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Making money on every project is essential for a construction company’s success. That said, the profit motive can sometimes get in the way of building strong, lasting client relationships. In this episode, Matt and Chad help us to strike the balance between profit and relationships. Also, a great conversation about the right timing to hire a Business Development Manager. If you enjoy this content, consider subscribing, and for those looking for more, you can visit our website at https://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/. Subscribe to be notified when new episodes are released on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or LinkedIn. If you’re looking for more ways to engage with the wider construction community, check out our affiliate podcast, The Morning Huddle Construction Show, hosted by Chad Prinkey, Well Built Construction Consulting and Stacey Holsinger from Steel Toe Communications. Tune in every Tuesday morning at 9 A.M. EST on LinkedIn Live for discussions with A/E/C experts, advancing the construction community. 0:00 What is the "Well-Built" series? 2:53 Check-Ins! 6:11 Do you put client relationships before profit? 15:59 How do you maintain your relationships with customers? 32:28 What simple rules do contractors need to follow when considering if they should put relationships before profit? 36:20 Should you hire a business development manager? 56:05 Where do you see a business manager's role ending in the sales process? 1:01:18 What are we reading and what are our biggest takeaways? 1:11:30 Thanks for joining us! See you next time! Thank you to our sponsors! Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit: http://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/82318299/admin/dashboard/ Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/Ro2QrVt/Themorninghuddlepodcast?__cf_chl_tk=9S8PSaN6zCOUNBhPtHXE.qk8HWtzxNNluBDlsEYhZkg-1726511898-0.0.1.1-8361

0:23 Independent Electrical Contractors: Skills USA Involvement and Workforce Development 2:58 How IEC works with parents and students to train future electricians. 3:24 Jacksonville, NC Teacher and Skills USA Coach chats about his all girl Teamworks Team: Carpenter, Plumber Bricklayer and Electrician. 4:40 Skills Jam Documentary 5:39 Teacher Involvement with SkillsUSA. 7:22 Using Associations to connect schools to businesses. 7:52 Otis Elevators talks about careers in the Elevator Industry. 9:36 Why all trades can transform over to the Elevator Industry. 10:08 Career Pathway Showcase for Career Services: Students Discuss Why SkillsUSA 10:42 National Technical Honor Society looking to make quality connections with Top Contractors: 100k Active Members, 65k New Members NTHS.ORG 12:47 Don't shy away from a school that doesn't have a construction program, have a conversation with a CTE instructor. 13:14 Skills USA Competitors talk about their involvement in the largest skilled trades competition. 14:07 General Dynamics builds destroyers for the navy, and also visits high schools to develop relationships with students. 18:06 York Technical College, SC student is set to compete in the HVAC category. 20:51 Recruiters from McCarthy on fall and spring apprenticeships and internship programs. 22:58 Interplay Learning talks about non-traditional academics, and consistently adding new modules to their program to help businesses, schools, and non-profits who want to learn about the trades in a digital format. 26:52 CBRE employs over 45k technicians all over the world. 29:18 Virtual Reality Demo 30:20 Two Skills USA student competitors talk carpentry and drywall.

Construction company owners are often highly capable sellers and doers. They built their business from scratch to where it is today for a reason! This all works fine until one day, they wake up and realize they've created a time-eating, stress-producing monster with themselves at the center. What they need is a team of trusted leaders inside their business to help them take control and reduce the pressure on a single owner. They need an executive team. In this episode, Chad and Matt talk about how and why owners should create an executive team. Also, they fight about work-from-home arrangements in the construction industry in our XvY segment. Subscribe to be notified when new episodes are released on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or LinkedIn. If you’re looking for more ways to engage with the wider construction community, check out our affiliate podcast, The Morning Huddle Construction Show, hosted by Chad Prinkey, Well Built Construction Consulting and Stacey Holsinger from Steel Toe Communications. Tune in every Tuesday morning at 9 A.M. EST on LinkedIn Live for discussions with A/E/C experts, advancing the construction community. 0:00 What is the "Well Built Series?" 3:00 Check-ins! 3:57 What is the "Well Built" book? 6:18 What was Chad's inspiration for writing "Well Built?" 12:57 Why do we build executive teams? 23:05 What is an executive team? 26:37 What is the difference between a management team and an executive team? 32:54 How do you go about setting up your executive team? 35:23 Where do you start when choosing your executive team? 47:25 Home vs Hybrid workplace 57:33 How do we create a positive work environment? 59:40 Can working from home in the construction industry be successful? 1:01:25 What are we reading and what are the biggest takeaways? Thank you to our sponsors! Well Built Construction Consulting https://www.wellbuiltconsulting.com/ Steel Toe Communications (Digital Marketing for Contractors) https://www.steeltoecommunications.com/ Katz Abosch (Tax, Audits and Accounting) https://www.katzabosch.com/ Lawrence Law (Legal Challenges for Contractors) https://lawrencelawllc.com/ Sandy Spring Bank https://www.sandyspringbank.com/ Genesis AEC (Full Service Architecture, Engineering, Construction in Life Sciences) https://www.genesisaec.com/ Marsh McLennan Agency https://www.marshmma.com/?utm_source=... Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit: http://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/82318299/admin/dashboard/ Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter for the latest updates: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/Ro2QrVt/Themorninghuddlepodcast?__cf_chl_tk=9S8PSaN6zCOUNBhPtHXE.qk8HWtzxNNluBDlsEYhZkg-1726511898-0.0.1.1-8361

In this episode, we delve into the private side of the public-private discussion. We're joined by Neal Rackleff, Attorney at Law at Rackleff LLP, to uncover the challenges faced by professionals dealing with government entities. We’ll explore process-oriented reasons behind the distinct behaviors of government employees versus their private sector counterparts. Neal dispels common notions about the public and private sectors, sharing his unique experiences. Tune in to understand Neal’s impactful journey—from private roles to federal government positions and back again.

Mike Henderson has served the construction industry as a part of the Associated Builders and Contractors for over 30 years. In his role as the President of ABC Baltimore, his sights have turned to positively impacting the minority contracting community as well. Chad and Mike will discuss an innovative approach they're both working on in the city of Baltimore to create profitable growth for the minority contracting community and the good of the overall construction industry.

In this episode, we'll debunk myths around government contracting, navigate the challenges of transitioning from commercial to government work, and uncover hidden opportunities in this dynamic sector. The stories and insight provided by Eric Coffie, founder of Govcon Giants, promise a thought-provoking journey into the world of government contracts. Join us for an enlightening conversation that might reshape your business strategies!

In this episode, we delve into the fascinating dynamic of semi-rivalry and discord between contractors and engineers. Join us as we explore each profession's crucial roles, uncover the valuable lessons they can glean from one another, and discover how they can unite to drive success as a cohesive team. Our guest, Sol Rosenbaum, owner of SR Engineering and Consulting, is a seasoned mechanical engineer who supports due diligence firms and building owners in the CRE world. The founder of Sol, sets an excellent example for younger engineers by inspiring them through mentorship. Join us as Sol lends his insights to this insightful discussion.

Sadly, too many construction projects fail to meet schedule and budget expectations and more than a few come completely off the rails in every mark in every year. Owners, architects, general contractors, and subcontractors alike retreat to their corners and focus only on protecting their selfish interests. In this episode, construction attorney Michael Wagner joins us to explore what happens to cause a project to become derailed, what behaviors worsen the situation, and what to do if it happens to you.

A significant number of our field employees do not speak English as their first language. This language barrier has contributed to thousands of injuries and even deaths each year. In this episode, two-time Morning Huddle guest, Oscar Garcia, joins us to discuss how he is using artificial intelligence to breakdown language barriers and create safer job sites for Hispanic workers.

Most construction companies recognize opportunities to improve their business. Few have a track record of capitalizing on those opportunities and driving positive change. In the fast-paced environment of designing and building, companies become accustomed to their problems and focus on getting their work done instead.

In a first for The Morning Huddle, host Chad Prinkey will become a guest and share his experience driving organizational change as a consultant for the construction industry over the past 15 years. We’ll discuss why companies get stuck and what employees and executives can do to get better today.

If you've ever been a part of a project team that doesn't communicate and where every entity acts selfishly, you may have thought, "there must be a better way." You're not alone with that thought, and you're right. There is.

The Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) method is a teamwork-based approach to construction. Imagine pulling the GC, architect, engineers, and specialty contractors together to work collaboratively throughout preconstruction and construction. Kevin Hollenbeck has experience with real-world applications of IPD and joins us to share his story to help bring more attention to this game-changing approach.

Every contractor needs an accountant, but certain relationships have the potential to become trusted advisors. As a contractor, you may want to be asking more of your accounting provider. Tim was a trusted advisor for several contractors during his time working for an accounting firm. He joins us on The Morning Huddle to share the principles that made his relationships so strong and strategic with his contractor clients, and what contractors can do to find and develop this kind of partnership with their accountant.

Transcript:

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00:11
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time.

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00:13
Speaker 2
Good morning.

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00:14
Speaker 1
I'm not saying it works. I wish you God speed, Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're going to have with that today because the world, my friend, has changed.

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00:27
Speaker 2
Right. A lot of American construction workers, they have completely different.

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00:33
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out and they usually have a community service or community relations portion, you know, the most.

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00:44
Speaker 2
Productive with a high performance value. And, you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

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00:51
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't it? Yeah. Not for me.

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00:54
Speaker 3
Not for me.

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00:55
Speaker 1
At 11 o' clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring. So foreign. It is morning huddle time. I'm Chad Prinke. Thank you so much for joining us. I've got, as always, wonderful producer and co host Stacey Holzinger with me here this morning. Stacy, how are you today?

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01:18
Speaker 3
I'm doing great. Good morning, everybody. Welcome, Tim.

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01:23
Speaker 1
Thank you. Yeah. So today we have Tim Klimchock who he and I got an opportunity to meet just I guess what Tim about a year ago, something along those lines about that. Yep, maybe a little less. But in, you know, Tim and I were similar to Stacy and I actually on a similar life journey of having spent a long time working for somebody and being, you know, put in a position to reconsider that and start working for ourselves. And so Tim has been running his own business here for, you know, the past, I don't know, six months or something along those lines. And, and we'll give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about what it is you're doing with that business.

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02:08
Speaker 1
But you know, when Tim and I were connected, it was just one of those things like sharing the wonderful, exciting, scary challenge of being an entrepreneur. So it's, you're in good company here with Stacy and I. We've been, you know, just over the past two years both on the same journey. So Tim spent better part of, I don't know, 10, 12 years or something like that at Stambon Ness, which is an accounting firm in Pennsylvania up and up in York area. He was the director of the AEC Group in that market and before that was an accountant for another firm for 10 years. So 20 plus years of accounting experience. I'll shut up and let you expand on that. Tim, what else would you add? And what are you doing now?

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02:59
Speaker 2
Excuse me. Thanks, Chad. Appreciate it. Appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Yeah, 20, 24 years in public accounting. This is definitely a new experience this tax season that I don't have 450 returns to sign this year. So it's. It's definitely been a little bit of a transition for me, but having a lot of fun. Had a great experience in public accounting. I think it's a great place to have a career. And I think for me it was this next step of just doing a deeper dive with a smaller group of clients and really getting a little more intimate with things as opposed to kind of hitting it with a shotgun approach, really just focusing on working with five to 10 clients at a time and really trying to add value and do some really cool things.

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03:42
Speaker 2
The name of my firm is Collaborative Advisory Group. Like you said, it's been. It's. I've started about four or five months ago, and things are off to a great start and I'm really enjoying a lot of the stuff I'm doing. And, you know, it's been a lot of fun so far.

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03:56
Speaker 1
Well, it's. I'm already benefiting, you know, and my clients are already benefiting from Tim. I've pulled Tim into a couple of different situations. One that we're in the midst of now. Pretty, pretty exciting to, you know, benefit from your experience and. And expertise on the financial front, really as that, you know, small boutique kind of service where, like you said, you can really be, you know, deep in it and. And extremely helpful. So glad that you're a part of it. I'd also be remiss. I have to. I'm seeing them on the chat. Potentially my best friend in the world is. Is. Is with us this morning is Jason Dixon, who has joined. And Jason's actually the reason that we connected and, you know, there's a Penn State connection there that I find a little off putting as a terp. But I'll.

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04:46
Speaker 1
But I'll struggle through. I'll make it.

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04:49
Speaker 2
I've known Jason since I was 16 years old and he was 18, so that was a couple of years ago, to say the least. Yeah.

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04:55
Speaker 1
That's awesome. That's awesome. All right, well, good. So we're going to get in today to talking about something you have a ton of experience in, which is I'm hoping to kind of educate our audience on. You're really the kind of relationship they should be expecting out of their accounting firm. The vast majority of our audience is contractors. There may be some accounting firms and maybe bankers or other professional service providers who also join us on a regular basis or may be joining us specifically for this episode. And they are probably going to have some good ideas for how to be a better service provider based on this discussion. But I'm hoping that contractors take away something that they can, you know, start to a new standard that they can start to aim for when it comes to establishing partnerships with their accounting firm.

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05:41
Speaker 1
So with that, I'm going to dive in. Stacy, as always, master of ceremonies, help us to get some awesome questions in through our, you know, audience this morning and we'll bring you back with about 10 minutes to go and get some audience questions.

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05:56
Speaker 3
Sounds good.

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05:57
Speaker 1
Thanks. See you in a bit. All right, so. So, Tim, let's go. Let's start with a crash course 101. I know this is, you know, maybe even pre 101, but I'm going to ask because I think it helps to set the stage, talk a little bit about just inside a construction company, what their finance and accounting makeup really needs to be and how they, you know, what they're trying to accomplish. Just talk about the goal of that financial silo inside a construction company, like leaving the accounting for a minute. Just what's the goal of the accounting silo or the financial silo inside?

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06:36
Speaker 2
Well, like everything in account, we always joke. Well, it depends and I think a lot of it depends on the size and the complexity of the company. You know, I think there's some differences between general contractors and specialty contractors, for sure. But, you know, a lot of times you're going to see someone in this controller, CFO type role that has the ultimate oversight responsibility of the company's financial operations. My personal definition has always been the controller is more focused on looking at the past and summarizing the past, where a CFO is really more forward looking and looking at the future. However, I do see in my experience a lot of times where that person, you know, again, depending on the size of the company, can't afford both functions or it doesn't make sense to have both that.

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07:21
Speaker 2
That controller slash, cfo, regardless of their title, has the responsibility of doing both of those things. And then to that point, obviously segregation of duties and making sure you have controls in place amongst the different people underneath those folks is important too. A lot of people have somebody separate for billing and then have another person on the payable side. Again, depending on size, somebody might be doing both of those functions. But ideally you want to make sure that there's this segregation of duties, as we say in the accounting world, that, you know, make sure that the checks and balances are in place. And some. There's always somebody reviewing somebody else's work. So. And then when it comes to construction specifically, then someone has to really take ownership of the WIP schedule and job cost and revenue recognition and everything that goes with that.

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08:10
Speaker 2
That's the biggest thing that's unique about contractors is that whip schedule and having a whip schedule that makes sense, that you're tracking your job costs, that you're recognizing revenue and just getting everybody on the same page. And that controller, CFO person really should be the liaison between the project managers and the estimators and ultimately with the owners.

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08:33
Speaker 1
Awesome. I love it. I, I like that idea of the control, pardon me, of the controller being this liaison between the departments tying together the financial picture of the business. So great. I think that's a great picture. Now layer in the 101 level of where the accountant fits into the mix. So do I need to hire an accounting firm or can I, you know, why am I hiring an accounting firm as a contractor and what fundamental role or traditional role am I really looking for that accounting firm to provide?

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09:10
Speaker 2
I think from a traditional perspective, you know, everybody thinks there's really two pieces of the puzzle. You have your financial statement side and you have your tax return side. And as everybody knows, tax returns need to be filed, whether it's for the company and then ultimately for the owners. And a lot of times the CPA firm takes that role of being the tax preparer. And hopefully there's some tax planning involved with that before year end. And then there's the regulatory compliance of filing the returns that you need to, both at the federal level and for most people, multi state level. The financial statement side is really driven by the surety companies and the banks. And there's three types of financial statements.

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09:47
Speaker 2
There's compilations, reviews and audits, depending on, you know, what you're borrowing, depending on what the size of your company is, that's really going to drive the type of financial statement. And it's really three different levels of service that the accounting firm steps into. And think of it as just a verification of your internal numbers and helping you get your numbers in line. And then ultimately we sign off on a report that says that we've either compiled, reviewed, or audited these numbers. And there definitely is different stages and obviously there's different cost levels for all those things as well, based on the amount of effort that, you know, the traditional CPA is going to have in that.

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10:25
Speaker 1
Yep. All right. Good, that totally makes sense. So I look at that as. Tell me if I'm wrong in the way that I'm thinking of this, but I always think of that as kind of the, that's the price of entry for an accounting firm, like. Right. Meaning you better have the ability to handle tax and financial statements perfectly like that. That's the expectation. It's the minimum threshold. And, and you know, in your experience be, you know, obviously you're not in any way, I will say this for you are not in any way talking about your previous employer or throwing anybody under the bus. Right? Like that's not what I'm asking you to do. But what I am asking you is, you know, in your broad and you know, 20 plus year experience as a CPA serving contractors, how many CPAs are failing?

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11:22
Speaker 1
What percentage do you think are failing to meet, you know, that level? That standard of these things have to be tight.

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11:30
Speaker 2
I think, you know, I think they're. And one of the biggest challenges in the business development area for accounting firms is there really are a lot of good construction accounting firms out there, my previous firm included. They're every region, everywhere across the country. There's a lot of CPA firms that pick construction as a niche and you know that they're really focused on it. But then there are some other firms out there perhaps that we used to joke about it as. And construction. So a CPA firm and it's something, you know, for your listeners to think about is, you know, looking at the whole picture of what this CPA firm does in the construction area.

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12:05
Speaker 2
So the end construction thing is you'll see on their website that we do nonprofits, we do manufacturing and governmental stuff, we do distribution, maybe we doctor's practices and construction will be at the end. And it's like, you know, I think that's really where the differentiator can be, is that you avoid those firms that are the end construction. And how do you do that? I think part of it is, you know, making sure that you're looking at the relationship with the cpa. Do you know these people, Are there people at your, whatever trade organizations that you're involved with, whether it's ABC or cfma, you know, not to promote any specific organization. But do you see these people pushing thought leadership out there? Are they, are they going out of their way to, you know, push webinars out there and content?

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12:52
Speaker 2
Are they sending you frequent emails? Hey, this is what's going on specific to your Industry, those sorts of things are the things to really target on. But that, but it is a challenge because there really are, you know, I could sit here and name you 10 to 15 firms, say in the Baltimore region and up here in south central Pennsylvania that I think are good quality firms. I know a lot of people at these firms and there's a lot of people that are doing good work. So that's really where you get into the next part is what extra value add stuff can these people bring to you? Right.

