Jeffrey Holton is the Facilities Operations Manager at The Doctors Company, the nation’s largest physician-owned medical malpractice insurer. He has a background in game development and project management. During the Clinton administration, Jeffrey served in the U.S. Army as a multi-channel transmission systems operator. He currently serves on the board of the City of Santa Rosa Planning Commission.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Jeffrey Holton describes The Doctors Company’s impressive property
- How Jeffrey entered the facilities management industry
- Tips for overcoming the challenges of facilities management
- Why facilities managers should build relationships with their vendors and subordinates
- Jeffrey’s innovative solution for a repair problem
- What Jeffrey learned from managing The Doctors Company’s facilities
- The challenges of remote work in facilities management
- Jeffrey’s advice for getting involved in facilities management
In this episode…
As a facilities manager, it’s necessary to establish communication between your vendors and subordinates to ensure seamless operations for your buildings. So, how can you communicate clearly while maintaining authority in your position?
Jeffrey Holton urges facilities managers to build mutually beneficial relationships with their associates. This requires taking the time to get to know them personally and offering your assistance. By demonstrating loyalty and consideration for their needs, your colleagues are more likely to respect your work and provide you with professional services.
Join Greg Owens in today’s episode of Watching Paint Dry as he talks with Jeffrey Holton, Facilities Operations Manager at The Doctors Company, about how to manage your facilities effectively. Jeffrey shares his tips for overcoming challenges in facilities management, the importance of building relationships with your vendors and subordinates, and his innovative solution to a complex repair problem.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Jeffrey Holton on LinkedIn
- The Doctors Company
- De’Shawn Kelly on Watching Paint Dry
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:10
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top leaders, industry experts and more to discuss issues affecting facility managers and property owners. Now let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:29
Hello, everyone, this is a nother podcast of Watching Paint Dry. And we are here on the second day of summer super long days. It’s nice and cool here in Marin today, which is much better than how the beginning of this week started where it was over 100 degrees here in Marin, which we were just talking makes, makes the paint dry a lot lot faster. This podcast like all of my podcasts are sponsored by my company McCarthy Painting. And we are located here in San Rafael, California. And we do painting throughout the San Francisco Bay area. So if you’d like to know more about our paint company and the types of work we do, go to McCarthypainting.com. Some of the projects that were just wrapping up, we’ve been doing a bunch of work for some of the autonomous vehicle companies, which is super cool to go inside those facilities and see the unbelievable work that they’re doing with vehicles that can drive themselves. And then working for some of the pharmaceutical companies, which are also always fun to go into those super clean environments and see what those guys are working on. I am really excited to have Jeffrey Holton here on the podcast. And we’re going to learn more about the things that Jeffrey has gotten himself involved in here, which is for The Doctors Company. Welcome to the podcast, Jeffrey, and how are you today?
Jeffrey Holton 1:59
I’m doing wonderful, Greg, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Greg Owens 2:02
And and things are good with you and your family and everybody that’s in your circles.
Jeffrey Holton 2:08
Yeah, yeah, we’re doing great. It’s It’s been a rough graduation. This was at least the first graduation for my oldest daughter who just graduated eighth grade. And so but it was, at least she was able to be in person, which was definitely a nice change of pace.
Greg Owens 2:25
Did you have a graduation when you were eight years old?
Jeffrey Holton 2:28
When I graduated from eighth grade? I did actually have a graduation. Oh, you did? Yeah. But my youngest daughter’s the extent of her graduation. She’s 10. And that was non existent this year. So Oh, right. Right. Right. You’re safe and sorry.
Greg Owens 2:44
Yeah. No, I don’t remember. I don’t remember having any kind of grudge. I wasn’t very I didn’t, I didn’t graduate from high school either. So that’s another story. But when I
Jeffrey Holton 2:57
both my friend you and I Oh, really nice. Yeah, I chose the military.
Greg Owens 3:02
I almost went that direction. It’s interesting, because my uncle and my dad convinced me not to do that. Right away. They didn’t want me well, they just said like, you don’t want to go in as enlisted you want to go in is like, you know, you want to go to college and and go in as an officer until I tried, but I just really wasn’t good at school. And I I still tried and then started working and was like, put that behind me. But
Jeffrey Holton 3:27
you made the attempt. And that’s all that mattered. You know what you found your calling? Yeah,
Greg Owens 3:32
what branch did what branch did you go into I
Jeffrey Holton 3:34
served in the army, I was a calm specialist, a 31 Romeo multi channel transmission systems operator basically, it just means I drove around in a Humvee and climbed telephone poles and trees hanging up line of sight communication.
