Business Innovators Radio - Josh Farley | President & Entrepreneur | Values in Action: How Culture Shapes Customer First

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

In this episode, we’re joined by Josh Farley, President and entrepreneur, as he shares the three core values that transformed his company from six figures to seven figures. Josh dives into the tough decisions and bold changes that reshaped his business, including a surprising outcome: 90% of his employees left after the values shift.Through candid storytelling, he reveals how these changes impacted company culture, customer service, and the long-term success of the organization.Listeners will gain practical insights into building a values-driven business, the challenges of implementing meaningful change, and the unexpected rewards of staying true to your principles.Whether you’re an entrepreneur, leader, or team member, this conversation offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at how values can drive growth, shape culture, and create a company that thrives.Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/josh-farley-president-entrepreneur-values-in-action-how-culture-shapes-customer-first

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. Hello, hello, hello, everyone. How are you? Hope you having an incredible, incredible day and may peace be upon you. And welcome, welcome, welcome to the show with me, your host, Dr. Isdehajama, and to have a friend with me today, Josh Fardi, who, is the president and entrepreneur. And we're going to be talking about values in action,

how cultures shapes customer first. Values in action, how cultures shape customer first. So Josh, welcome to the show and thank you for being here with me. Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate the time. Great. Thank you. Okay, so Josh, let's go straight to the point, right? But how, why is culture so important in an organization or in any business? Well, I think it's not necessarily as important as what the culture is, is how you define it, right? So every business has a culture, just like every business has values. It's whether you define them or not and really give them a purpose.

Once you have a solid culture, you can nurture that for a positive impact on your own team, let alone, and then that will go out to the customers. You know, it's kind of twofold. Yeah, so culture is one thing about how you define them is a different thing, right? So I feel like if you don't define them, it's going to create its own shape that may not necessarily be what is going to be of value or of service or the best thing for your organization or your customer. So let's talk us through about how do you then define a culture? So I started with my values. I read Lincioni's The Advantage, and it spoke to me because it's talked about,

your company has values, whether you define them or not. And that line particularly, I looked around my team, I smoked, my whole team smoked, I had tattoos, my whole team had tattoos, I cursed a lot, all my team cursed a lot. And I started thinking, oh my gosh, we do have an undefined culture based on the values that I presented to the people that I was hiring. And I really did a deep soul search into what are my true values. and I re-aligned my values behind empathy, humility, and accountability, and put those first and foremost, and I ended up losing 90% of my staff within the next three months, but I backfilled

them with people that aligned with those new values that I was putting out to the world. Changed my life. What was those values again that you've realigned yourself to? So humility, accountability, and empathy. So empathy, humility, and accountability. but we thought that was a little bit feminine. So, you know, as a contractor, we kind of realigned that and rewarded it into what we have as our mantra is sacrifice for others, move without fear, and own my outcomes because we are redline. And that's kind of what drives our culture is those values.

So we hire and fire by those values. We reward by those values. We see somebody sacrificing for others or having empathy. You know, we reward our team based on those. And if it's not the right fit, it's not the right fit. we'll write you a recommendation and wish you luck. Brilliant. So do you want to talk to about each one, very briefly, like an example of how an employee

kind of embrace that value? Sure. So empathy we have, we know what it feels like when somebody needs help. We need help, right? We know what it feels like. More so, we know what it feels like in the middle of the night when you're without power and you need somebody to get out of bed, right? So those are the things we see every week.

we have an on-call technician, just by being on-call, our employees are showing that sacrifice for others and the empathy of, hey, I know these people need my help, and I'm going to get out there and I'm going to help them. Doesn't mean you have to do it for free. It just means that we have to do it because we know, right? Yeah, that's great. So empathy, like thinking about other people, being there to help other people. I also mentioned not necessarily doing it for free because that all can be laid out up front. Hey, we're providing the service of being on call, but this is part of the package that comes with it. And I feel like a lot of people, they may just want to have that peace of mind. If anything happens, especially when you're on a tight, urgent,

complicated project, you want that piece of mind that you can just like pick up the phone and someone will take care of it. So that is the first value, empathy. What is the next one? what's an example that your company does for employees to embrace that value? So we call it humility, but it's coupled with confidence. So it's being humble enough to raise your hand or pick up the phone saying, hey, I've ran into something I haven't ran into before, ask for help, and knowing that you have the confidence that your team's going to have the empathy to help you, right? So we've seen, I've worked, I used to work at places where they throw you out there to the wolves

and you'd run into something you didn't know how to do, but you couldn't call your boss. because they ridicule you, right? They'd be like, what do you mean you don't know how to do that? We're not that culture, so our culture is also education driven. So, you know, it's important that they have humility to say, hey, I don't know what I'm doing here. I need some help. Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing here. And also for the other people who say, yes, I can help you with it.

