Join us for an engaging episode of ABFI Table Talk featuring Kevin and Jason Miller of ServiceMASTER Restore of Edmonton. When catastrophic events strike – from the Fort McMurray fires to the recent Jasper wildfires – these brothers lead and support a dynamic organization that scales from 100 to 1,400 employees virtually overnight to meet community needs.
In this episode, discover how the Miller brothers have built on the foundation their father Grant established 22 years ago after transitioning from insurance claims management to restoration services. With complementary skills – Kevin’s engineering precision and Jason’s business development mindset – they’ve created a leadership approach that respects their different strengths while maintaining family harmony and building on Grant’s strong foundation.
The conversation explores critical family enterprise themes including:
- The structured ownership buy-in process their father implemented and why it matters
- How they navigate decision-making with a committee approach that includes three non-family partners
- The brothers’ candid reflections on joining the family business while maintaining separate reporting structures
- Their commitment to community involvement, with a goal to donate $1 million to children’s charities
Whether you’re navigating sibling partnerships, building business resilience, or planning family business transitions, this episode offers practical insights from a family that’s made “treating people how you want to be treated” one of their guiding principles. Kevin and Jason emphasize the importance of creating an environment where family members – and everyone receives “no special treatment” and must earn their place in the organization.
Tune in to ABFI Table Talk for an authentic discussion about disaster response, franchise relationships, and how the Miller brothers are building on their father’s legacy while charting their own course forward.
Matt Knight 00:00
Thanks for joining me today. Welcome to Table Talk. We like to dive into the stories behind business families and the journeys that they’ve been on, try and find things that we can learn from around succession leadership, you know, walking into a business that that you may have known your whole life, but now in a very different perspective. So really excited to be joined by Jason and Kevin Miller with Service Master of Edmonton. They’ve been a leading provider of commercial cleaning and disaster recovery services in Edmonton for probably the last 15 plus years. We’ll let them get into a little bit of that soon. But first, let’s start by sharing a bit about yourselves. What do you do with the company? How long have you been there? We’ll start with you.
Jason Miller 00:43
I’ll start things off. So I’ve been with Service Master for technically. This last year was my 10 year. My first four years were kind of fake years because I was in university, so I wasn’t working full time, but I still got the 10 year award. This year. I’ve been seven years full time. First two years, I was a project manager, so I learned the construction part of our business. And then the last five years, I’ve been our business development manager, so almost all client facing. It seems like every year, though, some more things come on my plate that probably aren’t under the business development role, but that’s kind of how a family business goes. So, yeah, yeah.
Kevin Miller 01:16
So Kevin, I’m 12 years but same idea fake, because it’s the first four years. Was while I was in school for engineering at the U of A I’ve been a project manager the whole time. So kind of ran projects from disasters in Fort McMurray back in 2016 up until this past summer in Jasper, so and now my role is changing a little bit. I’m taking probably half as many projects as I used to, and I’m running a little bit more the operations side and any sort of weird special project that nobody else wants to do, I guess, gets thrown my way.
Matt Knight 01:46
And let’s maybe start about the kind of the history. So I understand this was your father Grant, who started the business about 15 years ago. Can you share a little bit about kind of what inspired him to do that? How did he get into being like, this is a business I’m gonna start or acquire the franchise. Like, what did that look like?
Jason Miller 02:04
Yeah, so 22 years ago, actually, he, my dad was, well, he worked for Wawanisa insurance. He was there for just under 20 years doing claims. So he did the adjuster side of insurance claims, and worked with a lot of contractors there. He was a claims manager for Wawanisa for several years, and then one year, he decided, why don’t I try to be the contractor side? I know a lot of the people in the industry, the insurance industry. I know a lot of people at Wawanisa. If I go start a contractor, maybe I can get work from all these different insurance companies and then try to build a business from there. So kind of, that’s, that’s where I started. You want to touch on kind of where they started with people?
Kevin Miller 02:40
And, yeah, they basically started. So my dad actually had a partner originally. So they were 50/50 split, and they had one employee. So for the most part, they did the demos themselves. They took the calls themselves at night. And I don’t really remember we were kids that well, of like him going out in the middle of the night, but it must have happened, because they didn’t have any staff. And that’s we’re a 24 hour business, so I don’t know. I don’t remember it ever happening, but I think it’s it must have happened quite frequently. Yeah, they slowly built up over the years, and I guess I would, I joined in 2012 so by that time, they were there in their 10th year, and they had quite a bit of staff by then. So he was no longer even taking projects at that point. He was just running the business so, but he bought out his partner somewhere probably around that 2010 or 2008 so then it was just just him for the last 10-12 years.
Matt Knight 03:29
Okay, it’s a pretty big change, going from an insurance claims adjuster into actually taking on the calls and doing the construction like.
Jason Miller 03:39
A lot of similarities, but also a lot of big differences, your boots on the ground, whereas they’re kind of in the office making sure everything goes okay, yeah, but it was a good change. I think he’s really, really enjoyed it. And we’re pretty lucky. We got the opportunity to work in the business as well.
Matt Knight 03:51
And so do you, either of you remember that change happening? Like, do you remember him going to, like, from, you know, going to work in a suit, to putting on his coveralls, or whatever that transition might have looked like?
Kevin Miller 04:01
I guess I would have been eight, so we were pretty young. I don’t really remember exactly. I don’t remember him being an adjuster, really. So, like, and he, he kind of always has run the business as, like, a family first kind of thing, like, he’s never missed sports. Like, never miss school plays. Like, if it was a two o’clock school play, he’d be there and then he’d probably work in the evening to catch up. But even with our staff now, it’s very much if, like, you have a kids soccer game at 11 o’clock your kids in high school and go to it and then work later catch up like we’re not gonna force you to miss something. So I don’t really remember too much.
Jason Miller 04:36
No memory for me, my whole life, it’s been Service Master. So there hasn’t, there wasn’t really the insurance world memories for me. I do remember playing hide and seek and stuff in the shop when I was little. But nothing in the insurance world.