Greg Owens 3:48
That’s that’s actually sounds lots of fun.
Jeffrey Holton 3:51
Actually was was pretty fun, very boring. But I was also in the I served during the Clinton administration. So we were at the time, fortunate enough to not really have had to been deployed to any, you know, war scenarios. But we were also transitioning out of line of sight communications and going more towards stack comms. So pretty much everything that I learned in a it was not even relevant anymore. So that was really interesting,
Greg Owens 4:17
right? Unless World War Three happens, and all the satellites get blown out, then they’re going to be calling on you saying, hey, we need we need some help with wire dogs. Exactly. Exactly. Wow. That’s an interesting. Yeah, it’s so interesting to hear about the transitions of that stuff you don’t think about right? Like how all of a sudden, a new new technology comes in. And the old technology is obsolete. And in a big way, right. I mean, they spent probably hundreds of millions of dollars on one type and form of communication to then just like switch because there’s a better form here now. Yeah.
Jeffrey Holton 4:52
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s definitely interesting, for sure.
Greg Owens 4:55
Um, tell me about the wall. Thanks for your service too. And we know that My pleasure.
Jeffrey Holton 5:00
I always it’s funny, I actually don’t even consider myself a veteran, I don’t really take advantage of many liberties that veterans are extended. And the reason being is because I believe that our veterans services should be should be reserved for our veterans that actively served during war. And so that in my opinion, I mean, everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. And I respect that. But just for me, personally, when people ask me, if I’m a veteran, I typically say no, yeah, and
Greg Owens 5:26
you and I, before this podcast, we’re talking about bureaucracies. And that’s a massive, the Veterans Administration to massive bureaucracy. Right. And they’re overwhelmed themselves. Right. And so yeah, I mean, it’s a it’s very noble of you to think of it that way. Right? And like, and and you’re not needing that service. It’s kind of probably nice to have it as a backup plan in case things do fall apart. But exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then so tell us about The Doctors Company, what wait and what you’re doing there. And what’s I mean, I read through some of this stuff, it sounds really interesting. Tell us what you’re what you’re learning there.
Jeffrey Holton 6:02
So I’m the National Facilities and Operations Manager. The Doctors Company headquarters that I currently work out of is here in Napa, California. And we were we built this building back in 1992. It’s 72,000 square feet on nine acres. And we also own six adjacent parcels, which brings the total of the property that I manage here to 15 and a half acres, we have a really unique design in our building. And actually people think our building is a winery very frequently. The building is absolutely gorgeous. And, you know, I’ve been doing facilities management for over 10 years. And this is by far hands down the most beautiful building that I’ve ever managed. And it’s really, really a pleasure. We have an east and west wing, which are both two floors. And then we have a central floor, which is three levels, which contains on the basement level, a cafe and a gym. And we also have egrets and herons that are endangered that live in our parking lot across the street. So my previous role I worked in a, I’ve worked in both the non and for profit sectors, one of the nonprofit sectors that I had worked in, they actually were advocates of, of birds and bird life. And so it was really interesting to be able to correspond with one of the individuals, groups that I used to work with, for them to request permission to come observe and do. Bird watching of the herons and the Ygritte. So it was really really nice.
