Podcast Episode

How To Double Your Ability To Hire With Anne Pfleger

Ryan Englin · June 16, 2021 ·

Construction touches everything. In this industry, you have the ability to hire women of various strengths. They can be business owners, tradeswomen, architects – the list goes on! Today’s guest is Anne Pfleger, the National President of the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC). Joining Ryan Englin and Jeremy Macliver on the show, Anne shares her strategies in attracting and recruiting women into construction. Oftentimes, women may see a position and refuse to apply because they think they’re not completely qualified. Reaching out to NAWIC and setting up conversations with these women and their employers help showcase their capabilities. Tune in to get more valuable insights!

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How To Double Your Ability To Hire With Anne Pfleger

We are so excited about this episode’s guest because, as many of you know, hiring good people in construction is a challenge. It has been for a while, and it’s only seeming to get harder. Our guest has a little secret for you. In fact, she’s been in construction for most of her professional career, estimating, safety, HR, IT. She has done it all. She’s got this internal purpose and passion to not only improve but to support and guide other women in the construction industry to do the same. She is the National President of the National Association of Women in Construction. She wants to get the word out on how to double your ability to hire by attracting and recruiting women into construction. I want to welcome my guest, Anne Pfleger.

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What’s the biggest myth about the construction industry?

The biggest myth is that women are not welcome in the construction industry. That, more than ever, is incorrect. I said something about being about 10%, people still call it a male-dominated industry. It’s not. It’s male populated. Women are making a difference in the industry.

Why do you think that myth exists still?

As women, or even men, are coming up in the construction industry, they aren’t seeing the women and what they’re doing. What we’re trying to do is become more in the forefront so that you can see us. When people see women working in these roles, then they will say yes, we are indeed welcome to work in construction with everybody else.

One of the questions I’d love to get answered. A lot of the work I do in the construction industry is helping fill frontline positions, find craftworkers and laborers. Every time we got to fill out an EEO report, there are always the questions like why aren’t more women applying? As much as I wish I had a real answer for that, what do you think is going on?

What I think is going on is that women will not apply for a position unless they meet 100% of the criteria in that position. Whereas men are 60%, 65%. What’s happening is, women may see a position, “I’m not completely qualified, so I’m not going to apply.” What we need to do to help correct that is reaching out to associations like NAWIC and other women in the community to try and get somebody’s resume, and then set up a conversation with them. Women shine when they’re in the interview, they can show a potential employer what their capabilities are.

The biggest myth is that women are not welcome in the construction industry. That, now more than ever, is incorrect. Click To Tweet

Women bring a different perspective to the workplace. For a lot of employers, that new perspective can be a breath of fresh air because it’s different. It’s things that they’ve never thought about. I have one client, they got 130 people in the field and one woman. She’s on pace to be their next superintendent. She approaches the problems differently. One of the myths I hear a lot about is, “The men don’t want to report to a woman.” At least watching her go through what she’s going through, the men are like, “I’ll follow her,” because she makes it easier. We get done faster. The boss isn’t breathing down our neck. There are so many differences that come with having her in that position.

That’s a great point. Seeing women actually doing that. The men are seeing how she is moving up to become a superintendent. What we also all need to remember is that when a person is put in a position, they’re put there for a reason, for their knowledge and expertise, but we are all also human and continuing to learn throughout our entire lives. When we ask questions, it’s not because we don’t have the knowledge or the expertise, it’s because we’re trying to learn, be more productive, and make it a better project or help out on the team, whatever that may be in the situation.

I imagine that you talk to a lot of business owners about women in construction, their recruiting efforts, and everything else. Big picture, not just recruiting but what do you think is holding most business owners back? Construction has a lot of challenges that they’re dealing with. What do you think is the number one thing holding them back?

They’re not having conversations with their employees, especially the female employees. I’m sure that everybody has heard that it’s got to come from the top down. That’s true, but the top also needs to be following up and making sure that whatever policies or opportunities that they’re giving are across the board for everybody. It’s important for employees, and it’s not women, that they’re being heard. The owners need to take that extra time and listen to what their employees are saying.

That’s one of the things that has been different from the work that I do in the construction areas. A lot of times, we’ll come in and we’ll start talking about the labor shortage. You know nothing about it, you’ve never heard that. The construction industry has had a labor shortage for 100 years, it’s never gone away. I hear so many people complain about the lack of good people, “There is nothing but bad people out there,” and all this other stuff. One of the different approaches that we take is we say, “These are human beings with personal dreams and goals. They are not a cog in a machine.” It’s amazing what a conversation can do about what’s happening in their world versus thinking about them like, “No, they’re a pair of hands. When those hands don’t work, I go get another pair of hands.” A lot of times, owners get so distanced from the field, they forget that.

That’s a good example.

What is NAWIC doing to help business owners change that and take a different approach towards the way they communicate with people, bringing awareness to women in the industry, and those kinds of things?

BCC 52 | Ability To Hire — Ability To Hire: The top needs to follow up and make sure that whatever policies or opportunities they’re giving are across the board for everybody.

It’s been a goal on our strategic plan for a while. We have a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Standing Committee in the association. One of the things that the committee is working on is information for employers to be able to recruit and retain female employees that we can then share with the companies. Also, many of our members want to talk to the owners. We can attend if you have business owner conferences. Having NAWIC members come and talk at those conferences also helps because then they’re hearing from the women that are working in the field, or maybe they’re on the administrative side, even a project manager and an engineer. You’re hearing from them, the people that are actually putting the projects together for the owners.

Boots on the ground, frontline. They know what it’s like if they’re having that. That’s great. These business owners are struggling because they’re not on the front lines. NAWIC is saying, “Let’s bring people from the front lines, have those conversations, and open up the dialogue.” What are two actions that owners can do, things that they can do to help them break through that?

Having conversations one on one with their employees, especially their female employees. My boss, every day he’ll come down usually in the morning with his cup of coffee, and asks how I’m doing, what I’m working on, is there anything I need help with, or do I have any ideas? That’s the other great thing, have them ask, “Do you have any ideas?” As you mentioned about how women have a different perspective, they have a lot of great ideas that could help the company grow. That’s something that NAWIC supports. We launched our new tagline, “Leading builders. Building leaders.” We’re helping our members to be able to be supportive and grow their companies that they work for.

I heard you say that bringing women into the conversation is partly how they can do this. We’ve got a construction company, 50 men in the field, no women. It’s hard to do that if you don’t have any women on the team. What do you see working for some of your members to attract women into construction, to bring them into the industry?

We have a lot of different initiatives that we are working on to educate women about the construction industry and how it is a viable career. Starting as early as grade school, we have programs to get them interested in construction. It’s been interesting because, in the last years, high school guidance counselors are allowing us to come in and talk about construction. It’s finding all the niches where females and young women are to encourage them to look at the construction industry. In addition, I would suggest that owners reach out to the local NAWIC chapters to come and talk to those 50 men that are working in the field. Maybe they can understand a little bit more and get to know what work women do in the construction industry and how we can be part of the team. That will encourage women to want to come and apply to companies.

One of the arguments that I could see coming up is, “I get it. We want women in the industry but they want the office jobs. They want to work behind the computer.” Help me break that one down because I’ve heard that said before.

Women have been, in the past, were supposed to be in the administrative part of the careers. That is not how women are now. We want to get our hands dirty. More women are wanting to do that because especially with our size, women make good electricians. There’s a lot of times when we have to get into small spaces. Also, we’re more towards the tendency of not being colorblind, which is important when you’re an electrician.

Women have a different perspective, they have a lot of great ideas that could help the company grow. Click To Tweet

We have programs set up to encourage girls to work with their hands. We have camps called Camp NAWIC. It’s a week long for junior high girls to get together, they learn about construction. They’ll do masonry. They’ll do plumbing. They’ll do electrical. They’ll work on equipment. That’s another great field that women enjoy, equipment operators. When you work it out on the roads, I bet if you watch, you’ll see women working in those fields as well.

I’m starting to see more and more women get into the fields. They’re usually more in the supervisory positions. How do we get them into the skilled labors? You said electrician, so if I’m an electrical contractor, I’m sitting here thinking, “I think I’d go to four years of school.” That’s a long time to invest in that. What are some things that we can do to help solve some of the issues that contractors are feeling?

With the four years of training, if you’re working in an apprenticeship program, you’re usually working and going to school. You are getting paid as an apprentice. Most times, when you’re going to college, you have to pay to go to college. You’re probably not employed. That is something that’s different about the construction industry. Yes, you are going through training, but you’re also working on the job, getting hands-on experience, and being paid for the work that you’re doing.

It’s educating the schools. We’re seeing more panel discussions. They’re asking us to come in and talk to their students to encourage them to get into these fields. Unfortunately, until we regularly get into the schools, which we are doing, there is going to be a little bit of a gap. We’re going to see a huge push of women in the industry in the next 5 to 7 years because we have been working so hard reaching out to those girls that are in junior high school.

I was working with someone a few years ago, a plumbing contractor, and they wanted to bring women to the industry. It’s a women-owned third-generation plumbing contractor. It was in the roots of the family, and they started this competition. It was an annual competition where they would go to the high schools, and they would bring the girls in, and they would do a plumbing competition where they’re sweating pipe or installing a toilet.

It was a fun thing to bring awareness to them but we found that a lot of the girls weren’t interested. How do we make these industries more interesting for them? I get you say bring women into the workforce. It can help change the culture, it can make recruiting easier, and it can fix a lot of these things. How do we do it? How do we get down to it? I get awareness and education, but what have you seen work?

Women seeing women. The young girls seeing those of us working in the construction on the field, and promoting that wherever we can. Showing them that you could do this too. Letting them know about the pay availability. There are a lot of single moms out there and they can make enough money to support their family by themselves. That’s why I said it’s going to be probably 5 to 7 years before we start the increase from the work that we’re doing because we are seeing more women seeing women working in the industry. It’s like a trickle down.

We got to get through those years to get those girls graduated from high school to do that. We also need to continue to educate them. Once we give them a taste of it, you got to keep that in the forefront with them so that when they get to the graduation stage, they’re ready to do it. I’m sure that everybody knows, women are known for changing their minds. If you keep that construction right there, that encourages them to get into the field when they graduate.

That goes with anything, you got to keep your people engaged. A lot of times, that comes from the human connection element, for sure. One thing I also want to echo what you said was, yes, we can train people up through an apprenticeship program. I can’t tell you how many times I talked to people, they’re like, “We have an apprenticeship program.” It’s like, “We send them out with this guy over here for a week, they learn the ropes, and then we turn them loose.” That’s not an apprenticeship program. If you don’t have one, find out how to get your apprenticeship program accredited and make it a real thing so that these people get the skills they need.

That goes to what I was saying about follow through. You can have any program in writing, but unless you enact it, stand by it, and continue it, you won’t get what you need out at the end of it if you’re taking shortcuts, or not taking the time to educate the new people about their jobs.

If you had one piece of advice for our readers, if you want to get more women involved in your company, or even in the local community and construction, what would you tell them to do? Something they can do quickly. What would you tell them to do so that they could actually make an impact here?

Reach out to the local NAWIC chapter and start the conversations with those women that are local.

Partner with NAWIC. Get to know your NAWIC chapter. You got chapters all over the place, right?

Yeah, we have 117 chapters across the country in almost every state. We’re chartering more. We’ve already chartered two in 2021. We got at least two more that will go. It’s exciting. If they’re not sure what their local chapter is, they can always go to our website, and we can help you find your local chapter. The women across the country are always excited to talk to anybody about encouraging women to get into the industry.

Women have been, in the past, more into the administrative part of their careers. That is not how women are now. Click To Tweet

What would you say are the 2 or 3 industries that need to hear that? You see women starting to get involved in the industry, you see them advancing through the industry, who are the people that we need to reach? You already said electricians, I would put that as one because women can get into places sometimes. What are some other industries that need to hear that message and get in front of your local NAWIC chapter?