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13:24
Speaker 1
Yeah. So. And that's so. So if I'm hearing you right, the likelihood that one of these highly qualified construction. Construction accounting groups is missing the mark on the cost of entry, on the tax preparation the, the likelihood that one of them is. Is dropping the ball in that area relatively low.

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13:49
Speaker 2
Relatively low. Yeah, I mean there's, yeah, there's certain people obviously can better than others, but I think that there's a lot to choose from in the marketplace. There's some people that dabble in it that shouldn't be dabbling in it because there are some very specific things with construction accounting that are very unique.

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14:04
Speaker 1
You know, let's jump into that for a minute. I'm interested in just it like, you know, what makes construction unique for an accounting firm that would make it something that the. And construction guys maybe shouldn't be dabbling.

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14:19
Speaker 2
I, I think it's totally the whip schedule and folk, you know, the whole. Everything about the whip schedule, whether it's revenue recognition, whether it's cost, you know, accumulation, you know, whether it's, you know, estimating, you know, and everything about project management, you know, the fact that you're not like anybody that would focus on a manufacturing operation, let's say, let's not pick on the manufacturers out there. But, you know, there are certain things that are consistent and very repetitive with manufacturing a product. As we all know, construction is definitely not that way in a lot of respects. So the fact that there's uniqueness, the fact that you're building a unique product every time really takes a lot more oversight.

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14:58
Speaker 2
And just the whole, that you have this system now, project managers and estimators and a bunch of people looking at these things, because it's not exactly the same thing every, you know, every single time. So it's really about, you know, what estimates are you using moving forward, you know, over under billings. And like there's just, you know, a lot of that stuff comes into play, you know, Manufacturer might just be worried about receivables, but we have this unbilled receivable, the under billing that we have to worry about too. So there's just unique things. It's something, you know, I, as we joked about before, I think, you know, I've been doing this for 25 years and I think I know what I'm doing now.

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15:33
Speaker 2
But I think back to different in parts of my career where it's sort of like, wait a minute, like you thought you got it, but it's like, wait a minute. I didn't understand when I first started what this meant.

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15:43
Speaker 1
So yeah, it's, if that doesn't happen, you haven't been growing, you know, but the key is to remain humble today, knowing that 10 years from now you're going to look back and be like, man, I was an idiot. So that's, that is the key, you know, you do your best and you stay humble. So that's extremely helpful. And I think if I get then past the barrier to entry and I think, okay, I'm working with an accounting firm that clearly understands wip, that understands over and under billings, that has the ability to look at my, you know, financial silo and really make not just heads or tails of it, but have the ability to understand the nuances very quickly and add value in the, in that form.

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16:36
Speaker 1
Like if something's not working internally in the way that you're logging or tracking or you know, cost codes or whatever, that your accounting firm would have the ability to pop their head in and say, hey guys, I'm noticing some stuff that needs to be sorted out. And, and if they don't have, if they're and construction guy, they're probably not going to have that. And, but if they have that construction background, they're going to be able to see it quickly, they're going to be.

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17:00
Speaker 2
Able to resolve it.

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17:00
Speaker 1
That's very useful. Let's talk about the value add where so if you've got this group of 10 to 15, you know, in any given region, qualified capable construction accounting firms, how do I pick which one to really use at that point and what, you know, what criteria should I be overlaying to consider who's adding more value?

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17:25
Speaker 2
Well, I think once you get through that initial scrub of saying, okay, these are the qualified contractors, construction CPA firms, then I, I see the next step is really being, okay, what else do they bring to the table like we talked about before, how are they involved in the trade associations that you belong to? Do you know who their other clients are? You know, get an understanding of what other companies are they working with? And, you know, another thing I've had come up on occasion is on a rare occasion it might be they're working with a competitor that you might not appreciate. The fact that your CPA is your direct competitor who maybe you don't get along with is, you know, we don't want to make sure that we're, you know, there's a confidentiality piece to our business. But there is that perception.

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18:10
Speaker 2
If you, if you do too much work with one particular company, there might be, you know, a risk of, you know, that some people are focused on that. Very few, but I have seen that before happen. But, you know, I think it's really about, you know, focusing on those value add things that they can bring to the table in terms of what associations are they involved with? Are they pushing thought leadership out there? What ideas are they bringing to the table? Are they ask, you know, some things I was thinking about or, you know, are they, you know, what would be wrong with asking your CPA asking you to go on a job site visit? Let me see boots on the ground. Let me see your actual process in the field. Let me understand your whole process from estimating to project management.

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18:55
Speaker 2
You know, inviting your CPA potentially to come to a project manager meeting and just sit there as a fly on the wall just to observe, just so that they, because there's only so much that person can do. It's based on what you're telling them ultimately. So it's, you know, them seeing it live and really seeing behind the curtain a little bit really will help add, give them the opportunity to add that extra value, for sure.

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19:20
Speaker 1
Love it. I love it. You know, it's so the. Mike, My business, believe it or not, is not podcasts. I, I, this is for fun. But, you know, in my business as a strategic consultant, I'm sorry to say that I can probably count one hand the number of times that a client has really connected me with their accounting firm or that their accounting firm has reached out to me and said we should really be, you know, on the same page. In the small handful of times that has happened, these are extremely strategically valuable relationships that those people have. Right. Like they're telling me they're giving me insights into the numbers, if that. So if that client hires me to help them to go from 5% net to 12% net over the next, you know, three years.

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20:20
Speaker 1
And that's the focus, is to drive up that net profit. Having a real strategic accountant. I mean, it's like a, it's like an easy button for me figuring out what needs to occur. Because they have such incredible insight into the, the things that are keeping them from being able to get to their goals. And whether it's people or lack of processes or, you know, markets or lack of technologies, all those things. You know, I'm hearing you say, if you have a relationship with an accountant who is willing to climb inside your business and not just stay on the outside, but actually climb inside your business a little bit and understand how you're operating, they have the ability to add so much more value and really be a consultant and an advisor.

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21:06
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's really about that advisor piece. The fact, like you mentioned the IT side of things, that's another area that can be incredible. And the CPA can play a role in that, too. If you read the trade publications out there's so much technology stuff going on in construction, there's that an owner has to be overwhelmed by, like, where do you even begin? Like, I can only imagine being in your shoes. It's like, okay, what do I invest in? What's not a waste of money you're getting, you know, getting a lot of that comes from the trade associations that, you know, are helping to push some of these things too. But, you know, there's so many ads out there, like, just to weed through that process.

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21:41
Speaker 2
You know, I think the cpa, again, is that trusted advisor can play a role in that if you let them. But again, you have to be willing to open up and show the person what you're looking. Well, this is the help that I need. And if there's a good, caring relationship there. Because that's the other biggest part, too. I'm not saying you have to best friends with your CPA and CPAs. Typical accountants aren't cool people is what most people think. But we can. So it's sort of like, you know, build that relationship, like, understand who. And here's the other part, too, that I didn't mention is I, I, years ago, I, I came up with this idea of just who do you want to meet? You know, I was doing almost 100% of my work for architects, engineers and contractors.

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22:22
Speaker 2
It's been like this for a long time. I'm in a position to make referrals, too. You know, if you have a good CPA and I know you're not thinking of an accountant like this, but, you know, there's opportunities where if you want to meet somebody, maybe I know how to get to that person and can help facilitate an introduction. That's been the part that I've enjoyed.

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22:39
Speaker 1
The second part I would add too.

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22:41
Speaker 2
Is, you know, a CPA that's involved with some of your. If you're a GC that's involved with some of your specialty contractors. One of the things I like about being involved regionally is that I know what's going on about a lot of projects. I know developers, I know the gcs. I know what I hear things of what projects are going where. And a lot of times when you meet with. A lot of times when I'm sitting down with a client for the first time in a while, the coolest part for me was that people would ask, so, Tim, what are you hearing out there? There? Like they, that was the pause and they wanted to hear. And I'm sure you get this too, Chad.

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23:15
Speaker 2
It's sort of like you just have a pulse on things that they don't see because they're so focused and working in their little silo, let's say, for, you know, and they don't get the chance to talk to people sometimes because they're so busy with the office stuff. But you're a guy and I'm a guy that's out there, so they actually like that feedback. What are you hearing from your banker friends? And, you know, what are you hearing? What's going on with legal issues out there, HR issues, all these things. And it's just you have all these resources available to really help people. And a lot of accountants don't want to take that step because it's out of their comfort zone. But a lot of them do.

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23:48
Speaker 2
And those are the ones that you really want to focus on is finding people that can, you know, help. Help make those connections for you.

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23:54
Speaker 1
Makes total sense. So, so I, I'm. I want to provide a quick summary.

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23:58
Speaker 2
And, and I'm, I'll.

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23:59
Speaker 1
I'm going to bring Stacy back because I will have some questions that she'll pose to us here. But quick summary of my takeaways is three categories of value add. The first category is business advisory. That is that your accounting relationship, having a deeper understanding for your unique business, the people in your business and being able to help beyond just a dollars and cents standpoint. But to point it maybe the drivers of the dollars and cents outcomes and give you Some advice and support from a business advisory standpoint. That's number one. Number two is, I would say relationships and, you know, they're being plugged in a complimentary space and having the ability to connect people, bring people who should be collaborating or doing business together, directly pulling those folks together. And, you know, that's probably a relatively rare trait for an accountant.

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25:17
Speaker 1
You know, not that they're not cool, Tim. I think they're cool, but they're not necessarily the most social people in the world, necessarily. Right. Like, there's a. There's a tendency for those, for people who are involved in high detail work to not be socially oriented and external. So that would be. The second category is the relationships they can bring to the table. And then the third category would be market intelligence is that their ability to provide useful data about things that are happening in and around the market. Big projects that might be moving forward, turnover trends and what we're seeing in terms of employees leaving or in terms of materials pricing or in terms of. Right.

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26:08
Speaker 1
All this different type of insight that somebody would be getting from just simply being immersed, plugged into the market gives them the ability to add value from a market intelligence standpoint. So advisory relationships, market intelligence. Add that to your selection criteria for accounting, in addition to ensuring that they have a strong deep construction practice, because if they don't, they're really not going to be able to provide any of these three things in any meaningful way anyway.

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26:41
Speaker 2
Right. So it's a matter of just getting started. You know, set up quarterly meetings with your accountant. Let them come out. Let's, you know, have a conversation with them and just get the ball rolling with this. If it's a new relationship or an existing relationship, it's. I think people just weren't thinking of it in these terms that it's. It's okay to have a conversation and get that. That accountant to open up a little bit, because there's a lot of value there for the people that specialize in this work. It's just a matter of. Sometimes you have to ask them to get the ball rolling a little bit.

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27:11
Speaker 1
That's all. Love it. Love it. Good stuff. All right, Stacy, we probably have a few questions before we have to jump off with Tim today.

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27:21
Speaker 3
Yeah. Eric just posed a question. What's the best way to find one of these unicorn CPAs that are willing to climb into your business with you and have these three things?

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27:32
Speaker 1
Yeah. Is there like a. Is there like a cpa, A unicorn CPA detector that we can.

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27:37
Speaker 2
Yeah, I love that I use that term unicorn a lot. So I love that. So I think that, you know, if you're not getting that from your existing accountant and you think they're. That that ability is in that person, you should ask them. It's like, okay, this is what I'm looking for this relationship to be. But you know what I had said, I think at the. Be sort of toward the beginning of the presentation here, you know, look for people that. I almost feel like when I was meeting with clients, it's almost like I'm. There's. There's an initial presentation. It's almost like I feel like I'm on a stage when I'm talking with people.

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28:11
Speaker 2
And so that makes me think, you know, anybody who's willing to do a formal presentation for your trade associations, that's someone that's used to sharing and is open, you know, that might be a way to look at it. You know, people that are actually pushing that thought leadership out there and doing presentations, that might be someone that. Again, I, I don't feel like I'm on a stage necessarily when I'm with clients, but I feel like I need to have my thoughts together to present ideas to them when, hey, Tim, what are you seeing out there? That market intelligence stuff. That's me being on when I'm with these people and then, you know, being engaged and dynamic. So that might be one way to find that person. You know, you know, I definitely, I, I.

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28:52
Speaker 2
Not to plug any specific trade organization, but you know, see, with this type of work, CFMA is a big one. Construction Financial Management association, national organization that has local chapters. There's a designation that I have called a ccifp, a Certified Construction Industry Financial Professional. I think that's a good way to find somebody too is focusing on that because there's continuing on top of taking an initial exam to get the certification, there's continuing education requirements that are specific to construction accounting that have to happen that you have to report every three years. So that's another piece of the puzzle too as you're trying to weed those out with looking for somebody that specializes. That's awesome.

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29:36
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a. It's a good litmus test to check real capability set in the industry is if they have a ccifp. I think that's great. I. One of the things I want to piggyback on or build on that I think you hit the nail on the head with was just right at the very outset. Tell these people the criteria, whether it's your existing CPA or whether you're shopping for a cpa, tell them that this is a part of the criteria and that it's a part of the expectation and ask them to demonstrate to you how they have the ability to do that. If they, if they struggle and they're scrambling to try to figure out how to present it to you, they probably aren't strong doing that.

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30:21
Speaker 1
If, if they're able to give you example after story after story and you know, situations, then it really works. It makes me actually think of a long time general contractor client of mine that I remember it was probably 10 years ago or eight years ago. They said to, they conducted a search process and they told their cpa, we're looking for you to be strategic, specifically in the area of relationships. We're looking for a CPA who can make connections and introductions in the developer community. They hired one that said they could do that and a year later they did. They, they went through and they said, look, you didn't do that, you're fired. We're moving on to the next one. And they ended up finding a, a really strong long term partner that way. So that's the other aspect of it.

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31:08
Speaker 1
I know it's uncomfortable, but you have to be willing to make a change. Even though you totally like your accountant and they haven't done anything wrong. The question to your point, Tim, it's like there's a lot of qualified people and that's not going to necessarily be your barrier. It's, you're not going to necessarily struggle to find, you know, strong qualified accounting firms in construction. What you are going to struggle to find are people who are committed to providing this level of service.

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31:37
Speaker 2
Right? Yeah, it makes sense if you think about it that you know, one, when they come in, we have a specific assignment that we have to get through those formal financial statements and tax returns. So it's really easy to focus on the production side of things and getting those deliverables done. It's that extra part that I think just gets lost sometimes. But frankly that's the part, that's the fun part. The part I've realized it isn't doing the financial statements. I mean, I did that for a long time. Tax returns for a long time. The fun part is really building these relationships with people, getting to know them, taking them to lunch, you know, maybe you play golf with them, go to a ball game with them, spend time with these people so that you get the opportunity to really, you know, build that relationship.

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32:18
Speaker 2
And just understand who they are. And then when it is time and you're working your 80th hour of tax season and you have to work another two hours to get something done, there's a different feeling. If you care about that person and that relationships there, it's like, okay, I'm going to find a way to get this done because I know they need this and expect this from me.

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32:35
Speaker 1
I love it. I think that's right, Stacy. I think we could probably squeeze in.

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32:39
Speaker 3
One additional say, with that being said, can you share us or illustrate any ideal relationships or stories with any of your clients?

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32:49
Speaker 2
I, I think, you know, I, I, as I said, finding ways to put people together, that's the part that I've enjoyed. And a lot of, one of the things I'm known for, I guess, is building those relationships and, you know, finding opportunities to put this architect together with this general contractor or putting this engineering firm together with this art. An architect, you know, finding ways to make those connections. And, and the guilty pleasure of this is if I actually go to the lunch and you make the connection, I just sit there, Believe it or not, I talk all the time, but believe it or not, sometimes I actually just sit and listen. And that's again, part of me building my intelligence level and just understanding their industry even better. So that's where, you know, finding opportunities like that, like, that's the cool part.

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33:31
Speaker 2
If you know, the people, when people say thank you because you went out of your way to create business for them, you know, that was part. I wasn't expecting to happen on my CPA accountant journey, but that's been some of the best. Yes, I can save you money. I can help with strategy. We'll save you taxes. Will present things great for the bonding company and the bank for you, all those things, but that's, that should already be a given. What else can you really bring to the table? And really, that's the fun part where you really add value and make and people say thank you. That's been, that's been the best thing for me.

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34:02
Speaker 1
That's awesome.

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34:03
Speaker 2
I love it.

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34:03
Speaker 1
And I think it may be, if you're a professional service provider and you're watching or listening to this episode, one of the takeaways I would have, if I were you, would becoming fascinated by, excited by the idea of being more of a connector. I think to the extent that you do that, you have made yourself irreplaceable as a service provider. Assuming you're providing a really strong tax and financial statements, you know, service, then you have this differentiator that protects you long term. And I'll just quickly ask Tim, in your 25 years, when being a CPA, did you have a pretty good client retention rate? Yeah.

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35:00
Speaker 2
Yeah. I used to joke, I said to a client one time, how hard would it be for you to fire me? And he said it'd be next to impossible because I'd have to tell so many people because you're part of that network. So that's. So if the CPAs out there that are listening, it's like, that would. That'd be my one piece of advice here. It's good for retention here. If you find those extra things in the event something doesn't go right or there's a miscommunication of something, that capital that you're building up with that client, and this can be applicable to the bankers out there and illegal and any other professional service that's servicing the industry. You know, the whole point of this is we're building up capital, but mistakes do happen, and miscommunications do happen.

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35:38
Speaker 2
This is how you build up that capital with people to really, you know, build that relationship so that when those things happen, it can weather that storm that happens once in a while.

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35:47
Speaker 1
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Because we're human and service providers, and in a service business, things happen. So there's.

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35:53
Speaker 2
There's.

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35:53
Speaker 1
There's no doubt. Tim, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for. For joining us for the morning huddle. Do you have any parting words?

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36:02
Speaker 2
No, I think. I think this was great. You know, I appreciate the opportunity to be on the podcast. A lot of great topics that you guys have going, and look forward to the next one. Absolutely.

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36:12
Speaker 1
Thanks. Please do. Yeah. Continue to. Continue to spread the word. Join us and we'll, you know, maybe. Maybe episode 84 will bring you back. Or episode 41. Right. Stacy's like, I can't believe we're gonna do more of it. We're going to do that many episodes. Yeah, it's freaking. Yeah, I know. It's all right. Thank you so much, Tim. Stacey, we have a little bit of cleanup to do. Let's talk about next week. So first things first.

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36:40
Speaker 2
Next.

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36:40
Speaker 1
Next week, you tell me Women in Construction Week is not next week. It's the following. Is that right?

