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Whether you are a minority contractor or not, this episode delves into what new opportunities exist within the electric vehicle industry and infrastructure. Specifically, our guest, Larry Bullock from the US Minority Contractors Association discusses how minority contractors can capitalize on the growing EV industry, and what partnership opportunities may exist for non-minority contractors. 00:46 The Morning Huddle Construction Show Sponsors 2:12 Catching Up with Stacey and Chad, Return of the Show Season 7, Episode 1. 4:00 Well Built- Chad's New Book 6:42 Steel Toe Communications discusses launch of Instagram and TikTok @CHAT_CTE 7:35 Introduction of Guest, Larry Bullock 12:57 The Economic Boom of the Transportation Industry. 15:10: 1/3 of where we need to be in fulfilling the 500,000 Station Promise, and half way through funding. Lots of opportunity. 15:53 The Joint Office for Energy and Transportation, www.driveelectric.gov/contact 17:12 Justice40: Goal is 40% of every dollar spent under the $5B operation should be spent in disadvantaged communities. 23:50 Which Non-MBE firms are partners with MBE firms. 28:00 Become Bid Ready 30:58 What kind of trades will be involved in installing and maintaining EV. 33:41 17 Electric Car Business Ideas: You Get in Where You Fit In 46:49 Closing 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=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_term=ntl&utm_content=resilience&utm_campaign=ntl-brand-awareness-mma&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw3P-2BhAEEiwA3yPhwBStkU82B0UALO_Ro1GKvn_sfhRJaY7TaEfwisj92ciDKSpYt52NwhoCPAcQAvD_BwE Construction Links Network: https://constructionlinks.ca/ For additional episodes and information visit https://www.themorninghuddleconstructionshow.com/about 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

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

America's top-performing contractors in every field have certain things in common. One of those things is a strong culture that allows them to maintain consistent results for customers and employees as they grow. Few contractors have done this more effectively than Ruppert Landscape. With over 2,000 employees across 8 states (and rapidly growing!), Ruppert has built a culture of success.

Our guest, Phil Key, is the President of Ruppert Landscape. He joins us to discuss how Ruppert has built and maintained their culture and why it has worked so far!

When most small to midsized construction companies think about Human Resources, they think of employee handbooks, PTO policies, and managing employee files. When people like Kathy Humm think of HR, they think about how investing in human capital becomes a strategic advantage for a business.

In this episode, we hear about how leading construction companies leverage their HR departments to become better places to work, minimize legal exposure, and increase productivity. Kathy has valuable experience from her time as the HR Director for Harkins Builders for 9 years before starting her new business, NTP HR.

Transcript:

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00:01
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. 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. A lot of American construction workers, they have different needs.

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00:21
Speaker 2
They have completely different needs.

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00:23
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out and they usually have a community service 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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00:41
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't that? Yeah, not for me.

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00:44
Speaker 2
Not for me.

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00:45
Speaker 1
At 11 o' clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring.

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00:48
Speaker 3
So.

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00:48
Speaker 1
So. Good morning. It's morning huddle time. I'm Chad Prinke alongside my co host and producer, Stacey Holzinger. Stacey, how are you this morning?

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01:06
Speaker 3
I'm doing great. How are you guys doing?

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01:10
Speaker 2
Doing great.

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01:12
Speaker 1
For me, it's all good. Yeah, we made it through a Thanksgiving. Like everybody, oh my God, I shouldn't even say this out loud. Everybody was sick and I somehow dodged it. Everybody's better and I'm not sick and I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I'm invincible. Folks, I think I made it. I believe it. Yeah. Though I don't know, Thursday to Tuesday, the incubation period is probably not totally over. There's probably, you know, there's some, you know, doctor somewhere like, oh no, he's got symptoms, I can see it. But anyway, so we have our guest and both of our friends, Stacy, Kathy Hum, here with us today. Kathy, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Kathy owns Notice to Proceed hr.

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01:59
Speaker 1
She just started that business literally months ago after spending years and years in the construction industry working for a wonderful, well respected general contractor in the D.C. baltimore area. And, and I was just noticing like recognizing as were getting started, Kathy, Stacy and myself, all three of us have started our own businesses just in the past couple of years. Go us. That's exciting. So congratulations Kathy. How so far, how's it going?

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02:36
Speaker 2
It's going fantastic. As you mentioned, I've spent over 15 years in the HR space. Nine of the last years that I spend in HR were with Harkins Builders. So built their HR department and decided to break off and start my own consulting. And my goal is to transform the construction space HR from transactional to strategic. So it's been great. I have a tremendous network through Associated Builders and Contractors and from Greater Baltimore to Washington, D.C. and. And it's been fantastic.

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03:21
Speaker 1
Well, you're doing work for me, with me right now for a client, for a shared client, where we're working together and doing a fantastic job so far. So thank you for. For the work that you're doing there. And, you know, I think as a new business owner, it is the scariest thing is, am I going to have any clients? And you've been able to solve that problem very quickly through your network, and I'm very excited for you. So that's. It's a nice place to start from, Kathy.

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03:53
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

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03:56
Speaker 3
So many small subs, you know, need your help, too. We were just talking about, you know, same thing with marketing and hr. A lot of people are multitasking in smaller organizations when there's a level of expertise that's really needed. So you'll be able to help a lot of people.

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04:17
Speaker 2
Yeah. And what I found is that as companies grow, you know, they're just getting by with the transactional HR component, which is, you know, payroll and benefits administration, and then they grow even larger and they realize, okay, I need to recruit top talent, but my retention is low, you know, so you have to come up with some sort of strategy on how are you going to recruit those people and how are you going to retain them, and what does that look like?

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04:50
Speaker 1
Yeah. So. So let's. Let's make this transition into today's topic, clearly, which is we're going to talk about what the mission of your organization, what the mission of your company exists to. To accomplish, which is making that transformation from H in HR from transactional to strategic. Stacy, I'm gonna, you know, obviously put you in the spot that you're. That you're always in each week, which is creating great conversation with all of our audience members who are joining us live. We'll bring you back here with a few minutes left to. To cover the audience questions. Good.

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05:30
Speaker 3
Yep.

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05:30
Speaker 1
See, in a bit, Kathy, you started down that path of describing what transactional HR looks like. And what I picked up from that was sort of. I don't. Maybe compliance items, payroll items, things. Things that are really keeping the ship afloat. Give us, if you wouldn't mind, just sort of the comprehensive list or the best off the top of your head of what transactional HR is. What do you mean exactly when you say transactional hr?

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06:02
Speaker 2
So you're absolutely right. It includes payroll, it includes benefits, administration, any type of, you know, new hire termination, all of those critical transactional duties that a company needs to do. And I mean really the list goes on employee relations, if somebody has an issue or if they have a question and the employees are our customers. So we have to, you know, spend a lot of time and respond promptly to what their needs are, which is important. That's absolutely important.