Matt Knight 04:48
It was actually gonna be my next question. Like favorite memories, kind of growing up in the business, like favorite memories, embarrassing stories about your brother.
Jason Miller 04:56
I think we had a pretty one on anyone liquor, liquor claim that one time when we were really.
Kevin Miller 05:00
Yeah, yeah, we did have. We had a liquor claim that came in years ago. We were probably, I don’t know how old we would have been, not drinking age for sure, but this was all basically just, it’s all like, it couldn’t be drank. It was all garbage. So we ended up, we’re like, well, we’ll keep the bottles and recycle them. So we ended up emptying out, I don’t know, 1000s of booze bottles. And that’s when I learned that you can’t open a bottle upside down, or else it explodes on you.
Jason Miller 05:24
So, yeah, it’s kind of a family weekend activity. We got to claim it at liquor store. There’s about 1000 bottles alcohol we got to get rid of. You guys want to come pop some pop some caps and dump beer into a drain? Yeah, that was a pretty funny one. And then just always come into the shop pretending to clean fans, doing sweeping up the floors, all that kind of stuff. Also good memories. Yeah, when I was little, I was kind of like, you know, I’ll sweep the boards a little bit, but then I’m gonna go try to hide somewhere. So I don’t have to do this anymore.
Matt Knight 05:45
Pretending to clean? And so what? So you took the business route you could. So you went to U of a business degree there and then join the business directly, or kind of as you’re doing school? What made you go that that route? Like you ever think about doing anything other than the family business, too? Couple questions there.
Jason Miller 06:12
So originally, I just wanted to do, I’ve always kind of been in, interested in businesses in general. I had that opportunity, so it was a pretty hard thing to say no to. So I thought, I’ll take business school. I originally actually wanted to do accounting. So my first two years were accounting major. I went to the office for a summer to do some accounting work for Service Master. Realized pretty quickly that I don’t think my life was gonna be in accounting. The one thing that kind of set me up for failure there is that was the year that we had the Fort Mac fire happening. So we had 1400 employees working for us, and I got to start doing payroll and accounts receivable. So that didn’t really make accounting the brightest thing in the world for me. So quickly switched to marketing. I’ve always been a big people person, so I thought I could probably benefit the business by doing a marketing degree and kind of going that route. And then kind of been history ever since then.
Matt Knight 07:02
Nice. Yeah. And then you went through the engineering route. I did also, like, Did you always intend to join the firm? Did you think of doing other things? What did that look like?
Kevin Miller 07:10
Yeah. So I, I did, yeah. I went to U of A for civil engineering. I kind of, I actually originally I was gonna be a pilot. That’s kind of my original plan. But pilot doesn’t really give you the best lifestyle, I guess, or or family style. So decided engineering, kind of when I was probably about grade 10, I decided engineering was what I was going to do, potentially with doing architecture after. And then when I graduated in 2016 there wasn’t a lot of opportunities for engineering in Alberta like that was kind of right after the oil crash. Like, for example, I think when I went in, in 2012 98% of the graduates were getting hired. When I graduated, it was like 10% so it kind of just made sense to get into the family business, see what it was. And that was also the same year that Fort Mac happened. So I was kind of diving right into that, and kind of enjoyed it. Kind of got to take a bunch of projects, and it just was interesting. Every day is different, every project’s different, so kind of stayed with it, and now haven’t really looked back.
Matt Knight 08:07
So let’s see. So you’ve mentioned the Fort Mac one a couple of times. It kind of came up in conversation already a few, few times, as well as the Jasper one that I know you guys played a big role in. Can you talk a little bit about what that means to your business and what it’s like taking on a project like that, like the scale and issues and scope is probably way different than than the day to day side of things.
Kevin Miller 08:29
Sure. Yeah, I can probably touch on a bit. So yeah. So we respond to Cat Cat loss is what we call them. So it’s catastrophic response. Like they classify anything over a billion dollars ends up in that category any event. So yeah, for back in 2016 was was well over a billion. So we did it. End up responding. We cleaned the hospital. There a bunch of schools, lots of businesses. It is interesting to respond to those, because you don’t know what you’re going into. Like when I actually went there the first night, I slept in my truck because there was no accommodations. And we actually got evacuated. We got there, cleaned for four days, and got re evacuated. So it it is interesting. Those are kind of, you never know what’s gonna happen. We’re also staffing up from maybe 100 guys to sometimes, like Jasper, we had about 300 Fort Mac made about 1400 so we’re hiring a lot of staff at that point, which end, the more staff you hire, the more problems you have and all sorts of stuff, and even just getting consumables and all that kind of stuff, it’s in a different city, so there’s lots of issues, but they are super interesting, and it is a cool experience for anybody in our business that I think everybody likes to respond to the cats we responded in PEI too, after Hurricane Fiona, I didn’t personally go, because I was pretty much great when my baby was born. So it didn’t, didn’t work out. But we had, I think, five PMS that went there, drove a bunch of guys from Alberta out to PEI. I didn’t realize that Florida is closer than Pei to drive, so I had to do the math on it. I was like, There’s no way. So put it in GPS. It’s like, yeah, it is a little bit. Closer to drive to Florida. It’s got some long drive, but yeah, the cat response is really cool. It’s kind of one of the biggest parts of our business, too. So we love responding to anything that’s any sort of event, for sure.
Jason Miller 10:13
Yeah, we always try to build our business around those cats happening, because we know it’s going to happen. You’re going to have to have the amount of people. You’re going to need additional project managers, because when you have something like that happen, you can’t send everybody. We still got all of our clients we work with at Edmonton, and if you send everyone, you might do well in the short term, but in the long term, you’re going to get all these companies dropping you as a preferred contractor. So they’re always good events. We get to go kind of help the people of the city, Jasper, specifically, we had people from Jasper pulling us over and thanking our staff for being there. Fort McMurray, there’s tons of people that were kind of dependent on us to get back into their homes and everything like that. So it’s definitely a feel good thing. Major learning curves. Every time you go to one. They’re always different. Getting hotels is always a fun thing, trying to stay, trying to work in Jasper, and you can’t get a hotel anywhere close to it, so you’re staying in Hinton. Next thing you know, Hinton, there’s the shutdown in town, so they kick you out of hotels there. So then you’re in Edson, there’s always issues that go on. But I know a lot of our staff really enjoy it, and it’s kind of what we’re always waiting for to happen. Because, yeah, that’s the big events, and we got a ton of people ready to go do it, yeah, yeah.
