#8 – Industry Variability for Facilities Managers with Rob Durr

8-Industry variability for facilities managers with Rob Durr

Introduction:  

Welcome to another episode of the Modern Facilities Management Podcast brought to you by Stratum. I'm your host, Griffin Hamilton. This is the show where I interview industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights into modern day facilities management. From hospitality to commercial real estate and everything in between, we'll learn what it really takes to succeed as a facilities manager.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Thanks for joining in another episode of the modern facilities management podcast. Today, I've got with me Rob. Rob, how're you doing?

Speaker: Rob  

I'm doing well. Yourself.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I certainly appreciate the time to sit down here today and really interested and learn more about your career path in facilities management and have been really look forward to this conversation for quite some time. So.

Speaker: Rob  

I know. I'm definitely excited to be here. We had a few hiccups getting scheduled you know. Obviously the realm of facility management changes every day and we had to push it back a few times. But I'm excited to take my first stab at this and see where it goes.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Well, there you go. Well, again, definitely appreciate it. And let's hop right into it Rob. Tell us who you are; a little bit more about yourself both personally and professionally.

Speaker: Rob  

Well, as you said, my name is Rob. I was born and raised in Ohio. I currently now live in Florida. I run the facilities department for the Toronto Blue Jays at their spring training facility, their player development complex. Moved down here for this specific role as kind of a promotion of my career as I was growing within facility management targeted this job, obtained this job, absolutely love it. Fantastic organization, fantastic opportunity to be able to work for him. So learning a lot, still developing myself and working through it. Before here, I worked with the Columbus airports. I was facility supervisor there. I was at the airport eight, nine years. That's kind of where I got my start in facilities from more of a maintenance perspective and operations perspective, construction background before that, that I won't go too much into but always seem to work with my hands. So I started working with my dad all the way back when I was a kid so…

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And so was that just something you fell into getting into facilities management or did you have an unintentional path getting into the industry?

Speaker: Rob  

It was very unintentionally intentional. I'll say that one and people laughed at me. So I did construction for several years. I was actually going to be a middle school teacher. That was what I was going to university for. Life shifted, started into construction. 2012 2011, kind of the end of the construction drop off, the recession, I was laid off, I decided I was done with construction, I didn't want to have the possibility of being laid off like that again so I started looking for maintenance jobs, I was good working with my hands, I was really good fixing things. So that's when I started hunting specifically for maintenance. Got picked up at the airport as a maintenance worker and just kind of fell into the career there, realized that I absolutely love it. Always sought after kind of the leadership opportunities so once I realized that there was a full career with facilities maintenance and moving into management, I kind of set my long term goals on that career path mode from you know, the worker into kind of a lead position, from a lead into a supervisor and then from there continue to further my education to basically just better myself as a Facility Manager and then ultimately moved in, you know, with the Toronto Blue Jays as their senior manager here.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And so going from that maintenance, that technician type role into the management, managing a facility, you realize that you had to further yourself and further education there. What in addition to being very technical and having that experience working with your hands, what did you realize you needed to add to your skill set to get into that type of position?

Speaker: Rob  

So there was a lot of personal development or professional development actually from just basic leadership skills, the ability to interact with not only my peers but also interact with my employees over my direct reports. Budgeting was a huge area that I had to learn, knowing that this is not my home finances and going from, you know, not having to worry about numbers to, you know, helping manage a four and a half million dollar facility budget and you know, having influence on multimillion dollar capital projects was just a tremendous learning curve. But that's like the big picture of it. There's also the ins and outs of the daily budgeting, you know. How does Accounts Payable work? How to service agreements and master agreements work? How do quotes and bids work? And selecting the right quotes, the right timelines, and all of that filters into, you know, your accruals and your monthly budgets, and that then filters into your annual budget. So many little pieces with that, fell in love with the budget aspect of it, I love dealing with the numbers and the budgets, and I actually enjoy the contract portion of it too which most people don't, but for some reason, I like to sit down and read an 80 page, you know, janitorial service agreement, slightly mind blowing.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

I think you are unique in that sense.

Speaker: Rob  

And then, you know, I knew that the technical side of things, but you know, there was the managing of that operation. So I could tell you how to fix everything, but then understanding how to assign the right technicians for the roles, whether that's, you know, kind of a solo task, a multi person task, scheduling it, prioritizing it, executing it, and then closing it out. So the whole, you know, life circle of almost a work request, basically. What I repeated there was the life of a maintenance request that comes in.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And was that all learning on the job or were you outside of your day to day, getting a higher education in that role?