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06:41
Speaker 1
Well, and that's exactly what I was going to say. What I don't hear you advocating for in any way is saying let's get rid of that stuff. Right. It's now have to occur. It's just that there needs to be a level of HR thinking that's happening at a different level than the day to day critical functions that need to occur to keep the, you know, the ship afloat. Let's now put some definition around what strategic HR looks like. What are some of the things that fall into that bucket? What strategic hr.

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07:15
Speaker 2
So strategic HR is being more forward thinking, not just putting out the fires today, but focusing on what is my 1-3-5-year plan. And you have to have buy in from the executive team. The HR business goals have to align with the strategic goal. So for example, if a business wants to double in size in the next three years, we what's the recruiting strategy to do that? Where are you going to get those candidates? You know, do you have a, you know, a diversity goal that you want to achieve? So how does that tie into your recruiting strategy as well? And I, it's all about being forward thinking and having that buy in from the executive team to be able to think outside of the box and really help that organization grow.

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08:11
Speaker 1
So, so if I can just solidify this recruiting can fall into either a transactional or a strategic bucket. But transactional recruiting looks like post the ad, call the headhunter. It's, it's reaction to we need a pm. We need to bring in somebody in this key position and our HR department reacts. Posts the ad calls a headhunter or any other number of just in time things designed to create a result. Not bad things, but things that are less effective perhaps than they would be if they were a part of a broader plan. So talk to me about what strategic recruiting just as an example might look like in comparison to the two, you know, to the, you know, post the ad, call the headhunter.

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09:14
Speaker 2
Sure. And those things like you mentioned Chad, are really important. But let's break this down a little bit. Is your job description from the 1920s or do you even have a job description?

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09:26
Speaker 1
Are we scrapping together a job description Last minute. I can't just, I can't tell you how I've seen people who are like, I don't know, Chad, do you have a job description? Something that we can help me with that? Yeah, totally.

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09:38
Speaker 2
But, but more specifically about the job description, are you talking about the challenges that this position will focus on? Are you speaking to the candidate? Are you talking about your culture when you write that job description and what it's like a day in the life at X Company? Then you take that a step further and do you have an employee referral plan within your organization? And have you coached your employees with an elevator pitch on how to recruit top talent? You know, you could be at a.

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10:12
Speaker 1
One thing to say, hey, we'll give you 500 bucks if you bring somebody in. It's another thing to give the tools to be successful in doing that.

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10:20
Speaker 2
You could be at a wedding, you could be in the grocery store and you get exceptional service from the, the person at the register and you think, wow, they have the skill sets, the essential skill sets that might be able to fit in our company. We can teach them the technical skills. Then you have to take it even a step further. And where are you going to find these candidates? Are you just parking your posting on LinkedIn and that's it. You have to build some sort of strategy around where we got most of our candidates. Do you typically hire from universities, community colleges, trade schools in construction? The Votech programs at high school are a great, you know, starting point to hire entry level people within the construction space.

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11:13
Speaker 2
And is your company the go to company in those programs that when they think about okay, we want to start placing our students, are they calling you? Are you the first one they're calling? Which means your recruiting strategy is you have to get in the classroom and you have to be present and you have to, you know, do the upfront work to get on that list and be the first go to caller.

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11:36
Speaker 1
Like so many things in life and business, what I'm hearing you say is it's all about making the investments in these areas that have long term benefits. That if I start laying down lines, if I start creating funnels at vocational schools, if I start laying down funnels in community college programs, I'm not going to have a bunch of candidates tomorrow. But what I will have done is help to Solidify my pipeline 3 years, 5 years, 10 years down the line. And that's strategic. And that's, that's exactly what you're talking about is, you know, hey, if you're today, if you're transactional, so be it. You might need to post that ad, you might need to call that headhunter. But today I want you to also make investments that will help you to be more strategic in the future.

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12:32
Speaker 1
It will help you in the future to have a much more effective strategy. And we're just talking about recruiting, not to mention all the other things that could fit into the hr which I look forward to potentially getting to with you today though time is so limited and there's so much to. So I want to ask what are some of the biggest mistakes that contractors are making as it relates to their HR departments? Whether it's general contractors or specialty contractors, what are the biggest mistakes they're making in relation to their HR department?

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13:10
Speaker 2
I would say the investment in hr. You have to invest in HR for it to be successful. So that's number one. And what I mean by that is you have to put the right person in the seat on the bus or develop that team that has both a transactional mindset as well as a strategic mindset. Because the duties are still the duties but you need to be forward thinking in an HR department and an HR role. So I would say the investment in hr. I would also say that HR needs to have a seat at the table. And what I mean by that is the executive team needs to include HR because let's face it, our most valuable asset in the construction space anywhere are our people.

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14:07
Speaker 2
And if we don't have good talent, satisfied employees, we're not going to be the best that we can be in whatever we do. So who has the better pulse, the best pulse on our people? It's the HR department. They, they absolutely have a pulse on the people. And so HR needs to have a seat at the table.

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14:31
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's so the first, the foundational aspect of that I'm hearing from you is really treating HR not as an afterthought, treating hr. Making the appropriate investment in HR leadership is maybe what I'm, is what I'm hearing you say. Does that sound right?

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14:57
Speaker 2
100%. But here's also something about that HR.

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15:05
Speaker 1
People.

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15:07
Speaker 2
That, that lead the department, that work in the department, they have to be able to speak the executive language. They have to be able to sit in those executive meetings. And the two biggest things that executives are focused on are the cost and the risk. And if you can't speak in business language and take the empathy and the touchy feely part of hr, which is important out of that discussion, that's where HR people tend to have trouble in those meetings. You have to be brief, you have to be concise, you have to be prepared, you have to have solutions. Don't come to them with a problem, come to them with solutions. And you have to know your data analytics and be able to present that information so that you're touching on the cost and the risk. That's what they want to hear.

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16:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a two way street. You can't. First, first things first. The executive team has to welcome the HR leadership as an equal, as an equal voice at the table, as somebody that's really going to have impact, that they're going to consider their perspectives. Yeah. The other portion of that equation is HR people need to speak exact. They need to, they need to actually be prepared at that level. And playing at that level requires, you know, bridging the gap between these touchy feely topics like employee satisfaction and tying it to metrics, tying it to measurables, tying those touchy feely topics to real. Measurable business outcomes, costs, risks, returns on investment.

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17:12
Speaker 2
So even speaking about employee satisfaction, you can go into an executive meeting and say, our employees aren't satisfied. What does that mean? Right. What is tell me more? Or you can go in and after you've done, you know, year after year employee satisfaction surveys using the G12, the Gallup 12 questions, which are very simple, you can go in and say, I just want to let you know, this year our Gallup 12 survey, Employee Satisfaction Survey, dipped from 4.8 out of 5 to 4.3. And here are the categories that they dipped in. And here are those scores. And so we really need to focus and unravel this. And I've done a little research and this is what I've discovered. Two very different. You know, you go in and you say, we've got problems. Well, there's no solution there.