And having humility on both sides or like, no, you're just the past, figure it out yourself. It's kind of like both ends of this. And also letting, I feel like letting customers know that, hey, I don't know this part yet, but I'm going to figure it out. Give me like a day or so for me to figure and I'll have an answer for you versus trinketing on things and then it becomes worst for the problems from it had started earlier. And what is the third value, Josh? Accountability. You know, it's when something goes wrong. It's not a matter of if something goes wrong. It's a matter of if something goes wrong. it's a matter of when something's going to go wrong.

It doesn't matter, you know, the scale of what went wrong, but it's like raising your hand, just, hey, hey, I, something happened. We either the tech messed up or the office didn't put the right notes in. Something happened along the lines and it didn't go exactly per our process. And it's just, hey, owning that outcome, right? We're going to make it right. We're going to tell you. We're not going to, we don't want anyone to find out something went wrong.

We want to let them know as soon as possible. And it rarely does that happen, but, you know, you're running late or you stop, you forgot something, you got to go back, you know, just owning those outcomes. And that's what drives our culture here at Redline. Yeah, absolutely. And it's not easy to do like speaking to truth or taking accountability. I remember when I was in La Jolla, it was breakfast time and I was ordering like an omelet or something, like an egg omelet. So I ordered that. Okay, and then I went sit out, and as I wanted to eat it, I saw that there was meat in it. Like, I don't eat meat, only meat our halal, which is me that is slotted by Muslim people.

So I'm like, oh, shoot, like, so I went over to the counter. I was like, I'm so sorry, I ordered this. It was my fault. I didn't check that it has meat in it. I was wondering if you can make me another one that, you know, I'd be happy to pay for it because it was my mistake. Because I didn't check the ingredients. When I was ordering, I didn't check that it was meat and I thought it was just eggs. So, you know, the lady was, okay, sure, we'll make you another one.

They made it. And I went as soon and pick it up. I said, okay, how much is it? Don't worry about it. Because some people, they value honestly. My friend, Aaron, who was with me, said, you know, not a lot of people are going to say they make mistakes. I was like, yeah, it's hard for me. It's like, I was the one who did not read the description of the ingredients.

Most people would just say, oh, I ordered this without meat, but it's got meat in it, even though it's got meat. Interesting culture out there, I know. I know. It's so crazy there. And so those are the three values that you have, like empathy, accountability. And also, what was the other one? Empathy, humility, and one more. Well, empathy, humility, and accountability. Empathy, humility, and accountability. And you mentioned that when you started to, recalibate to those values, a bunch of your existing employees left. Yeah. And so we lost, yeah, 90% of our staff, 75% of them left voluntarily. And there's a, there was a few that we had to ask to leave because they just weren't aligned. But looking back, I wish I had done it years sooner.

Yeah. Was it like a scary thing, Josh? because like 90% of your employee left, was it a scary thing or was it like one of the things like a bold thing? You mentioned that you wish you had done it sooner. Well, it's always scary to think that, you know, you might not have guys to fulfill the promise to your clients. But the problems we were looking back now, right?

Like we were talking earlier, rarely does a problem occur? And when it does, it feels like, wow, it's so upsetting because it's very, very, very, rarely happens. You know, but back when before my values were defined, there were problems all the time. It was the culture of putting out fires and tackling one thing after another. But having those values and getting the right people just changed the ability, one, for me to change the rules as I go, as I started to get better processes in my business to, you know, now we have people that are empathy to me growing and being able to adapt to what we're doing versus some of the older mindset was this is how we're going to do it forever.

I want to change and want to move forward and want to, you know, come into the 21st century or 22nd century, whatever people are calling it these days. So it was scary, but once you rip the bandit off, the grass is greener, I'll tell you. Yeah, and that's for any entrepreneurs or any business owner, that's a scary part, right, when you want to make a change. Yeah. And then when you want to make the change and then you know, going to affect a lot of things.