Plumbing pipefitters is another one that women are attracted to. Believe it or not, ironworkers and welding. That’s another that has a higher percentage of women working in the field. Those would be my other two.

Between Jeremy and I, we know a few ironworkers out there.

The way that I’ve seen a lot of great ironworkers and welders, they have a set of skills for precision that is impressive. Definitely seeing that.

Give us your website so that people can learn more about you.

It’s www.NAWIC.org.

Lots of great content, connections, and learned about the impact that women are having in the industry. As someone who’s always recruiting, we’re always looking for how do we attract new people into the industry. It’s no secret that most of our field workers in construction are going to be aging out soon. There’s a lot of older generations in the construction industry and we got to start attracting the younger generations. We are going to have a more difficult time finding people so.

The message here is don’t discount women. They’re good at this stuff, and they can do amazing things for your company and your company culture. Anne, thank you so much for being here. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. It has given me a different perspective. I’ve got some people that we’re going to be calling on to say, “Reach out to your local NAWIC chapter,” because there are some opportunities there, especially to get more involved with women in construction.

That’d be great. Another way is companies can also sponsor events of NAWIC chapters to get the word out about women in the industry as well. That would be another opportunity for companies to do.

What are some of the events that you are doing?

We have our camp NAWIC, it’s usually a week long. Not all of our chapters do that, but some of our chapters do, and they’re always looking for sponsors to get the materials for the young girls to work on. We also do programs. We have a Legos competition for grade school. We have a build a shed program for junior high. We then do design drafting for high school and early college levels. We’re always looking for sponsorships for those programs for the students.

Thank you, Anne. We enjoyed it. Thanks for being here.

Thank you.

Important Links:

National Association of Women in Construction

About Anne Pfleger

Experienced Estimator/Project Coordinator with a demonstrated history of working in the construction industry. Skilled in Project Estimation, Pre-construction, Contract Management, and Process Scheduler.

Strong operations professional with a Bachelor of Science (BS) focused in Business Management from University of Findlay.

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It Isn’t Blue Collar Anymore With Jeff Fleetham

Ryan Englin · June 2, 2021 ·

When it comes to the blue collar industry, many people tend to associate it as a dirty t-shirt, dead-end job with no career opportunity. But this is so far from the truth. In fact, many people who have grown up in this business have magnificent careers. Jeff Fleetham, the Director of Arizona Registrar of Contractors, greatly knows this to be true. In this episode, he joins Ryan Englin and Jeremy Macliver to dispel the greatest misconceptions and myths when it comes to construction and the trades. He shares how we can attract great young people to the industry, tapping into topics on education, construction science technology, and more. This isn’t blue collar anymore. Blue collar is what academic elites do to put people in their place. It’s time to break up this biased notion towards those who work in construction and the trades and shed a clearer and much truer light. Follow along to this conversation for more.

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It Isn’t Blue Collar Anymore With Jeff Fleetham

I’m here with Jeremy Macliver.

I’m excited about our guests and hearing the way Jeremy has so much in common and much passion about the trades and blue-collar companies in general. Our guest was appointed by the Governor of Arizona to be the Director of the Arizona Registrar of Contractors. He is so passionate about bringing new people into the trades that he is involved with tons of grassroots initiatives and schools in and around the valley. I want to welcome the show, Jeff Fleetham, the Director of Arizona Registrar of Contractors.

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Jeff, thank you for being on the show.

Thank you, Ryan. Thanks for asking me.

One of the questions we’d love to start with is to talk about some of the misconceptions about the industry. I know you’ve got a ton of thoughts and you’re super passionate about this. When it comes to construction and the trades, what is one of the biggest myths that you want to shatter for everybody?

When it comes to the industry itself, many people think it is a dirty T-shirt, no end, low brain power, and no career opportunity. It’s a fallback. If you can’t do anything else, you can go into the construction industry. That’s simply not the case. I grew up in the business. Other people have grown up in this business and have magnificent careers. There’s nothing about construction that doesn’t involve Science, technology, Math, and engineering. Any skill you can imagine is involved in construction, vision, art, and the whole thing. There’s a wide variety of areas you can go in. It’s only not being an electrician, a plumber, or a guy in a ditch. It’s a variety of different things. It’s an awesome way to drive down the street, look at something like I have done many years ago, and going, “My dad and I built that. That is an awesome thing.”

A blue-collar is what academic elites do to put people in their place. Click To Tweet

I love that you use that word technology when we start talking about this because there are so many people thinking, “Technology means I have to be a coder. I have to do computer stuff.” That’s not true. I was working with a client and they’re using robots to build bridges. It’s cool. These guys are still ironworkers and still in the trades but now they’re learning to operate these robots and apply technology to this. It’s amazing what they’re doing.

Ryan, those things have been going on for a long time. It’s becoming more apparent today that we see those things. In social media, you can see those kinds of things. I like to use the word Science as well. Science is an old word that means to know and technology is a new word that means to build. Thusly, that’s where I came up with construction science technology professionals because that’s what we are. We’re professionals.

Jeff, you couldn’t be speaking more of my language when it comes to this stuff. I love the passion. Honestly, we started having this before we even got onto this show. I’m looking forward to jumping into this. We talked about this, we talked about the words, and we talked about all of that marketing. I know you’ve been involved with AZBYF. I was involved with it from the beginning, going to a lot of the tours looking at that. You talked about some of those mindsets that are around hiring these young people. What do you think is the biggest thing that’s holding back the trades from attracting great young people to it?

I don’t think there’s one thing specifically. We do things that we think are the right things to do. One of the things we did with part of the AZBYF Effort was Arizona Commerce Authority, the registrar and once you start handling the material yourself and doing it. We talked a little bit about the visual understanding of what’s going on in a project that can only happen when you’re there.

It can only happen. I love that higher price education. Is that what you said?

I didn’t say it exactly that way. I don’t call it higher education. Personally, it is not. It’s other education. It is additional education. My one son-in-law is a pipefitter and during his training, it was online stuff with Purdue University. Had he gone four years to Purdue University, he would have had to come back out for four years to learn his job. However, while he was doing that, we call it Earn While You Learn. I mentioned to Jeremy earlier that my first job when I was a little kid was pulling nails and straightening nails but I also understood what nails do.

BCC 51 | Blue Collar — Blue Collar: Blue collar is primarily anyone that has a tactical, practical, boots-on-the-ground type of workforce.

It wasn’t long after that I realized that a 2×4 on a bearing wall at sixteen-inch on the center only holds 1/55 of its total load capacity. Why would I need to know that? What’s the difference between a standard size footing and a monolithic pour footing? Why is one wider? Why is one deeper? All of those things are all Science and technology. Those are things you learn while you’re there. Am I going crazy, Jeremy? Am I doing okay?

You’re doing fine because we’re so passionate. I didn’t share my story but I was a straight-A student in high school who graduated as a junior with a 4.14 GPA and decided not to go to college. My teachers pulled me aside and gave me the dearest and sincerest pouring out of I was going to be a failure at life because I was choosing the trades. I was making over $100,000 by 23. I don’t think that’s a bad wage. My passion was in the trades. My skillsets were there. Understanding how all that stuff works, I enjoyed being around that stuff. I knew that the other education, as you called it, was not going to be the right one for me.

You and I are almost preaching to the choir here about it but so much of the marketing around this has been, “You’ve got to do this to be successful,” which you don’t. You and I both know that. We had plenty of people there. I would like to take this into the business world here a little bit. You’ve seen this. You and I are 100% aligned that we should be getting more people into the trades. What are some things that you’ve seen businesses do that you’re like, “That is spectacular to attract the right people in and to help get the youth in?” I know you serve EVIT as a board there.

A couple of different places. I’m on the school board at East Valley Institute of Technology. I am in the Advisory Council at Estrella out of West-MEC on several different boards or committees like that in workforce Arizona.

What are some things that you might have seen that you thought, “That is fantastic. That’s a great way to message to the youth and attract them?” What are some good stories there?

There are a variety of different things that I’ve seen that seem to create some excitement. One of the things that are fun is what we did on one of the construction career days. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this. A few years ago, I was involved with that before I was with the register contractors with the Arizona building officials. In the first year, we were there. We showed hourly wages. Some of the kids looked at that. We started thinking about that and we started going, “Let’s talk about not how much you’re going to make now for an hour. Let’s talk about your career, what that means, and where you can go.”

Going to university isn't higher education at all. It's other education. It's additional education. Click To Tweet

We put together storyboards of, “Here’s where you start and here’s how much you make per year.” That’s more impressive. When you tell somebody $20 an hour, they go, “Oh, well.” When you tell somebody $42,000 a year to a young person that’s 18 or 19 years old, stepping into this stuff, that’s a little more impressive. One of the things, Jeremy, you and I know this, if you show up, you’re ahead by 50% of your competition. Show up when you’re supposed to. If you’re supposed to start at 7:00, don’t be there at 7:15. Be there at 7:00.

Those were some of the things. We started doing that. The Build Your Future website and SkillsUSA uses that. A variety of people are using the total income and career path understanding. Everybody starts at the beginning but so many of our young people now, it’s not their fault. They haven’t been taught or told that you start at the beginning. You don’t start in the middle. We tell the true story. This is what you can do and this is where you can go. Think of this. When you’re in 6th and 7th grade, you think this is cool. You see this video by Arizona Build Your Future. It shows kids doing this stuff and it shows a guy that job site with the hand control controlling a drone or controlling some crane device. You see that and you find out, “I’ve got some of these skills already. Where do I go from there?”

It’s not everybody but more are doing that where they’re showing people those things. There’s a group that uses that in the Madison School District. They got some junior high kids and they let them build something every year. They paint it and they build it. They built dog houses or whatever but they’re showing them how to do these things. One of the things that we do as an industry that destroys us, and we say, “This is an industry for people who love to work for their hands.” No, it’s not.

It is for people who want to make a difference, who want to create, and build things. I don’t like working with my hands. I like seeing something, seeing a piece of dirt and going, “I want to build this thing here and this is where I need to go with it. This is what I need to do. I need to make the building square.” It’s Pythagoras’ Theory. Where does that all come from? All of those kinds of things and think about it.

I’ve got a question about that line of thinking. When I’m working with clients, my focus is entirely on helping them solve the number one issue of every construction, manufacturing company, and home service contractor in the country. It’s finding good people. That’s my entire focus. You said something that I thought was interesting. You started talking about, “We’ve got to let these kids know.” We’re talking about the kids of now. We’re not talking about borrowing a season guy from someone else. We’re talking about getting new people into the trades. You started talking about the money and how there’s some good money these kids can learn. I love how they can earn while they learn. They can get all this experience and have no debt. There’s a lot of benefits there.

You shifted gears and you started talking about this sense of purpose. I don’t build my hands, I build something. I drive by it and I go, “My dad and I built that years ago and it’s still there.” They’re excited about what they’ve built. I find that most companies struggle with this. They want to pay an extra dollar because that’s the only way they think they can get people to come to the trades but then on the other side, they’re like, “No, you need to think about this long-term. Think about getting to build the infrastructure of America.” There’s this huge sense of purpose. I find that those two things conflict with each other. We can either drive money or we can drive purpose. How do we reconcile that? How do we get people to dig deep into that?

It’s a multi-faceted problem. You can’t attack one side. You have to understand what you’re looking at. To be quite honest with you, some small businesses are small enough and they’re busy enough that they don’t have time. It’s almost like you don’t have time not to do it.

If you can’t get guys, you’ve got to put the time or you’re not going to grow your business.

We have to remember this is a private industry. Also, another thing is the shortage of the construction workforce is not new. It’s bigger. In the early ‘70s, my father and I couldn’t find anybody to work for us. All of a sudden, everybody was out of work. There was nobody. You’re either damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You’re either too many people or not enough people.

What’s the solution then? We talk about this. We’ve got that with the Workforce Initiative here in Arizona with the Greater Phoenix Chamber. We’ve got Build Your Future coming into Arizona. We’re going into the schools. We still have a shortage. People have been talking about going into the schools and getting the next generation into the trades for decades and we’re still here. What are we going to do?

