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- [00:00]
A
For the first time ever, I am thrilled to say we have an official sponsor for the Dirt Talk podcast, and that's Ariat. I've worn Ariat boots on every job site I visited over the years, traveling in them across five continents. More importantly, I have yet to find a single project where working folks, unlike me, are not wearing Ariat boots and workwear in every condition imaginable. And there's really good reason for that, and that's because it's phenomenal stuff. And the more I've learned about Ariat and the company, the more I've loved their brand. So with this, Ariat is offering any dirt talk listener 10% off their next Ariat order at ariat.com dirttalk that's 10% off boots, jeans and workwear@arianat.com dirttalk or at the link in this episode's description. With that, let's get to the show. I respect what Shade's done because he's just gone all in on it. But he didn't go all in on it to begin with. He started with, you know, one machine and then got another machine, then got another machine. And as he saw the benefits, he's just converted. There's not a single machine in his fleet. Now that's not like European inspired. But then he's also part of, like we were talking about at dinner, that newer generation of contractors that's also sharing about it, which is even cooler. Like he's so open about, here's the latest and greatest. Like you would think that traditionally he'd go overseas, find out all the secrets, go implement them and say, just no one say a peep. I don't want anybody to know. But instead he said, here's everything we're doing and why we're doing it. And it's, I mean, he won the.
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B
Equipment world contract of the year.
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A
Contractor of the year. Yeah. Not by accident.
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B
And that those are the people that set the tone for the industry and you gotta learn from em. But here's the thing. I think the reason he doesn't. He's not afraid to share is there's nobody that's going to replace his people. He's built a team for. I forget how old they are, but they're. He's second or third generation. Right. So if you've developed a good team, then the, the, you can share the equipment because the equipment's the easiest part of it. All the people are the hardest part. So if you. I don't know, I try to be open and share things because I Know, I have great people and they're executing what we're doing. So I'm not saying that other people in our market don't have great people, but I don't know if there's anybody that's as consistent with their people executing on a daily basis. But again, the fear of sometimes you just gotta try one. Because I think my thing is I want everything when I implement it to be perfect. And Shay tried one and then got proof of concept, then tried two and three and four. But we at times, as people that are watching social media, only see the finished product. Right. The three or four. But, you know, and then that project he did in downtown Aspen, I believe is a water main project. So what was neat about that is we were doing a very intrusive water main project in our downtown. And watching him do that and saying, hey, Instead of doing one shutdown, we're going to do 10 shutdowns, do it all at once. We didn't, didn't fully execute that, but it did change our mindset and made us more open.
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A
Sure.
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B
And we did some things at night and differently. So when we share these things, it does have an impact and we were able to take a version, the Bactel version of that and implement it. So that's neat when everybody's sharing like that.
- [04:04]
A
Yeah, it's, I think the equipment thing too. It's like you were saying with software, it requires cultural change as well. Like if you were to just get tilt rotators on everything. It's not as simple as just giving your people tilt rotators and expecting them to now be more efficient. Like it takes, it takes time and you've got to warm them up to it. And they're going to be worse at digging with it because they've never used it before. Which is frustrating because it's like, why be worse when I can just use a bucket.
- [04:35]
B
Correct.
- [04:35]
A
And know what I need to be doing when I need to be doing it. But it's about managing that change, building it into the culture. Like something he's had to teach his people is something. One of the most obvious things in Europe is how many work tools they have and how frequently they're switching. I mean, it's every few minutes. Different tool, different tool, different tool, different tool. Whether they're doing pipe, whether they're doing excavation a little less with excavations a little bit more consistent. Demolition for sure. Just, just non stop. I mean, they'll switch hundreds of times a day, which is unheard of, unheard of here. But having to teach his people on. It's okay to switch tools and you're better off switching more frequently. But if you're switching tools, you need to be mindful of where you're putting them. So they have to be close to you so you're not tramming back and forth or messing stuff up or whatever it is. And then you have to know how to apply each tool for what specific application. And it's like this, like you could be a world class operator, but all these work tools, it's a different skillset that you have to learn. And that's the stuff that I don't think about.
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B
It's like, oh yeah, I think same thing's true with like GPS. We've had it since 2016 and we did okay with it and we learned like three basic functions and it got us by. It was better than staking. But you're investing all that. And we saw an roi but when we took it in house and we had Joe, our GPS manager, he came from the field and he showed a passion for it and then you allow him to learn and grow and that took time and money. So we're a small company, so you got to wear a lot of hats in that. But we let him go geek out in the corner and learn how to build models. And we bought him the best. The guy that wrote Trimble Business center started a separate company and we bought him a subscription to that.
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A
I see.
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B
And he's got access to that. Well then he, now he's got that passion. He teaches one foreman that and then that foreman takes something to the next level. So now we're, we're topoing, we're staking, we're doing offsets and it just keeps breeding through the whole, the whole organization. But it's time and money. Right? So, so yeah, we, we, that's how. So you have your big. We just had last week, we had zero degree weather negative. So we took two days and trained and our GPS training was back to the basics. So just so that we, we don't make mistakes. So we, we gave everybody the basics and then Joe's got two more courses which what he does is he takes content from different places and he actually puts it into the BuildWit app and then has different learning programs for him. So the next rain day he can then take a group of guys, maybe the guys that want to go to level two and teach them. So that's how we're adopting those things. But it takes time and money because it's all paid training. It's those sort of things. And then you gotta have the guys like Joe that are so passionate or some of our other foremen that then on their weekend when they got a little quiet time, they're googling something or YouTube and something and even getting better at their craft.
- [08:06]
A
I feel like, though, there's a lot of those people, you just need to foster it. Because I've been at companies where it's like, I want to add more value and I don't want to be paid for it. I just want to contribute. I just want to make it better. And it's pretty quickly shut down, which is the most demoralizing thing in the world. With no good answer. It's just shut up and do your job. And then I'm an ambitious individual, I'd say, but it starts to even wear that down, like, okay, fine, I'll just shut up and do my job. It's like the company in a way, somewhat just put the lid on it. Whereas if you can find those people and those opportunities and the embers are there, but you just gotta breathe some oxygen on it and put some more kindling on it, it's pretty cool what that can become.
- [09:04]
B
It's amazing, it's fun. That's where at this point, in my age, where I get the joy, it brings joy. But here's the thing is sometimes we get caught up into, well, is that going to screw up our process or procedure does that, you know, and you have to get it as a leader. You got to get out of your way, out of their way, I guess, and try to foster it within the confines of, hey, guys, it's good that we're learning this, but we got to make it repeatable. So it's giving them that room to grow and run with it, but then giving them a few boundaries to help so that when they bring it back, they can teach it that it's repeatable. Because if it's not repeatable, then it doesn't have as much value to the company. So it's finding that sweet spot of doing that.
- [09:51]
A
Sure, it's interesting too. You said talking or teaching the basics again, like brushing up on it. I, I, we've run into, like, I don't know, maybe the most frequent criticism we've had on our training videos is that it's too basic. But that criticism is usually offered up by someone not in the field. And I'm always confused by it because I feel like the basics are what's lacking the most in a lot of ways, especially with GPS and Technology, it is like crazy how the basics are just not at all involved. When I'm talking with people on the outside and I say, listen, you see that machine you drive? Have you driven by a machine lately? Yeah. You don't need a license to run that. I need a license to run a forklift in a warehouse. Small forklift in a warehouse. But I don't need a license to drive that 30 ton excavator that's right next to your house. And they don't, they, they think I'm joking. It's like, no, I'm not joking. I had five different construction jobs. I was never once taught the basics. Never. So you're just picking up what is happening around you and what the other people are doing. But there's no guarantee that that's the right way to do it.
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B
Right.
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A
And probably it's not because they picked it up from their dad or their original foreman or whoever it was. And maybe it is the right way because it is informed by experience. But I've seen a lot of situations where it's not at all the right way to do things. Like even like an example I had, I got to go out to Caterpillars training facility at one point when they were still friendly and invited us out. Now they don't do that, but we got to spend a day with their trainers. It was super informative. And they were talking about ripping and how the angle of your shank makes a huge difference. And you want, you don't want your shank perpendicular to the ground. You want it at a slight angle so that the material is, is, is rolling off it. In a sense it's, it's a lot more effective when it's at a slight angle. So as your material's running into it, it's not at that perpendicular angle. Getting that all that force against it, it's just a little bit less.
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B
And.
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A
And, and, and sit. And that's just a simple thing. I'm like, I'd never learn that. I don't know. I'm not a dozer hand. But I'll go out and see a lot of ripping. Very rarely do I see it done that way.
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B
Right, exactly.
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A
So like they're ripping and it's fine, but it's not. And once they said that it's like, oh, of course that's the correct way to do it. Like that's physics. But then I very rarely see it out in practice because no one's taught how to do ripping correctly. They're just, you put the shank in the ground.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And just drag it across.
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B
More power, more power, more power. That's it. Just put more power to it.
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A
Exactly.
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B
But I got a couple examples here. So we. I grew up, my dad worked for the water department. Okay. So he was a field guy, worked his way up to be the manager. He ran all the crews, new construction. So I was going on jobs with him at 5:15 and that. And then I started working for excavators. So I know water main pretty well. So I was taught how to lay water main. I taught Keith my, my operations manager, he taught his brother so on and so forth, right. So we get this big job in 19. It's the biggest job we ever have. It's over $2 million right down this busy road. And we are just kicking butt on it. Guys are doing good. We're growing all these things. And we get to the. And we were testing as we went. We got to the last run and we had failures. I had in that was year 19, very few failures. So we thought maybe that, that we dropped the pipe or out around but we had just slipped gaskets. Not, not going well. So he. I was became obsessed with what are we doing wrong in that. So we brought in the pipe supplier McWane Ductile and they put a class on for our whole team. And so we really were doing things right. I think that maybe we combination. Maybe there was a little bit off with the pipe but maybe we were just pushing it home wrong or whatever. But they said hey, if you're concerned about it, you got a paperclip. And I was like yeah. So we unfold a paperclip. If you take a paperclip and run it around the gasket you can feel when it's. When it's rolled. So usually what it is is you roll the bottom of the gasket. So here I am, I've taught at this point 30 to 40 guys how to lay water main. But I didn't know anything about this paperclip. So a 10 cent paperclip. Everybody has to carry a paperclip now. Every pipe layer. But the thing is, is then this is what's neat is like Chris, our foreman for the water mains, he's like there's gotta be a better way. So he went to Home Depot and they. There is actually like a kind of like a machinist type tool. And now those guys carry that in their. We have vests that they gotta carry certain tools in and they do that. So something that basic. Probably the. The two bells we had to dig up probably cost us $5,000 and a paperclip could have saved us on these two bells. So something that basic is what we're trying to teach and pass on. But here's the thing is you have to be consistent. So you have to build a laborer that does that every time. Well, I just laid 10,000ft and passed every time. And then they forget to start forgetting the paperclip, you know. So it's that basic that you have to go back to. And you were talking about like the basics. We actually have a. It was I think it was like 20, 15, 16 Keith and one of our foremen sat down and said what do we do every day that has nothing to do with like the technical aspects, but that you have to do. So they wrote a one page checklist for if you're starting at the shop, what you have to do, what you have to do in the field one day, what you do at the end of the day in the field and what you do at the end of the day in the shop. And that we teach every year to everybody and we've not had a lot of turnover so it's getting pretty redundant. But we've found that if we just do those basics right every day, they'll be powerful. And then we took. It was neat. Not at my prompting as the one foreman was like he grabs his phone and he filmed at his labor film him doing every procedure. And now that's in the BuildWit app. And so then every new hire, before they leave our office watches those videos and then we retrain on it. So that basic. And it's nothing earth shattering. It is very. When I pull up to a job, I want to know where to park so that I don't. I've had too many trucks backed into because you park at the end of somebody's driveway or you do it's that. That minute. So if we can teach people to have that much awareness, it avoids like all the low hanging fruit and we still have the problems, but it does minimize that. And I we found that, that our customers start to notice that, that they have less complaints when we're on the job and that sort of thing. So those basics, lining the equipment up to fuel and grease properly, all that, all of it matters.