Fulfillment, one thing, finding the right people, another thing. And even for me, sometimes there's a team member that I still hold on to because even though this team member makes so many mistakes, it's just easier than to find another person. Where else, whenever the mistake was made, it is three or five times more of my effort. to correct like you were saying like the culture of putting fires all the time or double triple

checking the work when i don't that's not my job to be double triple checking thing it should be done um the the super who is going to i call them the super who is the one that's going to get it done and get it done right if they don't they can ask questions um for it yeah so what have you seen josh now that was how many years ago was that oh it's going on now nine to 10 years, and we've been able to set goals and hit our goals and move forward. We landed on the Inc. 5,000 list five years in a row as far as America's fastest growing companies. You know, some of those things like you think about those three values, they're my core values. And then on top of that, we added three red line values, right?

So we have sacrifice for others, move without fear, oh, my outcomes. That's empathy, humility, and accountability. then we have knowledge of position, communication, and positive attitude. So all of those things combined really helped us set the bar. For us, communication is number one. Customers want somebody to answer the phone. They want to be responded to in a reasonable time. Everybody needs to have information to move forward.

So those are, you know, paramount. And then education, we meet weekly and we talk about our trade and we learn something new. So those things just really took me from, you know, an accelerator type business, you know, somewhere in the 700,000 range to, you know, $5 million company. So you think about how little of change it really was, but the impact was so, it was far beyond measure. Yeah, it's far beyond measure. And then those, the values and recalibrating and having people who are aligned to the values who is like, oh, yeah, Yeah, I'm in, and people who are not in alignment, they will deselect themselves. Correct.

Like, you know, this is not my thing, not my vibe. And what was your role or how did you have your employees embracing those values? So we put it on a mantra. We put it on our shirts. We put it on our trucks. We resided Monday morning at our Monday morning, all hands. We discussed them nonstop. Same thing with every new thing that we in, you know, that we in, what's the word I'm looking for that we invent, right?

Every new process that we come up with, every new thing that we bring to the team, disseminate, right? Everything that we disseminate down to the team. It takes practice. Everything takes practice. So we practice those things. We remind people why we're doing what we're doing. Just like our benefits, every Monday morning, we remind people the benefits that we have in case they forget or they're not using them. You know, that's really, it's following up with our, like, you know, the importance of sales.

Follow, follow up, follow up, follow up, right? Follow up with our clients. We need to follow up with our team. We have to sell ourselves to our employees, so we're following up. Yeah, I mean, that's a really good tagline. Like, you've got to sell to your employees too, right? Yeah. And the same vision and the mantra.

So it's like the repetition. Right. Of reminding and discussion, the Monday morning discussion. and how have you seen, Josh, for this to translate to the customers, for this new values, the empathy, humility, and accountability translating into customers, either their satisfaction or the quality of the job or the revenue, how have you seen it translate into the customer's end? So part of our process is we tell our customers what our values are. We get a lot of feedback. Listen, your guy was great. He owned an outcome here or he was empathy to

plight here, you know, we definitely hear that. We've also had the experience where we've let customers go because they don't align with our values, right? So our technicians are out there saying, hey, these customers are asking for me to not do this to code. They want to save some money because whatever reason, but they're asking me to do something that's illegal to our license. You know, we just, we just use those values to hire and fire our team and our customers. And then, but we've also seen, you know, we got them on our trucks. I get a lot of people saying, man, I love those values. I love them on your truck.

Or they'll ask me what it means and we'll have conversations about it. Everybody, it's a great, great feedback. Not a lot of contractors out here put values anywhere. Yeah, no, they just usually drive the F-150 or F-2. Right, yeah, exactly. Just bust through things, which is, I think, is great because that's what sets you apart and differentiate you in a way, like you said, have the momentum or acceleration that you have from, you know, a high six figure to a seven

figure kind of business step. So then let's talk about what is, you know, the next step for your business because you're at this point now. What do you see some things that are happening to grow and expand your business? Because if you're not growing or expending, you're going to be dying. Sure. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's like a baby, right? If you're not growing, you're dying. Yeah, we talk about that, too. You know, the technology is changing.