Matt Knight 11:16
But almost, probably almost completely separate from that core line of business where you’re doing things that are a little bit more routine, a little bit little bit more structured.
Jason Miller 11:24
Yeah, well, I wouldn’t say there’s a ton of routine structure in our business. We try to get our procedures and stuff that way, but it’s crazy. You could have one day where you got 10 guys sitting at home, everybody’s saying, Oh no, we might have to lay people off soon here, if we don’t get busier, and the next thing, something happens, and you got 20 temporary workers working for you the next day. So it’s a tough business that way, but it’s something we’ve learned over the years, and it kind of makes it hard for competition to excel in those areas as well.
Matt Knight 11:49
Yeah, yeah, nice. So we didn’t talk about this at the introduction there, but so your dad started the business. What’s his role today? What is he still pretty involved? Is he still pretty engaged, but what does things look like there?
Jason Miller 12:03
So he’s his title’s president. He never really has cared too much about titles, though. So he kind of handles all areas of the business. He’s very involved from kind of overseeing everything. He doesn’t really do a lot of our programs and specific like actual detailed work in the day, but he’s overseeing everything, checking in on cash flow, checking in on receivables, making sure everybody’s sales are going okay. He tries to be at the office as much as he can, but he also likes traveling, so he’s either in Arizona a lot of the time or Vernon, kind of enjoying the sunshine and getting out of Edmonton. But you email him at any time, he responds in five minutes, and he’s taking care of things and watching over everything. So for us, it would be, if he wasn’t involved, I don’t know how things would really go, that we’d probably be able to handle it, but there’d be some major learning curves, and it’s great having that mentor and guidance from lots of different perspectives.
Matt Knight 12:54
Yeah, and kind of maybe from growing up in the business and working with him through the years. Are there any kind of, like, major lessons that he passed on to one or both of you that kind of stick out?
Kevin Miller 13:07
Major lessons that’s kind of a tough one, like, there’s lots of little lessons here and there, and I don’t know, you probably don’t realize that they’re even a lesson until years later, which is kind of weird, but we’ve always kind of treated our staff really well. Like, that’s kind of, and he’s always kind of prided on the like, if I don’t know how to do it, let’s hire someone that does that’s better than me, really. So we’ve always kind of hired staff to do that. And whenever staff needs something, we always try to help them out with it. So.
Jason Miller 13:33
Yeah, I think to build on that, it’s he’s kind of taught us to treat people how you want to be treated, no matter who you’re dealing with. It could be your brand new field staff. It could be your highest paid Senior Project Manager. It could be your sub trade that you use, your client that you’re working for, treat them exactly how you want to be treated in the same way, and it’s probably going to benefit you in the long run. I don’t think he’s ever yelled at a single employee in 22 years in business. He always responds to people’s emails saying, thank you and appreciate what you guys are doing. I think it’s kind of just that humble leadership that’s really rubbed off on us and it rubs off on the whole organization. That would be, I’d say, is the biggest learning curve is appreciate everybody you got working for you, and treat people how you want to be treated.
Matt Knight 14:12
Yep, so just being a little little humble and really looking at treating people like humans,
Jason Miller 14:16
Absolutely, for sure. Yeah, no matter who it is, it’s a sub trade you’ve used once, or if it’s a client you’re getting tons of work from in a year. Treat those people the same way, because you need them, right? We wouldn’t be successful if it wasn’t for all those different companies we work with every year.
Matt Knight 14:31
And based on your introductions, like, there’s a bit of a gap between when you both join the business. What is it like working together as a family or as brothers? Like, what are some, what are some of the challenges that just come through that?
Kevin Miller 14:44
We haven’t really like for the last, for the first, kind of 10 years, we haven’t worked together a lot because it’s like, we like the project managers are, it’s kind of like running their own little business. If they’re in charge of their files. They do their own marketing, they get their own files, they dispatch their own guys. So it’s pretty isolated, like you work kind of. Your Own like it is, like your own business. And if you have to work at night, work at night. If you need to take a day off for something, you take it off or something. So we haven’t, we’ve kind of started maybe working together more in the last probably year or two years. So so far it’s been good. We kind of just keep on top of each other, let each other do what we’re better at. So if it’s something to do with marketing or some people relations, stuff he’s given to Jason. He’s a little, I’m more introverted, I’d say, and he’s a little more outgoing. So give him that stuff, and if it’s something technical, I usually take the lead on it.
Jason Miller 15:31
Yeah, he takes the hard questions. I take the easy questions. I go I go out for lunches. He gets to go to flooded job sites. Yeah, no, I think it’s amazing working together. We don’t like he said, we don’t do a ton together in the day to day. He’s more on the operation side. I’m more on the kind of sales and client side. But definitely, you got the Sunday dinners. You hear us all talking about work the whole time, that kind of gets a little bit too much. Sometimes our mom likes to step in and say, Hey, can we talk about something other than mold at dinner? Please? Like, can we just talk about something else? So it’s tough in those ways. But other than that, I think we’ve done a pretty good job separating business from personal life. Try to get away on vacation, stop talking about work, but big loss happens. Obviously, we’re all kind of congregating and figuring out, how are we going to do this? Does anybody have to go home and handle this or what? But we’re lucky. We’re so different that he’s engineering, I’m business, he can really excel in areas that I’m not very good at, and I think I think I excel in some areas maybe Kevin’s not as comfortable or good at.
Matt Knight 16:22
Yeah. So you guys can kind of know each other’s strengths a little bit better. How you know what each other your entire lives? Probably one of the main advantages, yeah,
Kevin Miller 16:31
yeah, they’re a little bit opposite. So yeah, definitely works pretty good. So yeah,
Jason Miller 16:35
yeah.
