Podcast Episode

How To Grow With Your Customer With John Jantsch

Ryan Englin · September 8, 2021 ·

How do you make your business grow with your customers? We learn how to do that and more in this episode. Ryan Englin sits down for an interview with marketing consultant and author John Jantsch. John and Ryan discuss marketing myths and talk about what you can do to scale with your customers. Learn more about marketing and scaling your business in this conversation.

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How To Grow With Your Customer With John Jantsch

I am super excited about our guest. I have been a fan of him since the early 2000s, when I read his first book. It got me thinking differently about marketing, relationships and the way we communicate with our target market. Our guest is a marketing consultant, speaker and author. You may have heard of one of his books. He’s got Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. In fact, he’s got a new book coming out, which we’re going to spend time talking about. John Jantsch, thank you for being on the show.

BCC 58 | Grow With Customer — The Ultimate Marketing Engine: 5 Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth

Ryan, thanks for having me. I appreciate the support.

I love the idea that you have a new book coming out. I can’t wait to read it but before we jump into that, what is one of the biggest myths about your industry? What is something you want to dispel for all of our audience?

The biggest is and it seems to have grown bigger in the last couple of years is the marketing is this complex deal, particularly digital marketing. I’ve probably spent the last couple of decades acknowledging the new platforms and things that have come along but also trying to teach people what not to do because the real allure to try to be everywhere, to be all things and do all this is causing a great deal of stress. I show people how to simplify.

I saw this infographic one time of all the social media platforms you can be on. They had to make it so tiny to fit on one piece of paper. You couldn’t even see the logos. It seems like it’s changing so fast. What’s your recommendation? How do we overcome that?

The real key starts with getting very narrow about who your ideal customer is to start with because that will help dictate a little bit of where you need to be because logic is you need to be where they are. You need to be where your ideal customer is getting their information. The second part is to fully understand the problem that you’re uniquely suited to solve for them. When you get those two pieces, you’ve got your messaging down then you can focus on guiding that group and that group only through the journey they’re already going on. You have to be there in that place. That allows you to do a lot less and not chase every new social media platform.

Be the big fish in the small pond. That’s what I heard there. Find out who your group is and go after them. I love that. We spend a lot of time on this show talking about hiring. We talk about how so many people think it is the number one issue in America for small businesses. It’s how do they find good people. Our approach is very unique. We believe that recruiting is a marketing activity. This is going to be a good conversation but I want to know a little bit more about the book you have coming out. How people can use marketing in that sense to build referral partnerships, to get their network or their tribe to come in and help them solve some of these challenges they’re having?

You need to be where your ideal customer is getting their information. Click To Tweet

Before I answer that, I will tell you that for years, I’ve said that marketing is everything. Hiring fits into that equation. This new book is called The Ultimate Marketing Engine: 5 Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth. Probably the biggest premise of the book is that we grow a business with our customers. That first gets into understanding. I encourage people to narrow their focus to the top 20% of the folks they’re working with, with the idea that you can completely understand them. You can communicate in a way that says, “You are for me. You’re going to solve my problems.” I’ll tell you, it’s interesting.

The biggest challenge that a lot of businesses have is if I’m a remodeling contractor, anybody that owns a home is my potential customer. Even though I’m doing high-end, bespoke work like kitchen engine things, I’m still fixing gutters for people or at least I give that impression that I am. You drill down and understand who makes an ideal customer and the problem that you’re solving for them. It’s not that you’re designing a new kitchen for them. Anybody can get a new kitchen if they’ve got craftspeople, the assumption may not be true but it’s how you get it done, the experience that they have.

Anybody that’s remodeled a kitchen knows what a disaster that can be to a family’s routine. The process of how that gets done and the company that can get it done in a way that is less disruptive, that communicates and all the things that make it a good experience, that’s the problem that they solve. It’s not building the kitchen. It’s the process of how you got there. If you understand who you’re working for and the problem you solve for them then you can start communicating to the world that, “This is what we do. This is how we’re different,” in a way that’s going to attract more of them. It also is going to teach, in a lot of ways, a client how to be ideal.

If you have a certain process in place for onboarding, for getting work done, getting communication and you’re communicating that all along in the marketing part of your business, you’re going to attract more of that ideal customer and that ideal customer because you’re providing so much value is such a good fit. Some percentages of them are going to want to do 10 times or 100 times as much business with you. Rather than chasing every odd opportunity that comes along, you narrow your focus and then you grow with that customer.

Targeting who that ideal customer is and figure out what that problem is you’re solving. It’s not the new kitchen. Maybe it’s because your wife loves to entertain and she’s embarrassed by the quality of the kitchen she has. That’s what you’re helping them with. You said a couple of times, “It was subtle but I loved the process.” Have a process with this. It sounds so easy and common sense. You got to have a process. It blows my mind how many people I talked to that have never thought about putting a process in when it comes to how they deliver and the value they bring. Not just get the work done but how do you turn that one kitchen into ten kitchens or to that next big project.

The thing that’s funny too about that is sometimes they have a process or at least somebody in the organization has a process. That’s how they get the job done or get the work accomplished but they haven’t thought about it being their unique process, unique enough to document, to brand and to maybe communicate. “Here’s the process we’re going to go down.” We’re together because it’s a great marketing message and marketing materials to show somebody that you’ve got a professional process.

You’ve done it enough and you do it well enough that you can tell them it’s only three steps. It might take a year to get through all three steps but if you’ve got three steps and you can break it down that way, it does elevate that level of professionalism.

We had a client years ago that we developed this fortnight. It’s a remodeling contractor that I’ve worked with for going on over two decades. We outlined all the steps in the remodeling process. We called it the remodeling curve because, in their particular business, there are parts that approved the plans that are high. Drywall sanding is way down here. They went through and had about 47 steps along the way. They said, “Here’s how you’re going to feel during each of these.” Not only did they show that they have a very documented outlined process, they used it as a way to set expectations too.

That’s one of the things we talk about when it comes to building a team or partnerships. Often, these relationships don’t work out because expectations aren’t met, whether they’re spoken or not. Everybody walks into a relationship with expectations. It’s our job to say, “Here’s what the real expectations are and here’s what you can expect.” That’s fantastic.

I often tell businesses that our job is to lower their expectations because then they’re easier to exceed.

Someone told me a long time ago, “Do what you say you’re going to do and never say what you’re going to do.” It’s a very easy way to lower expectations. Let’s talk about these building partnerships. That’s a big part of the book. What’s that look like? What do you mean by partnerships?

I’ll re-emphasize something I said already. This idea of growing with our customers is a great, beautiful way to grow. We all have probably experienced getting a referral. You get that referral from an ideal customer. A lot of times that’s great because that ideal customer probably knows somebody else who’s like them. They don’t ask about price as much or at least that’s not high on the list. They typically remain more loyal. They might refer people too. It’s a great, beautiful circle with this idea of referrals.

In the book, what I try to do is say, “That’s great. You know that that’s valuable. Let’s do something about it intentionally. Let’s set up some processes where we are reminding our customers at least quarterly why it would be smart for them to refer us. Let’s reward our champion customers, those ones that are already referring us.” What could we do special for them, bring them together and impact the entire ecosystem of our best customers? If we are providing services of one kind, we know that they probably need all the other things.

Let’s say a homeowner. They need all the other things in their home fixed. Could we build a strategic partner network where we could go in at any time and say, “We did this great project. I know that you might have this project and this project coming up. We have a couple of great partners. Here’s 10% off for the next time you need them.” They’re doing that for you when they’re going on their service calls as well. This idea of intentionally bubbling up the fact that people want to refer you by making it easy is a big part of what I have had for years. I wrote another book, The Referral Engine, that’s all about referrals but in this particular book, I bring it into an overarching strategy as well.

It got me thinking when you were talking. As business owners, it’s the wrong perception of our clients. They’re happy. Referring is as easy. They don’t need our help. If they want to refer us, they’ll refer us. It’s like testimonials. Not everybody has the skillset to give you a good, well-thought-out testimonial, which is why you see so many reviews with just a star rating, no words. It’s equipping them and helping them through that process.