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18:14
Speaker 1
Right. Give me hard data and tell me why I should care.

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18:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.

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18:19
Speaker 1
It's, it's a, you know, if somebody comes in and has the ability to say, this is a leading indicator that statistically, if we're not above this threshold, we're going to have retention rate issues, we're going to experience attrition. The cost per new hire is X. Right. Here's what it costs when we have a fail within our first three years. If we have to replace somebody, I mean. Yeah. And I can think about the differences. I spend a lot of time in my work with the HR professionals within my Clients, businesses. And there's a massive difference between the quality of conversation that we're able to have in one instance and the other. And without question, there's a connection on who's invited to the table. Yeah. Now at the same time I'm sitting here like, I'm sorry, I'm like thinking about chicken or the egg.

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19:17
Speaker 1
Like, am I a part of this problem? Do I need to make sure that. And I'm sure I am to some extent. And that's, and so it's a valuable discussion to be having with you.

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19:28
Speaker 2
So, but to be honest, where you excel is the strategic plan and the vision of organizations. And that's where it starts. And time and time again, when I ask companies, do you have a strategic plan? Well, kind of sorta or not really. Because the reason I ask that is because when I'm looking at hr, from soup to nuts, the recruiting business plan has to align with the strategic plan. It gives us direction as an HR team.

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20:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, I totally agree. Without one, you can't really have the other. And I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be a very strategic and capable HR professional operating inside a business that doesn't know where the hell it's going. That's got to be excruciating. So you can't have one without the other. I think that's an interesting thought. So let's talk straight talk here for a minute about something that I, I can't help. I, I, I'm really, I'm trying to solve this problem in my mind for the average or sort of typical sized contractor out there that does not have unlimited budget. This is an overhead hire. Right. We can't job cost this higher. If we're, if we're going to hire HR people, we've got to be able to really justify what we're doing here.

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21:04
Speaker 1
At what point do we need to make sure we have an HR person in place? Is there an employee count? Is there a revenue size? Is there, are there any rules of thumb for the point at which I need to be fully prepared to be past the transactional HR and have really HR leadership inside my business?

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21:23
Speaker 2
From my perspective, because I'm very strategic, that has to be out of the gate when you're considering starting a business. You know, think proactively. Okay. I may not need somebody right this minute, but who is that person going to be that's going to handle all the transactional and help me grow? Because you want them as a partner, but if you don't have that person in play. By the time you have 50 employees, it's time.

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21:59
Speaker 1
Okay, that's fair. And I, and now I'm, I can get that perspective. When you first started, I was like, oh, man. So, so it's going to be, I'm going to have, my first hire is going to be an HR person. We have to install metals or, you know, whatever our job is. What you're saying isn't that it's from the start you need to have this seed mindset. Yes. Which is I need to be. And perhaps, man, I don't know if you'll like what I'm about to say, but perhaps you can be strategic about HR in your business without having an HR professional leading that.

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22:38
Speaker 1
In other words, my job can be business owner or I can have vice president of operations, but if they have at least for some period of time in the business the ability to think strategically about HR issues, that could be sufficient. I don't necessarily have to go out and hire an HR professional, but what I'm hearing you say is once you reach maybe that 50 employee mark, it's a, it's time for you to have an HR professional.

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23:03
Speaker 2
Well, and Chad, I would argue, I would counter your point there with, you know, there comes a time where the HR responsibilities pull that CEO, that president, vice president, away from what they do best and helping develop and grow the organization. So there is a point that you need to offload those duties and find somebody who is equally as strategic to be a partner to be able to help the organization grow.

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23:49
Speaker 1
That's a really great point. I love that. And I can't agree with you more that there does reach almost in every business that I've ever come across a point, whether it's HR or sales or marketing or operations for that matter, where there's, there are people who are really in this lane who are carrying this added responsibility that it reaches a certain point where this responsibility isn't getting as much of their attention as it needs. This responsibility isn't getting as much responsive attention as it needs. And ultimately it's time to hand one off. And this is your primary responsibility. So it's time to hand this one off. That makes a lot of sense. That's helpful. And if you're an audience member, you're watching this. Consider, are you there? Have you reached that point where you have been handling the recruiting? Because, man, you love it.

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24:48
Speaker 1
You really enjoy being out in the Field with people. And you're the vice president of operations for a 75 employee company and you're heading up the internship program and you're heading up the employee, all these different types of things. But you're also the vice president of operations.

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25:05
Speaker 2
Right, Right.

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25:06
Speaker 1
It's a lot.

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25:07
Speaker 2
And there's a lot of nuances to all of the HR functionalities. There's just so much involved that, I mean, you take recruiting, we talked about that earlier. You know, from scheduling the interview to ordering the background check to this, that the other. There's all of that behind the scenes. That certainly needs to happen.

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25:29
Speaker 1
And it's time consuming. It's got to happen. So. All right, I'm going to bring Stacy back. There's one thing while I bring Stacy back that I want to just toss on the table with you is that I personally have always felt that one of the most essential functions of a strong human resources department is enabling employee development and training throughout the organization. And I'd like for you to describe, well, first off, if you agree, and second off, what an organization that wants to be a great employee development organization, they want to be awesome at training and developing their people. What role should HR be playing in that environment and what role should others be playing? Because I'll tell you, one of the things I hear a lot is like, well, I don't know, training hr. Are you on that?

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26:22
Speaker 1
And I always, I'm like, that's not fair. That's not quite right. You can't just lay training at HR's feet and walk out. So what's your take? Am I, am I wrong or.

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26:34
Speaker 2
Training is a part of an HR function. And I would say that anything from leadership development, management, essential skills, those kinds of things are led by the HR team. Now when you get into technical skill sets in the construction space, HR people don't know the technical, you know, how to's part of the job. What HR's role in that particular situation would be that they're facilitating the training. They're finding the technical trainer, whether it's in house or outside of the organization to have those training sessions. And they're making it. So HR absolutely plays a role in training. I would also say that companies need to have career paths. They need to spell that out because the younger generation coming into the workforce, they want to know, if I get hired here, what's my next step and what's my next step?

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27:45
Speaker 2
And you know, I want to see the three to five year plan for me. So it's really important for companies not only to have a really good job description but also paint the picture of if you start here, and these are the training things and certifications that you need to acquire over the next X months year, what have you. This is your projection and that's super important.