Greg Owens 7:44
That’s, that’s awesome. You’re able to bring nature into into here into your facilities management packet, sea of 15 acres. And that’s quite a few different buildings to be managing there. And then you’re also in one of the most been the Napa, throughout the world as well known throughout the world, which always blows me away because I live here in Mill Valley. And people drive through Mill Valley to go to Napa right from this from the city and, and then people come from all over the world and love, love touring the wine country, right,
Jeffrey Holton 8:15
that they do that they do. And it’s really, really been interesting to just kind of see the discrepancies because I’ve worked in Marin, I actually worked for a nonprofit in Marin domestic violence abuse agency out there called center for domestic peace. That’s kind of actually where I started my operations management career. I actually was a video game developer for about 10 years total, I worked on games such as Bioshock, I worked on all the NBA 2k, games, NFL MLB, even NCAA basketball when they used to do it, or visual concepts and 2k games. And I had basically gotten to a point where if anybody knows anything about the game industry, it’s a very labor intensive market. And we were working an average of 60 to 80 hours a week. I mean, I was had times where I was literally sleeping under my desk, because we had a build release coming out. And I was the build engineer. So we needed to make sure that that got released to the QA so that they could go ahead and start working on it. Wow. So I had also had gotten married about my fifth year, sixth year in the industry. And I had my first child, my seventh year in the industry. So needless to say the last three years of my time in the industry was was really, really difficult in regard to just not having a fair equal work life balance. So towards the end of it, I kind of even let my boss know that hey, look, you know, it’d be really great if I could have a nine to five. Like, look, you’re you’re working in an industry we don’t do nine to five and they said Well, it’d be amazing. You’re always fixing everything around here anyways, why don’t you transition into a role as our facilities coordinator, we need one for the building. So I was like, yeah, so I literally left on Friday, I came back on a Monday, and I was their new facilities person that was basically my job was to keep butts in seats. And
Greg Owens 10:17
it’s a great, that’s a great origin story. Because the, you know, you were sort of disenfranchised with, with the industry, the gaming industry and, and working those long hours. And I know I’ve a friend out there who was in that in that industry. And he started like, leaving at five o’clock, and he was said, everybody would like turn their head and be like, What are you doing? Like, yeah, nobody leaves at five o’clock. You’re not supposed to yet. And so he didn’t last long. Yeah, like doing that, right. And, yeah, and then like, and then having a boss that was like, hey, you’ve got some talents here and this other area, and, and you could have the balance of life that you’re looking for, in some ways. I mean, you still have to, you’re still on facilities. So you still want to call? Yep. But not as much going wrong on the weekends for a gaming facility. Right.
Jeffrey Holton 11:02
You’d be surprised what Red Bull can do to plumbing. A lot of people don’t know this. But soda, and especially if your organization or company has decided to transition to waterless urinals, to think that you’re doing a big disservice, you know, a big service to the world by not having, you know, not utilizing water. If your demographic of folks that works at your company happens to be mass consumers of Redbull, in particular, just has so much salt in the taurine and so much salt, you end up with salt deposits that are I mean, even if you get an auger down, they’re trying to, you know, clear out blast out
Greg Owens 11:45
those light because it because it crystallizes in there, right and becomes part of the piping, you know what, yeah,
Jeffrey Holton 11:50
and essentially become part of the hike. And we were having to basically have this preventative maintenance program of not only using enzymes, but also using, you know, we were actually just hydro flushing once a month, just to be able to have lines that weren’t backing up constantly. So that was, that’s always you know, the challenge. And that’s one of the great things about working in different industries is, you know, I mean, the differences between some of the folks and it’s actually funny, I’ve worked with environmental agencies where you would think, Oh, these people are going to be really on the ball when it comes to conservation. On the contrary, game, people were actually more, you know, more mindful about their usage of paper towels and paper products. And, you know, it was just really, really interesting to see some of the differences I really enjoyed, you had a previous podcast with Deshawn Kelly. And that was a really, really great podcast, I love to hear it, because tearing some of the challenges of working in the nonprofit sector, you know, it’s I could relate to a lot of it. And it’s, it’s really, really difficult when you make that transition from a for profit to a nonprofit. And it’s, I will say, equally relieving when you make that transition back from a nonprofit to a for profit, but it depends on the for profit, you know, if the for profit leadership doesn’t have everybody’s best interests in mind, then you could be in an even worse situation or worse.
Greg Owens 13:24
Right? Right. It seems to like some of those, like gaming companies, and some of those companies also have what they have really good margins at times, right? And so then they have some more of that money that they can, you know, and I look at money as a as an energy source, right? Like, you can do more with it if you have more, right. And so you can kind of you can make those transitions to the, you know, to the the urinals that don’t use any water and that kind of stuff. Because you’re like, hey, and we can we can you can look at the bigger picture when you have more of that energetic resource. I’m on a few nonprofits, and sometimes they’re there. They’re struggling, trying to do the good, right. And sometimes we have to be like, No, you’re the president of this nonprofit and you’re running you have like, you’re managing like 15 people, you need a race. Trying to give money, more money to the, you know, to the people that this is supporting. But you know, you also we need you to keep going we can’t have you burn out on this. Exactly.