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36:46
Speaker 3
Correct. So we're ahead of the head of the game, and we're going to be talking about workwear for women, shoes, clothes, and careers. We have Three guests on next week. So it's kind of like a panel lineup. I actually just bought Juno boots from one of our guests. I have not worn them yet. I'm going to test them out on Friday. I'm going out to a job site. So I'm excited for that. But her shoes are, they're beautiful. So we'll get to talk about all that fun stuff.

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37:17
Speaker 1
I'm psyched. I'll be. This will be a moment. I'm again, you know, we talk about it a lot, but there are these opportunities to learn that I feel so fortunate to have with all these guests that come on, we just get to ask them really cool questions. And I don't know if you notice, I, it's. I literally am filling up pages full of notes for me, you know, when I'm having these conversations. And I look forward to doing that again next week. A three person panel. Women in Construction to ring in Women in Construction Week. A little ahead of schedule, which will be great as always, I think. You know, guys, the mailing list, it continues to grow every week. Please share your email with Stacy H. Steeltocom.com and she will get you set up so that you're receiving a weekly email.

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38:07
Speaker 1
And it's very easy to register as well as follow up with the previous week's episode. If you didn't catch it live. You'll have all the links and all that type of stuff. We stream live on LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook, but we're also on Apple podcasts, Spotify and of course recorded on YouTube. I continue to hear from people who are listening to us driving down the road. That's how I take in my podcast. So as much as we wish you were here live, you know, please, if you're a listen and driving type of person and this time slot isn't perfect for you, make sure that you find that and tell a friend, please spread the word. We're trying to, we're trying to, you know, make the biggest possible impact in, you know, creating this platform for positive change in the building industry.

‍ ‍

38:56
Speaker 1
Stacy, are we ready to announce a certain. We can, yay, talk about it.

‍ ‍

39:02
Speaker 3
Nawic. So national association of Women in Construction. Chad is going to be. Well, Chad and I will be attending this spring forum. Do you have the date for that?

‍ ‍

39:14
Speaker 1
I do, yeah. It is May 5th and 6th. It's a two day event. May, Friday, May 5th and Saturday, May 6th.

‍ ‍

39:23
Speaker 3
So we're gonna do our first live podcast event with a panel there so we'll get more details of the time and when to tune in and all that fun stuff. But we're excited for that.

‍ ‍

39:35
Speaker 1
That should be sufficiently nerve wracking.

‍ ‍

39:37
Speaker 3
Yeah, we'll see how that goes with the noise and all that stuff.

‍ ‍

39:43
Speaker 1
Yeah, totally. But it's going to be, you know what I'm really excited about is to bring attention to NAWAK and to have an opportunity to learn more about what they're doing and spread the word there. I'm actually going to be giving a keynote presentation On Saturday the 6th, first thing in the morning. It's going to be about driving change from within your organization, regardless of your role in an organization and in doing so in a male dominated environment with some sort of, you know, advice for gaining buy in and traction on ideas. So I sincerely hope that if that is something of interest to you will sign up for the NAWIC conference which I believe is going to sell out.

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40:28
Speaker 1
I think they're going to have somewhere around 150 to 200 attendees and you know, early indications are that they will run out of those. So check out nawic. We'll have more information that we'll send out in the newsletter with register registration links and all that type of stuff to help them to spread their word and help our members to take up those seats before they go away. So. All right, that's it, Stacy. I'm gonna stop with the talking and we'll transition into next week. I can't wait to see everybody again soon. Stacey, anything to say before we part?

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41:02
Speaker 3
Nope. I'll see you guys all next week. Have a wonderful day.

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41:06
Speaker 2
Thanks.

‍ ‍

41:06
Speaker 1
See you too.

‍ ‍

Real estate developers drive a staggering amount of construction in the US today, and like all construction project owners, they have unique needs. Whether you are a design firm, general contractor, or specialty contractor, some or even most of your projects have a developer as your ultimate customer.

In this episode, we hear from a VP of Construction for an affordable housing developer, but Meade Rhoads has been on both sides of the table and brings a well-rounded perspective to the discussion. Join us to improve your understanding of developers as a customer and how you can improve your strategy for winning more developer-driven projects and building lasting partnerships regardless of your role in the industry.

Transcript:

‍ ‍

00:03
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you God speed. Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're going to have with that today because the world, my friend, has changed. Right?

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00:19
Speaker 2
A lot of American construction workers, they have different needs.

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00:23
Speaker 1
They have completely different needs.

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00:25
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out and they usually community service or community relations portion, you know, the most productive with a high performance value. And, you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

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00:43
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't? Yeah, not for me. Not for me. At 11 o', clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring.

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00:50
Speaker 3
So.

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00:50
Speaker 2
So.

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01:00
Speaker 1
Good morning. It's morning time. I'm Chad Prinke here with my co host and producer, Stacy Holzinger. Stacy, how are you today?

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01:09
Speaker 3
I'm doing great. How are you guys?

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01:13
Speaker 1
So far, so good. So far so good.

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01:15
Speaker 2
It's.

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01:15
Speaker 1
We're inches away from Thanksgiving. Our house is teetering on the edge of sickness, and we're hoping to be able to actually see family. So that's what's going on in my world. We have today, we have a good friend and guest, Mead Rhodes, who's with us from the NHP Foundation. He heads up construction for the NHP foundation, which is an affordable housing developer and an operator of affordable housing properties. Mead, thank you so much for joining us today.

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01:48
Speaker 2
How are you doing? Just fine. Glad to be here. Look forward to this chat.

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01:54
Speaker 1
Yeah, same. What's, what's exciting in your house heading toward Thanksgiving?

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02:00
Speaker 2
We're headed down to Pinehurst. It's typical plan, right? We head down there, meet some family down there, look forward to it. One of my favorite holidays. Right? Just a lot of food. Too much food.

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02:17
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's the best. An entire holiday that is actually geared around the idea of giving thanks. I think is. Gratitude is such a valuable thing. It's. I think if we can all stay there and not get into politics, then we will have a good holiday, I think, in our house. Stacy, what's. What's going on in your world heading into Thanksgiving? Oh, Stacy, we're not hearing you.

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02:49
Speaker 2
Shoot.

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02:51
Speaker 1
Stacy, with the technical difficulty. Oh, no, it's all good. It's all good. She'll get it straight. I'm confident. I do know that Stacy has not had Thanksgiving dinner with her extended family for three years due to the flu. Every time she's had, you know, Thanksgiving in the past three years and this year, their fingers crossed, gonna actually make it to a Turkey Day dinner. I'm hoping, I'm hoping for Stacy that turns out again. I'm sure she'll be joining us back. She just had some sort of glitch, but me, let's jump into it. So the purpose.

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03:30
Speaker 2
Sure.

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03:31
Speaker 1
The focus of today's conversation. And, and I, I've actually talked to a handful of people leading up to this that are really excited about this conversation to actually talk to a developer or somebody on the developer side of the multifamily building community about what matters from a developer's perspective. And I think you actually bring a unique combination to the table, both as a developer and as a construction guy. So let's start with your story.

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04:04
Speaker 2
Sure, sure. So I was that kid who used to stand on the corner watching the backhoe. Right. So even at an early age I was interested in it. And, and then in college, I got a real estate license when I was a sophomore and spent the summers on the business end of a hammer. Right. So I, in the summertime I was banging nails.

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04:28
Speaker 1
We have that in common. Yep.

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04:29
Speaker 2
Yeah.

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04:30
Speaker 3
Right.

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04:30
Speaker 1
All through high school and college.

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04:31
Speaker 2
Yep. Well, I haven't gotten too far away from it because I'm on a farm. I don't know whether you know it, but I live on a farm and so I still the business end of a hammer every now and again. So. Yeah. But, but anyway, in terms of my career, I started in property management and I, I've come to believe that they're some of the hardest working folks in the real estate industry. They're just, they're, they have to push rents with the tenants and then at the same time not spend any money with the owners. Right. So it's just you kind of caught in the middle in the balancing act. It's. Yeah, it sure is. Takes a little bit of another go between and then, let's see. So I figured out that was just some kind of all kinds of hard work.

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05:20
Speaker 2
And so I ended up going back and getting an MBA up in D.C. at GW and then got into asset management and property management at a REIT in Richmond. And we bought a lot of properties and left there and got into residential development with a regional development, regional developer in and around DC and spent. Worked on both ends of the spectrum. So I worked on the tax credit end. Right. But then on the other end of the spectrum, we also did luxury apartments and so and not so much in the middle and then got into commercial development, mixed use development, was a partner, a development partner in Northern Virginia. We did mixed use, commercial, residential and then, and now I'm on traction side and I'm, I work at NHP. We do mostly tax credit work predominantly.

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06:31
Speaker 2
We've got 190 million in work under construction, under active construction now. And let's see what else. I'm a licensed contractor and I already said that I've got a broker's license.

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06:47
Speaker 1
That's awesome. I mean it's an extremely varied career, really comprehensive experience surrounding professional real estate organizations. And the construction end is where you started, it's where you even are today, but inside of a development firm. So I think what you stand to bring to our audience and what I'm hoping that we can get into is helping us to put ourselves in the shoes of the developer community. And I think before I start asking you those questions and putting you on the spot to be a representative from the development community, I'll also say that it's possible that some of the stuff that you personally do or believe in may be somewhat different than what are the norms in the industry.

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07:49
Speaker 1
And I think it's throughout the course of the conversation valuable to kind of differentiate between those two periodically where you might say hey, this is what's normal, this is what I've seen, it's not what I do. And then, you know, vice versa along the way.

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08:04
Speaker 2
So that's fair.

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08:06
Speaker 1
I think at the core of people's desire to understand when I say people, I'm just going to go ahead and say general contractors and subcontractors have a deep desire to understand why developers procurement processes appear to work the way they do. So let's start if you would, in your shoes as a developer, what has been your experience with a typical procurement process for the general contractor?

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08:45
Speaker 2
Sure. So let's see. I've never, I've never had the luxury of working on a product where we had 100% complete plans and were putting them out to bid and you know, the RFP bid, you know all. I think the only people that are really able to do that are schools and the government.

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09:14
Speaker 1
People building that stuff might argue that even then, even though. Okay, yeah, but no, but I, I'm hearing you loud and clear and there is something really, there is something really, I don't know common about that in multifamily. Whether it's affordable or whether it's market rate doesn't really matter. That that seems to be a trend. I hear that almost all the time. So, so as for starters, you're saying we're starting off with incomplete plans, we're going through procurement and we're starting off.

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09:46
Speaker 2
With incomplete plans and running full tilt. So I've been in two worlds, right? We talked about the market rate world that I've been in and I'm currently in the tax credit world. And in both worlds we often, and I can't think of an instance when we haven't had a GC in the mix early on. Right. And there is a tremendous amount of value that a really good GC brings to the table.

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10:26
Speaker 1
How do you select? So if I'm hearing you right. Yeah. I didn't hear you say multiple GCs. I heard you say GC involved, AGC involved early on. How do you determine which GC to involve in that early stage? Are you, are you creating some sort of competitive process between GCs early?

‍ ‍

10:55
Speaker 2
It's not competitive. I mean it's competitive in the sense that we may talk to a couple GCs about a project, but it's not competitive in terms of like I just. It, it's what we look for is somebody who's got availability, who's got capacity, who can add value. We're about to get into a discussion about a three legged stool, I think. Right. At some point. So the three legged stool being the owner, the architect and the GC and assembling a team that can work at a high performance level.

‍ ‍

11:44
Speaker 1
And so I think what I'm hearing you say is that it's the competition, if you will, at that early phase is really about finding the right fit. It's not about. That's exactly a pricing exercise at that phase for you, right?

‍ ‍

12:04
Speaker 2
That's. Yes. And that's one of the conversations that happens very early on. Like we've got these schematics and we're trying to figure what it's going to cost to build. But we're, but you're looking for somebody who can come in and help with estimating and, and then make decisions around more efficient structures and substitutions and maybe even bring subcontractors or at least have good dialogue with subcontractors about concepts that are being pushed around and alternates that are available. And so there's definitely a value add with a good gc, the design process.

‍ ‍

12:56
Speaker 1
So does that general contractor at that time know that they've been selected? And is there a way for them to not to lose that at that phase in the game, you know, is it, is it a given that they're definitely going to be your partner through the course of the project if they've been brought in at that phase of the game? Like so to rephrase, do they know that they're the guy or they're the company and is that a given?

‍ ‍

13:27
Speaker 2
Yeah. So in my experience, yes is the answer. I mean we select some, we select somebody and they participate in the design, the refinement of the design and they're actively engaged in pricing and there's a target like we know what we want to spend. And so managing the design process so that we end up with a construction number that works is important. And so it just doesn't work to have multiple people, you know, having multiple discussions. You. Part of it is getting a contractor who's invested in the process.

‍ ‍

14:17
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. I as. So I have to say it. I'll be on a soapbox for roughly 30 seconds. Time me. I'm sorry. But one of the things I see that drives me crazy are situations in which developers create a competitive budgeting process on extremely early stage plans.

‍ ‍

14:45
Speaker 2
Yes.

‍ ‍

14:46
Speaker 1
And make their general contractor selection based on the lowest budget from the gc. At a phase in which there's so much ambiguity and so many questions about how plans can be interpreted and what they're begging for, literally begging for in that instance, is for general contractors to interpret the plans in the least expensive way.

‍ ‍

15:15
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's exactly.

‍ ‍

15:16
Speaker 1
Which may or may not be constructible, which may or may not meet design intent. Which may or may. Right. Like all those things are up in the air. And the earliest phase of the general contractor developer partnership is forged in lies, which is a terrible way to start a relationship. It's just a terrible way to start. And it's in there constantly digging out of it. I lay that responsibility directly at the feet of the developer. Creating a procurement process that is inherently flawed.

‍ ‍

15:51
Speaker 2
Well, even worse than that.

‍ ‍

15:53
Speaker 1
Things differently.

‍ ‍

15:54
Speaker 2
Yeah, even worse than that is not communicating that's what's going on. And have. Having multiple conversations with contractors. Right. And, and, and that inevitably they're talking to the same subs. And it always gets at and back and you do nothing but undermining, you know, what you're, what you're trying to do, which is to build a great high performance team to get this job done. So totally.

‍ ‍

16:19
Speaker 1
And by the way, word, we haven't even started construction. We're about to get married for about 24 months.

‍ ‍

16:24
Speaker 2
That's right. Right.

‍ ‍

16:26
Speaker 1
And imagine starting off, you know, marriage knowing that your spouse just cheated on you. You know, that's the way it feels for, that's exactly for both parties, I think. And again, the person driving the bus there is the developer. They have to take more, a more responsible approach to procurement. It really sounds like you and NHP are. I applaud you for that. Let's. I want to go to this idea of the three legged stool. I want to go in particular, I want to talk about the role that you want to see your contractor partner play with your architect partner. Describe maybe what a healthy dynamic looks like there. Because the way that you're doing this, with that early involvement, they really do need to be partners. What does a good partnership look like there?

‍ ‍

17:19
Speaker 2
So I think the best projects are projects where you've got the three legged stool. Right. So going back to that analogy, you've got the. An owner and an architect or design team and a contractor who are all high performance individuals and companies. Right. Just operating at a high level. And the goal should be to assemble a team that outperforms. And if things are done correctly and the process is good, then the outcome will be good. And the outcome, the good outcome will involve a higher level of design efficiency and quality plans, better costing because the GC actually understands, because he's been involved in the dialogue, understands what the design intent is and can help provide clarity to the subs as they're pricing things.

‍ ‍

18:30
Speaker 2
And then the owner is really is the conductor and should be the one assembling this team and setting the bar and making sure that the plans are tight and that the GC is, is, you know, pricing things appropriately and if the process really works, the outcome is a fairly high level of trust with a fairly high level, you know, group of individuals.

‍ ‍

19:03
Speaker 1
I think it's that term that you just tossed out at the end, trust is something that I, it's a topic I'm obsessed with. It's something that I spend a lot of time researching and exploring and trying to create on the teams that I work with. In your experience, what are the high trust behaviors that you see from general contractors that when they do these things, it cements that trust that you have for them as an owner?

‍ ‍

19:53
Speaker 2
God, that's a hard question.

‍ ‍

19:58
Speaker 1
Now.

‍ ‍

19:58
Speaker 2
So I think it may be easier.

‍ ‍

20:00
Speaker 1
To focus on the things that cause you to lose trust.

‍ ‍

20:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's, that's Maybe the. Yeah, but I, I like to think about the glass being half full. But it's a hard question because it's just, it's those behaviors that. So what is it? It's, it's perseverance, it's thoroughness, it's thoughtfulness, it's honesty. It's, you know, it's having the hard discussions before you're married, not after you're married. It's. Yeah, it's, it's taking responsibility, the things that you should be responsible for. But then if somebody stumbles, you know, one of the three legged, going back to the stool. If, if you've.

‍ ‍

21:02
Speaker 1
You, you.

‍ ‍

21:02
Speaker 2
Can still have a project that is successful, right? If you, if, if you have two really strong legs of the stool, it's awfully hard to stand one leg for 18 months. But, but if you, if somebody stumbles. We had it. We had a situation where we had an architect who ended up having some health issues and just evaporated. Right. But the project, the process and the project continued. Right. And, and then they were able to rejoin. And having two really strong players who could step in and carry the project makes a difference. And so, you know, high trust, I mean, it's all those things.

‍ ‍

21:51
Speaker 1
Love it. I love it. I think the, If I could share one thing that I, I share frequently when it comes to high trust behavior, it is to call out, call yourself out proactively for the errors, minor mistakes, accidents and things that you're trying to do to repair and put those things on the table and share your action plans for recovery. If anybody ever gets caught having made a mistake, the extent to which that damages trust is so much worse. And in fact, if you lead off by saying, hey, Meade, we just identified an issue that we had in pre con, we're going to own it. It's not your problem. But I wanted you to know that we have a bust. We're going to figure that out and try to create a solution with these three trades to see if we can recover it.

‍ ‍

23:07
Speaker 1
I'm bringing that to your attention just so that, you know, we're trying to figure out a collaborative solution that doesn't in any way change your expectations for the product.

‍ ‍

23:16
Speaker 2
Right.

‍ ‍

23:18
Speaker 1
It may even motivate you as an owner in that situation to say, really appreciate you sharing that with me, Chad. Just tell me what the damage is. We'll work through it together. Maybe it's something we can pull out of contingency, you know, or something along those lines. And we can work on that.

‍ ‍

23:33
Speaker 2
To do that, there has to be some level of self awareness and it just, it's, that's, it's beautiful. It happens and it elevates the whole team.

‍ ‍

23:45
Speaker 1
So yeah, I, I, I, I warned you when were preparing for this that this time would fly. And here we are at 9:25 almost already. I'm gonna pull Stacy in because I know that we've had a ton of questions rolling through our chat this morning.