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A
I. And that's something I've. I mean I think that's a characteristic and it's not a secret thing, a characteristic with any top performing team. The details, the basics are just dialed in every single time. Like we've had the fortune of getting to know some special operations guys. That's the first thing they'll talk about is the smallest little details. You cannot let any of those slip. Yep, they're in there. They are absolutely professional at just the small details. Repetition, just non stop sports teams like you can go down the damn list. I mean anybody that's been extraordinary at sports, I feel like it's all about the details. Like John Wooden, you know how, how you put your shoes on, how you put your socks on.
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B
Making the admiral that said make your bed.
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A
Yeah, make your bed. Yes. Y. McRaven with making like there are a thousand examples. I think you can go back to the Bible and probably on every other page find an example as well there just across the board. But it's rare at the same time to see that. But in my recent talk, it's like I can go on a job site and by the way the entrance looks, by the way the parking lot looks, by the way, if I were to open up a company truck and look at the floor, look at the floor map, if, if I looked at how the equipment's parked, if I looked at how the rock is set out on the site, pipes set out on the site, is there trash? What do their people look like? I can probably tell you if it's a best in class company and a company that's making a ton of money and attracting the right kind of people buy Those small things 100% nothing to do with the job.
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B
Yep.
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A
And it's universal. It's just like I have not found a. I have not found exception to that.
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B
When here's the thing, you think about it, when I was one guy in a truck, I could do that. I didn't have a lot of resources, but I could do that. So it's not earth shattering. And I didn't sure as I didn't invent it. I was fortunate. When I worked for the John Deere dealer, I was in parts and service and I deliver filters to places I got to see. Cacosing and Heigl and Miller brothers, all these guys that were best in class in Columbus and I just copied it. I was like, wow, I really like that. Being a dirt nerd, a geek. I was in a. They had a three acre maintenance shop in housing with a. At the time the guy was a army specialist managing the whole parts department because it's basically like running a Walmart or something like that. So even when I was the one guy in a truck and our shop, literally my aunt and uncle let Me park my truck there. It was a chicken coop and the cones were neatly stacked. It had a couple shovels and a wheelbarrow. It was nothing fancy, but even then we did it. And as we moved to different facilities, we didn't always have the best stuff, but we were organized and neat. And I can remember one of my estimators that's retired now, we did not have a fancy shop. We interviewed in the front seat of my truck. But he saw how our 10,000 square feet of gravel was organized. He's like, I think I want to do this. And this was a veteran guy that had been around. So it's that organization that people appreciate it, it matters.
- [21:00]
A
That's huge. Yeah, yeah. Or yeah. I mean, shoveling tracks, sweeping out machines, trashing machines. It's just. You can go down the list. It's also on this note too. It's interesting. I'm reading a book right now on. This guy's studied mega projects and he's basically studied why almost every mega project ever has gone way over budget and way over schedule. They just blow the budget and schedule just completely out of the water almost every single time. And so it's like, why is that? And one of the things he talks about is it's called uniqueness bias. And how everybody thinks that their project or situation is unique, but it's not really in the grand scheme of things. And so instead of just trying to reinvent things or try to make up a whole new set of rules, just apply what's worked, apply what others have done in this situation that's been effective, Just do that. That's far, far, far more consistent than trying to reinvent stuff. Like even estimating a project. His whole argument is like, they try to just make stuff up based on what this project, what could happen with this project. But it's like, just use previous projects, use those rates or whatever you achieved there. That's gonna get you far closer than trying to take these educated guesses just cause there's too many variables. It's impossible to account for all the variables and for which variables are going to work in your favor versus which aren't. And it. There's too much. And I think that's part of the problem with companies with construction operations is everybody thinks they're special. They all think they're a unique snowflake. Well, that wouldn't work here because we're in Ohio, or that that wouldn't work with us because we're a smaller contractor. You know, all the, all the. It's like, this is a universal principle. Being orderly and organized, creating SOPs, training people on the SOPs, on the basics. That applies anywhere.
- [23:10]
B
But here's the thing, because I don't want to sit here, and we are very good, but we're not perfect. And we're humans. They get weary and tired. So that's why you have to go back and retrain. Because we constantly need to be reinvigorated, you know, and, you know, it's New Year, like people do their New Year's resolutions. I'm not saying that so much as just, you gotta. You gotta just reinvigorate the team and re. Explain why we do things. We say a lot of whys. You know, sometimes in the heat of the battle, you can't say whys. So at some point you need to explain why we're that way. It can't just be, well, Matt's anal. We know he's a neat freak, so that's why we do things. And then whenever we have a win or when a customer says, you guys are different and thank you, we got to make sure the team knows that because it gets tiring. It gets tiring moving the concrete. Guys forms for him all the time. Right. That's not their job. We're not getting paid extra to do it. But we know that if we don't play nice on these sites and be helpful, we end up getting the worst pain. But it's easy for me, who's more in the office now than the field, to say, guys, you gotta do that. They're the ones having to eat somebody else's crap every day. So you have to. We gotta just remind them like, it is being noticed. We're not always the low bidder. When we turn, we do a lot of negotiated bid. We're not always the low bidder. But all these little things that you do actually do matter, and they're getting noticed. So please keep doing them.
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A
Yeah. And even when it's not tough, it's just really monotonous.
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B
Yes.
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A
Like, you know, when it comes to sharing the stuff on social media, that's the stuff you don't share because it's the same shit every single day. Whether it's cold, hot, wet. Same thing, same thing, same thing. But that's the magic in it too, is if you can. Like, I'm young, we have a young team. And this is something I'm working on to this day, is really explaining, like, why it's important to have some sense of order. Like, if you don't have some sense of if you go back to your house and it's a fucking disaster, total chaos. That chaos like that that goes everywhere with you, and it makes you so much less effective. It wears you down over time. There's a. There's a cost to that. So, yes, there's a cost to being orderly, to cleaning up after yourself. Yes, it's not fun. Yes, it's monotonous because you're making dishes every day, you're making laundry every day. It's a nonstop endeavor. But you're eliminating that chaos so that, wow, I actually do. Like, I have made my bed. I do have something in order. I can affect something. And you won't then look at your bed in the evening when it's made and be like, you won't feel like shit about it. You'll feel like, okay, I do have some sense of control over my environment, and I think that's really important for people. And so I'm right now trying to teach this because it's like, I'm not being an ass. I'm not being on you about getting your shit together, keeping those details aligned for me. It's for you. And no one's taught you this before, but you better figure this out, because this is probably the one thing getting in your way when it comes to doing anything beyond what you're doing right now. It's not your skill set. It's not your actual job. It's just getting those details squared away and being stupid consistent about it. And I think what people don't realize, too, is the consistency is really important because that builds trust with those around you. And I like being very consistent because people know exactly what to expect with me. And if they ask me to do something, it will get done. If they ask me to be somewhere at a certain time, I will be there at that time. And so I don't want to be the person that other people have to worry about. I just want to deliver. And I don't always get it right because, yes, I'm a human being, but I'm trying to just be wildly consistent so people know exactly what to expect. They can lean on me for getting shit done. And when you're not consistent or those details are missing, can I trust you if I ask you to do this and you haven't, You've missed it in the past, and you've done it nine out of 10 times, but you missed on the 10th time. I give it to you on the 15th time. I'm still wondering if it's gonna be a miss.
- [28:08]
B
And that's hard. It's hard because you see people putting such great effort out, and then they miss those things. And sometimes if I see great effort, I will cover for them. And I gotta be very careful of that. I gotta make sure that we're holding them accountable. Respectfully. I don't yell, I don't scream anything like that. Respectfully. Holding people accountable. We've kind of built a culture in the guys where they're holding each other accountable and whatnot. But it's tough to get it right. Like, we sit here where, whether it was the last time I was on your podcast or now, people will reach out afterwards and say, hey, it seems like, you know, ask for advice. You got things figured out. The thing is, is we have a lot of things figured out, but we also. This world's changing so so much in every. The environment's changing everything, so. So it's trying to maintain order and structure while everything's changing. And so it does go back to what you said, the trust. Like, people need to trust that. Yeah, everything's changing. But historically, we've been taken care of. We've evolved, we've changed, and we've weathered bad times, whether it's 08 or the pandemic or any of those things. So I don't know that trust is a big deal, though.
- [29:34]
A
Yeah. And once I started to understand that trust is just consistent action over time, because all trust is, is, are you gonna do what you say you're gonna do? And if I have this whole data set that says, yep, Matt does what he says he's gonna do, with these hundred different points, the odds are you're gonna do it the 101st time. So it's like, I can trust you. It's like, yeah, cool. There's nothing to substantiate that I can't trust you. But that inconsistent data is just what. Cause I feel like it's. People that are untrustworthy are easy. You just don't trust them. You don't. You don't have to wonder, like, they're just untrustworthy. And maybe that's not within your team, but you deal, any kind. Any company or any individual deals with all kinds of people, whether you like it or not. So you will be interacting with untrustworthy people.
- [30:31]
B
Correct.
- [30:32]
A
No matter what you do, where you do it, that's easy. Because once you find out, it might hurt you to then figure out, oh, they're untrustworthy. But once you know, Noted.
- [30:42]
B
Cool.
- [30:43]
A
Now I know how to deal with that person. The trustworthy people are also pretty easy. Cool. Yep. Put them in the category, they're gonna deliver this every time. It's the people in the middle.
- [30:52]
B
Right.
- [30:54]
A
It's those. If they're inconsistent, you just don't know where to sort them and you want to put them in the trustworthy category. But then you've also been burned enough and you're like, and this is really important and this customer's key, they've got to do this. But they've missed just a few months ago. And if they miss on this, it really sets us and you start to play those games and it erodes it across the board.
