Blue Collar Culture

Business Results the Old Fashioned Way

Ryan Englin

Get Out Of The Weeds & Act Like An Owner With Adriane Woodrum

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BCC 92 | Owner Involvement

 

Most business owners don’t know how to read financial statements and only rely on their bookkeepers to do everything. If you want to run a well-oiled business, owner involvement must start from the top. Do not only focus on the bottom line and let others take care of the nitty gritty without proper supervision. This means you have to sit down with your bookkeepers and understand your P&Ls throughout.

Join Ryan Englin in this conversation with Adriane Woodrum, a Financial Coach at Business Development Resources. Listen in as they talk about bank reconciliation and the ideal bookkeeping process. Learn how you can get involved full-time as an owner in the financial side of your business. Don’t leave your bookkeepers hanging and secure a smooth cash flow within your operations.

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Get Out Of The Weeds & Act Like An Owner With Adriane Woodrum

What’s the biggest myth that you want to shatter for our readers right now about your expertise? This is my first question. You probably have a bunch of them. You have to be involved as the owner. You can’t turn the blind eye to your financials, which I know so many owners that I’m like, “When’s the last time you looked at the P&L?” “My CPA gave me one last January from last year.” I’m like, “No. You are telling me you can’t hire right now because you don’t have enough revenue coming in to hire a new person. When’s the last time you looked at your financials?”

Let’s say you start right off the bat. The biggest myth, I don’t even know how to answer that question.

What’s the biggest roadblock you run into when working with a new client?

The biggest roadblock is the owners not being on the same page. What it boils down to is we need the owner’s bought into what’s happening in the business and understand that there has to be a procedure or a process for everything that we do. It starts at the top thinking that financial reports magically appear without the proper workflow. That starts with the owner being on board and being part of creating that and encouraging everybody is doing the same thing every day.

Owners need to be bought into what's happening in the business. There needs to be a process and procedure for everything. Click To Tweet

I think that a great myth is that, “I can own the business and not be involved in the day-to-day and not be involved in the financials and the business will take care of itself. My people will take care of everything for me.” That is a great myth that we need to bust. You have to be involved. I tell people all the time and this is me personally.

“If I knew how involved I had to be in the financials to be the owner of a business, I would have gone and done sales for somebody else.” I would have worked for somebody else because I don’t like financials. I can’t stand it but I had a mentor that for twelve months beat it into me. “Where’s your P&L and balance sheet? What is this telling you? What is wrong with this?” I’m like, “Stop. I don’t like this stuff.”

After a year of him making me eat my broccoli, I’m like, “I like this stuff now.” I look at my financial statements twice a month just to make sure because, for me, the beginning and end of the month are different every single month. I look at them twice a month. This stuff needs to make sense and I make decisions based on it. I drank the Kool-Aid, is what I’m telling you but for years, I fought.

Most people do. I think that’s one of the most rewarding things is when we start with a client, the owners can’t read the financials. You hand it to them. They see the revenue and bottom line but they don’t understand all the stuff in the middle. Part of our goal is to teach an owner how to read their reports so that when their bookkeeper prints them and hands them to them, they can look at them and know exactly how much gross profit they had and why it’s high or low.

BCC 92 | Owner Involvement
Owner Involvement: Most owners can’t read financials. You hand it to them and all they see is the revenue and the bottom line. They don’t understand everything in the middle.

 

They can pick it apart and see exactly what’s happening and manage the numbers. Seeing the progress from the beginning and over time, you see the light bulbs going off and it’s wonderful because they never understood it before. That’s one of our goals is to give it to that point so the bookkeepers are putting things in the right place, and the owners are understanding what to look for and when something’s not in the right.

I think that’s great. Having the information you need to make good decisions, but knowing the information you have isn’t any good. It’s garbage in, garbage out. You have to be involved in the process. I love how you started with a checklist. Make sure everything is done. I can’t tell you how many people I have talked to and they might have twenty techs on the roads. They are a decent-sized contractor and they will tell me, “We are not going to hit payroll this month because we had all these payables we didn’t know about or we forgot.”

We have got to take care of this to keep our vendors happy. I’m like, “How does this happen? How do you get the size you are at?” I share that because nobody’s immune from this. You have got to have a process. How does someone figure out that process? How does someone start that and put that process in place?

Start at the beginning. If you are only getting started, the most obvious thing to start with is bank reconciliation. Once you get that down, we are going to add something else and we are going to add the next thing but you have to start with one thing. It can’t be something that you only remember, “I do this every month. I’m going to remember to do it.” You have to have a physical list because you have to be able to reconcile yourself with something.

BCC 92 | Owner Involvement
Owner Involvement: If you’re starting from scratch, start with bank reconciliation. You need to have a physical list because you have to be able to reconcile yourself with something. You can’t just rely on your memory.

 

You can’t rely on your memory. Too many things happen in a day, week, or month to think you are going to remember everything. You have to have something to be accountable to and that means you start at the beginning. You start with one thing, and then you add something else until you get to the point where you have 25 or 30 things to do to make sure everything’s entered to know that your reports are accurate.

Someone told me one time. They said, “Your brain was designed for processing, not for storage.” To sit there and remember all of the things you have to do and I love what you said too because you didn’t say, “You need to reconcile your books when you feel like it.” You said monthly. Every month you need to reconcile those books because how do you make decisions when you don’t have solid financials? I believe that every single thing you do in business can be tied back to a dollar somewhere, whether it’s revenue generated or expense created.

You are going to have your yearly goal of how much revenue, gross profit, and net you want to have, but you can’t manage on a yearly basis. You have to break that down into bitesize pieces, which means you have to have monthly goals. With revenue trends, the revenue is not going to be the same every month throughout the year. It’s going to be different based on seasons because we’re a seasonal industry.

To be able to break that down and know exactly how much you have to have this month or next month, and see the fluctuation. You manage each month based on what you need to make sure that you are reaching your goal for the whole year together but it’s got to be in bite-size pieces. The only way to do that is to make sure that every month, you are recognizing everything that happened in that month so you know exactly where you are and what you need to do the next month.

You can't manage your revenue and gross profit yearly. You have to manage it every month to know exactly where you are. Click To Tweet

I have been doing this long enough, but it’s amazing to me how the story that your financials tells can do so much for helping you either continue writing that story or start writing a new one going forward.

Exactly, because you might have a month that typically historically does well, but then something crazy happens and it’s an unusually low November. It doesn’t match the trends so then you know, “I have got to figure out something different to do next month to make up for what didn’t happen this month.” You have to be prepared to change courses based on what happens.

I would imagine the only way you can do that as the owner is if you are involved in this process.

Absolutely.

What does that look like? When you say involved in the process? You are not saying that they got to learn QuickBooks and go do bookkeeping? What does involvement look like?

Involvement means that they have to know what’s happening. They need to know how many jobs are going on and how many we have on hold waiting to be scheduled. They need to know that the managers are managing the departments and that the information is getting from the field to the office and from the CSRs or the billing clerks to accounting. They need to know that the customers are being billed. They need to know that the vendors are being paid. You can’t walk in one day, as you said, and say, “Why aren’t we paying the bills?” You have to keep your finger on the pulse.

It’s so interesting what you said. I think it was insightful for me, is that it’s not only the bookkeeping that needs to happen. It’s making sure that processes are working throughout the whole company. The CSRs, techs, and managers are doing their jobs, and everybody is sending the right information to you so that you can make a good decision. It’s not only about the cash and the bank account or what shows on the P&L. There is so much more data that needs to be collected and gathered to tell the story.

Going back to the myth you were talking about. One of the biggest myths is that at the end of the day, all of the accounting getting to the right place is the responsibility of the bookkeeper. I’m going to back that up a little bit because bookkeepers are historians. We record data that’s already happened. By the time that information gets to our desks, we shouldn’t have to go out researching or looking for anything. Everything we need to know should be what comes to us, which means we need to know the customer’s name.

BCC 92 | Owner Involvement
Owner Involvement: Bookkeepers are like historians. Once information hits their desk, they shouldn’t be researching for anything.

 

We need to know what department it goes to. We need to know what it was for or who purchased it. All the information needs to be at our fingertips. When you give incomplete data to the bookkeeper and then they have to spend their time finding out where it came from and what it was for, you have inefficiencies in place.

That never happens. That’s such an interesting perspective, for me at least, it’s when it comes to understanding the health of your business based on financials, there’s so much more to it than the historical record that the bookkeeper provides you. A P&L is a historical record. How do we use that information to go forward? Now, they are understanding how I collect all this information. What do they do with that information? How do they make a better decision?

You look at your P&L and I tell people all the time. The P&L is something you need to live in. That needs to be your living document every single day. The vitality of your company is your P&L. You need to look at it constantly and determine, “Is my labor high? Is my equipment high? Are my materials high in comparison to your revenue?”

The vitality of your company is your P&L. Click To Tweet

Based on the percentages of those things, you will know immediately whether your customers have been billed like they should have been, or maybe something was put in the wrong department from an equipment or material standpoint. Maybe we’ve got too much labor that we are paying the technicians that can’t be applied to jobs that we can’t bill for. You see the whole working dynamics of labor, cost a good sold, and everything right there to know, are we billing as we should be? Is our price high enough? Maybe we need to increase our labor rate. It’s all right there in the P&L. The P&L will give you all of that information.

As long as the information helped you build the P&L.

It’s got to be accurate, which is why it starts from the top. We have to have the procedures in place, and it’s up to the owners and the managers to make sure that the technicians are doing their job and getting that information correctly to the bookkeeper.

You know that I am passionate about helping companies hire technicians and the frontline and the CSRs. One of the things I hear a lot is, “I can’t afford another technician,” or, “I need more revenue and customers before I can hire someone else,” but I know I’m burning my existing technicians out and they are all working 60 hours a week and there’s no money left.

My take on that is there are probably inefficiencies in your systems or your processes or that kind of thing. How do you challenge someone who has that mindset of, “I can’t afford another technician,” or, “I got to keep doing things the way I am? They are not open to change.” How do you work through that with one of your clients or how do you think a typical business owner should work through that?

I would challenge you to say if you are running your technicians to death. If they are going from call to call to call all day and working late every day, I ask you, “How much revenue are you missing on each of the calls they are going to because they are going so fast that they are not looking at everything. How much are you leaving on the table that you could be getting if you had them take more time? You have more technicians. They run fewer calls. They take more time on each call, so they are not missing anything.” You could be leaving so much revenue on the table by running them to death. That could be enough for 1, 2, or 3 more technicians based on how many you are running already. I would challenge them to look at it.

It reminds me of that saying from the Navy SEALs that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Sometimes slowing down and getting your people to help a second set of eyes, you could have so much more opportunity. I think about the residential service contractors. How many upsell opportunities are they missing? They are going so fast so they can get to the next job and close out the tickets because that’s what you are focused on.

Are you getting through your tickets through the day? Are you getting the jobs done fast enough? You even mentioned, “How many non-billable hours are you paying out versus the opportunities that are lost for billable hours because your technicians are going so fast?” There are so many things that it impacts and that information is in your financials.

Yes, it is, completely.

I heard two things so far. Number one, you got to have a process for your bookkeeping and generating your financials, and you gave us some tips on that but you got to make sure everybody’s doing their job and getting the right information to the right people and doing all of that. What’s something that an owner can do? Someone reading this right now says, “I’m going to go back to my team.” You don’t want to go back to your team and like, “Here are all the new processes. Follow them.” What’s the next step for them so that they can get their team to embrace this idea of collecting the right data and getting the right information so we can start making better decisions?

This is an interesting concept. I was talking to someone about this because I think that the owners need to have a conversation with the source. They need to sit down with the bookkeepers and say, what do you need? How can I help you get what you need from me? A lot of times, bookkeepers are stuck in a hole and expect to get everything put in. They don’t feel comfortable necessarily speaking what they need.

BCC 92 | Owner Involvement
Owner Involvement: Business owners need to sit down with the bookkeepers and ask what they need and how they can help. Most of the time, bookkeepers get stuck but don’t feel comfortable speaking about what they need.

 

I think sometimes the owners have to sit down with them and say, “What do you need from me? How can I help you make the financials more accurate?” They take that information and maybe they go sit down with the service manager and say, “I need you to review your guys’ invoices every day and make sure that everything’s on there that needs to be. I need you to verify that the invoices are correct before they ever get to the bookkeeper.”

Maybe they go to the install manager and say, “I need you to make sure that the warehouse guy is separating what was pulled off the shelf versus what was ordered for a specific job so the bookkeeper knows what to pull from inventory and what to list in a different way. All of that begins with a conversation. They need to have a conversation.

That’s one of the go-to things for me is to ask them, talk to them, or have a conversation. I love what you said. We do a lot around behavioral analysis and understanding that people behave differently. Some people get comfortable doing a show with video on, and some people are like, “I don’t want to talk to anybody at all ever.” You develop different behaviors. What we find is that good bookkeepers are typically in the latter group. They don’t want to talk to a lot of people. They don’t want to raise their ruckus. They don’t want to raise their hand and say, “Boss, I got an issue.” That’s not natural for them. It’s very uncomfortable.

If you don’t have a good rapport with your bookkeeper, you don’t have a good relationship with them, they are never going to do that. You have to go to them in a very non-confrontational way. I have seen people do this. “The financials are a problem. They are a mess. You are a mess. Fix it.” That’s not the way you do that with someone like that. I love that you have that question of going to them and saying, “What do you need from me? What do you need from the team to make your job easier?” I think that caps out the whole thing. That’s the next action you take is to go to your bookkeeper and say that.

