Ep. 79 - Overbilling is Survival: Managing Construction Cashflow With Ben Justesen

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Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue-collar business.
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I'm your host, Cy Kirby, and I want to help you what it took me, trial and error, and a whole lot of money to learn.
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The information that no one in this industry is willing to share.
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Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox.
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Guys, welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast, brought to you and sponsored by our brand new presenting sponsor, a product that I have used mainly for the excavation space and the civil construction space, but Pay Dirt support.
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They're your partner in being precise for excavation and earthwork projects, from accurate quantity takeoffs, estimating, and even all the way to 3D GPS modeling.
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If you guys are at that level, PayDirt will give you guys as excavation contractors the data that you need to plan smarter entering into that project.
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Um, you've got to know your costs.
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That's the biggest part of it.
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And knowing your quantities is exactly what you need to put your cost to.
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And so hit up paydirt support.com, tell Ben and the team that I sent you guys over there from the Blue Collar Business Podcast.
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And uh I have personally used his takeoff software at SciCon.
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So I need you guys to understand that it is not some product I am just pushing.
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It is something I'm very passionate about.
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And uh they will help you out in the estimating world.
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Um, today, guys, we're actually kind of staying along that lane.
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A gentleman that hard-nosed an industry that we haven't brought up on the show yet.
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Um I'm actually kind of intrigued about it because I see them all the time, and it's restoration companies, uh, fire damage, uh, water damage, mold restoration.
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And honestly, I know not the first thing about it.
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I know Mount Mold's bad in a building, and I know a fire's bad and and floods are bad.
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We all know this, right?
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But the gentleman I have today is um a veteran in this world.
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20 plus years he served in this trade.
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And not only that, he's done like myself, or I guess I have done like him, and not just figured out the business for himself.
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He's gone on to figure out okay, if I have this knowledge, why doesn't everybody else have this knowledge?
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And um he also sits on a chair of the RIA, which is the independent pricing task force, fighting for fair contractor rates.
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Uh, the gentleman also has estimation experience, is where I was going with that.
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Is we he didn't just sit in the trade.
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He he elevated himself and figured out, okay, pricing is everything, sales is everything.
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How do I build a software or how do I build a system that I can also share with other competitors or other guys that are getting into this industry so they can see success with as well?
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And I promise you, sir, folks like yourself are exactly prime candidates for this show because that's what I'm trying to do.
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But furthermore, welcome to the show, our friend Ben Justiceon.
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Thank you so much.
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I really appreciate that introduction, Cy.
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So I uh I was just thinking about you know your your sponsor and what you were saying there.
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And uh the interesting is thing is in our industry for the restoration industry, we've become very reliant on uh a couple of software for doing our estimates.
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And so much so that we don't necessarily know what's in the line items, but we sure complain about the price.
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And the insurance companies, they try and make us stick with that price, right?
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And so when you're talking about utilizing, you know, this service and you're talking about takeoffs, I'm like our industry.
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So that's you know, I look at the construction background, all other uh construction backgrounds, what it doesn't matter if it's plumbing, it you know, framing, uh whatever it is.
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Doing a takeoff to figure out your costs, if you know every stick, every every uh light of pipe, every nail, how many hours that you attribute to each task that you got, you're gonna you're not gonna lose.
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You should make money.
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But so many people are like, uh there we go.
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That's that's the number, or they rely on a software not knowing what's in it.
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And this isn't just my industry, I know that.
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Because I I see people using, doesn't matter if it's pro build or whatever it is, it's like, do they really know what that consists of?
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And so, yeah, I love talking about that stuff.
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I got, and look, the reason I got into it when I grew up doing this business, my dad started a carpet cleaning company, it transformed into this uh cleaning and construction business.
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We got into the insurance, it was uh really lucrative, especially back then.
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Um, things have got so much tighter uh as far as margins.
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In fact, the last couple of years have been extremely difficult in this industry.
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Um but when I bought the company from my dad, it was only a million-dollar company, and I'm in a very rural area, right?
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Uh, Moses Lake, if anybody's ever heard of that, probably not.
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Moses Lake, Washington.
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And at the time it was like 15,000 people inside city limits, and to get to you know, maybe 70,000, 80,000 people, like you had to drive an hour and a half every direction to see that kind of population.
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And so my dad was like, we'll never get past a million.
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And uh I was I was very prideful, I've been too prideful throughout my life, but I got some humble pie because the year after I I bought the business from my dad, I was 30 years old.
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And I got sued by this company out of California, had nothing to do with restoration, wasn't a customer.
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It was a patent.
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They had a patent saying if you use heat in buildings, then you're infringing on our patent.
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And they had a patent to kill bed bugs and mold and whatever else, and I'm like, I don't, I don't do that.
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Like, I use heat to dry a building out because that's what you do to dry out buildings.
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But anyways, uh went through that lawsuit for five years and it cost me$400,000.
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And you know, when you're a company that size, I'm like, every every penny was gone towards that.
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Now, during that time, we grew three million dollars, and I still had no money because to get to three million dollars in revenue or three million more in revenue, that takes a ton of capital.
