BusyBeeNews - June 2021

june 2021

Wellness Tip Submitted by: ali banaszek

10 Mental Wellness Tips that will Change Your Life!!!

The best thing to do for your mental health is to do things that you genuinely enjoy.

Take care of yourself and your personal needs.

Make sure to eat something and drink some water.

Surround yourself with positive people, places, and things.

Value yourself Spend time with good people Find a healthy way to manage stress Shut your mind off Mix up your routine Increase activity and exercise Keep up with good sleep hygiene Avoid alcohol in excess Perform random acts of kindness Don’t be afraid to seek help

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submitted by - gary chinn

answer - 13755

What is the street address to the old HMC building on Benchmark?

CURRENT JOB OPENINGS: Inside Sales – Pump Team Account Manager – Little Rock Factory Service Team – Central Texas (Austin or San Antonio) Warehouse Associates – Carrollton Account Manager – Corpus Christi, Victoria, and The Valley Inside Sales Associate – Plumbing – Carrollton

motivational quote Submitted by: ali banaszek

Tales from the

Road

by Pat Armstrong

They say, “music soothes the savage soul” and it’s true. Music takes us away to a different place and time. I fondly remember falling asleep with a Sony Walkman tape player and headphones on my head listening to Motley Crue and The Eagles.

Being a GenX’r, my taste in music is wide and varied. Growing up, we listened from Simon and Garfunkel to John Denver, and from Dolly Parton to Jackson Brown, so when I say it’s varied, it’s really varied.

Times are still the same. I still listen to the same music with new stuff thrown in here and there.

When I travel, instead of a Sony Walkman, I use iTunes and Airpods as my preferred music delivery method. LOVE THEM! Best thing since sliced bread and canned beer, as my buddy David would say.

When I get off a plane and I’m walking up the boarding ramp, my “walk up” song is “Gangsters Paradise” or “Lose Yourself,” sometimes it’s “Welcome to the Jungle”… see, varied.

Most of the time when I get on the plane, I stow my stuff, get situated, engage my seat mate if appropriate, put in my ear buds, and hit the shuffle button, on whatever playlist I feel like at the time.

It was a Sunday evening, American Flight #3380 from DFW to Albuquerque, completely full flight. It was a long weekend already, but I had to be in Albuquerque at 7:30am Monday morning, so you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

Same habit…load the plane, seat 8C (port side aisle), right behind First Class, three seats on the port side and three seats on the starboard side… totally packed flight.

Preflight announcements heard, push back, taxi to runway, massive jet engines rumbling below the wings, and my earbuds are in, fully charged and ready to rock!

I hit the “shuffle” button on my 80’s play list and my one-time crush, Kim Carnes, comes on with her dusky voice singing “Betty Davis Eyes”. Still a great song! The jets spool up for take-off, so I CRANK up my music ‘cause you know, you gotta hit the notes when she belts out that chorus, “She’s got Betty Davis Eyes”.

Then a tap on my shoulder from the guy behind me. I’m thinking this is weird… what the heck does this guy want???

Me - “Yes sir, how can I help you?”

9C – “Great song!”

Me – “Yeah it is” …then the penny drops…

9C – “Yeah we can hear it too!”

My ear buds had disconnected somehow!!! The 18 people around me got a great laugh and got to appreciate my taste is 80’s female singers… I was so embarrassed, but I started laughing.

9C – “We were all wondering how long it was gunna take you to figure it out?”

Me – “A good while, apparently!”

I’m such a nerd. That has happened to other people on a plane and I have sat there saying to myself…”what an idiot” …on this day, I was the idiot!

Life lesson, dance like no one is watching, but when on a plane, make sure your earbuds are connected!

Stay safe and fly right! - Pat

WHAT THE HIVE CAN TEACH BUSINESSES ABOUT

LEADERSHIP, EFFICIENCY,

& GROWTH LESSON #15 Outcompete by Outfinessing Rivals THE WISDOM OF BEES by: Michael O’Malley, Ph.D. Honeybees are the Wal-Mart of the insect kingdom: nifty, ever-present competitors. They are generalist invaders, feeding on more than one hundred species of plants in a given geographic area, laying claim to the vast riches of their territory.

Honeybees consistently outperform one of their chief rivals, the bumblebee, through greater agility in the collection of nectar. Honeybees and bumblebees have overlapping market interests of 50 percent or more, and honeybees are able to push bumblebees to the territorial fringes by systematically co-opting supply.

The remarkable success of the honeybee is attributable to several factors. Thousands of nestmates perform a portfolio of jobs and coordinate their actions in a highly cohesive way. A few important lessons for competitive advantage are these:

Set clear goals and direction • Define assignments and accountability Practice active discovery • Encourage learning • Build effective teamwork Leave some room for enterprise • Empower others Bees exhibit a worldview that we correspondingly would describe as fair, open-minded, and objective.

Bee Fair - The hive treats every foraging bee as equally important.

Bee Open-Minded - After the bees have fully exploited the nectar of a flower patch, they abandon the patch, but periodically check back for a few hours just to make sure that circumstances have not changed.

Bee Objective and Data-Driven - The decisions bees ultimately make are evidence based.

The honeybees’ formula for success should be no surprise to businesspeople.

Clear goals and accountabilities, for example, are staples of enterprise.

More Pollen

Honeybees’ constant intake and use of information make them fast and formidable competitors. They use data quickly and effectively in order to react to opportunities and shed themselves of wasted motions and obsolete functions.

Stop, Reflect, Focus

The basic idea is that reflection, the ability to examine ourselves and deliberate on our actions, is an intentional act that involves a willingness to disengage from the habitual and to reassess our direction in the context of core purposes and values.

by adam merritt In most of our territories, the quarantines and work from home orders have come to an end.