You are exactly right. Bookkeepers are data people. They are not people, people. Some of them may be. Maybe they are the best of both worlds and they love people and data, but that’s not typical. Most people like to get in their spreadsheets and that’s their comfort zone. You have to go to them.

Most bookkeepers are data people, not people-people. As a business owner, you have to talk with them. Click To Tweet

Having a conversation with your team about what they need and what they can do to support the people that need it. It’s because after the bookkeeper tells you what they need, you got to go to your team and say, “What can you do to get them the information they need?” You can then have better financials. You can make better decisions about your business and you can achieve your goals. Did I summarize everything you said?

I think you did.

This was awesome. I know there are people that are reading right now that are going to want to get ahold of you. They are like, “This is cool, but I need help.” How do people learn about you?

They can go to BDRCO.com and find out anything they need.

Can they get ahold of you there and everything? Maybe a form or a phone number?

Yes. All of the team members are listed in there? They should be able to get in touch with anybody at BDR.

I enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for being on the show.

Thank you for having me.

 

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Why Your Current Marketing Sucks With Brittany Murphy

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BCC 93 | Marketing Strategies

 

Marketing strategies can dictate either a triumphant success of a business or a tragic waste of resources. The worst part is that most businesses with poor marketing decisions don’t realize they are doing something wrong until it’s too late! That’s why in this episode, Ryan Englin and Jeremy Macliver talk to Brittany Murphy, a Partner at One Thing Marketing. She explains how to revamp your website and reinvent your marketing by discussing the psychology behind it. Brittany also breaks down creative ways to promote your business to successfully convert your target market into loyal customers. Tune in and learn how to level up your current marketing tactics to yield the most desirable business results!

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Why Your Current Marketing Sucks With Brittany Murphy

You may know that I have struggled with so-called marketing experts for pretty much my entire professional career. A couple of things that I struggle with is that they are good at selling and sharing information, which shows they are doing a great job. Many marketing companies don’t focus on the things that matter.

In this episode’s guest, when I first met her, I knew that there was something different because they do focus on the things that matter, the things that are going to drive better results for your marketing efforts and drive more revenue to your company so that you can improve your bottom line. We are going to have a great conversation about a couple of things that you can do to improve your marketing and get phenomenal results. I want to welcome to our show, Brittany Murphy. She is a partner over at One Thing Marketing, and they are doing things quite differently from the rest of the market.

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Brittany, welcome to the show. I’m excited to have you here.

Thank you for having me, Ryan. I am excited to finally get on this show with you after talking with Tammy.

We have been in conversation for quite a while now, and there are some great partnership opportunities here. More importantly, I want to introduce you to our readers because I know that you have a unique approach to helping people with not only their website but their marketing in general. Tell me, in your opinion, what is the biggest myth? What is that thing now that many people reading believe isn’t true, and you want to shatter it for them?

From big to small, most marketing doesn’t work and is a waste of time. Niching that down further, what I specialize in is SEO, Search Engine Optimization. The biggest myth is SEO is a scam. I’m ready to debunk all those.

We talk a lot about writing effective job ads, and I have to remind people that Indeed is a search engine. You have to search engine optimize your job ads because if you don’t, it doesn’t know what you are talking about. I do get what you are saying and why that myth exists because a lot of people out there are less than honest when it comes to SEO, but I don’t believe you are in that bucket. Tell me this idea that marketing doesn’t work and that SEO is a scam. Where does that stuff come from? Why do you think that people believe that?

In my role within the company, I get to hear the Festivus of anyone in the trades looking to complain about what is going wrong with their business. I love it because I know the root cause of most issues. What I’m hearing from most people is that they feel like they have been swindled. They had been taken advantage of. They were paying thousands of dollars monthly and, at the end of the day, had nothing to collect for it. That is where most of this is coming from.

By the time someone is talking with me about a new strategy, they are jaded. It is my job to audit and give them explanations and examples of a good strategy to move forward with. With more education, you can make better decisions. That is where we were talking briefly before we started. For most marketing agencies, their job is to sell. They are going to spin what is going to work the best and, at times, mainly what is the best for them and what is not always the best for the clients. I like to jam-pack knowledge into this. That way, you can be a smart, savvy business owner because you don’t have 40 hours a day to think about marketing. This is where you can focus all over your business but know you have the best cards in your back pocket.

The job of most marketing agencies is to sell. They will often spin things that work best for them and not for their clients. Click To Tweet

There is an element of education. Where a lot of marketing companies fail is that they don’t educate well. They send reports that nobody but them understands. They send all this information as super technical and full of jargon, and at some point, you have to trust. It was like, “I spend X amount of dollars. How many new clients do I get from those dollars?” There are many moving pieces in between. That is usually where the communication and the information break down. I love that you are educating people.

When it comes to overcoming this myth and hurdle, I’m sure there are people reading now who were like, “I know some of those marketing people that you are talking about.” Maybe they are working with one and they are afraid to pull out. What do you think’s holding them back? What do you think is keeping these business owners from thinking this way and continuing to do this? What are some actions they can do to break through and get through that?

When we look at the root cause, it is going to come down to time or money. These are usually the two issues we are juggling when we are not letting everything make sure that it is going as well as it can. Our time is being spent somewhere else. For example, someone who is lacking in money is going to be more of a newer business and maybe not have too many employees. They are trying to drive leads. They are going to take some more of their time to DIY or do research to talk to find someone local that they trust to work with. On the flip side, most companies I talk to have no time in the world. They are busy from sun up to sun down.

BCC 93 | Marketing Strategies
Marketing Strategies: Marketing people are being held back from breaking through because of two root causes: time and money.

 

That is what I specialize in. My guys are busy, but they need to stay busy. If you can’t devote your own time to make sure you are staying busy, you are going to have to hire and spend money for someone else to keep you busy. Make sure you are still showing up when you need to make sure you are doing business throughout all the seasons, and you can keep all your guys fed, full and hungry the entire year long. What I see the most issues with is either we didn’t devote enough time to figure out what we needed to do, or we blew money and had no accountability. Our marketing company may be doing reporting, but it was based on impressions. Do you know what impressions 100% means, Ryan?

I don’t know, but last time I checked, that is a vanity metric.

What we get down to is when I look at different reports other companies come to me with, and they say, “This is my marketers doing. What do you think? Is this working?” I ask them those questions. At the end of the day, is an impression a phone call a new business? No, I don’t know what an impression is. Let’s take a step back, ask and figure out what the heck is going on so we can make better decisions about where we are spending our money. Marketing can feel like a scam because we have all heard the phrase, “You have to spend more to make more.” It is not always the truth with marketing. I love to even squash that thought.

For those of you that are wondering, a vanity metric is one of those that doesn’t mean anything. It is fun to talk to your friends about it, or the marketing companies think that they are cool because they are usually big numbers. Vanity metrics don’t drive the results that we are after. Impression is one of those.

If you think even several years back, before digital marketing was popular, vanity metric was all we had to track traditional marketing. How many people drove past a billboard? How many listeners tune into this radio station? They were what was all that was used. We will get into it down the road in this interview so stay tuned. I’m going to tell you how to push back on these numbers because what worked then is not going to work now for you.

I love what you said about where we see a lot of our clients. They don’t have the time. This is what I believe about marketing. Feel free to disagree with me. When we are marketing for open jobs and recruiting, if you don’t spend the time working with the experts, getting them the information that they need, and helping them understand the intricacies of your business and the way you recruit, you are throwing mud up against a wall until the marketing company figures it out. As much as you might not have the time, you have to make the time if you want this marketing stuff to work well.

To be truthful, we don’t want to figure it out for you. We could be wrong. That is not something we want to spend your money on and be that close to wrong with it. One of the first questions we ask our clients before we write anything on their website is, what is your voice? Are you always conversational? Are you serious? Are you always making jokes left and right? Are you a punny type of company? Those are things we want to know because, with recruiting and trying to find a new client, they are going to be geared and pulled toward certain dynamics and personalities.

The more lovable and likable you are, it works not only for my role marketing to close more business and get more leads. It is also going to help when you are getting more leads and have more employees trying to get in with your company to work with you because they like what your message is and what they see with those things. It is a beautiful relationship they can have if you can make them work together. I like to tell people, “It is two birds in one stone.” What Ryan is saying versus what I’m saying, you can use these things in harmony together on your website and marketing.

The more lovable and likable you are, the closer you get to more businesses, which leads to more leads. Click To Tweet

A lot of people tell us, “The only way to recruit right now is to offer and give more money.” That is akin to being the low price. I know this for a fact, and everybody knows this, people don’t leave their jobs. They leave managers and people. We have all heard that saying. People don’t look for a new service provider because they want to save money. Brittany and I, as marketers, recruiters, and people that are going to help you grow your business, if we don’t understand who you are at your core, it is hard for us to help you. What is one thing they can do to start getting some results and seeing some movement forward?

The first answer is common sense, unfortunately.

We all know common sense isn’t all that common sometimes.

It is always worth repeating. The biggest thing I tell all my guys is you have got to take your marketing back into your own hands. What I mean by this is even if you are in a large company and you have an internal team doing this, if you have not talked to that marketing team internally for weeks or months, who is? Who is helping them try to gear them toward the right position?

BCC 93 | Marketing Strategies
Marketing Strategies: Take your marketing back into your own hands. Even if you are a large company with an internal marketing team doing the work for you, do not let them unsupervised for weeks or months.

 

Let’s take a step back. Most companies I work with do not have an internal marketer. That is why they are working with us, an outside agency. I have to pull teeth at times, Ryan, to get people to meet with us, to tell us some things and questions that we need the answers to continue doing the best service for them and marketing them in the areas or with the services that they want. You have got to talk and have this communication.

When we talk about recruiting, there are answers that people want to see on their website. When it comes to marketing and new clients wanting to call you, whether their roof, toilet, or HVAC system is leaking, they need to be able to see these answers to build trust and authority with you. The more information you can jam-pack onto your website, social, or anywhere you are marketing yourself fully and completely to, the more likely you are to go to get that sale, get that hiree, or everything you are looking for. At the end of the day, we’re all asking questions. We are mainly asking those questions to Google first.

Does your website, which Google is using to find the answers, have those answers on your website? One of the biggest things is a small and big company all comes down to the same thing. You have to be providing value and resources to your clients to get more people to find you and to build your business in a scalable and non-expensive way. If we choose not to do that, which myth busted that search engine optimization, Google rankings are all about having the content and ranking when people type that question in, how much HVAC repair near me? How much does HVAC replacement cost? Metal roofing versus shingle roofing. They are all questions they are going to.

If you don’t have those answers, Google is not going to find your site. It is not going to be put in front of someone, and they are not going to end up using you. I always tell my guys, “Have your texts written down these questions? Have your office staff write down these questions?” If you are getting them often, tally mark them. These are questions I bet you $10 you don’t have on your website, and you don’t mention it anywhere. They are having to do research, and you are making it harder for them at the end of the day.

We teach a process when it comes to recruiting to have an FAQ page on recruiting. Not only what are the most frequently asked questions, but what questions do you wish people would ask? We teach this process to create a page as FAQ. I imagine they could do the same thing to help Google out, not have to worry about how they squeeze it into a paragraph or on their homepage to have FAQs. It is a page where Google could know these are some questions they can get answered.

You have that FAQ page, and later on, you are eventually going to have a blog post on your website that lays out these questions in full because those are the pages that will rank. That is the page that you want to rank because when it pops up, you have a little call to action that says, “Book, schedule or send here your resume.”

Whatever it is on the aspect of you are making it seamless and simple for them to get in touch with you. At the end of the day, I told you in five minutes, that is the marketing funnel. Getting found, giving them something to make them trust you, and they trust you enough to close to be your new client or be your new employee because they found you via that metric. If you are not doing any of it, you are going to always struggle because you are never going to get found by people you know, new clients and employees. We are all online now, and that’s my joke. Every kid born out of the womb with at least an iPhone 14 is the one that the newest babies are coming with.

The marketing funnel is about being found by people and giving them something to make them trust you. Click To Tweet

Google doesn’t care how pretty your website is. Google doesn’t care about those things, but if the things that Google cares about aren’t helping you get found, the rest of the stuff doesn’t matter. The number one reason that people struggle to recruit good employees is that good employees don’t know they exist, especially smaller businesses.

If you throw an ad up on Indeed that says nothing about who you are or what you do and they have never heard of your company before, they move on. In recruiting, 75% of hiring managers say, “It is easier to recruit good people when people are familiar with your company brand.” I imagine it is at least as high, if not higher, when it comes to getting customers. Being found and people being familiar with your brand is critical. You can do it through SEO, Google and those kinds of things. You don’t have to buy billboards, television commercials and all the other stuff, which I don’t recommend because they are hard to track.

Number two, please track everything. Another myth I’m going to bust is that you can’t track everything. It is going to be busted. You can track everything now. It is not going to be perfect for every situation, but that is half of why I’m disgusted by a lot of marketing companies nowadays. They are not doing the due diligence and the proper type of tracking to help the business owners at the end of it.

They are tracking impressions. That is great. Impressions in my world when it comes to Google rankings means that is how many times your website popped up on the first page. If you can see impressions rising, that is a great thing. That starts to tell you, “I’m starting to rank better.” That doesn’t mean your calls have tripled yet. That doesn’t mean you got anywhere further that you need to be in the goal.