- [31:21]
B
And here's the thing is there are trustworthy people that especially when you're talking about employees that have something go astray in their home and then they will get off track. And then as the leader, the manager, you have to figure out is this permanent or is this something that is just something we can help them and coach them through. And so they may. I always hate to say that they break the trust. It's more that you can see them not act their behaviors not the norm. And you gotta, you gotta go beside them and talk to them about it and see what's. What's going on. And that's easier said than done. Sometimes or unfortunately we're not. Not good as especially men aren't good at raising their hand and saying I need help. So then they'll dig themselves into a hole or noticing. Yeah.
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A
That somebody needs help as well.
- [32:18]
B
Yeah, exactly. And then, and then as the leader you're going and this is just not going the way it used to go. And then you have to either dig in or move on. And you pour so much, you pour time and money into people, but if you care about them, you pour your heart into them too. So you got to really make sure that you're being aware of that. And now we're teaching our foreman to be aware of that. So that when they see somebody that isn't performing like they. They used to, there's usually a reason for it. And you know, even, even down to we got a lot of young guys, so you got a lot of girlfriends coming and going and different things like that. And just. Even a breakup will back to guy for a couple days. So you gotta make sure that you're. You're aware of that and making sure they're being safe and they're, they got their head in the game.
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A
So. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I mean that's non stop too.
- [33:19]
B
Yeah.
- [33:19]
A
Because I Was fatal flaw in what I was just saying with trustworthy versus untrustworthy is that's assuming everybody's within a constant state, which is completely, completely incorrect. But yeah, it's a death in the family, it's a breakup, it's a divorce, it's alcoholism, it's sickness. Yeah. Sudden heart attack, you know, something chronic, something sudden. There's soap, car accident. You know, there's a thousand different things that can happen that can just wildly disrupt your life and then you still have to go to work and perform.
- [34:01]
B
I'm actually in awe of people, how resilient they are because as the owner, I may be more privy than maybe one of our foremen. Right. Because they have to come to me and ask for time off. So they've kind of given me the full story. And I always encourage them, I say, this is your private business, but everybody here cares. So if you're comfortable in your trust, you can share this with your team, then they can help you more. And that's something that we're really trying to encourage people to do. But I don't know, people are resilient and that's encouraging. You know, we get a lot of negative stuff in social media and we just got over the, you know, presidential campaigns and all that stuff. But man, I think the one thing I've learned, and it kind of gives me my hope and energy, is that there's a lot of good people out there that are willing to learn and grow and work together. And if you can cultivate those people in your life, whether it's at your company or through what you're doing with the Dirt World Summit and you're cultivating a lot of people that care about the industry and that you can surround yourself like, man, it makes all the BS you deal with fun.
- [35:20]
A
It makes it way better. And I've written about this a lot. I really enjoy the people I work with, which is a kick ass feeling. Like, and I go back to the teachers in elementary school, middle school, high school saying, you know, when you, when you, when they make the random groups for group projects, like, well, you know, in the real world you're not going to be able to pick who you work with and this and that. And it's like, now I'm, I'm able to pick who I work with and it's way cooler, right? Yeah, yeah, it is so much better. And I think you don't just have to be a business owner too. I think, I think people should be very selective with who, who they go to. Work for as well. Like the standards need to be on both sides of the fence. And I think employers right now in a lot of ways have this victim mentality which I don't at all like or appreciate. But those are the employers that I think are going to go away. I just don't think that's a winning formula is, oh, poor me. I, you know, people are, they don't work hard or they're taking advantage of us or you can go down the list and this is like small companies up to the biggest corporations in the world. And then on the other side of the fence you have individuals that are victims or always looking grass is always greener, so on and so forth. But if you are a good, hardworking individual that's doing your best, that's done your best for the company you're working for and the company you work for sucks, go find another company. I think that's the only way the market adjusts and market will adjust. The companies that do better for their people will attract more people and will make more money which will then be able to invest further in people. And it just goes around and around and around and around. And the companies that don't, they can only continue to raise wages for so long. They can only like that's their only tool is money and that it only goes so far. And it's like it does go pretty far, but I just, I don't see that as the future. I could be wrong, but I don't know.
- [37:41]
B
I think that a lot of people complain about the younger generation and that I don't buy any of that. I think that we have to be realistic about where they came from. So I have six kids and I've referenced his son before and it was different. The office was in our home, we were doing a lot of commercial stuff. So my dad was able to take me to job sites and that. But my kids didn't get that same experience. But they listened to the talk around the business table and that. But what I always tell my foreman is when I turned 16, my dad got a little cheap set of ramps and taught me how to change the oil in my truck. Nice. Okay. When my kids turned 16, I taught them how to not drive in the pit at Valvoline. Okay.
- [38:33]
A
Yeah.
- [38:34]
B
So different. And I taught my kids how to sweep and mow and clean a toilet and do all these things. Things. But there were things that just timing wise, they were very involved. So they're at dance competitions or band competitions or sporting events. So when my kids are all in their teens and twenties and they're going out in the workforce. They have a lot of skills that other people don't. But then there's some gaps there too, right? And so you have to help them fill those gaps. My one son went to college for two years and he came to us and said, hey, I want to get in the trades. And I said, okay, what about back to excavating? And he gave me some great reasons why he didn't want to go down that path, and I agreed with him. So he looked at electric pipe fitter, plumber, iron worker, ultimately chose to be an electrician.
- [39:30]
A
That's great.
- [39:31]
B
So here's the thing though is he had his experience was mowing, sweeping a couple years, loading trucks at Walmart. Not really hand tools in that. But we were fortunate. He had approached a union contractor and they said, no, we're sorry, you just don't have enough. Well, he went and worked for a non union contractor that just poured into him, taught him all the basics, right? And then a year and a half later he decided he wanted to leave our smaller town and move to Columbus. Went back to that union contractor at a brancher and said, hey, not asking for a job, I'm just asking for recommendation. And the guy's like, wait a minute, you actually went and gained skills? And he goes, you're valuable to us. And they got him in the apprenticeship program in Columbus. He was able to make this big move and it was because. But you go back to it as a father, I was like, man, did I fail him a little bit because I didn't teach him how to the hammer or we did some of those projects, but just not the way I grew up. What the reality was is it probably going to work for somebody else made it better. You know, dad's not trying to teach you, you know, and he learned those skills. So I guess as leaders of construction companies, we have to remember that story that, you know, these kids didn't necessarily. They're so involved in activities, right? Like five, seven days a week. I mean, that's a whole business unto itself. But what they do learn in those activities is commitment, work ethic, how to grind, that sort of thing. They're not necessarily learning these construction skills. So now as I flip it to my guys, we've got a bunch of guys with the heart, the work ethic, raised by good families. We just need to be patient with them and teach them, you know, how to use a shovel, you know, you didn't. Unless you grab a farm kid, you're not necessarily getting somebody to learn how to use a shovel and a pick and a sledgehammer in that. So you have to teach them those basics and just keep, keep feeding into that and, and then asking those people for patience. Right. Because really they all want to run and run the equipment. Yeah, but you need to back to excavating. You really need to master the basics and the laboring.
- [41:54]
A
Well, I think that's the employer's job too, is to teach them why the patience is important for them. Why spending the time on the ground, why spending the time in the ditch, whatever it is, is probably the most critical experience they'll get in their entire career. Like that's what I tell people is they're always trying to get right into equipment. I say, hey, the more time you're in your early 20s, you're 18, 19, 20, whatever it is, the more time you can spend on the ground, the better. Do not rush that. You rushing that only screws you. And especially even if you're going to college or you want to go be a project manager or something like that, that is the most valuable experience you'll get. That's the foundation for everything else. But I feel like it's. They don't know any better at the same time. And yes, of course they're trying to get to a piece of equipment. Who doesn't want to get in a piece of equipment? Like I don't blame them either, but I feel like, like the details like you were talking about, it's like it's, it's on us to educate. Hey, here's why you don't want to skip ahead. Here's all the valuable skills that you're going to get that will then help you do X, Y, Z down the road. Even like I feel like the previous generation, I love the previous generation criticizing the current generation because they're the ones that raised the current generation. I just, the irony is rich. But I also think previous generation looks back on the world with their rose colored glasses and sees the world in a way that it's just not like 30, 40 years. How fast everything has moved in. 30, 40 years is very dramatic. Cars, for example, people don't really work on their cars anymore. Why? Because they're just complicated. You have to plug them into a computer and Ford won't even give you the damn software.
- [43:55]
B
Don't get me started on that.
- [43:57]
A
We won't get into right to repair. But they're far more complex now today than they were 30 years ago. 40 years ago you could Pull your car into the garage and do just about everything you wanted to to a car, a modern car. Sure, there are still people with that skill set, but there's. It's so much more complex. Even just the number of parts within that vehicle is astronomically higher than where it used to be. And so, like, I think it's in a lot of ways just an unfair characterization. Like, well, we did this when we were kids. It's like, yeah, well, the world was different when you were a kid. Or even I've seen, like, the food thing is really, really starting to get some mainstream energy here, which is, I think, great. But like, how parents will say, well, we ate it as a kid and we're fine. And it compares the ingredients of the same food. But, you know, back in the day versus now, wildly different. Like, you know, seven ingredients over here versus 34 over here. It's the same thing, it's the same brand, it's the same product, quote unquote. But there's nothing same about it. And I just think people lose track of that a little bit. They don't, I feel like, give that the credit, they should.
- [45:19]
B
I agree with you 100% because you can get into that mindset of things just aren't as good as they used to be or they aren't. And I really try to be. I'm a realist, but try to stay positive at the same time. And my wife and I, when we're trying to blow off steam, watch a lot of documentaries and stuff. And all you gotta do is watch like a documentary from the 80s about the mob or drug cartels or whatever. And you're like, that era we romanticized was pretty rough, you know. You know, it was really kind of rough. So I get that. But, you know, I think, you know, as a leader, you just gotta. You gotta try to stay, stay positive and stay while being realistic. Things do change. There's a lot of change. And I can't say that personally, over the last two, three years that I've always loved it. There's been periods of time where I've just had to slug through it and maybe just keep just one foot in front of the other. And then there are times where I'm like, okay, I'm ready to tackle this, and you're energized and charged up and go tackle that change. But the end of the day, no matter what, it's always going to change. And you got to embrace it. And usually if you embrace it, there's some value or return there. And A lot of times you can make some pretty good profit if you embrace that change.
- [46:44]
A
Yeah, I think realism, being pragmatic is extremely important because, I don't know, I tell people, it's like we can argue all day about the work ethic of 18 year olds all day and you saying they don't work as hard. It could be true. It very well could be true. They're less equipped for sure for hard work. I don't know if it's a work ethic thing. I think they're just less equipped and they haven't learned. I think it's a skill and they just haven't learned. I didn't learn in the environment I grew up in. And it's like, is that my fault? No, it's not my fault. I didn't choose where I was born, I didn't choose how I was raised, you know, and most children don't.