Matt Knight 16:36
And so you mentioned you’re really good at kind of balancing those family dynamics and keeping business and personal separate, sometimes any kind of things that have worked really well, that you can share, or any kind of like, what do you do that works? What do you do that doesn’t work?
Jason Miller 16:53
Well? I think kind of bringing our spouses into our life has helped a little bit. Kevin’s wife is a nurse. My girlfriend’s a teacher. They definitely don’t want to be talking about water damage and fire damage at the kitchen table. So kind of having them around and separating that part of the business has got us talking about it less, but something that works eight to 4:30 focus on business when you’re done, maybe leave it for the next day. If you have a quick chat on your way home, you can do that, but try not to do it late into the nights, around the weekends. I think we do a pretty good job doing that.
Kevin Miller 17:23
Yeah, for the most part, we’re, we’re 24/7 businesses, tough. Like, yeah, we are seeing stuff at all times, but we have lots, lots of people at our office too. Like, we’re not a small office. So, like, I don’t, I don’t go on call anymore. I did for years, but I haven’t been the last couple years. So we get to kind of keep stuff to the eight to 4:30 and then respond as needed kind of thing. But yeah, nothing. But definitely, having the family like the wives around and the girlfriends around helps they don’t want to talk about stuff as much.
Matt Knight 17:49
So yes, they can keep you accountable?
Kevin Miller 17:52
Accountable and on track of not talking about work.
Jason Miller 17:55
Yeah, I think mom’s happy there’s some extra girls around.
Matt Knight 17:59
Is it just the two of you and your like any other siblings? No, no, just the two of us. No, okay, and so you mentioned Kevin that you have. You’re a newish father, 18 month old at home. Are you already thinking about your next generation joining the business? Has that even crossed your mind yet?
Kevin Miller 18:18
Not really crossed my mind, but like, it’s, I guess, always an option. Yeah, I haven’t really crossed my mind a lot, much yet. Right now, we’re just working on our colors and animals. So.
Matt Knight 18:28
Mold spores come later?
Kevin Miller 18:29
Yeah, mold spores come later. We have been to the office and sat in grandpa’s chair a few times, though, so
Jason Miller 18:35
He’ll be setting up equipment and putting up drywall in a couple years.
Kevin Miller 18:38
Oh, you’re right.
Matt Knight 18:40
He’ll be able to pretend to clean pretty soon.
Jason Miller 18:41
Yeah, exactly. Pretend to sweep the floors, hide in the corner.
Matt Knight 18:47
So what kind of advice would you have for other maybe brothers going into business together, or siblings or even family members, like, what would you tell them that that they should look at? Or what do you wish you you knew when you joined the business 10-12, years ago?
Jason Miller 19:02
I’d probably say, no matter what, if it’s a family member, treat that family member as if you deal with in a regular employee, that you kind of treat them in the exact same way. Give them kind of updates. Make sure you give them the privacy they need, give them the time they need. Don’t just expect because it’s a family member, that you can barge into their office and demand them to do a whole bunch of things. You kind of have to treat them as a another employee in the business, and everything kind of works out from there. Don’t know if you have anything to add?
Kevin Miller 19:26
I guess, well, if for brothers or assembly siblings joining a business maybe, yeah, try to figure out what your what your strengths are, and hopefully they compliment each other. And that’s probably something you could do. But yeah, everything else is kind of what you said.
Jason Miller 19:39
I guess one thing is, it might not be your brothers or your direct family, but always be careful how much family you do involve too. So it can always it can work out very well, or else, or else, it could affect your family in the future. We’ve had different people we’ve brought on in the past that are cousins or uncles or different things like that. Some work amazing. Some don’t work great. So. Always be very particular on what you’re looking for and how you’re going to kind of treat that relationship, because it’s a special type of business, and it doesn’t always work. So really put the time into thinking about who you’re going to get involved and friends and family always think about that.
Matt Knight 20:15
Yeah, especially with smaller businesses too, like the impact that one new person can make sometimes can be huge.
Jason Miller 20:22
Yeah, for sure. I think another thing too, is when it comes to perks, don’t, don’t make sure your family is treated exactly the way everybody else is. You don’t get extra vacation, because it doesn’t look very good from the rest of the business, right? That person doesn’t get to show up late, and that’s a big thing. Our dad’s always kind of said, you can’t show up to 8:15 into the office and expect everyone else to be here at eight, because then everyone else is going to start showing up at 8:15 you got to set an example from the beginning. And he’s been very big on no special treatment for us. I mean, yeah, we do. We do get some things, obviously, with with the family, but treat everybody as if they’re the rest of the stuff.
Matt Knight 20:55
Yeah. And did both of you go in reporting to your dad, or did you have kind of, like, different structures in place?
Kevin Miller 21:02
I don’t think either of us reported to our dad. I had a manager live. I’ve had three or three of our managers, I guess over the years, not anymore so much. I guess we’ve kind of, we kind of report to him now, but in the last year is kind of the only time we ever have before that we’ve always had somebody else. We had a GM who passed away in what, 2020, so I reported to him for probably five, four or five years.
Jason Miller 21:26
So yeah, now it’s not even really reporting. It’s more of just all working together, all CC in probably too many emails. But yeah, we’re kind of, he’s brought us in to be involved in almost aspect of every aspect of the business. And it’s not that we’re gathering stuff and reporting to them. It’s kind of like we’re all working together, and it’s great you have those people you can trust, because in business, you can’t always do that. But when you say, Hey Kevin, go make a decision, we know you’re going to do the right thing, it’s not really reporting to anymore. It’s more of a we’re all working together. Here’s our different areas we can work in and make it work for the team.
Matt Knight 21:58
So what does the structure look like right now, if say the two of you disagree with something, what would you do? Do you go to dad? Do you work through it?