‍ ‍

24:04
Speaker 3
Hey.

‍ ‍

24:06
Speaker 1
So glad to know everything's okay. In my brain. Your house was like hit by a missile and I was really worried and, but now here you are, you're back in your city.

‍ ‍

24:14
Speaker 3
I'm back. Lots of great questions. Let's start off. How do you see the multifamily residential industry pivoting in response to the rising cost of money, inflation and materials and increased cost of labor?

‍ ‍

24:31
Speaker 2
Holy smokes. So everybody's scrambling to the answer, right? Trying to figure out how to make it work. And so the opportunity is to sit down, take a closer look at these projects, you know, figure out how you can skinny them up and, and make the scope work. And, but it's hard. I mean, it's, it's hard. Yeah.

‍ ‍

25:03
Speaker 1
Are you, are you seeing, and you know, if you can't answer, it's okay, but are you seeing tax credit deals, futures being thrown into question right now? And are any tax credit deals stopping making sense in our current cost to build environment?

‍ ‍

25:24
Speaker 2
We haven't had any that operated. They just get a little bit harder. And so I don't know whether that, I can't speak for others. Right. For us, we haven't had any that have evaporated. We just, that's great to hear. You just dig a little harder. And you know, there's such, there's.

‍ ‍

25:45
Speaker 1
There'S such an incredible unmet need, undermet need, I should say, for affordable housing in the country, in this country. It makes me feel really good to hear you say that your tax credit deals haven't evaporated. I'm sorry they're getting harder, but that it is nice to hear that they're not going away. That would be, that would be a tragic situation for large population. So thank you.

‍ ‍

26:08
Speaker 3
Have you, were just talking about off site construction in our last episode, but have you explored off site manufacturing of modular units at all?

‍ ‍

26:18
Speaker 2
Okay, so we've looked at this and it's Hard with tax credits. They're front loaded. They take, they take dollars up front and we've just not been able to figure out how to make them work. And really the benefit is the quality. You just get higher quality product. But it's, the design is more complicated. It's six dimensional instead, you know, four dimensions. Right. The walls, you get the floors and you got to make verticals all work. And it, so that just, that's a degree of design that in the affordable world, as fast as we're moving, we haven't been able to get to. And then the footing of the funds is another computation that just, we haven't been able to figure out.

‍ ‍

27:10
Speaker 3
Are you moving towards integrated project delivery?

‍ ‍

27:15
Speaker 1
Yeah. This is an interesting question. I think about, you know, as you were describing the way that you like to operate, Mead, this idea of pulling in your architect and general contractor partners early, selecting people based off of their fit, not necessarily their price, and then conducting that exercise. There are formal contracting methods, you know, integrated project delivery being one of them, where, you know, you're pulling everybody together based on those themes, not just the general contractor, but most if not all of your specialty contractors, and really pulling everyone in for essentially a collective design build effort in which they're financially tied to project performance metrics and everybody's operating in an open book. Is that a topic that has entered the mainstream at all in affordable housing in nhp in your world? Where do you stand with that stuff?

‍ ‍

28:11
Speaker 2
Gosh, we definitely try to make sure that our design team is fully integrated and we focus on the coordination of how the architects work with MEPs. And oftentimes you get disconnects in the fans. And so we focus on making sure that process is tight. We focus on bringing the contractor into the process. Right. So that, so that they're involved in the process. But that's, I mean, today that's where our focus is and you know, wish I had a better answer.

‍ ‍

28:53
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think it's that I would, I love integrated project delivery as a concept and I love it in practice. In some really specific examples that I've had the ability to go through. Very, very cool. I think the learning curve is something that is intimidating to a lot of folks and if I can, I'll editorialize again yet again, maybe like for the 12th time today. Sorry about that. But the, the reality is that for owners, the willingness of the MEP trades, for example, to provide free design assist as a part of the process has removed a lot of the necessity to look into ways to make that happen. If I have a good GC partner who's got a good MEP partner that they feel, you know, confident in the process, everybody's.

‍ ‍

29:55
Speaker 1
That the GC is not charging you for any additional design assist on the upfront collaborating with the Arc deck, I'm assuming. And you know, same goes with the trade contractors. So I think that's a part of the reality is if, if we want to, if they truly want to change the way that happens in the market, they've got to stop offering the service for free. They've got to start saying this is how this ought to work. And, and developers will. Developers are just doing there. I think they're just buying the way that everybody else is telling them to buy. It's like you're bringing your service to me in this way. So anyway, I'll shut up. Stacy, More questions.

‍ ‍

30:36
Speaker 3
From Casey. So I know there's a lot of issues with subs getting paid on time. Do you think prepayment for change orders is possible?

‍ ‍

30:47
Speaker 2
Not, not in the world that I operate in today. And oftentimes the lenders and funders actually require reviewing change orders and yeah, not in the tax credit world. Not anytime soon anyway.

‍ ‍

31:07
Speaker 1
So I think if I can expand on that question. Ike also tosses in this note where he's asking is, can you suggest any strategies for subcontractors to avoid having to finance change orders? Is there any. Is there anything? Because, I mean, you get it. I know, I know you understand that if you were a trade contractor working in tax credit affordable housing deals, what strategies would you be thinking about to protect your cash position and make sure that you weren't floating in financing change orders?

‍ ‍

31:42
Speaker 2
Wow. I haven't thought about it from that perspective and I, I just, I'm focused on getting them funded, you know, and getting things funded and getting the approvals and I just haven't flipped it around to think about it. I don't have answer today. Not in the world I'm operating in today.

‍ ‍

32:05
Speaker 1
Yeah, I don't think there's a very elegant one in any case, I will share that one. One select strategy I've seen work, it's very back of the envelope, but it's still. It goes to trust is if you're a specialty contractor and you know that you're going to struggle to float some particular change order, preemptively going to the general contractor and talking about anything they can do to help you to absorb that. And I've, and I've worked with, I've had the good fortune to work with several general contractors that understand where their subs are coming from and will go ahead and cut them loose on that portion and float it themselves. But it just, it's hard, it's hard accounting and there's no elegant solution to it. It's nothing that I've seen.

‍ ‍

32:52
Speaker 2
Yeah. I just had a conversation yesterday with it with the GC and the conversation was we've done this, we've done 13 draws and. It's been 44 days. What it's been taken to get on this project, to get it done. And if we're not able to fix it, at least we can communicate about what it is and manage expectations so that people know what to expect. That's, it's just a, you know, having the hard con is what it is and you know, we just need to plan it accordingly. Awesome.

‍ ‍

33:40
Speaker 1
All right, Stacy, what else?

‍ ‍

33:44
Speaker 3
Just a couple more comments here from Paul and Jeff. Paul was just saying the federal mandates reporting, labor rates, insurance, except etc on the government's money is a huge issue. I don't know if you have any comment on that.

‍ ‍

33:58
Speaker 2
Can you say that? Can, can you?

‍ ‍

34:00
Speaker 3
Sure. Paul said the federal mandates reporting, labor rates, insurance. Oh, government's money is a huge issue.

‍ ‍

34:12
Speaker 2
Yes, yes. And, and it's a challenge for the developer. Right. Because make commitments on these projects, on these funded projects that we're going to make and have certain participation.

‍ ‍

34:29
Speaker 1
Participation.

‍ ‍

34:30
Speaker 2
Yeah, I just, it wasn't working. Right. And, and so we make participation requirements or promises and we really, I mean it's the Fed. Right. That's around. I mean we need to make them and we need to report them accurately. And so tracking that stuff is important, really important.

‍ ‍

34:55
Speaker 1
The, the best thing that a trade contractor can do, I think is to be bulletproof on their reporting requirements on a, on a, you know, tax credit job. You're going to have all these reporting requirements and also collaborating with your fellow specialty contractors to make sure everybody is also going to be successful. Because if, and I think maybe what Paul's alluding to, particularly as it relates to change ordered payment delays, is that one trade, if one sub doesn't have their stuff together and it can hold up the payment of a whole change order, not because anybody's trying to be a jerk, but because literally there's federal requirements that they will not release the money is not going to be cut loose and. Exactly.

‍ ‍

35:59
Speaker 2
Right.

‍ ‍

35:59
Speaker 1
You might have, you know, the electrical might be, you know, being held hostage by the concrete sub because the concrete sub isn't tight on their requirements.

‍ ‍

36:15
Speaker 2
And then the, and the gcs just need to step in and help with the paperwork. Get it done. Right. Whatever it takes.

‍ ‍

36:22
Speaker 1
And whatever it takes. I know it's tough. Paul's like, yep, that's what we're doing. I'm sure. So we're good. What else do we have?

‍ ‍

36:33
Speaker 2
Stacy?

‍ ‍

36:33
Speaker 1
Any other.

‍ ‍

36:34
Speaker 3
That's it.

‍ ‍

36:36
Speaker 2
Awesome.

‍ ‍

36:38
Speaker 3
Yeah.

‍ ‍

36:38
Speaker 1
Great conversation. I'm thrilled to see all the communication that came in through the audience. If people wanted to follow up with you separately, Mead, what would they do? Would they just connect with you on LinkedIn and reach out to you through that channel? Is that okay?

‍ ‍

36:58
Speaker 2
That would be fun. Sure. That would be fun. And I'm glad to help any way I can. You know, if we're asking questions, we must be trying to get, you know, improve and get better and with our understanding and all that. So, yeah, we'd be glad to help in any way we can.

‍ ‍

37:16
Speaker 1
That's great. Thanks so much, Mead. Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Is there anything that you want to say in parting?

‍ ‍

37:31
Speaker 2
I wish I had some, something profound to opera right now. I've tried to lay it there, you know, I've tried to lay it bare and just shoot straight. So, you know, I'm glad to have had the opportunity. It's nice to chat with you this morning.

‍ ‍

37:49
Speaker 3
Thank you.

‍ ‍

37:50
Speaker 1
Likewise. Likewise. I think, I think you did a great job being just who you are and sharing with us exactly how you approach the world as one person with your immense background. I think it's a great example of, for our audience what people in your shoes care about. So thank you for sharing that and I hope that you'll join us again at some point in the future.

‍ ‍

38:21
Speaker 2
Thank you so much. It's. It's always nice to chat with you, Stacy. Take it easy. Hope things, Hope things stay well, you know, for Thanksgiving.

‍ ‍

38:32
Speaker 3
You too. Happy Thanksgiving.

‍ ‍

38:34
Speaker 2
We'll see.

‍ ‍

38:35
Speaker 1
All right, Stacy, we have a little housekeeping to do here. Let's, let's talk about where things stand at this point. We've got one episode left in season three, which is episode number 38 with Kathy Hum, who is going to be joining us to talk about creating a strategic HR department as opposed to just a tactical one. And I think that a fascinating conversation for business owners, for people in the HR world. Maybe there are some frustrated HR folks who are trying to get things to change in their company and they. This would be useful to, to check out. So look forward to that. Stacy, do we have a Steeltoe Communications marketing tip heading into Thanksgiving week?

‍ ‍

39:30
Speaker 3
Yeah, for, I guess, Thanksgiving week to be grateful. Just a reminder to, you know, think about your internal marketing and recognize your employees. And we always say in the construction industry, the detail or the devil's in the details. Right. So when you're telling someone, just don't say you're doing a great job. Actually put some thought into giving them a nice compliment and being grateful for what they do. That's it.

‍ ‍

40:00
Speaker 1
I love that. That's a great. It's a great idea. I recently. Oh, you know what? I won't even say where I was, but I, I was checking out at a store and I saw something that I thought the, that three women on my team would really enjoy and ran over and picked those things up for them for Thanksgiving. Just thought, you know, people used to.

‍ ‍

40:24
Speaker 3
Do that all the time. Like, you know, my dad was always great with that, like recognizing people in his organization. And I feel like we lost a lot of the years. So.

‍ ‍

40:35
Speaker 1
Yeah, I, I'm trying to. I'm a terrible gift giver. I might be the worst. Just ask my wife. It's like, bad. But I'm trying to. It's not about the gift. Right. It's just about thinking about.

‍ ‍

40:49
Speaker 3
Yes.

‍ ‍

40:50
Speaker 1
Thinking about others. So at any rate.

‍ ‍

40:52
Speaker 2
Well, good.

‍ ‍

40:53
Speaker 1
I can't wait to see you again next week. I hope that this week ahead is a wonderful one for you and for all of our audience. And if anybody that you know should be involved in season four, we're going to be starting up over the winter. We'll be starting up after the new year. And we would love to fill out the schedule with folks that, you know, I think we have eight out of our 12 guests identified. So we do have at least four.

‍ ‍

41:23
Speaker 2
Slots open at this point.

‍ ‍

41:25
Speaker 3
Okay. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. See you.

‍ ‍

41:29
Speaker 2
Thanks.

‍ ‍

In the commercial, industrial, and multifamily construction segments, companies have the chance to work together repeatedly. As such, maintaining strong relationships with customers and service providers alike is a great strength for the companies that do it well.

Matt Bolyard joins The Huddle to talk about the value of strong relationships between GCs and Owners, and the service-oriented mindset he and the Southway Builders team use to create lasting partnerships with their customers.

Transcript:

‍ ‍

00:00
Speaker 1
We need to get back to work. And work is one of the ways that we contribute to this country, that we grow our gdp, we grow our tax base, we contribute to each other effectively.

‍ ‍

00:09
Speaker 2
We help finance our national security, our.

‍ ‍

00:12
Speaker 1
Homeland security, our, you know, our infrastructure.

‍ ‍

00:14
Speaker 2
I had key employees that really wanted to be leaders in the company, but they didn't want to have any ownership in it, responsibility that way. So I just had to start researching out and figuring out, well, how.

‍ ‍

00:26
Speaker 1
Do I market my company?

‍ ‍

00:28
Speaker 2
Go to your local school board for one hour twice this year. And if you can have even just.

‍ ‍

00:33
Speaker 1
10 or 15 employers show up and.

‍ ‍

00:34
Speaker 2
Do that at the same school board every single month, there's two contractors filling out a little card to give your 30 seconds at the podium that says, I need your help and we have great jobs. Eventually they will hear you. But if everyone just did two hours a year, that's how we change this. Stacy, how you doing this morning?

‍ ‍

00:50
Speaker 3
I'm doing great.

‍ ‍

00:52
Speaker 2
She loves it. I ask the question every time she sleeps like, I'm fine, dude, just a little much.

‍ ‍

01:01
Speaker 1
And I say to that owner, I said, sue, you're not willing to invest in yourself. You're not going to invest in yourself. You're going to invest in companies you have no control over, whereas your company you control and you don't have the confidence to pour the money into that.

‍ ‍

01:14
Speaker 2
When things are busy and they're looking for their GC friends to sit down and negotiate a project on a GC and a fee and they're more excited about building the project and then all of a sudden the model, the market swings and now the developer market is going to go out and they're going to hard bid the same project to two or three different GCs. And that's where it starts going down. Morning huddle time. Good morning, everybody.

‍ ‍

01:47
Speaker 1
Good morning. Good morning.

‍ ‍

01:48
Speaker 2
It's June 14th. We started our day with a thunderstorm. Not a typical start to, to a morning, but I was like the only one in my house awake for it. Look, looks like we're in for round two, you know, as well. So hopefully on this live broadcast we don't have a power outage.

‍ ‍

02:09
Speaker 3
Yeah, we'll see.

‍ ‍

02:13
Speaker 2
So we've got Matt Bolliard here with us this morning. Matt, how are you?

‍ ‍

02:18
Speaker 1
I'm well, Chad, how are you doing?

‍ ‍

02:20
Speaker 2
Real good. Thank you for being here. So Stacy, how was your weekend?

‍ ‍

02:26
Speaker 3
It was good. I took a trip to Philly and saw my parents for a while and we did. We watched the Keys versus the Thunder games. It was awesome.

‍ ‍

02:38
Speaker 2
Oh, that's awesome.

‍ ‍

02:39
Speaker 3
Yeah.

‍ ‍

02:40
Speaker 2
That was minor league. Minor league baseball.

‍ ‍

02:43
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah.

‍ ‍

02:45
Speaker 2
I have not been out to a Frederick Keys game.

‍ ‍

02:49
Speaker 3
It's a blast. It's a blast.

‍ ‍

02:52
Speaker 1
Good.

‍ ‍

02:53
Speaker 2
All right, I'll put that on the list. How about you, Matt? How was your weekend?

‍ ‍

02:56
Speaker 1
It was great. My daughter and wife were away for a Girl Scout trip, so it was a boys weekend, which concluded on Sunday with a Lego festival, which was a lot of fun. So.

‍ ‍

03:10
Speaker 2
So just you and your sort of grown up friends or. Yes.

‍ ‍

03:15
Speaker 1
Sometimes they act like grown up friends, but the two boys are seven and three, so that's awesome. It was great.

‍ ‍

03:21
Speaker 2
A Lego fest.

‍ ‍

03:22
Speaker 1
That sounds great.

‍ ‍

03:23
Speaker 2
Yeah, A lot of fun. I threw my back out on Sunday, which has been exciting. I've been. Yesterday I was like, holding on to hope I play hockey in like an old man's hockey league. And yesterday I was holding on to hope that I would be able to play hockey. I didn't like, tell the team until noon. And I was like, you know what? I can't really walk, so probably hockey's off the table tonight.

‍ ‍

03:47
Speaker 3
How'd you do that?

‍ ‍

03:49
Speaker 2
I'm not sure is the hardest.

‍ ‍

03:52
Speaker 1
He sneezed. Yeah.

‍ ‍

03:56
Speaker 2
You start to. It happens. Everybody has warned me that it would happen and it's happening where you just start getting older and things are falling apart part. So it's a blast. It's a lot of fun.

‍ ‍

04:05
Speaker 1
Yeah.

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04:07
Speaker 2
Well, good. So. So I want to introduce Matt Boliard. Matt is vice president at Southway Builder. Southway is a Baltimore based builder. I don't know, you know, if. If you want to expand on sort of size and type and all that kind of stuff, I'll let you do that, Matt. But they're good friends of mine and I've known Matt for a long time. What's really cool is that when the reason that Matt's on the show is that I was talking to a developer client of mine that has, you know, projects going on in 14 different states and folks all over the country and obviously works with lots of general contractors. And I said, hey, I want to do an episode where we are talking to a general contractor that has really figured out how to be a good partner for you guys.

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04:57
Speaker 2
Do you have anybody that you'd throw in that category? And he didn't skip a beat. He said, you should really be talking to Southway builders. I'd recommend talking to Matt Boliard. And I was like, that's really funny because I know them really well. And, and I wasn't surprised. But it was validating of a lot of the feelings that I have about Southway and a lot of the feelings that I have about Matt personally. And so there's, I think I'm really interested to have our audience hear how you're approaching things and you know, as it relates to building effective general contractor ownership partners, owner partnerships, that is, you know, what you're doing that maybe, you know, made our mutual client put you at the top of the list.

