How To Make Your Company Much, Much Cooler To Customers

Carey Smith, Founder of Big Ass Fans and The KitchenCarey Smith had idea. He was going to elevate the cool factor—cooler buildings, cooler companies, and cooler cultures. How was he going to do this? Imagine letting your customers name your company. Imagine allowing them to inform you on your next product. Imagine how cool your company could be if you, and your employees, became laser-focused on the desires of your customers—sometimes when they don’t even know what they need.

Of course, there’s more irony to the story we’re about to tell you. Smith’s company was literally in the business of cooling. He is the founder and former CEO of a company you may have heard of—Big Ass Fans.

Carey Smith, Founder of Big Ass Fans and The KitchenCarey Smith

“I was looking through a magazine one day, and in one of the photos I noticed a gigantic fan on the ceiling of an agricultural building,” Smith told us. “I was curious who made fans that big. I did some research and realized that there wasn’t anyone mass-producing these things—they were all custom built. And, I thought, I can do that.”

Many of us who work in air-conditioned offices might not often consider how hot and stuffy a barn in Southern Minnesota can get in the summertime. Or, we not think twice as we board a plane about how hot all those airplane hangers get on the ground. And, what about other large buildings that may be far too expensive to air-condition like warehouses, manufacturing buildings and other industrial complexes.

“Our fans range from 8 to 24 feet in diameter,” Smith told us. “We started in 1999 with just six employees. We sold 140 fans the first year. We grew the company to 1000 employees and $265 Million in revenue. And, I sold it in 2017.”

Obviously, a lot of changed over Smith’s 18 years in the fan business. The company not only had to build and adapt fans for different uses, but Smith also had to learn how to build a company—how to build a culture, and figure out what was at the core of that culture.

“Every company wants the best people,” said Smith. “We hired a lot of engineers right out of school. It was much easier to work with a bunch of kids who were really curious, flexible, and much easier to develop—because this was the only culture they knew. We had a lot of success hiring Millennials. They were flexible. This was a very fluid environment. And, we were extremely customer-focused. They understood that our culture was about bending to the customer’s needs.”

Smith told us that he expected an awful lot from his employees. “I think when you give people, especially young people, a big challenge, they see it as an opportunity. And, when you show them that you’ll take care of them, they rise to that challenge and realize it’s their job to take care of your customer.”

It’s no surprise that Big Ass Fans created quite a big reputation—for quality products, a controversial name, and as being one the most desirable places to work in Lexington, Kentucky. But, what might be even more interesting is how Smith built a culture of service—where the entire focus of the company culture was satisfying customers.

We spent a lot of time talking to Carey Smith about that culture. He was direct. He was extremely humble about his success. And, just as our conversation was coming to close, Smith mentioned that grabbed our curiosity. “A guy named David Banks applied 18 times for various roles at Big Ass Fans. “That’s amazing,” we said. “Any chance we could talk to him? Maybe Banks could give us a different—less humble—perspective about why the service culture was such a success.

Days later, we spoke to David Banks as well. We asked him what made Big Ass Fans such a cool company that he applied 18 times. He talked to us for more than hour, and we’ve combined both Carey’s comments, and David’s comments below—to give you a better idea on how to make your company or service much cooler for your customers.

1. Listen Between the Lines: We asked Carey Smith where the name Big Ass Fans originated. We expected him to talk about disruptive marketing strategies. But, instead he talked about listening to the customer. “Our original name was kind of boring,” Smith told us. “It was HVLS Fan Company which is just an acronym for High Volume Low Speed. But, we kept getting phone calls from customers who would ask, ‘Are you the guys who sell those Big Ass Fans?’ It happened so often that we basically took the name our customers gave us—we listened.”
2. They Go Seek The Solution: “Carey wants to provide the right solution, instead of a partial solution,” David told us. “He would send a team to a location, on our company dime, to make sure that what we were selling would actually solve the problem. For instance, we worked with a brewery that was struggling to get the right results in their beer. We could have just sent them a product and hoped it worked, but Carey wanted us to go see how to solve it properly.”
3. Let People Do What They’re Good At: “It was very clear to me the second week I was on the job that Carey Smith was a big believer in autonomy,” David told us. “Management would explain the goal and then get out of the way to let employees figure out how to solve problems, build new products, or find solutions. If we bumped into a roadblock, we’d talk to a manager and they would help you remove it. Our focus was on doing anything it took to solve a customer’s problem—because even when we had to build something custom, we knew there were probably other companies who needed the same solution.”
4. Hire For Curiosity: This might not seem like an obvious attribute of building a customer-focused culture, but when you’re in the business of solving problems, this might be the most brilliant piece of advice we heard. “David didn’t initially get hired because he was overqualified for most of the jobs we were posting,” Carey Smith told us. “But, when he kept applying we had to stop and really look at him. We didn’t have anything opened that matched his skillset, but that didn’t mean we should pass him over. So, we created a job that matched his abilities. He became one of my most valuable employees.”

Our conversations with both Carey and David were fascinating. And, the cool stories didn’t end with Big Ass Fans. Carey Smith sold the company in 2017 and started a cool new company with a handful of the engineers who worked with him, including David. The new company is called The Kitchen. “Throughout the years a lot of the guys would have ideas for new products,” said Smith. “I wanted to give them a chance to explore the opportunities to pursue new businesses. I fund the projects. We share ownership. And, some of them are close to launching, so we’ll see what happens next.”

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidsturt/2018/09/21/how-to-make-your-company-much-much-cooler-to-customers/