What I talk to a lot of people about is call tracking, social media tracking and traditional tracking. Those are the biggest things that you have to put what you are doing on, and it can work in all facets of the business, like I alluded before. In the old days, we couldn’t track as easily. The only way we could was to buy separate phone numbers and have a million phone numbers. At the end of the day, it ports into one because we had to have a separate one for our newspaper, billboard, TV ad, radio ad, magazine ads and so forth with it.

BCC 93 | Marketing Strategies
Marketing Strategies: Call tracking, social media tracking, and traditional tracking are the biggest things you have to put everything you’re doing on. These can work in all facets of the business.

 

It is a similar system now as to what we use, but that is my biggest problem. I want to shout from the rooftops. If you are working with a marketing agency or you are not working with anybody, track your crack. You need to track your website and Google my Business. You need to track if you are running Google ads on your social media if you are running ads there.

I will be honest. I’m not a huge advocate of in the trade space because if my roof is leaking, I’m not going to TikTok or Facebook. I’m going straight to Google, typing in roof repair and some keywords such as that, and getting the first few people that show up that have good reviews. I’m going to call them and schedule out some quotes.

That was the key. People that show up. That has been a big challenge right now. I need someone to do some fence work at my house, so I contacted 7 or 8 people. I had two that called me back, and I’m like, “I can’t help you.” That is on the customer side, but that is on the recruiting side too. This is my little pet peeve right now. We talk a lot about ghosting. Everybody knows that employees are ghosting like crazy. Two-thirds of employees never hear back from you. They never hear back from companies when they apply. Do you want them to stop ghosting you? Stop ghosting them. That is a soapbox for me.

I hear you there because we are marketing. I get a lot of people to reach out to us, and we are not a national firm. I’m hiring everybody left and right. We have seasoned tenured employees. I have a little template in my email to send saying, “Thank you so much. Right now, we are not hiring.” I give them some resources because I want to leave a good impression. Should we need someone else? I don’t have bad taste in their mouth. Maybe they went to a company, stole some great trade secrets and several years later, it is even better timing for us. You never know. That is on the sales side.

Not that we create all of the sales processes for our clients. We are creating the marketing process. It is more on your shoulders to create the internal sales process. How are you reaching back out to your customer? How often are you following up with them afterward? As a homeowner for several years, I have replaced almost every single thing in my home, but I have seen many different follow-through processes.

Not that it is 1% of your forefront marketing. That is the end marketing. If you did all this work to have a good website, have all this content on there, make sure you rank and they are calling you. You are ending the follow-through process or the sales process preemptively. You are leaving a lot of dollars on the table, which, unfortunately, is going to offset what you think is working for marketing.

That is why we talk about tracking and relating that back to this tip two because if you can track, you will know exactly where each of your leads is coming from. Are they coming from all the time I’m spending on social media? I’m looking at my TikTok because I’m a local plumber. I see they are all coming from this coupon code I had, my website or these ads I’m running. You can relay it back there and know where you need to spend your time. That is where you can track everything. If anyone wants to know how to, I’m more than happy to yell at you and tell you how you can do it.

I have a background in digital marketing. Even with my business, I struggle with getting all the tracking. Things are changing. There are new tools, techniques, and all sorts of new things that are happening. I will tell you that spending the time putting together this tracking strategy or this plan with the experts, like One Thing Marketing, is going to save you so much headache, pain, and money to do it right up front.

What is that saying they have? If you fail to plan, plan to fail. That is what you are talking about. It is never too late to put this tracking stuff in place. That is my personal opinion. If you don’t do it now, it is going to cost you so much more money figuring it out and going to the school of hard knocks and hoping that you got a great marketing team that can do it. This is one thing I believe. You got to track through the whole thing. If you close a deal and you are not reporting that back to your marketing company, I might be stealing some thunder from you, Brittany, but that is a problem. You need to tell them, “I closed these. I didn’t close these.”

One of the things we see a lot when we are developing metrics for employees is we will often see people hiring CSRs, which are essentially the marketers and sometimes they’ll be a sales team, especially for larger estimates. The texts that are selling are always like, “They keep giving me bad leads.” I go talk to the people that are closing the business, and they were like, “I didn’t know they were bad. Nobody told me.” Part of tracking is you have to communicate. Sorry, I’m getting all a little soapbox and stealing some thunder from you, but this is why you need to hire an expert for this stuff. Especially when it comes to performance management with your people, they can’t perform if you are not giving them good stuff.

I will shout this with the mountaintops with you because one thing I give all my clients the power to do if they want it is a log-in to see their call tracking system. I can tell them where calls came from, but I don’t know at the end of the day which clients sold. Did you get a $50,000 lead that you closed? It is the holy grail of all clients you want. Please, either give me that phone number or take that phone number and try to find it in the system.

Control F, we can all do that, put that number in and see where they called from. That information is going to help not just you but it helps us to know. We are getting 90% of your best-quality callers from this. Do we want to cut spending the extra $5,000 a month on that billboard because we only got two phone calls from it, and neither of them closed?

Think of the money you are trying to save with us. Call tracking does require spending some money, but there are many clients we have saved $1,000, $2,000 to $3,000 a month with continuing because we were able to track it. They found who closed from where and they are able to justify at the end. Should they continue any of these marketing channels because we do need to spread ourselves out a little bit? We should not spread ourselves so thin and keep money in places that don’t work. That is where we are both trying to think and make sure everyone understands it.

In the digital marketing space, when it comes to customers, the mediums and vehicles you have to use there way ahead of the recruiting space. In the recruiting space, we don’t have the tracking, so we do have to put some crazy stuff together. A lot of people come to us, and they will say, “Indeed is the only place I get employees.” When they go back and track it back, they were like, “We get lots of applications, but we don’t get any employees, especially ones that we like.”

When we shatter that for people, they go, “Maybe Indeed isn’t where I should be investing my money. I should be doing it somewhere else.” That is what you are talking about. We had a client that was running radio ads for recruiting for $40,000 a year. When we started tracking it, they got zero new hires from that. It looked and felt good. It was in the community. If they went to a coffee shop, the barista would be like, “I heard you are out on the radio this morning.” It is all vanity. It didn’t drive them results.

Make sure that information is back on your site. They might find you on Indeed, but if they are going to do a Google search on you, they want to find the dirt. Your website could be the best place to stomp on some of that dirt, like we talked about in those FAQs. We have some FAQs, and I will make it brief. It is almost telling you what we want you to be if you are going to work with us. It was like, “Here is what a good client is to us. Here is who we work with.” It is stuff that might seem blunt and not that, “We don’t want you if you are this way.”

One of the things we say is if you are not going to track, we are never going to have a good relationship because that is what we need to make this a partnership. If you are against that, feel free to do a Google search again for these keywords and see who pops up and find someone better there. It is all those things that we are making them give that information to eventually, once you call, submit that contact form.

BCC 93 | Marketing Strategies
Marketing Strategies: Track your progress with a potential business partner. This is necessary to ensure a good relationship and secure the partnership.

 

Even to that, as far as when it comes to recruiting side, is the follow through. Everything you have back on your website or other marketing has to relive those advertisements that you are doing and give even more information because we can’t slap everything that is amazing about your company on a billboard. It is never going to fit.

I’m going to ask if this is a trade secret, tell me, but I know there are DIYers reading this right now going, “You are talking about call tracking and great call tracking systems.” Which one do you recommend? What is the best one out there?

We use CallRail. That is my favorite but some people don’t like it. I had a meeting with someone who wasn’t a fan of it, but when we talked about it, it came down to his marketing agency not using it correctly for him. One thing I tell everybody is if you use CallRail, you can set up what is called a whisper message. That way, it will whisper to you. That is what our clients get calls from website. It will say that, and within one beep, you will be connected with the person who called. If you want to track these things internally, you can. It could have call tracking numbers for your job boards. You are trying to recruit versus a potential client you are trying to close. You can know the difference between them and give them an even better first impression of them.

I don’t know how to do this, maybe you do, but we had a couple of clients that have given up their traditional phone system and went to CallRail because it tracks and records everything. They move all their numbers over there, and the whole phone system lives in CallRail, and it is cool. If we could keep going, you even brought up a reputation for a second. That is a whole other episode.

There is so much here that we could talk about. I love that you broke it down into those two things, being educated, understanding, having that relationship with the marketing team, being a part of this and tracking. The tracking is the one I geek out on because I wish we had the tracking in the recruiting space that you have in the digital marketing space. It is not quite there, and frankly, I don’t think it is ever going to get there, although we’re all doing our best to make it happen. I know that you got an offer for our readers. I learned some great things now. I’m sure they learned some great things now. Tell us how we can learn more about you but also take advantage of this offer.

I want to make 2023 better than 2022 for every trade business I talk to. If what I have said helps scrape the surface of what you are interested in and if you have an in-house team that needs to refresh, revamp and have that good beginning-of-the-year marketing talk with each other, we have a free eBook. It is the 9 Trade Service Marketing Strategies Proven to Increase Leads.

If you are in some type of trade or home service industry, go to our website, OneThingMarketing.net, and it is at the top say, “Download our eBook,” It will come straight to your email address with everything you need to know. It is a nice hefty PDF. You are going to give examples and some good strategies within it.

My second offer is if you say, “I don’t have time to read or do anything. I need to be told what to do.” We do offer a free strategy session. On that same website page, you can click the top right button, and you will schedule a free strategy session with me. When I told Ryan, the fun part about it is I got to do homework. You are going to schedule 30 minutes to brainstorm, but I will be doing a pre-audit of your website, SEO, and marketing.

If you are running any ads, I will look into all those things, and we will meet for 30 minutes. We will give you everything you need to either do this on your own moving forward or have us create a strategy. We can do this for you because we are a niche based in the trades and home service marketing agency. That is what we love and specialize in. That is what my dad did my entire life growing up. I understand what it means in a family business to make sure it is thriving, growing and making sure that there is food on the table for everybody now and in the future.

Thank you. You can take advantage of not only that eBook but the strategy session sounds awesome because sometimes we are close. Things are right there. We are off by a degree or two, and you need a second set of eyes to say, “Did you know this? What did you think about this?” You can solve it.

I know Brittany, and they are amazing over there at One Thing Marketing. They aren’t here to sell you. They are here to help. If you end up doing business with them, and that is how they end up helping, that is awesome. If they can get you unstuck or point you in the right direction, like you said, you never know what is going to happen in the next few years. You never know where someone is going to be at. Take advantage of that. Brittany, thank you so much for being here. I enjoyed it. I have learned some things myself.

Thank you, Ryan. This is awesome.

 

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The WSR Is Your #1 Growth Tool With Bryan Kaplan

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BCC 90 | Growth Tool

 

Everyone wants to drive their business to success. Good thing we have so many tools at our disposal that could help us achieve that. But what is the best one out there? In this episode, Bryan Kaplan of Construction Consulting shares his wealth of knowledge in explaining the number one growth tool that drives many organizations to success: the Weekly Status Review Meeting (WSR). He also reminds us that your people want to know that you have a plan for them, so set that roadmap. This episode is filled with buckets of wisdom on recruiting, onboarding, and retention, so tune in to know more!

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The WSR Is Your #1 Growth Tool With Bryan Kaplan

Bryan, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

You’ve been doing this for a long time. You’ve been in the construction space for a long time, and I know that you have a wealth of knowledge to share with our readers. Before we get to all that, though, tell me, in your opinion, what is the biggest myth in your industry that you want to shatter for our readers right now?

I will say that recruiting, onboarding, and retention are business activities. Before we started, we said that was one of the marketing activities, which they very much are, but they are very much business activities. We can’t hire a bunch of people to do our onboarding and then hope for the best because that’s when the work starts.

We can't just hire a bunch of people, do our onboarding, and then hope for the best because that's when the work starts. Click To Tweet

If they do onboarding.

I was giving everyone the benefit of the doubt.

I get it. Onboarding is not making sure they fill out their I-9 W-2 and that they have got all their new hire paperwork done. That is not onboarding. It is interesting. There are business activities and it’s something that you need to focus on. You need to think about it. It’s something your leadership team should be discussing, talking about strategizing, planning, and all of that stuff. Is that what you are saying?

Absolutely. This is an ongoing activity. It’s also decentralized, meaning that everybody in your company should be contributing to this in some way, shape, or form. Your employees or your team members that you have should be helping to recruit other people that they might know. They should be willing, because you have such a great culture, to do a testimonial of their experience in working in your brand. It goes all the way side to side on your organizational chart, like everyone should be focused on this for sure.

I do a lot of public speaking and I survey the audience. I’m like, “How many people do you have that are responsible for recruiting?” Someone will own a 400-employee shop and they will be like, “Three.” I’m like, “No, you should have 400.” For those of you reading, it’s a trick question when somebody asks you how many people you have responsible for recruiting. It should be your headcount of how many people you have on your team. This is important. You mentioned that it’s a business activity, and I’ve seen you say that because not everybody believes that. What do you think it is that keeps people from treating this recruiting and retention as a business activity? What’s holding them back?

In residential construction, I would say it’s the volume of stuff that’s going on a daily basis. It’s very easy. I need somebody to put out a job description, get a resumé or a few, shortlist it, hire somebody, and then be able to focus on the next thing. It’s the business and probably a lot of lack of systemization and process-oriented work that they do in their business.

I know that you and I have a passion for process in getting these things in here. I tell people the time, the process isn’t for you. It’s for your people. They need the process. You mentioned that they’ve got all of these things and it’s the stuff. We were even talking here. It’s one of those days. How often does that come up? I talked to a lot of people in the construction space like, “Can’t meet today.” “Why not?” “We had an emergency.” “Everybody okay?” “Everybody’s fine. We had this other thing that we call an emergency.” What are some actions that our readers could take to break through this wall and start thinking about people and this process and all of that? What are some things that you’d recommend for them?