- [47:26]
B
But you had a passion for it and you went and chased it and. Yeah, so if you see somebody with a passion for it, you got to, you got to pour into them. You have to, you have to, man, I'll take all those people, you know, and it doesn't mean they can. They're always going to work out. Sometimes maybe you're just, you're there to guide them and help them for a year or two. They produce effort and help your company. Sometimes they move on too. So you just have to. Early on we were like, we hoped or wished everybody would stay forever. But I can remember we had a young guy that he was with us but his desire was to go work for the city road department or something. We poured into him and he worked, he gave his two week notice. He worked like a lifer till the day he left our company.
- [48:25]
A
Sure.
- [48:26]
B
Well, when he wanted to go from the city street department to city water department, needed a reference, he got a reference to the point where the guy from the water department called me and said, are you guys related? I said, no, but that kid gave us everything we had for two years and I respect him for it and we're going to not. Just because he moved on doesn't mean we don't care about him still, you know, so, so just, you know, I don't know. There's seasons in your company, you know, and your company's changing, so you have people there for a season and maybe you outgrow them or they outgrow you or sometimes you're not growing fast enough for them and you just got to. If you pour into people though, good things Will good things will happen or.
- [49:09]
A
You just want to try different stuff? Like, I feel like some of the best advice I was given in my early years was just try a bunch of stuff. You don't know what you like. You have no clue. You've never done any of it. So how do you know what you like? Go do what you think you like, try it out, but then go try this, go try that. You're going to be better off for it. And while I was working for companies for only a short amount of time, I still did my best for those companies while I was employed. So to me it's like this isn't taking advantage. One, they don't really give a shit about me. I'm a kid. Like I'm not a critical part of the equation here. And two, they're paying me to do a great job, I'm going to do a great job. And then when I want to go do a great job elsewhere, I'm gonna go do a great job elsewhere. Because the way I can go provide maximum value to this industry is finding out where I should be within this industry.
- [50:12]
B
Correct.
- [50:13]
A
And the odds of me finding that at one company are very low. Now. It's possible. It's more than possible, but statistically speaking, it's probably low. And I'm super glad I did that. I think that was one of the best things I did because it made me a lot more valuable.
- [50:31]
B
Right. It gave you perspective.
- [50:33]
A
Yes.
- [50:34]
B
So I had a similar. I worked for three different excavating companies, all smaller size, but still three different ones. I worked for a John Deere dealer, but they made me work in parts and service first. So I swept their floors and I put parts away. But I got exposed to all these big time excavating companies. But then like I remember one semester I did cold calling for Merrill Lynch. That was before they, mind you, this is in the 90s, so they were still respected. This before the OA crash.
- [51:03]
A
Yeah. That'll build character.
- [51:05]
B
Yeah. You know, having an 80 year old lady MF, you know, like you're calling at 6pm during her time with Pat Sajak or whatever, she's gonna, they're gonna be mad at you. But man, when I started the business at 23, cold calling was not an issue. So, you know, I hear it on your show a lot. And a lot of things, especially construction people, I think we gotta be careful of. There's been. There was this you had to go to college thing. Right. But I also think now we're starting to say the trades are the best. And like, like it's a, like one has to win and lose.
- [51:44]
A
Yep, yep, yep.
- [51:45]
B
I think what you described and what my. I think you and I have actually similar paths to get where we're at currently. So my kids, five of them are in that college to young adult age. And I said what really matters, get, get good grades, but what really matters is the internships. And I said there's no time in your life if you're a college student. You get at least two, if not four summers. Yep. To try things. And I said it's the only time that when I look at a resume and somebody's job hopped to where it's acceptable to job hopped.
- [52:20]
A
Exactly.
- [52:21]
B
So I think that's the part that people miss. I don't think that I have a business degree from the Ohio State University of Marketing. Well, there was no social media in 1998 when I graduated. Right. But I'm taking some antiquated old marketing skills and have applied them to today's social media because I choose to grow and learn in that. And I hear people say, well, I didn't learn anything. I learned how to interact with people. I learned how to study. I learned how to take something I didn't like statistics or calc and gut it out. So I do think that, I think that's just a general comment on to say just this whole one person has to win or lose when really we want good people in this industry that are educated. And there's more than one way to get there. You can get a two year construction, you can get the school hard knocks. But as the employer, we have to just understand that there's gaps missing there and help fill them. So if I got a guy that's a leader that didn't go to college, I might have to spend more time with him on like his personal, his personal system. You know, there's the backdoor checklists. But he still needs to have like a personal management system for how he approaches his day in that. So we have to teach those things.
- [53:52]
A
Yeah, I think college is still wildly valuable. I don't, that's. I've had the same like questions in my head of yeah, why does it have to be one or the other? And I would still argue for college. If someone were to ask me would you do it again? I'd say I would do it 10 out of 10 times knowing everything I know I would do it. I would do it so many times over because it gives you four years at 18, you are a complete shithead. No matter where you are, you have no idea what's going on. You have no idea who you are. You don't know a single thing. So to have four years that are as safe as it gets. Correct. Those are really. And people have argued with me. But it's very low risk. I would say as low risk as it gets for a 18 to 22. Very low risk for you. Not only to jump around jobs, which is. Yeah, again, no one would bat an eye about how many jobs I'd had. No one cared because I was in school. And not only that, but to learn about who you are as an individual. That is worth its weight in gold as well. Just figuring out who the hell you are and the amount of social experience you get and just the volume of data you collect in those four years. Years versus working for those four years, I would argue in a lot of ways is a lot more valuable just because it's so much more variable and offers so much more opportunity for some critical life mistakes, but not the enormous consequences of those mistakes. At the same time, in most cases, what I don't believe in is a degree is going to qualify you for anything.
- [55:37]
B
Correct.
- [55:37]
A
I don't subscribe to that one bit. I don't think the degree is worth almost the paper it's printed on nowadays. Unless you want to be a professional engineer, cpa, lawyer, et cetera.
- [55:50]
B
Correct.
- [55:50]
A
There are certain roles and those are very much needed in construction. If you want to be a cpa, you can be a CPA in construction. We need those people, right? So to think like we just need people in machines, like no, no, no, we need the whole thing. We need the whole infrastructure here. And two, I don't think you should spend a lot of money on it. I think people go to these out of state schools and spend 3, 4, 5 times the sum on the exact same product that they would get or a comparable product to what they would get in state if they have that option, which most states have that option.
- [56:33]
B
So as someone who has kids, senior in high school, we range from 17 to 23. And we've had those conversations. And I think part of what helped us is we provided for our kids, but maybe a safe, reliable car, paid their insurance, paid it, gave them a chunk of money, but they were on the hook for a lot of their college. So that made them more educated consumers and they had to get creative. So if one wanted to go out of state, like her one daughter, she was an ra, she did all these things to minimize it. But man, and I'm a proud dad of all these kids. But when I see what that experience led to, it led to internships and doing these different things. If you do it that way, where you've got skin in the game and you are making educated decisions, I don't think you have to go. Unless you're trying to be like the Wall street guy that has to go to Harvard to get that prestigious job. I think it's about the internships, your experiences, all those things. And even two of my daughters worked at the local bar and grill to pay for college. So they did the internships at the accounting firms and prestigious Berkshire Hathaway companies and all that. But then they had to work at places where there's some humility. And this local bar and grill is the place where the judge is having lunch and the guy he sentenced for the fourth DUI is having lunch with him. But you learn how to interact with people. You learn how to. So it doesn't have to always be prestigious. You just gotta be moving forward. I referenced my one son, the Electric Apprentice. I remember him saying, hey, dad, the one guy at Walmart's just not a nice guy to people. But I figured out that if I ask about his kids, he's really kind to me.
- [58:49]
A
Kids are a very safe topic with.
- [58:51]
B
Most people, but nobody would interact with him. So he was able to have a better day at work because. And he wasn't trying to get anything out of it or manipulate the guy. He genuinely cares about people. And so you learn these soft skills while doing some of these menial things. So as an employer, when I have to put, now I'm a dad, but I'm also interviewing 20, 19 and 20 somethings, I think our industry's so quick to say no. Okay, so, oh, you worked at Walmart. You worked in a restaurant. If I see that they were at that same job for two years, I can take a chance on them if they express that. And what we do and what's pretty neat is we'll start them off in our shop. So you'll take a guy. And our shop has not had a permanent person working or cleaning in it because after about three weeks or six months, you're like, this kid's too good to be in here. But it's a proving ground. Did they run parts? Do they clean? Are they reliable? All those things. So I think that I don't know if it's good enough. What we're building has got to be good enough for my children to come too. And I'm recruiting other Parents, kids. So I gotta make sure it's safe, that it's a good, healthy environment for em to learn. And I think I've just been lucky to be in this sweet spot where our growth and the timing of it is, as my kids are doing the same thing.
- [60:29]
A
It is interesting timing, right? Yeah.
- [60:31]
B
Right. So. So it gives me perspective. And we have, I think out of 17 field guys, 10 under 30.
- [60:38]
A
Wow.
- [60:39]
B
Two of our foremen are been with us since the start. So just seeing these guys grow up and have kids and I mean it's, that's the fun part of this business.
- [60:53]
A
Well. And yeah, you're almost taking like the way I started to put in my, my, my, my mind as like you're taking kids and you're making adults out of them. The more you can do that, the more fulfilling it is, I think.
- [61:08]
B
Yeah.
- [61:08]
A
And it's, it's very difficult and a lot easier said than done.
- [61:15]
B
Yeah, I mean, I mean I, I gotta, I can't tell you. We, we have, you know, everybody starts off running a bobcat, right. Or a skid steer loader.
- [61:23]
A
Right.
- [61:24]
B
So we have this. Every skid steer loader has its own utility trailer. And I replace at least two fenders per trailer per year to the point where my mechanic had these like mega fenders built just so they can't ruin them. But like, I could be a jerk and every time one gets dinged, just lose my mind. But number one, we need to do a better job of teaching or we need to teach them to have a spotter if they're not comfortable backing onto this trailer, pulling off of it. But the point is, is that man, like, it costs, it does cost time and it does cost money to train. But we're a little company and we can still do it. We did it when we were three people and now we're 17 field guys and five in the office. And this, this is the excuse of like, well, I'm not. You see like Goopaz setting the bar high. Right. With simulators and all those things. I can still take a guy over in the side yard of our shop, have the gas line marked and teach him how to hand dig. Right. That doesn't cost a whole heck of a lot. Or you can do the take your time and do on the job training. So I think we just have to take the excuses out of it and just, you know, we, we post videos of our training and that our training room is just this long narrow thing. The, this room that the previous owner of the building had cubicles in so we put a TV on it. We went to Walmart or Sam's Club, bought black chairs and tables that they all match. It looks kind of nice, but they're not like high dollar leather office chairs or anything. And we train there, but we can also. We used to train in the basement of some old house where the ceiling was low. And so it doesn't, you don't need fancy to do these things.