The doors to our customers are open again and requests for in person training are starting to roll in. While we all recognize the value of a quick online training session - and they will continue to be an integral portion of overall strategy - no Zoom, Skype, or Teams meeting can replace the effectiveness of good old-fashioned face-to-face training.

In May, we took the show on the road to our customers in Oklahoma. Two large residential plumbing contractors in the Tulsa area have hired a lot of new help and reorganized their teams to better serve their customers. We are proud that their long relationship with AO Smith and American water heaters meant that they saw us as a resource to help train their new teams.

The day started at 6AM with a group of plumbers whose experience ranged from two weeks to three decades in the business. Everyone in the room came away with something new, even though we were only talking about the basics of diagnosing and repairing residential water heaters. The most valuable visual aid was a cut-away model of an expansion tank.

“Does everyone here test the water pressure in the hose and then inflate the tank before you install it? Nod yes with me. Keep nodding if you will definitely be doing that on all your future installs.” They want us to come back and talk about tankless next time.

The rest of our day consisted of a tankless tear-down lesson for HVAC technicians who have become the tankless trouble shooting experts for their service division. We grabbed a returned unit from the scrap pile and took it apart piece-by-piece, explaining the function and failure modes of each component as we went. After hours of tinkering, a little bit of barbecue, and some time talking about installation considerations and accessories, these HVAC techs admitted that while they were initially intimidated by working on a tankless heater, now they look forward to the next service call. They want us to come back and talk about tank style heaters next time.

What training would you benefit from? Factory Support Team has a new project that you can help with. We are developing a series of Product 101 lessons and we could use your input. These lessons are for HMC employees, so that we can all better speak about and understand the products we rep. Within the next month, a survey will be sent out to determine which of the lines, that we rep, you would like to get more training on. We welcome any and all feedback!!!

Manager’s Update

Jim Ambery

President and C.E.O. Team: The term “light at the end of the tunnel” has been used all too often to describe our positive outlook on coming out of this 2020/2021 pandemic year. I know I have used this way too many times, even as far back as last April. Over a year later, I think we have actually arrived at this point where we all truly can see a life similar to what we had in the past. We have all rallied together as a cohesive team that was ready to take on every task that was thrown in front of us.

Most strategic forward-thinking companies, including HMC, were busy formulating a strategy last April to take care of and support their most valued assets which are their people. Cost cutting strategies, to plan for expected revenue drops of 25% - 50%, are challenging, and often daunting, to all involved. Our vendor partners were busy doing the same thing during this time, but they had another plan, which was to curb their production schedules by up to 50% to brace for the unexpected.

This critical decision was what started the downward cycle, of accelerating a global supply chain shortage, that was already under major stress. We conducted several calls with our key vendors and customers and most agreed that the construction industry would see a reduction of close to 50+% before we would start to see improvements. The same vendors started to immediately cut production levels, slow purchases on components, and also try and move off existing inventory at reduced rates.

What we have been left with is an extremely unprepared world economy trying to keep up with demands in excess of 2019 growth rates. I have also learned, firsthand, just how many companies are dependent on resin to build products we all depend on every day.

Car parts, food packaging, foam insulation on water heaters, and of course PVC pipe and fittings just to name a few. Having lead times of 1–3 months when we’re all so used to 1–3 days is a tough pill to swallow, but this is where we are.

I read an interesting article called “Supply Chain Resiliency”. It focused on the new norm and the need to truly identify your challenges and risks today, but more importantly what are they six months from now and six years from now? Who are your key suppliers and who do they buy from?

Just like we had to react to all the business interruptions during Covid, we are going to have to do the same now. The world is changing rapidly, in front of our eyes, and hopefully you all see we are trying to do the same and continue to grow and thrive today and in the future.

Jim Ambery

Dear Dan, With all the rain we’ve been having, it seems that the mosquitos are worse than ever. What can I do or spray to reduce or eliminate these pesky blood suckers?

Sincerely, A Quart Low ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Dear Low Quart, Stop being so sweet…eat less sugar

...Dan

by: Pat Armstrong

Guess Who…It’s basically like “20 Questions” and you, the reader, have to guess who the subject is.

Here’s how the process worked. I listed all of the associates on an Excel spreadsheet and then had Excel assign each one a random five-digit number. I excluded myself obviously. Then I asked a volunteer to select a totally random five-digit number and the person whose number matched closest was chosen as the subject. I reached out “said person" and under “the cloak of secrecy” asked him or her 20 questions.

Can you guess who it is? Their identity will be revealed in next month’s Guess Who article. So here we go!

1. Who was the president the year you were born? Ronald Reagan 2. Are you married? Yes 3. How many teams or departments have you worked in for HMC? Seven 4. What was your first ‘real job’? Landscaping 5. Favorite food to eat? Seafood 6. Do you prefer a sports car or a pick-up? Pick-Up 7. Favorite ‘adult beverage’? Corona Light 8. What size shoe do you wear? Nine 9. Did you have a favorite pet growing up? Yes, a dog 10. Are you an ‘indoor’ person or an ‘outdoor’ person? Outdoor 11. What’s a family nickname they have for you? Manchas 12. Favorite cartoon growing up? Bugs Bunny 13. If you could meet one historical figure, who would it be? Martin Luther King 14. Favorite type of dessert? Shot of tequila lol 15. What will you NOT eat if it’s on a pizza? Barbecue sauce 16. Who was the biggest professional influence on you career? Cristiano Ronaldo 17. Do you have kids? One 18. Favorite hobby or pastime? Family time 19. What’s the best vacation you’ve been on? Visiting my hometown in Mexico 20. Mountains or beach? Mountains… I don’t know how to swim

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