There’s a ton here. The big thing is understanding that you can’t be almost predictable in that when all of a sudden, I need somebody, I have got to go and find somebody and then hope for the best once I “onboard them.” Part of it is prioritizing your workflow. If we go into the business side of things, we want to take the right opportunities. We want to get super clear about what we sell, who we sell it to, and how we succeed as a company.

We talked before we went on here about things that get measured and improved. A lot of business owners aren’t stopping to take a breath to think about their business, which is working on your business. Understanding that this machine will keep going if you allow it to. If you keep kicking the can down the road, it’s going to keep going down the road and nothing’s going to change.

A lot of it is taking stock, taking a pause to think about your business, recognizing where you guys succeed as business owners, but as a team, and then making sure that you can dedicate some time to focusing on this huge aspect of your business. I always say you can’t do it alone. If you could, there are contractors out there working by themselves.

They have worked by themselves for 20, 25, or 30 years, whatever it is, but there’s a ceiling. For some people, that’s fine. They want to be there, but they are sick. They get COVID. They are not at work and they are not earning. It’s not a business. It’s more like you are an employee for the people that hire you thing. That’s what I would say.

I met some people like that. I met a guy who was at a trade show and he goes, “I used to have 22 people on my team. I got rid of all of them. I went by myself. I make more money. I have more freedom. Life is so much better,” but he’s got a job. If he gets sick, gets hurt, and out for six weeks, work’s not getting done, so I totally get that.

You had said there are a whole bunch of things they can do to figure this out. That mindset component of it was what I heard you say that’s a big piece of it. You got to start thinking differently about how you solve this problem. Think differently about the way you do your business. Give us some pointers. What are some things that we can do to make that shift and start building these processes and start having this machine that helps us with our people?

The first thing that I tell everybody is without time, none of it’s going to be possible. You have to find a way to limit yourself from doing probably 60 to 70 things a week that you shouldn’t be doing as a business owner. If you are running a small business and you are running around and picking up material. You are running around and on the job site and you are the center. You are that center hub of your business. It’s going to be very hard for you to replace yourself and take this time to dedicate to focusing on the bigger picture.

BCC 90 | Growth Tool
Growth Tool: If you are running a small business as that center hub, it’s going to be very hard for you to replace yourself and dedicate time to focus on the bigger picture.

 

There’s no blue magic pill, but I would say that you pick off a few low-hanging fruits. Look into the organization, all the people that you have. Who is someone if you don’t have anybody that can be viewed as a supervisor, someone that can help you get the production side of things done so that you are not running around to every single job site every day?

Don’t run around and pick up equipment or material. There are tons of services in all major cities across US and Canada that do this. All of your suppliers will do this for you. Don’t run around and do that. Don’t convince yourself that you need to do that. Don’t sit on your email inbox. Set specific alignments with your clients in terms of the communication that you do with them.

Set specific days that you go and meet with clients so that you are not doing it as an ad hoc service. The big idea here is you’ve got to respect and protect your own time because if you don’t, then someone else will basically use it for their own agenda. This is one of the huge things. There are a lot of things that I could say here about what to do, but those are some of the big ones I would say for sure.

You have to respect and protect your time. Otherwise, someone else will use it for their agenda. Click To Tweet

That protecting the calendar, protecting your time, and carving it out for the things that are most important, I still struggle with that. It’s difficult. We are not saying that some of these things are easy, but I do think that something important here is progress is more important than perfection. Even if you could find an hour a week to start, that would be a great place to start. I’m sure we will need more than an hour a week, but at least starting somewhere and protecting that time. One of the things that I have learned and seen this happen over and over again, especially in construction, is those things that you think are super urgent aren’t always that urgent.

That’s exactly it. Picking up that shoring jack or that set of scaffolds and running to a job site, we think it’s important. It’s urgent. It’s not important. What it’s telling us is that we didn’t plan well. We probably aren’t also releasing some of that Darth Vader grip I like to talk about on our business and trusting people in our organization.

Allow them to take those things off your hands and start to release some of that grip. I always say that the people around you are incredibly smart and they have a lot of value to help you run your business if you are willing to listen to them. I suffered from this for years. Once I finally understood this and got it, it was game-changing for me.

BCC 90 | Growth Tool
Growth Tool: People around you are incredibly smart and have a lot of value in helping you run your business if you’re willing to listen to them.

 

I hear people tell me all the time, “I can’t go to my team with this because they won’t know how to solve it.” I’m like, “They are the ones doing this all day, every day. They are going to have ideas you never even thought was possible and it might blow your mind.”

If you solve it for them, there’s no accountability or buy-in because they weren’t part of that solution. Ask them and involve them in the solution because that’s how you build accountability.

We talk to our clients all the time about recruiting and how important these things are, but time and time again, this new generation that’s in the workforce, they want these opportunities to learn and to take on new responsibilities and grow in their career. They want these things. They are not good at communicating it and telling you they want them, but every survey I have ever seen in the last decades says they want it. Let them make these decisions and maybe even letting them fail on occasion. They can learn and they can grow, and then you don’t have to worry and after a while that you are going to see that, “They know how to make these decisions and make things move forward. I love it.”

This idea of controlled failure is what I call it. Picture a road with grassy side shoulder thing and fields on the left and right side. In general, you are going down the business road and people sometimes get a little off track. All of a sudden, the tire is on the gravel, and then soon enough they are going to be on the grass.

What you are trying to do is give them some guardrails of safety. Nudge them back on the path. That is the support or that is maybe some tools and tactics, but make it low stakes. Give them the ability to grow. It’s like if you are coaching kids on a soccer team. You want to give them encouragement a little bit here and here and here. You can’t be too hard on them and yell at them because they don’t understand. The idea is to give them a little bit that they can be successful in and continue to build on that.

Give your employees the ability to grow. Click To Tweet

It makes total sense. Hearing you talk about this, I’m already picturing a couple of people saying, “It’s faster if I do it myself.”

I don’t disagree, but that’s the exact low-hanging fruit. That is the quagmire. That is the trap we all get into where I could spend five minutes doing this or I could spend 30 minutes teaching somebody. The thing is, if I take the 30 minutes, maybe it’s not going to be only one session that I do it may be 2 or 3 sessions to do it. I never have to do those tasks again and that’s all the urgent but not important stuff that’s in your business. That’s all the site communications, picking up materials, picking up equipment, or shuffling your team calendar and other people can do all those things. It doesn’t have to be you doing it.

Any tips on how to break through that and start that process? I hear it takes me five minutes to do it or I got to sit down 30 minutes a couple of times. That’s a future problem for me to deal with. Kick the can down the road like you said. Eventually, the can is further down the road. Any tips or advice you have for our readers on how to break through that so that they don’t get stuck in that?

There are two things I would say. The first is you need a right-hand person and every business owner needs this. You need a right-hand person, and then the second thing is to start to document it as you do it. This is probably going to be the hardest thing for any human being to do because it’s the most unnatural behavioral heuristic that we have or a pattern to change our psychology.

We are meant to go through and do the process and be done with it instead of pausing at every step and documenting the steps that I need to take. It can be a very simple word file, Google Doc, Google sheet, or whatever format you want to put it in. Every time you do something, start to write what the steps were.

BCC 90 | Growth Tool
Growth Tool: Every time you do something, start to write what the steps are.

 

If there’s a hyperlink to a platform that you are using, put the hyperlink in there. If there’s something that you know very well but you can imagine that someone doing it for the first time might get tripped up on, take a moment and write a short paragraph explaining what it is and how they get around it. Progress over perfection or, as I would say, done is better than perfect. Remember that it’s never going to be perfect. There’s no such thing as perfection. That’s a myth I can shatter for sure.

Getting started is the important thing. Let’s go back for a second to the right-hand person. Every business owner needs this because you can’t pass. You hear that everyone has a different way of spinning this, but does your business pass the fishing test? This is the new buzz term that’s going around social media.

The idea being, “Could you leave for two weeks and go fishing and your company would run without you,” thing. This is why you need a right-hand person because you rarely can do that without being able to vacation as opposed to checking in every single day, checking your email every single day and making sure everything’s going well.

That hits home with me so personally right now. I got back from this trade show and I ended up with COVID and I was down for six days. If I didn’t have somebody that could cover for me and take care of the clients, take care of the business, and run the thing, we’d probably still be in business, but it would have been ugly once I got back and had to deal with everything. I totally get that. I love that. I love fishing. Taking two weeks off to go fishing. It’s important.

What’s something else they can do to break through this wall that’s holding them back? This thing or belief that, “I’m the only one that can do it. I don’t need the process. I’m the only one that can recruit. I can’t trust anybody else.” These are all beliefs. What are some other tips or maybe another tip that you have for our readers to help them break through this?

Maybe this will help. I have a client and we were talking about one of his team members, and this team member, I would say he has a bit of a short fuse at times. We have all possibly been in a business or been acquainted with someone that has that and one day, he kept saying, “This guy sucks and that guy sucks,” and he is going on and on about every trade partner that they work with and every employee that’s in the company.

Finally, the business owner said, “I need you to look in the mirror for a second. What’s the common denominator here?” Obviously, for him, the common denominator is himself. Part of this is some tough love that I will give everybody to say that it’s about looking in the mirror and it’s about understanding that every time there is a failure or a success in your business. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in. As a leader that’s what we want to be looking at. What was my involvement in basically the success or the failure?

Taking that extreme ownership approach to say that, “If someone fails, I didn’t provide them with enough context, strategy, tactics, tools, support, or whatever it looks like. What could I do differently to get a better outcome the next time?” People screw things up. I have been in the construction industry a long time and I have screwed a lot of things up, and a lot of people around me have screwed a lot of things up, but me yelling at them isn’t going to change any outcome because I’m not helping them with the support, the tools and all of that so that they don’t make that mistake next time. One of the big things that we can do to start.

If you haven’t read the book by Jocko Willink, he’s an ex-Navy SEAL guy. Some people obviously might be familiar with that book. The concept is valuable. By midway through the book, it’s regurgitating the same thing over and over, but the concepts are good. One of the things I have always done is lead with outcomes as opposed to tasks, and the extreme ownership approach is very much focused in that realm. Looking in the mirror and understanding that when we succeed, it’s the team that succeeds. When we fail, I have to look in the mirror and say, “What didn’t I do? What could I do better that’s going to help my team in the future?”

That leads me to something that is important to you. We talked a little bit about investing in your people and giving them a career path and mapping that out for them and helping with that. Let them know that it might hurt a little, but there’s an outcome that we are after. We are not focused on this task. We are on that outcome.

Talk to us a little bit about that career roadmap and some things that people can do to keep their people engaged because I see this firsthand. A lot of people tell me they have a hiring problem and then I ask them how many W-2s they issued last year. They don’t have a hiring problem. They have a retention problem. You are talking about pouring into your people, investing in them, teaching them and letting them know that they are part of this. They are part of the high-stakes game that we are playing. That career roadmap is huge to that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Maybe plant some seeds for our readers?

The first thing I’m going to say and I will come back to it, is that the number one tool for your success, if you have an organization with people or you are looking to hire people and grow your organization, is going to be this weekly status review meeting, this WSR. This is the central thing that’s going to be the success point for your business.

Let me back up and say that to start, we always want to lead with outcomes. We want to make sure that people understand what we are driving towards. One of the things that align with the Extreme Ownership book and the concept as well, it’s about decentralizing the command. The typical thing I need to hire somebody, I go to Indeed, I look at a few job posts, or maybe I have a prior one that I have had.

I copy-paste and I mash something together that’s about two pages long with 1,200 words in it that I have to read through. People are skimming. They don’t read all of that information. It’s all tasks. It’s all, “You are going to do this.” How many times have you seen or written must be able to work in a fast-paced environment?

Those words are every single job post I have ever seen in my life. The point is that we are not different. Coming back to your marketing point about we have to do something different to attract people, but point is we want to lead with outcomes. We want to help people understand how they are going to succeed. You’ll be successful in this role if it’s client experience and we have the highest level of client experience and satisfaction. I can use that.

When we decentralize command, we put the decision-making as close to the front lines of your business as possible. We help them understand what we are trying to achieve. Specifically, it’s around communication. We want high client experience and satisfaction. I can use that to maybe step outside the boundaries of when we normally communicate with a client because I know that I’m serving that outcome as a site superintendent or project manager.

BCC 90 | Growth Tool
Growth Tool: When we decentralize command, we make decision-making as close to the front lines of your business as possible. We help them understand what we’re trying to achieve.

 

We want to get clear on all of that. We form our position agreement, which gets clear on the outcomes and some of the specific job functions, and then that parlays into the career roadmap. The career roadmap is something I would bring to every single interview, and I would show people, here is what it looks like if right now you are a carpenter or this is what a lead carpenter’s role is, this is what a site superintendent is, and this is what a project manager’s role is.

Ironically, as the general manager, people, I would always ask them, “Where do you want to grow to?” They say, “Maybe general manager one day.” I was like, “Okay. I’m sitting right here, but if you can do the job better than me, that’s fine. Hopefully, I will find something else to do.” The idea is that we want to get clear on the outcomes for each role and how it changes as you move through different positions and this is what the roadmap is destined to do.