Kevin Miller 22:07
Well, we do have some other owners too, so we put a lot, a lot of our decisions to committee. Like, there’s six of us, I guess, kind of minority owners as well. Like, ultimately, everything’s up to my dad, I guess, like he’s still the majority shareholder. But like, a lot of our decisions are kind of made by committee. Okay, so, yeah, you kind of get an equal ish vote. And ultimately, if my dad thinks it’s the best decision to go whatever he thinks, then that’s what we go with for now. But yeah.
Jason Miller 22:38
It’s monthly, weekly management meetings, quarterly meetings kind of bring those, bring those difficult topics or disagreement areas to the group and see what everybody else is thinking. Every so often you might have a three, three divide down the middle, and then it’s okay, Grant, what are we doing? Yeah. But yeah, a lot of the time a lot of us are agreeing.
Kevin Miller 22:53
Doesn’t happen a lot. It’s like, usually a five to one or, like, not a lot, or six nothing. Like, it’s not, we don’t have a ton.
Jason Miller 23:01
But yeah, I guess if there is a disagreement, you could always go, we got a CFO. We could ask the CFO their opinion from the accounting side of things. You could go ask our operations manager, hey, what do you think’s right here? Is Kevin completely wrong? Or am I completely wrong? We’re in such different areas of the business that a lot of the time we’re not even really thinking about the same stuff. So that’s kind of a plus part of it. Like, if we’re talking about building a new building, a new building, and I’m probably not even going to have an opinion, because if I’m building it probably won’t get another job from that client. And then, if it’s kind of like, what are we sponsoring? What kind of different things are we doing for the community? Mostly that kind of stuff, I make a decision, kind of just fill in Kevin and Grant in. Okay, there’s not a ton we’re disagreeing with, which is pretty nice.
Matt Knight 23:38
Yeah,
Jason Miller 23:38
Yeah.
Matt Knight 23:39
And you mentioned that’s kind of changed over the past year is that when you both became owners, like, talk to me about that process, if you don’t mind.
Kevin Miller 23:45
It’s been about three years, I’d say, since we kind of joined the ownership team, but since we actually kind of moved more into a management role, or, like, actually looking at some of the aspects of the aspects of the business, that’s kind of about a year and a half, I’d say, ago, before that, I pretty much just ran projects. That’s so I was like any other project manager we have, I think 16 project managers right now. So I was running my day to day, very similar to the other 15 people you’ve kind of always been like on there’s nobody else that does your job. So a little bit different for you, I guess.
Jason Miller 24:19
Yeah, for quite a long time, I kind of reported I would come up with, here’s my ideas. Go talk to our general manager and say, Hey, what do you think of all these ideas? Most of the time would be like, yep, yep, yep, yep, or every so often, no, you want to spend that much on the sponsorship. So the only thing that’s really changed is we don’t have a current General Manager. We’re kind of handling that together. Okay, so involved in more areas, and not a ton has really changed, though. We’re kind of in our own areas, making decisions and going from there.
Matt Knight 24:47
Yeah, and, and if we don’t want to, like, or go back to that ownership question, like, what did that look like? Was it a an opportunity your dad presented? Was it something you guys brought both brought up, like, how did that, you know, how did getting involved in the owner? Relatively early in your in your careers, happen, like?
Jason Miller 25:03
Yeah, I think it was always in his mind, like it was, it wasn’t when it was gonna happen, or it wasn’t if it was gonna happen, it was when, I think he kind of wanted to wait until the time that he’s, he’s, we’ve both shown him that we’re kind of dedicated to the company. It’s not gonna be all right. You’ve been working here for six months, years ownership, yep, I think it was probably five years full time for me, even seven for Kevin. And then he actually presented it to if we never really asked ourselves, he said, Hey, I want to get, kind of bring you guys in. Have a vested interest in the business. And then we were pretty lucky. He gave us, ah, we had to pay for it. Unfortunately, we didn’t just get handed over. I wish that would have been kind of nice, but…
Kevin Miller 25:39
We still have shareholder loans, and pay back, eventually…
Jason Miller 25:41
Yeah, shareholder loans, but he made it a good agreement for us, and now we just got to work hard for the next, however, many years it takes to pay off that loan and maybe start getting some dividends from it one day.
Matt Knight 25:52
And that’s the way. Like there should be that, like, there needs to be a business valuation, there needs to be that structure set up,
Jason Miller 25:58
Like it’s, yeah, well, if it’s the, if it’s the type of business where it’s just handed over, it never really goes well. Not a lot of the staff really have respect for those like you got to kind of build your respect in the office and get everyone to trust you and go for there.
Kevin Miller 26:11
It’s like giving your kid a car and not expecting it to come trash to, like, a month later. So yeah, I think buying into it, you have an interest in it. So we had to work towards kind of paying loans off and stuff, so
Matt Knight 26:23
Yeah, and it kind of shows commitment and yeah and buy in as well,
Jason Miller 26:27
exactly.
Matt Knight 26:28
So did you notice? Did either of you notice a change in your attitude at work, or your outlook at work, when you became both a family member and an employee, but when you when you kind of completed the circle and also became an owner.
Jason Miller 26:43
I would say it was kind of hand in hand with me, maybe just maturing a little bit. When I was younger, it was kind of like, Oh, I’m just working. I just want to go hang out with my friends type thing. I think as I got older, I also became a part owner, kind of at the same time, and then you start realizing, Hey, I got to keep an eye on areas that aren’t just about sales and marketing. I gotta if I see someone that’s upset about something, to go talk to them and see if there’s a way I can fix it. Yeah, just seeing an overarching view of the business instead of just your one area you’re working in. I think for me, it’s more I kind of started to mature and realize there’s more than just hanging out with your friends and doing things on the weekend. Yeah? Kind of in line about you, yeah?
Kevin Miller 27:20
Yeah have a tiny change. I don’t think, like, it kind of always ran similar. I’ve always been pretty committed to, like, education and like, like, I got my Master Water and Fire restore before I was even an owner, and wanted to do that. Like, it’s so didn’t really change a ton for me, other than kind of, maybe, yeah, maybe focusing on some of that other stuff, like, what’s best for the company, maybe, like not what’s not best for my file? What’s if I have to give up a carpenter and one of my files goes off track? But is that best for the company? So maybe a little bit more vision into that than I had before? I’d say, yeah.
