was falling more into that crowd of the kids who seclude themselves and instead of the kids that engage in their surroundings. And so that’s a huge takeaway for me that I do now. I just went and had lunch with my fifth grader yesterday, and I will have lunch lunch with my second grader tomorrow.

 

Jennifer Clements: So, like, get to know that table and that network and they’re going to tell you who your friends are. And then they will also point out to you that’s the mean one or whatever. And having lunch yesterday with my 11 year old, I was there was a little girl that walked by and I was like, that was a cute dress she has on it. And my little one, [00:26:00] she goes, That’s what I told her. It’s a cute dress. And I was like, proud of you. Like, just simple things like that that that matters. So I challenge you as a parent. One get the conversation cards. If you print them off online, find them on Pinterest, create, write them on the popsicle sticks, have a popsicle game like it doesn’t have to be expensive. You don’t have to buy that. Have the kids come up with their own questions for you and it goes back and forth because the more the way that I put it is, let’s face it, we’re not raising kids, we’re raising adults, we’re not raising children to go out into the world and be children. We’re raising children to be adults. And so if we do not raise them to adequately engage in their environment around, they’re never going to succeed. They’re going to be a failure to launch. They’re not going to leave your house. So you’ve got to build that relationship of communication with them so that they don’t seclude. And when something serious is happening, they can come to you and talk to you about it because it’s not a big deal, because you’ve already had the awkward conversations of I’ve had [00:27:00] a shitty day and that’s okay.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. Yeah. And it is, it is okay. But go ahead, Josh, go ahead.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, I was I was going to I was going to tie this. So your experience so this is what, five, five ish years ago roughly?

 

Jennifer Clements: Yeah. She’s 16.

 

Josh Crouch: But so have you taken what you’ve learned from your own experience and applied it to how you interact with. Team members at your business or how has that impacted your business?

 

Jennifer Clements: It’s impacted my business with the fact that I’m just real with them on every aspect. I don’t hide anything from my team members, you know, situations with my divorce, I’m honest with situations with my kids, I’m honest with my staff even is hey, how is she doing? How is everything going? When do you see her again? And Hannah is putting in some serious work to maintain and be successful. She is at a boarding school right now, actually, so [00:28:00] hopefully she’ll get to come home soon. But she’s putting in the work every day and I am just like there again. It’s just that communication point of you can like, Hey, I’ve got a team member who seems a little bit off what’s going on? Like, I’ll send you a private message. Hey, you seemed a little short this morning. Just letting you know I’m here if you want to talk. But I just wanted to let you know. I notice it’s not a bad thing. I just want to let you know that I’m just aware of it, you know? And then they’re like, dang, she cares. She noticed I was off today or that I was short or that I was fast paced because I was running late because I woke up late because I stayed up late. Like it’s you don’t necessarily have to call everybody out with a write up. You can just notice something in a text message is like, Hey, what’s going on?

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah. No, I think that’s super important because now obviously we we talk about HVC a lot because Tersh is from the HVAC world. I’m from HVAC. It’s summer, it’s here. Right? It’s, it’s [00:29:00] getting hot everywhere. And this is the time of year when a lot of things will go unnoticed because it’s balls to the walls. It’s 12, 14, 16 hour days, it’s weekends. It’s just don type mentality.

 

Jennifer Clements: Absolutely.

 

Josh Crouch: And so is there some some stuff when it gets busy like this that you would give some advice to people as far as to like just checking in or anything that you could give to the business owners or managers listening?

 

Jennifer Clements: Yeah. So actually one of the biggest things, biggest takeaways I actually got was from a really good friend of mine named Cassie Pound. I don’t know if she’s been on with you guys or not. She’s been. Yeah, they go, Yeah. Cassie’s awesome. So one of the big things that I take from her is she actually pours in to the to the home of her technician. So she every summer, she creates a thank you. Hey, I know we are taking a lot from your home, and I want to recognize you as a support person. And she puts together a gift or a gift bag or gift basket, whatever you want to call it. But she puts together a recognized [00:30:00] recognition item and says, I’m recognizing that you’re putting in more work because I’m taking your person, and I want to thank you for that. And she she is amazing at recognizing that support is important. And so I challenge you as a business owner to make sure that you don’t forget the people. And military is also really good about this as well. It’s called the FRG. It’s the family group readiness. There’s a whole thing behind the military that reaches out to the support, the family group readiness, that supports the family behind the military, because without that support, your soldier is not going to be as good. So if your technician is stressed out because they’re missing crap at home, because their wife’s giving them a hard time, they’re not going to be performing at home or at work. They’re they’re just not. They’re going to be I need to get home. I want to go home.