I’ve got you, Ryan. Talking about something is not doing anything. You’re just talking about it. You have to take action. Here’s what happens. I might get muted by some of my team. Firstly, Ryan, the government isn’t going to fix it. The solution is at the front of it is teaching. Teaching kids how to code is a great thing but who’s going to build the building that they’re going to code in. A construction site technology professional. Going into a higher education place is good but who’s going to build this massive building that you’re in. A construction science technology professional. Who is going to do these things?

Those of us in the industry have to start talking to young people early but not everybody wants to do this. Not everybody ever is going to want to do this. We have too many people in the workforce to do the work, unemployment is going to be there and we’re going to have a problem. I’m starting to get a little circular here. In construction, once we got into the production of homes, one would think that would be the way it needs to go because that makes sense. You get into a production mindset and you do all these things. You bifurcate crafts. A carpenter isn’t what a carpenter used to be. The carpenter used to build your house. You get the mason to build the walls. The carpenter probably finished the concrete, did the other stuff, hung the drywall, and did all this stuff. You start bifurcating.

There's nothing about construction that doesn't involve science, technology, math, and engineering. Click To Tweet

We don’t have carpenters framing houses. We have framers. We have a guy that lays out the framing and we have the guy that all they do is pull the nail at the end of the nail gun. That’s where the shortage is. That is not a skill position. That is Henry Ford’s wrench. We’ve got a few different things. We need a bunch of people to pull the trigger on the nail gun but we need to pay them enough to keep them there so they can learn more and they fill the void in that leadership role. We talk to the young people. That’s a challenge. That’s why I said you have to start at the school boards.

One thing I’m hearing that you’re saying, Jeff, and you dragged it to Ryan and me. I want to expand it to the entire audience reading here. We need to be active in the school boards. We need to be participating out there at the grassroots where this is coming up. I’d love to challenge all of our audience to go out there and to participate. I am active in it with running Arizona’s Welding Advisory Board and leading the SkillsUSA State Competition for Welding. I’m doing some of those things and being a part of these different advisory boards. It’s so imperative that these kids get to hear from real people that are having real success because for none of us probably reading, it’s not a big thing for us to believe that you can be hugely and wildly successful in the blue-collar space.

With that, I would love to dive a little bit deeper into how the ROC is affecting that. You’ve got a ton of great contractors. You’re attracting and holding them to a higher standard. I believe that the entire industry is rising to a new level that, quite honestly, the world has not recognized yet. You and I were having a little bit of discussion about the word blue-collar. To me, it’s a point of pride. I know, internally, we can say that but the rest of the world hasn’t quite seen that. I know the ROC has the big stuff that they’re doing. You’re running one of the most well-known ones in the country. Tell us a little bit about how you’re removing those barriers.

Thanks for asking, Jeremy. Firstly, the way it works is I’ve got an amazing team and you’ve met some of them. They’re an example of the rest of the crew. I’m overhead here. They’re awesome. I have a ton of experience in consumer products by mistake. In the mid-’70s, construction was bad. I took a part-time job that ended up twenty-plus years in consumer products but we learned a lot about customer service there. When I came to the Registrar of Contractors, my goal was to turn this into a customer service operation. Our goal was to find reasons to licensed people and let people know that being a licensed contractor in the State of Arizona is a marvelous career. We have a theory or a belief here that we’re going to find reasons to license people, not reasons not to license them.

We began on the task of taking a look at a variety of different things that were required to become a licensed person in the state of Arizona, from our application size to specific requirements about things. We started looking at some of these things and finding out whether they made a difference. Do we need to know this for you to determine whether or not you’re a qualified contractor? The answer to a lot of that stuff was no.

The timeframe for a small business person to get licensed at one time was someplace in the 3 to 4 months range. When you’re trying to start a business, that’s a long time. You’re trying to start a business so you can pay your bills and do those things. Jim brought this up to me. We were asking for financial statements. You’re a new business and determinations were being made that you didn’t have a whole lot of money in the bank, so you couldn’t get your license. You go, “Are you kidding me?” Decisions were being made about how you, Jeremy, could start your business by someone who had never signed the front of a check or never understood that. We start looking at those things from those ways and chipping away at those little burdens and barriers.

Trust me, there are licensed contractors and potential licensees that still don’t think we’re doing what we need to do but we’ve removed a lot of things. I’ll give you an example. When I first got here, one of the things that hit my desk almost immediately in the first week was denial for a young man who wanted to get his landscape license. Everybody seems to be a kid to you when you’re older, this young man was in his late twenties and he had had a DUI when he was nineteen. A couple of years before and his license was denied because of that. Here’s what’s interesting.

Statutes say that we could deny a license for felonies, not for something that you did years ago. We started looking at those things. That didn’t make any sense. We license about 80% and close to 85% of felons that have applied for licenses here. I’m going to probably get into some area where some people don’t like it, and that’s okay. There are six felonies. Years ago, there only used to be three. Some of these felonies are for minor things that get piled up. In America, you’re not guilty for the transgressions once you pay your debt to society and these are people that we are able to get licensed. I’m going to go on and on about some of these little things like that.

There are a couple of things that you’ve said in this that resonate. First of all, you acknowledge you had a great team. Partially, we wanted to have you on the air because we knew that you had a great team. I work with a lot of companies helping them to get more out of their people. Ryan helps them get more people. I help them get more out of their people. When they’re not getting enough from that. They’re not as efficient and not profitable but a lot of that has to do with how they’re leading that team, how they’re delegating, and managing all of that. Like everything else in the world, construction and the trades have got so much more competitive. The stakes are so much higher and customer service is a critical thing.

I was GC in a job and we had a superintendent out there. We recognized fast if we had made a bad subcontractor hire or not. It was simple. The first day that sub showed up at the job site and the crew jumped out, looked around and within about two minutes, we could tell you if we had a bad sub or a good sub. That foreman will walk up and say, “I want to get the lay of the land. The materials aren’t here. That’s weird. Let me call the office.” We have a good sub. If they’re like, “The materials aren’t here. They’re a bunch of clowns.” They go on cussing and we’re like, “We’ve made a bad sub.”

Customer service starts all the way at the top of how we’re taking care of our team and how we’re building a culture. When we start building that momentum, I see it started attracting a lot of great people to that because great people want to work with great people. One of the reasons I want to call out to the audience that we wanted to have you on is we noticed that our clients are knocking out of the park. We took the ROC, their licensing, and took their certifications seriously along with everything else that they were doing in their business. It raised our respect for the ROC in what they’re doing.

As we look to raise the blue-collar world and the image of what it is, we realized that the ROC and what you’ve done to put customer service into it, build a great team, support it, and find ways that enable successful entrepreneurs that have a scientific construction mindset to enable them to go out and do something, that’s what we’re looking for. It’s been an honor having you here. I know that you guys have a cool project. We’re excited to share with the team and everybody is reading out there. I’d love to hear a little bit as we bring this to a wrap-up here about the Hard Hats Contest that you got going because that is cool.

Customer service starts all the way at the top of how we're taking care of our team and how we're building a culture. Click To Tweet

We had to cancel a few things that we had set up. We had a deal set up with the Diamondbacks and dozens of companies that were going to participate. It was a career fair at Diamondback Stadium that was all set up for baseball and COVID hit. We had to cancel that. We’re involved in a variety of other things that we had to cancel. The team, Breanna being part of it, and Jessica here, we’re all talking about some things. They came up with something to get the young people at least get a little bit of juice as well. They came up with this Hard Hat design. That’s not a big deal. Maybe it’s not a big deal. I don’t know, but it’s pretty cool.

Any kid, 9th grade to 12th grade, can participate in the ROC Hard Hat design, they can go to our website ROC.az.gov and there’s a Hard Hat link there for the Hard Hat contest that gives the requirements and the rules for it. We will pick from that and we’ll pick up the top ten. We’ll do that at the office and we’ll put it on social media for the social media to vote on it. Breanna came in and they came up with an idea over the holidays. They came up with a gingerbread house thing. The deadline for this is April 5th, 2021. That’s one thing to keep a little bit of what this is in front of the kids now that perhaps aren’t in C10 and J10. Maybe they’ll get a look at the registrar site and they’ll take a look at that.

I want to thank you for letting me here. You mentioned something about great careers. One of the best things that helped me here was using Collins’ book, Good to Great, that we use in our career here to get everybody started. It’s also a book on trust that any business person in construction should have as well. I’m not sure how many audiences we have when we talk about those things but we try to pass on any gem that we have during our contractor forums. We have contractor forums for people who are wanting to become licensed. We have forums for brand new licensees and we have ongoing forums for licensees. These forums are where we add new Q&As. We’ll give updates on the registrar and we’ll open it up for free flow questions.

Everybody should be joining. How do we register for those?

If you’re a licensed contractor in the State of Arizona and you provide your correct email, you’ll be getting an email from us to notify you about that. You’re notified when those are and everybody is welcome to sign up. That’s where you’ll get an update on what’s going on with the agency. We’ll open it up and answer the questions that we can. If there are some things, we can’t answer in an open forum like that, we will connect the participant with the proper department head and they’ll get an answer.

Thank you so much, Jeff, for being with us. I know your time is highly valuable and highly requested, so we’re honored to have you with us. For everybody that’s out there reading, make sure that you encourage the students to go out and compete against the Hard Hat thing. Join what the ROC has going on because we all know that we’re passionate about raising the bar and raising that to the next level. Thank you all for reading. Thanks, Jeff, so much.

Thanks for having us here. Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you, Ryan. Thanks, everybody.

Mentioned in this episode:

About Jeff Fleetham

Governor Doug Ducey appointed Jeff Fleetham as Director of Arizona Registrar of Contractors (ROC) effective February 9, 2015.

Prior to his appointment, he owned 12-88 LLC, a residential project consulting and dispute resolution company, licensed as a B-3 General Residential Remodeling Contractor. His background includes construction, consumer products, consulting, and dispute resolution in both public and private sector industries. Director Fleetham also worked as an investigator with Arizona Registrar of Contractors from Jan. 2007 to Sept. 2013.

Director Fleetham’s background in the industry has made him an enthusiastic proponent of cultivating the industry for future construction science technology professionals. To that end, he proudly serves as Governing Board member of District #401 of East Valley Institute of Technology School District (EVIT); is a member of the Energy and Industrial Technology Advisory Council of Estrella Mountain Community College Energy Institute and Arizona Department of Education’s Construction Advisory Council (ADE-CTE / ACTEAZ); is a Steering Committee member of Arizona Construction Career Days (ACCD); and serves on the Greater Phoenix Chamber Foundation’s (GPCF) Construction Workforce Collaborative.

He actively serves on several councils and boards, including on the Board of Directors for the National Association of State Contractors Licensing Agencies (NASCLA); is a member of Arizona Building Officials (AZBO), where he was named Member of the Year 2013/2014; serves as a board member and Performance Excellence Committee member of the Governor’s Workforce Arizona Council; is a member of the Central Arizona Chapter of the International Code Council (ICC), where he holds multiple certifications; is a member of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and Arizona NFIB Leadership Council; and of the National Association of Bunco Investigators (NABI).

Director Fleetham came to Arizona when his father moved the family and business from Oregon in 1959. In 1962, Fleet Construction was founded and licensed in the State of Arizona until 2015. He attended Tavan grade school and graduated from Arcadia High School in 1970. He has three children and four grandchildren.

Joe Soltis | Happy Employees Lead To Happy Customers

Ryan Englin · May 19, 2021 ·

You can take your pick of any marketing strategy you want, but at the end of the day, happy customers will drive the most revenue to your business. For excellent customer experience to be possible, however, you need to ensure that your employees are in top form. They need to be engaged and happy to be doing their jobs. They need to experience the wins of their hard work and be compensated accordingly. Joining Ryan Englin and Jeremy Macliver in this conversation, marketing specialist, Joe Soltis, shares how he applies this principle in his own firm, ChoiceLocal. He also talks a bit about the unique business model of his marketing firm, which focuses on helping franchisees dominate their market by giving them the same level of service as the company’s Fortune 500 clients have received.