Matt Knight 27:54
And then Service Master itself is a larger organization. I believe it’s like a franchise model. What’s that experience been like? You know? What is it, you know? How does that fit into, kind of, like, your family values and working with a larger entity?
Jason Miller 28:09
So, yeah, Service Master is kind of, there’s a big parent company Service Master. It owns a couple different divisions of businesses, but the two kind of main ones that relate to Service Master itself are Service Master restore and Service Master clean. Service Master restores our business. It’s all insurance claims, restoring buildings. Service Master, clean is the cleaning side. So it’s commercial cleaning, janitorial cleaning and carpet cleaning. So we don’t have any interest in the clean side of things. But yeah, it’s a franchise. I think there’s 74 franchises in Canada, seven in Alberta. It’s really cool. You have a great, known name across the whole country, not only just country, but North America. So it’s very helpful in bringing in more business, getting trust from insurance companies, from national companies out there. I think it’s been a great experience. We get to go to conferences every year. There’s a national conference in Canada. There’s a North American national conference. It’s in LA actually this year, in a month. And the cool thing about that is, you go to these conferences, and there’s two to four owners from every single business, and you get to hear about their experiences, what’s working, what’s not working. How do you think the franchise team’s doing? It’s invaluable to hear from them. Like we’ve done. We’ve been to tons of different states. We’re even friends with different people, like we’re good friends with the people that own service master in Seattle, we’ve gone there and watched football games with them, learn their processes for contents and stuff like that. It’s great being in a franchise
Matt Knight 29:31
That’s kind of support both kind of from the learnings, and then also you have other peers around that you can learn from and and get ideas from.
Jason Miller 29:38
Yeah,
Kevin Miller 29:39
yeah. We steal the ideas all the time, it’s like, yeah, go to their business and whatever, St Louis or Seattle, that’s a good idea. Well, we’re gonna bring that back. So it’s yeah, we, and we did, we did actually host, I think, 10 US businesses in Edmonton, probably about, not quite 10 years ago, probably eight years ago. So, and they all kind of learn from us. So, and actually, the couple. In Texas, said Edmonton is their favorite place they’ve ever visited because they’re very into historical stuff. And they they loved Fort Edmonton and and they went to Banff and Jasper. So it’s hard to pretty nice. We take for for granted what we have. It’s pretty nice here. So
Matt Knight 30:12
Yeah, that’s for sure. And what do you so if you think about kind of Service Master 10 years from now, where you know, where do you see, kind of your your organization and the company going, what? What’s new? What are you excited about? What are you scared about? I know that’s a big question.
Kevin Miller 30:28
Yeah, like it’s for us, it’s tough to project growth, because it does depend on, on cats and all that kind of stuff. So growth is, is tough for us to project down to exact but maybe territory changes, or maybe we work with some of the other franchises in Alberta more, because we currently don’t do a ton of that. That’s kind of Yeah, it is tough to project growth for sure for us.
Jason Miller 30:54
I think one big change in Service Master as a whole in Canada is we have a program called SRM coming out, which is developed through Service Master Canada head office. It’s kind of our way, our brand’s way of competing for national contracts. So right now, we have some competitors in Canada that they own every single location across the country. So they can go to the Costcos and Walmarts of the world and say, Hey, if you want restoration help in all of Canada, you can call this one number and we’ll help you out anywhere you are. Whereas for our franchise, it’s like, Hey, you want help in Canada, here’s 74 numbers call us, and so they’re developing a plan right now called SRM that is kind of a centralized model where we all work together and we can all benefit from these contracts together. So that’s a big thing that it’s happening right now. It’ll probably start to really start working in the next couple of years. And then I think a big thing, just personally, from a local level, is we want to we want to just keep getting more and more involved in the community. Our goal in the next 10 years is give a million dollars back to the community from the different events we host every year. So if we can get to that goal, I think that’s that’s a big point of success for us. So yeah
Matt Knight 31:57
And what, when you look at kind of the community involvement, community engagement. What, what kind of things do you like to do? Like, how do you give back? How do you work to kind of build the brand? But also, you know, like, is there certain areas that you focus on? Like, what does that look like?
Jason Miller 32:11
Yeah, so just in the past, probably three years, we’ve started focusing a lot more on the community stuff and getting involved in different non for profits and everything like that. We host annual golf tournament every year. It’s kind of the same thing last Thursday of August, and we partnered with a local charity to donate all the proceeds to so our first year, we did the hard Stroke Foundation. Next year, we did zebra center, and then this year where we did the little warriors. So every year we plan on doing that, which is a big thing for us, because we get to invite all of our clients, and then we get to raise as we can for those charities. Same time as that, we do our poker tournament every year. So that’s kind of a networking type of event. But when you bring a lot of people into a room, it’s why don’t you involve a non for profit and make some money for the community as well? So we actually have that on February 6, so that’s coming up this year. We chose little warriors as well. So we kind of do a dual. We choose one non for profit to do for the year. And then every year we’ve been choosing new ones, and kind of based off of our big thing we’ve done lately is just kids. So zebra Center has to do with kids. Little warriors has to do with kids. We also do the Make a Wish Foundation heroes challenge every year, which is a big corporate event at West Edmonton Mall where you go as a team. So it’s a team building activity with 10 to 12 of our staff. And then you try to raise $10,000 to make a wish come true. So almost all of our stuff these days is kids. However, we kind of wait for stuff in our life to happen. If something happens in our family or something happens in our business, where it’s like we should go to this charity, because that’s going to support that cause. We’re kind of, we haven’t specifically said it’s only kids, but that’s just kind of something that’s touched us. And that’s touched us in the last little while,
Kevin Miller 33:44
Pretty much, yeah, and you take care of most of that anyways. So yeah, he plans our golf tournament and poker tournament, and luckily, I don’t have to do too much with that, because it’s a lot of work, yeah,
Matt Knight 33:51
But that actually might have been the first time I came across you, kind of recently, was at a golf tournament. You guys like the burger truck, yeah? Or chicken wings.