The idea of growing with our customers is a great, beautiful way to grow. Click To Tweet

Making it as easy as possible is one of the real keys. Everybody is so busy. The idea that somebody is going to stop what they’re doing and say, “I’m going to go do this.” The beautiful thing, as human beings, if we exceed people’s expectations and we surprised them, there are a lot of people out there that will be motivated to talk about it. “Look how smart I was to hire this company.” We want to take advantage of that.

How do you go about finding these partners and building these relationships?

The first place is to ask your customers. Who’s best in class that they work with? That to me is the first step because then you’ve got a mutually shared client or customer so it’s a great logical place to start. Their reputation and doing some research online, you can find people. Here’s what I recommend people doing them. If you take this mindset that, “I want to build this partner team of best of class providers,” first and foremost, when my client or my customer needs something, I have somebody to refer them to.

Nobody goes on your list because you think they can get you referrals. They go on your list because they’d be a great partner for you to provide to your clients. I would recommend building that list, maybe 8, 10 people. Send them a letter that says, “I have customers that I think might be able to use services like what you provide. I wonder if you could teach me the best way to introduce you to my customers.” If you got that letter, wouldn’t you at least go, “I’m going to check this person out?” They say, “I don’t know who you are but you want to refer me to your customers? Sure. Let’s talk.” That’s the way that you get on somebody’s radar.

You’ve got to have something that can activate the relationship. Can you interview them on your podcast, write guest content or provide guest content for their website? Could you do a video interview? If you do some sort of how-to educational series, could you offer that to their customers or their community for free? Recruit these folks but then have a way to activate them. Maybe there’s a co-marketing thing. You could all have your service technicians be passing out each other’s discounts when they go in and make calls.

There are so many good nuggets there in being able to start the conversation with those partners. What’s the next step? How do you make sure it moves forward? I’ll tell you, I’ve had this experience many times where we start this partnership, it’s great and then it fizzles out. Nobody knows what that next step is.

That’s why I say it’s so key to have that next step, have a workshop that you could do, have the content that you could create, do a podcast interview. If possible, become a customer or offer a service. I’m in the professional services business. I could go to strategic partners and say, “Let me do an analysis of your marketing or let me review your website just so you know how I work.” I’m not trying to sell that person anything. I just want them to experience how I work. A lot of times, even though we have a great meeting, we say, “Let’s work together.” We don’t have full confidence in how it’s going to work or how they’re going to work. You got to find ways to go deeper. You might even get together the three of you say, do offer a webinar or some educational step so that you’re all inviting each other’s folks there so you’re cross-pollinating in a way.

A lot of it too is finding people that are like-minded. They have that servant’s heart. When you were talking about getting that letter, the first thing I thought of was something I learned in BNI, givers gain. It’s that give the first mentality with zero expectation of anything in return because you want to be more valuable to your clients or more valuable in the community. That’s fantastic. There’s one question I want to ask you. Something that we teach when we’re helping people recruit is developing partnerships when it comes to who’s out in the marketplace. Who’s out there having these conversations with workers who may be looking at another job?

We teach a marketing plan process for how do you get in front of these partners. What are some things that we could do to open up that relationship besides that 10% discount? What are some of the things that you’ve seen work so that it’s easy to transition into, “Can we maybe help each other to hire some people? I might have people that might work better for you or they might work better for me and we can start getting out there and supporting each other.”

That’s another aspect of your strategic partner network. In most instances, your strategic partner network or non-competing businesses also have your ideal customer in mind but they’re probably in tangential industries. The idea of co-marketing for hiring ought to be part of the consideration with your strategic partners as well. We have a client that is looking for skilled trade lead carpenters. They’ve gotten together with a couple of other trades. They are doing apprenticeship programs and hiring fairs to where you come in. There are lots of those out there but these are very reputable names. They’re coming together and saying, “There are a couple of opportunities.” You want to get into the skilled trades of one shape or another. All of the educational institutions are looking for people that can teach or at least speak to those types of job opportunities. Doing a lot of outreach in the community is a big part as well.

Community involvement is big. I talk a lot of times about small businesses in particular. If you’re still involved in the day-to-day of your business, you’re still a small business. You might have 200 employees and you’re still a small business. If people can’t find you, they can’t apply for your jobs. I’m sure you talk about that when it comes to branding, marketing and everything else. If they can’t find you, they can’t become your customer.

Rather than chasing every odd opportunity that comes along, narrow your focus and then grow with that customer. Click To Tweet

What’s interesting is hiring messages. Hiring advertising is a pretty decent brand message unless it’s desperate with people. The fact that you are hiring and continuing to grow is a decent brand message for a lot of businesses too. If you start thinking, “This is very expensive,” and you’re shifting some of your budget that you might be spending on attracting clients, you can feel comfortable that if it’s placed in the right places, it will have the impact of building your brand as well.

You’re a credible source when it comes to marketing. We teach a process around redirecting advertising. Ads that attract good people will attract good clients but the other isn’t exactly true.

You might not be in a position to do this but we’ve all seen the particular industries that are like, “Marble countertop discount only today.” That’s all their messaging as opposed to messaging about the company and what it believes. That type of messaging in your marketing certainly is going to go a long way towards attracting people who believe those values who want to work there as well. Promoting your people, that they’re happy and doing great work. Having processes where you treat customers fairly, all of that goes into your ability to hire.

I was thinking about having those well-defined processes and creating these partnerships. Much of it has to do with, “Are you aligned? Do you have the same value system? Do you think the same way?” Those are the best partnerships.

I know because you focus on this so much too. Not having those processes until having balls dropped by no fault of the employee who happens to be there facing the brunt of the ball being dropped. It wears on people. Having great service, great values in action and having processes makes for happier employees. We’re square into the retention idea.

We’ve talked about having this process and some of this messaging. Any tips for our audience on how they can start working on that?

Guess who knows the answer? It’s your customers. Your ideal customers know what you do that nobody else is doing for them. Make it a point to talk to 8 or 10 happy customers. This is not research. You’re not doing NPS scoring or anything. This is you finding out the real things that people buy from you, the real problems that you solve for folks. I’ll give you an example. We worked with a tree service years ago. All of their website, their messaging, family owns, third-generation are all good stuff.

I’ll tell you another goldmine. First off, get those Google reviews but then scan them because you’re going to see so much messaging and the words that people say in a Google Review. Not just the five stars but the paragraph of, “Here’s what we get that nobody else does for us.” Back to my tree service, we interviewed their customers, scan their Google reviews. About 50% of them said some combination of, “They show up when they said they would and they clean up the job site every time.”

I don’t think anybody even talked much about the tree coming down beautifully. “If you got a chainsaw on a truck, you’d cut a tree down but you showed up exactly what you said you were going to so I didn’t have to wait for four hours. When I came home at the end of the day from work, I could hardly tell you were there.” That’s the problem they were solving for their ideal customers because we’ve all had the opposite of those things. It’s not just getting trees cut down. It’s pretty much everything that you have done probably on your home. That became their core message. Their strategy for their business is to build a whole on-time guarantee around it and communicated that because the customers told them, “Here’s what’s important to us.” I will tell you. Shockingly sometimes, it’s little simple things that you assume everybody else does but they don’t.

It has nothing to do with taking care of trees at all. You said there was a goldmine as well. Was that it?

That’s what I’m saying, those Google reviews you should be scanning. If you’ve got over 25 five-star Google reviews, I guarantee you that there are blog post ideas in there, email subject lines and messaging that probably should go above the fold on your website before you ever talk about all the great stuff that you do. You should be promising to solve your ideal customer’s greatest problem.

First off, if you don’t have Google Reviews, let’s solve that problem first but if you do, go through, read them and take the time to get to hear what your clients are saying about you.

If you don’t think prospective employees are looking at those, you’re crazy.

I’m close to 80% until job seekers Google the company first. The first thing that comes up for a lot of companies is not even their website.

No especially local businesses. It’s the map pack.