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Joe Soltis | Happy Employees Lead To Happy Customers

I am here with Jeremy Macliver.

Welcome back, everyone.

I’m excited about our guest. He’s got an amazing story, which I am not going to do justice. I’m going to give him a minute to catch us up on that. He owns and manages a marketing company that is focused on franchise brands and helping them dominate in their market. One of the things about franchise brands is that there are usually a lot of locations and it can be difficult sometimes for these smaller businesses to compete. Even though they’re part of a larger brand, they are individuals by themselves. He started his company years ago. He’s already grown it to 75 people. This guy knows what he’s doing when it comes to marketing. Joe, I want to let you share your story but I want to welcome you to the show, Joe Soltis.

Ryan and Jeremy, it’s great to be with you. It’s great to be on the show. I’m very excited. A brief background, I worked at a company, top-ranked in advertising agency magazine, a 180-person firm and we served Fortune 500 companies. Late into a pregnancy, while I was working there, my wife and I lost a child. I always said, “I want to be successful so that I can help people.” It was always, “I want to be successful so that I can help people later.” I can use that as I sell people. When we lost Ben late in the pregnancy, it was how do we help people now? We created ChoiceLocal with a mission to help others. That’s what we do. We take 10% of our profits out of the company, roughly to help kids in need.

In 2021, we’re doing a donation to Habitat For Humanity, which we’re excited about and a bunch of other stuff we’re involved with. Our mission goes beyond that. It’s helping our customers succeed, which we call partners. It’s helping our employees succeed, which we call teammates. It’s the giving back piece as well. The other thing we did is we’ve had customers like FedEx and CVS and multibillion-dollar brands as customers. I said, “How can we help small and medium-sized businesses be wildly successful with the same level of customer service and the same level of strategy and results that we’re giving to these Fortune 500 brands?”

The small business owner isn’t getting served the way they need to. What we learned, what we found is that you can do that in the franchising space because of the replicability of it. We’ve also found you can do it in verticals as well. We’re going aggressively after concrete, standalone businesses, every concrete contractor in America, as well as in the home care space and franchise systems as a whole. We’ve had a lot of success doing it. It’s been a lot of fun.

It sounds like you and I are serving the same market. I know Jeremy is serving the same market as well, so we’re excited to have you here. To that end, what is the biggest myth about your industry? What do you want to dispel for our readers right now?

That it is science-based. Digital marketing, people are like, “It’s a magic box. It’s a bunch of hocus-pocus. I don’t know what works and what’s not.” The truth of the matter is it’s very easy to figure out if you have the right approach. Google is powered by an algorithm, an algorithm that can be reverse-engineered. We reverse-engineered for our customers to figure out how we get them to the top of the search engines. It’s not just guesswork. It’s not wait and see. There’s a concrete plan. There’s a concrete way to do it so you can accomplish those results. For example, Google does hundreds of changes to their search engine algorithm every year and then it does several big ones. When it does a big one, all we have to do is we have hundreds and hundreds of client partners to see who went up, who went down and what’s the difference between the two. By doing that, usually, we can reverse engineer that algorithm update within a couple of days. We take that and then use it to move everybody forward. It’s not a black box.

The lesson though is don’t do this alone because if you do it alone and you don’t have that professional expertise to dig in, understand the changes that are going, it can feel like a black box. It can feel like voodoo and black magic. Here working with a professional, working with an expert, that’s what’s going to help you get the results from your digital marketing that you need. Is that right?

Tie a KPI to everything. People need to know when they’re winning. Click To Tweet

That’s right. They also have to put up the goods. If it’s dragging on for more than three months and you’re not seeing a lift, they’re not doing something right.

Let’s talk about that not doing something right. What’s the one thing that you see in the work that you’re doing that your team sees with your partners? What’s the one thing that holds most of them back?

We work with small and medium-sized business owners. The customers that we work with typically are on the franchisee space and independent business owner space. Even on most franchisors, they are a company doing between $1 million, even $500,000 on the smaller side, up to $10 million in sales. What we see for even successful franchisees is they can’t get out of the business. They’re always in the business and they’re always doing the business as opposed to working on the business. It’s because they have great difficulty in scaling their business, they have great difficulty in the delegation piece of their business and finding the right people to make their business grow and scale. We’re at the point they’re not burning the candle at both ends. That’s the biggest challenge that we see small business owners make.

I want to go back to something you said and tie it into this. You mentioned that if the business owner is not putting up the goods or the marketing agencies are not putting up the goods in a couple of months and we need to make some changes. We’re talking about this delegating piece and talking about how do you manage, how do you lead these people from a metrics-driven perspective? What are some of the things that these business owners need to do to know that they’re getting the results they need from their team and maybe even from a marketing agency?

The first thing that you need to do is tie a KPI to everything. A KPI is a Key Performance Indicator. It’s called a KPI or Key Performance Indicator for a reason. It’s not a key performance dictator, but what it does is it indicates to you what’s actually happening and it’s very powerful. With a marketing agency, if you’re a business that generates or relies on leads for sales, the KPI should be how many leads am I generating? How many of my customers am I getting and what’s my ROI? Your number one indicator needs to be ROI. That’s the KPI. You set a goal ROI for that marketing investment and then it needs to be measured. We provide those tools so that our franchisee and business partners can measure us. It helps us retain them as partners because we deliver the goods.

On the employee side, it’s a similar thing. If you have people that are doing outbound sales for you, it’s how many calls a day are you making and how many appointments you’re booking. If you have people that are servicing your customers, like they’re pouring driveways, what’s the net promoter score? It’s the number one KPI that can be used to actually predict the future in your business. It’s how excited are people to recommend you. That’s what that number is. I can go all into that but those are some simple ideas.

If you have customers that can be with you for a long period of time, what’s your customer retention rate? What’s your referral and word of mouth rate? Those are all numbers. Every position in the company, I don’t even care if it’s office manager, needs a number tied to it so people can feel if they’re winning or if they’re losing. Frankly, you can move them. If they’re winning for you, you can help them win too by increasing their compensation and those types of things. They see a career path, they see progression, they see forward movement, but the business sees it as well. Everybody wins and that’s the type of environment you want to build.

Being able to measure people’s performance, it’s not just about making sure that they know when they’re not doing a good job but it’s also about making sure that they know when they’re winning. I don’t like playing games where there’s no score. Making sure that they know when they’re doing a good job is beneficial to the team as well. When we started talking about these KPIs, I want to look at how are we making sure that from a marketing perspective we’re getting the results that we need. Whether that means we got people in-house that are doing it or we’ve got an expert like yourself that’s helping us. I know there’s a ton of KPIs. I don’t want to get too technical on that but what are some of the actionable things we should be looking at and what are some ways that we can drive performance around them?

There are a lot of different ways that you can slice this from a marketing perspective. From a business perspective, one of the things you always want to look at is year over year growth. How many leads am I getting in February this year compared to February of last year? How many new customers am I getting? How many outbound calls am I doing? How many appointments are getting booked? How many inbound leads do I have? Those are all things. If you’re in a business that’s heavily seasonal, you need to look at that on a year over year basis. Also, anytime you do a big change in your business, whether that’s investing in a new marketing program or investing in a new employee or a teammate, you want to look at pre and post. What was it like when this person or this company partnered up with us and what was it like after? You can then measure that success in that difference. Those are super important KPIs.

BCC 50 | Happy Customers — Happy Customers: Net promoter score helps predict customer loyalty and enthusiasm. It’s such an important number because you need to make your customers raving fans.

The other one that I did want to talk about though was Net Promoter Score. Years ago, for example, if you turned on CNBC, they have this shows that is like a constant rerun loop. It was called The Age of Walmart. All you could do is hear about Walmart over and over. No one was talking about Costco. At that point in time, Walmart had a net promoter score of negative, meaning their customers hated shopping there. Costco had a net promoter score in the 70s. People love shopping there. What ended up happening, if you fast forward ten years later, Costco’s taking huge market share and Walmart saying, “How do we copy what Costco is doing so we can be more like Costco?”

Net promoter score predicted that was going to happen a decade before it became a reality. Similarly, Tesla has a net promoter score that’s the highest I’ve ever heard of any company. It’s like the high 90s. It’s crazy because the net promoter score can go from negative 100 to plus 100. That’s in the high 90s. In 2020, Elon Musk was the 40th richest guy in the world, now he’s number one. Net promoter score helped predict that measure of customer loyalty and enthusiasm. You need to make your customers raving fans. It’s such a critical number. You can also do that with the people in your company by measuring their net promoter score. How likely are you on a scale of 1 to 10 to recommend somebody to work at this company? You want that number to be hot. If you keep moving it in the right direction, you’re going to have people that are fired up to come into work and they’re going to do a great job at your company or your organization. It’s powerful.

The thing about net promoter score is it doesn’t matter where you’re at on the scale. The point is to see progress. I’ve talked to people that have a net promoter score of right around zero. They’re like, “We might as well give up. What’s the point?” I’m like, “This isn’t like a death sentence for you if it’s not good. Let’s move forward and let’s progress it.” We see that a lot when it comes to the employees in the company. You had talked about doing net promoter score inside the company with your employees but also with your customers. What I’ve found is if you focus on having happy employees, they’re going to do a lot better job at making happy customers. You can have a lot of influence over your different net promoter scores and your different markets, from my perspective, by focusing on your employees because a happy employee is going to make a happy customer. If your employees aren’t happy, there’s nothing they’re going to be able to do to make your customers happy.

Some companies, they check out a certain store and you literally hear them trash their employer 3 to 4 times while you’re there. Something’s not right there. It’s not you have an angry employee who’s venting. Something’s not right there. You’ve got to take great care of your teammates. It’s important.

For a while, we were GC-ing a job, as the general contractor. We could tell if we’d made the right sub decision on day one when the crew jumped out of their vehicle. Whatever that crew leader told us, the first thing out of his mouth was going to tell us if it’s going to be successful or not. If he said, “What’s the material here? This is that office. They’re always messing it up,” and he was grumbling and griping, it was going to be horrible and we messed up. We’d have ones that we get out. We’d say, “I don’t think the materials are here for that,” and be like, “Maybe I’m going to call them quickly. That’s weird.” It was going to be a good job.

If you’re talking about employee net promoter score and we’re talking about the customer net promoter score, both of those are hinged on each other. We’ve actually boiled it down. We use some work from Walt Brown on the patient organization and seven questions to dive into the employee net promoter score, making sure that we’re being strategic about the way we communicate to build raving fans. If we have raving fans as employees, there’s all the glass doors and those things out there. The real thing that matters is what are they saying when they go home to their friends because that’s what’s going to drive your employee base. I’d be curious, maybe a couple of nuggets on what a company can do to increase their net promoter score in the marketplace.

The first thing is ask. Anonymous surveys can be powerful. There are lots of different tools out there that can do this. You can even do this through Survey Monkey very cheaply. You send an email with a question once a week. We do this at ChoiceLocal and we ask the net promoter score question once a month. We ask once a month on a scale of 1 to 10, “How happy are you at work and why?” We say, “What’s one thing you would never change about ChoiceLocal? Name one thing that you’d like to see improve at ChoiceLocal.” We take that data and we use it to help us. We have a monthly team meeting where we get everybody together and we say, “Here’s what’s going on in the company,” to have celebrations.

We give lots of praise to lots of people in the company. We give updates on our financials and what’s happening, the latest things we’re doing to move forward. We celebrate promotions, people in the company and all that. We actually survey our team and say, “What do you like about the team meeting? What would you like to see that’s different? What would you like to see improved?” It’s very powerful. There are things that I’m changing in leadership as a direct result of what I’m hearing through those surveys. We’re seeing that net promoter score continues to tick in a positive direction out of the gate. It’s good. We won the best workplace awards three years running. We’re coming up on a fourth now. It’s important. The thing you’ve got to keep in mind, you can’t be all things to all people. You’re not going to make everybody super happy 100% of the time. If you’re seeing that net promoter score and you’re 30-plus, meaning you’re great compared to most companies, then you’re aiming for 50 and then you’re aiming for 70, that’s great stuff. It’s fun.