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05:41
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, first thanks Chad and Stacy both for inviting me and Southway on the show here. We really appreciate any opportunity to speak about this topic, especially it's something that's I think, near and dear to our hearts. Southway is getting ready to celebrate our 31st year in business. We are, depending on context, I think, a mid size regional general contractor. We, while our roots were founded in affordable housing, we have grown beyond that in 20 years ago, started a commercial group. So we're pretty evenly distributed now with commercial project as well as our multifamily projects ranging from affordable housing apartment deals to projects like Lexington Market that hopefully folks are familiar with. So I've been with Southway for 15, coming on 15 years now.

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06:41
Speaker 1
Started as a project manager, coming from another company prior to that and kind of stayed here and worked my way up. But it's been really great. It's a great company that has grown a lot in those 15 years and the 31 years as well and continue to grow based on a lot of the principles that I think we'll discuss today. So thank you for having us. Awesome.

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07:05
Speaker 2
Yep, we're happy to get into it. So Stacy, you know, as always, you know, making sure that we keep capture questions and comments from the audience. We'll pull you back in here toward the end, but I'll, I'll spare you needing to sit on screen and type at the same time because I know that's fun for me. So. All right, cool. We'll see you soon, Stacy.

‍ ‍

07:30
Speaker 3
Sounds good.

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07:31
Speaker 2
So Matt, I want to kind of, you know, pick up on this sort of thread of what creates the kind of reaction that I got from the developer that I asked. What do you think makes a successful partnership with an owner in your mind? Where does that sort of start?

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08:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think, you know, we're often asked, you know, what's our secret recipe? What, you know, what's, what's magic about how we approach this? And I, I don't know that there's any, it all seems really obvious. To us. Right. And, and I don't know that it's magical for us, it all begins with trust. And, and really that was sort of ingrained from 31 years ago and how the business was built. But in more recent history, we've really modeled our behaviors off of the five dysfunctions of the team. So Patrick Lencioni, Author of the Advantage 5 Dysfunctions and many other books, had created this model with a pyramid that starts with trust, goes to accountability, commitment, conflict and results.

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08:53
Speaker 1
And our starting point on any relationship is really coming at it with the understanding that the environment that we've chosen to be engaged in, that of construction for many years, has been rife with deceit and mistrust. You know, that's the stigma that has been developed, not unlike the stigma that follows the mechanics of the world. And I think our recognition of that is really important as we come into a relationship and understand that we have to, you know, first develop this trust and wash away the narrative of that stigma and then start building on that foundation towards achieving those results at the top of that pyramid.

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09:40
Speaker 2
So along those lines, I agree with you totally that there is this stigma, well earned stigma, quite frankly, you know, surrounding contractors. And I say well earned because I think, you know, it's very common to run into contractors that are doing whatever it takes to make the money that they need to make. And sometimes, often that comes at the expense of their customer's experience, the way that they're, you know, conducting business ethically, you know, transparency or lack thereof. It, I mean, it happens a lot, whether it's between subcontractors, generals, general zoners, heck, suppliers and manufacturers and the rest of the industry. There's, there's a lot of hiding, you know, in shell game kind of stuff going on. But anyway, because of that, I think your customers, they either are working with a general contractor today, for the most part. Right.

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10:55
Speaker 2
This isn't their first project. With the exception of those for whom it is their first project. They're working with a general contractor today or they have worked with general contractors in the past. In either case, they're coming in with some preconceived notions. How do you overcome that? How do you overcome the baggage that you're maybe walking into with a new customer?

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11:17
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think, you know, the baggage of a relationship with a customer is really not unlike the baggage of any relationship that you're coming into, whether it's a romantic relationship or new friendship, whatever it might be. Everyone's got baggage, right? And so there's an added wrinkle, I think, inherent with contracting where the starting point of most relationships, at least once it gets to a project level, you know, then we start developing a contract where all of the terms are centered around this idea of what happens when things go wrong. And the terms are really baked into this fundamental thing of not trusting the other party. And so you have to insert and create these terms.

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12:01
Speaker 1
And so the starting point of any relationship has, you know, baggage plus, at least in the contracting world, but similar to, I think, any other relationship, at least most traditional romantic relationships, right, you're not meeting someone or courting someone from across the room and engaging, and then next thing you know, you go to the love Chapel. In fact, some people may, but the very next day, we're often going to the chapel to get married. And so over time, over a courtship of dating, you know, we start to unwind, I think, and learn about that baggage and what that baggage effect has been on that individual or in this case, the customer. And so for us, the trust building scenario is really a project, right? So we get to the starting line and then we get into the project.

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12:58
Speaker 1
And it's not the first three months, it's the entire span of a project. We refer to the first few months of an engagement usually as a honeymoon period anecdotally. And it's stated that way for a reason, right? Because you're not going through all of the ups and downs of a relationship as you would. And so for us, we really build that trust through demonstration, I think, through the project. And that demonstration is really just founded on this unreal commitment to candor and transparency. And really, I think reflection and understanding that the other party has been burned, has had some baggage, has preconceived notions, stigma or otherwise about contracting, that we really need to unwind as we perform on a project so it doesn't happen on day one. It's a process like any other relationship, us.

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13:56
Speaker 2
I often talk with my partnering clients about this idea that you have to extend trust and that everybody is sort of waiting for the other person to earn their trust. But in that waiting period, I'm waiting for this person to earn my trust. The behaviors that you have tend not to behaviors that earn the other person's trust. And it's always at least a two way street, if not a multiple way street, depending on how many parties are involved and what you are doing to extend trust. Initially, I think, how does, I guess how does that translate for a general contractor working with an owner. What are some of the gutsy things that you have to do along the way that are like, this is a new relationship. I sure hope this doesn't come back to hurt us, but here we go.

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15:03
Speaker 2
What are some of those extending trust situations that you might have as an example?

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15:09
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think the first thing for us is acknowledging for ourselves that we're going to make mistakes. We're human. The second step is encouraging our partners, and I'll use the term customer, to be inclusive of design partners, you know, the three legged stool of client, design contractor. But all of us, I think our next step is to have everyone on the team recognize that all of us, we're going to make mistakes along the way. And you know, a traditional, I think approach in the construction process, especially in a hard bid environment, is one in which everybody's trying to shift risk and avoid the mistakes and point the finger to one of those other stools. Our approach, I think is really a little different in that we try to, I think, help everyone to be successful.

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16:10
Speaker 1
You know, it's, and that's rooted, really comes back into our purpose. We'll talk maybe a little bit about this later. But you know, our purpose is to serve others, to help them to achieve their maximum potential. And that goes around the board. So we approach a project in a relationship of look, we're not to use the sort of saying that's come to life here with the pandemic, but we are really all in it together. And so we approach it from a sense of look, let's lock arms here. Your problems are our problems, but the reciprocal of that is that we want you to be willing to play a role in our problems being your problem so that we can collectively solve them instead of pointing to you and saying, well, this is your problem, you need to solve it on your own.

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16:57
Speaker 1
I think the other side of that, maybe to cite sort of a broad example, is it comes back to that pyramid. The accountability piece on the pyramid of the five dysfunctions is a really hard piece for contractors, but I think for anyone, especially when you have an expectation of holding your customer accountable, the hand that feeds you. I think often folks feel that they're in this position of, well, I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me. But holding every partner at the table accountable is really toward, you know, focusing towards a common and greater good and having that all. You can't do that without trust. And that's why trust is it at the foundation. But when you can create an environment where you Trust each other enough to, where you can have conflict, you can have the difficult conversations.

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17:56
Speaker 1
And when somebody's not performing, whether it's the customer, whether it's the design partner or the contractor, that each person in that triangle, each group in that triangle can point and say, hey, that's not good enough. We need this. And you're not holding up your end of the deal. But, but often I think because of that, you know, relationship of the hand that feeds you, we're silent. And I think that's where we really strive to not be silent, but to be candid and have an open and transparent culture.

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18:28
Speaker 2
So, so there's, I mean, there's so much in the past two minutes of that answer. There's so much in there to dig into. I want to, I guess, highlight a couple of the things that really, I.

‍ ‍

18:42
Speaker 1
Pulled out of that.

‍ ‍

18:43
Speaker 2
One is acknowledging your own fallibility. And you know, I always, the term I like to use is like, bust yourself before they bust you.

‍ ‍

18:56
Speaker 1
Right?

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18:56
Speaker 2
Like if you've screwed up, don't let other people catch you that you've screwed up. Come running down the hall and be like, I screwed up. Just really announce that it makes a huge difference in terms of trust, right? Because if somebody feels like they had to catch you doing something wrong, that doesn't go well, right. That, that undermines trust. So that's. One is acknowledging your own fallibility and readily, you know, calling yourself out on your issues along the way. One of the things I think that buys you, if I'm hearing you right, is it buys you then the, you know, other end of that, which is the right and the ability to, in a non accusatory way, to hold your customer accountable to, you know, when you identify mistakes that they've made.

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19:46
Speaker 2
And it's like, it's not like, hey man, you made a mistake, so you're going to pay for it. It's, hey, we've identified this. Can we mutually agree this is a thing that we have to overcome and we're in the boat with you. Let's, let's solve it together. But because you called yourself out, it makes it easier for you to sort of call them out. And then one last thing, you use this term, candor. And I can't stress enough that I have found when people fail to tell others, shoot each other straight and say like, hey, like if you bite your tongue and you say, I really don't want to bite the hand that feeds me there, I'm gonna hold Back. I'm gonna not say what I think is the issue going on with this customer.

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20:30
Speaker 2
It's subtle, but it erodes your liking of that person over time. And it eventually will make it to where you don't treat them like the partner that you want to treat them because you don't like them, because they're jerks, because they've screwed you over.

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20:49
Speaker 1
Right? That's right.

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20:50
Speaker 2
But in my opinion, the truth is it's your fault. You had an opportunity to correct it.

‍ ‍

20:56
Speaker 1
Right? That's right.

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20:57
Speaker 2
So that's the, I mean, I don't know. Is that, is that a summary of some of those themes? Is there anything in there that you would disagree with or expand on?

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21:05
Speaker 1
No, I think it's great summary. I think you hit the nail on the head. You know, while trust is the word at the foundation there, it's really a version of trust. It's vulnerability based trust. And if we accept the idea of being vulnerable about our own misgivings, our own mistakes, that is the recipe. That's the trust recipe. Right. But absolutely great summarization.

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21:31
Speaker 2
So what are some common sense tools? If we're listening to this, we're like, okay, this is thought provoking. We want to create this two way street for accountability. What are some, what are some common sense or real world tools that you might use or strategies that you might use to create this environment of accountability?

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21:50
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think we have a lot. The one that I think I would hone in on here, just continuing theme of that project, demonstration of trust, is at the conclusion of that project, everybody I think gets really caught up in the motion of any one project. But we have a process at the end of every project. It's based on the Army's model for after action reviews, which is a real specific sort of construct where, you know, you review your mission objectives. In our case, the project objectives kind of figure out where you landed relative to those outcomes versus the initial desired outcomes. But the meat of that process really comes in two forms. One is reviewing collectively with the customer, again to be inclusive, the design partners what our team and project wins, losses and challenges were.

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22:48
Speaker 1
And then trying to reflect and understand, okay, well, these are where we lost. How can we avoid or mitigate these losses in the future with each other? But again, that requires this vulnerable trust where all parties can really say, yeah, well this is where we screwed up and be honest with each other. And if everyone isn't in there with that same level of trust and the process starts to erode from the start. So it still, it all comes back to that trust. But then going through the wins even and talking about, well, where were we successful and how we can enjoy those same successes going forward. The other part of that we often bolt on is a real 360 feedback.

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23:30
Speaker 1
And not all customers are game for this, but we find that ones who are, it really creates this deep and meaningful relationship that makes us that much more successful in future projects. But literally where we're in a room round robin, and whether it's a project engineer providing feedback to a project manager, or a project manager providing feedback to an architect or the owner, everybody gets to go around the room and start, stop, continue fashion, say, hey, these are the things that, you know, maybe we didn't do so well or we should reconsider on the next job as just leaving it behind. Whether it's behaviors or otherwise, these are things that we didn't do on this project that we think, you know, maybe you should start to consider to deploy on the next one.

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24:17
Speaker 1
And then of course, celebrating wins, talking about, these are things we did well and let's keep doing these things in the future. But having that 360 feedback loop, especially when we can get our customers involved and in the room with us, the results of that exercise are profound. And it just deepens again. It really shores up and codifies that vulnerability based trust.

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24:40
Speaker 2
There is so much courage necessary from all parties to pull that off and to regularly conduct that exercise. Not just from the executive team at, you know, Southway, but, you know, really from the folks that are in the trenches. I mean, what a.

‍ ‍

25:04
Speaker 1
That's right.

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25:04
Speaker 2
What a potentially really scary experience. But what you're saying, I think is so valuable is that if we do really create that kind of continual feedback loop, willingness to confront the truth, whatever that is, that has, I think you said, a profound impact on trust. So now all of a sudden we've got, despite whether the project was a home run or whether the project was fine, what we've got is a sense of partnership that's left behind. And one last question on this, and it has to be brief because I know Stacy has questions from the audience that we want to make sure that we get to. But does it ever happen where you determine at the end of that this is not a good partnership?

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25:58
Speaker 1
We haven't had a. We usually make that determination before engaging. Quite honestly, you know, the work that we do usually carries with it a really long gestation period because of the negotiated work that we do. And that gestation period allows us to really have. You know, that's a project in itself where you can.

‍ ‍

26:19
Speaker 2
Right. There's all the dating.

‍ ‍

26:21
Speaker 1
Yeah.

‍ ‍

26:21
Speaker 3
You've.

‍ ‍

26:21
Speaker 2
You've had an opportunity to date before you decided to go on vacation together. Yeah.

‍ ‍

26:25
Speaker 1
100. Yeah. Yeah. So anytime that we've recognized that it's usually been before, we've put the ring on the finger, so to speak. So.

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26:33
Speaker 2
Yep, Yep. That makes sense.

‍ ‍

26:35
Speaker 1
So it's.

‍ ‍

26:35
Speaker 2
It's kind of like, hey, if we've done a project together, we had enough positive signals that you were going to be a good partner.

‍ ‍

26:42
Speaker 1
That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

‍ ‍

26:44
Speaker 2
That's cool. Stacy, what do we got from the group?

‍ ‍

26:48
Speaker 3
Yeah. So IKC said, how does Matt protect his subcontractors when working with an owner has yet to earn his trust.

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26:58
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I think so the. Our five dysfunction. It's a great question, by the way. The 360 nature of everything that we describe, including our sort of dysfunction pyramid, is not unique to any one direction, be that upward direction to customer, you know, sideway direction, peer to peer, or in direction to our trade partners. You know, we have a similar function with our trade partners that it. That the foundation of trust has to exist with the subs as well. Right. And if we can't create that platform of trust with them, then it's no different relative to the relationship that we're trying to build with our customers. So I think the easy answer to that question would be that to Chad's earlier point, our goal is to not really enter into a scenario where we don't think there's an opportunity to build that trust.

‍ ‍

27:58
Speaker 1
So in. In the case of the question, our hope is that our subcontractors are partnering with us to be part of that trust demonstration throughout the project. And so we're doing it together.

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28:11
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think it's a really good question coming from Ike. You know, I can only imagine the scenarios that you run into where, you know, there's the practical financial aspect of what you need to accomplish on a project, and then the partnership aspect of what you need to balance with a subcontractor. You know, I don't envy the position, but I do in general, you know, around the market, hear very positive things about what you've been able to do there. What else do we have, Stacy?

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28:48
Speaker 3
We have a comment from Mark that says the traditional reward system for project leadership team members focuses on protecting the bottom line, which turns into kill or be killed in pursuit of profits. Making a paradigm shift in evaluating project success is critical to moving our industry forward and beyond our big dysfunction. Just wanted to know, I guess were talking about the guiding philosophy behind choosing to run your business this way and, you know, kind of the things that you already talked about, but if you wanted to comment on the killer be killed.

‍ ‍

29:27
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.

‍ ‍

29:28
Speaker 2
I mean, it's. It's Mark's spot on.

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29:31
Speaker 1
I always thought that Mark and I had a subliminal connection. Now he just confirmed it because that's a great question. I hope Mark as well, by the way. We haven't talked for a while, but so. So the. Our guiding philosophy is really simple and it ties back to our purpose. And it's really, you know, if you look at Simon Sinek in the Golden Circle, it's our why. And our why is to help others to achieve their maximum potential. And it's. It really starts with this position of service, which is really different, I think, for most general contractors and is probably more aligned with, you know, a nonprofit to that regard, where our focus is how we can have everyone, whether it's subcontractors, architects, clients, everyone being this idea of we're all working towards something greater, right. To achieve our collective maximum potential.

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30:21
Speaker 1
And so to Mark's point, our teams are not our assessment and our metrics that we have profit is pretty low on that list. Right. At the end of the day, if we have incredibly profitable project, but the owner's upset, the project looks like crap, you know, all those things, those aren't.

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30:39
Speaker 3
That's not.

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30:40
Speaker 1
That's not building trust. That's not earning work. And by doing that, it's not going to allow us to have that greater impact, to allow others to achieve that maximum potential. So for us, it always comes back to that center and to that why. And so when we're looking at teams and looking at the success of projects, we're really looking at, well, how did the team feel? Right. It sounds really weird for a contractor to talk about feelings, but at the end of the day, if we all can't lock arms at the end of the day and feel like we helped everyone, including the communities around us, the impact that we have socially, then if we can't feel good about that or feel like we've really moved that needle, then the profit, you know, what's the point? Right? For us.

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31:22
Speaker 1
So to Mark's point, for us, we're not a kill or be killed by profit company. We never have been. The profits are just something that happens as a result of doing the right things and trying to continue to do those right things. To grow bigger and bigger so that we can do more and more right things and help everyone to really come and achieve their maximum potential.

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31:46
Speaker 2
Specifically, when Matt and I were getting ready for this interview, one of the funny things that stuck with me was this idea that if a project manager did the wrong thing culturally but made the company $100,000, that would be a, considered a failure.

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32:16
Speaker 1
Right?

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32:17
Speaker 2
That would be considered a problem. And you know, I get the sense that's, you know, those are conversations you really had before.