- [63:27]
A
Yeah, and the fancy stuff is great. I think that perception of training though does the industry a disservice. For exactly that reason. You look at it like, I don't have simulators. I can't, I can't afford a full facility that's just for training. Like that's, that's great, but that's so far out of reach. Or Knife river, right, is the next level.
- [63:49]
B
Yeah, that's, that's crazy.
- [63:50]
A
However many millions on this facility. Many, many, many millions. But I like their story too because it's like here's where we started 15 years ago or 20 years ago, whatever it was. This was the training program. So it's not about this. Like this is great, but this is the result like we were talking about when we began. You see the end result, you don't see the beginning because the beginning, there was nothing really to it, but that's where it starts. And doing something is much better than nothing.
- [64:20]
B
Correct.
- [64:22]
A
Which I think. And that's why having people in you, like you in here is so valuable. Because I talk with a lot of companies that are much bigger, but then that's the biggest criticism from the smaller companies is like, okay, that's great, but it doesn't apply. It's just not relatable. But I'm sitting here, I'm like, well these, yes, it's not relatable, but all of these themes are the same. It's all the same principles, it's just applied differently.
- [64:53]
B
Well, think about this. If somebody wants just a real world example. So we have a three acre shop and to teach gps, we had four or six control points set around our facility that are permanent. And in any day or time you could go teach somebody how to set control. And then we have just a small area where we store equipment in the back and we have a pile of asphalt millings and you put, you have a model built that has a 20 by 50 pad and you just push the asphalt millings back and forth like it, that's, that's our, that's our training. That's Knife River. Right. So it doesn't have to be in. We have a nice shop and facility now, but when we were across the street at this 30 by 30 barn and that, I could have still done the same thing. You know, we maybe had to get a torpedo heater in the barn or whatever if it was a cold day. But you can still do the same thing. So they really, I think just. I would encourage people just to just do something. Just try.
- [66:02]
A
You know, we do like, we, we, we were just like talking in circles about leadership training and you know, you know, looking at Echelon front and this and that. It's all out of money. And we've gone through quite a few years now where we don't have a lot of money, we don't have the money to spend. I would love to do it, but it's just not possible. It's just not feasible. So then we just wouldn't do anything. You know, the usual. It's this tale as old as time. And then I'm like, why are we not doing anything? This is the, the, the dumbest excuse. There's so much material available. Why don't I just have a monthly call talking about some kind of leadership topic? So all today will be. We're gonna revisit. We've talked about it before. We're gonna revisit extreme ownership. We're at the beginning of the year. Let's talk about extreme ownership. And I have a 10 minute video. I was actually looking up. This was funny. I was looking up Jocko videos on this and I found the build with training videos, but on YouTube. I didn't even know they were on YouTube. So good information. But I found him and it's again, I forgot this video existed. But I pull it up and it's me asking Jocko at his table. San Diego.
- [67:15]
B
I'm laughing because we just had leadership training last week and watched that video.
- [67:19]
A
Okay, good. Yeah.
- [67:19]
B
Okay, so we did that, you know.
- [67:21]
A
10 minute video and I'm going to show the 10 minute video and we're going to have a discussion. Hey, here. When was a, when was a time where this was when, when, when you, you displayed extreme ownership or you saw it displayed in a positive way. When was a time where you or somebody else around you did not take extreme ownership? You just have a discussion. There you go. 30, 45 minutes. It just costs time. That's it.
- [67:48]
B
So this was really neat is that we identified making sure our foreman had leadership skills as one of our strategic initiatives, right along with replacing me as the project manager and implementing some software. We had Three big initiatives. What was neat, though, is this time, usually a lot of it in the past, the training came from me, but Joe, my GPS manager, who also handles our build wit training, and Keith, our longstanding superintendent, operations manager, they said, we got this and they shut the door to our conference room. And on a Friday, they just went through everything. So they had extreme ownership dichotomy of a leader laying out. They're watching the build wit. Echelon's got a bunch of YouTube videos, so they basically pulled in some of the buildwit. Some of the Echelon front had a print of the OODA loop, which is what we were teaching that day, and that was it. It didn't. It cost, I'd say, four hours of their time, so whatever that's worth, on a Friday. And then we came in and from 8 to noon we just went over that content. But we chose that because we had paid for it and it was readily available. But it really. The conversations between stopping the video are what really matters.
- [69:11]
A
That's the valuable part.
- [69:12]
B
That's the valuable part. You know, and then, you know, a lot of times when we do training, we bring in pizza or barbecue or whatever. But then we went and actually took a minute and had lunch. I can't remember when. So it was my wife and I and the foreman and the office staff. We just went and we. I don't think we barely talked an ounce of shop, but we got caught up on family and everything. And it just, man, it just reset the tone, right? And gave us energy in. So didn't cost a lot. So it cost me a lunch some, you know, a little time to be organized. We had three handouts that people could take notes on put in there. Like, we. A lot of our guys carry binders just with stuff that they want to reference in that. And the feedback's been great. You know, now we got to actually go. Got to go live it, right? Yeah, you got to go live it.
- [70:10]
A
Not for the hard part, but I am on the training front. Like I was saying last night, it's taken us just even quite a few years to understand training in the industry just because we're charting a new course, which is oftentimes messy. But what we've realized is it's not really the video that's the valuable part. It's the discussion. A video, a simple video, can foster and can help facilitate because I say, and it's anecdotally, but probably 9 out of 10 safety meetings, I go to toolbox talks, whatever morning meetings are Identical. There is very little value in any of these meetings. And to me, it's a huge missed opportunity because that's the only chance probably that that crew is together for the day in not doing other stuff, not eating lunch, like just together. And that's the one opportunity the crew leader, whoever, has to address that team and to build that team. And when it's slipstrips and falls, stay off your phone, wear your damn hard hat. Hey, can you put your gloves on? You know, stuff like that. All right, let's go to work. There's just no value created there. But if you can show one video of Jocko talking about a simple topic and give that leader in the field a small tool to have a discussion with their people, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, there's so much more value created. And then you do that. If you do that every day or even once a week, there are so many different opportunities for training and learning that would have never existed otherwise.
- [71:50]
B
And then if you take all that and you have humble people in your group that share that's big, that share their mistakes and aren't afraid that they're going to be reprimanded for it, that's when the magic happens. Especially in safety, when you can take an abstract video of power lines and say, you remember, unfortunately, XYZ guy hit a wire two years ago and we were very lucky that that didn't harm or hurt anybody. And then that person stands up and says, yeah, I did that. Here are the three lessons I learned. That's when. So you do all those things you said, and then you have humble people that aren't afraid to own their crap. So one of the things we teach is if you make a mistake, raise your hand high and we're going to own it and go on. I mean, I went out this Saturday. It was like four or five. No, actually, I guess time flies. Five years ago, we're doing a Dollar General downtown Akron. I think I'm going to put oomph on the crew and just run a piece of equipment. Help. I'm going to sweep, do whatever. I had the best time right up until about 2:30, 3:00. I backed into a. There had been houses there, so we had ripped down these houses. The power company had disconnected the power, but had left the pole, the old rickety pole end. I went to load on a lowboy and I swung around and I knocked that pole down. It knocked down and the wires laying across our lowboy in the middle of a road, shutting down traffic. And I'M the owner, right? And they all looked at me like, how's he gonna react? And I was like, hey, listen, you got lucky. Like, I called Edison. I had a local number. They came right out within a half hour. I was like, guys, this is what we did wrong. Da, da, da. And then Monday morning, I had a team meeting, and everybody heard the story. I was like, I did this. So I preach safety, but I need you to know I make mistakes, too. Right. Like, we do make mistakes. And I've been in the field, and I've been in your seat, and I'm not proud of it, but you gotta own those mistakes. And so what's the lesson? How did we respond to that? Because you could have run over to that if the wire was hot, tried to move the lowboy and get hurt. So you have these real world examples. So it's unfortunate that you have those incidents, but you have to make those teaching and learning moments, too.
- [74:26]
A
And those, despite what people say, those incidents are everywhere.
- [74:29]
B
Yeah.
- [74:30]
A
At every company, everywhere, every project. They're happening. And I've found the fastest way to get people to share their mistakes is to share your mistakes. And I think that's probably the only way, I think, really, to get people to share.
- [74:47]
B
Yeah. You gotta disarm them first, make sure they know it's safe to share those.
- [74:51]
A
Yeah, but that's such an effective tool to just first, hey, here's an example. Like, I'll do it today. Here's an example that I saw extreme ownership practice in a great way. Here's an example that I saw that I didn't take extreme ownership, and here's what happened as a result. That just opens the door wide open. Maybe not in that conversation, if it's still a new thing, but that then signals to everybody else, oh, okay. All right. Well, the boss did it, so we can talk about it. And then, like, Randy and I just had this conversation. You can tell me all day long, every single day, watch out for power lines. Watch out for power lines. Watch out for power lines. And you can put some flags on the power lines, and you can put signs saying, there's power lines here and this and that. They'll probably still get hit at some point. But if you have a story like that of somebody hitting a power line, and here's what happened. I will never forget that. I will never forget that. I could tell you all of the terrifying safety stories that I've been told throughout the years that are the reason why I'm safer. And I'm watching this Shit, because I've heard the horror stories. I haven't. It's not because of the safety training I've had. It's not because. Well, here's the OSHA 30, here's the rules and regulations. It's. And here's what you need to do. It's not, I mean, that's helpful. Like you still need to know the laws and information, but it's the stuff that's gone terribly wrong. The people that have been buried in trenches, left and left, left and right, died, paralyzed, whatever it is to know. Cool. Trench protection, extremely important. You don't have to tell me anymore. Like, you don't have to say trench protection is important. You just have to show me some guy that died in a trench. Noted, won't do that.
- [76:44]
B
Yeah, unfortunately, we had that incident in our community with another excavator maybe 15 years ago. And we know one of the survivors. And every time we have trench talk, we're like, we know somebody. This isn't didn't happen in Columbus or Cleveland. This happened in our community. We happen to know those people. They're good people. And a lot of pain was caused by. In this instance, it'll just be a second just spotting something real quick. And so I think that, I don't know, it's a tough industry and you have to safety first, but it's got to be real. So like you referenced OSHA 30, remember a couple years ago, I feel like that was a trend. Like everybody, every GC, especially the nationals, we went OSHA 31, OSHA 10, all this stuff that honestly, it's kind of backed off. People still put that on their websites and all that. But I went to our safety company that we use, the third party and I said, I like that, but I've sat in it and it's about ladders and scaffolding. A lot of stuff that doesn't apply to us. Nobody's at. None of our GCs are asking for it. So how do I actually keep my people safe? So we developed, we did, we got somebody to come in and we did skid steer training so that they could get a little card, even though it's not required. And like, I think it's every three years. OSHA requires trench competent person. We do it, if not every year, at least every other year, because that's what's our biggest risk. Right? So don't do things just to check a box. Do things that truly keep people safe and keep it at the forefront. So. But we have to tell the stories like if you just watch the videos and listen to the instructor, like we need people to step up and tell their near misses all those things so that it's put a real name and face to it.