Jeffrey Holton 14:24
Yeah, it’s it is really tough. And I’ve also noticed that some of the different major differences that I noticed is that you just, you get sometimes people in leadership positions who have just kind of earned that position through their persistence and their ability to just kind of stay close to the heartbeat of the organization and not directly related to their ability to do the job. So this is a double edged sword at times, you know, you have times where it works out really great because you can get an empathetic perspective on some certain things, but at the same time, it gets really, really cool. convoluted when you hire somebody to do a certain position, and you expect, have certain expectations of that role in that person, but then you have Tie them by not fully trusting them and not fully allowing them to, you know, to monetarily make their own decisions. Even when you bring a proposal to the board. The problem is, is the board might not understand, you know, and when your boss is a, you know, a finance person or a person who is not directly related to facilities, you can tell them the right thing until you’re blue in the face. But unless they have that buy in, in you, and that trusting you, it’s really, really, really hard to actually do your job. So I’ve run into that problem quite a bit where you have people that just they do not know a thing about facilities management, and you tell them, hey, here’s the remedy to this solution to this problem. And what do they do, they go out and hire a third party contractor to come in. And they pay him five to 10 grand to tell them the exact word for word, what you had already proposed. And then there is no you know, all Hey, sorry, we didn’t trust you know, sorry, you know, we didn’t have faith in your decision making, you know, and then it gets to a point where you start to realize that situations like that can become, it can become unworkable. If you let it personally affect you and let it get to you personally. That’s why basically, there’s a lot of shoulds in the world. And then there’s reality. Yeah, just don’t fight the I don’t ever believe in should or shouldn’t. And I always believe in don’t fight reality, because you will lose.
Greg Owens 16:41
Right? Right. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I’m gonna on the other side of that, as the, you know, as the contractor being called in, and they can look at the facilities manager, and he’s just like, rolling his eyes. Like, like, I’ve already told them everything you’re saying about why we need to paint this specific. Right?
Jeffrey Holton 17:00
For you, as a facilities manager, your job is really to protect the investment or protect the capital, you know, protect everything. I tell people this all the time, my buildings are like my children. Like, if you really want to see me get upset, like, come into my building and do something really, you know, just ridiculous. And believe me, you’re gonna, you’re gonna see a knee jerk reaction.
Greg Owens 17:24
Right, right.
Jeffrey Holton 17:26
I just take a lot of pride and ownership and what I do.
Greg Owens 17:29
Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s wonderful. Because, you know, at the end of the day, I think the facilities buildings need to be like, where the where the occupants can just do their best work without thinking about the facility itself. Right. And I mean, it sounds like, I’ll have to look up some pictures of your facility because it sounds amazing, right? If it looks like a villa looks like a winery, then it’s also got this aesthetic beauty to it, along with, right, and it’s got to have the right temperature and the right feel, and there’s no trip hazards, and people can come in, and do their best work at that facility.
Jeffrey Holton 18:05
And but if you’ve worked at an organization like ours, that just has such great leadership, you know, I can’t, I’ve actually been with this role with The Doctors Company now for five months. My boss, Linda Johnson is absolutely amazing. You know, she is one of the she supports her staff, unlike any other, you know, VP of facilities I’ve ever seen. She is well versed in everything, you know, she is such a great teacher, and she’s really, really good at identifying individuals strengths, and she really, really plays to that. So just for you real quick, before you look up, there is basically a whole Yeah, that’s just our back lawn area,
Greg Owens 18:49
right with the American flag right out front and center. That’s,
Jeffrey Holton 18:53
we, we definitely we have a lot of our C suite is very, very involved in and supportive of our military and so it’s, it’s really great. And this is my favorite part. This is our our lobby arrow where we’ve got a really nice rotunda and and we’ve got some, you know, it’s just it’s just an amazing building. And it’s great because I’ve been able to call on some vendors and resources that I haven’t talked to in years because I got a Venetian plaster, who was trained in Italy doing Venetian plastering, mixing the pigments by hand and, you know, not very often it’s some
Greg Owens 19:27
well that’s a that’s a dying lot. Are right like chalk. It came in it came in very popular probably about 10 or 15 years ago. Lots of clients were doing it. We even trained some of our painters to do it. Right. And it’s so labor intensive. It’s crazy, really, and it takes out an artistic hand, right. You can’t it’s not it’s not a production thing.