So every field, I assume, has technology and, you know, it's moving or impacting their business. Ours is data centers. A lot of, a lot of energies going now into technology into AI. So, you know, we're trying to, we're trying a couple new verticals. Talk around here is thinking outside of the electric box, maybe a plumbing or HVAC, being able to pull them under our umbrella as far as, you know, our process, our values, that really is the framework for success in any vertical, I would say. And then I do still myself, I still perform commercial estimates. I have a handful of clients I like to work with. But maybe I'd like to

get out of that and move into more of a marketing standpoint, maybe write a book, you know, and then get more of an into the business development side yeah that is awesome getting more into the business development strategy marketing so which is where i spend most of my time but you know yeah and that's something that not many entrepreneurs or uh contractors like yourself do right because that is like if you number one anything in business the number one thing is revenue generation if you don't have revenue generation no matter what you do expense is always going to come whether you have revenue or not. Like every month, it's like clockwork. So touch, give a couple of tips to the entrepreneurs out there. And what is the best way to

have a consistent revenue, but also an increase of revenue? Well, do what you say you're going to do, right? Do what you say are going to do. Find the customers you want to do work for. Don't be the, don't do, don't do, don't be a be all where you're, you're trying to manage every single client in the market. You're not trying to make everybody happy, right? There's a client out there that you want, target that client, go after it, whether it's the type of work that you're going to be doing or the type of client that you're going to do. For instance, we do commercial and residential service. We do electrical service in existing buildings. We don't do new construction. I don't work with a lot of general contractors. And that's

not a target. I don't waste my time. When they call us up and ask us if we want to bid, we just say, no, we don't. But before I got to a place where I could start to figure out how do I maximize my efforts, my profits with my efforts, we wouldn't turn anything down. We would just take whatever we wanted. But we were spinning our wheels with the wrong clients. We had clients that were asking for so much. Before you know it, you're doing so much back-in work. They're not even profitable anymore. Why are we doing this? Learning when to say no is also a good tip. But, But pick your target and go after it and be that niche, right? They say the riches are in the niches are in the niches,

but like literally tell people what you wanted to do. When somebody asks me what we do, I say we're electrical contractor, work in existing businesses and our targets, commercial clients with multiple locations. So if somebody heard that, they're not going to send me a ground-up residential new construction. They're just not going to do that. Yeah, so you're focusing on your niche, right?

That's it because that's what you focus. on everything that you've got is, is, if you've got is invested in that, and you want to be known in that area. Because if you do the commercial and the residential and the new op and the reconstruction and everything, you're going to be spreading yourself thin. And I'm speaking even to myself, like,

oh, I want to do this and this and this. And like you said, and then soon you're like, what is the profit? There's no profit. You're even pumping in your own money in it. Right. And then you got employees with different skill sets that you can't use this guy over here and this guy can't work over here and then you're juggling all around um it's hard to get it's hard to say

no we get distracted we see all the glitter and glam of you know this morning i was having my leadership meeting and somebody mentioned there's a residential contractor with a great social media and i'm like well that's not our target oh right talk social media that's it's really for homeowners it's not really it's not our target um do we do it if somebody calls this existing business yes but it's not our target so just don't get distracted just find your find your niche focus on it and dig deep yeah find and don't get the distraction kind of right because there's so many things that you could be doing and then you're kind of like spreading up thin and also knowing where to play and how to play that's going to maximize your your skill set your

experience, your revenue, your potential. So I've heard, like, one of the dads mentioned, because my son brought his ice hockey, and one of the dad was like, you know, in the pros, the players would sharpen their skates. Like, they know all the ices around in the States. So they would sharpen their skates based on which ice they're going to play. Because some ice are drier, some, some ices are wetter,

some ices are in between. So the way your skates move and the way you have, handle the puck, it's different. So you really want to zone in and niche down and understand, like you say, the social media thing is not even your thing. And what I noticed as well that you want to have the situational awareness. So we just came back from Nashville because my son had an ice hockey tournament there. And then I saw the puck, right?

When the kids were passing to each other from our team, it just like bounce off the sticks. And I'm like, like the kids couldn't catch the puck. They just wanted to bounce off. And then we were wondering what is going on so they keep on missing the puck. And then the other team gets it. And we started to ask question. They were like, oh, the ice here is drier. And the ice there is drier than the ice over here.