The WSR that I talked about a moment ago, there are two sides to it. One, it’s a production side. We help people think through the problems. We are sticking with the fishing analogy. We are teaching them to fish as opposed to fishing for them. I have done this many a times where we have a client that maybe is upset about something and I’m like, “Don’t worry. I will write the email,” as opposed to helping them understand what the client’s probably feeling, what we might want to think about when we respond, and what are the outcomes of what we are going to respond with a thing.

That’s a tactical example of how I could change that. Instead of me writing it, I can help them understand those three things. Teaching them how to fish for themselves. The career roadmap will help us to see how we develop through all those stages. The second part is what things do I need to work on to go through those stages. I had a lot of people that were carpenters or leads that wanted to be superintendents or project managers. I was teaching project management 5:00 on Wednesdays and anybody could join, and I was helping them set some goals for themselves and regularly check in on those goals.

The career roadmap will help us see how we develop through all those stages. Click To Tweet

It’s not necessarily a weekly thing, but let’s say every 4, 6, or 8 weeks, and no longer than every 90 days. We want to check in on how have you advanced through these goals. What do you need from us? What are you committing to? What do I need to support you? What obstacles or roadblocks are you encountering?

This is about pouring into your people. I always say, “Once you hire somebody, that’s when the real work begins because the recruiting part is easy.” There are a lot of people that are rolling their eyes right now because they are like, “Have you tried to hire somebody in the past few years?” As you said, you don’t have a hiring problem. You have a recruiting problem. This is the crux of what it means to develop people in your industry or in your business.

There’s a whole episode of questions I have from what you said. It’s great. The one thing that I heard is that all of our readers should hit know is that your people want to know that you have a plan for them.

People want to be led.

When you sit down at the interview with that roadmap, they know that you are invested long term. It’s not a, “You’ll work here until it doesn’t work out,” which is how a lot of interviews go these days. You got a pulse, you can fog a mirror, and you are hired. Candidates don’t like that any more than you like that. Job seekers can’t stand that. That’s why they are not applying for these jobs anymore because they are tired of that.

If you could sit down and say, “We have got this roadmap for you. We are going to show you and we are going to do it with you too.” It’s not, “Here’s the thing. Good luck.” We are a part of this together and we are doing these weekly status reports. There’s so much value in investing in your people that way and building that relationship that, even if you don’t do that stuff perfectly, your retention will go through the roof.

For sure and it all comes back to building a culture. When you show up in an interview with a career roadmap, it’s that concept of reverent power. This is something we do. This is normal. This is part of who we are as an organization. These are our core values and people want to be led. Interestingly enough, we were talking about before we hopped on, we were talking about recruiting as a marketing activity, which I agree with. I always talk about it because your clients and your team members are basically the same group of people that you are selling to if you think about it.

When we are marketing, we are trying to attract them. We are trying to speak to the things that are going to drive them, the things that they are passionate about. There’s the third principle of what motivates human beings, which is autonomy, by providing people with this roadmap and helping them see that they can move towards these different roles that give them more of that. These are the three things purpose, autonomy, and mastery. That’s what’s going to motivate me as a human being. To your point, hiring me and then until it doesn’t work out thing, there’s nothing in it for me. I’m already out the door when I get in the thing.

It’s so much stuff to unpack here. I know there are people reading right now that they are going to want to learn more. They have read what you’ve said and I know you’ve got a wealth of knowledge beyond what we can do in one episode here. How do people get ahold of you and how do they learn more?

The easiest way is the website ConstructionConsulting.co, and then I’m also very active at the same handle on Instagram, so you can send me a direct message there. I post a lot of content and I’m pretty active on LinkedIn as well. If you search for Bryan Kaplan, you’ll be able to find me and you can book a time for us to speak directly through the website and be happy to chat with everybody about their challenges.

Bryan, thank you so much for being on the show. I enjoyed the conversation. I have learned a ton.

Perfect. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

 

Important Links

 

About Bryan Kaplan

BCC 90 | Growth ToolMy vision is to empower every construction business owner to be valued, respected, and treated as a professional no different than a doctor or a lawyer. Through my training programs and masterclasses, I will help you change how you do business. Here is my story.

 

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Innovate Your Business In Two Steps With Carla Johnson

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BCC 91 | Innovation

 

What really is innovation? And what does it take for an innovative idea to be formed? In today’s episode, Carla Johnson shares how a business can effectively innovate in two steps! Carla is a global keynote speaker, a best-selling author, and a recognized marketing and innovation strategist that has worked with Fortune 500 brands. Tune in and learn from the expert herself what it really takes to innovate today!

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Innovate Your Business In Two Steps With Carla Johnson

Innovation is a key step in being able to transform the way you attract, hire, and retain amazing people. If your company isn’t innovating in the way it’s recruiting and you’re not innovating in the way you’re engaging your people and the way you market and present yourself in the marketplace, you’re missing out. Often, companies get stuck and they got their blinders on. They are looking at the things they used to do or the things that others are doing in their industry as inspiration for innovation.

Our guest will tell you that’s not the way we should be doing it. Carla Johnson is an expert at helping organizations innovate using her five-step process. She’s going to explain the process to you. She will help you understand how you can take this and create an amazing team of people that are constantly innovating in your side of the business and out so that you can transform your business and get the results you’ve always wanted.

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Carla, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Ryan.

I’m looking forward to this conversation because there is something that is intriguing to me about your expertise in innovation. I can’t wait to hear more. What is the biggest myth you ran into in the work that you do?

The biggest myth that I ran into is that innovation is something that only a specific group of people is allowed to do. We see them as the product development people. Maybe it’s process design people if you’re thinking about construction. It could be the software people. There is a certain person or type of person, role or educational background who somehow we have given the official tap on the shoulder that they are the innovators. The most successful organizations don’t buy into that.

I should have asked you to start with this, but define innovation. What is the definition that you use for that term?

I love that you asked that because if I asked 20 different people for a definition of innovation, I would probably have 35 or 40 answers. It’s not like accounting, architecture, engineering or construction. There isn’t a specific definition and necessary methodology that’s widely accepted as to what it is.

I define innovation as the ability to consistently come up with new, great, and reliable ideas. It sounds super simple, but each word has a powerful impact. A new idea is something that hasn’t been done before in your industry. I like to use McDonald’s as an example of a new idea. When they were looking at how to design or redesign their drive-through layout for the restaurants, they took inspiration from a Formula 1 pit stop. They looked at who has to have a car, come in and out very fast, be efficient, safe, and all of the same requirements as what McDonald’s used.

Was it an idea that had never been done before? No. Was it a new idea that had its first time in the fast food industry? Yes. That’s the definition of a new idea, but a new idea on its own doesn’t necessarily mean it’s successful or provocative enough to be considered innovative. The next criterion is that the idea is great. To be honest, a great idea is a lot more subjective than a new idea because a great idea is one of those things that when you hear, it raises the hair on the back of your neck or on your arm, or gives you a little bit of goosebumps. It makes you feel a little jealous that maybe you didn’t come up with that idea.

Even with that impact, when you think about a new and great idea, we see some of those, but they crash and burn or the company that has them goes out of business. That’s why the third requirement is so important also, and that’s it’s a reliable idea. A reliable idea is something that has a bottom-line financial impact.

When you put all three of these together, then innovation is when you’re able to consistently come up with new great and reliable ideas. Ideas that are new to your industry give you that sense of envy and excitement, but also have a bottom-line financial impact. When companies or people are able to consistently develop these over long periods of time, that’s truly the people in the organizations that we look to and say, “They are rockstar innovators.”

Innovation is when you're able to consistently come up with new, great, and reliable ideas. Click To Tweet

I love the qualification you gave for that reliably. I work with a lot of visionaries, entrepreneurs, and people that have a hundred ideas by the time they are done with breakfast. They walk into their team meeting and they tell them, “I got all these great ideas,” and the people start shooting them down. They might be new and great, but if they don’t impact that bottom line, they’re not ideas that we need to be using moving forward. I like the way you qualified that.

Along the way, it’s not necessarily always upfront, but you have to have an objective for your ideas. There are those times when you want those brilliant breakfast ideas, but at the end of the day, they have to apply and have an impact for them to truly be innovative. What people don’t always realize is that there is also a gift in the person who can come up with a lot of ideas.

One thing that I see is people will come up with 6, 8 or maybe 10 ideas and go, “That was awesome,” then they pick the best and run with it or try to run with it. Research shows you don’t truly get to really creative and innovative ideas until you’ve gone through the first 200. You think about those meetings where you get through the first 8 or 10, that’s just the low-hanging fruit.

To be honest, in most cases, you’re probably just taking something you’ve done in the past, you’re rehashing it a little bit, taking a part out, substituting something in and saying, “That’s an awesome idea.” It misses that great component. If you think about you go one step further, maybe you’ve taken something that a competitor does and put your own flavor on it, but it’s still not competitive.

To stand out, the idea-generation step has to be fueled by inspiration outside of your industry. That’s a little bit of a benchmark. Not that every team or person gets to that 200 idea mark before they choose one, but it gives us a sense of context for how quickly we default to what’s easy rather than what’s truly new, great, and reliable for an idea.

I see that happen a lot. People get excited about ideas and they run with them. Three months later, they’re like, “We’re losing money. This is dumb. Why are we doing this?” It sounded so good three months ago and it wasn’t a good idea. The myth was that there’s not a select few that can consistently do this, but then I hear the 200 ideas before you get to the point where you’re starting to be more innovative. This seems contradictory to me. You either have to be the idea-generation person or not. Help me break that down a little bit. I’m sure I misheard something so break that down for me.

I should have put your first question into answer A and answer B. The first myth is that there are people who are the special ones, as we think of it, who are the idea-people. The second myth, subset, item 1A, is that it’s this ambiguous process. Ideas just pop into your head when you’re running or showering and they magically appear.

The truth is coming up with great ideas is a structured process. I spent five years doing research, studying all sorts of innovators in all industry sizes of companies, ages, and geographic regions around the world. I looked at their individual competence, team competence, and company competence, and coming up with ideas. What I found is that they all have the same five-step process, whether they realized it or not.

BCC 91 | Innovation
Innovation: Coming up with great ideas is a structured process.

 

The interesting thing is the most powerful part of it is that the innovators that we think have this magical ability understand that you have to fuel upfront the idea-generation process. You do that by being more observant of the world around you. That’s the first step of this process. It’s that highly innovative people are also highly observant people.

The second thing they do is look at all of these different observations they have, and they start to notice patterns. The interesting thing about steps one and two if you want to improve your skills as an innovator is that it takes very little effort to get going with this. The ability to observe the world around us and then distill those observations into patterns are things that are genetically wired into us. It’s how we survived back on the Savannah when there were tigers, lions, T-Rex and whatever else is out there.

Our ancestors were able to observe all of these different details and distill those into patterns that told us, “Is it safe to leave my grass hut this morning or do I need to go back in and pull my grass duvet over my head and call it a day?” It’s that safety and threat patterns that tell them where food is or patterns that tell them things about the weather, the climate, and things like that. These are things that are genetically wired into us.

The third thing is the most critical one that I found in my research that determines how successful a person is as an innovator, as well as their idea. That’s being able to take the patterns that they’ve distilled and truly understand how they relate to the work that they do. If you think about the idea of designing the layout for the McDonald’s drive-through using a Formula 1 pit stop as their inspiration, the designers observed things.

To start out with, they observed that people didn’t come into the restaurant because they had to pull up, get out of their car, they’d go inside and wait in line. It was cumbersome and it took a lot of time. If you’re thinking all you want is a cup of coffee on your way to work, that’s not very efficient. They also observed what happens in a Formula 1 pit stop. There’s a team of people ready and each person has their responsibility. Each person knows how to integrate with the other. If you look at the pit stop, people are in and out in minutes because that’s part of winning the game.

For McDonald’s, they look at their ability to observe and understand that part of winning the game comes down to distilling all these details into patterns of things like efficiency, empowerment in your own job role, understanding how to hire the right people so that they fit into these functions correctly, and training them so they understand how all these parts and pieces fit together. Not that they have to necessarily do everyone, but there needs to be a context for the responsibility.

Those are things they could easily relate to what their business challenge was, and then begin to generate those ideas. Something that is really important is understanding that there is a very structured yet flexible process that we can use to come up with these ideas, and then also share them in a pitch. We’ve heard people share ideas and they’re horrible at presentation. It’s that unfortunate thing that a bad pitch kills even the best of ideas.

When we look at this whole process, it’s the ability to start with inspiration and bring that into the work that we do, generate these ideas that are different and unique, yet still relatable to the specific objective or goal that you have at hand, and then being able to share them to get buy-in from the rest of your team, your organization, and your clients.

That’s a critical step right there. It takes some skill. What are the last two? You gave us three of the five steps.

The fourth step is generate, and then the fifth step is pitch. When we think about traditional brainstorming, strategy sessions or whiteboard sessions, what typically happens is that we start at step four, generate. We say, “Everybody come together Friday afternoon at 4:00 in the main conference room.”

That in and of itself doesn’t lead to a lot of inspiration for the ideas that come into the room. We go into these meetings where we’re wanting great ideas and be inspired, but we don’t know how and we haven’t fueled that process. We’re essentially sucking from a dry bone. We’re trying to come up with something new, different, and unique but we don’t know what to do.

You then go to pitch those ideas and people say, “We don’t have that budget. That’s not what we do around here. We’re not that company. Do what you did last time and change a few of the numbers.” If we’re ever going to get a different output of the ideas that we generate and pitch, then we have to start looking at the input that fuels that fourth step, and how we bring it in a cohesive, reliable, predictable, and scalable way that anybody can learn and practice.