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32:27
Speaker 1
It is, it's, in fact, it can be a little bit of a culture shock for folks that come from other companies because that is not consistent with most commercial general contractors. And the idea that, you know, we've had conversations where one of the members of our team, you know, they, there's $100,000 issue and you know, it's a little gray, but we have a really good set of core values. We call it qdi, which is quality, dependability, integrity. And what we say is use that as a guide on, for every decision that you have and you'll never make the wrong decision. But nowhere in those words, nothing about that talks about profits or stuffing money in our wallets. And so when there's this hundred thousand dollar issue, if the right thing to do is that's our hundred thousand dollar problem.

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33:21
Speaker 1
When, when someone comes from another company and they're working for us and they take joy out of the fact that they turn that $100,000 issue into a $25,000 issue, but they did it on the back of a subcontractor or the back of an owner. That's not good enough for us because that doesn't pass our QDI test. Right. So, and that's a weird thing because, you know, there's other companies out there that celebrate, oh well, we just saved ourselves from $100,000 hit by converting it or pushing it elsewhere. But they don't think about, was that the right thing to do? And so it's, you're right, it becomes a weird, I think, conversation sometimes where there are some individuals, well, what do you mean, I just saved the company $75,000? Well, that's right, but that wasn't the right thing to do.

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34:07
Speaker 1
And we'd much rather have had that hit in the spirit of what that means to our partners, whether it's our subcontractor partners or design partners or a customer, because at the end of the day, that's what's going to help them to achieve their maximum Potential and then. And there for us. Yeah.

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34:24
Speaker 2
And it's, it's funny because that $75,000 that you left on the table, I know it's not why you're doing it. You're doing it for your core values reasons. Right, I know that. Which, which I think is why it works so damn well. But just as a side note, that $75,000 is coming back to you tenfold in the future because of the integrity that you acted with, be it toward the owner, be it toward the subcontractor. So ultimately, even though it felt like you were leaving $75,000 on the table, you were actually, you know, create. Doing, making a better financial decision long term. And again, I know you would say that's not a financial decision. Right, I know that. But, but it, it still is. Yeah. So listen, we're over already and I still see questions coming in. Stacy, I'll let you call it.

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35:19
Speaker 2
Do you want to get one more in?

‍ ‍

35:21
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think we should get this last one and I think it's good. How do you determine on whether or not to take a leap of faith on a subcompcontractor you have not worked with previously?

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35:35
Speaker 1
Well, it's a great question. I think a leap of faith probably has some context to it in terms of how we might define that. Again, I think it really comes down to this sort of courtship. Right. And so, you know, we have, as most contractors our size have a formal pre qualification process and that sort of thing. But that, you know, that's kind of like the, I'm trying to go back to a romantic situation, a male and bride or something like that. I don't know. For us, the more meaningful part. Right. Is where we can really sit down and engage with that subcontractor at a more deep and meaningful, intimate level and really.

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36:19
Speaker 1
And make sure that we're not just engaging with their leadership, but it's that with their leadership and their, you know, the folks that are actually going to execute the job for us. And, and what we really want to have in that process is that, you know, this isn't an interview where it's just rapid fire questions, but it's really something where we're engaging, whether it's over lunch or just in a more unstructured environment to understand, you know, their behaviors and their culture. And you know, we can figure out what their expertise and technical aptitude is from references and things like that. But the important part for us is what's it going to be like, just like with the customer?

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37:02
Speaker 1
What's it going to be like when we're going through the ups and downs and can we get a gauge of that, you know, through a series of actual in person, just at the table sort of conversations? So, you know, and. And through that, we then elect if. If it makes sense for us to engage further or not in the same way. It's really no different than us electing to engage further with a customer. For us, a customer and a subcontractor both integral to our success and our growth and our ability to increase that impact and to achieve our maximum potential. So there's a willingness.

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37:38
Speaker 2
What I think. What I think I'd say there is that what I'm hearing is there's a willingness, and not just maybe a willingness, but actually kind of a desire, which is maybe not common as well from you and your group to actually build relationships with the subcontracting community to do the opposite of what so many people try to do, which is just kind of reduce them down to numbers and scope.

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38:03
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's the goal. And again, look, we're not perfect with all of these relationships. We admit that we're not perfect and we're going to make mistakes along the way. But at the end of the day, our goal is, you know, just in the same way that we're talking about serving others to achieve their maximum potential. That applies to all subcontractors, all of our trade partners as well. And we don't. We don't deviate from that. But we're, you know, we'll continue to strive for perfection, but we're never going to be perfect.

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38:33
Speaker 2
All right, cool. Well, I think we'll wrap it up there. This has been a great conversation. Matt, thanks so much for taking time out of your morning to do this with us.

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38:42
Speaker 1
Thank you.

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38:43
Speaker 2
Anything you want to say before we part ways and Stacy and I start talking about next week?

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38:48
Speaker 1
No. Thanks for having me again in Southway. You know, we're really excited to be part of. Part of this. We're really excited to be in Baltimore and the impact that we get to have on this community and beyond every day. And. And this is just a small part of that as well, so. Good stuff. Thank you.

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39:04
Speaker 2
Thank you.

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39:05
Speaker 3
Thank you. Have a great one.

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39:06
Speaker 1
You, too. See you, man.

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39:08
Speaker 2
So, Stacy, next week, correct me if I'm wrong.

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39:12
Speaker 3
Yep. We are talking about mental health with Rex Miller, right?

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39:18
Speaker 2
Rex is. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Rex is. He's the author of one of the most influential books on my shelf, co author, along with, you know, a team of other really smart people that has really, you know, helped to shape a lot of the work that I do. And one day, on a whim, I reached out to Rex and said, hey, man, I don't know if you know this, but, you know, your book had a major impact on, you know, me and a whole bunch of other people. And he the kind of guy that, you know, scheduled a meeting with me to say thanks and learn more and figure out how to help. And so over the past year or so, we've been developing that relationship.

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40:00
Speaker 2
And you look forward to digging in with him on a topic that I know is really close to his heart, which is, you know, how do we make a healthy, you know, building industry for people mentally? So that'll be a really cool conversation. And if I'm not mistaken, it's our last show of the season. Yeah, right. So, so if you're able to join us live next week, please do that. I do want to announce just a couple of quick things officially as of this morning. I can't believe it's taken us this long or taken me this long to do this. This is not on Stacy, but we're up on Apple podcasts, so we're on Spotify, we're on Apple, we're on YouTube.

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40:46
Speaker 2
And, you know, I, every time I'm out at an event somewhere, somebody will come across, be like, man, I, I, where do I find these things? So I, I want, we're gonna do a better job of you putting that out in writing and sharing links and things like that. And then, of course, as we always say, make sure that if you know, you want to be informed on what we're doing at the morning huddle, all you have to do is just email Stacy. She'll get you on a weekly distribution list. And then, you know, lastly, as we prepare ourselves for season three, which is going to get going this fall, if you or someone, you know has an important story to tell about creating positive change in the building industry, reach out to Stacy or I, we'd love to dig into that again.

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41:28
Speaker 2
I think we're looking for four more guests in season three at this point, so we're very interested in anybody that you'd have in mind, including yourself.

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41:38
Speaker 3
Or if there's a certain topic that we haven't talked about in season one or two, we're trying to, you know, keep the topics very fluent and diverse. Please reach out to us. Me and Chad are pretty well connected, so I think we could find someone to hit, you know, one of those targets.

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41:55
Speaker 2
Stacy's pretty well connected.

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41:57
Speaker 3
Chad.

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41:59
Speaker 2
I stay just to myself.

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42:01
Speaker 1
All right.

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42:02
Speaker 2
Thank you so much, Stacy, for all you do. And thank you to the audience, you know, appreciate you being here live. And if you're catching us on a recording, keep doing that, too. It's all good.

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42:13
Speaker 3
Have a great day. See you.

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For more than 25 years, Mark Perna has been empowering educators and employers to unlock the tremendous promise of the younger generations. He regularly speaks to audiences of CEOs about it, and he wrote about it in his best-selling book "Answering Why: Unleashing Passion, Purpose, and Performance in Younger Generations".

Inside construction companies there can be a clash between "old school" cultures and the young people joining them. This clash can lead to companies failing to retain youth and missing out on the massive potential they can bring.

Mark joins The Morning Huddle to discuss how construction companies can strike the right balance of retaining the positives of their culture while engaging the power of the latest generation entering the workforce.

Transcript:

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00:00
Speaker 1
Need to get back to work. And work is one of the ways that we contribute to this country, that we grow our gdp, we grow our tax base, we contribute to each other effectively. We help finance our national security, our homeland security, our, you know, our infrastructure.

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00:14
Speaker 2
I had key employees that really wanted to be leaders in the company, but they didn't want to have any ownership in responsibility that way. So I just had to start researching out and figuring out, well, how do I market my company?

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00:27
Speaker 3
Go to your local school board for one hour twice this year. And if you can have even just 10 or 15 employers show up and do that at the same school board every single month, there's two contractors filling out a little card to give your 30 seconds at the podium that says, I need your help and we have great jobs. Eventually they will hear you. But if everyone just did two hours a year, that's how we change this. Stacy, how you doing this morning?

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00:50
Speaker 4
I'm doing great.

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00:51
Speaker 5
She loves it. I ask the question every time.

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00:53
Speaker 3
She's like, I'm fine, dude, just a little much.

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01:00
Speaker 6
And I say to that owner, I said, so you're not willing to invest in yourself. You're not going to invest in yourself. You're going to invest in companies you have no control over, whereas your company, you control. And you don't have the confidence to pour the money into that.

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01:14
Speaker 7
When things are busy and they're looking for their GC friends to sit down and negotiate a project on a GC and a fee, they're more excited about building the project. And then all of a sudden, the model, the market swings. And now the developer market is going to go out and they're going to hard bid the same project to two or three different DCs. And that's where it starts going down.

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01:43
Speaker 3
It's morning huddle time. Good morning. Thank you so much. Mark. Stacy, it's a beautiful morning where I am. I hope that it's the same for both of you. Stacey, how are you this morning?

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01:55
Speaker 4
I'm doing great. I had a great Mother's Day. Did you guys celebrate too?

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02:00
Speaker 5
Of course.

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02:02
Speaker 4
Spoil the moms in your life.

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02:05
Speaker 3
What'd you do? What'd you do for Mother's Day, Stacy?

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02:08
Speaker 4
We just spend time together as a family. We're a little sick too, but just some time at home.

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02:16
Speaker 3
Right on. Just be. Just. Just being taken care of, I'm guessing.

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02:20
Speaker 4
Yes.

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02:21
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's, that's the ticket, right? It's like the one day that the only person mom has to take care of is Herself, theoretically, that's, that almost worked in my house. Three kids. The little one too. It's just never. And I, so I got to tell you, for me, my dishwasher is out of commission and I feel like it's 1914 in my house right now. Like it's, I don't know how anybody got anything done aside from just washing dishes a hundred years ago. I'm losing my mind. It's absolutely out.

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02:54
Speaker 5
Then imagine doing the clothes too. You know, remember the rack, the sun, you know, you know, imagine trying to pull that off.

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03:03
Speaker 3
Chores were like a full time, full time job.

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03:08
Speaker 5
Straight up respect for technology, you know, God, no kidding.

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03:13
Speaker 3
We have somebody coming out to fix it today, God willing. So we're good. So, Mark, how are you? Well, let me give it a little bit of background here. So Mark is an author, he's a speaker. He's a really dynamic and fun guy that I got an opportunity to meet through Stacy and reaching out and helping to get Mark here with us today. Mark's passionate about the idea of embracing the youth, you know, the young generation into the workplace and integrating the best of all of our generations in the workplace effectively. And so in the construction industry, I can't, I personally can't speak to all these other industries, but I know in the construction industry it cannot be stressed enough. There is this major divide generationally and I look forward very much to having you come in and, and sort of speak to that.

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04:10
Speaker 3
Mark, what else would you tell us about yourself?

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04:14
Speaker 5
Well, I'm, you know, I'm a speaker, like you said. I give 80 to 85 keynote speeches a year across North America. Yeah, I have a number one best selling book. I've won eight National Book Awards. I've also had an opportunity in my life to now, you know, write weekly forbes for the last two years and which is I've reached over 3 million readers and that's pretty extraordinary. So writing on these topics of generation and education and career and workforce development and how do we connect all the dots and how do we stop working in silos between education, employment, and even economic development in our country? And how do we bring people together to have really substantive conversations so that we can close the skills gap. So that's what I'm all about. That's what I love to chat about. So I'm looking forward to it.

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05:01
Speaker 5
Chad and Stacy, you guys are fun. So let's rock and roll.

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05:04
Speaker 3
Let's do it. Let's get into it. So, Stacy, you know, as per usual, let's get this audience engaged and pull out their best questions and comments and all that kind of good stuff. And we'll reconvene, we'll pull you back in with about 10 minutes to go to get some of that, you know, audience based feedback, you know, and, you know, get some custom answers from Mark to what the audience is thinking about and talking about. Good deal.

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05:28
Speaker 4
Sounds good. Awesome. Awesome.

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05:29
Speaker 3
See you soon. So, Mark, let's talk. Just as a starting point on this topic, why are you so passionate about generations in the workplace? What lit this spark for you?

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05:46
Speaker 5
Well, for me, it's really the fact that most people in America today think that the younger generations and thinking Gen Z, Gen Y, millennials, there's always a negative term associated with the way people talk about young people. They're lazy, they're entitled. You've heard these things, I've heard these. And people think these things all the time. And I go completely the other way. I think they're the most extraordinary generations to come down the pike. I think they're the most intelligent, resourceful, and pit bull like generations that we've ever seen in this country. When they see a want to in their life, they will move heaven and earth to get there. Our challenge though, as parents, educators, employers, is getting them to want something. And so really that's the, that's kind of the battlefield of the future.

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06:24
Speaker 5
And so we have to build the want to into everything. Because if the want to is strong enough, the how to will come. You know, they'll figure out how to do the things we want them to do. But I think we have lost the ability in many cases to really create in a passionate way through a transfer of enthusiasm and a human connection that we have with the young people in our sphere of influence to build that want to. Because they don't see our vision, they don't understand the mission, they don't understand the purpose, they don't understand why to do this.

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06:51
Speaker 4
Right?

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06:52
Speaker 3
So I may be the oldest millennial in the world or the youngest Gen Xer in the world. I span this and I have two much older brothers. So I definitely orient myself toward the Gen X, you know, sort of mindset. And yet I'm surrounded with and friends with a lot of millennials. And I, I find that there's this big gap in the way that I view the world, in the way that they view the world where I'm like, you're, how do I put it, you have a job, you were hired, and therefore you owe them everything you've got because you're getting a paycheck and there's a job description, damn it. And it's time to put your head down and do all the work. And that is just simply not how the folks that I'm talking to are wired.

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07:42
Speaker 3
So you talk about that, want to, and I do think that there's just a fundamental difference. And, and there, and here's where the value judgment comes in, right? You could even hear it in my tone, right? Is immediately, I'm like, you're getting paid for it. Don't be, don't be lazy, you know, just, you know, get out there and work for it, you know, kind of thing.

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08:03
Speaker 5
And I wish, and I wish you luck with that, Chad. I do. I, I wish, I'm not saying it works. Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. I, you know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're gonna have with that today, because the world, my friend, has changed, right? We're in a completely different set of circumstances today. And, you know, there are two ways to look at the young people in your sphere of influence. You can either look at them as a problem to be solved, which is what most people do, or you can look at them as a tremendous resource to be unleashed within your home, your classroom, your place of business.

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08:37
Speaker 5
And so if you look at them with the second set of eyes, you are significantly further along down the road to connecting, engaging, answering why, and getting them on your side team, you know, vision, mission, the whole bit. However, Gen z, for example, 8 to 25 years old, is the least transactional generation to come down the pike ever. And what you're talking about is transactional. I'm giving you money, you're giving me your efforts. And why don't you just do that? Well, they will for a short time. But if you do not have a vision and a mission and something as an organization that you are trying to accomplish, as an example, right, construction, field, manufacturing, you name it's all the same.

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09:27
Speaker 5
If you do not have a vision where the pride of their contribution actually adds to the greater good, if they cannot attach themselves to what you're trying to accomplish, and by the way, what you're trying to accomplish cannot be shareholder value and simply making money. There has to be a greater good. And if you can build that vision and they can attach to it, then you can keep them. Then the revolving door of People coming in and going out and trying to find people is significantly easier and less of an issue. But see, in far too many places as employers across the country, and I speak to chambers of commerce and economic development groups and business and industry. I mean, I just did the Pennsylvania statewide keynote speech for workforce development on Friday.

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10:10
Speaker 5
I followed the governor of Pennsylvania and I told them the same thing. I was like, if you are working and trying to develop younger generations, think the secret is that you're not going to change. And you're expecting them to come where you are. You have a challenge. You better meet them where they are and recognize that the world's just different today and you can unleash them. And if you can unleash Gen Z, it works for every other generation.

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10:40
Speaker 3
Yeah. So it is different. We agree. And I agree wholeheartedly with what you're saying. I just, I also know how hard it can be, you know, to make that mental leap. And to me, just like anything else, when it comes to changing your perspective and coming closer. Right. Bridging the gap and coming closer to people who view the world differently than you do, I think it kind of starts with empathy. So, so may I. I don't know, maybe you have some hypothesis or maybe, you know, research, but some hypothesis for help us understand why the younger generations, the millennials and the Gen Z's entering the workforce. Why are they wired the way they are? What's that about? Help us to develop some empathy there.

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11:30
Speaker 5
Yeah, they're exactly the way we made them. You know, I mean, that's probably one of the greatest ahas I get when I speak to parents and educators, employers across America is, you know, when you, I mean, most people have no idea what makes them tick, what they think or how they make decisions, but they're exactly the way we made them. So look in the mirror in the morning and go, it's me. Yeah, I'm the drama. Yeah. And so what you have to recognize though is that they are extraordinary. They are the most intelligent and all these things that I mentioned earlier on, you know, in our session here.

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12:07
Speaker 5
But, but one of the keys, I'll give you just one of the keys, is that they require a human connection to move forward with you as an employer, with you in an educational scenario, with you as a parent. They have to have a human connection. It's a non negotiable. They're the first generation in history that a human connection is non negotiable. And yet we live in a world today where Human connection and the bandwidth to create the human connection has been significantly compromised. Pandemic, you know, issues and challenges, the way the world has changed. People are moving faster and faster. You can go on and on, right? And so the human connection in many cases has been sacrificed.

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12:46
Speaker 5
When I was giving this, you know, I was giving a keynote speech several weeks ago to manufacturing, excuse me, expo up in central Wisconsin, and I got an email the next day from a gentleman who said he was the CEO of a company. And while I was speaking for 90 minutes, he said, I watched a 60 year old foreman in my company, like Scope locked on you because he has never given his attention to anything more than 10 minutes. But he was so riveted by the fact that the young people in his sphere of influence have completely changed.