It’s the map, the Yelp or the Google reviews, all those things that you have less control over. Make sure you stay on top. This is great. Anything else you want to share about partnerships with us? There’s a whole book out there about this. I love that it’s five steps to ridiculously consistent growth. It’s only five. It’s probably a couple of hundred-page books though.

It’s a couple of hundred-page books. I’ll go through the five steps. Map where your best customers are and where they want to go. That’s a big innovation that I’m trying to bring to the world here. Most of our customers come to us in a certain stage, with certain characteristics and certain challenges. We can recognize that they’re in that stage that’s why they become a prospect or a customer. My idea is what would the next stage look like for them and the next? We were able to build our entire service offerings and processes around helping them achieve the milestones that would move them to the next stage.

It’s not just about solving nowadays’ problems, it’s about helping them in the future. That’s a different way of thinking about it.

It’s wherever they want to go. Not whether we’re here to sell them. What’s the transformation that we could ultimately provide? That’s a big one. Uncover the real problem you solve for your ideal customers. That’s step number two. That’s all about some of the things we’ve been talking about getting at that messaging. Step number three is going to challenge some people. Narrow your focus to the top 20% of your ideal customers. It’s a tough one and 20% arbitrary but what I have seen over the years is that there is a product or a service that you offer that typically is producing most of your profit for a certain type of customer yet when I go to your homepage, there are 27 services on there that you applied it.

If we exceed people's expectations and surprise them, there are a lot of them out there who will be motivated to talk about it. Click To Tweet

You did dig that trench around somebody’s driveway one time so you can offer that. We want to make sure that people know that. If you focused on the fact that you are the best basement waterproofing company on the planet because you are and that’s where you make all of your money, then anybody who comes to your website says, “These are the people we need to hire for that.”

It’s one of the things that I love about that step. I’ve seen clients that have gone through this process. Your marketing, your advertising becomes so much simpler. It’s less expensive and so much easier because it’s laser-focused on that 20%. I love that tip.

Once you know who you’re trying to attract, you know where you’re trying to take them. You know the problem you’re solving. It makes it a lot easier than to explore what channels you’re going to put that message out there. Your job is to be very focused on that narrow idea. The fifth step is to scale with your customers by serving their entire ecosystem. That’s my view of the whole referral, partnering, all those things. Once you know who that ideal customer is and you’ve lasered in on exactly what it is you do for them to solve their problems, then you can spend a lot of time growing with them by either partnering, getting referrals or finding ways to do more with them instead of chasing after every new thing that comes along.

It’s almost like I’m the only one that’s in their phone on speed dial. Anytime they need anything, they call me because they know I’m connected to high-quality professionals.

I can go as far as one line in the book. I say something like, “You can become the only company that matters to them.”

That is an exciting stop. I am looking forward to it. Does it come out in September 2021?

On September 21, 2021, it will be available.

You got a free offer for our audience.

If you’re one of those people who says, “I wish I could get something,” pre-order a copy of the book wherever you order books. You can find all the links to do that at TheUltimateMarketingEngine.com, which is the name of the book. Come back there and you’ll find a big button that says, “Get the companion course.” Fill out that form and you’ll instantly get access to six training videos on some of these concepts along with worksheets.

Once the book is published, you buy a copy of it. There are some links in there to all kinds of resources, tools, checklists, things that we use every day working with business owners to develop some of these concepts. You’re going to have access to the whole library of 40 or 50 tools that come along with the book as well. You can get the companion course right away. On September 21, 2021, wherever you order the book from, it will show up on your doorstep.

John, thank you so much for being my guest. I had a great time talking about this.

You bet. I loved it. Thank you so much.

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About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. He is also the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network, which trains and licenses independent consultants and agencies to use the Duct Tape Methodology.

Stop Making Your Insurance Broker Rich! With Steve Tusa

Ryan Englin · August 25, 2021 ·

Increased risk comes with growth, which also means an increased financial burden on the organization. Insurance is supposed to help ease that burden, which means you need an insurance broker, right? Well, in this episode, we shatter that and several other myths about insurance. Our hosts Ryan Englin and Jeremy Macliver sit down and tackle the thorny issue of insurance with Reseco COO, Steve Tusa. Steve answers the important questions head-on and gives an insider’s look at what you need to know when it comes to business insurance and risk management. Listen in to learn more about how insurance policies can be made to work in your favor.

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Stop Making Your Insurance Broker Rich! With Steve Tusa

We spend a lot of time talking about business growth and what we are doing to hire and engage the right people so that they can go out and take care of our customers. One of the things that is a by-product of growing your team is that it comes with increased risk and a lot of times with an increased financial burden to the organization. I am excited about our guest here because he is in the business of helping you protect your business, that asset that you have created over the years. I would love to welcome to the show the Chief Operating Officer of Reseco Insurance Advisors, Steve Tusa. Steve, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

I am going to hit you with the same question we ask everybody because there is so much talk and misinformation out there about different industries. What is the biggest myth about your industry that you want to shatter for us?

Interestingly enough, the biggest myth is that everybody has an insurance broker because you need an insurance broker typically to procure your insurance. That broker, usually, the response back is, “They are a nice guy or gal. I have a great relationship. I trust them and they respond fast to anytime I send them an email or make a phone call. I am good,” and/or, “I have met a lot of brokers and you all do the same thing. You over-promise and it all sounds great. When it is time to deliver, it is the same thing. Why even have a conversation?”

As we jump into this, Steve, I thought, as you are sharing that, how many times I have heard that and believed it. The only reason we are bringing you on and willing to bust that myth is that I first learned about you through a couple of my clients who were not getting that stuff. They were getting something completely different. I remember being in session with one of them and they were like, “Our insurance guy and none of what you are telling me is insurance,” as I was thinking about what they were telling me in the session. It is proactive. It is changing their culture and some amazing stuff. What should we be looking for if we are looking for good service and not a fast reply when we call you?

I didn’t go to school for insurance. I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Electromechanical Engineering. I am all about solving problems and issues. I found myself taking the insurance job for advisory-type reasons. What you should be looking for is a true advisor, someone who enables your business to scale while managing risk, but someone who is going to have life experiences and a team of professionals that can collaborate and bring advice. The goal is not to give more money to insurance carriers. Unfortunately, when the client’s insurance goes up in price in my industry, the broker makes more money. It is a flawed economic model.

The more challenging a business gets or grows, people like me make more money. We have turned that on its head. You need someone that is going to give you good business improvement advice, have a method to analyze the financial spend, benchmark that spend, and then bring true resources to bear to start managing that more effectively, so you flush less money to the insurance company and keep that capital in your business. If your insurance broker is not doing that for you, they are earning a lot of money to renew your insurance policy, and there is a waste. My team loves attacking the waste.

When you say waste, what do you mean? What kind of waste? Is it more premium or are there other things that you are talking about when you say that?

Yes, more premium specifically and/or more claims. As companies get bigger, they might be in a risk-sharing model where they have a higher deductible. They might be contemplating a captive insurance program. As you take more risk, in addition to more premium, you also have claims. The challenge with claims is they are never fully insured. The carrier will pay like for a workers’ compensation injury. They will pay the medical. They will pay a percentage of the lost wages, but when your employee is injured and out of work, let us say they are put out of work for two weeks.

What happens to your business when that happens? Do you have to put people on overtime? Do you have to move someone from one job to the next? Do you have to hire temp workers? All this uninsured cost, which is a drain on profit that occurs temporarily until the next event happens. Unfortunately, there is this unmeasurable component. Fortunately, at Reseco, we have a proprietary way of quantifying that. That is what I mean by waste, lost profit. We call it financial leakage.

Deliver what you promise. Exceed expectations. Click To Tweet

You are looking at it more than just the ends, loss, and premium, but all of the effects that go on in the real world. I heard you say real experience there. That is where you are coming from is recognizing that, “There is a lot more that goes into this when we are hiring somebody, replacing, overtime, all those kinds of things, and factoring those in.”