I was thinking that anybody can learn this if you have this process. It’s so interesting, as soon as you said people start to generate, I can think of a dozen people right now, me included, that that’s where we start. I got all these ideas and it’s not because they were influenced or anything. I was having breakfast and had an idea.

It’s always important to capture those because you never know, that idea may apply somewhere down the line or it may help lead to another idea. I call this five-step process the Perpetual Innovation Process because as innovative thinkers, we should never stop. It’s something that once we go through the observe, distill, relate, generate and pitch process, there’s always going to be another situation when we need another great idea.

Innovate Your Business In Two Steps With Carla Johnson Click To Tweet

It doesn’t matter if it relates to how we hire and recruit people. It doesn’t matter if it relates to how we look at the processes that we use every day on the job. It doesn’t matter if we look at how we hire and retain people. Human resources, talent recruitment and reward, and that area of business is one that needs more ideas than ever before.

Many times organizations get stuck in, “This is how that is done.” Does it have to be? If you look at a ride-share company, a Lyft or an Uber, you can apply and within hours, you can be on the job working. What if you could take inspiration from that and relate what works for them into your organization, and begin to use that as inspiration for the ideas you generate?

I’m not suggesting that every organization needs to have a hiring process where they can get people in the door in a matter of hours. That’s not right for every organization. That’s why that relate step is so important because it isn’t about copying and pasting something that some other company has done like Uber and Lyft.

It’s understanding by observing the details and finding the patterns, and then looking at the patterns and relating that to your own organization. Maybe the pattern in that situation is they have a great process that helps filter people and understand who’s the right person. They have a great process that identifies profiles or whatever it is. I don’t know the hiring process so I can’t say. I’m just making this up. What are those things for these organizations?

One of the things that we do a lot in our work is looking at the job seeker’s or the candidate’s experience. In some of my research, as we develop our processes, we look to other industries outside of construction. If there’s one industry that has gotten stagnant in the last decade, it’s construction. The economy has been good. It’s been easy to get work and they kept going, but they’ve always struggled with hiring.

The candidate wants a fast experience. They want you to make a decision quickly. They don’t want you to call them and say, “In three weeks, we got an interview, and then three weeks later, we’ll let you know if we make a decision.” It’s great to look outside the industry and even your work

I made a comment to a remodeling contractor one time and I asked him, “Who’s your biggest competition for people?” He goes, “There’s this big company down. They’re in four states.” I was like, “Really? How much are you paying?” He’s like, “$19 an hour.” I go, “Amazon, Target, and all these customer services, these are the people you need to look at because they’re stealing your people.”

When you think about the impression you present as a company, especially if you’re looking to hire young talent and you have the same approach and brand presence as you’ve always had, especially as a construction company, you’re going to get your shorts eaten. I now see companies in traditionally boring industries that understand how to tap into TikTok and create short clips, whether it’s about the work that they do or the personality inside the company or whatever it is. All of this matters if you are looking to be relevant. While the industry may be very much in demand, if you can’t hire the talent to get the job done, it doesn’t matter how much work you have coming in the door if you can’t deliver.

My brain is churning right now with ideas and questions. I’m going to stick to the script because I know that our audience wants to know more too. What are some things that I can do as a business owner, I think about our audience, which could start using this five-step process when we start generating these ideas to innovate and ultimately, differentiate ourselves so that we stand out as an employer of choice in the industry?

I’m going to give you two things. One is a blatant direction toward the five-step process that I created that we talked about. It is to learn this five-step Perpetual Innovation Process. It’s something that I detailed in my book, RE:Think Innovation. I explain how to do it in minute detail and also why it matters from a culture and employee recruitment and retention standpoint. Half of it digs into the process and teaches people how to do it. The other part is, “Now what do you do with it if you’re looking to create a culture where everyone is encouraged to become an innovative thinker?”

The second thing that I suggest that people do is create a list of what I call envy brands or the brands you’re jealous of. This should not be solely companies in your industry. It can be some because maybe they’re doing some amazing things. What we don’t often recognize is that when we are competing, we think we’re competing against our peers in our industry. Truly, when your customers, employees, or prospective employees and customers interact with you, they aren’t using the filter of, “How should I think of this company?” They’re thinking, “How is my experience this morning at Starbucks? How does that compare to this experience? How is my experience with Amazon in same-day delivery?”

BCC 91 | Innovation
Innovation: We’re not just competing against our peers in our industry. But truly, when your customers or employees interact with you, they aren’t thinking, “How should I think of this company?” They’re thinking, “How does my experience compare to the experience I get from other companies?”

 

Sometimes I get things in two hours on my doorstep. How does that compare to the experience you’re delivering in whatever way, shape or form? How do people communicate? I always have my phone right here handy because I have apps and that’s what I use to keep track of things and communicate. Is this something that you need to think about when you look at the brand envy? Whose apps do you live and die by and what is it that you could learn from them? What that helps people do is understand how big and broad they need to start thinking when they look at other brands that can inspire them.

That’s interesting because I’ve heard that before. When we’re looking and interacting with someone new, we’re comparing them to the brands that have the most influence in our lives, whether they’re competition or not. The Starbucks, Apples, and Amazons of the world are who this construction company were comparing to. Amazon can do it in two hours. Why can’t you?

I know some construction companies don’t do big commercial construction. They’ll put up a camera and they send you a daily summary like some chat boards that you’re on. It’s like, why does that have to be so outside the norm and seem like such a huge thing when that’s what we would expect in many other situations with companies that we interact with? That’s what I think is a huge opportunity for the construction industry. It is to begin to ask yourself, “How might we begin to do some of these things just like what our customers have expectations for the rest of their lives?”

What I heard is to learn the process, and you have a book that will teach the whole process, and then look at your envy brands or the ones that you envy. It’s not even competition. Maybe, but most likely, who is it that you would strive to be like or go, “If I could create a process or system or be as profitable as them, who is that?”

That helps you start to think things like when you’re considering ideas and you feel stuck or you want to help move this forward with a team member, a leader, a customer or a client, you can start to say, “What would Lego do if they were building this? What would Lego do if they were creating an onboarding experience for a construction company?” It helps you start to think differently. That’s why that list of envy brands is important.

That’s impactful for me because I see in a lot of people that observation step that you start with. When they observe with the blinders on and only look at their industry, they’re not seeing what the rest of the world is doing. They’re just seeing what their competitors are doing. Many people get caught in that, “Down the street, they’re doing it this way, so we’re going to do it this way.”

I’ll never forget this. I met a client a few years ago and they didn’t offer any paid time off to any of their labors. These are the guys in the field. You had to be there for five years and then you got a week of paid time off. These are the guys putting their lives on the line. They didn’t get any time off.

I asked him why and we dug into it. He goes, “That’s the way my dad’s company was.” Why? That’s the way his dad’s company was. Why? That’s the way the industry has always done it. Why? They didn’t have any answer to it. I said, “You’re competing for the same people that Amazon is competing for, and they get two weeks of PTO on day one. You got to look outside of your industry. To me, that observation step is where so many people need to start. It is looking at those envy brands. I love that tip.

It is almost so simple. People easily dismiss it as not being relevant, but the power of it is in the simplicity of it when you stop, slow down, pause and observe. People have eaten a lot of humble pie once they go through and start to observe.

We observed, we learned the process, and we look at these envy brands, but then what? I think that there are so many different directions you could go, but I’m sure it’s not that complicated.

The next is I’ve created a specific formula for an objective statement because even if you follow this process, at the end of the day, the ideas have to apply to a real-world situation. The objective statement has three parts. The first part is, “We need new ideas too.” What is it that you’re looking to accomplish? This question is something that’s very common for most companies, especially construction companies. They have a situation in front of them that they know what they want to solve or that they need to solve.

The next part is, “So we can.” What is it that you’re ultimately wanting to accomplish? Is it so you can stay on schedule? Is it so you can stay on budget? What is the, “So we can?” This can oftentimes be deceivingly difficult because not everybody agrees on what that outcome is. That right there makes a big difference in the clarity and sophistication of the ideas that you come up with. It’s that everybody has to agree with what it is we’re ultimately trying to accomplish here. Unless you can do that, to be honest, it doesn’t matter how great the ideas are because they have to apply toward a specific business objective. That one takes time in conversations to agree on.

The next part is, “With these constraints.” I usually say to look for 2 to 4. The 2 most common ones are time and budget. It could be within code requirements. It could be a whole lot of things. What are the requirements that the idea ultimately has to fit into? Even if you got the agreement on the first and second parts of the statement, “We need new ideas” and “So we can,” the ideas still have to live in the reality of the world that we work in. That’s where the constraints come in.

When I have people go through this process, I have them set up the objective statement, and then set it aside until we’ve gone through the idea generation part. We then start to pull in, “Does it fit these first two parts of the objective statement?” Now, how do we start to combine some, get rid of some, revamp some, and still we’re looking at the world of possibility? We don’t bring those constraints in until the very last moment. It’s like what you said, Ryan, the typical thing is you get into a brainstorming meeting. You start at step four to generate ideas. You throw out all these ideas and people say, “That will never work,” because they start with the constraints in their mind instead of the world of possibilities.

I was thinking that’s unless you’re Elon Musk. There are no constraints for that man. We’re going to live on Mars, and it’s all crazy. It’s so refreshing to me to hear that there is a process for being able to generate innovative ideas and things that aren’t just going to iterate a process or change something. You could transform an industry with this, and know that it’s something you can learn and you don’t have to be an Elon Musk, a Steve Jobs, or an Ivy to be able to do this. This is something that your team can do without those names that I mentioned.

It works in every corner of the business. In the book, I talk about a woman who was in finance. She wasn’t an executive. She wasn’t even a director or anything, but she had a report that she had to run manually every month, and it was 40 hours a month to run it. If you think about that, that’s 25% of your time every month. It’s a week a month.

BCC 91 | Innovation
RE: Think Innovation: How the World’s Most Prolific Innovators Come Up with Great Ideas that Deliver Extraordinary Outcomes

She started to observe what was going on with this process. She then started to observe other departments and other situations where she saw efficiencies, and how they solved them. She taught herself a programming language, wrote herself a program, and now instead of 40 hours every month, it’s about 12 minutes. It is incredibly powerful on a number of levels. One, she’s not doing soul-sucking work for 25% of her time every single month. Two, she feels empowered to be able to observe more about what’s going on and take that inspiration to generate ideas that have a specific bottom-line impact.

This is where we get back to, is it a new idea? No, but it was new to her team and what she did in the work. Was it a great idea? You better believe it. Was it a reliable one? Absolutely. If you think about being able to free up 39 hours and 48 minutes of one person’s time every single month across the entire organization, what an incredible bottom-line impact that has.

I love that story because not every idea has to be completely revolutionary for the business. To her, that was a revolutionary idea. The other thing I heard from it is she now has a new skillset.

It fits the criteria of the objective statement. It worked beautifully. We do have this perception that innovative ideas are big disruptive, back to our friend Elon Musk, but that’s not the truth. The really innovative organizations understand that it’s a consistent focus on looking at how we can do things better in every corner of the business.

The really innovative organizations understand that it's a consistent focus on looking at how we can do things better in every corner of the business. Click To Tweet

I think reading your book is probably a great first step for people.

I think so, but I will admit, I’m quite biased.

I would imagine that there are plenty of stories in there, and I love the story of the gal on finance because it wasn’t some revolutionary transformative, “We’re going to dominate the market and take out our competition.” In her world, that was so impactful. Even if it wasn’t 38 or 39 hours for every employee, but if an employee could save 5 hours a month by having these innovative ideas, what would that do to your organization in a year?

We don’t think about the culmination of all these tiny little baby steps forward. We look at things and think it has to be big and massive, but it’s all of these collective everyday innovations that have that big massive impact. It was interesting. When I was doing research on the book, I found a statistic that said that 90% of all innovation happens outside of traditional product and service line development.

The other thing was that 70% of all innovative ideas come from employees inside the organization as opposed to the executives and the leadership. Unless we equip every employee with something that is tangible that they can understand, that they can learn, that they can practice, you’ll never reach your full potential as an organization. That’s one of the things that gets me the most excited about uncovering as I was discovering this process that these innovators use. It’s that it is something anybody can do.

You’ve made that very clear on this show. Thank you for that. I do think that one of the things we see as a challenge for some people though is letting people be innovative. As a leader, you have to understand that just because someone wants to change your process doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing.

A hallmark of a true leader is understanding that you don’t have all the answers. If you don’t have people on your team coming to you with ideas, it’s probably because they’ve learned that that’s not allowed.

You need that culture shift and that change there. Fantastic stuff. For those people that want to learn more and get to know more about you, I know you do speaking, training, and consulting work, how do they find you? You also have a giveaway for our audience.

People can find me on my website, CarlaJohnson.co. I say it’s dot-co for the great state of Colorado. You can find me because I’m in Denver, Colorado. When you go there, there are all sorts of blogs and resources to help you with different areas of this. Also, on the homepage, you’ll find a free assessment that you can take, and find out your own style as an innovator.

That’s also something that’s important as we look at the people part of innovation. We all say innovation, transformation, and all of these things are a mix of people, processes, and technology. We have more processes than we ever want to see or deal with. We’ve been processed to death. We have so much technology that 3/4 of it probably never gets used or at least used to its full potential, but the part that has been grossly neglected is the people part.

BCC 91 | Innovation
Innovation: Innovation and transformation are a mix of people, processes, and technology.