- [78:52]
A
Yeah, I mean like every rule, everything safety related has a story associated with it because that's, that's why the control or whatever applies. Because there was something horrible that happened at some point. But I, I, and that, that's part of my struggle with some safety programs and even like some of the mental health talk too. I view it, it's, the intentions are always good, but it's extremely hollow when it's all this messaging about how we need to talk about it. You know, you can talk about it here and I make a video telling our people we can talk about it and that's it. Like, I don't think that's, I just, I don't see that as very effective. I would see it more as like, hey, we need to talk about it. And here if I were to provide a positive example as a leader, if I were to offer some degree of vulnerability because everybody's been there. Here's when I was in a tough spot and here's what happened as a result. And thank goodness I had so and so to talk to. That makes it a hundred times more valuable, I think. And it's like, I'll watch some of these videos or see these posts. It's like, that's what I want. Like, give me something, make it real. And then they just go right up to it and then it's done. And to me, that's just not all that effective. And it's good that we're talking about it, but it's like it needs to be a real conversation. If it's just talking to talk, like, I feel like a lot of that, it is a lot of that. Right now we gotta check the box. We've gotta do this. It is a problem.
- [80:33]
B
Well, it's mental health awareness month, so I gotta have five posts.
- [80:37]
A
Exactly. Yes.
- [80:38]
B
Just to, to check the box, check in and like, do you really have a giving heart? Do you really care? You know, so it's teach in leadership training, talking to your people about noticing when your teammates are not acting themselves and then coming beside them and say, hey, notice thing that you seem a little off today, what's going on? And then having some skills. So we just had, every year I've had somebody come in and talk about our health insurance program. And this is another thing, like we're a small business, but I would put our Health insurance against anybody's thousand dollars deductible, 2000 a family. We want people to keep what they make and they don't always understand that. So I feel like it's my responsibility as the leader, give them the best health insurance possible, which includes counseling, mental health stuff, all these things. And at the smallest deductible because a lot of guys, as much as I'd like to think that we've helped them learn fines. Some people live paycheck to paycheck. So one birth, one big medical thing can wipe them out. So we're trying to. And I'm going to tie this back into mental health. You have to. It's not just to say we support you if you need anything. It's actually to say we have an open door policy, but please actually come through the door. Because a lot of times I think I'm pretty approachable and have an open door policy. People still are afraid to come approach me sometimes.
- [82:25]
A
Well, yeah, because your name's on the company.
- [82:28]
B
Correct.
- [82:28]
A
It happens to me all the time too. And they've had prior experiences that then like I don't want to go talk to the guy or the guy's busy, like he doesn't exactly.
- [82:36]
B
And that that's the worst thing they could do. But so now it's my responsibility to teach our operations guy to notice that then it's his, you know, and take it down the line. But then to, to bring it together. So like we renewed our insurance, we switched insurance companies and that's a whole. Just part of being an owner is to stay on top of that stuff. And when the guy's like, hey, I'd like to come in and talk to everybody, I don't know what dawned on me, but I realized that we subscribe to a lot of things and don't use them to their fullest. So this year I had them come in at 5pm so it was paid for our guys or gals, whoever are the employees, to sit through it. But they were allowed to bring their spouse because if you think about guys in particular, they don't, a lot of times don't handle that part of their lives. So I said to the spouses, I truly want you guys to use this. And I know that some of you are facing big stuff, births and surgeries that have big tickets. And I personally can tell you as a father of six that, that we weren't using it to the max. We have a 2000 per family deductible and you shouldn't really, other than co Pays, pay a dime more. But we hadn't trained everybody on how to use it. But then we said, hey, this is Brenda from the insurance company. This is her cell, this is her. And when you have these big life things, keep all those bills. And if you need help, this is the person to do it. So as it applies to mental health, it's gotta be the whole thing. Because if it's cost and you're fearful of, you're already living paycheck to paycheck, and then you're afraid for more expense to your family, then we've given you a benefit, but you're not even taking advantage of it.
- [84:37]
A
Well, I think that's quite good too, because the people that work at your company, if they're married, they're half the equation.
- [84:46]
B
Correct.
- [84:47]
A
If you don't have the spouses on board, that can get in the way pretty quick of somebody working for your company or making the decision to work for your company. That's a key decision point I've seen with our benefits is pay's one thing, but what are the benefits? And it's not even the person coming to work for us asking. It's typically their spouse or oftentimes it's the spouse, especially people with kids. Like, if they have kids, that is like question number two, what am I getting paid? But then what do the benefits look like? Because I've got two little kids at home, we've got to figure this out. And involving the spouse is, that's quite brilliant.
- [85:29]
B
I mean, it makes sense. It makes perfect sense. But it was like, where am I failing? So here's the thing. My wife and I, she's not, she works from our home office, but we got the new documents. They're in a folder still in my briefcase. So even I failed as a husband to bring those documents home and say, hey, here's the latest details. Now, she brokered the deal and knows a lot of that. But still I dropped the ball, right? Not as the leader of Bactel, but as the leader of the home, as the husband, to do that and keep her in the loop. So if I'm failing at that, I can imagine the other guys are too. So it's just trying to make decisions that really matter. Like not just to check a box, not to do that, but that really matter to people's well beings. If you can do that. It's not, it's not rocket science, it's nothing. But my motto this year is like, let's do we pay for a lot of things and we're only using a fraction of it. So it started with the health insurance because our little company we're going to do, we did just under 11 million or something last year. I think our premium just for health, not for dental vision on it is 21,000amonth. I can buy a lot of dozers with that if I could. But. So if you're going to give a benefit, everybody should really know how to use it and max it out and then we'll see. We'll see if it, if you know. And I think that we'll probably have the meeting next year, right?
- [87:16]
A
Yeah.
- [87:16]
B
Because we'll have new people, but people will need a reminder, even the people that are the responsible ones. So we got to do that.
- [87:24]
A
Well, and sometimes too, it's like I don't have kids right now. I'm healthy, I'm a young guy. It's not, I don't really care about health insurance. But then I have a kid on the way that next year, that next meeting, I'm going to be listening a lot more carefully.
- [87:37]
B
Correct. Well, and here's the thing is like we have a young guy, he in his younger life race dirt bikes competitively. So we have a short term disability policy. It doesn't cost us much to provide. We provide it. But he needed surgery. It wasn't a worker's comp claim, needed to miss three weeks of work in the field. He used it. But if you get pigeonholed into thinking that wouldn't count or something. But if they really understand everything they got, that stuff actually matters. And I think we've had three or four people take advantage of that. We had older gentleman that was a laborer and wear and tear, carpal tunnel stuff and took two months off in the winter to have surgery and was compensated. So those things and they cost, I don't know, $5 a month per employee for that short term.
- [88:36]
A
Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cheap.
- [88:37]
B
Yeah. So those are the type of things that I would just, I guess if. Encourage people that even if you're small, you can provide those things. Like those are things that we've provided since year two, you know.
- [88:51]
A
Yeah, we, we've had a similar program since, yeah, Year two. It's just a matter of prioritizing it.
- [88:57]
B
Correct.
- [88:57]
A
Just working it into the business model.
- [88:59]
B
Yep.
- [89:00]
A
If I feel like it's a lot harder if you're trying to make it as small as possible and then try to make that change down the road because it's not like your business model. It just doesn't your Model just doesn't account for it. But I've never once regretted having a great insurance program, great benefits program that's never once been. I mean, even when it's been really tight, we've never once gone to the benefits. Like, that's where we're going to cut. We're going to cut on 401k, we're going to cut on insurance. We're going to cut X, Y, Z. Because it's just. It's not in anybody's best interest 100%.
- [89:37]
B
And here's the thing is sometimes you gotta rely on professionals. So we were facing a 26% increase two years ago, and the guy was like, hey, if we switch, you can raise your deductible. I said, I really don't want to do that. Well, now we have, like. And it's not secondary insurance, but a second card basically to cover the deductible. So the primary institution, we have a $5,000 deductible. But by just showing a second card and us paying a small fee for the right to use that second card for this. I forget the exact industry term, but secondary insurance, we kept the deductible small. And the only inconvenience to our people, including me, because I use it, is I got to carry two health insurance cards. But that's part of the reason that we said, hey, if there's any confusion, Brenda will help you out.
- [90:32]
A
You mean to tell me health insurance isn't straightforward in America? Yeah. Later this week, we have Rich Jones from U Turn Health coming in. Their videos, from a mental health standpoint, are, by a long shot, the most effective.
- [90:49]
B
Okay.
- [90:50]
A
Because I think it. I think it's. It's. It's. One, it's just very simple information broke up in small chunks, which I think's great. But two, he's like, yep, I'm a recovering addict. And he starts talking about addiction, and it's like, well, this is a lot more effective. Like, that gives. Instead of being a doctor or whatever, like, that gives him a lot of credibility. Like, because that to me is like, yeah, I've been there, I've been through it, and here's what I've learned. And he weaves these personal examples. And throughout the course, it's like, oh, yeah, okay, this makes perfect sense. And I'm so much more willing to listen to it. And I've actually learned a lot from that. They talk a lot about, like, what you were saying about how to notice the behavior of others and what to do when you notice the behavior of others, and they walk through sample conversations of how to approach those people and how to navigate the conversation and how to follow up with them. Like, it's extremely tactical.
- [91:51]
B
Okay.
- [91:52]
A
And it's stuff I've never heard before. Like, that's.
- [91:55]
B
It's. It sounds powerful.
- [91:56]
A
It's phenomenal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they. We signed up for U turn and they said, hey, every. Every leader has to go through our training. And it was actually one of the few enjoyable trainings I've gone through.
- [92:08]
B
Okay.
- [92:09]
A
Because it answered some of those questions. Like, all right, cool. One, how do I notice? And they gave you some very practical tips. But then, two, cool. I notice how. How do you even bring that up? And, like, can you bring that up as an employer? Questions like that.
- [92:26]
B
Yeah.
- [92:27]
A
And it's really good stuff, man.
- [92:31]
B
Sometimes I don't think about the things that we're supposed to say or not. I just.
- [92:37]
A
I kind of.
- [92:37]
B
I deploy the. If it was my kid, how would.
- [92:41]
A
Yeah.
- [92:41]
B
Would I want somebody to walk beside them or do that? And. But it's good to know all that stuff because you can get into trouble.
- [92:49]
A
It's. It's good to know because. Yeah. You. I think, like, at a small company especially, lawsuits are very expensive. Not just from a dollar standpoint, but just time and energy. It's like you just want to avoid all that trouble. But then I feel like if you're. It's. It's ironic because if you're an employer that just does the right thing, your odds of being sued are very, very low. Like, I feel like if you're kind of screwing people, you're more likely to get sued. Is my theory on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [93:22]
B
We'll knock on some wood here.