 

Jennifer Clements: I want to clock out early. I’ve got a clock out. You’re going to have more issues with that technician and more friction points with that technician if you’re not supporting what it is they need to do at home. So recognize their [00:31:00] support systems. Tell their support systems, thank you, have a summer kickoff party and say we’re about to go into the summertime. We just want to thank you. Put together a something, whether it’s a mug or a gift card or free babysitting. I don’t know, like whatever you think you can do for your business to support that, to make sure that you lessen that friction point between you and your technician, because at home is handled and settled in, at home feels appreciated. So yeah, as business owners and going into the summer and going into our busy season, you’ve got to really just be mindful of maybe why that technician, you’re having friction points with them, maybe because at home they’re not home as much and they’re not used to it or they just recently got married. And so that’s a reason why they’re not used to it or they’ve come from a different company and things are new like don’t just assume things have conversations have right. Thank you. Notes really just acknowledge [00:32:00] that support system for that. I mean, we do teacher appreciation, right? I mean, we are so grateful for our teachers and we support our teachers. Why is there not just like in the military, there’s that family group readiness support and we celebrate that support unit. There’s family that mandatory family fun day.

 

Tersh Blissett: I hate that.

 

Jennifer Clements: They hated that whole day.

 

Tersh Blissett: But but so that’s a great point that you mentioned there, Jennifer. The fact that you like we’ve anybody who’s been in the military that’s gone to family day, you know, sometimes they’re good. Sometimes it’s like, oh, shoot me. Like, this is horrible. I don’t want to be here. How do you avoid that within your business if you’re going to do like a summer kickoff? Like, because sometimes the larger we get, the larger we’ve gotten. Sometimes it’s like, that’s not my cup of tea. I don’t want to be penalized if I don’t show up.

 

Jennifer Clements: And so.

 

Tersh Blissett: At.

 

Jennifer Clements: A bare [00:33:00] minimum, the at a bare minimum. I require my staff to show up. Whether your support team shows up or not, that’s completely up to you. But and the other way that I do that is I create that relationship with with their support. I call them directly and introduce myself and thank them for sharing their spouse or their partner or their son or their daughter with my company. Thank you. I just want to say thank you. I know I’m probably somebody that you hear a lot about, but I did want to introduce myself and say thank you.

 

Tersh Blissett: Hopefully it’s all in good ways.

 

Jennifer Clements: And it probably not and probably not. And that’s okay. But that’s something different that I do. So I am very much like. Do against the grain things because that’s where your successes are. Because when you’re going against the grain, you’re making a mark. And if you’re making a mark, you’re going to stand out. So just like I was open and honest with people who are calling me and I’m like, Hey, I’m on [00:34:00] my way to my daughter’s mental health pick up. Can you please book online if I text that to you right now? Or can you please just go to our website comments like you can click that online booking and then book your appointment and then I will call and confirm when I get back into the office, just like reaching out and saying, Hey, we’re doing a kick off. I just want to say thank you, or you don’t have a kickoff and you just send them home with a gift basket. Just, you know, and a lot of times, too, with men, men don’t communicate. And so if you even put your personal cell phone number in there, great. Yeah. I love you. Y’all are full of shit.

 

Jennifer Clements: But even if you put your purse, honestly, like women are better at keeping details. So if your spouse at home keeps the details for you, put your personal cell phone number in that thank you card that you said and is, hey, if there’s any important dates that you think that your spouse needs to take off for that, we may need to remind them about texting. To me, I’ll be more than happy to make sure they’re off of those and they’re like a perfect day care. They care. They care that my kid has graduation or my kid has field day [00:35:00] or we’ve got a gender reveal, or we’ve got an ultrasound or whatever you’ve got going on. Text it to me because he may be so worried and concerned about making money that I’m like, no, for your mental health so that you don’t go guilty later on. I’m scheduling you off for 4 hours, so you go to the ultrasound appointment, like whatever you’ve got going on, you just create that open communication, create the create some type of like openness with a boundary. Yeah. That you’re, that you are willing to do and.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, that’s great that. So when we do our onboarding, we’ll ask for four dates and we preface it like, Hey, what’s your anniversary? We’re just so you know, we’re going to send your we’re going to send flowers to your house. They’re going to be from you. And so you don’t have to sweat that. And so it’s one of those things where it’s like we’re constantly trying to make sure that we’re sending things to the family and having [00:36:00] that conversation. I had one technician one time is just spent a couple of years ago actually he was a dispatcher and he got home and his wife was super excited and everything else and like really bubbly. And he was like, I don’t know what’s going on right now. I think I did something wrong. She’s not supposed to be this happy. And he gets over to to there they have like a sofa table. He sent me a picture of it, sofa table and there were flowers on it. And he was like. Good health since you flowers. And he didn’t say it loud enough for her to really hear him. And she was like, thanks for sending flowers today. Like she was in the kitchen or something behind him. And he was like, Oh shit, I sent these and then he read the card and immediately he could tell that it was my verbiage. And he sent me a text and he was like, Man, you saved me. I completely forgot this. And I was like, I’ll be honest with you, man. I didn’t remember either.