This is not a new concept. When I was early on in my career, insurance carriers and other brokers call it indirect costs. They may have shown a picture of an iceberg and say, “The top is what the insurance company pays. The bottom is what you pay.” Here is the difference. We quantify it for our prospective clients and clients. We then build a strategy to change culture, influence performance and do that deliberately on a 1, 3, or 5-year strategic plan to produce year-over-year improvement, resulting in fewer insurance dollars out the door. That is the strategy behind it. It is proven expertise that we deliver in various areas.

You are creating a 1, 3, and a 5-year strategy to change, particularly one of them that I am aware of their safety culture, which is going to ultimately change their insurance premium because they have a safer culture, fewer incidents, losses, leakage, and all these other waste areas. That is how we are going about it and turning it from the email response to a proactive one. Do I understand that right?

Correct. You mentioned safety. That is one component of it. It is what you exactly said, Jeremy.

What is the biggest thing that is holding business owners back from leveraging this area of their business?

It first boils down to what we discussed. I have a nice guy or gal. I trust this person. I have known him for twenty years. In some cases, they become a friend of that CFO or business owner. Maybe a friend of their wife or husband. That is a barrier. They also have been promised things in the past and over-promise, under-deliver. That is what consultants are known for. I carried the name consultant for years and that is the stigma. Ideally, the biggest barrier is, if we can show a business the opportunity to save money, the whole insurance model is predicated on five years of prior claim experience. It is much like your auto insurance. If you have never had an auto claim in the last five years and are driving a minivan, taking a low risk, and you are in your 40s to 50s, your insurance cost is going to be good. You need to live in the right neighborhood.

BCC 57 | Insurance Broker — Insurance Broker: The biggest myth is that everybody has an insurance broker because you need an insurance broker typically to procure your insurance.

Let us take that to a business. If you are in a moderate business with not a lot of risk and your claim history for five years is good, your insurance cost is probably not going to be a problem. If you are in a riskier business, say, construction-related, transportation, warehousing, distribution, high-volume, and your history has claims in it, that underwriter is going to price your insurance at what they believe the future will hold. If you do not have a 1, 3, or 5-year strategy, the price is the price, but most prospective clients believe they are a nice guy or gal and what they are selling is insurance leverage. “I have a lot of insurance carriers. I will leverage that market and save you money,” when they are delivering increases year-over-year.

What they say is, “It could have been 15%, but I got you 5%.” Somehow, I am a business owner. They think they saved you 10%. The way I look at it is they flushed 5%. The barrier is, they don’t think and believe there is a better way. They believe the myths they have learned year-over-year from someone they trust. I get it. Ending a relationship with someone you trust, we can all think back, it is not easy, but it is amazing. Insurance is the last frontier when it comes to this. Everything else in your business, you evaluate the ROI. Why don’t business owners evaluate the ROI on insurance? No one has been able to prove that. We can quantify our ROI and show that to our clients quarter-over-quarter. We align it to their 1, 3, or 5-year plan and establish goals aligned with the business model. If we don’t deliver, it is going to stand out like a sore thumb. We deliver. It is that simple. Deliver what you promise and exceed expectations.

I love how you are quantifying it. Some of these things that we are talking about are intangible or they feel like they are intangible. It is the same thing that we run up against when we are talking to companies about hiring, turnover, culture, and those kinds of things that feel like, “Business is hard. It can pinpoint daily actions,” but putting it on a P&L and saying, “This is what is going on. It can be a little bit challenging.” We are looking at it from a number’s perspective.

When we look at some of the same concepts, I think of one company. This is a larger one of them. They increased revenue by $17 million in one year by lowering turnover and getting a whole recruitment side to their business. It is the same thing you are talking about where I hear from this insurance side. We look at all of these little risks and things. We are holding onto a relationship, but it is causing something inside our business that is holding us back. I love how you are challenging it. I could truly testify to some of the proactiveness I have seen there.

Thank you.

With that, what are some actions that people can do to break through this wall and start looking at this piece of their business for some opportunity to grow or be better?

We start the conversation with an interactive 45-minute discovery process. That discovery process is unlike most conversations you will ever have with an insurance broker. We operate an independent consulting practice, too. We are very consultative in our interaction. We want to get to know our potential clients what the vision, mission, and values are. We do our homework and determine, “Is this a client that we even align with from a values perspective?” Core values are extremely important. That 45-minute discovery always ends on time, but it usually carries over.

The discussion is many a time around culture, attracting and retaining talent, their financial performance, safety, healthcare trends, regulatory compliance, or brand protection. Those are some areas where we have impacted our clients. We end the meeting at 45 minutes, learning a lot about that business, what is the top couple of things keeping them up at night. If we can help, we go deeper into the area they need the help. In that first discovery, insurance comes up many times, but it is not the primary issue on top of mind. However, amazingly enough, you mentioned attracting and retaining talent. It is one of our areas of strength and culture will do that. We had a much deeper discussion with a client and turned that into tangible action.

We delivered our financial leakage report and value report. For them, it was like we increased their sales by 10%. This is a $50 million company. Our value delivery was $5 million in sales and we are an insurance brokerage firm. That is what we love to do is make the business healthier. Our core purpose is, “Better businesses, better lives.” We do that in a lot of different ways. It is our guiding purpose. We are all results-driven at Reseco. We want to get our clients the results they want to earn and then we want to leverage that.

Better businesses, better lives. Click To Tweet

I love that when you are out there talking to people. You are doing a holistic look at the business. I know so many people in the insurance space and it is like, “We are going to talk about insurance.” They said, “How does that impact your business?” “I am not quite sure, but we are at least going to make sure you are protected,” is a lot of the times the response that I hear. When we are working with clients on helping them attract and hire better people, I hear this all the time, “I can’t find any good people.”

When I ask them what they mean by good people, it is never, “I can’t find someone to do the work.” It is always, “I can’t find someone that wants to do the work, fits my culture or behaves in the way I want to behave.” The solution to the problem is always so much deeper and bigger than what it looks like on the surface. It sounds like you are in that same space where they might come to you with one problem, but you find out that it is something completely different. When you look at that root cause, you are able to help them with that.

You mentioned talent. When we are in discovery, it comes up a lot, “Can you find more people for us?” When you dig deeper, it is not more people. It is the right people in the right seats. If you are an EOS implementation organization, there are strategies behind that, but many organizations don’t know how to do that. They don’t have a recruiting strategy and a proven analytical way of screening people before they interview them. They don’t have a way to align and determine if the role that is available is aligned to what the person’s skillsets are. We have the ability and the proprietary tools to do that. In some cases, we have partnered with the best in the business.

We also have an HR senior advisor who would engage on the client’s behalf as part of us being selected as the insurance broker. Why would we want to invest time and money at no additional cost? It is to make the client have a better business, impact lives, get a better outcome, and drive lower insurance spent. That is where we make the investment at Reseco. Our competition invests in more marketing people to go out to the market to quote insurance and we do not quote insurance. We will not do it. It is not our client’s best interest. That is not our approach. It is very different. You can interview 100 brokers. If you said, “Do you quote?” They said, “Of course, we do.” We would say, “Of course, we don’t.”

I don’t come across a lot of businesses where the owner was the one creating all the risks. It is almost always someone you hired that is causing the risk of being out there and creating some issues. Having that approach where you are helping them with the right people and thinking about, “Are we protecting the company by getting the people in the right roles? It is right up our alley. We love that.” One of the questions I have for you comes up a lot, especially with smaller businesses. When I say smaller, it is probably under a couple of hundred employees. One of the things they always tell me is, “I can’t find good people because I don’t have good benefits. I can’t afford benefits. The benefits we have aren’t very attractive. That is the reason we can’t get good people.” What are your thoughts on that?

That is a valid thought and it comes up very often. The biggest thing we ask when that comes up, “What are you trying to accomplish with your benefits program?” If they say it is to attract and retain talent, we have a methodology to say, “Do you know if that was part of the reason someone selected your organization?” Our clients that have been clients for a while will know if benefits were an attraction, a detractor, or neutral. We have the largest benchmarking study in the United States, bigger than the big boys, millions of lives on benefits. We can drill that live real-time down from the United States to region, state, city and compare their offering to others.