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And I was, you know, for trucks, I'm I'm going to U-Haul buying their used stuff that's you know, 100, 200,000 miles on it already, buying it for like 9,000 bucks.
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Now, this is this is 15 years ago, right?
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When 9,000 could buy you a uh a box truck, but these were like the worst trucks, but they were better than my trucks that were already broken down, so I just did what it took.
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But the things that I learned, I was in survival mode for five years, and the toll that it took on us and our family was tremendous.
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And you know, there's just there's just some things I can't redo, I can just learn from.
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That doesn't work.
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That stagnancy, that's not me creating that price, that's somebody else, and they're not listening.
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Uh and then the processes, like we were I was just winging it.
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I was from the hip all the time.
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I wasn't budgeting like I should be, I wasn't doing any of that stuff, and probably most importantly, I didn't have a good culture.
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I thought I did.
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You know, it was all lip service though, and so because of all that, there was a lot of lessons, and so because we implemented a lot of those things and we continued to learn, I I became one of the best in the estimating software in our industry.
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I learned how to create my own pricing within it and give feedback to the software, and so now my area, Wenatchee, Moses Lake, that area, and then later on I I opened up an office in Yakima.
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All all towns you probably have never heard of.
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Um if you look at that compared to most of the country, even now, it is some of the highest pricing in that software.
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Because I I did the feedback, I did the work, I made sure that they got the information from me on a consistent basis.
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But whether they used it or not, I created my own pricing.
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And you want to talk about you know, rocking the boat with the insurance companies?
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If you've ever gone to the doctor or the dentist or the whoever, they they pay a certain amount and they don't want to pay more.
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And so I I was that out-of-network provider, and I knew that I couldn't do it for what the insurance said.
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So I was like, well, either you guys gotta pay or the customers gotta pay.
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I I cannot sacrifice what we need.
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And ultimately it came down to what do my people need?
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What am I gonna pay them?
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So I tried to figure out how much do I need to pay my people, what kind of benefits are we looking at to give them the quality of life they want, and uh you know what what we need to survive and do well ourselves.
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And so when I had that train of thought, we created uh labor rates, and it got to the point where I had uh all the all the benefits that you would have at a large corporation.
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So it was very successful.
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We were paying in in some cases, we were paying like ten to fifteen dollars more an hour compared to the competition.
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They had to up their game, right?
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And I wanted my competition to know I wasn't sharing any pricing with them, I just wanted them to know how to make their own pricing based on their financials.
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And so I created a labor rate calculator, and at first I was just charging like a yearly price for it, and I just had the desire to make sure that people had access to it.
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So now I gave it to the RAA, the Restoration Industry Association.
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So you do have to have a membership to use it, but the calculator's free.
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And you can figure out what your rate should be.
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And this is it doesn't matter your industry.
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It takes what is what's the top of your pay scale, what's your uh labor burden, figures out what your overhead and your profit are as percentages, and then it determines on every trade there's a percentage that is labor, and there's a percentage that is material.
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So material, you're only getting a very small margin on, right?
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So if you're charging like a 20% markup, you're really only getting a 16.67 margin.
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And so if you're only getting that, but you need you know 35, 40, 45 percent.
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And so we're very overhead heavy in our industry compared to other uh building construction industries.
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So we've got to have usually around at least 40 margin to make it.
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So if I'm only getting 16.67 on the material side, well, then I better be, you know, if it's 50-50, 50% of that trade is material and 50% is labor.
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Then the other side of that, I better be at 66.67% on the labor side.
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Now that's 50-50, and that's easy enough to figure out.
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When it comes to weighted averages, I couldn't do it in my head, and that's why I created the calculator.
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But it takes all the different variables and then it figures out what your labor rate should be based on your financial.
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So I could never share my prices with another competitor, or we would never have the same exact price because there's like six, seven variables in that calculator, and that's like the lottery for us to be the same price.
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The like the crowning jewel of this being successful, I became a trainer of the software, a certified trainer, and people started really coming to my classes, so it was a nice little side hustle for me.
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But I helped a lot of people.
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Finally, I got one of my competitors, I got most of my competitors to go, but there was like this one guy, he was just a holdout, right?
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I'm like, you gotta come.
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He finally sent a guy, and anyways, it wasn't just teaching him the pricing, it was just other things within the software, and and then just how to run the business a little bit.
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Well, they made those changes.
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The next year at a conference I was speaking at, he came up to me afterwards and he says, Ben, I just want you to know this last year after sending somebody to your class and making some changes in our business, that was our most profitable year we ever had.
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And I was so excited for him because you know, it's it's an abundance mindset.
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I had my best year, and he had his best year, right?
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Like if you have the that fear mindset or scarcity mindset, then how did both of us succeed?
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Right.
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So, anyways, the the point of all that is not to be afraid of your competition.
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It's also determine your own rates, don't depend on a software, right?
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Figure it out for yourself.
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Make sure you're doing the takeoff, right?
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Because that takeoff, that is your budget.
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You should know exactly what it's going to cost you.