Speaker: Rob  

I am a firm believer in on the job training. One of the best ways that I learn is throw me in the muck and let me kind of sort it out. So I'm definitely very hands on with stuff. That's one of the ways that has led me to the more technical side of things. I did pursue some credentials. So I worked through EFMA and got my facility management professional. Currently working through ethanol right now to get my sustainable facilities. My ultimate goal is to eventually obtain my certified facility manager. So my CFM. That's kind of my long term goal over the next probably two years. Yeah, man, let's say three. That's my long term goal over probably the next three years is to continue to work through that as my own. It's professional development, but it's definitely a personal track that I want to take which very much blends the personal and the professional development aspect of things. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Now how those certifications that you've already received, how is that other than the obvious of this is great knowledge that I can apply, I mean, is that something on a daily basis, you are looking back on what you learned throughout the certification process and be like, okay, this makes sense and I can apply it to x, y, and z, and I've done so?

Speaker: Rob  

Absolutely. The facility management professional was probably the, it was the best credential at the time and it taught me the most hands on and applicable… can't say that word today… information. I mean, it’s just there's four areas that it went through and I apply most of what I learned on a regular basis. It is truly a valuable skill set or knowledge set that I obtained from that to be able to implement in my daily routines. I mean, they talked about leadership, they talked about project management, they talked about operations, they talked about budgeting, so these, almost like the four pillars or the fundamentals of facility management and those are the four things that they work you in, and teach you about.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And going from the airport where you really got your experience and your foot in the door as a facilities manager and translating that to a completely different industry managing athletic facilities, two part question; First part, what has transitioned or translated from one industry to the other and what's been totally different?

Speaker: Rob  

What has translated from one to the other and what's different. So I'm going to start with what's different. Because it's easier. I went from, you know, a million and a half, 2 million square foot facility, 90 something addresses, 70 or 80 different roof levels, multiple buildings spread over three locations. We averaged about 12,000 work orders a year at the airport and had a 40 man staff plus and that's just maintenance, not including custodial grounds, airfield, and technical aspects. So really large. And coming here, I think the hardest thing, and the most difficult thing to learn was how to downsize. Government agency, so our accounting process was 17 steps to go by, you know, 10 cent screw, it probably cost $100 in man hours but that was just the way that it was done. So it was very formal, it was very repetitive and you just always did things the same way. Where here, I went from, you know, large facility, large budget to 120,000 square foot facility on 60 acres and a budget that's a fraction of the size there, but it's used in completely different ways and you operate completely different. The thing that probably translated between the two was how maintenance is. At the end of the day, we're just another building. We have an HVAC system, we have plumbing, we have electrical, we've got janitorial services and cleaning. So it was what breaks gets fixed, how you fix it, and then back to that same you know, prioritizing it and executing it. So those types of skills transition. I will say I'm very thankful for the budget skills that I learned at the airport because focusing in the manner that I did there, and how I learned to budget and then transitioning here as they were trying to bring their budget to a better level or their accounting departments to a better level and a higher level, it's nice to know that the way I used to do things and how I was formally trained there is the route that we're kind of progressing here. Because it's you know, you go out, you get your quotes, you get your PO, you execute the quote, and then you receive it in the system, and you're done and you move forward with things. Those types of things were very transitional. So how building operates, how you work on the building, how you learn the building, those types of things, you know, I pulled right from the airport to here. And this is a brand new facility so that's one of the perks about this, like, you know, we're opening and commissioning and brand new, you know, state of the art training facility. So, I've never imagined I would be working in a facility where I've got, you know, a 2600 square foot kitchen that has every bit of you know, appliances that you would have at a high end kitchen or, you know, hydro room with indoor swimming pools, and saunas and rehab facilities. Like things like that are just, they're fantastic to get to learn. I've no idea how to operate a pool system so my team and I are looking at becoming certified pool technicians. I mean, we outsource it so we have a very reliable local pool company that comes in, does an amazing job. He's been working with my in house technicians to train us on stuff so that we all learn it at the end of the day. But yeah, I never imagined you know, my skills that I learned at an airport are transitioning into an athletic facility with this type of equipment and it's just, it’s exciting.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And to your point, I mean, something's broken, right, and it's a very similar process where; let's identify the problem, let's troubleshoot, let's resolve it as quickly as we can and if need be, let's get our vendor partners out here. And just because it is one completely different type of a piece of equipment, still needs to be fixed. And you mentioned that you guys have a very good vendor from, a local vendor to help out on the pool repairs. Let's go into detail there about the importance of vendor relationships. And again, go back to the difference between the very structured organization you came from and now it seems like you are in the process of establishing that structure. Can you speak to that and vendor relationships there?