Most companies have a benefits guide put together in a regionalized and centralized format by their broker. It spells out the costs and offerings, but employees don’t know how to leverage that. Year-over-year, benefits rise by anywhere from 5% to 7%. Brokers come in and say, “It would have been 15%. I got you 7%.” What did they do? “You got to increase the copay. You got to decrease your spend. The people have to pay more.” Year-over-year, employees are used to showing up for benefits. The service quality goes down, the price goes up, and people are not happy. The HR or your office admin takes the brunt of the complaints and your broker takes your commission.

There are so many variables at work there. I love how you say, “Do you know is that the reason that you are either not getting or keeping people?” A lot of times, it is easy to hide behind that because benefits have become less affordable. A lot of people hide behind that and it may not even be a reason. We have clients all the time that are able to hire frontline and office talent. They don’t even offer a lot of benefits and rarely are they even employer-paid, especially for the smaller businesses. Yet, they are still attracting great people. I know it can happen.

Also, in those smaller businesses, there are creative offerings. A client of ours doesn’t need to jump in two feet and whole body in the water. If they have never offered benefits before, we have the ability to strategically allow them to offer what would make a difference in the hiring decision. I can gladly give you a good example of a client that we are in year two with and how it impacted their business if you like it. It has led to them not only attracting talent but increasing their workforce. The enrollment has been 98% in their benefits offering.

Let me ask this. I know there are people out there going, “I have a small business. I have talked to my buddy who is doing my insurance. I talk to him once a year. He doesn’t have anything like that for me.” How do people learn more about what you do? What is it that they got to do to set up one of these 45-minute discovery sessions? Is there any pre-qualification? Can you give us a quick intro on how someone can get a hold of you and start opening up the dialogue on some other options for them?

You packed a lot into that. First, if they are open to having a conversation and sharing what is currently working well within their offerings of whether it is risk management or employee benefits, we are willing to listen. That 45-minute discovery is simple. It is simply a request for a person within our organization. We will schedule that discovery meeting based on the type of business you run and your goals, whether employee benefits, property-casualty, or consulting. We will have a senior advisor reach out to schedule that discovery session.

I would always say, too, “When was the last time someone other than your buddy, good friend, or trusted confidant has analyzed what you are offering and how you are performing?” If the answer is, “More than 2 or 3 years ago,” if they are open to some analysis there, we are more than willing to do that. I would say, “What do you have to lose in a 45-minute meeting that might yield less financial leakage in your business, more profit to fuel growth, more profit to reward your top performers, and it will stick to 45 minutes?” If there is nothing there of substance that convinces or motivates to move the ball forward, it is a 45-minute investment.

Ninety percent of the time, we are having second meetings. Ten percent of the time, things are so dialed in that they are good, which is fine. If they are not, 9 out of 10 times, we move towards the next step to dive deeper and make a difference. With our clients, it is all about year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter, and month-over-month improvement. If the organization is about being better and moving that flywheel faster each day, that is what we are all about. It is focused on where we are going and moving that flywheel to pick up some momentum and the culture. Better businesses, better lives are what drives us. It is as simple as reaching out to my quarterback on the team and getting scheduled for that discovery meeting.

You mentioned work culture, which is something that is in our name. It is in our DNA of everything that Ryan and I do. I want to highlight that as we get towards the end of the show and talk about that. We got this guy who is a business owner listening. I could see myself being in that spot. I had a good friend for twenty years, but I would like to learn more about some of the stuff you said you do around culture and safety and hear about that. You are open to that meeting, even if I got my good guy?

Absolutely. In some cases, it could even be on cybersecurity or we will engage as a consultant first because we have had clients not willing to part ways. We have been hired specifically to improve safety, culture, and performance, but not do the insurance. We are fine with that and here is why, better business, better lives. Over time, it is common that at some point that business owner asks the question, “What would it look like if we did the insurance and the safety or if we did the insurance and you did our cyber insurance more than the best practice assessment on some improvement of some of our practices?”

Talent is not about more people. It’s the right people in the right seats. Click To Tweet

What it would look like is an integrated approach where we, the consultant or advisor, can tell the story to the future insurance carriers and say, “You are looking at their claims five years ago. Look in the rearview mirror 20% of the time and you won’t wind up in a ditch. Let us tell you through the windshield the improvement this client and organization has made. Let me tell you what the safety culture looks like now. Let me tell you how 98% of their supervisors are engaged in coaching their people every single day, changing behavior, improving outcomes, operating safer and why you shouldn’t look at five years ago or their experience mod, which is four years old, and base your financial quote or proposal on five years ago. If you do that, we are going to find someone else that will do it for less because we have a proven process when it comes to safety culture and it is 64% sustainable improvement on average.”

What is that 64% sustainable improvement mean?

It boils down to is fewer claims, incidents, people getting hurt, vehicle accidents, equipment damage, and theft. You name it. It is all the things that cause the business to pause, regroup and spend more money. On insurance, your cost is your cost on a lot of insurance programs. Once a year, you are going to renew it, but everything that happens between your renewal periods affects the future costs. If you have a workers’ comp claim that costs $50,000 in 2021 to the insurance company, you are going to wind up paying an insurance company more than $50,000 over the next three years to compensate for that. It is the way insurance works. I have been on the insurance carrier side for the first half of my career. I know how insurance carriers compensate. I also know what their focus is and their investment income. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s just not good for small business.

Tell me the methodology of how you go about doing this.

Most consultants or advisors have a boilerplate template on how they go about business. If it is a safety culture improvement process that the client is after, we diagnose before prescribing anything. Through an interactive best practice assessment, we will quantify strengths and opportunities for improvement based on over 100 years of experience. It results in red, green, or yellow light report that will bring back to that prospective client and propose a game plan. Our proven process is a four-step process. It is with senior management, phase one. Why and where do you want to take your safety culture?

If the client wants to move forward with our proposed strategy, it is simply three steps. First, we work with a team of clients, people at all levels, to design the system. We have a highly effective launching process with managers, supervisors, and coaching modules to enable the supervisors to become good coaches of safety and create positive habits versus conventional safety. It is a bunch of rules of what not to do. We clearly define what is expected and build accountability around it, which is simply defining, measuring, recognizing, and rewarding people when they do it right. It is very different but highly effective. I have done it for years and have a lot of success stories there.

Steve, I have enjoyed this. If they want to reach out to you and your team because I know that you have an extensive and qualified team there, for a 45-minute truly financial leakage discovery and not anything else there, what do they need to do? Where do they need to go?

It is simple. They can contact Deanna Hughes. It is [email protected]. You can call, if you prefer, if you are a phone person, at (603) 753-4267. If for some reason, you would rather have a conversation first with me, I would welcome that. I will provide my email address, which is [email protected]. For my phone, the best number is (602) 402-2210. I will be happy to chat first if that person prefers that.

I hope that you have enjoyed this episode here as we have brought to you Steve and everything about looking at your insurance as a strategy and as a way to take care of that last frontier of your business. With that, Steve, thank you so much for being here. I look forward to seeing you in the future.

Thank you, Jeremy and Ryan. I appreciate the time.

Important Links:

About Steve Tusa

Steve is the Chief Operating Officer of resecō Insurance Advisors, an analytic commercial insurance brokerage firm. He provides vision and operational leadership for a team of highly skilled Risk, Safety, Claim Management, Human Resources, Information Technology professionals. Steve specializes in strategic cultural improvement by engaging all levels of your organization to design a system that focuses on critical behaviors, shaping good habits, critical supporting activities, positive feedback and coaching.

The team’s entire focus is to significantly reduce our client’s financial leakage, returning it back as revenue. We significantly improve our client’s EBITDA, profitability, business valuation, and operational agility. Additional key services include implementation of accountability systems, behavior safety processes, and performance management systems that integrate solid risk management techniques into core of an organization.

In his downtime, Steve enjoys traveling, sports and spending time with his wife and two children.