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28:13
Speaker 1
I love it. I love it. That seems fair to me. And it seems like there's an internal customer that obviously that HR is serving. But there also needs to be an investment from department leadership alongside HR to make this be successful. So HR not only needs to service its internal customer, but it also needs people to be bought into servicing the internal customer that's inside their department sense. In other words, it needs to have the buy in and support of everyone else so that everyone isn't just pointing the finger at HR and saying, I don't know, we're supposed to have a training program, hr, are you on that? But instead they're building it together. We are already up on time. I'm the worst. But we're going to go a little late. Stacy, what do we have in terms of questions?

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29:18
Speaker 3
We have a great question from Ralph. So how do you make training and employee growth a priority throughout your organization? Allow time away from projects for employee growth? I think that's a big concern for a lot of companies because they don't want to take people off the projects because they have to meet these deadlines and these schedules. But it is important for employee growth.

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29:43
Speaker 2
So.

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29:43
Speaker 3
So what are your thoughts on that?

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29:47
Speaker 2
Well, with any function of HR and this particular question relates to training, there has to be accountability from the top and there has to be buy in from the top. So how do they treat learning and development? And if they have buy into it, then you can formulate as an HR team what that looks like. Dollars to spend for your department for each of your, you know, team members for training, going away to conferences, taking time away from the job, maybe recruiting and hiring more people so that you have that backfill for you to take that time off. A lot of companies are also moving to sabbaticals in construction. It's a very challenging industry and it's high stress, high energy.

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30:45
Speaker 2
So a lot of companies are going to take some sabbatical time after a three, five year period so that they can recharge and train and develop.

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30:57
Speaker 3
Definitely when you were talking earlier about training and things like that, I, when I worked with Shapiro and Duncan, I worked very closely with the HR department and I think marketing also usually ties in as a support system to HR and trying to simplify the message, trying to get forms return that you need, whether it's health benefit forms, meeting deadlines, event planning, employee morale type things. So if you do have marketing support, include them into the HR conversation because they can help you out a lot when it comes to communicating these crucial messages, whether it's safety or HR or health benefits or anything like that, to get that information out and get it returned. It was always kind of a struggle, but we worked together pretty good doing that.

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31:59
Speaker 2
I would 100% agree both for your internal messaging and your external messaging, because you have to paint the story of the culture externally to attract candidates, but internally, all of that messaging around open enrollment, recruiting, employee referral program training and development, compliance. Why we have to do things that we have to do because the federal government and state legislation, you know, are putting, you know, bills in place that we have to comply with.

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32:30
Speaker 3
Yeah. And how can companies better enable a shift to becoming more strategic if they don't have unlimited overhead budgets?

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32:42
Speaker 2
It starts with investing in automation. We have tremendous systems that can do a lot of the transactional duties and it starts there and it will free up that one person team, two person team to be able to spend time planning and being more strategic.

‍ ‍

33:07
Speaker 3
Nice.

‍ ‍

33:08
Speaker 1
That's awesome. I think there's a real hesitance for companies to purchase software that they don't know that. How do I put this? Contractors don't love, don't like purchasing software that doesn't specifically tie into operations or the technical aspect of the work. Right. And I mean with automation, can you give us a sense of the return on investment that you would get for, you know, I don't know. That may be difficult for you to come up with out of thin air, but for X dollars invested, what are we, what are we saving when we bring in the right hr? Automation.

‍ ‍

33:56
Speaker 2
So on the front end you'd have an applicant tracking system which can give you those, the data analytics. As far as the candidates that are applying, who you're hiring, all of that data is critical to the ROI and understanding. You know, is this worth the investment? And then, you know, certainly you have your benefits tracking in there. You have your open enrollment and you have capabilities depending on the system with learning and development and then compliance. I can give you an example of the Affordable Care act requires at a certain number of employees requires you to do reporting. And at my previous employer, we paid over four thousand dollars for that reporting. If you have an app, if you have a, an HR system and you're automated, you can Pull that data out of the system and it saves you.

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34:56
Speaker 2
In that case, it would have saved us $4,000.

‍ ‍

35:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Got it. I see where you're going with it. And I, you know, I'm assuming that if I were an audience member and I had questions about even any aspect of what we've talked about today, that these are all things you'd be, you know, totally comfortable having a conversation with somebody about if they wanted to reach out.

‍ ‍

35:21
Speaker 2
Absolutely.

‍ ‍

35:22
Speaker 1
If they wanted to reach out to you, where would they get you? Should they reach out via LinkedIn?

‍ ‍

35:27
Speaker 2
Ntphr.com cool. And my email is Kathy Humtphr, LinkedIn. Be happy to talk through any of your HR needs. I do an assessment from soup to nuts, no cost to the company to give you an idea of where you are and where you'd like to be. And then we go from there.

‍ ‍

35:54
Speaker 1
Awesome. Nice.

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35:56
Speaker 3
Thanks for joining us.

‍ ‍

35:57
Speaker 2
Yeah, thank you.

‍ ‍

36:00
Speaker 1
I really enjoy this conversation. Kathy and I have been particularly recently talking a lot, and I still feel like I have a lot to say to you. So. And I love listening to your perspectives on things. You're, you're a great, fun educator. I don't know if that's something you're aware of, but you are, you're very good at it.

‍ ‍

36:21
Speaker 2
Well, thank you.

‍ ‍

36:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, thank you. Very good. So. All right, Kathy, thanks again. Stacy, let's do a little housekeeping to wrap up the last show of three.

‍ ‍

36:34
Speaker 3
Yep.

‍ ‍

36:37
Speaker 1
So, so we are up in the air on exactly when we're coming back, the exact day I. Oh, wait, no, that's not true. We nailed it.

‍ ‍

36:46
Speaker 3
January 31st.

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36:48
Speaker 1
January 31st. This literally just happened over the past week. So we are, our first show back will be January 31st. We'll be running for 12 weeks, pretty much consecutively. Consecutively thereafter, unless there's some holiday that we haven't accounted for and we are looking for guests. So please reach out to Stacy if you or somebody you know should be on our show. And the best way to do that, to reach out to Stacy is right here. Stacey H. Steeltoe.com.com. You can reach out to me as well, but I'll just forward it to Stacy. He handles all the, she handles all the booking. So I'm not qualified to handle that particular aspect of what we do. Stacy, do you have a steel toe? Communications tip of the week.

‍ ‍

37:34
Speaker 3
I just want to remind everybody today that it is giving Tuesday. Make sure that you're supporting your local construction nonprofits that are doing all the hard work to recruit people into this industry to help get people or help get you employees. If you're not donating with money, try donating with your time or just spread the word by sharing the organizations and their messages and what they represent. Please do that today.

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38:08
Speaker 1
Awesome. Thank you, Stacy. So I'll take one moment and just say this, which is the past few years have been extremely busy for most people in the construction industry. Now, depending on if you've been doing commercial interiors exclusively, you might be angry to hear me say that. Or if you've been doing hotels exclusively, there was a pretty tough time during that period, but by and large the industry has been really thriving. There are some very valid indicators that we are heading into a less vibrant time. We're heading into a time where business will be less plentiful and your strategy for your business is going to be that much more important. I've been speaking with a lot of people recently about designing their strategic plan so that their business is more recession resilient or recession proof.