 

That’s why I wanted to look into the different styles of how people innovate. In an industry like construction where at the top, you have a lot of left-brain people. They’re thinking nicely and importantly about the very minute details of how things are done and are very left-brain thinkers. Not everybody is like that. If you only look for people like you to help be innovators in your organization, then you’re missing an incredible opportunity.

This assessment shows what kind of style you have as an innovator. There are six different styles. Also, when you find out your own style, there’s information that helps you understand how your archetype interacts with the other five, how it looks when you’re all in sync, and how it looks like when maybe you’re butting some heads. It’s educational and helps people understand how to be more effective with their own style, and not feel like they have to be somebody else to be effective.

Anyone that knows me knows I geek out about assessments. I love them. We use them in a lot of the work we do. People ask me all the time, “How many have you taken?” I go, “I lost count.” I will be taking this assessment before the end of the day and try to learn a little bit more about myself.

Carla, thank you so much. This has been insightful. I would imagine that for some of our audiences, it will be impactful to know that they can start making these changes. They can empower their team to be able to make these changes and start innovating inside their company. It’s not something that is left to a select few. Thank you so much for that.

It was wonderful to be here. Thanks, Ryan. This is one of my favorite audiences to talk to because I grew up in the AEC industry. I use a lot of what I learned there in my work now.

It definitely shows. Thank you so much again. Thank you for being a guest. I look forward to speaking soon.

Thanks, Ryan.

 

Important Links

 

About Carla Johnson

BCC 91 | InnovationCarla Johnson is a global keynote speaker, a best-selling author and a recognized marketing and innovation strategist.

Having lived, worked, and studied on five continents, she’s partnered with top brands and conferences to train thousands of people how to rethink the work that they do and the impact they can have. Her visionary expertise has inspired and equipped leaders at all levels to embrace change, welcome new ideas, and transform their business.

Her work with Fortune 500 brands served as the foundation for many of her books. Her tenth, RE:Think Innovation busts the myth that innovation is something that requires a specific degree or special training. In fact, Carla explains why, to be a successful company in today’s hyper-competitive, customer-driven world, innovation must be everyone’s business. Her goal is to teach one million people how to become innovators by 2025. (Her book is available for pre-order at www.carlajohnson.co/rethinkpreorder)

Consistently named one of the top influencers in her field, Carla regularly challenges conventional thinking. Today, she teaches people around the world how to cultivate idea-driven teams that breed unstoppable creativity and game-changing innovation.

 

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Working With And Not Against Each Other With Sue Dyer

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BCC 88 | Interdependency

 

Did you know that construction is the only industry in the United States that, for 53 years, has decreased in productivity points every year? That is happening because they tend not to depend on one another. Construction needs to be built in a high-trust environment if you want success.

Join Ryan Englin as he talks to the author of the #2 Wall Street Journal Bestselling Book, The Trusted Leader, Sue Dyer. Sue is also the host of the Lead With Trust podcast, where she talks about high trust equals high performance. Learn why a trusting environment is crucial for success, especially in construction. Find out how you can change your mindset if you are afraid and don’t trust your team. Know that it only takes one individual to change the whole environment.

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Working With And Not Against Each Other With Sue Dyer

My guest is no stranger to the construction industry. She has been around for quite a while and made a huge impact in her ability to help teams put together very successful projects. In fact, some of the stories that she’ll be able to share with you sound impossible. I don’t know how else to say it, but it’s impossible. It’s amazing what happens when teams trust each other. They come together and collaborate in a way that is creative. They’re able to achieve impossible results.

Sue Dyer has been around in the construction industry for quite a while. In fact, she has been doing it for so long that she has a ton of research and data about why this works. Her expertise is in helping teams trust each other. As much as we want to think that construction is all about how fast we can build, how cheap we can build it, and how much profit we can make, there’s so much more that goes into it. Her Trusted Leader Program is going to transform construction companies all over the country. I’m so excited to have Sue here to share her insight about what it takes to build these high-performing teams.

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Sue, I am excited to have you here. Welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Ryan. I’m excited to be here.

We haven’t known each other that long, but I feel like we have because we have so much in common with the people we serve, our passion for the industry, and making sure that we’re out there helping construction company owners solve some of their biggest challenges. Let me ask you this. One of my favorite questions to ask is, what is the biggest myth about your industry and the work that you do?

I believe that the biggest myth that is out there is that we believe as construction leaders, whether you’re at a project level or a business level, that somehow, we can have fear and still be successful. The fear leads projects to fight with each other, holding our cards close to the vest, and not sharing completely, especially on low-bid projects. That is because they aren’t going to share what they have in their pocket that is trying to make it work.

The owner isn’t sharing what they have in their pocket to try to make it work for them. The designer is going, “You’re messing up my design.” We think that all this fear is somehow going to protect us when, in fact, it ends up completely undermining our ability to succeed. It ends up being a loss. We could be so much more successful if we could create a high-trust environment.

I have been on this road and this path for a long time. For many years, I have been working in construction and doing experiments to see what it takes to create a high-trust, high-performing team, whether it’s a business team or a project team. That’s where I came to create my Trusted Leader Continuum where there’s a continuum of leadership.

On one side is fear, which has been the tradition in construction for about a hundred years. We teach our folks there to drive the crew, make it happen, get production, and get going. That has been our norm for many years. I believe we have to move on to the other side of the continuum where it is more collaborative and based on high trust. Let me tell you why. If we go through the continuum, I’m on a project with someone who is a benevolent dictator.

I have sat in construction offices where you’re not there for more than maybe five minutes. You realize, “On this place, I better do what I’m told because if I don’t, punishment will be involved.” People don’t want to be punished, so they do what they’re told. I got hired because I’m seasoned. I’m an expert in my area. I’m the best of the best at what I do. They hired me for my expertise. I feel as though I’m being treated in a way that I’m being forced to do things that I don’t think are necessarily the best things. Maybe I don’t believe it’s the best way to operate on our project or the best decision, but it’s my job, so I do it.

It’s interesting how you position that. It’s almost this vicious cycle that we get into. As you’re describing it, I’m not seeing anything, but I’m picturing in my head that you have this owner or leader who is like, “I can’t trust him anyways, so I’m going to act in a way that’s consistent with that.” The employee sitting there is like, “I can’t trust him. Maybe he’s lying to me. I’m going to act in a way that’s consistent with that.” We get into this vicious cycle of nobody trusting anybody. They think that because we’re operating this way and it’s the way we’ve operated for hundred years that that’s the only way to operate.

Not only that, it’s so contagious. I’m a seasoned professional and I have people working for me. How do I treat them? It is the same way. Coercion becomes the norm. What happens is it looks like everything settles in and we are working well together, but it’s just compliance. We’re complying. I’m like, “You do this.” You’re like, “Okay.” I’m like, “You do that.” You’re like, “What do you want me to do?” People wait until you give them the next order.

When a big project issue comes up, the team sees it. They’re smart. They’ve probably been through it before in another project or something in your business, but no one says anything. No one steps up and works to solve the problem. That leads to the failure of so many projects and complete businesses wiped out. We looked at nineteen forensic studies of construction. Forensic studies only happen when they’re deemed a big failure. What we found is that 100% of the time, this is what happened. It was not a big technical problem. It was the team that didn’t step up, share, talk, or solve.

The foundation of that is this fear and lack of trust. Why do you find that this is perpetuated in the industry? What do you think is going to people’s minds outside of habit that keeps this being something that you have to deal with?

There are many things, but one of the things that come to my mind first is we are ignorant and in denial that we are interdependent. On every construction project, every person that is working there, whether they are a fourth-tier sub, a general contractor, a designer who’s not quite as much involved anymore but still integral, or certainly, the owner’s team including the construction manager, are interdependent. They can’t succeed without the help of each other. Yet, we act as if we are all interdependent little silos doing our own work. Especially, you see that in the trades where they put in the contract self-organized. That means, “Get your pipe out of my way.”

We are ignorant and in denial that we are interdependent. We can't succeed without the help of each other. Click To Tweet

I saw a picture where someone put a pipe through a ladder. They installed the pipe through a ladder. It is about knowing that we are interdependent and we’re in this together. It’s been a tradition over the years to be protecting or policing and protect our own interests. I try to make sure that what I bid at bid time, I get out of the project. It’s like, “I am full speed ahead. Get out of my way. I’m going ahead,” not realizing that it is a dance. If you work together, you could go faster.

I hear you talking about this from the perspective of project management and getting the contractors and the teams to work together well. I see this a lot in hiring problems as well. People work for one of these little toxic cultures where we rule through fear. It’s all about the stick mentality of, “Do this or else.” They come up and then they go get another job because they can’t stand it anymore and they find out that the company is the exact same way. They go do it again and the next company is the exact same way. All of a sudden, these people don’t want to do this kind of work anymore.

In the industry, that’s a big problem. Not only that, you don’t make as much money. You aren’t as successful. It costs the owners a delta of somewhere between 10% and 50% extra. It costs the contractors the ability to know that they can succeed with what they have been doing. It’s not predictable, which is what I’ve been working on for many years.

I try to create predictable outcomes so that you know your project is on time and on budget with the amount of quality that is needed for it to work. This happens during the design phase. We are creating more levels of collaboration. Construction is the only industry in the United States that, for 53 years, has gone down in productivity points every single year. All other industries in the United States have gone up 173%. We’re playing the game by the wrong rules. The rules need to change.

That makes sense. Let’s talk about that. I love helping our audience get something to take away and something that they can go do in action. What are two actions that they can take to either move away from this to start the process or something they can do that can transform their organization?

There is an exercise I like to do. You can do this within your own business first, and then when you realize it works, you could do it on a project. Get a whiteboard and draw a line down the middle of it. On one side, let’s say it’s your estimating department. We’re going to do it inside. Maybe in the middle is your accounting department. On the third side is your field folk.

Have them all write down on a construction project what it is that they need in order to succeed. That’s what their business is. They’re producing projects. Write everything down that they need and then have them circle what are the top three things that they need to be successful. I bet you it will be cost, scope, and schedule. Maybe there’s some quality in there and you achieve that by getting production. They’re all going to say the same thing.

If you go onto a construction project, you do the same thing where you give a flip chart or a board to the owner, designer, contractor, or subcontractors, and tell them, “What do you need on this project to be successful?” Have them write it out. I’ve done it dozens of times on billion-dollar projects and $500,000 projects. They all write the same thing. What it does is it proves you are interdependent. We all need and want the same things.

We can’t point the finger at somebody else and say, “It’s on them. It’s their fault. It’s not my fault.”

It’s this mythology that we have. The owner thinks, “The contractor is only trying to get change orders. They’re trying to screw me. They’re the low-bidder. They’re not going to be fair to me.” The contractor is thinking, “The owner wants to beat me up. They’re not going to be fair to me.” The designer goes, “They’re not going to do what I want. I’m going to try to make sure I get what I need. They’re not going to take advantage of me.” Everyone goes in ready for a fight when they’re really in it together. We work against each other instead of with each other. That is a tradition. If you shift that even at 10%, you’re going to see a huge amount of momentum on your projects.

We talked about this in construction in one of our prior calls. It is the difficulty of being able to recruit from the younger generation and get younger talent out there. A lot of the stuff is exactly what you’re talking about. We have this belief that, “If I do something, I’m going to lose.” Almost 50% of construction companies do not put wages on their job descriptions when they post them online.

When I ask people, “Why don’t you put what your wages are?” They are like, “It is because they’re going to want the top wage and I don’t want to pay that.” I’m like, “Why don’t you put on there what you’re comfortable paying and realize the consequences are?” “I was open and honest with you. I put it out there. If you don’t want to apply for my jobs because I’m paying below market wages, then okay.” We have this belief that, “If I’m a little bit vulnerable and open with people, they’re going to take advantage and hurt me.”

That’s the fear playing out. If you want to be highly successful in construction, you have to shift that. What I’ve learned is it only takes one person in a key place in your realm to begin to shift it to a more high-trust, high-performing. Think about that. High trust equals high performance. The more fear you have, the less performance you get.

BCC 88 | Interdependency
Interdependency: It only takes one person in a key place to shift an environment to be more high-trust. High trust equals high performance.

 

I have a project and I’ve worked on several, but I’ll tell you about one. This was a runway safety area project for an international airport. I’d worked on several RSAs. The FAA required every airport in the country to have this runway safety area because the airplanes were running off the end and into the water or into other places we didn’t want. They created these special concrete cells that absorb the impact and stop the airplane. It’s a very specific type of material. It completely disrupts the operations of the airport.

At this airport, the FAA was worried that most of these projects took around two years to complete. The FAA said, “It’s too impactful to air travel worldwide. We’re going to give you four months to build it.” The project team created a way to build it in 90 days. They co-located. They were a high-performing team. They created an enormous amount of trust. We did a lot of partnering together. They were able to perform $1 million of work per day for 90 days. They got it all installed and opened up so the airplanes could take off and land.

I bet that was a pretty profitable job.

Hundred percent, and it wasn’t easy. They had blocks that got broken. We have pictures of guys chasing down FedEx trucks trying to get the blocks. We had to have a plane fly into another airport and bring blocks that had broken. It was not an easy task. I had another project where we were going to do a taxiway and the main runway. Most of these projects took about two years as well. This project team figured out how to do $2 million a day of work. They completely did that in two weeks which did two years’ worth of work. These things are impossible to do if you don’t have high trust.

The schedule was down to five-minute increments. Think about how many trucks had to bring in asphalt because it’s fading. You’re doing a structural section. There are hazardous materials. There are lights and all the technology that goes on. All that stuff had to happen in two weeks. These are things that are possible. The higher the trust, the higher the performance.