I used to run a steel company where we were growing super fast. We won 100 Best Places to Work in Arizona. I think they’re on now 6th or 7th time. I’ve lost count. Once you have that momentum of a great culture, so often people think, “You’re a marketing company.” They’ll take all that stuff but a metal company or a roofing company or a concrete company that you work with, do they want that? The answer is yes, absolutely. When they are bought in, they’re engaged. Your employee retention is up, which shows up on the bottom line.

Doing a good job sucks. You need to be amazing. Click To Tweet

Looking at external because I know you do a lot of marketing and you’re the expert in this arena, what are some things that companies can do to make sure that their customers are experiencing a strong net promoter score and they’re actually creating these 9s and 10s. What do you feel like underneath of Elon Musk’s success? I know I gave you a compound tough question there, but I’m looking for some nuggets that we can take to our companies and be like, “Can their net promoter score grow with this?”

There’s a guy I met at a men’s CEO’s group that I went to and it’s like faith-based group. One of the guys spoke who happens to own a steel mill. He brought out a book and it’s completely secular but it’s called Be Great by Peter Thomas. In the book, basically what they say is sit down with pen and paper and write down all of your values, things that are most important to you. Whether that’s integrity, hard work, good health, whatever it is, just write it down. You have a list there of 20 or 30 values that are important to you. He says, “Pick your top five and then order them 1 through 5, then write down goals for those values in your life and in your business.” That’s a powerful thing that can be for you personally, as well as professionally. In a company, that’s a long way of saying you need to hire people to believe what you believe.

Not just somebody who’s a great craftsman but somebody who believes in integrity in all things, if that matters to you. Somebody that believes in candor with goodwill, if that matters to you. Somebody that believes in amazing customer experience, if that matters to you or that matters to your business. One of the things at ChoiceLocal, we have a core value, amazing customer service. When I meet with our new teammates for their first day, I say, “When was the last time you went to a company or worked with any company that did more than they said they were going to do for you and they did it before they said they were going to do it?” There’s silence because that doesn’t happen. You can differentiate as a company, as an organization by having amazing customer service. What I always say is, “Doing a good job sucks. Being amazing is where it’s at.”

That’s how you build these promoters. You’ve got to hire people that believe that and then reward them when they deliver on that. I don’t care if you’re a company that pours concrete driveways. You need to have an amazing experience for your customers where you estimate the job will take slightly longer than it will take and you finish early. You come in under budget and you do it without making a mess of their house as much as you can with the yard and those types of things. That is a differentiating experience. People are like, “That company is awesome. They came in, they got it done early. There were a little bit under budget. It looks fantastic. When they were done, it was fantastic. The grass was in, everything was great. I love this company. You should work with them.” That’s how you build those promoters. Even if you’re a CEO who believes in amazing customer service, you’re never going to have that unless you’re working 200 hours a week and you’re on every single job all the time or you hire people that believe what you believe. You can start to scale that through your organization when you match those values with KPIs and that’s how you do it.

Joe, you couldn’t be speaking in my language more. I love that. The only way to transfer and delegate the success that got us started is through values. That’s how we’re transferring all of that internal value system. There’s not another word for it so that everybody is enacting on it. If I summed up what I heard there, the best way to change our marketplace, the way that the market views us as a company, and for us to get raving fans outside in our community is to focus internally on our employees. We need to make sure we have raving fans for employees because that’s the only way we’re going to deliver the amazing customer service.

As we dive into this a little bit more, what are two actions that you feel like our audience should go do? They already have a team, they’re already moving their company, they already got motion and they read this go, “I got my values.” They write them down on a piece of paper. Where do they go next? What do they do?

They have personal values. Now, take those values and apply to your company. Some of those values may or may not be applicable to your company. Some of them maybe, but you need to come up with those top five values for your company. It doesn’t have to be 5, it could be 3, but you shouldn’t have 12 or something. It’s crazy. Keep it simple. Once you have that, you need to find a way that you hire or fire, give raises and promotions based on performance and those core values. How do you do that? If integrity in all things is a core value, during the interview process ask, “When in your career did you feel pressured to lie and how did you handle it?” Don’t say anything else. Wait for them to answer.

By the way, people want generous managers and leaders. This is actually a very important question. “Name three times in the past year where you’ve been generous.” At first, it’s an odd question for an interview but if they can’t come up with an answer, they’re probably not that generous. If they can come up with an answer, they are and people like to follow people that are generous. People like to follow people that know that can help them. That’s powerful. That’s step two. Figuring out ways to hire for it, then build annual reviews. Here’s how you did it on your KPIs. Here’s how you did on your core values. Have your teammates on your company rate themselves and then you rate down as well.

You can have coaching conversations with them and then ask them, “What are your dreams and aspirations? How can I help you make your dreams and aspirations a reality?” You do that when you touch base with them, when you’re on the job with them. Even during formal monthly meetings, you do that with them and you build a bond because you’re helping your brother, you’re helping your sister. You’re helping them get ahead and make their aspirations a reality. What that does when they understand you legitimately have their back is it builds this culture of trust. It builds this culture of loyalty and I’m going to work my butt off for you just like you’re working your butt off for me. It helps everybody. It’s cool. Those are some simple things that you can do to make this a reality in your business, from an idea to something you’re doing day to day and living and breathing in your organization.

We wrote an entire book called Unmasked: How to Hire the Ones You Won’t Want to Fire. I love those questions that make you go into the uncomfortable but not traditional questions. The ones that are very specific and you’re looking for how they respond, kind of going into that generosity one. If you asked me that right off the bat, there might be a little bit of a stutter and it’s going to throw me off. Immediately, I can start drawing some stories from that. I think when you’re watching these interviews, it’s important to observe how do they handle those awkward situations? Does it seem like they’re pulling out of thin air or they really got something? I love that because so often we didn’t ask those questions. We didn’t learn about it. We didn’t set the right expectations. When we hire them, we don’t get what we were looking for because we didn’t ask questions that brought that conversation up, even in the interview.

I’ll get this a lot of times. I don’t know if you get this, Joe, but I’ll get, “We’re going to hire them anyway.” Yes, because labor market is short or yes, because whatever. That being said, these questions uncover stuff. People tell me that. They go through and they ask those questions and they’re blown away by the questions because they are excited about it or they’re blown away going, “I will be okay not having an employee for a while. That isn’t going to work. We were going to hire them anyway.”

I encourage you out there, if you’re reading this, to dig into what Joseph is saying here and say, “What are my values? What kind of company am I trying to build?” Go and interview to those. Joe, thank you so much for being here with us. It’s been a great time. I love diving into it. I know you had some good, practical ways to take this out into the world and do your marketing. I believe that you have a free giveaway here. Could you share that free giveaway and how they can get ahold of you?

You can go to ChoiceLocal.com. What we do is we develop marketing strategies for businesses for free, along with revenue and return on investment projections. You can see here’s what your competitors are doing. You can see exactly how to beat them. You can see exactly how to capture the projected market share that we’re showing and how many leads and how many new customers that will come out as a direct result of that at the ROI. What’s cool about it is we do that for free and that piece can drive tremendous growth in businesses.

Our mission is to help others. We’ve had tons of businesses that we’ve helped sell. People retired. Other businesses, we’ve helped them going out of business by executing that strategy unique for them. It’s a lot of fun. We celebrate that during our monthly meetings. “Here’s something we’ve done to help somebody.” At ChoiceLocal.com, there’s that information. In some industries like concrete, for example, we give free websites away that are powerful, built to rank in search engines designed to convert to qualified leads and customers. We have that as well.

If you’re reading, go to ChoiceLocal.com. We definitely would recommend it. Thank you, Joe, so much for being on. It’s been great.

Thanks, Jeremy. Thanks, Ryan. It’s been a pleasure. You guys are doing great work.

Important Links:

Joe Soltis – LinkedIn
ChoiceLocal
Be Great
Unmasked: How to Hire the Ones You Won’t Want to Fire

About Joe Soltis

Joe is the Founder and CEO of ChoiceLocal, a digital marketing firm that serves franchise systems where the average client partner of ChoiceLocal gains $15.51 for every $1.00 in invested in marketing. ChoiceLocal is a local marketing firm specializing in marketing franchise systems. Their average client generates in excess of $15.54 in new revenue for every $1 invested in marketing.

Digital Sorcery Doesn’t Work With Ryan Redding

Ryan Englin · February 10, 2021 ·

Any marketing strategy cannot beat excellent and reliable customer service. If you cannot satisfy your target market’s demands and expectations, there is no form of digital sorcery that can save you. Ryan Redding explains to Ryan Englin and Jeremy Macliver how well-targeted online marketing strategies focused on customer satisfaction will always spell out success for any business and leave a lasting impact on everyone. Have you ever wondered how some companies thrived even in the middle of the pandemic? Stay tuned as Ryan reveals the answer and discusses the importance of learning continuously and closing the bottom of the demand funnel for blue-collar trades to flourish.

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Digital Sorcery Doesn’t Work With Ryan Redding

We’re going to dig into a little bit of marketing. I know for a lot of home service companies out there, marketing is one of those things that everybody knows they need to do. They know they need to do it better. They need to get better results, but sometimes they’re not quite sure how. Our guest has been a marketer for nearly fifteen years. He works a lot with HVAC and plumbing companies. He’s been a frequent speaker at colleges, universities, industry groups, and is even a consultant for Oklahoma State University. I want to introduce Ryan Redding to the show. Ryan, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Everybody’s got an opinion about marketing. They need to do more and they need a better ROI, or whatever that may be. Help me understand, what is one of the biggest myths from your perspective about your industry?

That’s tough because I feel like, starting off cold, most people think that most marketers are just selling snake oil, but they’re full of crap. They’re saying promising the moon or whatever to close the deal. I’ve got to tell you, there are those guys. They exist, but there are some good people and smart groups out there who are doing solid work to help guys grow. One of the biggest myths is that it’s all scam because that sucks for everybody.

That’s going to lead me to my next question. I know a lot of people that have been burned. How do you separate the guys that are selling snake oil or the scammers from the ones that aren’t? What are some warning signs people can look for?

When uncertainty hits the fan, the best of the best steps up. Click To Tweet

This is going to sound awful because I don’t know about you guys, but for us, we don’t find our clients. Our clients come to us. We work with plumbing shops, HVAC shops, and have a handful of electrical contractors. They’re all blue-collar trades guys and they get bombarded by emails promising page one listings, sales calls, or everything under the sun. There’s a whole lot of people selling a whole lot of things. We do the opposite. We do good work for the clients we work with, which in turn gets us happy people, gets them to refer other people to us. We take the approach of the best marketers don’t do a whole lot of harassing you on the phone to get you to call. They do the good work. That’s their focus and that’s how we think about it at DP.

They let the results speak for themselves. I love that. I know that you work with guys in this space that are all levels of business. Maybe they’re still in the truck. Maybe sometimes they’re in the truck and sometimes they’re out of the truck, or even maybe they got a leadership team that’s helping them. You work from small companies all the way up to some of the larger ones. In your experience, what’s the one thing that you’ve seen holding most businesses back?

I’m going to come out and say this is going to sound cheesy and cliché. I’m going to say leadership. Especially in this era of COVID, it was fascinating. Let’s start here. COVID was tough for everybody across the board. It hasn’t been fun. There are levels of uncertainty that I’ve never seen. The companies who were able to not just survive but thrive through all that uncertainty weren’t necessarily doing better marketing or tactics or whatever. They had better leadership in place and they were flexing the muscles that they’ve been building on for years. I would say the difference between a good company and a great company is hands down leadership, and that might sound corny and cliché, but whatever. That’s where I’m going to hang my hat.

Can you paint a little bit of a picture of a situation you saw that was great leadership through this and maybe one that you saw that was a little bit stronger and have gotten more out of this?