It’s Time To Go To Owner’s School With Matt Michel

Ryan Englin · June 30, 2021 ·

For a lot of business owners, there’s nothing more important than getting on top. Ryan Englin talks with the founder of Service Nation, Inc., Matt Michel, on some of the most common challenges faced by business owners in the trades. Matt is an internationally recognized and highly acclaimed motivational and informational speaker on the significance of learning the craft of the business and going back to the owner’s school. While many business owners fall into the trap of focusing their end goal on success, Matt points out that they are forgetting the basics, including the goal-setting process that is highly significant in order to start walking the path to success. Join him as he reveals more insights every business owner needs to know.

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It’s Time To Go To Owner’s School With Matt Michel

Our guest is very involved in the trades. His organization has over 5,500 member companies. Everybody from electricians to plumbers to HVAC contractors, remodelers, people in solar and even in the construction space. He is no stranger to what is going on, what some of the challenges are. He’s got some great insight on how to overcome some of the most common challenges faced by business owners in the trades. He believes that community is one of the most important things business owners can have now, whether it’s local, online or even in one of his groups. I want to take a moment and welcome to the show, Matt Michel from Service Nation.

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Welcome to the show, Matt. One of the questions I love to start with is what’s the big myth in your industry? What’s that one thing that everybody believes about your target market, the skilled labor guys or anybody in the trades? What’s the biggest myth that you want to shatter for our readers?

I don’t know that it’s a universal myth because we’ve got a number of people that have disproven it in our group, but I think the biggest myth, probably overall, is that you can’t make money in the trades. You can make a lot of money in the trades. You can become very successful. You can build a great business. The millionaire next door is a contractor. I know a lot of millionaires and not very many of them went to college. They learned in the school of hard knocks. The tuition that they paid was the tuition of mistakes, failures, getting better and improving, but if a person wants a great career, I think that there are very few places that are more accommodating than the service trades.

Having grown up around the trades, I see it. I know a lot of people that love getting their hands dirty. They love being out there building, creating, constructing, fixing and they did well. Especially when they start operating a little bit more like a business, then you start thinking, “I need more hands than just mine to go do something impactful.” What do you think is the number one thing holding business owners back? I know a lot of guys that get their first truck. They go, “This is great. I’m selling it. I need some extra help.” Maybe they hire a friend or a buddy, a brother-in-law or something. They start growing their business, but they still hit these plateaus where they can’t breakthrough. They can’t seem to make it more than just a job. They can’t find that millionaire-next-door status like you’re talking about. What do you think is holding them back?

It’s themselves. We’ve got guys who know how to turn a wrench, they don’t know how to turn a profit. They may have been to trade school, but there isn’t an owner school. Fortunately, there are resources out there that can help them now, but they’ve got to trade their craft for the craft of business. As much as they enjoy getting out and working in the business, as Michael Gerber says, “They’ve got to start working on the business.”

Until they do that, they will never be able to get out of their own way. Another part of this is guys got to understand that growth is a good thing. I talked to probably 40% of the trade and they don’t want to grow. They want to run a lifestyle business and that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with running a lifestyle business, but you need to understand what your sacrifice is. You need to make sure that you have accounted for your family in case something happens to you and you can’t work. The single truck operator, the most independent guy in the world, is also the most selfish because if something happens to him, there goes the business, customers, income and maybe the house.

If you want to be successful, find five other successful people and associate with them. Click To Tweet

Growth is incumbent upon people. The thing that most contractors can’t see, and when they do see it, that’s when it becomes amazing, is when they build a business that can exist without them. Until that point, they don’t have a business, but they have a company or they have a job and it owns them, they don’t own it. When they build a business that can run without them, every business owner has things that they don’t like to do, things that they hate doing. They can delegate those to somebody else. They can hire people to do the things they don’t like and aren’t good at and they can focus on the things that they want to do.

Abraham Maslow, the behavioral psychologist, came up with this Hierarchy of Needs. A lot of people have seen it. It’s like a pyramid. At the very pinnacle, when you’ve satisfied everything else, you’re self-actualizing, which means you’re working on the things that you enjoy, the things that make you happy. That’s where I live as a business leader and that’s where a number of contractors I know are. When you’re at that point, that’s when a business truly becomes fun.

What are some things that these guys can do to get there and realize that and have a business that they own versus a job that owns them?

One of the things they need to do is associate with other successful contractors. Jim Rohn says that you’re like the five people you surround yourself with most. That’s absolutely true. If you want to become successful, find other successful people and associate with them. Here’s the irony. Most contractors think that the most successful guy in town won’t have anything to do with them and won’t share anything with them. That’s the guy that’s the most likely to share.

Successful people are the most likely to give back to others. They’re the least fearful of you taking something from them and hurting them. Nobody’s going to take your customer from you unless you screw up. That’s the first step. The second step is to listen to podcasts. If you’re in a truck a lot of times, you can learn a lot from podcasts, which are free, from audiobooks, which you can download by joining Audible.com. You can get them from the library.

There are a million ways that you can turn that windshield time into productive learning time. You can transform yourself. I also think it’s important to go to events where contractors are. Get involved with your local trade association. Go to national events like the Service World Expo. Those types of events are where you will run into people from all over the country, even all over the world, who have been there, done it and have a closet full of t-shirts.

BCC 53 | Owner’s School — Owner’s School: There are a million ways you can turn that windshield time into productive learning time. You can transform yourself.

What you’re doing right now with Service Nation and all of the different products and groups that you have is giving people a platform for that. Is that correct?

Correct, and one of our core values is community. We’re all about community, we create environments where communities thrive and relationship building begins and grows. Business is all about relationships. Businesses grow on relationships. We put contractors together, whether it’s in the Service Roundtable, which is about 5,500 member companies from around the world or the Service Nation Alliance, our best practices group, which has roughly 500 members, but this is an extremely intensive group. We also hold events like the Service World Expo and the Barefoot Roundtable in Clearwater Beach, Florida. It’s going to be outside under a tent. It is going to be on the sand and shorts are required.

If I’m thinking about joining a community and I want to be a part of people that have leveled up their business and have gone to that next level. I agree with you on what Jim Rohn says about the five people you surround yourself with. If I want to be more successful, I need to hang out with people that have been to the mountaintop and that has seen that success. I see it a lot to where often people are afraid to share because they think they’re going to lose customers. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know any single contractor that’s got more than 5% market share in any market. The ocean is vast. There is a lot of fish out there. There are a lot of customers just waiting to be taken care of. What do I need to look for if I’m looking to join a community? What are some things that you’ve seen work or don’t work?

It’s the attitude. There are a lot of contractor groups that are out there. Some of them operate more like a country club. Everybody tries to one-up the other person. It’s one where you see more of an attitude of service and it’s, “You’re a member? Come on over to my shop and let’s talk.” I don’t know anybody in the Service Nation Alliance, for example, who can’t call up another member, drop in on them and visit them. That’s the great thing about contractors. I don’t know an industry where people are more giving and more open to helping each other than the contracting community. I’ve worked in high tech and I did some marketing consulting with major corporations. None of them are as challenging or have people that are as down to earth as the contracting world.

How to get started in either looking to join your community or maybe even finding a community that maybe it’s a better fit for me? What’s one of the things we can do?

Most groups have some type of recruiting event. We have successful days. We hold them around the country and several of them every month. There are other groups that have those as well and you can search for those online. The Service Roundtable is a very low barrier to entry. It’s self-service that’s $50 a month and you can engage people online through it. It’s getting involved with those but also come to the national events like Service World and Barefoot Roundtable. It’s there where we’ll talk to people who are in different groups and at your local trade shows. These are going to start back up and we’re going to get away from the virtual world, which is great.

Millennials are hard workers if you can find the right environment for them. Click To Tweet

I was at the Conditioned Air Association of Georgia’s annual meeting. They had a couple of hundred people and it was great to be back face-to-face. When you talk to other contractors, you ask them what works for them, “What are the things that you like?” They’ll tell you and be honest with you. Every group has a reputation. They’re not hard to find. You can go to the online forums and there are online Facebook groups and people will share those with you. What you have to find is somewhere where you feel a fit and you feel comfortable. When you find it, you’ll know.