I’ve listened to Simon Sinek talk a lot about that with the trust and the work that he’s done with the SEALs to understand how these high-performing military units are able to accomplish so much with so little resources and time. They trust incredibly. It is on levels that I probably couldn’t even comprehend because we’re literally talking about life and death.

You said something, though, that I want to dig into for a second. Correct me here because I may not say it right, but you said something about it takes one person to do this to start it. My gut reaction to that is, “That person is going to get called out and be shipped out real fast.” You made it sound like that’s not the case and they’re the catalyst to start this whole thing. I want to break that down for a minute. How does that work?

I have five models I’ve created over the years. The first book I wrote is The Trusted Leader. I see the need for leaders, whether you are a crew leader or a superintendent. It may be you’re leading a whole project. You’re a CM or the owner. It doesn’t matter. You need to know how to create a high-trust atmosphere. That is what I embedded in this book. The thing to do is you got to know what it is.

It’s a partnering approach. The partnering approach has two components to it. One is ten partnering principles or intentions. When you embed this in how you operate, it naturally begins to create high trust. The other is six partnering values. Those values create behaviors. If you want to change the behavior of your people or your team, it starts with values. Values create attitudes and attitudes create behaviors. Your principles are creating the processes, attitude, and atmosphere.

If you want to change the behavior of your people or your team, it starts with values. Values create the behaviors. Click To Tweet

I think of it as intention. It’s the intention of high trust. There are principles in there that you work by and live by on your projects, and then you’ll begin to create this high-trust atmosphere. First, it might be amongst a few people. They’re going to say, “How the heck did you do that?” We had people from the FAA all over the country coming to see what that project team was doing. It then begins to ripple out to, “Show us what you did so we can do it.” Another team or another group within the team is doing that, and then more people go, “We need to do that.” Pretty soon, you get senior management going, “How are we going to do that? How can we do that on our project?”

It creates this ripple effect. When the FAA comes in and says, “We want your trade secrets. What are you doing? What’s your competitive advantage?” It is to be able to share that with them knowing full well they’re going to share it with other contractors and be like, “Did you see what they did?” It is to realize that there’s enough out there that we can all share. We can all be more productive and do this together.

It’s self-defeating not to because the more people you can work with who have this mindset, the more predictable your results are and the smarter, better, and faster you go. What happens is you begin to be seen as this guru for always having these successful projects. Everyone is going, “How did you do that?” You become marketable in the marketplace for sure.

As the business grows, you have to have more people that are willing to play that game with you. If it’s only a small group and you don’t share it with others, you can’t take on more projects. You can’t grow.

Not sharing it is fear. It’s incremental, too. You start at level 1 and then you move to level 2. You go, “This is cool.” You then see, “We can move it to levels 3 and 4.” They begin to see how much better and smarter and they will say, “Let’s overcome some other barriers.” With some organizations, when they’ve learned how to do it on their projects, especially facility owners, they realize, “What is in our specs and contract that’s a barrier to trust?” They begin to work on policies, processes, and practices that are more trusting and less fearful.

As easy as you make it sound, even I’m having this reaction of, “I don’t know if I could do that.” It’s not easy.

It is simple but not easy. It takes practice.

Let’s talk about some of the things that we can practice to start doing that. What are some things that we can do on a regular basis so that we can get over our fears and get a little more comfortable with this action?

Operate like, “We’re in this together. I can’t succeed without the help of others.” That paradigm is how you operate. That would be the first thing. Let me show you mathematically how it is. I like to think in terms of math. Most construction projects operate like a zero-sum game. They are like, “I’m going to put my stuff and you put your stuff in. Unless you do something for me, I’m not doing anything for you.” Mathematically, that’s one plus one equals zero. You’re putting in a lot of resources and not getting a lot out.

Other people say, “We have to be a little more collaborative, so we’re going to compromise.” Mathematically, compromise is one plus one equals one and a half. It’s still a lose-lose for both sides. If you begin to be collaborative and creative, you want to get to a creative mindset of innovation. Now one plus one equals three, you are getting somewhere.

When you have enough trust in where you are co-creating, it doesn’t matter who pays your paycheck. It doesn’t matter what business you’re working for. We are all focused on the success of the project, working together, and making this happen. Now one plus one can equal 30. It’s breaking down the barriers between the silos on a project or within your business so that it’s one team. Focus on the success of your project, the team determines what success is. It’s like, “What day are we going to finish? What’s the budget? When are we going to come in? Is it ahead of time?”

BCC 88 | Interdependency
Interdependency: Break down the barriers between the silos on a project or within your business, and just focus on being one team because it’s the team that determines what success is.

 

I have one team that said, “We want to save some money on this project because the maintenance group does not have any real ability to have any money to create some benefits on this.” It was a roadway and they were like, “We want to try to do that.” They made a commitment to save $500,000 on this project. In year one, they saved 2$50,000. In year two, they saved $250,000. They were able to give that to the maintenance department to go and make some other benefits to the roadway. That would never have happened. It would get flooded every time it rained.

It is so much about mindset. I know I’m talking about mindset, but it is a mindset. Think about when you play a game. If I said, “We’re going to play soccer but we’re going to play by the rules of checkers,” it doesn’t work. That’s the problem. It’s a different set of rules to make collaboration work. That’s why you’re seeing in construction so many different new models of delivery. From what I’ve learned, it doesn’t matter. The delivery method doesn’t matter. The mindset matters.

It’s interesting that you bring up games. I played a game called FreshBiz a few years ago. It was transformative for me. It’s a game like Monopoly. They hate it when I say it’s like Monopoly because what’s the point of Monopoly? The point of Monopoly is if you, Sue, and I are playing Monopoly, it is to get as many hotels and houses and buy as many properties. That is so that when you come by my place, I can potentially bankrupt you. That’s the point of Monopoly. We bankrupt each other.

In the game of FreshBiz, the only way to win is if everybody wins together. You start playing the game and play it like Monopoly. You’re like, “I’m going to hold my cards close. I’m not going to show people what’s going on.” I’m not going to say, “Don’t land there because then I get paid.” You start realizing that you are losing the game by playing this way. As you go through the game, you’re like, “I can’t win if I keep playing this way.” It then challenges you to think differently.

The concept is to get to an island. Imagine if I won and got to an island by myself, it would be boring. I’d be like, “What are we going to do?” The whole point is we got to get everybody on the island together. Sometimes, that means there’s something that I can do that is going to help you in a way that’s going to 10X our efforts together. If I hold it to myself and you’re 1 and I’m 1, maybe we get 2 out of our collaboration. If I tell you about this thing that I have or that I can do, it could 10X our results.

It was a good game for me because it opened my eyes to this collaboration that you’re talking about, and it comes from trust. We talk about trust a lot in the work we do. We have a team that we’re talking about vulnerability. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Brené Brown and her TED Talk. I made everybody watch that. I’m like, “You’re all going to watch it. We’re going to talk about this because you guys are not good at this.”

Much of what we’ve done in construction is about, “I don’t want to get hurt, so I’m going to protect myself. If it hurts everybody else, that is tough.” Here we are, many years later, and the only industry that has been impacted by this is construction. It is an epidemic. There is nobody out there working to fix it. It is short of people like you and me who are doing as much as we can. We’ve got to come together and realize if our mindset doesn’t change, we’re in for a world of hurt.

I love construction. I love the people. They are the salt of the Earth. Each person in construction needs to take the responsibility that it’s their job to help create that high-trust atmosphere. Construction is the highest suicide rate also of any industry. It needs to be fun to work together as a team, build things, and see them come to fruition.

The other thing that kills construction is complexity. There’s so much complexity. Figure if you work even on a small project. You’ve got dozens of companies that have to come together to build that project. If everyone is bringing their own culture for their business and leadership style, everyone is like, “I’m holding my own interests at my heart. I’ll forget about you guys.” If everyone comes and they are ready for a fight, then it’s a lose-lose for everyone.

Those silos have to get broken down. When you’re talking, that’s what I’m seeing. It’s us and them. It’s the office versus the field. It’s production versus safety. It’s a supplier versus a contractor. It is all an us or them. We all point fingers and blame everybody else. We realize, “I’m only hurting me and/or the project. If I keep this mindset and this behavior, it is up.”

The number one walk away from this would be to see red flags whenever you feel like or hear someone else say something that’s a blaming tone. It is like, “You’ve done this to me.” That would be a time when instead of writing that, you need to go have a face-to-face or eyeball-to-eyeball meeting. Talk about it and talk through it. It only takes one person to shift it.

My background was in labor where I negotiated with a lot of unions. There was no more adversarial place than that. My job was to create high trust there so that we could create solutions for the industry. That is what we did. Projects have similar dynamics that we’re interdependent. In an interdependent relationship, there is only a win-win or lose-lose. On most of these projects, people are negotiating about someone else is going to lose more than me. That is still a loss.

There is only a win-win or a lose-lose in an interdependent relationship. Click To Tweet

That was one of my takeaways from playing FreshBiz. It’s all a metaphor for how we play in the real world. When we’re playing this board game, it is a metaphor for how we would play in the real world. I stood up and shared with the group that I played this with. I said, “The way that I’ve played through most of my life is, ‘As long as I win and you don’t lose, we’re okay. You can be zero-sum, but I need to come out ahead.’” That was the game I was always playing. I was like, “They still lost because they put in the effort, the resources, and the time.”

Also, they’re not available for the next job.

That’s where they started. I’m enjoying this. I know we can keep talking. I wrote down three takeaways that I got out of this. I want to go back over and make sure I got it right. I love that exercise of the whiteboard and being able to say, “Grab your groups.” Think about who are silos inside your organization. Bring them into a room together and say, “What do we need to win on this project?” We’ll find out that we all need the same exact things.

The second one, which is probably the most impactful for me, is you got to have the guts to go first. All you need is one person to say, “We’re going to change the way we do this. We’re going to do it a little bit differently. It will be a ripple effect.” I kept seeing that ripple effect. I love the last one, which is the most practical because you can put it into action right now.

It is to see those red flags when someone is blaming someone else for the situation, the problem, or whatever it is we’re dealing with. How do people learn more about you? You’ve got a course coming out. You’ve got a book. There’s a ton of information. I’m sure you have a ton of resources and clearly, a wealth of knowledge on this. How do people get ahold of you?

One of the best things to do would be to listen to my podcast Lead with Trust. On that, I’m trying to share everything that I’ve learned. I try to put it on there. Check out the Lead with Trust podcast. Sudyco.com is my website. The course will be launching in January 2023. You can begin to save spots so that you can get ahold of them. It walks you through my book, which I was fortunate enough that became number two in Wall Street Journal.

BCC 88 | Interdependency
The Trusted Leader: Use the Partnering Approach to Become the Trusted Leader People Want to Follow

Congratulations.

All of the examples and everything in there is construction-related. It will teach you how to understand and walk you through what you need to do to create the framework in your mind and a framework to follow. It is so that you do daily practices to train your brain by incorporating the intentions and values into what you do every day. At the end of the course, you will do a 30-day Do The Impossible Challenge. You’ll pick one of those things and we will walk through it until you take it from being impossible to possible and from probable to inevitable.

If you’re reading this and you’re like, “I’m not in construction. I won’t service the construction world,” every industry on the planet, the last time I checked, has human beings. What we’re talking about here is how to work better together through interdependency.

The book is written for general business, which is how it got to be Wall Street Journal number two.

You have an offer or giveaway for our audience, is that right?

I do. We’re talking about the continuum of leadership with fear on one side and trust on the other side of the continuum. If you or your team members want to know where you fall along the continuum, you can go to Sudyco.com/Profile. Check that out and see where you fall. You’ll see your trust level. You’ll see your primary style, which is how you are leading. You’ll also get your secondary style, which is how you perceive your leading. Sometimes, there’s a difference between how we think we’re leading and how we are leading. There are five other component parts to that, which you get can all for free, so check it out.

Sue, thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed talking about how we work together. This interdependency is something that I’m passionate about. What the industry needs right now is for us to start trusting each other more and we’re going to do amazing things with that. Thanks for being on the show.

Thank you so much for letting me be here. I hope that we hear some stories of people that began to implement a higher trust atmosphere on their projects or within their businesses.

I hope for that, too. Thanks again.

Thank you.

 

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About Sue Dyer

BCC 88 | InterdependencySue Dyer, MBA, MIPI is one of the world’s leading experts on trust. She is the author of the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Amazon best selling book, The Trusted Leader: Use the Partnering Approach to Become the Leader people Want to Follow. Sue has helped more than 48,000 executive leaders improve their results by building high-trust business cultures. She is called the “godmother of partnering.” Sue coaches leaders to understand their current level of trust, how to train their brain to create a high trust mindset and create a trust strategy for their business.

In 1980, Sue was the first woman in the United States to head up a collective bargaining group and negotiate on behalf of 200 construction companies with the construction unions. Sue worked on over 4,000 construction projects worth over $180 billion to perfect her Partnering Approach model. There have been five university level studies on the efficacy of her model.

Sue and her team have won 73 awards for their work. Her fondest award is Facilitator of the Year from the International Partnering Institute because the team nominated her and wrote that her partnering efforts saved the state $50M. After intervening and facilitating the development of high trust, high preforming teams, Sue now wants to teach leaders how to do this for themselves. That is why she founded sudyco™ LLC. Her mission is to have one million leaders devoted to building their business on a foundation of TRUST. She is committed to helping them make it happen! Sue Dyer – Trusted Leader Programs (sudyco.com)

 

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