So I said, uh-huh. So if you don't understand your niches, you know, you're going to lose the puck. You don't understand the ice. So that's so interesting that you brought that one up, Josh, in terms of niche down and capitalize on that market. Well, it's a fascinating story. I didn't know that, right? And I wouldn't know that if I decided to get into that market. And then I would be the struggling guy trying to learn all these things. And yeah, you don't want to waste your time. Yeah, I mean, there's a point where you have to learn is if you're starting out, then obviously you've got to put the effort to learn. But at your place, you've already in a way established in your area.

you just know, you're focusing on residential and commercial, commercial clients is multiple existing properties for you to do the electrical. Okay, so let's wrap up with this, Josh. What are the do-s and don'ts that people, you know, when we speak about culture, when speak about value, what's the biggest thing that people make mistakes on? Oh, geez, there's so, I mean, there's so much. I think the lack of recognition, you know, an employee. it's hard it's hard to remember what it feels like to be an employee right when you become an

entrepreneur you're just you've always had a different mindset than other employee minds most employees like to be in their box they want to stay in the and do the work that they were hired to do but everybody wants to be appreciated so i think there's been a lack of appreciation especially in the trades here making sure that there's some recognition some some some process or program for recognition, some intention to recognition. Thank you. A nice job. I can't believe I didn't, I wish I would have thought of that.

You know, those things go such a long way when it comes to morale and culture. I think that's one thing that's overlooked. Another thing is, fire faster. It's hard. It's really hard to do. And you think to yourself, I'm going to keep this person until I find the person that's going to replace them but that's that's you're hurting your culture the more you let somebody that's not a right fit because your employees know that that person is not a right fit before you do and they watch

they see everything you do they're listening to every word you say and if you're not if you're talking about culture and how you fire and fire and do all the things but you're not doing it same thing as when your clients if you don't do what you say you're going to do they're going to leave so if there's somebody that you're thinking it's not the right fit you should probably just let them go yeah fire you fasting you talked about it earlier you're doing one two three checkups you might as well just do the job yeah exactly i might as well do the job instead of like spending an hour to write a detail email and those steps one you know all the detail and still not getting i still checking on it so she'll she'll watch the podcast and then she'll you know she'll select

And, like, my friend Laura told me, she's like, you know, is you can't, she's a, she's a one X. You're a 10x. You can't expect her to play the 10x. She is not that person. And sometimes she's a minus 2x. You know, like, so, and Laura was like, because I'm like, okay, Laura, she needs to do this and this. I'm like, no, is you, you can't expect her to be that. I can get it.

I can understand it. But not her. You cannot expect her to be a 10x. she is not. And that's what you're seeing. When you, when people are not aligned to your culture, let them go. Fire faster. You're being of service to yourself. You're being of service to them. And what you're saying, that your employees, they're watching, they're watching, they know. And then they kind of like, oh, okay, right, this is happening. What's the boss going to do about it? Right. And if you think your employees aren't smart enough to know, shame on you.

Yeah. I mean, you should hear the gossip that they're talking. talk about it's like they know and sometimes it's just the guts that you have or you having the balls to like take that balls of steel that is like balls of steel all right josh thank you so much for having this conversation with me on values in action how cultures shapes customer first and the impact you can have on your organization the impact can having your employee how it translates to your customer. And do you want to remind everybody the three core values that you yourself? Obviously, everybody is different. You're more than welcome to choose the values that most align to you. But remind everybody again, what is your value? Yeah, thanks again for having

me. It was fun. So my values are empathy, humility, and accountability, which we put in a mantra, sacrifice for others, move without fear, and own your outcomes. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Josh, for hanging out with me. And everybody can remember, it takes courage when you, you are afraid to take action of the hardest thing. The hardest thing to do is to take action when you know something is right. Like Josh said, fire faster. It takes courage to fire fast versus like hanging on. It's kind of relationship too and dating, isn't it, Josh?

You know, you know that person and still like hang on with them, but you know that the right thing and you're like still hanging on another year in that relationship. so fire fire faster or everybody take care and please be upon you like josh you want to say goodbye to everybody see you guys later thanks for having me thanks for listening to business innovators radio to hear all episodes featuring leading industry influencers and trendsetters visit us online at business innovators radio.com today Thank you.