- [93:23]
A
We'll knock on wood. But it's like, it's. It's a gray area. Like, you need to know what's permissible. But then at the same time, it's like, I'm just gonna do the right thing here and hope that the outcome is right. And if the outcome's not right, I can still live with that because I did the right thing. I feel like doing the right thing is that wins.
- [93:44]
B
It wins every time.
- [93:45]
A
It's just best for you, Whether it's.
- [93:47]
B
The way you treat your people or the way you deal with one of your customers or vendors. If you treat them the way you want to be treated. I mean, that's the thing, is that there's no. Is really not that complicated in the whole scheme of things. Treat people well. Do what you say you're Going to do. It's all the kind of cliche slogans and that, that you've heard. But, you know, if you can do it consistently, it, you know, generally speaking, it works out in the end.
- [94:17]
A
Well, and even like, I think there's a misunderstanding with how contracts work too. My, my father was a lawyer, so I, I, and I learned this early in business, like how a contract is all completely made up. Like, I thought it was, it had to be very specific and it was all rooted in the law and this and that. But no, every, every contract's negotiated. Everything's made up and, and like, you can just draw lines through stuff. Like, I don't like that paragraph. Just draw a bunch of lines through it. And then if they turn the draft around and they say the lines are good, the lines are good. It's like, we just got rid of that paragraph anyway, you know all this. And it's like, a contract's good. You as a contractor especially, you need contracts. It's important. You gotta protect yourself legally. But at the same time, all it really is is just an agreement between two parties that I'm gonna say, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. And you can go back to the contract and go, if you're gonna go prove your point, you can go back to the contract whenever you want. But it oftentimes doesn't at all solve the issue. And it's like, instead of just using the contract as a weapon, like I had this conversation like, yes, we have to draft this agreement, but if it comes down to it, we're just going to have a discussion like, we won't ever use this. This is, let's formally sign it. Let's never use this. And if there's conflict, let's have a discussion about it and resolve the conflict. It's that simple. All this is, is just to an established agreement between two parties. But you can so quickly go down the rabbit hole of like, well, the contract says this, so you better do that. And then you weaponize it, which happens all the time and makes a complete mess out of a lot of relationships or business transactions or whatever it is.
- [96:11]
B
Yeah, if you want to work with somebody long term, using the contract does, it's bad practice because, I mean, you got to live with them for a long time. Especially maybe in Nashville, you can burn a few bridges because the market's large. But Massillon, Ohio, I can't do that because all it does is if I burn up the bridges local, that means we got to start traveling and We've got to go an hour north to Columbus or two hours or two hours south of Columbus, an hour north to Cleveland. No, we'll try to stay local, have repeat customers, repeat relationships, be fair. And sometimes you do have conflict, and sometimes you gotta meet in the middle and still way ahead of lawyer fees and that. But if it gets to that point, you probably have burnt the bridge with that customer. You know, that's not a good place to be, especially if there's a limited number of customers in your market.
- [97:11]
A
And even if you're right, you could be dead right and still be wrong. But I think a lot of people do that because they just don't have the leadership and communication skills required to navigate something like that or to have that conversation in a. In a calm, mild, mannered way, or to negotiate on something that could be wrong. Like, I feel like people just don't know what to do. They think they should pull the contract out, but then in reality, it just. It unravels everything.
- [97:44]
B
You. You have to. I don't know, but this, you have to understand it inside and out.
- [97:49]
A
Yeah.
- [97:49]
B
But then try not to deploy it at all. So. So even you got to anticipate and think ahead. I was. When I first started, I had some tough customers. Guys that had reputations for being difficult to work with, and they were. But out of those tough relationships came, like, business 101.
- [98:11]
A
Sure.
- [98:11]
B
I learned that. I had one guy that we did a ton of TNM invoicing for him, and he looked at every invoice that came through his company, even though he was building 60 condos a year or whatever. But he looked for round numbers. But it taught me the value of I need to be honest. So he was difficult. And I could have took this approach like, he's a jerk. I'm not. He's being picky. But then I was like, you know what? I'm gonna put myself in his shoes. He's got, let's say he's got 30 units going and he's got 20 trades. If everybody puts an extra foot on everything, it adds up. So I actually used his stuff to teach my guys how to fill out paperwork and to be very accurate with it and not to round too much and that negative with that guy. Actually, I'm very grateful that he was that way because it shaped the way I build to this day. And knock on wood, had very few disputes. But he also was a difficult guy in that he would set aside some invoices every year because he wanted to wrestle about them. So he would. Let's say at the time, we were a small company. We were doing 300,000 a year with him. He would set aside 10 to 15,000, but he'd keep paying you, and you'd be busy. I'm one guy in a truck, five guys in a truck. And I'm like, I'm getting paid. It's good. And I get to the end of the year and be like, wait a minute. He jumped around here a little bit. And he would have these. He would scrutiny meetings with you, and you'd be like, really? I've given my heart and soul to you this year. Like, literally. But it made me better because I got to the point where like, there was one year I was ready, and he's already got the check made out, but he wanted to make me sweat. And he grabs a check from the table behind him and he goes, you won this year, you know, but what has that done now? I teach my estimators, I teach my project managers, my people. You're going to be very accurate. You're going to be very prepared, and we're going to be kind, and people are going to like us. But I'm not going to lose either. Sure, we're going to win with understanding of the contract. We're going to win with the attention to detail in our paperwork so that if we get called out, we can just be like, nope, boom, boom, boom. This is the date, this is the time. This was the weather. You know what I mean? I had one guy that we were working on a school project, and he sent. He wanted to dispute some change orders, and I typed up my response, and his response was, sheesh. He's like. And he paid the bill, but it was out of this negative in these. And we even call it negative, just working with the tougher guys that allowed us to grow. But I think you and I were talking about this last night is you can get caught up in the negative of a lot of things, but if you can always just keep, like, saying, yeah, that guy was tough, man. What are the lessons I've learned from that?
- [101:38]
A
Or, that guy's tough. But this is good work for my people. Yes, let's keep doing it right, because this is bigger than. Especially as you grow a company, too. It's like, well, this is bigger than me now. This isn't. I mean, yes, you have a family, too, that you've got to support, but this is bigger than me and my family now. This is me, my family, other people, other families. So I've got to do what's best for the whole thing here. Not what my ego is saying to get involved in.
- [102:08]
B
Yeah, that was the best advice. I had a local plumber that just has a fabulous plumbing company. Like super organized in that. But his demeanor is so calm and he works with the best GCs, but he works with some tough ones. He's like, matt, just check your ego at the door. It's good, you'll get paid and at some point it'll all be made up to you. Just do that. And I was very fortunate to have that person in year two or three remind me of that. And I don't even need him to remind me anymore because I just think about that lesson that he taught me. So it's good.
- [102:43]
A
I'm grateful. I have a calm demeanor as is. That's really helped me out. I feel like it's a lot harder when you're. You just get worked up pretty quick. I just don't get worked up very quickly. But even. I mean, I'll notice it. It's just interesting even being more aware of my emotions now. Like this morning, I did what I wasn't supposed to do, right? When I wake up, I get up, I get ready for the gym. Before I go to the gym, I open my emails and I look at my emails, which is just dumb, and I see some group said, no, we can't go somewhere. And it just immediately just pissed me off a little bit. Then I put my phone down and I'm kind of walking out the door and I notice I'm pissed off. And I'm like, why am I pissed off? It's like, oh, because they just told me to kick rocks. But it's like, why get pissed off? This isn't going to do me any favors whatsoever.
- [103:43]
B
Chances are they're missing out.
- [103:45]
A
Well, yeah, yeah. But then this, you know, later, once I'm chill, I respond to the email and I'm very gracious. Hey, if there's another opportunity, so on and so forth, here's what that could look like. But it is even nice to just be. Have like a greater sense of awareness. Like, why am I wound up right now? Oh, it's this. Why did that wind me up? Okay. And you start to understand it a little bit better. And then you can in theory prevent it or just recognize it. Like, even recognizing that I'm wound up continuing a conversation right now, or engaging in a conversation right now, or writing this, sending this text message or email is not in my best interest, which is a very simple lesson that I Think everybody that's young should learn at.
- [104:34]
B
Some point, and older, too. And sometimes, you know that, but practicing, it's different. So you gotta. I think that's a constant reminder is that you can win and lose well.
- [104:47]
A
And especially if it's in writing, that's when you gotta be really careful, so thoughtful of what you put in writing. Because a lot of times you'll put something in writing, you look back on it a few months later. Like, what a day, dummy. Why? Like, this is so stupid. And something can come back and bite.
- [105:10]
B
You in the ass pretty quick. Yeah, definitely.
- [105:13]
A
Yeah.
- [105:13]
B
Yeah. I don't know. It's a lot of life lessons in this business, that's for sure.
- [105:19]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Like, if I ever have to go through a Senate confirmation hearing. Oh, boy. Oh, no, you don't. But it is. Someone joked about the other day. They're like, I write every email considering that somebody could be reading it to a jury at some point.
- [105:38]
B
It's funny you said that. That was my boss's theory when I worked for John Deere, he said the same thing. I remember being 22, and he's like, There was another guy that's 22 also. He's like, boys, do you know what my job is? And we thought we were like, well, you're the head of sales. No, it is risk mitigation. And so that's funny that you said that. One of my mentors said very similar things.
- [106:01]
A
It's great advice. Or even watching these Senate confirmation hearings, just how brutal it is, even. It's just I've pictured myself being up there with the little name card in the microphone. What could they ask me about? Would this be something they're going to ask me about? And if so, it's probably not something I should be doing. They're not asking you of all the great stuff you've done. They're trying to find whatever skeleton they can and bring it up in front of the world. Not that I'll be in a Senate confirmation hearing anytime soon, but it's a good thought exercise.
- [106:39]
B
Yeah, definitely.
- [106:44]
A
It's good. It's fun seeing how you guys are changing and growing. Because, like, what you were explaining earlier, you were like, you've been doing this 25 years, and you were really. You were doing it a certain way for a very long time. And then you've said you've seen all this other stuff going on, and it's helped open up your mind to different ways of doing things. And now you've gone on this other journey. Now that is well, how could we do this better? How could we grow our people? How could we work with our, you know, cool, our workforce is going to be younger. How can we work with that rather than against it? How can we better implement our technology? What systems do we need that we don't have that are holding us back? And you've been in it for a few years now, and I know it's been exhausting. We've been in it a few years now. It's so exhausting because you're redoing all your systems and processes and you're building all the foundational pieces. None of it's sexy, none of it's really bearing fruit at the moment, or even six months, 12 months later, but you still know it's the right thing to do. And now I feel like you're starting to get into that phase where it's like, all right, let's really make something of all this work that we just.