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39:14
Speaker 1
If that's a conversation that you want to have with me, you can reach out to me directly through LinkedIn or via that email. I've been giving a lot of talks on it. I've been giving lots of keynotes on it. So if there's anybody that wants to have that discussion, please do reach out. Best of luck everybody as we enter into the New Year. Happy holidays and all the best from us at the Morning Huddle. Stacy, any final words?

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39:40
Speaker 3
Happy holidays and I look forward to the break, recharging and bringing some new awesome topics and guests for next season.

‍ ‍

39:50
Speaker 1
Same here. We'll see you in 2023.

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39:52
Speaker 3
See ya.

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39:53
Speaker 1
Bye. Bye.

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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!

Transcription:

Okay, I am updating our title here, but so. So what do you guys. What are you guys doing for. For networking in the coming holiday networking rush? What are the ones not to miss, Mark? 

S

Speaker 2

00:23

Well, WBC event is always one not to miss at Congressional Country Club. I call it the. The Electrical Contractors Reunion, because every electrical contractor in town is there, and. And you get to talk to all them, and it's usually. Usually their top leaderships there as well. So that's always good. And. And Congressional is a great venue. ABC's event at Manor is always a great event. It's rule number one. Stay mobile at Manor. 

S

Speaker 1

00:58

Yeah, no kidding. Manor's got a lot of nooks and crannies. I found myself going to that event and getting trapped in the. In the. In a handful of great conversations, but in one room, in one corner. 

S

Speaker 2

01:10

Yeah, and there's. There's about 10 different rooms and venues. You can be in there also. Both those. The after parties are always good. 

S

Speaker 1

01:21

After parties, Mark. There's after parties of the holiday parties. 

S

Speaker 2

01:26

Yeah, there's after parties. 

S

Speaker 1

01:28

I had no idea. 

S

Speaker 2

01:30

So in. In the basement of each of those venues, there are bars, and they're member bars. And. And because it's a member has to sponsor the event for the. For the association have it there. Usually there are members that go down there, and the party will go on till the member bar closes. So. Well, Debbie and gang will roll up their stuff and. And Steve, Kenton and Rito roll up their stuff, go downstairs and find a bar. 

S

Speaker 1

02:01

If you go to the after party, I'm thinking that's the point at which you'd want to make sure that you've taken an Uber. 

S

Speaker 2

02:07

You want to take an Uber? Yes, yes. Or have your sleeping bag in your car so you can sleep in the parking lot. 

S

Speaker 1

02:16

There you go. All right, guys, we're gonna go live here in. In just a few seconds if you're starting to join us. Thank you. I've got some. Some folks I can see, you know, joining us on the. On the LinkedIn live stream. But we'll hold off until 8am proper to. To officially go live to allow folks, you know, to get here in that last little bit. I think for those folks who attended last week, this is what it's supposed to look like, which is a live Stream. Right. On LinkedIn, rather than having to reroute you to zoom. And all of this will naturally record and be available for those of you who weren't able to get here live. So this is what the norm is so, all right, good. It is eight. We're going to start right on time. Good morning. 

S

Speaker 1

03:09

Thank you for joining us on the morning huddle. My name's Chad Prinke. Today, our normal partner, my normal partner, Stacy Holzinger is out. She's got a whole week of intensive leadership training that she's going through right now as a part of the ABC Metro Washington experience. And so we're going to miss Stacy today. But we're lucky enough to have our friend Cody Wilcox joining us. Cody is from Malloc Mechanical. Cody, thank you for being here today. 

S

Speaker 3

03:39

Yeah, thank you. I'm excited to be here and for everybody to join us. 

S

Speaker 1

03:43

Thanks, man. How are you? 

S

Speaker 3

03:45

I'm good, I'm good. I'm getting used to daylight sabins a little bit, but besides that, I can't complain. 

S

Speaker 1

03:52

Yeah, I always like an excuse to get into my pajamas early, so that's nice. And I also like that I don't feel like I wake and go to sleep in darkness only, at least not until somewhere around February. It's nice to be greeted by the sun at least somewhat close to my wake up time, so. Well, cool. Cody, you're going to be playing the role of capturing our questions. So all attendees who are here with us live, please make sure that you're sending in your questions throughout the course of the conversation. We're not going to answer them as we go. We're going to answer them at the end. But go ahead and type them in along the way. That way, you know, while they're fresh in your mind, we have an opportunity to, you know, to get your best questions on the line. 

S

Speaker 1

04:37

So Cody, I'm gonna put you know, kind of move you to the side here until about 8:20 and we'll pull you back in. 

S

Speaker 3

04:43

Good. Okay, sounds good. 

S

Speaker 1

04:45

Thanks. Mark Drury is today's guest. Mark, thanks so much for being here. 

S

Speaker 2

04:50

Good morning, Jad. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and join your crew. Who's who signed on here and listening and watching along. 

S

Speaker 1

05:02

Thank you so much for being here. I, you know, Mark, you and I have known one another for quite a while at this point. And you know, were, when were kicking around, you know, running this, you know, having you on the morning huddle. One of the things I'll tell the audience for weeks, this slot just said need to determine title. Because I think the truth is, Mark, you and I could talk about anything together. And in fact we have. And so when were preparing for today's discussion and Exploring topic areas we could cover. We really tried to sort of narrow things down. This idea of small business and growth and getting to the next level continued to come up between us. I know it's something that we're both passionate about. 

S

Speaker 1

05:46

So that is today's title, which is grow and balance your small business. So let's start by defining. First things first. Mark, you know, tell us a little bit about your story, give us a little on your background, like you know, in a minute or so. I know that's okay. 

S

Speaker 2

06:06

I'll give a brief. Okay. So I recently, in March I retired from employment and I started up an llc because I'm, I've got several, a few board positions that are in the industry, in the non profit sector that require me to be a business member. So I started an llc. Now for years I've mentored company owners and company leaders in different companies and I'm continuing to do that and I'm doing some consulting. So I'm talking to business owners, helping them build their business, helping them improve, helping them expand, helping them through issues. Learning the ropes basically. So I'm still doing that. 44 years in the construction industry, 18 on the general contracting side and 26 years as a mechanical subcontractor. Started Shapiro and Duncan back in 1995. 