Jason Miller 34:00
Chicken wings, yeah. We’re pretty known for our mini donuts. Go to a lot of golf tournaments every year. We had a mini donut machine. So people were like, You guys are the mini donut company? Are you? It’s like, yeah, I guess. So you can call us out if you want. I think we even got a Google review at one point. These guys make really good mini donuts. Like, oh yeah. There we go.
Matt Knight 34:17
Totem back in the day, yeah, yeah.
Jason Miller 34:18
So we try to get to tons, like we do, probably 15 golf tournaments a year, sponsoring holes and giving back to the community that way. Great way to connect with clients and stuff too. So, yeah, yeah,
Matt Knight 34:27
Nice. And when you think about kind of succession for the organization and growth, you know, you’re, you know, you’re, don’t know how much of a role your dad’s gonna have in 20 years. What you know? What conversations are you having around that? What do you see for, you know, the future leadership. Do you know it’s going to be one of you? Do you know what’s going to be both of you? Do you think you’re going to hire it from an external like any, any guesses or conversations there that you you can share?
Kevin Miller 34:52
Not a ton. But our dad is, what, 67 this year. So he’s probably, I think he’s got a 70 he wants to be retired by 70. For sure, so we are in a little bit of a timetable. I guess every year it’s one more year, so we’ll see once we actually get there. But I don’t think we have a solid plan yet. I think it’s something we need to probably focus on in the next couple years, but no as of right now, I guess we’ll probably just both kind of work on stuff, and we do have some other owners that are involved, so we’ll probably continue on. And we’ve kind of made those owners are key parts of the business as well. So they’re active. They’re active. You have, yeah, all of our owners are active, active in the business and like, that’s part of the requirement. We don’t have any non active owners so, and they’re all key employees that do lots of sales and are good at their job. So yeah, well, I don’t think we’ve thought about it a ton yet, but unless Jason’s thought about more than I have, well,
Jason Miller 35:50
I know our dad will be upset. He called him 67 because he’s actually turned 65 this year. So…
Matt Knight 35:57
You hit a couple points right there,
Jason Miller 35:58
Rounding up. Yeah, yeah. I think it’s gonna depend on when my mom says you’re done, because he’s she’s getting tired of him being on his phone all the time while they’re trying to enjoy their retirement life, right? I don’t see it being anytime soon. Maybe in the next 5-10, years, it’ll just keep slowing down and slowing down. But me, Kevin, we got our three other partners in the business. I think we could probably take on things ourselves. They’re all very smart people and really good at what they do. And then just the whole team built underneath it, like we have amazing staff that could help us in pretty much every way we need. So I think it’ll probably be the five of us going going from there, and hopefully we don’t screw things up without Grant
Matt Knight 36:37
And there are, like, there’s a bunch of models out there with in within family business, where you’ll see co-CEOs who are siblings, and it’s not as popular in Canada, in the UK, especially Ireland, it’s all over the place.
Jason Miller 36:51
Okay
Matt Knight 36:51
You see, like, multi generation, 2-3-4, kids running the business together.
Jason Miller 36:57
I think that’s probably what it’ll be like. It’ll be something like that, for sure, or the operation side with him, and more of the client side kind of stay with me, and then the other three, they keep taking on more and more, and they’re very motivated to help the business be successful too. So think we’re in good hands right now.
Matt Knight 37:12
Yeah, I don’t know that was kind of a left field question, but it’s one of those ones that is awkward silence is the theme of this podcast. That’d be a terrible thing for a podcast, actually. So when you think about learning and growth, so one of the things I like to ask just about everyone on the podcast is, you know, recommendations or books or things like that that have changed the way you look at business or life. Any any ideas to throw out there from either of you?
Kevin Miller 37:41
Well, like, the last, like, 15 ish months, we’ve been kind of following traction a lot. So really trying to get we didn’t really have a lot of organization. Everything was kind of responding to the fire, I guess, if you will. And we didn’t have a lot of, like, planning, like, what are we going to do in six months? What are we going to do in a year? What are we going to do in 10 years? So we have, we’ve been following traction a lot more. We’ve been doing kind of L 10 meetings and stuff like that. So that’s probably the one I would go with. I think Jason probably reads more books than I do, but
Jason Miller 38:12
Yeah, one and two. Yeah, no. We definitely had EOS kind of customized to ourself. We work with results here in Edmonton, they’ve been an awesome company to work with. We always found that we’d have great meetings with our whole management team. There’d be tons of good topics come up, and then we’d wait another month for our next meeting, or three months for our quarterly meeting. We’re like, Okay, well, what happened with all these great ideas? So working with results, it’s been great. We kind of have our business execution specialist that keeps us all accountable, gets a champion for all these different areas we’re working on. That’s definitely one I would recommend to any business. If you kind of want to take it to the next level, get yourself goals quarterly, annually. We have our three year goal. We have 10 year goals. They’ve been really awesome. And it’s just someone’s kind of leisure meeting. It’s an outside perspective on everything. That’s probably one of the biggest recommendations, and they really help hold you accountable, too. Oh yeah, because it’s hard to keep your your like, you’re all partners. It’s hard to be like, Kevin, did you do this or her? She’s like, I don’t care. I’ll ask him, whatever, Kevin, why don’t you get your stuff done where you don’t really want that tension within the business for between us? So yeah, results has been a really big thing. Honestly, one recommendation I do is I go to a lot of conferences and trade shows and stuff like that. Make sure you spend time listening to keynote speakers and buy those books that they sell after, because those are always really motivational. You can get good leadership skills, good teamwork skills. Every time at our Service Master conventions, they have them, and they kind of inspire me to kind of go to the next level or read a book and go from there. So, yeah, try to get in front of keynote speakers if you can.
Matt Knight 39:44
Can you think about maybe one of those speakers that stands out for you?