A lot of the work that we do is helping contractors hire better people faster. It’s no secret hiring is, and probably will be for a long time, one of the largest challenges for contractors to find good people. We help them focus on fit. I can teach you to turn a wrench. I can send you to go get another certification or something like that but what I can’t teach you to do is to be the right person for our team to feel like you belong here and make a difference.

I would say that finding the right people is not one of the greatest challenges. I’d say it’s the greatest challenge. That’s where most contractors struggle with. You want to hire people that fit your culture. I didn’t get culture for the longest time. I knew we had a culture. I just didn’t understand it. I knew it was there but I didn’t realize that you can design a culture. I went to the Disney Leadership Institute and it changed my outlook and it blew me away.

At Disney, they believe that culture can be designed because culture is the shared values. These values drive behaviors that drive results. There are certain behaviors that you will or will not do based on a value system. If you identify what those values are, you can see what the behaviors are and the behaviors drive results. This is why Peter Drucker said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. A great strategy has to be executed, but a great culture is self-executing. An important part of the hiring process is identifying your values. What are the values that are important to you, your company or your organization and develop questions? I’m assuming you can help these guys do that.

Identify the underlying behaviors that are consistent with that value. Now you’re bringing people into your organization who share the value set you have. There’ll be less conflict, more harmony and productivity. You’ll have a better organization. When the pandemic first hit, we asked a number of our members who were seeming to get through this without much of the struggle to get on a webcast with us. The thing that struck me listening to these guys describe their experience after what happened in March 2020 was they all mentioned the culture of their company. They had strong cultures that got them through. If anything, COVID has brought out the importance of culture to a business and the need to make sure that you’ve got a strong culture.

In a couple of things that you said, one of them I like is that the values are the behaviors you’re looking for. It’s what drives the behaviors. We tell a lot of people, “Your values should be a verb.” It should be something you can do, not just be something that you are, because you want to see that show up in the actions when you start executing that strategy. I liked that piece. The other thing too is COVID made it so that a lot of people said, “We’ve got to figure out how to do this remote workforce thing.”

The thing that most people don’t realize is that the trades have been doing remote workforce since ever. They were the first ones that were remote. Whether you’re working on a job site because you’re constructing something new, you’re doing tenant improvements or you’re out there servicing something. They’ve had a remote workforce. I think to your point that culture is what’s going to help you bring the right people together. The more intentional you are about that, the easier it will be to find the right people and keep them because that’s the other big challenge. It’s one thing to find them. The other thing is being able to keep them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard somebody tell me, “I lost Jimmy for a quarter more an hour.” Jimmy didn’t leave for a quarter more an hour. For a lot of other reasons, the quarter is the excuse he used. That’s what helped him justify it. Let’s talk about this learn to craft the business. Go to owner school.” Can you elaborate on that a little bit for me?

The first thing that we start with is goal-setting. You need to understand the goal-setting process and how you set goals that are out of reach but not out of sight, so you have to stretch for them. We do an annual success plan. The goals ripples through the organization. It goes into manpower, planning and looking at available days and making sure that you know, you’re looking at what type of production you’re going to need through the year and that you’re going to have enough bunch of trucks to be able to fulfill that. You can work on it in advance. Too often, a contractor waits until Jimmy is gone and now, “I’ve got to find somebody.”

You should be working on this. We advise that the business owner should be working on recruiting 30% of his time year-round. Do you have a recruiting brochure? I have a recruiting brochure just like you have a company brochure that promotes your company and the benefits that you offer to prospective team members. If you don’t have a recruiting brochure, you’re not serious about that. Work on building relationships up. A lot of times, we’re interested in the trades because we’ve got all these people that think they have to go to college, and I don’t think they do.

There’s also a group of people out there that are willing to work hard but aren’t going to go to college. It’s not because they aren’t smart or bright, they just aren’t going to do it. How do you identify them? How do you find them? Go to the Catholic Church and talk to the priests about some of the Hispanic kids that may be looking for the trades as an opportunity or go to an African-American church and talk to the pastor and say, “Who’s coming up in the youth that might find this as a great career?”

That’s something that we’re negligent in doing. We need to be doing more than that. We need to be doing more of reaching out to the high schools. This is incumbent upon every contract. That’s all part of it. We’ve got some contractors whose path is they hire an apprentice for every truck. After two years, the apprentice gets his own truck. They are constantly building and growing and doubling. It’s a slow approach, but it’s a steady approach and it works. Let’s talk about the need for good retention programs. That’s huge. We’ve seen contractors lose their entire team before. How does that happen? One of the things is they are meeting the technician’s or the plumber’s needs.

In the past, we’ve always been good at tech trade. We were good at technical skills. We do a lot of training in that. In the previous years, we’ve gotten pretty good at soft skills training. That’s standing up straight, smiling and looking people in the eye, the whole deal. The knock on the door, step back, hand a business card and put on sheet covers. All the soft skills, we’re better at that than we have been. We’re finding that the training is not just technical skills and soft skills, but we also need life skills. Why does the guy leave for another dollar an hour? Because he’s broke. Why is he broke? He’s paid well. How is he broke? He’s broke because he doesn’t know how to manage his money. Why didn’t he know how to manage his money? Nobody has ever taught him. We’ve got contractors who are out there teaching and we created a course for our members to use with their guys that teaches them personal financial management. Once you start to get control of your personal finances, you’re less likely to leave for an extra dollar an hour. It goes beyond finances. It’s character. It’s how to be a good dad or husband. It’s all kinds of things that people don’t learn anymore and they used to learn growing up. The guys that do this and do it well, they select.

If people in the company aren’t growing, then the business won’t grow. If people are growing, then the business will grow. Click To Tweet

One of the things that we coach our clients through is everybody has got a joke about a Millennial. There’s somebody that’s got something bad to say about Millennials. I think of two things. Number one, some of the hardest workers I’ve ever met are Millennials because they know why they get out of bed in the morning. The other reason is that Millennials have the greatest economic buying power in this country. You better learn to like them. They’re around. They’re not going anywhere.

One of the things that we found out a while back was that, to your point, life skills, these guys don’t come to work because they want to turn a wrench. That’s all they want to do. They want to earn a good living. They want to take care of their family. Sometimes, we have clients who have gotten into this mindset of, “We need to finish raising them a little bit. We need to give them the life skills that the schools let them down on or that their parents didn’t teach them because they were too busy out pursuing their careers and doing their own things.”

One of the jokes is, “Millennials never show up to work on time.” They talk about that all the time. I was like, “There’s software out there that you can get, that will send a text message to him that says, ‘It’s time to get up and get out of bed and get to the job site.’” It’s those little things that we can do to coach this the next generation and help them with life skills. Help them understand how to be more give more of a contribution to not just the company but also their family.

We also have to change the way we manage because I grew up in a Theory X environment, “What do you mean you don’t want to do that? I’m your boss, do it. What do you want? I give you a paycheck.” We’ve got to manage Millennials like we manage a group of volunteers. I don’t know if you’ve ever managed volunteers, but the way you manage volunteers is you thank them for showing up. You give them lots of pats on the back. You tell them, “Good job.” You celebrate them. You have pizza. We’ve got to start doing some things like that with these guys. The thing about Millennials is that they are hard workers if you can find the right environment for them. Let them know what they’re doing is important. Show them their value they’re providing.

We went through 60 hours without electricity at 0 degrees in my house in February. We had a pipe burst. When the plumber shows up. He is a hero and a savior. He’s allowing us to live in our house. It’s the same thing for the air conditioning guy when he comes to work on the broken furnace or the air conditioner and it’s 100 degrees outside. What guys in the trades do is important. That’s why they’re all essential workers. They keep homes cool in the summer and warm in the winter. They make sure that the toilets flush and the showers are hot. They make sure that the lights come on. They help rebuild homes to make them more livable. This is valuable stuff. They are some of the tradesmen to be looked up to, not looked down upon. A lot of them have gotten the attitude where they look down on themselves and they shouldn’t do that because they’re providing a vital role. Frankly, you’ve got to work with your head and hands.