Speaker: Rob  

Vendor relationships are key. It's a very pivotal aspect. A lot of times… I'm a firm believer in house first off; I want to try and do things with the team that we've built, or the team that we're developing first. Obviously, we're a small facility. I've got, you know, to great maintenance techs, I've got an excellent H-vac tech and then I've got a facility supervisor. The four of us, or the four of them and myself, you know, the five-man team here, or the five person team, we don't know it all. There's so many other aspects of it. So that vendor relationship is very key. Yeah, I would love to be able to hire my own pool tech, my own electrician, my own plumber, my own kitchen repair, a kitchen appliance repair tech, you name it, I would love to hire it but I just can't. So developing those relationships is very key. It's different come into a new environment. So I moved across the country or moved down south, I guess I would say. So one of the first things I started to have to do was network. So I'm reaching out to local chapters of EFMA, I'm reaching out to local facility management groups, trying to just insert myself and just get to know people, meeting with different vendors whether I'm going to use them or not. You know, we're opening a new facility, I didn't think I would need a painting vendor anytime soon but I still met with, you know, painting companies, just to you know, start building those relationships. And then, you know, obviously, there's the formal part that transitions from the background here where I'm wanting to write up very specific statements of work, and I'm reviewing every contract that comes in and, you know, putting every little company, it may be a $3,500 annual contract and I'm reviewing it like it's $100,000 contract. So it's, it's that same level of thoroughness with everything but at the end of the day, I want the best vendor, I want a reliable vendor, I want somebody who's gonna show up if I do have emergencies, and those types of things. And I believe we've started to build great relationships. Thankfully, you know, my peer, my co-worker over at the stadium, he has a lot of those relationships that he had already kind of built so I was able to kind of leverage him and his existing relationships and then just kind of pull some of them over here. I've developed new relationships, we’ve brought on new companies for different services. We're a larger facility, we've not had to experience that from this organization in Florida. So it's, you know, bringing in vendors that they didn't even realize that we had services for and, you know, water management or chiller loop, you know, chemical testing, those types of things, finding good, you know, sprinklers and life safety, fire alarms, alarm companies, all of those different vendors. So yeah, I think I could rattle on few more minutes about something.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And so on that point, or to your point, you mentioned that you haven't had to use a majority of these vendors. This is you just being proactive. And it seems like you have a very thorough vetting process whenever you do add a vendor. What have you learned over the years or what mistakes have you made they learn from with regards to that vendor relationships and vetting out vendors that you work with?

Speaker: Rob  

Be honest and be clear! I think one of the toughest things I've had to learn, and not the honesty part of it but the being clear, being thorough and expressing what your expectations are and then managing those expectations properly. You know, I could talk stories about cleaning companies and my expectations from a cleaning company is that I'm going to walk in and my walls are going to be polished and sparkle like you see in a movie. But in reality, they're just painted and that's just the way it is. But if there's issues, it's knowing that you've built that relationship that you can go to them and talk to him about it too. So we pulled in our life safety company, we're in the process of working through all of our agreements with them right now, but I had them come out and do the first quarter riser inspections on our facility and then they did a cleanage and a hood inspection and there were some issues with it. So they threw our panel into or they bypass some things in the panels so they didn't set any alarms off, and then they didn't go back down and reset everything properly. So all the next day I was getting trouble alarms but I've built the relationship with them where I could just call them up and from a leadership perspective, it was not a laughing matter, but we were able to talk through it, and they, you know, took it to their technicians who were on site were able to correct it so hopefully, we won’t have that issue and it's a learning experience for everybody. Now, I know before they leave to make sure they go back down to my panel and double check it and put everything back in the right or re-enable everything.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And you mentioned, taking a couple steps back, you mentioned earlier that you'd prefer to have less reliance on vendors, just that being your, really your strategy. Why?