S

Speaker 2

07:02

They're about 4 million, $4 million a year, 40 people when I left in March is 140 million a year and 400 plus people. So been in the business of building and building businesses. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

S

Speaker 1

07:19

That's an awesome story. Yeah. And along the way, and what you don't have time to talk about and you know, anybody who knows Mark knows this is that, you know, Mark's had, you know, educational experiences in the design build world. You know, more leadership experiences and leadership training experiences than one could, you know, try to fit into a lifetime and all those different types of things. It's a part of the reason, Mark, that you and I can talk about literally anything together. So if I can try in our limited time that we have together. Right. Keep us focused on small business. I'd like to try as a starting point to you know, define small business. What is that? What does that mean for it as a contractor? What's a small business? 

S

Speaker 2

08:07

Well, I think it depends on what trade you're in and what your market looks like whether you're a small business or not. I mean you could be an 8 million dollar countertop company and be the Largest countertop company in your region. Or you could be a 8 million dollar mechanical contractor and be a considered a small business. So it really depends on, on what your trade is, what your work is, what you're doing. The government defines it by trade and GC etc and they have, you know, average revenues for the last three years. And some of them are pretty big mechanical. 17 million for the last three years. I'm trying to think. GC I think is 33 million for the last three years. 

S

Speaker 2

08:55

And that's, you know, if it's under 33 million, you're defined as a small contractor. Well, a lot of $10 million contractors, a lot of $25 million contractors wouldn't think of themselves as small. Possibly. 

S

Speaker 1

09:08

Right. 

S

Speaker 2

09:09

Depending on the market they're in. So I mean small, you're struggling, you're growing. Well, I'm not going to say you're growing because I think everybody should be growing all the time. But you're small and you're struggling. You don't have a lot of resources. You know, you may be a mom and pop shop, you don't understand necessary, you may not have a lot of systems and processes in place, procedures in place, you may not have brought in the right softwares, etc to do job cost tracking, etc. 

S

Speaker 1

09:40

So one of the things that I think about when I think about defining a small business in the construction industry is that in fact, while I know the government has its definition, when I think about a small business, I simply think about operating in a resource constrained environment where it's not like being a part of, you know, Coca Cola or Toyota, where if, you know you can turn and throw massive amounts of resources at a thing and not break the bank. But, but where you're operating in a resource constrained environment where you're making decisions that on a daily basis either, you know, make or break the company financially. And, and you know, almost by definite, if I use that as a definition, I would say the vast majority of the construction industry falls into the small business category. 

S

Speaker 2

10:37

Yeah. Even when you're making $600 million a year, you still make decisions day by day, correct? 

S

Speaker 1

10:42

Yeah. Because, because at the end of the day, you know, the way that the construction industry is set up is so diffuse and it's so hyper localized and. Right. You know, based on, you know, exactly what's going on in a geography that the majority of the building industry is small businesses. So anyway, I'm hoping that the content that we talk about today isn't just relevant to that company that's 6 to 8 million, but that is relevant to that company that's 250, 500 million. You know, because ultimately operating in that kind of resource constrained environment, making decisions on a day to day basis that could make or break the business, I think that relates. So, but with any, I would. 

S

Speaker 2

11:26

Say, Chad, that the discussion should pertain to any business, regardless of size and revenue, that has a vision for the future and can take a look at where they are today and establish a baseline and then create a vision for the future and then back map down to put your roadmap together your strategic plan to get to reach your vision. 

S

Speaker 1

11:50

All right, so let's, let's start there. Let's. You know, one of the things that you and I have talked a good bit about is with a lot of the small businesses, we both talk to one of the things that they, you know, mention on a somewhat regular basis as kind of like a, you know, a gut response to, you know, their vision. They talk about doubling. 

S

Speaker 2

12:14

Yeah, doubling. I want to double my revenue next year. 

S

Speaker 1

12:17

Right. I want to double my revenue next year. I want to double my revenue over the next two years. Or what, or whatever that looks like. What do you say to folks who talk about doubling? 

S

Speaker 2

12:25

Well, I say, what do you think it takes to double your revenue? Is it just a matter of bidding more work and bringing more work in? What about, what about your team? I mean, you gotta look at your team. You gotta look at your staffing if you want to double your revenue. You know, doubling your revenue when you're $500,000 a year is not that hard. You know, you might be adding one person to give you that capacity, doubling your revenue. When you're $40 million a year, you might be adding 30 or 40 people to your team to do that. Now where do you get those people? That's the resource. People is our biggest resource. You know, our people are everything in terms of building your business and executing projects. So doubling. 

S

Speaker 2

13:09

Yeah, I mean, it's a nice thought, but you need to look at what's it going to take to double and what kind of team does it take? Because doubling your revenue if you don't execute is, is the way to the back to the basement. 

S

Speaker 1

13:26

So, so you got to be ready for growth, right? How do you know you're ready for growth? What, what are some of the things that you would be really, you know, confident about to determine you are ready for growth? 

S

Speaker 2

13:44

Well, I, I think you need to be attuned to the market. You need to know what the available work is in the coming year, the coming two years. You need to know what your back current backlog is and you need to know what your pipeline is for bringing resources in. How am I going to bring in the resources to get this done? Is it hiring people? Is it subcontracting? Is it breaking it out? 

S

Speaker 1

14:16

So, so let's pause there for a second and do a little bit of a deeper dive on that topic because I think that's the one that I hear the most from contractors considering growth is the chicken or the egg question, should we achieve growth and then hire to meet those needs or should we hire to be prepared for growth? 

S

Speaker 2

14:42

Well, I'm a big proponent of hiring to prepare for growth. And it can be done in a somewhat linked environment. It doesn't necessarily have to be one and then the other, it can be happening together. I mean you can be pursuing work and have a good handle on it and pursuing resources at the same time. I mean, realistically bringing on some, a new hire, if you can bring on somebody in a month, that would be really quick. You know, you're not going to be able to bring on people in a few days. And one of the keys to success in bringing on the right people is to get them engaged in the project from the start. 

S

Speaker 2

15:30

And too many people make the mistake of they hire after they get the job and that job starts moving very quickly in terms of contract submittals, scheduling, all those items are happening quickly and then you bring on the team to get it done and they're already six weeks behind and it's not, it's not a, it's not a good formula in my eyes. 

S

Speaker 1

15:54

No, I, I, so that's answer that's very similar to one that I give, which is don't take on work and then try to figure out how to get that work done. Especially when you're at that small business stage. When I, this one, I'll go with the government definition, a small business. Right. Like you're, you really are a, you know, extremely limited in your personnel capacity. That's a, it's a surefire way to make sure that, you know, either the next couple years of your life are living hell or you know, that, you know, because you keep up with the work, you know, to Keep up with the work or you fail to keep up with the work and it's even worse, right? So it's a lose. 

S

Speaker 1

16:38

But what would you say to the companies that, that say I can't afford to make the hire before I secure the work, I need the work to make the hire and that, you know, hence the chicken or the egg. What would you say to those companies? 