Jason Miller 39:49
So there’s one at a service master conference. I can’t remember that ship is it was called, it’s your ship. So it’s about a captain in the Navy that he took over. A ship, and he changed the ship from the lowest ranking ship to the highest ranking ship. And do you know what book I’m referencing? I do, yeah, I can’t remember. It’s called, it’s your ship. I can’t remember it’s your ship, but I don’t remember the guy’s name. And it’s like, painting the boat, yeah, painting the boat. And then, like, instead of going around getting mad at people for doing things wrong, go around the boat and and find people that are doing things, right? Yeah, the kind of attitude was always like, oh, hide watch out the like, leader of the ships coming, right? And now it’s like, Oh, everybody, go out there and get in the open because he’s coming. You might get a reward sometime, right? That was a very eye opening one. We both read it right after we saw him talk.
Kevin Miller 40:35
He had really good speech. I even talked about, like, something about, like, he was you’re only allowed to give out like, 10 of these accommodation things where they get like, extra points on their exam or something. And he’s like, in my first year, I gave it, like, 200 nobody gave me shit. He’s like, that’s, that’s just what I did. Like, it’s pretty cool books. He’s a cool speaker,
Jason Miller 40:51
something Abraham, that could be but, or even just, like, he’s never, they’ve never had a capture the ship Eat, eat with the rest of the crew. So he would make his make his make sure he always went an eight with everybody else in the cafeteria instead of up in his fancy office. That’s just something I’ve always tried to bring into our business. Like I’m not too good for anything. I can go help out crews with demolition work, with sucking up water. I might not be very good at it. I might take me a while to turn on our equipment, but I’ll figure it out.
Matt Knight 41:17
But you being there and trying and learning sends that that right message.
Jason Miller 41:22
Yeah, and we try to get that to all of our staff. Just because you’re a project manager doesn’t make you too good to do this. Just because your crew chief doesn’t make you too good to do the technicians work. We even have like Taryn, she’s one of our partners. She She did a final clean by herself. She’s like, well, we’re almost at cost for this file. Let’s go clean it ourselves. So we have really good staff in that way. And yeah, that’s, that’s probably a book I would recommend. Is that one.
Matt Knight 41:43
And we’ll throw it in the show notes. It’s in the top of my head, something that Abraham, I’m pretty sure he’s like a lieutenant colonel or, yeah, exactly that. Can see the picture. I have a book in my office. I can see the book in my mind. Can’t remember his name either.
Jason Miller 41:57
The BEX conference always has very good speakers too. Last year was my first year, was my first year, and it was, there was very good speakers there motivational
Matt Knight 42:03
So, yeah, no, I’m looking forward to this year as well. It’s gonna be, it’s gonna be a fun event. Yeah. So when you think about kind of legacy, kind of wrap things up a little bit, kind of the legacy of of either kind of the Miller family or your your dad’s legacy. And I know he’s only 65 he’s not going anywhere. But what would like, what do you think is going is he going to be most proud of? What do you you two want to be most proud of when you look at this business and what it’s done?
Kevin Miller 42:33
That’s a tough question, too, but I think he’s always been kind of family focused. So I think his family maybe is his legacy kind of thing. And like, he’s definitely, he does a lot more now, like, he is wants to do more charitable stuff for kids and stuff. I think our mission statement, I guess, is restoring peace of mind. So he’s kind of always, kind of always gone with that and try to help people where we can, like, he’ll quite often we’ll see something like, he’ll see something on the news and, like, just email us or text us, like, oh, we should do something about should do something about this. I’m like, oh, okay, we’ll figure out something. But I think that’s kind of unless, and you have to add?
Jason Miller 43:11
hmm, I think something he’d always want to be remembered for is just always having that open door policy. He’s always been known for the guy that he’s one of those people. If you’re emailing him, he has to be the guy that sends the last email. So it’s kind of like, Thanks for sending this. And they’re like, no problem. Have a good one. He’s like, Well, have a good one. Thank you. No matter who it is, he will make the time of day to talk to our brand new technician that might be making the least money in the company, or our highest paid person, no matter what, he tries to help people. We have families that work for us. We have people that have come from different countries around the world, that have come for work for us. And I think that’s probably a big thing, is just making a difference in all of our staff lives, because we’ve done a lot of that. And I know that is something that makes me feel good. I’m sure it makes him feel good too.
Matt Knight 43:57
Anything that either of you want to add before we kind of wrap up anything that you thought I would ask or that you’re dying to share.
Kevin Miller 44:06
I don’t think I have anything.
Matt Knight 44:07
No, like embarrassing stories.
Jason Miller 44:12
No, I don’t have too many embarrassing stories. I want to bring up just a couple out there. No, I think I’ve pretty much got everything. We really appreciate you having us on the show. Absolutely awesome.
Matt Knight 44:23
Well, thank you both very much. Kevin, Jason, thank you for sharing your journeys and your insights with us today. Really, kind of shows. A lot of things I took out of this conversation was just the importance of those family values and kind of following in the leadership that your dad showed, and a lot of those things in the community and in the company, and really about being adaptable and how you build a business and learning from those those Cats. My new industry term I learned today, learning from those Cats. And just, you know, if anyone wants to learn more about Service Master Restore of Edmonton or either of you, how should they find you? How should they. Connect if they want to find someone that that’s going to come do their next restoration project. What do they do?
Jason Miller 45:06
Restoration Project? You can find us, obviously online. You can find our main number, and we’d be happy to help. Maybe reference if you ever call them because of the show, reference it. I’d love to know that and come meet you and go from there. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, so if anybody on LinkedIn wants to reach out to me on there. I’m always happy to meet people, no matter where you’re what industry you’re from. If you’re an insurance broker, obviously I’m gonna be really excited. If you’re a homeowner that’s trying to start a business, I’d be happy to help you out. One thing I’ve learned kind of from my role over the last couple of years is, no matter who it is, that you could work with them in the future, go, take the time to meet them for coffee and kind of help them if you can, because it’ll always come back and help you in the future, but yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best way for me.
Matt Knight 45:45
Cool. Okay, well, thank you both again. I enjoyed the immensely.
Jason Miller 45:51
Thank you. Appreciate you having us on here.