Speaker: Rob  

Oh, it’s the age old debate of in house versus outsourcing. I believe there's a level of ownership that you get from in-house work that you're not going to get from outsourcing. So if you look at our maintenance techs, they're not going to be digging in and fixing all these different things, I mean, they're going to be working on a vast array of different stuff. But if a ceramic tile breaks in the bathroom, they're going to take pride in fixing it, making sure that it's, you know, squared away, making sure that it's flush, making sure that the grout matches, you know, on the same tile, those types of things. Whereas if you're outsourcing it, you're gonna have whoever ceramic company, tile company come in and replace one tile, yeah, they're probably going to do a good job but at the end of the day, they're not overly concerned with what your bathroom wall looks like, they're not going home and telling their wife about it. So they may go home and talk about being at the Blue Jays facility, but outside of that. So you get this level of ownership and once the team gets, you know, invested and on board with everything, you know, it just keeps rolling. It's funny to say. But just to see the passion that they have for the facility, and the ownership that they're beginning to take, or are taking in the facility, the pride that they have, you know, at the end of the day, to me, that's more important than the vendor relations. Yeah, they get things done in a timely manner, they do things great. You know, those are things that, yeah, if you're managing all outsource, you're just making a whole bunch of phone calls. And that works for a lot of different facilities so they have no problems with that. You know, I have peers that were you know, they oversaw a series of libraries. Well, they didn't need an in house staff there, it was one person that traveled between all the different libraries. So it was better to have those vendors because they were all over the board where an in-house person wouldn't necessarily, you know, manage that or be able to respond quickly. Whereas here, it's we want faster responses, we want proper responses.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And on top of that, beyond just like the ownership of the maintenance team in-house, do you look at it as a cost savings as well?

Speaker: Rob  

It depends. What do you factor in into it? Are you just factoring in like, a guy's hourly rate and his benefit package? Are you factoring in what he can do offsets, you know, what their contribution is offsetting what you would potentially have vendors and for, it's challenging. At the end of the day, we are establishing ourselves as, you know, a very high end facility, we want to have a best in class facility. And to do that, we have to have, you know, a matching maintenance team, where we could, you know, we could open this brand new facility and just let it run itself and just bring in people quarterly and as repairs are needed, but after two years, it's going to look like a neglected facility. And to me, it's definitely a cost savings at the end of the day because I know they're here. I know what's on their plate and I know the pride they're taking in the facility to keep it and maintain it in a very high level. And I think those are some of the things that you could potentially lose by just, by outsourcing, you know, all of that staff. And I’m going to clarify something because I'm talking very much from the technical side of things, I’m not necessarily stating from a company, you know, the Blue Jays as a whole could have just outsourced facilities management. So I'm not necessarily speaking from that standpoint because I know there are facility management companies that just do the full operations. I don't know anything about that. I've always worked for, like I've always been in companies that hire their own in house facility management team. I have peers that do like third party facility management. So I'm talking very much from a technical aspect [inaudible 25:41] technician in house versus outsourcing to a technician.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Correct. And the reason why I brought that up, and I was curious where you would go with that because every time I ask that question, it's very similar response because it is not a very black and white answer. Because there, I think that the factors that you don't see on paper play such a big role in facilities that you can't just say, here's a headcount benefits and here's the cost of a vendor. It doesn't work that way. There's so much of an impact on having an in-house team, having to your point the quality assurance there, the accountability, and frankly, doing what you can on a day to day basis to on a preventative maintenance standpoint, to minimize the need for vendors to come out. And that doesn't show on paper.

Speaker: Rob  

I mean, I probably could show it on paper if I tried hard enough. We could make statistics show anything we want.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That is true, that is true. Well, switching gears here for a second, I want to go into really your thoughts on the future of Facilities Management and how you foresee it changing both from I guess, a technology perspective as well as just the resources available from continuing education and frankly, getting into the industry, as opposed to where it was 10 years ago.