S

Speaker 2

16:53

Well, I mean, if you can't afford, maybe you haven't been investing in your company like you should because as you've been going along, you need to be, keep retaining your earnings. You need to be building your capital because cash is king. And you need to make sure that you have the resources to take your growth steps. And the resources usually are capital. You need to have that capital to invest back in your company and bringing on the right people, bringing on the right software, bringing on the right process, bringing on the tools, that's all investing in your company. You know, too many people make the mistake of they get some money in the bank, they did a couple jobs, they've been in business for three or four years and you know, I got a little break in the action. 

S

Speaker 2

17:37

So I'm gonna take this forty thousand dollar vacation for three weeks to Costa Rica or wherever. You know, I'm gonna charter fishing boats. I'm doing all this stuff because I got all this money in the bank. Well, that money in the bank should be company money and it should be looked at. You know, too many owners look at it as that's my money. Instead of thinking I need to keep investing in the company. 

S

Speaker 1

18:01

That's a fan. I mean, I love that point. And I found myself, I wish I could attribute this quote, honestly, I can't. But I've used it multiple times, you know, which is if your business isn't where you want it to be and your income is where you want it to be, you're, as an owner, you're out of balance, right? If you're paying yourself like you know, I'm where I want to be, but your business isn't where you see it going, you're ultimately not going to be able to get the business to where you see it going. So I think what you're saying is have the discipline to keep the money in the business, to reinvest in the business, which enables you to make those types of investments. 

S

Speaker 1

18:46

And if you're finding that you're not able to make those types of investments, the first place to look is probably, you know, what are you taking out of the business? 

S

Speaker 2

18:52

What are you taking out of the business? Yeah. And what are you doing with it? Are you taking money out of the business and putting it in a stock portfolio? 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 man. 

S

Speaker 1

19:17

That's a really good point. We all get, you know, so in our mind, like you got to be reinvested, you got to be investing for retirement. It's really good advice. But if you're in a business owner mode and you're prioritizing, putting money in your 401k and then, you know, 501 plans for your kids and all that type of stuff, while you don't reinvest in your business, you, I mean, that could be a miss. 

S

Speaker 2

19:38

Yes. A huge mess. 

S

Speaker 1

19:40

Interesting. Is there one thing that every small business owner, every small business should be doing if they haven't been doing it already? If you, when you really think about like the, if I could give one piece of advice to small business, what would it be? 

S

Speaker 2

20:02

I would, I would say have a vision for the future. Be a leader. Look, look beyond your, you look beyond your fence lines, you know, look beyond the pasture that you're feeding your cattle in right now. Try and look towards the future. And that's how you grow. That's how you plan, be in touch with your industry and always be in a learning mode. There's a lot to learn out there every day. I mean, I learned every day. I've been doing this forever, but every day I'm, you know, I'm engaged in research and looking at things and reading articles and finding out what's new in the industry. You got to be on top of it. Things are moving fast. You need to have a, you have your finger on the pulse of where markets are going. 

S

Speaker 2

20:51

You know, if you're in the high rise residential market, you know, is it getting saturated? What's the competition like? What's your margin like? You know, if you're doing health care, all those things, and diversify your portfolio, you know, there's a lot of different ways we can apply what we do in a lot of different markets that each are affected differently by the economy and the Ups and downs of the world. So, you know, diversify. It's great that you love doing restaurants, but, you know, if you were doing restaurants 20 months ago and that was your bread and butter and all you were doing, I'll bet you've had a rough 20 months, right? If you were just doing hospitality, if you were doing, you know, just look at things like the pandemic that hit and it's not the first time. 

S

Speaker 2

21:53

We had the residential boom in 2008 when that crashed, which didn't hit the commercial market till about 2010, 2011. But, you know, it really had an effect on the industry and having a diverse portfolio of work and being able to go to different markets makes a big difference. 

S

Speaker 1

22:17

So, so if I could kind of, I don't know, summarize what you just said to my ear, I'm hearing you say, step back, take the time to like, don't just let your business happen to you. Yes, but, but evaluate your environment, decide where you want to go and you know, set a course and be intentional and make sure that course includes good diversification. Make sure that course includes plugging into your community and right into the building industry community around you. Things along those lines. I think that guys, I think that's incredible advice. Who's watching it? That, that's spot on. 

S

Speaker 2

23:21

Good. Build relationships. 

S

Speaker 1

23:23

Build relationships. Yeah, no doubt. All right, we're at that sort of 10 minute remaining mark, and I want to open up the floor to the audience, make sure that we get an opportunity to hear some questions. I'm going to pop our good friend co Back up Cody. What do we have from the audience today? 

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Speaker 3

23:46

Yeah, we've got a few questions here. I'll start with the one that will build off the conversation that we just ended there with. But you know, when you talk about working in the business and on the business mark and you look towards the future, how far ahead should you be looking as far as a timeline specifically? And when you have things that come up unexpectedly like the pandemic, how are you able to quickly pivot and change as well? 

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Speaker 1

24:16

Well, so how far should you look ahead? Let's start with that. 

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Speaker 2

24:20

You know, I, I, I, I think five years is a good outside vision. I think looking at five years and then what you want to do is you want to back map that back to three and one. So, you know, if you look at five years, I want to be here in five years, then back map it to, you know, if I can get there in five years, at three, I should look like this. At one, I should look like this. Okay. And then you got to go back and you got to do your market research to see where the markets are and what the prognosticators are saying, what the economists are saying, where things are going. You got to look at your relationships, you got to talk to your, your contacts in the industry about what they're looking at. 

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Speaker 2

25:06

One thing I did is I established some relationships with some of the utility folks early on. Engineers at Washington Gas, at Pepco, etc, because I had a mentor that told me that those are the folks that developers go to first. When people have an idea and there's a cocktail napkin discussion about a development, they need to go and see if the infrastructure is there. So they contact the big utilities to see if the infrastructure is available for the dream that they have. And that's when it becomes a lead and then you start tracking it. So, you know, looking further out, that's how you look further out is look for stuff that's way down the pipeline. Yes. 

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Speaker 1

25:55

What I'm, what I'm hearing there is long range vision and then mid and short term milestones. 

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Speaker 2

26:04

Yeah, I mean you gotta have a long term vision and then you have to map it, you have to back map it and you have to set up the milestones and then you have to fill in with all the tasks. It's like doing a CPM schedule, you know you're going to start the job and you got to finish it and you know, each of the stages that you got to get through. You know, you got top out the building, you got a bam, bam, rough in the mechanical, all those things. 

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Speaker 1

26:27

This is such a funny, I mean like how many times have you and I said that, you know, it's like you would never start a construction project without a plan, you know, to know exactly how long, when, by when everything's got to happen. Why are you running your business that way? Right. It's crazy. Wonderful. All right, Cody, what else we got? 

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Speaker 3

26:49

And I've got another question here. I'm sorry I'm unable to see the name, but it says, Mark, Statistics show that over 40% of all businesses in the construction industry fail annually. What do you consider to be the top three reasons for these failures? 