- [108:04]
B
Put in and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But I have to get out of the perfectionism and also got to make sure I've been able to delegate fairly well throughout my career. I haven't held onto things, but there were this software integration we're doing now and that I think part of it was it wasn't fully baked and I wanted it to be perfect. And then I also had been through one implementation of major software in 13 and remembered how painful it was. So at times I had. I let the knowledge of that pain maybe caused me to procrastinate, but also then to have Joe, our GPS manager, step in and we gave him the time and he went from helping me with it to owning that piece and becoming an expert at that, to the point where software companies and him are having development. Software development meetings and stuff. But giving up that control when you have good people and trusting that they're going to do it to the best of their abilities. And it may not be perfect, but 80% of something's better than 0% of something. Right. So. So it's doing that and just getting past the perfectionist mindset. We want to be excellent. Right. But we. Perfection is just a. That is an animal you really should be careful chasing because it'll stifle you, I think.
- [109:43]
A
Well, and you could argue it's not achievable.
- [109:45]
B
Correct.
- [109:46]
A
One and, yeah. Two. It's like, I think that's held back so many people in companies.
- [109:53]
B
Yep.
- [109:54]
A
So many. Especially in construction. Because the path in construction is typically, you're the guy, you're really good at building stuff. You start a company, you start to hire some people, but you still want to have your eye on everything because you still want to maintain that standard that you. That got you to where you are. But then at a certain point, it just. Yeah, it stifles everybody. It stifles you, stifles your team. It stifles everything going on there.
- [110:22]
B
Yeah. We just saw, and I can't remember who showed us the chart. It was. It might have been Benjamin Holgram or somebody had this chart of something I was watching a video of, and it showed, like, this curve, and that grit gets you to, like, a certain point. And then if you're building your processes right, it actually can get easier for not just you as the owner, but every team member. If you get over that grit stage to where you're just. And we're in. That's what we've been doing the last two years now. Let's build out the processes and have repeatable processes that everybody can apply. And it's still going to be hard. You're still going to have to zig and zag its construction. But if we can get it to where it's more repeatable and predictable in a very unpredictable industry with weather and everything, delays, I think you can really achieve something special.
- [111:20]
A
Yeah, yeah. The bet, like one of my favorite analogies, is like pirate to Navy. When you're starting out, you do have to just apply brute force with some things. You do just have to kick indoors. You do just have to raid other ships. Like, you do have to play against certain rules because you're at a significant disadvantage. And so you have to be unconventional. It's David and Goliath. You have to approach it in an unconventional nature because of your position, but that's also a position of strength to a certain point. And then you say you want to go work for the bigger general contractors. You can't. And not saying you guys were doing this, but you can't have as much of a cowboy approach. You can't just be. And you can't be the guy. The world can't revolve around you because you can't even accommodate a bigger project when you're the one. Or you can, but you're just going to stress yourself out the whole time or be working 80 hours a week or whatever it is. And then that's when that. That Navy mentality and process has to set in. I'm like, all right, we need some process here. We need some rules. And that's hard to that's been hard for us. And why we've turned over quite a few people from the beginning was because we're just operating differently now. Like we can't be like that anymore. We can't be as willy nilly. We can't do the stuff that got us here. Like the way I took pictures in the beginning, I can't do that now. That is so wildly. It wasn't illegal, but it was certainly a gray area. But it's like it's what I needed to do to get the initial access. I haven't done it in way long time, even though I still can. But it's like I know I can't cause of the position I'm in now. And the risk is just not worth the reward anymore. And we've done that across our business. And some people just like being a part of. Some people just like cowboying, which is fine, that's great. But if you want to grow and evolve, it's just not possible. But then you can go too far in the other direction. That is too sterile, too rules based. And you still have to maintain some sense of fuck you, for lack of a better term. So it's that balance that's always changing.
- [113:46]
B
Well, you don't want to abandon what got you there. But you have to evolve. So you have to, you know, everybody puts their core values on their walls and mission statements and all that. And I probably sounded negative when I'm saying that. But like we do have that stuff. And so you have to figure out what those are and truly live them, but then still evolve. So you have your core values and what your vision and mission is for your company. And how do you not compromise those? How do you not lose that while evolving and making your company better and modern and all these things. So we were just having that discussion. Our leadership and Joe's going, we got grit, we got this and that. And I said, I agree with you on all of that. But we're actually getting to the point where we're starting to outgrow that. We need to make sure that man, document management and prints and all these, this unfun, unsexy part of the business, we got to get all that right. Because If I get 28 RFIs and I don't give you the right documents, we're going to be building things wrong and changing. So yeah, we're going to be gritty and tough and we'll still go. If a customer calls and has an emergency, we'll go tackle that. But then we also Got to be this professional, organized, methodical organization that can build projects like, with great quality, consistently, all the time, no matter who's there.
- [115:28]
A
Yeah.
- [115:29]
B
Matt doesn't have to be on the job. He doesn't have to be on the job. I think like the, one of the neatest examples is, you know, I grew up around this local water department. My dad worked there. He's been retired 12 years now. But they're one of our bigger customers and for the longest time I got all the calls, then Keith got the calls and now Chris, our foreman's getting a lot of those calls. So it's, that's when you are actually building a business and you're not a sole proprietor is when you're, you're, you're training. Then these people are doing so well that they're replacing you in these key relationships and they're, they've gained the trust of these people. So it's beyond any, it's beyond you. And that's the fun part of this is trying to see those people grow and giving those opportunities and, and just, you know, but it's not easy.
- [116:24]
A
Well, and I, I think the number of phone calls someone gets is an indicator of that. That's not like the end all be all. But I do think it's an indicator if their phone is just non stop. Maybe that's how they want to run their business because you can run a company like that and you can actually build a pretty big company with it revolving around you. But that's not where most people want to be because that's an exhausting position to be in.
- [116:53]
B
It's not sustainable. And the company won't live beyond you. No, that's the, that's the big thing.
- [116:58]
A
Yeah.
- [116:58]
B
I think that, that got to understand is that we need the company to live beyond us because as I'm aging I need the younger workforce to stay.
- [117:07]
A
Yeah.
- [117:07]
B
But I committed to all these families. We have to build something that sustains beyond me and our older leadership team because these people are counting on us to do that. So you got to build something that will stand the test of time and grow and get better and hopefully there's somebody to take it over then.
- [117:29]
A
Well, and even if you want to go sell the company, it's only worth something really without you.
- [117:35]
B
Correct.
- [117:36]
A
Like that's if you have to work yourself out of it to assign the maximum value to the organization. So even if that's the game plan, you've got to get yourself removed because whatever that organization that's buying you is, they're gonna want you out at some point.
- [117:52]
B
Right? Exactly. And that's the ultimate goal. Right. And here's the thing is, in my community, we've seen the big CRH and that come in and buy the big, bigger companies out. But there's very few 50 and under head count or even 100 and under that unless there's another generation, have a great succession plan. And I watched one paving company in our community, he'd grown it to 50 employees, $10 million. And I watched him as shops crosses, I can look out the window and see his shop. And this guy was amazing. He mentored and taught another generation. And now that Generation is at 130Some employees and I don't know what their dollar amount is. But. So I've been using that gentleman's example of it can be done. It's either that or you end up having Richie or somebody lines or somebody auction everything. Right. There isn't much. So that's really. I've reached out to that gentleman and tried to get his advice and import put. And it's really about. He was like, matt, teach your people how to keep score so that they know if they're winning or losing. And then mentor him on leadership and management and then give them the Runway to go do it.
- [119:13]
A
It's a damn shame when a company just goes up for auction.
- [119:17]
B
Yeah.
- [119:17]
A
And I think that's. It's just going to continue happening across. Across the board. But I've worked at companies that at a certain point, no succession plan, just wind it down, sell it all. And some of them, they'll ensure everybody has a job within that market. But it's just like, man, all of that, like the legacy of that company and that team, like everything just blood.
- [119:45]
B
Sweat, tears of a lot of people trying to build something great. Just. Just gone. Just gone.
- [119:50]
A
Yeah. And not that it's completely gone. You still have the projects you've built over the years. But it is amazing to just see these companies just completely disappear. All of that collective time and energy put into this one thing that just dies and a few weeks later is largely forgotten about, which is also humbling. It's like, that could be me, that could be you. That could be any one of us doing this.
- [120:16]
B
And if you don't, like we're trying to build something that sustains beyond us. Because it puts everybody at risk if I don't.
- [120:24]
A
Yes.
- [120:24]
B
Right. Like there's greater risk in not growing than there is in growing.
- [120:32]
A
That's where we're at.
- [120:34]
B
If you do it in my Opinion methodically and with thought. And even when you do it methodically and with thought, you can make mistakes and you have to go, oh crap, I gotta get back. I gotta get the ship back on track. But if you got the good foundation, you can weather those little veer offs and you get people back on track.
- [120:57]
A
Well, I think it's just a responsible thing to do too because like we were talking about, it just takes one thing to go horribly wrong and to, God forbid, knock you out or something like that. And if something horribly wrong happens to you, allowing that to endanger the well being of all the people that have been entrusted to you is largely irresponsible. And so I've always viewed it as, yeah, my responsibility to, if I were to go, I should be able to go at any moment and this thing should be able to continue going. That's my goal. And having that in the back of my head's been very helpful and quite sobering actually, to continuously think, like, I could go at any moment. I want to make sure this thing's good to go. I don't want like. And there's going to be parts of it where it is very dependent upon me. It's very dependent upon me in some categories, but in other categories it's not at all anymore. And that's why I can go around the world or do this kind of stuff because I'm not getting a million phone calls about the business. There's other people, there's other great people, brilliant team, taking care of the shit so that I can have these conversations so I can travel around the United States, around the world, do what I do, which then makes their jobs easier.
- [122:18]
B
Right.
- [122:19]
A
On and on it goes.
- [122:20]
B
Yep. Yeah, it just perpetuates. Yeah, it's, you know, it's fun. It is super fun. It's fun, you know, but I say that, but it is. It's fun and exhausting. Yeah, it's exhausting and fun and all at the same time. But I wouldn't have any other way. I mean, what else would I be doing? It's good.
- [122:44]
A
Well, I appreciate you coming back.
- [122:46]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [122:48]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how this contrasts to our first conversation, but you've certainly learned some things over the past few years. I have too.
- [122:58]
B
Yeah. And I don't know, we're. We got more chapters to write and I'm sure there's plenty more and you're doing great things, so it's fun. I appreciate the opportunity to share our story and, and you know, a lot of people reached out after the last podcast, and they're welcome to again. I just understand that I don't have all the answers, but I, I will. I will try to help better this industry any way I can.
- [123:23]
A
Well, you've. You're almost an empty nester, so you've. You've got your next chapter beginning.
- [123:29]
B
Yeah.
- [123:29]
A
You can go back to work.
- [123:31]
B
That's what we told the team. We're. We're ready.
- [123:34]
A
We're. We're.
- [123:34]
B
We're gonna. We're gonna see where we can take this thing, so.
- [123:37]
A
Right on. Well, Matt, thank you.
- [123:40]
B
Yeah, thanks.