Speaker: Rob  

Facility Management is just, it's forever evolving at the moment. One of the best aspects about facility management is that your facility management job is not the same as my facility management job. And when I go to another company, it's not going to be… not that I'm leaving, any blue jays who are listening, let's strike that here. You were to go to another company, you know, it's gonna be a different role or a different responsibility. So and it's funny when I saw this role, it was because I loved everything about the job description, and all the different things that I was going to get to do all the way down to security. I've never had to handle security before but now we're running Major League Baseball security here. So the future of facility management is so wide open, because every company is looking at this job, I don't want to say as a catch all, but from the aspect of, we can rely on a Facility Manager at the end of the day to just perform and do different things that we don't have any other role for so let's just put it in their role, and let them you know, absorb it and take ownership of it. And we're great at that. Facility managers, all of my peers who are facility managers are just excellent at going, Oh, wow, I now get to do this as part of my role so let's figure it out in the world have all of the other balancing plates. I know that's kind of a very, very fun way to describe the future but you know, you've got your technology, you've got your work order systems and the data that's streaming in from everything and companies who are looking at you know, how many hours a day is a technician working versus his ancillary time, versus his breaks and making sure we're optimizing and getting the maximum amount of people and organizing their day so if somebody is doing drywall, they do seven drywall repairs in a row versus going to drywall repair and then a plumbing repair and then another drywall repair. So there's so much technology out there that's helping with that. We use a simple work order system. We're not trying to be over the top with the technology here. We just want to be able to properly track and make sure items are getting completed. It's not a tracking a technician from a time standpoint, or you know, making sure they're doing it the fastest way possible. It's there's 100 things on our plate, we just want to make sure that we get to all 100 and don't miss any. So we look at technology from that standpoint. But it's forever changing. I mean, I talked to companies and, you know, they've now got iPads that, you know, they're showing where technicians are going, how they're working on it, you know, they can video record stuff. One of the eight track companies we were looking at utilizing here actually sets up a tripod and records their annual preventative maintenance or their quarterly preventative maintenance and you can go online and view their whole service record. So it's great for my perspective because now I can go make sure they did everything, you know, in alignment with how I've asked them to do it. But, man, that's got to be tough on the workforce because now they're like, I'm getting videotaped. But I mean, with that, I mean, resources are abundant. Training is just outstanding right now. There is every day, I mean, from LinkedIn trainings, to free YouTube tutorials and videos, to you know, official credentials. There's just, you know, abundance of it right now. Universities have now started actually having degrees and I can’t think what you call them anymore. You know, you can go get your Bachelor's in facility management or technical aspects which is just amazing. 20 years ago, gosh, was it 20 years ago? Back in the day, when I went to university, that kind of stuff wasn't an option. Like if you wanted to work with your hands, you went to vocational school. I'm still a huge, huge fan of vocational schools in training the workforce, you know, from any age. I believe everybody needs to learn how to work with their hands. At some point in time, you're going to have to hang a picture on your wall, or you're going to have a leaky sink so you got to know the best way to put the five gallon bucket under there so that it doesn't overflow and leak all over… 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

It's funny, I'm looking at my video, I'm looking at the photograph, hung up on my wall, it just might be a little crooked so don't critique me too much. But I mean, to your point there, I think it's really interesting, because so many people I talk to you, they just fall into it. Very similar stories, whereas I love working with my hands, I'm really good at catching on and learning new skills very quickly. And they just keep working their way up. And I'm interested to see the college degrees that you're referring to; there are becoming more and more common. How does that complement the trade skill? Because there is a very clear overlap required.

Speaker: Rob  

That's going to probably be one of the most challenging aspects of it. So I do know of a couple universities who as you do your undergraduate degrees, you either have to minor in a technical aspect or have gotten your associates from a technical school. So to even get into their facility management program, they're almost pushing the technical background. I love that! I love the fact that they're kind of blending the two of them together. I do think there's a lot of value in just the overall education aspect of it so that you know, facility management or facility managers as they're shifting into this role, you know, those people who just kind of fell into it, they are understanding that there's places they can go to to gather information, there's peers they can go to and talk to about it so that they're not so blindsided when things shift or things change and it's facilities management, it's just the way it's supposed to be. But yeah, so those degrees in the technical part of it. The degrees that don't have the technical part of it, you know, I believe there's a lot of… from a whole, our facility management is still evolving, it's still changing so those degrees are going to continue to incorporate best practices, they're going to incorporate the things that are needed at the end of the day to make you or myself successful at this role. If you see a lot of people graduate from facility management, and then they don't stay in the facility management career, then, or don't succeed in the facility management career, then you know, hopefully they would zone into maybe there's things that they could be missing. I don't have my degree in facility management, so I can't speak on what it all entails but anything helps, right? [inaudible 35:21] 101 first facility management class everyone needs to take.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That is certainly good to know. And it seemed like whenever you were cutting your teeth, that was the eye opening area of the job there. We'll wrap it up here, one question I asked everybody. Who or what has made the biggest impact on you in your career?