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Speaker 2

27:04

Wow. The top three. The number one reason for failing in small businesses is billing. They fail to bill small businesses startups. Your Your wonderful craftsman that decides they want to be their own business person. They fail to build, they fail to invoice for their work. I can't tell you how many times I got called by a subcontractor saying, why haven't you paid me? I said, did you send me an invoice? I said, why would I send you an invoice? You gave me a contract. I said, did you read your contract? No. I said, your contract says how you bill me. You have to bill me. You have to give me an invoice so I can pay you. Well, that seems like extra work, you know, why do I got to do that? You gave me a contract. Just pay me. 

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Speaker 2

27:45

Well, that happens to a lot of people. They don't, they don't build. The other thing is not knowing, not knowing where your costs are. You have to know what stuff costs in order to put together an estimate. You can't, you can't just throw numbers at things. You have to have some realistic view of what it's going to take to get the job done and what's going to cost to get the job done and understand where you need to be in terms of covering your overhead. You got insurance, you got all these other things you got to cover and you know what your profit margin should be. So not knowing your cost is another big failure. What I say, billing cost. The other thing is overextending yourself, taking on projects you don't have the resources to handle. 

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Speaker 2

28:36

You know that's a quick road to failure. You know the number one business startup failures is restaurants. They have the highest failure rate. Contractors is number two, and number three is accounting firms that handle contractors and restaurants. 

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Speaker 1

29:00

That's great. So real quick on this point, this is one, I think those are three really fantastic answers. And I think the only concern that I have is that sometimes when you think about particularly that third point, overextending oneself, that it might create, as valid as it is, it might create some fear of growth. And I don't know about you, Mark, but I see a lot contractors that are afraid of growth that they almost, you know, internally they say a lot of things like, you know, we're right where we want to be, we just want to stay right here. And you know, those different types of things. And I think that while we certainly read about and hear about the companies that overextended themselves and had a big explosion, right. 

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Speaker 1

29:53

And that's how they went out of business, what I don't think we hear about are the multitude of contractors that spend decades providing meh jobs to people and profit for an owner at the end of a 30 year run, they look at and they're like, man, I should have worked at a grocery store, you know, and not to knock the grocery industry, but you know what I'm saying, It's just a, it's, you know, where these. So I think there's a, there's another risk that is extremely important to note that is actually not going out of business, but sucking over the long haul. 

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Speaker 2

30:41

Yes, yes. And not having, not having a continual improvement mindset, not having a always moving forward mindset. You know, I like to say once you stop growing, you start going backwards. You know, in Montgomery county, we had the county council and everybody going for zero growth. In Montgomery county, there was a whole bunch of no growth people that were looking for zero growth in the county. And then the recession hit in 2008 and I said to the county council, I said, how's this zero growth thing working for you? Pretty good, huh? I call it recession. 

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Speaker 1

31:20

Spot on. And so how would you respond to this thought that companies should shift their focus perhaps from focusing on revenue growth to just focusing on becoming a better company every day and allowing the revenue growth to kind of follow that? What would you think of that? 

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Speaker 2

31:42

Well, I, you know, I've been in the business development side of the business for a long time and people always said, well, you're a sales guy. Said, no, I'm not a sales guy. I'm working on developing the business. And that's what you really need to do, is you need to make your business the best it can be and the sales take care of themselves. You know, if you're, if your folks perform and execute, if your team is professional, if you're always moving forward and taking on challenges, if you're on the front edge of, of technology and you're adopting things and you're always aggressive and moving forward, people see that, people realize that and the opportunities come your way and that's business development. Build your business, Build your business first. 

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Speaker 1

32:29

I think that's such a different way of thinking about business development compared to the norm. I find it to be a much more rewarding look at that term. So thank you for sharing that. I think we have time for one more question, Cody, can we fit that in? 

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Speaker 3

32:47

Yeah, of course. So you talk about growth, Mark. And I want to know, based on the question that we have here, is when you're hiring for growth for your small business. What sort of characteristics should you seek in search when hiring? Because you also mentioned, you know, your people are your resources and they mean a lot. 

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Speaker 2

33:08

I mean, for me, that's easy because I, I, I have my rule of hiring. You know, first you go with the three A's. You want the right attitude, you want ambition and you want aptitude. I can train the rest. You know, if you come to the table with those three things, that's great. A passion for the industry. That's another thing. I mean, a lot of people miss out on young people that are trying to get into this business that went through two or three years of high school training in H vac, carpentry, masonry, whatever, and they get out and they want to go to work. And the contractor says, well, I need somebody with five years experience. 

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Speaker 2

33:56

Well, if you need somebody who's with five years of experience, you should have started five years ago with a high school kid, right, that came out of a masonry program or came out of an electrical program and then you would have that five year experience person. 

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Speaker 1

34:08

Oh, man, Mark, I can feel another episode or six coming out of that. 

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Speaker 2

34:13

Work the pipeline. Work the pipeline and look for the three A's Attitude, ambition and aptitude. 

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Speaker 1

34:19

That's, that's awesome. That's awesome. Hey, here at the morning huddle, we try to finish on time just like any good contractor, right? So, so I'm gonna bring our conversation to a close. As much as I would really like to just continue chatting with you. Mark, thank you so much for joining. 

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Speaker 3

34:39

Thank you. 

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Speaker 2

34:39

Thank you, Chad, for having me. Appreciate it. 

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Speaker 1

34:41

Yeah, it was awesome. So real quick, next week we have Justin Panzer coming to talk about technology in the field. Come in and check that one out. It's going to be in particular focused on risk mitigation, cost savings, and just kind of the simple stuff that organizations should be thinking about when it comes to putting the right tools in the hands, the right technology in the hands of their folks in the field. And what else? That's every Tuesday, 8am Be here. We don't have a recurring invite, so I'll say the same thing that I said last week, which is if this is something that you want to make a part of your weekly routine, shoot us an email or I'm sorry, shoot us a private message. 

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Speaker 1

35:34

Shoot me a private message with your email address and I will add you to a mailing list so that you get a weekly, you know, email reminder to join. You'll also get a. A link to the recording of that week's session or, I'm sorry, show so that you can, you know, refer back to it if you missed anything or what have you. So, mark, any final words for our audience before we sign off today? 

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Speaker 2

36:02

Well, I would say continual improvement always look to grow. Don't be afraid of trying something new. Change is painful, but it's very rewarding. 

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Speaker 1

36:13

Thank you, Mark. That's awesome. Cody, thanks so much for stepping in for Stacy this week. You did an awesome job, and we look forward to seeing everyone next week. 

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Speaker 2

36:21

All right, thank you. 

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Speaker 1

36:22

See you guys. 

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Speaker 2

36:23

Bye.