There are tons of examples. Chances are, the guys and gals reading this probably know of examples in their own market space. Right when the lockdowns started happening, to rewind the wheel because everyone knows their own unique experience as it relates to COVID. There was no uniform federalized response. It was left up to local governments to make these decisions. We saw this piecemeal response from a marketing standpoint. Whereas certain states, counties, and cities would go on various types of lockdown. We would say market demand change.

BCC 49 | Online Marketing Strategies — Online Marketing Strategies: Most people think that most marketers are just selling snake oil, but they’re full of crap.

Consequently, the businesses within those markets would respond differently. The companies who did well didn’t hide from it. They enhance their marketing. They use this as a chance to increase their market share. They doubled down on deploying technology, so they had tools that would allow them to virtual service calls. Everyone’s afraid for their life, but yet, stuck at home. These companies are able to run calls with their tech in the driveway or at their shop and keep the customers completely safe. They were investing in things like how to provide customer experience virtually when there’s no direct contact and your sales process would have to change.

These companies thrived. In the midst of all the chaos, they did fantastic. Other companies did the exact opposite. They scaled back their marketing, started letting guys go quickly. They maybe started getting paranoid about how they were running certain calls. We saw some guys who wanted to pretend like none of the chaos existed and their customers pushed them aside because of it. This was a time where companies who had exceptional Google reviews forever leverage that momentum. The guys who didn’t have a good reputation online struggled. It was this night and day change. We saw a lot of guys that we worked with had record revenue months all through COVID. We have other guys who we’ve worked with who struggled to get their mindset above surviving in the chaos. The mindset of growth versus survival did paint that two different outcomes.

It has been interesting watching all of that because we definitely saw some of our clients have their best years ever, while we watch some of their competitors drowned. In fact, one of my clients’ huge wins was their large competitors fell out of the marketplace due to COVID and somehow, they were picking up momentum and picking up steam. The two things that you say there was one was leadership teams that were strong and healthy. They were aggressive and they knew how to push forward in the market, but they also had adaptability. They’re aggressive and adaptable versus real stoic and they got cinched down and fearful. Some got bold and some went backward.

It’s the old expression that smooth waters never made a skilled sailor. When the economy is going well, it’s easy to make money. When things are stable and customers are good, it’s easy to make money. When uncertainty hits the fan, customers are anxious, and everything is confusing, that’s when the best of the best step up. That’s where guys who want to become the best start putting their heads above the rest of the crowd. It was fascinating to watch from a marketing standpoint.

One thing I want to push into right here is you said that you get most of your clients to come to you versus you reaching out to them, which is an interesting thing to know from a marketing person who most of us are looking to hire somebody to go proactively out in the world, too. How do you explain that to someone that says, “I’m doing great work as a plumber. I got a good reputation. I’m not getting the leads?” How do you help with that versus going to the SEO and all the other stuff and doing whatever marketers do?

There is no replacing good old-fashioned customer experience at its core. Click To Tweet

It’s funny, one of the pillars that we build on is reputation. There’s a joke in marketing that great marketing makes a bad product fail faster. If a company has poor service and they don’t know how to take care of people, there is no amount of digital sorcery that will make them succeed. All we’re going to do is drive them to the scene of the crash faster. A huge focus for us is excellent customer experience because of the influence that has both on customers being able to refer to other potential customers, but also things like Google Maps rankings, Google Local Services, and SEO rankings organically. The influence of reputation is hard to exaggerate in this day and age. Even though yes, we do recommend traditional SEO, local SEO, pay-per-click, and things like that, there is no replacing good old fashioned customer experience at its core. That never changes no matter what the medium is.

I love that conversation about experience because I’ve seen it happen where you do a great job for somebody and you hope they go tell the world. You might have to do that for 10, 12, 15 people before one person hears about it, but on the bad customer experience, that one person is going to tell 10, 15, or 20 people. I see that a lot where guys are struggling to get good reviews online. They’re like, “People that have no problem leave me the bad reviews.” Getting good ones is such a challenge.

It’s funny, I disagree with that point. Not to knock on this certain fast-food restaurant, but it seems like every time I go to a certain restaurant in our neighborhood of their kids, they always come up and say, “If you go to the bottom of your seat, you’ll get a $20 off your next meal,” or whatever. I’ve never done it. I don’t know one person who’s ever done this like, “Go online and fill out that survey and you’ll get something in return.” People don’t care. However, I would say that people want to generally help people. If you took care of the customer, wowed them with your experience, and you honestly said, “It would mean the world to me if you would take ten seconds and leave a review for us on Google. You have no idea how important those reviews are for us in this day and age. It would go a long way. Would you do that?”

Those customers have no problem wanting to help, but once you get in your truck and you’re going on to the next job, that customer is going to get distracted. They’re going to get dance recital or football practice or whatever else is going on in their life. It doesn’t mean that they don’t care about you and they weren’t impressed. Life happens. The way you ask goes a long way, but you have to make it seem like it’s meaningful and personally important to you. Not just going through your script that you’re supposed to do when you’re closing out a deal.

I can see some of our readers are thinking, “I love that, Ryan. How do I get my text to do that before they got back in the truck?” Diving into that would probably be a whole episode in itself.

That’s a fun topic, too.

I want to get back to something you said about COVID and what you saw with the different companies. You saw some that said, “I need to pull back. I need to feel safe.” That’s what I heard. I don’t know that you use that word. “I need to feel safer about my business. I’m going to let some people go. I’m going to protect the revenue that I had.” You saw other guys that were like, “Floor it. Let’s go.” The ones that floored it when COVID hit, they’re all of a sudden taking market share and are doing great. I know Jeremy mentioned this. I’ve had some clients who had their best year ever in 2020 because they didn’t get scared and they pushed through it. As a business owner, even a business leader, if you’re in that mindset of comfort like, “I need to protect the business,” how would someone break out of that? What are some of the things that you’ve seen work for breaking out of that comfort, be willing to take that risk, and push your business forward?

I would probably make an argument that most leaders only respond to fires and chaos. If something goes wrong, it jumps to their attention and they will do whatever they need to do to put out the fire, but sometimes, there are no fires. Sometimes, things are smooth. There’s not a problem. There’s not a squeaky wheel. In that case, I would make the argument that good leaders set fires. They create a problem that needs to be extinguished. Sometimes, that can be a little like, “The way that we’re deploying our technologies is worthless. We need to do better. We need to do better about the customer experience. We need to do better about how we answer the phones. What we’re doing is insufficient. It was good two years ago but it’s no longer sufficient.” The best leaders even in little things, when things are smooth, are going to create a fire. This also creates unity with their teams because now all the team can unite around putting out this one fire because the leader drew attention to it. It’s interesting. There’s always a case for a fire, to exist in a fire, and be extinguished as a team. Sometimes, it’s completely good if those fires are self-created.

I’m thinking of a couple of clients I know. When things get too simple or things are working too well, the owner will come in and he’ll be like, “What can we break? I need something to fix.” He’ll start his own fire. I love the way you explain that. For those people that don’t have that natural inclination to start fires, I know that you’re a big fan of learning, fluency, topics, and those kinds of things to enhance their skills. What are some tips or recommendations you have for our readers who don’t naturally go, “Everything’s looking good. Let’s start a fire so we can get better?” How do they overcome that?

Most leaders only respond to fires and chaos, especially those they create themselves. Click To Tweet

To the larger point there, I do encourage and recommend any continuing education, formal or not. If your background, for instance, is in plumbing. You’re a good plumber and you built up this business. Now you’re the owner of a plumbing business and you’re not turning wrenches anymore. Learn other skills that are complementary to help your business grow or at least the concepts. Take night classes at a community college to understand financial accounting. Push yourself to that so that you understand how to hold other people accountable. It doesn’t mean that you’re expected to be an accountant. That’s nonsense. Get yourself to the point of learning to find opportunities through hardship. That means flexing muscles that maybe you’ve never flex before you didn’t even know you had.

Sometimes, it means cross-training like going from plumbing to HVAC or some plumbing to accounting. Sometimes, that means getting an entirely different exposure. If you’ve been out of a truck for a while, get back in a truck for a week or two. Get an idea of what that’s like. It’s almost like the Undercover Boss. Get in the actual shoes and face your customers again head-on. That experience can go a long way. Eventually, you’re going to get yourself either the courage or the insight to either see a fire that you didn’t know was one or to create a fire where you didn’t know needed to be one. One of those two will happen if you push yourself to new boundaries.

Do you have a couple of real practical things that they can do to start that journey? It’s not that big part and not go back to continue education or anything, but 1 or 2 things that you’ve seen some of your clients use to break through and start that journey.

Generally speaking, one is to get involved with these trade groups online on Facebook. There are dozens of them. It doesn’t matter if you’re a roofer or if you do window sightings or if you do plumbing or HVAC. There are tons of groups online of guys like you who are always sharing best practices, things that work in their market, and things that they’re struggling with. It’s a great way to get peers around you. Two, get a part of a trade association that more formally does that training. There are tons of groups. In our space with plumbing and HVAC guys, one of the giants has a group called Nexstar. They do fantastic coaching from CSR training to sales training to inventory management.

They help make you become not a plumber, but a business owner and they help you transition to that road. I know that’s a lot of the work that you guys do with helping these guys build your business acumen and take the business up a notch so that the business isn’t running them, but they can run the business. Find people who’ve been there, who’ve been in your shoes, and have gone down that road before you and let them feed into you. Ask them the questions. Running a business of any type is lonely and exhausting. You don’t feel like you have anyone to talk to about the struggles you’re having or the fears that you’re facing.

There are other guys who feel just like you and they’re willing to help and engage. Use common sense. My recommendation is don’t try to talk with people in your same market space. That could be awkward. Find people in a larger group who don’t live in your area and let them help you. Those are easy things. That will require flexing muscles that you probably don’t know you have. There are other things are maybe more formal. For me personally, I took the route a few years ago of getting my MBA. That is not for everyone. It’s not at all. It was a way to formalize some training and some exposure and skillsets with various sorts of skills and expertise. Otherwise, I wouldn’t use it on a day-to-day, but it makes me a better business owner and it makes me help have more grounded business decisions.

Those are some great tips. A big thing in all of that was peer support. People that have been there already. You own a marketing company, so you probably know a thing or two about marketing. Isn’t that fair?

Sure.

One of the things that you’ve mentioned is these guys that pushed into marketing and how marketing can move the needle on the business. There’s this belief, “If I invest more in marketing, it’ll generate more leads, it’ll give me more sales, the business will be awesome, and everything will be great,” but then you have this line here, “Great marketing makes a bad product fail faster.” Contrary there, marketing isn’t always good. I know you believe that digital marketing can move the needle on your business, especially if you’re in that place where you’re looking to get out of the truck or you’re looking to get more trucks on the road. Help us with that a little bit. What are some ways our readers can use digital marketing to move the needle on their business?

I don’t want to get into the whole concept of it, but there’s an idea called a conversion funnel. Every person goes through this. Whether or not you’re buying a pair of shoes or a bike or a house or a toaster, it doesn’t matter. The idea is that people at the bottom of the funnel are ready to make a decision. For much of the trades in the blue-collar space, people aren’t sitting around their couch on a Thursday afternoon going, “I wonder what electrician is around me because I’m curious.” They don’t do that way. They only look for an electrician because something’s wrong. They need a solution now. There are some exceptions like in remodels, they’re going to take their time making a decision.

For the most part, a lot of the blue-collar trades are bottom of the funnel. Your customers are making a decision. That’s why you’re engaged. First off, tighten up the bottom of the funnel. If the bottom of the funnel has holes, your website doesn’t rank, your website doesn’t convert, and people can’t find you on Google My Business, if they do find you in Google My Business and your review suck, there is no step two without addressing those things. Those things have got to be dealt with. Otherwise, you’re going to pour good money after bad and it’s going to be wasting it. Tighten up the bottom of the funnel.