Speaker: Rob  

Oh, wow. Who or what made the biggest impact? My mind is like there's 1000 different scenarios. I'm thinking through them all at the moment.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

It's funny, because so many people are saying, you know, there's been 6, 7, 8 people I can think of, I just don’t want to offend anyone I leave off the list.

Speaker: Rob  

I'm not worried about that on. I'll go all the way back to one who… my dad taught me more things than I could ever imagine including a die hard work ethic. The man never stops and I've got mad respect for him. From there, I give a lot of credit to one of my former superintendents from construction. You know, I don't know why he was one of the greatest superintendents I've ever worked for and I think it was because he always told me it came from the school of hard knocks because he lived, like he grew up in the construction field and he learned the technical aspect of it. And I think that's what I probably most respect him for. And he also would stand toe to toe with anybody and not back down. Like there's ways to build things, and there's always to build things, right and he just, he would, you know, he was great at what he did, I always give him a lot of respect. For more of a facility management side, one of my previous when I was a supervisor at the airport, he was actually our facility manager. His name was Jason. Phenomenal at what he did, very educated, very thorough at what he did, exceptional leadership skills and to look at his leadership skills and know how he balanced his leadership skills with his technical knowledge, with his ability to manage management, or manage upline was just, you know, something that I valued getting to learn from him. And then, yeah, that's probably pretty close. I got a lot of mad respect for our vice president at the airport to over our division. I actually almost cried when I told him I was resigning from the airport. So when he was first person that I told when I accepted the job from the Blue Jays but he's very data oriented and he's very detail oriented. And those two things, you know, being able to watch him manage… I mean, he managed the entire asset division, the asset manager, so hundreds of employees at the end of the day. And it was just amazing to get to watch him how he interacted with everybody and his level of thoroughness and his ability to just kind of lead that entire team. So I always got a lot of respect for him as well. What had the biggest impact? You know, it's funny at the end of the day, it's the fact I got laid off. Because if there would have been a couple bad bids from the company I was working for or miss bids, or some of them went back out to the streets because the whole project was over. I mean, I got laid off, who knows? I don't mess too much in the what ifs or the maybes but knowing how that impacted me personally, going from having an income to not was just kind of a devastating life moment for a 26 year old. Yeah. 26 year old.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

For obvious reasons. 

Speaker: Rob  

Yes. And, you know, I didn't want to start back over things. I wanted to continue my career. And when I first got into the facility management, that was what shifted gears in my entire life to go on the path that I'm currently going down. So here I am sitting in Florida at 78 degrees outside right now.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Oh, rub it in. 

Speaker: Rob  

Sorry I’m originally from Ohio. I still call people all the time like, it's four degrees there right now like.. loving it 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That's great. Well, Rob, before I let you go, any parting bits of advice for anyone listening?

Speaker: Rob  

Have fun with it. I mean, the end of the day, you know, you spend almost as much time at your job as you do, you know, at home or doing other things, and if you don't have love for your job…. like I absolutely love what I do and I absolutely love where I do it and it just makes things just awesome at the end of the day. So if there's any advice, I can see your smiling, everybody, he's smiling. Cuz I know, you know, from talking to you a couple times beforehand, you really enjoy what you do. So it's always finding that passion in what you do and constantly enjoying what you do. I'm working way too many overtime hours right now and I don't get paid overtime. At the end of the day, I still just I love what I do and I love knowing that and however many days from now, when all these major league players show up, they're gonna walk into a facility and just be just in love with it. And it's myself and my leadership and my team who have helped achieve this. I don’t know if that’s a cool advice or not.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah, I mean, find your passion. And it's, I mean, you never know when you're gonna find it. I mean, to your point, you mentioned at 26, 27, you got laid off, and it took you that long to get into the field. And so you never know how you're going to find it but once you do it, it makes life really enjoyable.

Speaker: Rob  

Yeah and if you're somebody starting out in it, find a mentor, find somebody who's been doing this for 10 years and just chat with them. You know, there's a world of knowledge out there from just experience, which, obviously, you're building and sharing. So

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That's the goal here. Well, Rob, definitely appreciate the time. It was a pleasure talking with you. I appreciate the insights and I'm also looking forward to all the players showing up. That means that the Braves are starting their World Series run. So on that note, I'll let you get back to it. Have a good rest of your afternoon..

Speaker: Rob  

I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

All right, take care.

Outro:

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