 

Tersh Blissett: I had it [00:37:00] set up automatically as soon as you got hired. So it’s one of those things where it’s like there’s little and those little touches, that guy, he doesn’t work with us anymore. And it’s a cool story. He was the announcer. He is the announcer for the Savannah Bananas baseball team. And what you’re saying, going against the grain, doing Jesse Cole. He’s the owner of Savannah Bananas. One of the things he says is if it’s if it’s normal, do the exact opposite. Doing business differently is his thing. But anyways, he this this guy that was a dispatcher, he he his dream was to run a radio station. And he came to me and he was like, man, I got an opportunity to run these three stations, be the guy that runs them all. But I really love what I’m doing here. Like this. I didn’t think I was going to like being a dispatcher, but I love talking to these people and everything else. I was like, and I told him, I said point blank, If you don’t go, I’m going to fire you. And so he was like, All right, fine. And then he took it and he’s loving it. I mean, [00:38:00] loves it to death, but he didn’t want to leave whenever whenever that opportunity came up, even though it was his lifelong dream. But yeah, little things like that really. They do add up over time. It’s a consistency thing though too. You have to make sure you do it every time as often as you can anyways.

 

Jennifer Clements: Yeah, yeah. And you know, one of the other really cool things that we do is we’ve got a group text message that’s going all day long with my technicians. And it’s simple things from sharing your sales tickets to sharing a review, to sharing that you put in a yard sign or work that you did, being proud in that aspect and just, you know, giving each other a hard time and razzing each other and creating those inside jokes so that people want to have that camaraderie with you and to want to feel included. So I’m not perfect at it every day, but I did want to share what has worked for me. And it’s not traditional. [00:39:00] It goes against the grain. People want to be bigger, seem bigger, but sometimes showing who you really are is the best thing you can do.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, 100%. And I apologize for everybody in the chat because I completely ignored you all today. I did, too. But Everett. Everett said. He said, what a genuine and sincere woman. Super brave and thank you. And somebody else who is I can’t see who it is. But they said teaching communication skills should be part of school curriculum. I wholeheartedly believe with that. And I was terrified to talk to anybody until well after high school. And it’s wild how uncomfortable I was talking to new people.

 

Josh Crouch: Strangers stigma with it. Right. So I think the stigma, even.

 

Tersh Blissett: The stranger danger, things like that, talk to people and.

 

Josh Crouch: Beat a guy. Like if you talk about your feelings.

 

Tersh Blissett: Oh yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: That’s a stigma that you’re weak or you’re not as strong [00:40:00] or something else. And it’s honestly it’s quite literally the opposite since we’re talking about opposites is quite literally the opposite. It’s easier to hold it in sometimes than to actually open up to somebody and let the feelings come out. Let the emotions come out.

 

Jennifer Clements: Yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: So I mean, that’s hard work. You actually you have to put in the work to do that. And it’s I love that you came on and shared this and continue to share it. I mean, we the social networks are only so big, right? We all kind of follow each other in one way or another. So we’ve seen your story, which I know has come with yourself with some personal transformation and stuff like that too, which is phenomenal. I love seeing that stuff.

 

Jennifer Clements: I know I’m a very open I’m a very open book. And I tell people that, like, if you see something on one of my stories and you want to ask me a question, none of it offends me. That’s that’s part of what I’ve learned through the journey with my daughter, is you’ve got to be able to allow people to ask [00:41:00] you questions without being offended. And if something does, I just want to answer you. I’d be like, respectfully, I’m just not that’s just not something I can dig into. But I’m an open book I might allow you to ask. And most of the time I would say 95% of the time I’m going to have an answer for you of at least like, okay, this is this is what it is. So, I mean, ask.

 

Josh Crouch: And I love that. I think we’re going to have to do a part two and get your app a little bit. Absolutely. So I don’t want to spoil that too much, but we can.

 

Tersh Blissett: Can you tell? Before we can. Yeah. Give us a little teaser on that.

 

Jennifer Clements: All right. So League of Contractors, it’s for contractors. By contractors, it’s a referral based app where if you put up a referral, you can get paid.

 

Tersh Blissett: Okay. Well, it sounds like you’ve said that once or twice potentially.

 

Josh Crouch: Little, little pitch there.

 

Tersh Blissett: Jim, we really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing everything. If anybody does it does not it’s not connected with you. What’s the best way for that to happen?

 

Jennifer Clements: So I’ve [00:42:00] got a I’ve got a public figure page called the Jennifer Clements. I also have my regular Facebook page, which is just Jennifer Clements. I’ve got League of Contractors. You can also find that page. And then there’s Clements Electric. Our Clements Electric, obviously, Facebook page. I’ve got to talk. If you guys want to follow me on TikTok and also Instagram, I call life as it is. I call the shots how I feel. I’m very open and a lot of times I make things that people tell me to take down.

 

Tersh Blissett: So we’re going to have that.

 

Josh Crouch: Sometimes that makes me even more interested in looking at it. So. Right.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. Cool. Well, we appreciate you being on the show today. And if anybody has any questions or anything, don’t hesitate to connect with Jen. If you if you have any questions for me, don’t hesitate to ask me and Josh. But with that being said, I hope you have a wonderful and safe week until we talk again next time. Now, I will tell you, next week we will not be here because Josh will be going to [00:43:00] a far, far away land and I’ll be going to pod fest. So we will not have a show live show next week, but we will still release an episode. But that being said, I hope you have a wonderful and safe week and we’ll talk to you again next time. See you. By.

 

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