Find people who can help you navigate through your blind spots and become better. Click To Tweet

Once the bottom of the funnel is right and you know when people are looking for you, they’re finding you and once they hit your website, they’re converting. Once they find your GMB and they’re impressed with your reputation, then you move up the funnel. Start flushing out things like social media and start doing things like email, both cold email strategies and repeat nurture strategies. Try to find ways to stay in front of customer’s eyeballs. If you have a product or service, it’s a long acquisition process. I mentioned remodeling. Nobody is making a decision on a bathroom remodel tonight. Nobody’s going to do it. They’re going to take their time and look at different examples.

Hit them with the display retargeting ad. Keep these things in front of them. The whole bottom line is when you’re at the bottom of the funnel, which tends to be the problem, and it’s broken, it doesn’t matter how many billboards, TV, direct mail you run, or times you canvass a neighborhood with flyers. When people are trying to make the decision and they look for you, the tools and mechanisms in place will fail, hands down. If they fail, you wasted all that money. Make sure to focus on the bottom of the funnel. When you do that, it’s much easier to move up the funnel and that is when you start seeing those massive ROI impacts year over year.

What you said was to understand the way that your customers are making a buying decision. Nobody decides to remodel a bathroom tonight. If you’re running ads to get them to convert tonight, that’s probably not going to happen. I know if my toilet gets clogged and starts spilling out everywhere, I’m going to make that decision quickly. I’m not going to be shopping too much. Know your client and then focus on the thing that is going to convert them the quickest, which would be the bottom of the funnel. I love that. I want to go back to the two takeaways here that I got. I want to sum them up. The first one is to break out of discomfort. If you’re in a discomfort cycle or if you’re a little nervous about what’s going on in the economy today with COVID and other things, get involved in trade associations, peer support, and education. Improving yourself is what it is. Work on yourself, and then get the support you need. Is that accurate?

Yeah. The idea is that we all have blind spots, but you don’t know what they are, so you need other people around you who are better than you, smarter than you, and further down the road from you to help make you better. They help you see your blind spots in a way you can’t.

I love that description. The second one is if I want to use marketing to improve my business, don’t go into it thinking, “There are all these things and I’m going to do all of them.” It’s figuring out the way that your customers making the buying decision and focus on results there. Once you’ve got that good, then you can move up the funnel and start working on more of the longer-term staying in front of them and those kinds of things. We’ve talked about a lot here and I know there are some people going, “This sounds awesome, Ryan. I love your ideas. I love your thoughts, but how do I do this?” If they want to get ahold of you, how do they do that?

It’s easy. You can go visit our website at DPMarketing.Services and there’s a giant green button. Hit Schedule A Call and that will take you right to our calendar. We can get you on there and make an introduction and see what’s up in your world.

We’ve talked a lot about plumbing and HVAC, but you also work with home service companies in general, correct?

Yeah. Plumbing and HVAC is definitely our sweet spot, but for any crisis-oriented low trust business, we’re right up the alley. Nobody looks forward to having to call a plumber. Nobody looks forward to having to call a pest control guy. Any of those businesses that meet that low of the funnel, crisis mode, and don’t trust you from the get-go is our sweet spot.

For those readers that are willing to take you up on that learning recommendation that you gave and getting a little bit more knowledge about the business or marketing, you’ve got a free giveaway for them. Can you tell us about that?

We are giving away only ten copies. Here’s the deal. I wrote The Book On Digital Marketing: For Plumbing & HVAC Contractors. You’re welcome to pick it up on Amazon. For the readers of this podcast, we have a giveaway. If you go to our website, DPMarketing.Services/bcc, you’ll be able to sign up. The first ten people who sign up will be able to get this in the mail. There’s no pressure. It does walk you through check marking of how to set up your website, how to set up your ads, and how to go through social media planning. It is a tactical book to guide you through how you make decisions. If nothing else, I know a lot of our guys use it that we work with to fact check these marketers who talked to them because there’s no BS, crap, or snake oil. It’s process, science, and methodology. Use it as a guide to making sure you’re not being sold a bunch of crap. Use it to grow your business or whatever you do. For the first ten people who sign up, we got that on the house and we even cover shipping.

Thanks, Ryan. If you’re reading this and you want to know more about this marketing and being able to fact check the guys that are already calling on you or if you even want to get ahold of Ryan, go check out his website. Ryan, I want to thank you for being here with us. I’ve learned a lot and had a great conversation. I know that our readers are going to think that this information is relevant and valuable. Thank you.

It was my pleasure. Thanks for the invite.

Thanks, Ryan.

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About Ryan Redding

There’s nothing more deflating than sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. You know that to get more customers you need more leads- and to get more leads you need better marketing. The problem is you’re not a marketing expert; you’re an HVAC or plumbing pro.

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I get it. That’s why I’ve developed a proven process that helps dozens of HVAC and plumbing contractors 8x their revenue. Let’s get you more leads so you can make more money.

Putting Professionalism Back Into The Trades With Dennis Gehman

Ryan Englin · December 16, 2020 ·

On today’s podcast, Ryan Englin and Jeremy Macliver talk to Dennis Gehman about the importance of industry associations and increasing the remodeling industry’s professionalism. Dennis comes from the design and remodeling industry, and he’s the president-elect of NARI, a well-known industry association. Don’t miss this episode as Dennis shares how NARI is helping to increase the professionalism of the remodeling industry. He also reveals the biggest myths about industry associations from a business owner’s perspective and talks about the advantages of joining NARI or any national association.

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Putting Professionalism Back Into The Trades With Dennis Gehman

I’m excited about our guest. He’s been involved in his industry for a lot of years and I’m going to let him talk a little bit more about that. He comes from the design and remodeling industry. He’s the president-elect of a well-known industry association. He’s got a lot of certifications behind him. There are a lot of things that his company is known for, and he’s very involved in the community and in the industry. I want to welcome Dennis Gehman of Gehman Design Remodeling. Thank you, Dennis, for being here.

You’re welcome. Thank you. I’m looking forward to this conversation.

Help me out with this. We’re going to talk a lot about NARI and industry associations. What is one of the biggest myths about industry associations from a business owner’s perspective?

The biggest myth is that people think they’re going to join and they’re going to have all their questions and problems solved right away. It’s not the case. Our industry at least is ever-changing from new products, new laws, new OSHA regulations. The reality is most of us have come up through the trades. We were a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, and then decided to venture out on our own. Generally speaking, we know the trades well, but we don’t know the business side. Many people weren’t the best students in school, which may be why they got into the trades. Therefore, they’re not real avid readers and taking the time to get on podcasts, webinars and that kind of stuff. It takes time.

Because I’m looking at the association and you told me I’m not going to get all my problems solved right when I joined, what are the advantages of joining NARI or any national association?

I’ll speak from the remodelers’ side. Our association is NARI, an acronym for National Association of the Remodeling Industry. What you’re going to get is we’re fortunate that we have a staff headquartered outside of Chicago. We had people there that are staying on top of current education, top of new products, new laws and new OSHA regulations. That information is put out in a number of different ways. Some are through local chapters. We have 43 chapters across the country. They’re not everywhere. Also, there’s a weekly email newsletter that comes out every Wednesday and that is packed full. I have to admit, I don’t always get time to read it all because there’s too much information, but I can see the headings. If there was something new and something I haven’t learned about before, I can jump onto that.

I used to run a structural steel company and I was a part of a national steel association, Steel Erectors Association of America. Being with other people and learning that they had the same problems that I had, and they were in the same challenges that I was in. They were overcoming them in different ways. One guy would have a good strong ability to manage a safety program, while another one was stronger at the bid package. Being able to collaborate with people that were intentional about their businesses, it’s a huge value of the association. All of the stuff that’s going on and them helping us through the steel excise changes, all of those kinds of things. It sounds like that’s what they’re getting from being a part of NARI.

As much as I value the education, the good speakers, the webinars and podcasts, to me, the best value is the opportunity to get to know some other remodelers. Many times, at local chapter, they might be your competitors. One of the things that I’ve learned through NARI is that I’m okay with a good solid competitor. It’s Chuck in the truck with his dog that I don’t always see eye to eye on, and who doesn’t know his own value so he’s not charging enough for what it is. That opportunity to network and since I’ve been involved so long, I have friends all across the country. Unfortunately, we’re not doing a whole lot of meeting in person. I still know that I can pick up the phone and give people a call and shoot out an email. We have mastermind groups where people join. That’s a group of 8 to 12 contractors who are not direct competitors. They meet on a regular basis, typically once a month. The group that I’m a part of that has been going for several years now. We have a lot more interaction than just once a month. There are texts going back and forth or emails several times a week.

Being a part of a mastermind shows you that other people are going through the same business challenges. Click To Tweet

Tell us a little bit about the masterminds because that’s an exciting and unusual thing to see in associations. It’s impressive. I’d like to know a little bit more about some of the takeaways that you’ve had from being a part of that mastermind.

It’s very much like you said. It’s knowing that there are other people going through the same challenges in business that I am. Sometimes it can feel lonely. You don’t feel like you can always talk with your employees about it. My wife works in our business. She’s a good person to bounce things off of but it’s nice to have that outside perspective as well. We have a facilitator for the mastermind groups. Each of us commits and puts our signature to a confidentiality agreement at the beginning that we’re not going to go telling everybody else about the woes, the good or bad of the people that we’re talking with. We were planning to get-together in person, but because of COVID that didn’t happen.

Some of us have met at various trade shows or that kind of stuff. The camaraderie is very good. Somebody who is looking to hire another salesperson said, “Before I do this, that I’d like to probably revise the job description. Does anybody have one?” Within a few hours, 3 or 4 of us shot our job descriptions off to him. We copied everybody. Now, we all have these things and I haven’t yet had time to read through in detail the others. I think there’s some good information there that I can tweak ours and make it better too.

When I was 25, I joined a mastermind group for the first time. It’s a trade-based one where it was a whole bunch of collision center owners all across the country which is noncompeting. The guard goes down and all the numbers flow. You’re exactly right. You got people inside your own business and stuff that you can chat about to a certain level, but there’s something about having an outside influence. It’s more than just an outside influence. It’s a consistent outside influence from the same people that love, know you and care about you. They don’t sell you nothing. They don’t pitch you nothing. They’re your friend in business. That completely transformed several of my views of the way business works and learning what other real entrepreneurs were doing. That’s amazing that you guys have those throughout your association there.

It’s a cool benefit. I think one of the biggest values for me is that at the end of every session and we do a Zoom call, it’s an hour and a half. We’re always asked, “What are your takeaways and what are you going to do as a result of it?” Those are all written down. We know that when we come back the next month, we’re going to get asked what we did about it.

We spend all day long holding everybody else accountable. Even though as entrepreneurs, we do our best to be accountable. We say to our employees that they can call us out if we didn’t do that. The reality is sometimes they’re not as forthcoming as we are to them, even when we tried to create that open honest culture. I love the masterminds. That’s amazing that NARI has that. You’ve gotten to experience all this through the association. You’re seeing different businesses interact, how they function and stuff. What is something that you see that holds all the businesses back? What’s a major thing that you’re like, “I see a pattern in this?”

It is a skilled labor shortage. I know that’s not unique to the remodeling industry, but it’s a pretty big deal. Most people that I talk to, we could be doing more business and more volume if we could find the tradespeople to produce it. That’s not something that’s going to get fixed overnight. Those conversations need to happen with our local schools, probably starting at the middle school, junior high school level, and realizing that college is not for everyone. I don’t have anything bad to say about college. I did one year before I dropped out. It was a good year. I don’t regret doing that at all. Life took me in a different direction.

I have spoken for the last few years at Arizona State’s career technical education conference. Due to COVID, it got canceled. I was on the docket for being one of the main speakers there. It’s challenging the school system to look at college a little bit different. Let me get on a soapbox for just a second because I’m not against college at all. In fact, I think it’s done a lot of great things, but the numbers are the numbers. I can’t speak for the whole nation because I live here in Arizona and I studied Arizona to prepare for these speeches. When you look at high school graduates that don’t go to college and high school graduates that don’t finish their first year of college. Those two categories make up about 70% of the population. What I’ve pushed for years is to transform our messaging that just because you’ve chosen a different route other than college, it doesn’t mean you’re destined to dig ditches for the rest of your life.