Jeffrey Holton 19:49
To do jobs ever come out the same Yeah. And
Greg Owens 19:51
then now nowadays, we’ve been painting over it, which is kind of sad because like people are busy because it takes somebody like an artistic hand to touch it up right If it starts getting dingy or dirty, and and it’s not cleanable anymore, then, you know, to match those colors is nearly impossible. Yeah, exactly. Unless you’re just like fully, like, full blown artist, right? That’s great. You found somebody that can help you with?
Jeffrey Holton 20:15
Oh, yeah, yeah, no, it’s great to be able to actually call on vendors like this that I haven’t spoke to in years. And, and that’s the thing. That’s one thing that was told to me by my mentor, gentleman named Larry Charlotte, who was who is believe He’s the VP now of all facilities for Take Two Interactive 2k games, you told me good said, look, the best advice I can give you is you’re only as good as your vendor. And it really rings true every single day, I can’t count how many times I’ve observed other facilities managers or other operations managers, and the relationship they have between their vendors seems to be one that’s, it’s so cold, and it’s so just, you know, and they just don’t really care about getting into the weeds, or just spending that extra five minutes to actually get to know the people that are providing them services. And you’d be surprised on how far that goes, especially when it’s 105 outside, and your H back unit goes down, and your servers start heating up. And the next thing you know, you’re bringing in fans to try to cool the room until they can replace the compressor. And, you know, it’s times like that, that you go, I’m so glad that I have this relationship with my vendors. Because guess what they’re out right now in Richmond going and picking up a new compressor. They’re driving all the way back up to Petaluma to install it same day. Because why not? Because your company has that much clout, but because of the way that you’ve interacted with them and treated them and dealt with them as and not as you know, resources or subordinate?
Greg Owens 21:56
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s brilliant. And I know that on my end of this, yeah. And my mentor taught me this too, is like, you know, your relationship with, like, the facilities managers solid when, if I call them they pick up the phone, right? Like, it’s not going to voicemail right away, and I try to teach my project managers that to like, hey, there’s, there’s levels of how you were, you know, the relationships really solid, right? That if we call in, and that they pick up the phone, but we’re always picking up the phone, right, like, so they call where you know, and, you know, you build that you build a really, I mean, I find that I can build a really, really tight relationship with them, where we want to help in any way possible. We can even if there’s an emergency, even if it’s really hard, that we’re always figuring out a way to say yes to that and, and get it done. Even if it’s like, well, we can’t get like everything you want done right away, but we can get the most important parts done tonight. So that that way, you know, like the water damage is taken care of, and it’s clean, and people won’t see it tomorrow. And then we’ll, we’ll come back on the weekend and finish up and make it all correct.
Jeffrey Holton 23:08
And I love vendors like you who will actually come on the weekends and do that work. You know, what a cost and an expense it is for you to pass on to your employees. I mean, it’s really, really tough to just, you know, say hey, guys, I know you worked a 40 hour week and 102 degree weather. But guess what, I need you to come in this weekend. So that’s kudos to you for you know, taking care of your crew and taking care of your guys. And, and so yeah,
Greg Owens 23:37
and thanks. It’s also I really, because I work this way. And I worked this way when I painted to is I have people I don’t have some people that want the 40 hour week. They are very involved in their church. They’re very involved with their kids lives. They want to be home every day at five o’clock. Totally. Okay, we can we can work with that. Right? Yeah. And I have a bunch of painters that are workhorses. And if I don’t feed them work, like one of them. One of them. Enrique said to me once he said, Greg, if if, if you don’t have work for me on Saturday, I’m going to break the toilet just do fix it right. Like it’s okay. We don’t need to break things to fix. Working. I’ll find you something to paint. Exactly. Yeah. And it’s, it’s great. It’s, it’s wonderful because I feel like you know, they’re just so conscientious that there’s a nurse, so work oriented, that they don’t like to just sit around, they want to just work as many hours as I will allow them to write. And I do think there’s a limit, you can’t be going over 12 hours in one day is is really hard. You become more like I’ve done this and you become more like a zombie. The ability to make mistakes goes skyrocketing. Right? And I feel and then I do feel we need to have like one day off a week, right? Yeah. And there’s a lot of written things around how that’s important even if the Her son wants to keep working. It’s like, no, take a chill day, you know, you can work on your own car projects or whatever, but not not directly for the company.