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13:20
Speaker 5
And when he recognized what the change was and that the human connection was everything, this guy said, my foreman turned to me and said, I have to change the way I deal with everybody in our business, you know, and so you have to recognize that the world simply changed. You have to embrace the change. It's not a bad change. No, it's just a change. And I think most people look at it as a bad thing, you know, and it's not a bad thing.

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13:41
Speaker 3
No.

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13:42
Speaker 5
If anything, the younger generations are dragging the older generations kicking and screaming actually, to a better place.

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13:48
Speaker 3
That's exactly what I was going to say. If anything, you know, if you really reflect on some of the stuff that you're talking about, purpose, right? You know, human connection, how can those things be negatives? How can those things create anything other than a more positive workplace for everybody? But it's change. And so, and so you do. It takes effort, it takes intention, but I think it's worthwhile for everybody. I don't think you're just catering to the youth, if that makes sense. I think the youth are. The demand to engage the youth is actually making you a better business.

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14:26
Speaker 5
Exactly. And if you can do this for the youngest generation, human connection, a transfer of enthusiasm for whatever your subject matter area is for your vision, your culture, what you're trying to accomplish, getting them to come on board, all of that with you. And I mean, that works for Gen Y millennials, that works for Gen Xers, that works for baby boomers. You know, there are people, I mean, I could sit here as a generational expert and I could tell you about all four generations and I could tell you about the cusps of each of those, right, the two years in between, and. But who has time or the bandwidth themselves as an organization to create, you know, eight different ways to connect with everybody at every age. So I'm here to tell you the lowest common denominator is now Gen Z.

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15:11
Speaker 5
But what works for Gen Z works for everybody. So if you can embrace it and understand it and then, you know, advance because of it and move from trans, you know, transactional to transformative and getting them on board, you'll, you'll never want in your business again.

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15:30
Speaker 3
So let's talk about, let's. We're big here on the morning huddle, you know, with brevity, right? We're going to get to 30 minutes. It's going to like it's about to happen. We're big in brevity and we're also big with really tactical, tangible takeaways that people can, you know, kind of learn from. So you talk about this difference between transformative and transactional and transformative. That's what we're saying. Describe that difference and what are some really tangible things that companies that make the change organizations of any type that make the change have in common? What, what is that? You know, what are some things we should do?

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16:08
Speaker 5
It can't be just about a paycheck. If it's about a paycheck, you're going to, that's transactional. I'm going to give you X amount of dollars, you're going to give me X amount of time. But there you set up a dynamic because myself as an employer, my goal is to get as much from you for as little as possible as I pay you. Your goal as an employee is to do as little as possible and get as much from me as possible. That's transactional.

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16:33
Speaker 3
It's at odds.

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16:34
Speaker 5
We're at odds. But transformative means that you are getting people to come on board your journey, that there is a journey that they're willing to give the best of themselves for and you're willing to compensate them accordingly. But they bring a piece of themselves. But that has to be extraordinary. The pride of that contribution has to add to some greater good in the younger generations today. And so that's a big piece of what you do it, however you give back to your community and what have you there. And so as business and industries look at making this change, you have to recognize though there's other things that are possible. There's also work life blend versus work life balance. Older generations were big into work life balance. You know, they were trying to balance it all now it's all work life blend.

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17:19
Speaker 5
90% of employees, and that includes all employees. 90% of employees want flexibility in their workforce. Here's the challenge. Okay, we're going to talk construction. Here's the challenge in the construction industry. And I say the same thing to manufacturers. I am not an expert on how to create flexibility in construction on a site. I don't know how to do that. I am not an expert at that. But I'm here to tell you, if 90% of people in our workforce need flexibility and want flexibility, and a Work Life blend means that I can work some and then I can live some, and then I work some and I live some, if that's what's necessary. And that's where people are. You have to find a way in the construction field to develop that. I don't know how to do it in the construction field.

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18:01
Speaker 4
I don't.

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18:02
Speaker 5
I told manufacturers I don't know how to do it on a manufacturing floor. But if 90% of people want something, you better find a way to incorporate it into your business model somehow. Yeah, that's. That's a, that's a differentiator.

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18:14
Speaker 3
The building industry is very difficult. I mean, you know, you got to go to the. The majority of the workforce for, particularly for specialty contractors, needs to go to the job site. They need to. You need to have a workforce there at the job site. So it's not like, hey, show up whenever you want to go to the job site and then leave whenever you're done at the job site. Because we do need to have, you know, people kind of working and collaborating on the same things at the same time. We need 30 people there at one time, not like 30 people there over the course of the next 24 hours. And so that can be challenging. But I think that the earliest stage.

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18:47
Speaker 3
What I'd be taking away from this conversation, Mark, is that, you know, at the very least, let's engage our employees and talk to them about Work Life Blend. Let's talk to them about what they'd like to see happen, and let's see what we can do in the name of progress to create that, you know, a better atmosphere. Maybe you're. You offer three different schedule types where, you know, maybe it's. You offer four tens to field employees, and that's an option for these guys to choose from. Maybe you offer three twelves and a five or, you know, whatever. You know, that different type of stuff. And, you know, these are all ways of trying to engage a workforce. Now, of course, I guarantee You, I have a drywall contractor watching this right now saying that's impossible.

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19:33
Speaker 3
And, you know, maybe four tens is impossible in your world or. But here's what, again, what is. What is immediately possible, I think, is having the conversation and being open to the ideas and the. In the dreams that your employees have and being willing to at least try. Right. To meet them halfway. So that's really fascinating stuff. Yeah.

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19:56
Speaker 5
And Chad, so I will tell you. So I'm not in the construction business, although I have worked in construction early in my life, summer jobs. My dad was in construction. He worked for Turner Construction Company. So I'm very familiar with job sites, lots of different kinds of job sites. And in my company, I've got, you know, 23 people that support what I do across North America. And in 24 years, I have hired, I've never fired, no one's ever left. And I'm here to tell you, it's not because I am the greatest boss. It's because I simply was understanding enough to create a fantastic vision that people connect to and do the things that we're talking about here. And so I don't have this revolving door. We're virtual now. We used to be more in office. Now we're more virtual.

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20:38
Speaker 5
It's a work life blend for everybody. I tell everybody up front, I said, family comes first. What you need to do with your kids, you do not need to ask for permission. You do not. But you go to the game, you go to the doctor, you do what you need to do, Live it around your life. If you need to work for two hours and take two hours off, and then work for an hour and take two hours off, however you need to work it, every day can be unique for you. And what I have found over the years of doing this is that my organization works way more than 40 hours a week. I mean, they work nights, weekends, holidays, vacation times. They are. They're always engaged. I can't get them to shut down. They.

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21:16
Speaker 5
So buy into the vision of where we're going to transform both education and workforce development in this country that they're all in and that can be created in businesses across America. But you have to take the time to recognize why the world has changed, how the world has changed, and how you have to adapt in this inflection point accordingly.

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21:35
Speaker 3
Love it. I love it. And there's like seven more topics I'd like to get into with you, so I hope that maybe next season you'd be willing to come back on and run down things like, what are the competencies that young people should be having coming into the workforce? We had. There's all kinds of areas that I'd like to run down with you. But our audience has some questions and I want to bring Stacy in here to funnel some of that stuff to you so we get the people who joined us live what they were looking for.

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22:05
Speaker 4
Yeah, we have a couple questions. So before I start off with this one question, just a short story. I had a lot of interns that worked under me and one of the struggles with was the cell phone usage. And I remember having a one one meeting with one of my interns and telling her what we had planned for this event that were planning. And she pulls out her phone and she starts on her phone right during our meeting. And I'm thinking, like, that's rude, you're texting. But here she's looking up things as we're talking. And I've had so many conversations with people in leadership roles that had similar, you know, circumstances where they're always pulling out their phone and they don't have boundaries with that situation. So I was just wondering what kind of advice, and Mark had a great question here.

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22:54
Speaker 4
How, in your opinion, has technology in the digital world alter generational groups?

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23:01
Speaker 5
I mean, it's helped it's hurt it. You know, there's a yin and a yang to the whole thing. You know, the dopamine effect that's, you know, in young people today, for all of the social media and things that they're on, is not necessarily a positive thing. I mean, I don't have a white paper on that or anything. That's just my personal opinion is that it's, I think it's made it very challenging because whereas young people today are more connected than ever, they're also having the highest degrees of depression and loneliness. So I don't think it's the, you know, it's the wonderful, you know, boom we thought it was going to be in the long term.

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23:33
Speaker 5
I think there are some things we certainly have to overcome, but it has also affected their ability to focus and it is a affected their ability to seeking attention both in the workforce and in educational organizations, you know, in their schooling. So, you know, I think it's something again, we have to recognize where the world's changed, where the kids have changed at young people, and how do we adapt accordingly to where they are, how do we meet them, where they are, validate their circumstances and help them be able to move forward. Building respect Building trust, building the human connection that is necessary for them again to see and buy into the vision of where you're going as an organization.

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24:07
Speaker 5
If you do not have a vision that yourself buy into as an organization or as a leader in the construction field or in any field, if you don't have that, they will never see it and you will continue to, you know, run this revolving door of people in and out of your organization. So you have got to get clean with yourself in a vision and a mission that is something worthwhile that other people would join you for.

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24:31
Speaker 4
Nice. Cody also had a great question. What are some of the best ways you've seen leadership connect with the younger generation? I think setting time aside for conversations involving non work related topics goes a long way and builds a trusting relationship.

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24:48
Speaker 5
Yeah, I think it's the power of understanding how they think. Part of how they think is that between lifestyle and career, every decision they make is based on how it affects their lifestyle. We spend almost no time talking to the people in our sphere of influence about the lifestyle goals and wants that they, that they long for, but understand. I mean, two questions I love to ask young people in my sphere of influence is what do you love to do? What do you do? Well, and having a lifestyle conversation dovetail into a career one. And even as an employer, understanding the lifestyle wants and desires of the people in your charge and then understanding how that intersects their career choices and opportunities. So they're trying to find the perfect intersection of career and lifestyle, what gives them whatever it is they're looking for.

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25:35
Speaker 5
And there's always a spectrum, right? I mean, you know, on this spectrum, you know, there's people on this end that want to be millionaires. This, on this end of the spectrum, they want to, you know, just two hot meals a day and then there's everything in between. So to understand the story behind every employee's, you know, eyes or every student's eyes, and being able to recognize that is what builds relevance to the career journey and the career journey in your organization as a construction, in the construction field, for example, is where can they go, how can they get there and how can they fund whatever it is they want to be able to do in their life if they feel you understand that they are more apt to stay with you.

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26:14
Speaker 4
Yeah, I love how you said, you know, ask your employee what they love to do and what do they do. Well, I found that worked so great for me. And you can really capitalize on talents that you might have not even, you know, considered into the job description or incorporate it into the role. So I think that was great advice. And then Eric TV has a question. As employers, what are the top three transformative behaviors that we should embrace in order to navigate the new normal?

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26:48
Speaker 5
Can you say the question one more time, Stacey? I want to make sure I understand it correctly.

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26:52
Speaker 4
Sure.

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26:53
Speaker 5
What are the top three?

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26:54
Speaker 4
What are the top three transformative behaviors that employers should embrace in order to navigate the this new normal?

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27:03
Speaker 5
I think human connection, flexibility, work, life blend. Being able to understand how to bring out the most. Also, learning and development. L and D have become the top competitive differentiators. Every company across America today needs to invest more in learning and development because younger generations want more training. Significantly higher. People say they're lazy and entitled. I don't believe it for a minute. Because they actually want to be in continuous training. They actually want lifelong learning. They want learning, by the way, not only in the job skills and the things they need to be successful in your organization. They also want Life Skill Training. 78% of employees today under the age of 35 want life skill training because they didn't get it when they were younger.

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27:48
Speaker 3
Do they have classes on how to fix a dishwasher?

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27:53
Speaker 5
Great question. I don't even know how to fix a dishwasher. I believe to fix that, I just call a 1-800-number and I think it all just kind of happens.

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28:01
Speaker 3
It's just magic.

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28:02
Speaker 5
It's magic and it's organic at that point.

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28:07
Speaker 4
I think that's all. All for the questions. So do we have any final notes for today?

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28:12
Speaker 3
That's awesome. You know, my reaction to this conversation is, you know, invigorated thinking about the opportunity to make these adjustments that will not only pull this generation of the workforce into your organization and create that spark, that fire and passion that really unleashes their potential, all that intelligence that you're talking about. So, I mean, you're so right. I talked to some of these people. I'm like, how. What did you learn in school, man? I didn't get it. I must have been on page 10. You're on page 100. I had no idea a lot of this stuff. So I think that's an amazing thought. And then that. To accomplish that, to, to unlock that you actually get to build a better company because the list of things that you're talking about are just.

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29:05
Speaker 3
It's kind of like a wish list of the best places to work. You know, these are things that you know, every company should. Should be striving to try to accomplish. So I don't. My takeaway is extremely optimistic and. And excited for the people that. The audience that has taken the time and taken the notes and hopefully use this as inspiration to go out and do something inspirational. So I hope so, too, Chad.

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29:33
Speaker 5
You know, it's. It's been such a pleasure being with you and Stacy and being able to have this chat. I feel like it could have gone another two or three hours and we could have really, you know, dove deep into. Into some of these topics. But. But thank you for, you know, asking great questions and thanks to the audience for, you know, bringing the best of themselves to all of this conversation as well.

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29:53
Speaker 4
So thanks for joining us.

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29:55
Speaker 3
Thank you. All right, Mark, we're going to let you go. I'm going to talk a little bit with Stacy about what we have coming up next week. Thanks again so much, Mark. Have a great day.

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30:04
Speaker 4
Thank you.

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30:05
Speaker 3
All right, Stacy, so next week we've got an exciting conversation coming up with Chris Bybe. Right. This is somebody that you brought to my attention that's actually doing some work with people that, you know, that is providing virtual training for apprenticeship to speed up the rate of apprenticeship training and to create a better, you know, overall better experience so that people come out of apprenticeship faster and with more skills and in a really convenient kind of package. Is that right?

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30:39
Speaker 4
Yes. And I'm hoping that he can give us a demonstration because it's very important not just to have the discussion, but to see the visual with it. So I'm hoping that he'll walk us through, like, a demo on how. I don't want to give too much away, but he does H vac electrical plumbing skill trades where you take tests online through, like, a virtual experience. So it just ups the level of current apprenticeship training.

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31:08
Speaker 3
Awesome. Yeah, well, very cool. Just a reminder here to email Stacy if you want to be added to our weekly email list. We send it out so that you don't have to stalk your LinkedIn and figure out if you've been invited to the morning huddle. And you can just register by clicking with one click jump on Spotify for those of you who are driving down the road, podcast listeners. And I can't tell you how many times I was just in an event last week and probably five people came up to me and said, man, I keep missing the huddle. I'm going to get there. And I'm like, look, you don't have to get there live if you can't get there live. Just download the Spotify, you know, download Spotify, follow us on Spotify.

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31:48
Speaker 3
I'm going to be adding Apple Music here in the next couple of weeks, you know, Apple podcast that is in the next couple of weeks. And so we'll be on wherever you get your podcasts as well. And if you're like me, you're driving down the road, this is, you know, a perfect time to catch up on everything that you've missed. So please check it out and give me a call or I'm sorry, you know, shoot me an email or Stacy, an email if you have any questions or, you know, frankly, if you or someone you know would like to be a guest, we are setting up guests for season three which is coming up in the fall.

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32:19
Speaker 4
All right, have a Mark's comments.

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32:23
Speaker 3
Awesome.

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32:24
Speaker 5
All right, have a great one.

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32:25
Speaker 4
See ya.

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32:26
Speaker 3
See ya.

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Join Host Chad Prinkey (Well Built Construction) and Co-host, Stacey Holsinger, (Steel Toe Communications) every Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. EST. on LinkedIn as they interview top A/E/C industry experts. Guests can participate in the conversation live!

Transcript:

Speaker 1: 00:00

All right. Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Chad Prinke. Welcome to our first episode of the Morning Huddle, brought to you by well Built Construction Consulting and our partner, Stacy Holzinger, the owner of Steeltoe Communications. How are you this morning, Stacey?

Speaker 2: 00:34

Good, how are you?

Speaker 1: 00:35

Excellent. Thanks so much. Our first guest today, our guest for our first show, I should say, I should say, is Kenny Mallock, who is the owner of Malloc Mechanical. Kenny, how are you this morning?

Speaker 3: 00:52

It's been a. It's been a great start with a nice morning, morning cup of coffee.

Speaker 1: 00:59

Excellent. Good man. That's exactly what we're hoping for. And I hope everybody else is, you know, enjoying their morning cup of coffee while they're joining us right now. Kenny, by way, a little bit of an intro. Kenny is a good friend of mine. We've known each other for about a decade. I've learned a few things about Kenny. He's a lifelong learner. He is constantly working on improvement. He is an incredibly straight shooter and not afraid to admit when he's wrong or when he sees something wrong. And for that reason, in that kind of sense of, I don't know, friendship and confidence in the quality of our conversations over the years, Kenny, you were a no brainer to invite as a first guest. So I want to thank you for accepting and joining here today. And, you know, with all the dozens of different things we've talked about in the building industry, the stuff that we're passionate about, the stuff that drives us nuts, I think the thing that I wanted to bring to the audience for our first conversation today is really just to get into something that you and I have talked about probably a hundred times, which is what's right and what's wrong when it comes to effective general contractor and subcontractor partnerships. So that's today's topic. Now, before we dive into the topic, Kenny, introduce yourself a little bit to the audience. How long, how long have you been doing this? How long have you been running Malloc Mechanical?

Speaker 3: 02:51

So officially, I think it's around 28 years. I've always had customers, though, since I was probably 13 years old. So in essence, it's been a long time. How's that?

Speaker 1: 03:05

Right on. When you say you've always had customers, what do you mean?

Speaker 3: 03:09

Well, it could be from, from shoveling snow, cutting grass, raking leaves, whatever. You know, growing up in good old Twinbrook, usa, it gave me a great opportunity to meet a lot of different people, and I guess I learned how to hustle.

Speaker 1: 03:26

You must have had some, some motivation to make some cash. When you were a kid, what was the first big thing you bought?

Speaker 3: 03:34

Levi's.

Speaker 1: 03:36

No kidding.

Speaker 3: 03:37

Yeah. My parents wanted to send me to high school with tough skins unless I paid for half of my Levi's.

Speaker 1: 03:43

So weren't having it.

Speaker 3: 03:44

I wasn't having it.

Speaker 1: 03:45

That's awesome. That's awesome. So what is. I mean, you've been doing it for more than three decades in one way or another. What's your favorite part of the industry?