I can’t agree with you more on that. The thing that many people don’t realize about the younger generation and frankly, the modern workforce, and I know Gen X-ers feel this way. They’ve stepped away and changed their mindset about what work is about. Work is no longer about a paycheck. Work is now about a purpose. We tell people all the time, “The Millennials traded a paycheck for a purpose. They don’t care about the extra dollar an hour. They want to know they’re making a difference. They want to know that the work they’re doing is contributing to something bigger than themselves.”

I see many owners that don’t know why they’re in business. They’ve forgotten that they did this to create a lifestyle, take care of their family or contribute to the community. They’ve forgotten that and it’s all become about, “I’ve got to get the next job. I’ve got to reduce expenses and increase profits.” They’re focused on that that they forgot about their purpose, the reason why. If you can align people on that, if you can give them that sense of belonging and right now more than ever, as human beings, we want to feel like we belong to a group whether it’s a company or a group like yours.

What’s the higher calling? What’s the mission? What’s the bigger purpose? What’s the vision? Everybody wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Every morning since the pandemic started, I post a short motivational video on a Slack channel for my company. I usually write some messages. I ask a question at the end of it, “Tell me why this day is going to be a great day? Tell me something good.” I took some Jim Rohn and some Doug Hanson stuff. I used a motivational speaker that we had in one of our meetings. Doug Hanson said, “Everybody works on a to-do list and that helps you get things done, but what you also need is a to-be list so that you’re working on yourself. What do you want to be because you can become more than you are?”

Jim Rohn echoes that message, “It’s the sense of purpose that’s got to go beyond just the company, but what are we doing to grow ourselves?” Look around in your backyard. Everything is either growing or dying. It’s the same way with a business and people. If people in the company aren’t growing, then the business won’t grow. If people are growing, then the business will grow. This fits in with what we’re looking for in Millennials and Gen X-ers. They all want to grow. They all want to become more. Here’s the cool thing about these kids. They don’t see a dividing line between work and life. They don’t go home and just turn it off. They’re interwoven and interlinked. If you’re flexible with these people, then they will be loyal to you.

We used to work with an HVAC contractor. They all have GPS tracking in their trucks. At the end of the day, they would pull the reports to see where the guys went. If they made a stop at a Home Depot or something, they would reprimand them. They’re like, “They’re doing side jobs.” Their turnover was ridiculous because of that level of scrutiny. I love that modern workforce. The Millennials, especially. There’s not a difference between life and work. There’s not that work-life balance. They don’t understand that concept. I remember when I was in corporate, there were all these initiatives about work-life balance. I’m like, “I work 90 hours a week, then you give me 90 hours a week of home life where I’m sleeping and recovering.” That’s not balancing but that was the way it worked.

They don’t see the difference. A lot of Millennials clock in at 9:00 PM after the kids have gone to bed and start working a little more. How do we put these two takeaways into practice? What are the things that they can do now? Those reading are like, “I’ve got to go do something with this.” Associating with successful contractors and learning the craft of the business, what are the things they can do to put that into action?

This is self-serving but I think the first step is joining the Service Roundtable and committing to come coming to the Barefoot Roundtable. Everybody wants to get out, go somewhere, do something and see people. That’s a good place to start. If you go to ServiceRoundtable.com, you can learn about the Barefoot Roundtable. If they want to try us out, we’re $50 a month, but I’ll give them three months for $75. No harm, no foul. If they don’t like it, they can quit and leave. We don’t handcuff you. There’s no long-term contract. We have to win our members’ business every month.

Everybody wants to be a part of something that’s bigger than themselves. Click To Tweet

Email me at [email protected]. Mention it and I’ll have someone get in touch with you. That’s a good starter. If you have a local trade association, go and get involved with the local trade association. Business is building relationships. Start building relationships and the craft of the business. Start reading the books that are essential. If you’re an air conditioning contractor and you haven’t read Ron Smith’s HVAC Spells Wealth, you’re not serious.

Read The E-myth. You’ll see yourself in the pages of the E-Myth. There’s The E-Myth HVAC Contractor that Gerber wrote with my friend, Ken Goodrich. Ken is a guy who started by sitting outside of the supply house. They told him to wait while they were taking care of their good customers. He’s sitting there with his mullet, as he describes it, mad, scratching out stuff on a legal pad and setting goals for himself, and he got so mad that he went out and started achieving those. He built a $100 million company. After that, he did it again. Now he is in the $200 million range. He was growing hand over fist. The guy has his own jet.

Another book I’d love to add to that is Profit First for Contractors. It talks about the craftsman cycle, “Go out and get the work, go out and do the work.” It’s this roller coaster of, “I’m busy doing these jobs. I can’t go sell more.” It’s like, “You have to always be selling so that you don’t have these ups and downs in revenue.” Those are fantastic books and I’ve read HVAC Spells Wealth and I’m not even a contractor. It’s a fantastic book. You have the best practices group as well.

Service Nation is the company. We run the Service Roundtable, which is our large self-serve group. We have the Service Nation Alliance, which is our Jesuits or Marines. These are the guys who are serious about success. Every one of them joins, then they get placed on an advisory board with other contractors and a consultant who guides them. They meet weekly, they go over KPIs, they go over their personal goals and hold each other accountable. The success and the growth that these guys have attained are amazing. They’re helping each other become more than they all can be as individuals. It’s the old adage of, “The smartest guy in the room is not smarter than everybody else in the room.” If you can take advantage of the insights that everybody in the room has, you’re going to be way ahead of the game.

I love that piece about accountability too. For a lot of guys, it’s lonely at the top and they’re only accountable to themselves. You probably know this, but I’m the hardest person to hold accountable. Getting involved in a group that can hold you accountable is fantastic. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. I’ve learned a lot. I’m sure our readers have learned a lot. Reach out to Matt. Take advantage of that Service Roundtable offer. It’s a fantastic group. They’re doing a lot of great things and great value is coming out of it. Matt, thanks for being on the show.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

Important Links:

About Matt Michel

Matt Michel is an internationally recognized and highly acclaimed motivational and informational speaker. He has spoken about marketing, branding, sales, pricing, leadership, strategic planning, and goal setting from Istanbul to Australia and every place in-between.

Matt founded Service Nation Inc., which operates the Service Roundtable (the world’s largest contractor alliance), the Retail Contractor Coalition (a contractor branding and marketing program), the Service Nation Alliance (an elite contractor best practices group), Roundtable Rewards (the service trades’ largest contractor buying group), and the Service World Expo (the service trades’ largest residential conference and show). Previously, he founded and created the Aire Serv Franchise System, which is the oldest continually operating HVAC residential franchise network.

Matt is the 35th and youngest person to be inducted into the Contracting Business Hall of Fame. The Air Conditioning Heating & Refrigeration NEWS presented Matt with the 2018 “Legends of HVACR” Award. Contracting Business Magazine named Matt one of the 22 most influential people in the history of the residential HVAC/R industry. Contractor Magazine named him one of the 18 most influential people in the history of the plumbing/hydronics industries (Matt is the only person to appear on both the Contracting Business and Contractor lists). The Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration NEWS named Matt one of the top five business advisors in the HVAC industry.

Matt is the inaugural recipient of the HVAC Golden Toolbox Award, presented by North American Technician Excellence and Contracting Business Magazine to “recognize industry leadership and support of technician certification.” He has also received the Significant Sig (distinguished alumnus) Award from the Sigma Chi Fraternity.

Service Nation has been named to the Aggie 100 (“The 100 fastest-growing Aggie-owned or Aggie-led businesses in the world.”) six out of eight years entering it. Service Nation has also been listed in the Dallas 100 and has made the Inc 500|5000 six years running, including a ranking in the top 300 for Business Products & Services.

A popular writer, Matt is published more than 60 times per year as a featured columnist for The Air Conditioning, Heating, & Refrigeration NEWS, Contracting Business Magazine, Contractor Magazine, Contracting Canada, Plumbing & Mechanical Magazine, Southern PHC Magazine, and CB Hotmail. He also publishes the popular Comanche Marketing blog.

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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.