BCC 1 | Increasing Professionalism — Increasing Professionalism: The biggest myth people have about joining industry association is thinking they will have all their questions answered and problems solved right away.

I don’t believe that every student that performed at C level or below is not intelligent. I believe that the school system wasn’t designed for their intelligence. What I mean by that is some people are very hands-on and tactical. I’ve been out there working with guys in the field. They look at it and draw something with a chalk on the ground fast. They say, “If you did this little thing, this connection will hold that. It will slip and it will fall into place.” They got Geometry, Physics and all these complex things. They could never in a million years articulate that in a textbook. They just look at you like, “This easy.”

They pull out a piece of chalk out of their pocket and scribble it right on the concrete out on this job site. It took Trigonometry and I don’t know what all those other big things to figure it out. I love that you’re passionate about that. I believe that we’ve undersold many people and we could increase our potential in the market. When I run the steel company, we started working with the high schools and attracting a lot of kids out of it. There were a lot of kids that didn’t have the ambition. They didn’t see college as the way to go. You can make a real good living in the trades.

A lot of the work I do is working with employers to help them attract good people. Sometimes it is kids right out of college. I know that there are a lot of arguments on both sides about why kids are not getting into the trades. There’s a lot of promotion from organizations like Build Your Future and these local co-ops to get kids attracted to the trades. One of the things that I want to suggest is a lot of what’s going on and the difficulty, I feel that business owners have done it to themselves. They haven’t kept up with the times. The unfortunate truth is, Dennis, I don’t know about your area but out here in Arizona, whether you want to believe it or not, Amazon is a direct competitor of the trades when it comes to hiring good people. I can make $15 an hour and I can sit in an air-conditioned living room and answer calls. One of the biggest challenges I’ve seen with a lot of businesses in the trades is that they haven’t stepped up and said, “We are now competing against Amazon for talent.”

One of the easiest things we can do is realize that almost 90% of job seekers are online looking for jobs. If they can’t find our jobs, we’re going to have a tough time recruiting them, whether it’s an apprenticeship program or it’s just general labor or even the skilled craft worker. I’d like to ask, what are some of the things that you’ve seen around that? It sounds like you’re very passionate about the skilled labor shortage and helping businesses overcome that. What are some of the things that you’ve seen work and some of the things that you have seen not work that we need to stop doing as an industry?

Some of them are what you guys have already talked about. For the most part, it’s going to start with local. It’s grassroots. Each of us as business owners of a small blue-collar industry should get involved in our local schools and the trade schools as well to get the word out there. I hadn’t thought about Amazon as a competitor, but you’re exactly right. What I think about in our area. We are in the biggest meat-packing area for that kind of industry East of the Mississippi River. Both pork and beef are local here. They got big banners out front that are telling you that you start at anywhere from $17.75 an hour to $24.50. They’re herding for employees too, but they’re doing their part to put it out there.

One of the challenges at least in the home improvement industry, few people are interested in growing their business all that large. Some of that is because by and large, we don’t have the leadership skills and management skills. Many of us want to continue working with the tools and that somewhat limits us, unless you want to hire a general manager or somebody to take that on for you. That’s one aspect. How do you learn those skills? First, you have to have interests. You’re exactly right, Ryan, that if they don’t find us online or by some other method, how do they even know that it’s a possibility or that it’s an option? Just the thing of talking to the young people at my church, we got three young men who are working with us now.

They go to our church, but that’s the way it is. Most of us connect with people who are in your circles in some way and going outside of them. The local chamber of commerce, letting people there know that you’re looking for people. Getting involved like Jeremy talked about there in Arizona. I imagine Pennsylvania has something similar, but I’m not aware of it because I haven’t been involved. Career days at the local high schools and the tech schools. It’s getting the word out in that way.

One other thing that I’ve seen that held a lot of the trade businesses back in this recruiting effort and the war on talent is they’ve struggled to communicate the why behind going into the trades. Some of that almost sounds white-collar-ish. Other organizations have clearly communicated, “We’re going to do this.” I’ve worked with a lot of different companies to establish, “Why on Earth are you even working here? What are you doing?” One particularly I think of is another steel story. I was driving with a superintendent and we’re riding along here in Phoenix. It’s a large spread-out town. He started telling me, “I helped build that.”

One of the challenges, at least in the home improvement industry, is that few people are interested in growing their business. Click To Tweet

Finally, he’s sharing all these stories. I was like, “I helped built Phoenix.” There’s some pride in that. Forget this stupid job. When we can connect that person to something, they can become passionate about it because people are looking to belong to something. I find it in the trades all the time like, “We are transforming the way that plumbing supply chains work.” I have a client that’s working on that. That’s what they’re doing there. They’re not just selling plumbing supplies. They’re transforming the way plumbing supply chains work. That’s their goal. They can rally a team around it. They can pull people in and they’re like, “No, I get $15 at Amazon. I get $15 here, but here we’re going to make a difference.” My boss is helping me and they’re transforming it. It’s so much more fun. I know that work is not about being fun, but we do need to be clear about why are we doing this? That’s one area that I see that the trades has struggled to articulate.

I’m thinking outside of the box. I have one guy that works with us for years. He went to college for three years. He didn’t finish, but he was an art major. He didn’t know which field. Is that going to be painting, drawing or ceramics? It turns out the medium that he does that gives him an opportunity for his artistic creative is doing remodeling work. He does beautiful finished carpentry work and cabinets. Letting people know that they have that opportunity. On the design side, on the interior design schools and so forth, that’s another way of showing your artistic ability. For some people, they want to be able to work with the tools. Once they’re introduced to them, it takes off from there.

Summing up this because we had some good conversation here. There are several points for our readers out there that you can take a look at your recruiting efforts and say, “Are we doing everything we can?” As Dennis said, “Are we involved in our local communities, schools and our circle of influence? Are we active in an association where we’re learning best practices, job descriptions, or right things around that? Are we communicating the why behind what we’re doing? Are we making sure that it’s visible online and areas that they would spend time in? Are we comparing our ads to those of equal salary compensation and not just our trade?”

Look at your whole entire recruiting effort from that perspective. Maybe you’ll find some areas that you can go and take it off to the next level. What I’d like to do now, Dennis, is we’ve challenged you in a lot of different ways. We asked you a lot of different questions. I would love for you from the association perspective to say what’s something you would love to challenge our audience to go do, to take action and to review?

The core purpose of NARI is to increase professionalism within the remodeling industry. Unfortunately, in most states, the ease of becoming a remodeling or home improvement contractor is pretty easy. I do sincerely believe most people know the trade that they’re going to be working with, but they don’t understand the business side of things. That’s what gets them in trouble. That’s why some contractor from our industry ends up pulling 20/20 or 60 minutes every year as the contractor who took people’s money and didn’t finish the job.

Unfortunately, we can’t change what everyone does. NARI teaches people how to be good business people, how to treat your clients and employees fairly, and put systems and processes in place to be able to do that so that you don’t have to work night and day. Being a small business owner shouldn’t be a 24/7 thing. There is life outside of work. You’re a better person when you realize that. You have hobbies and have time for family and to give back to your community in doing that kinds of things. When you get to the point where hopefully you’ll be able to retire financially, you don’t have to think about what you’re going to do because you have some other things rather than saying, “I don’t know. I’ve just worked all my life. I guess I’ll just sit here.” In my mind, that’s a recipe for somebody who soon passes away.

I hear that challenge is saying, “Go out there and figure out what your passions are.” Particularly for those that are in the remodeling industry to restore professionalism back to it. Normally, we let the challenge just sit there and let the audience do it. I’m going to flip it back on you just a little bit here if that’s okay. How is NARI helping increase the professionalism of the remodeling industry?

The first thing that people be aware of when they submit an application for membership, part of what you need to put your signature to and commit to is a code of ethics that says you’re going to do the right things. I don’t have these memorized but if people want to see any of this information, they could go to NARI.org. It’s all there. There’s a consumer side as well as a contractor side to that. We’re doing it by putting the information out there. We can’t force people to read it, to take the webinars and those kinds of things. There are lots of great information. We have our fall educational conference. It’s going to be virtual. This is the first time we’ve done that. Typically, that’s an in-person meeting somewhere in the country. There’s still time. People can register to that even up to the last minute if they want to.

As I said, head knowledge is good, but you have to put it into action. When you go to a conference, there’s no way you can ever put everything into action that you learn. Pick 1 or 2 items and then focus on those. The next time you come back, you hear maybe some new things or you hear something again. It’s a work in process. You have many years in business. We have a lot of good things going for us here. There are still areas for improvement. Some of that is because I have a thick head and I need to hear things a whole bunch of times. Too often, it’s learning because we lost a lot of money because we did it that way. If we change how we’re doing things, hopefully that won’t happen again.

The best mistakes to learn from are other people’s. Unfortunately, that’s not the ones we typically choose to learn from. What I hear is NARI’s goal and mission is to increase the professionalism of the remodeling industry. They do that through conferences where you’re going to get tons of great information too much to even absorb and execute all of it, but you’re going to get tons of that. You have weekly newsletters. You have industry involvement and industry best practices. You even have a mastermind to pull a lot of that accountability into the real world to change them. It’s all compiled around the code of ethics and making a difference in the remodeling industry. Is that how you see it?

You summed it up very well. Thank you.

For everybody that’s out there reading and is in the remodeling industry, I’m going to put it passionately. I know Dennis probably wouldn’t say it as strong as I’m getting ready to say it, go to NARI.org and join up because we do need to change the way we look at the trades. If we change the way our professionalism, if we change the way we act, if we changed the way we communicate, it is going to help us to solve that biggest problem that’s holding us back and that’s hiring. Dennis, it’s been good having you. I’ve enjoyed this. I look forward to anything in the future.

Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it as well. I appreciate your time.

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About Dennis Gehman

Founder of Gehman Design Remodeling, Dennis Gehman brings over 30 years of experience in the construction industry. When you meet him, you’ll instantly feel welcomed, respected, and understood. You’ll connect with him immediately. Humble and mild-mannered, Dennis focuses on the big picture as well as the small details on how to best serve you. As GDR’s President, Dennis’s role requires him to wear many hats. As a Remodeling Consultant, he listens closely to your needs, wants, and ideas to translate, through his design and construction experience, into a project that will meet or exceed your expectations. While ultimately the buck stops with Dennis, he’s grateful for the team members who do an excellent job in handling things so that projects can continue without needing to wait for him. Working at GDR is an absolute joy for Dennis as he enjoys interacting with clients working with the experience of our team to achieve the goals for each project. As GDR continues to embrace its “green” journey, so is Dennis. While some are going green for the cost-saving and environment-preserving benefits, Dennis believes this way of life is simply a way to show his gratitude toward being on this earth. “To me, being green reminds me of how God has blessed us with beautiful earth to live on and take care of. The least I can do as part of my worship to Him is to be a good steward of what I have control over.” Dennis is the husband of wife Glenda, proud father of grown sons Elijah and Aaron and daughters Kaela and Teesha. He is a charter member of Bucks-Mont NARI (National Association of the Remodeling Industry) and a member of the National Kitchen and Bath Association. Dennis devotes a significant portion of his life to giving back to the community, as he served as a past board chair and is currently a building committee member for Spruce Lake Retreat and a board member for Greater Philadelphia Joni and friends. In 1986, Dennis and his wife Glenda became founding members of the Covenant Community Fellowship. He is a graduate of Christopher Dock Mennonite High School, attended Eastern Mennonite University in Camping, Recreation & Youth Ministry. Outside the construction industry, Dennis worked as a Christian camp counselor and a Program Director at a Christian camp. When he’s not at the office or volunteering his time for an important cause (multiple ones in his case), Dennis can be found reading, camping, and motorcycle riding.