Speaker 3: 04:01

The customers. Good customers is the favorite part of my end of the industry for me, somebody that, that, you know, that. That appreciates and values what you do, that trusts you and believes you and lets you do your thing. That's the favorite part.

Speaker 1: 04:20

That's awesome. Have you been fortunate enough to be surrounded by those folks your entire career?

Speaker 3: 04:27

No. It's a navigation. It's a navigation. It's a journey. And sometimes they're good ones and sometimes there's bad ones or not. So good ones.

Speaker 1: 04:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get you. So, all right, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna kind of start to dive into the topic. I think that's actually a good lead in for you. The customer today, right, is the general contractor. And you know, that maybe has differed on one level or another over the years. And I know it's not your only customer. There's a service business involved and all that type of stuff. But for the sake of our conversation here today, when you think about the general contractor subcontractor relationship, describe how that should work from a subcontractor's perspective. Obviously a mechanical subcontractor's perspective too. Right. Because there's different nuances to every trade category and how they want, you know, the relationship to work, how ideally paint the picture of the optimal subcontractor general contractor partnership from your point of view.

Speaker 3: 05:44

Once you have a. Once you have trust established or credibility established from the organization perspective, which is. Which is another part of the journey. But once that's established, it's about a contractor that has a good customer, and that customer trusts the contractor. If the trust work, trusts the general contractor to do his job and do it well, that general contractor will engage his subcontracting community, which is basically supposed to be the experts in their chosen field, to involve and engage them in the construction, in the project itself. So in a perfect world, you know, sometimes I'm assuming a GC might meet with a client and, and, and go over a bar napkin sketch of what somebody wants to build and the general contractor gets excited about it. And they figure out how to navigate through building it first. And I'm assuming they have to go through some, through some conversations about fee structure and stuff like that. But once that fee structure stuff is established and nailed down, then we start collaborating, we start building. In a perfect world the GC is gonna, you know, maybe get, get his subcontracting community involved in projects at 30 documents and when he does, you know, our pre construction group is going to look at those documents and they're going to quantify and estimate and provide budget pricing on what they see. And then the next step is to from their knowledge is identify what's missing. But you know, it's necessary and you identify these items, quantify those, write a lot of RFIs to poke holes in the, in the project to help develop the project. And we're going to do this at 30%. The information goes back to the architect and engineer teams, they perfect the documents, we look at it again at 60%, do the same thing, the feedback gets back to the architect and engineers and we do it again at 90% all with the desired goal of reducing change orders, eliminating scope creep for the GC between the GC and subs, keep the thing on track and make it constructible.

Speaker 1: 08:17

So and what's, what's interesting is I, I, and of course we're going to be talking to some general contractors on the morning huddle in the future but one of the things that I, I wonder is how much does that differ from, from how a general contractor would draw it up? Because for, from my perspective it sounds an awful lot like what they would like too. So, so, so ultimately you know, it kind of comes down to this question sort of like so why exactly doesn't it happen that way? And, and, and what are the forces at work? And, and, and so, so before we dive into our some hypothesis about why it doesn't happen that happen that way I guess describe what it looks like when it's broken, when, when. So, so if I can recap in a sentence or two what I heard you say it's super early involvement, 30% design docs, we start partnering early. Every trade is involved in you know, pre construction assistance, you know, essentially informal design assist. Tell me if, you know, tell me if that.

Speaker 3: 09:22

Right, yes.

Speaker 1: 09:24

And, and then the documents mature, the design matures and we end up with a very efficient, extremely well orchestrated plan. That's the way it should work. Now in there. One quick question, sorry. When do you know it's your job? In a perfect world.

Speaker 3: 09:53

In a perfect world you don't know until, until all final numbers are tabulated and they present the GMP to the owner and the GM and the owner approves it and then the general contractor does the selection. And we don't expect to get a project just because you provide these level of services but you do want to be treated, you know, somewhat. You want them to remember did we bring value to the table during our pre construction services? We want to make sure in a perfect world we would have like minded competition, leveled competition. Competition is a good thing. And there's, there's time and place where we might even go to the pre con services and help develop the project. But schedule wise it doesn't work out for us at that point when the thing just starts moving forward. So I can, I can relate and I can understand why they, the contractors might have to have two or three different people running this exercise with them to have options. You never want to be in life without options.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Yep. Yeah, but and note. Right. I'll just draw a circle around that. Two or three. Right. Not like seven or eight.

Speaker 3: 11:01

Two or three.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Yeah. Yeah. And I think if it just becomes unwieldy for everybody involved past a certain point that's really interesting. So. All right, so just talk a little bit about what it looks like when it's broken. When it's, when it's, you know, really not the way that a subcontractor would want to draw it up.

Speaker 3: 11:21

That's the hard bid plan and spec market. That is a broken. That's what's broken and you know, what causes that is something different. We can get into that if you want to later. But ultimately when it's hard bid plain inspect, you know, there's, we get engaged late. You don't have the time to massage it. The, the drawings are already done. You Write as many RFIs as you can. Typically try to level the playing field to make sure that when we look at a project, even if it's hard to plan inspect, we still want to build a successful project. But the RFIs that we're writing at that point there are trying to level the playing field to make sure that other people, other, you know, because hopefully there's some transparency with the RFIs that we write and other people get them and pay attention to them to try to level the playing field and make sure that people are capturing items that are really going to be needed and required to make sure their pricing includes it.

Speaker 1: 12:20

Yeah. So the broken model is hard bid plan and spec and I think, you know, just from previous conversations I think the thing that drives both of us nuts in that environment is that there's actually a reward for dishonesty. Right. There's a reward for playing games for subcontractors in that environment. And the motivation is to look low. Right. If the motivation is to look low, there's all kinds of creative ways for a subcontractor to play dumb and look low and end up winning that work. You know, I know from talking to you that that's just. You're not going to sleep well at night if you do it.

Speaker 3: 12:59

Yeah. Now it does not feel good. You know, again, just like you said, it's a game. Some people are good at playing it. But if I was going to play that game, I would have to renovate my house here with people, you know, change orders, for example. You know, when it's hard bit plane inspect, there's, there's not the margin and you have to find the margin in it. You have to nickel and dimensional the project. You have to, you know, go aggressive after scheduled delays that you don't have any margin for error in. And I need to have a different subset of people for project managers to be able to document and chase. It's not, it's not good. The last recession, and I think it was 9, 10, 11, whatever it was, it's. We did a lot of hard bid plan and spec work, and the hard bit plan and spec work prior to that actually had margin in it that allowed me to continue to build the projects without nickel and diming things so I didn't have to chase it. But when those margins went away during that recession, I would have had to renovate this place. I was, it was, I was an unhappy person at that time because in order to survive, I would have had to again, renovate this company with personnel and hire people that are change order kings, change order hungry and trying to exploit every opportunity you can get to make a buck.

Speaker 1: 14:34

Yeah. Yeah. So I think we, you know, we know that there are some environments where the, that hard bid plan and spec, it's kind of, it's out of your control, that that's the way it's gonna work. We'll leave those off to the side. We could expl. I do believe that it's worth trying to change that over the long haul. Right. That, that, that's more of a movement to try to get, you know, funding agencies from the government as an example, to take a look at, you know, redesigning procurement models so that they don't go hard bid plan and spec, but Leaving those off to the side. Do you see that in the private development world? You know, right now? Is that happening at all?

Speaker 3: 15:16

It is, it is right now. And there's like, there's a swing and whenever that there's a swing in an economy, you know, Covid has been the example since the commercial office building market got pretty much annihilated during this thing. Developers that typically would, when things are busy and they're looking for their GC friends to sit down and negotiate a project on a GC and a fee and they're more excited about building the project and then all of a sudden the model, the market swings and now the developer market is going to go out and they're going to hard bid the same project to two or three different GCs. And that's where, that's where it starts going down.

Speaker 1: 15:56

Yep, yep.

Speaker 3: 16:00

I guess they trust, they trust their GC partners in a good economy and then all of a sudden that trust or that value goes away when they know that the general contractor and subcontractor market is hungry, looking for work. And they, I think there's some assumptions in there that, that we profiteer in those good times and, and actually our pricing goes up. That's not the case. You know, good contractors and good subcontractors, their, their cost perspective and their profit perspective remains the same because that, you don't, it's kind of weird. You don't do what you do for money.

Speaker 1: 16:42

Comes back on you. Right. I mean, hitting, hitting a home run can come back on you. Right. If you, if you think. Right. And when I say come back on, it's, it's you, you don't want to take advantage of, of the trust because the moment, the moment that happens, you have to assume that that's not going to remain private. Right. And, and, and, and so, yeah, I'm with you. I think, I think there's a, a belief that, you know, subcontractors are out there, you know, cracking heads and taking money when times are good. And I think there's some of it, I do think there's some of it. And, and, and because of that, you know, it may fuel some, some of that lack of trust or, or, or worry when times tighten up. I also think there's probably some influence from funders, right. Where it's not maybe the developer, but it's the source of the money. And the source of the money is now feeling jittery or demanding. And so sometimes it's not always that, but it's interesting. You're Seeing it right now. So I want to talk to the audience here for a second. We are going to, if, if I can manage time correctly, we're going to shift gears and want to start answering some questions. Please start typing some questions into the chat. And that way we kind of have a sense of how many questions we want to get to and still wrap up by 8:30. I'm going to ask you one more question at least though, Kenny, which is I think so much you said earlier. You know, I imagine that a general contractor is getting together with, with, with their customer and they're sitting down and maybe doing a napkin sketch and then they're talking about. There's so much value in really understanding one another's perspective. So what really happens behind the scenes with general contractors? If you can get a good clear sense of that and appreciation for that and empathy for that as a sub, I think it helps you to serve them better. What do you wish every general contractor understood about being a sub? You know, if there was one thing that could help them to gain some insight, some empathy for what subcontractors are doing. What's one thing you wish that gcs knew about? Subs.

Speaker 3: 19:13

We're here to help. Really sincerely, good subs are really truly here to help to, to make the project go smooth, minimize risk, minimize stress. One time, one budget, happy customer. And we can, if you engage us, we can help. And again, earlier I stated it's kind of weird when I'm interviewing somebody, we tell them this. We don't do what we do for money. We do what we do for the fun of the game. Money is a result. It's not the driver, the game. Which is again, there's two different games you talked about the hard bed plan and spec game. I hate that game. I would prefer to engage and actually engage my people, engage everybody around us to build a good project. That is the game. We had this company as a bus. We have a lot of different seats. If everybody that we hire is in the right seat of the bus doing the right job that they're happy and best at doing, the result is money. And the same thing goes with client selection and subcontractor selection to build good projects, money will be.

Speaker 1: 20:25

Yeah, that's awesome. That's a really, really interesting answer. And I think something that if you think about 30 seconds for me to editorialize, if you think about your subcontracting community as there to help, that that frames them up as partners. It frames them up as friends. And I think Kenny, Kenny is one of the most, again, straight shooter, one of the most realistic people I've talked to in the building industry. I asked him what the perfect world looked like. He was like, I'd compete, right? But I, but I would be, I would be remembered for the quality of my pre construction services and, and you know, those things, you know, if I was adding value, those things would translate into having a leg up on the project. But what you definitely wouldn't do to somebody who is trying to help you is you wouldn't withhold information, you wouldn't lie, you wouldn't change the rules of the game at the last minute. Right. You would operate in front of them. Even if I know you, and I've talked about this before, Kenny, Even if operating in front of them is, hey, Kenny, I need your help. Like, you're gonna win it, but I'm not. This one's not gonna be yours. That's great information for you to have. And to your point, you're still gonna help and you're gonna help 100%.

Speaker 3: 21:42

And I know that, yes, honesty is always the best policy.

Speaker 1: 21:48

Awesome. All right, cool. I'm gonna invite Stacy on to help us to sort through some of these questions and help us to, to answer, you know, questions as they come in. So Stacy, what do we got for questions? We probably have time for like three or four.

Speaker 2: 22:05

Okay, sure. So, Scott, friends said, how are you keeping up with the lead times becoming longer and the lack of resources to build the job better? Asked how have you and your GC partners been able to team up to show the owners that schedule simply can't be an aggressive right now given the current climate.

Speaker 3: 22:30

It's about laying out your, your resources. It's not, it's, it's about not over committing. You can only produce what you can produce with the resources that you have. And if you, as soon as you start going out trying to find work that you don't have resources for, that's going to be ugly. That's been the private nightmare that, you know, I probably dealt with 15, 18 years ago, when you find a job, you didn't have the personnel. Now you have to hire the personnel to do that work. And it's never a good recipe. You don't know what you're getting with.

Speaker 1: 23:02

So that's a, I mean, that's a great piece of advice as it relates to your own internal resources. Let me ask a question. Have you, have you turned away work that you would want?

Speaker 3: 23:15

Unfortunately, yes. Unfortunately, over the last month, we've had to turn away work that we were running pre con one and you know, I hate to say it, but it's. It's come down to first come, first serve with a lack of transparency, lack of communication, a lack of commitment that I picked up something else and I wasn't able to. To execute, to procure another contract with somebody else.

Speaker 1: 23:41

Well, I think it's a really important message for the general contractors who are watching this to, to, you know, pay attention to, which is, you know, buy as quick, as early as you can from the people that you really want to buy from. The faster you can get them on your team, the more. Like, to your point, first come, first serve, when you don't know whether you're going to get this one or this one, when this guy comes to you and says, hey, it's your job, you're saying yes, even if this one was a little bit better. Because it's not like you can. It's not like you can wait.

Speaker 3: 24:12

Money's not money as a result. And again, I have an obligation to my people to keep my. Keep work in front of my people. And a bird in the hand is worth better one in the bush better than one in the bush. So you gotta do what you gotta do. And it's unfortunate.

Speaker 1: 24:26

Yep. Thank you. All right, good. Other questions. Stacy?

Speaker 2: 24:31

Yeah. Tara McCarthy said, How do you rebuild trust with a client after it's broken?

Speaker 3: 24:39

Don't break it. Don't break it. You know, be honest. If something is. Something's going south, have a straight up conversation with them and, and just be honest. Trust is the foundation of every relationship. And whenever you're not transparent with things, just be honest and come at them and tell them the truth what happened. Let the dice, you know, let the chips fall where they fall. It is what it is. But honesty is the best policy.

Speaker 1: 25:06

Kenny, I freaking love that answer. There is a, you know you're gonna screw up. So the question wasn't how do you rebuild relationships once you screw up. The question is how do you build, relate. Rebuild relationships when you lose trust and losing trust is within your control, people aren't going to lose trust for you for screwing up. They're going to lose trust for you because of the way that you handled the screw up. Did you try to hide it? Right? Did you lie about it? Did you try to blame somebody else? Did you try to save a couple of bucks rather than saving the relationship? Right? That, that's the. And I love it. I think that's exactly right. You can choose whether you lose trust. And if, look, if somebody Wants to say, I'm not going to work with you again because I don't like the way that went down. At least their, their trust in your honesty and integrity shouldn't be undermined.

Speaker 3: 25:53

I get it. I get it. I'm sorry you feel like that. Hopefully we have another opportunity to, to show you something different in the future.

Speaker 1: 26:00

That's it. Yep. Excellent. Good. Stacy, how about another?

Speaker 2: 26:04

Sure. Scotch Montgomery said buying earlier is even becoming a chance, is even becoming a challenge, though, especially in a world where escalation is becoming more and more unpredictable. Where's the happy medium in buying early and mitigating escalation risk?

Speaker 3: 26:24

The happy medium. You got a job to do, you just got to do it. You got to know your own schedule. And again, the, the farther, the earlier that the owner can get you involved in it to where you can actually have the time to do your job, the better off everybody's going to be. But again, if it's hard bid plan, inspect late deadlines, they want it, you know, they bid it on a Thursday, want to start it on a Tuesday. You can't be proactive. You can't be proactive. You, especially the owners got to understand now there is supply chain disruption. So they got to get their projects engaged with early to give people the opportunity to do their job. You know, we're, we're finding ourselves, you know, documenting and timelining when we're awarded the project, when we have released our subs and vendors and documenting the whole process because there's certain things that are outside of our control, be prepared for transparency.

Speaker 1: 27:21

I think there's a, I think there's a right now an immediate world situation related to supply chain delays, you know, pricing, escalation, all those different types of things that, that have created a whole other set of challenges and questions. I would, you know, I think what, what I'm hearing you say, Kenny, is buy early regardless. Doesn't matter, man. Just get, get, you know. So have you seen any interesting clauses, contractual clauses that are protecting people against, you know, price escalation or anything like that if they do sign up early?

Speaker 3: 27:56

No, no, I haven't seen anything new come up, come out in contract reforms with this, but I've seen good general contractors engage early and, and, or through the scope process. They want to under. They want to understand what the long leads are. Good general contractors are asking the questions early. And, you know, some of the things that they're even considering doing is maybe doing an early release for a small package. Their documents might not be 100% but maybe the underground portion of it is and they'll do an early release package to get somebody signed up and working on it so they can hit the ground. Veri. With. With trying to do the best they can to avoid delays because of supply issues.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Yep. Awesome. All right, cool. You know, rather than running long with this group, I want to try to set a good expectation that we're going to wrap up at 8:30 on the dot. I just want to take a moment to thank you so much, Kenny, for taking, you know, some time this morning and joining and having this conversation. I'll talk to, you know, the audience here for a moment. I, we, we, we came up with. Yes. Well, okay, so first off, Stacy came up with this and, and I want to thank Stacy and Steeltoe for, you know, forcing the issue and, and creating this opportunity for this kind of dialogue. Without Stacy's, you know, intention, intention on this and pushing me along, we wouldn't be here. So thank you so much for that and, and for, you know, you know, producing and organizing this show. We thought we were going to do six. I think we're going to do this every week. You know, we've gotten an overwhelming response. Tons and tons of people are reaching out, asking if they can be a guest, asking to participate. I think we have guests lined up through January now. And, and, and so if that's something that appeals to anybody who's watching, if you have something that you're passionate about and something that you feel like you can add value by talking about, I'd love to hear from you and, and you know, welcome that kind of interaction. And on next week's show, we have a person named Chris Blyk. He's an expert in the industry workforce and he's going to be talking about emerging construction tech opportunities, construction tech jobs, and talking about what is new and trending and what we can expect coming up as it relates to the job opportunities that are being posed by technology and construction. Kenny, any, any last words that you want to shout out to the group that's watching here today?

Speaker 3: 30:27

Make a difference, join the show, talk about what you're passionate about it and let's fix this industry.

Speaker 2: 30:33

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 30:35

Thanks so much. Have a great day. I'll talk to everybody soon.

Speaker 3: 30:38

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 30:39

Chad, guys, thanks for joining us.