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Labor is very difficult to figure out, and this and softwares can help you with that, but that's where you start looking at your historical data, figure out your production rate.
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And you can start looking at your own data.
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Geez, all these big companies, that's exactly what they're doing, is they're storing all this data of how long it's taking them to do each size job.
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And it's easy to determine that production rate at this point.
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And so you could do an estimate in no time if you know your production rate.
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And it doesn't matter what software you use.
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I like using, you know, a certain software because it spits out a components list for me, and I can check that against my takeoffs.
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And that's what I like about uh at least one of the software in my industry is it's got a very detailed components list.
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Uh so, anyways, but that helped me be really successful, but the the culture was even bigger.
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That helped me understand my people.
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Man, you just uh you just laid it on us now.
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You did, man.
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That was I that was epic.
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And a couple of key points I want to drive home here.
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Um, you know, you ate some humble pie through that lawsuit and figured out that, oh, it's not just rainbows and unicorns.
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That was one of the things, and there's so many things that hit us that we had no idea as business owners, like zero clue that this was gonna happen.
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That some dude out of California was just gonna show up, serve, boom, here you go.
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Now you got this giant problem on your hands.
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But that's what happens so many times in businesses, and it clouds us up and puts us in the forest.
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You can't see no light at the end of the tunnel.
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I've been in that survival mode, man.
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Um, last two years have been rough for us trying to get through the tighter margins, not just in your industry, in every industry.
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We're very capital.
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You know, I'm I'm hearing a lot of similarities, is where I was trying to go with this is that um, you know, our industry, there's a ton of saturation.
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Everybody's pulling a skid steer behind their truck, and and none of them know exactly what you're talking about or paid the ignorance tax and that experience tax of going through it and figuring out, man, I thought we were gonna make a killing on this job.
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What do you mean it cost me 20K to finish it?
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Or, hey, man, are they still not done over there?
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We had 600 man hours in this thing.
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Why are we sitting at 900 right now and we're not even 70% done?
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And all those things can't even, those indicators, as I call them, those red flags.
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You know, a lot of these guys that are listening today, a lot of them come from the excavation space, but I know we're uh at this point in the audience is pretty eclectic.
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We got concrete guys, we got we got sparkies, we got plumbers, we got red iron guys.
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So they they they're definitely hearing what you're stepping in.
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It's so cool, Ben.
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Thank you so much for taking that next step and building a software for these guys to understand their own labor rate because you hit another major point home that I I literally have learned very hard the hard way in the last two years is those production rates.
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You're like, well, how do I bid this job?
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Well, this is normally what I've always bid it at.
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Why is it changing?
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Why are we not landing?
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Or why are they saying I'm too high?
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Well, when when it should be going the other way, like the market should be going up.
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Like, what's going on?
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Well, does that pipe cost the same?
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Does that piece of gravel cost the same?
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You know, and and and just like your component list, they have, I could only imagine what goes into uh a putting a building back together and the amount of materials and and takeoff when it goes into that.
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But the the the one thing you hit home where a lot of these guys don't understand that they already have the data to start getting them towards these steps.
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Like labor burden, that is a huge thing that you hit on.
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And a lot of these guys don't even know what labor burden is.
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Hell, I didn't until three years ago because I was that guy.
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And I think it's so cool that you were to come on here just like myself, very open, very vulnerable, and going, hey, look, I screwed this up for a lot of years, didn't know what I was doing.
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And then somebody came in my office one day.
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Well, where's your labor burden on your estimate sheet?
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I'm like, what's that?
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Oh, well, that's how you're supposed to pay for FICA and payroll taxes and Medicare and all this other crap that the business has to pay out every month.
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And so that was a little snippet on labor burden, but truly knowing your cost is everything.
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Sales is everything, but knowing your cost after that, to be able to watch the job, track the job, job cost the job, know where you're at in the job, to understand if you really are profitable.
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Hey, what is your overhead number?
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And there's no way that me and a company right next to me, side by side, same equipment, same people, they're set up differently.
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They're ran differently, they're they run on different operations, and so they carry different overhead numbers.
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And your overhead changes with your revenue guys.
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And that's where I see this.
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Oh, you got to know your overhead.
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Well, I need you to understand that your overhead changes as your revenue changes.
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And it, anyways, that's those are all super great points for any industry across the board.
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Like you have to know these things, and you're like, well, Sai, how do you how do you freaking know this?
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Well, I go look back at the okay, I'm bidding a 500-foot waterline job, or I'm bidding uh a restaurant that, you know, imploded, whatever the case may be.
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Have I done this before?
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Yeah, I did.
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All right, let's go look at this job.
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How did how did we estimate?
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Oh, look at that.
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We're missing that right off the bat.
00:22:31.949 --> 00:22:34.349
Oh man, how did this job come in at?
00:22:34.429 --> 00:22:35.869
Where's the where's the man hours?
00:22:35.949 --> 00:22:36.829
Your labor report?
00:22:36.990 --> 00:22:41.149
You're telling me we bid 800 and we had 1700 man hours in this.
00:22:41.230 --> 00:22:48.990
You think we missed a bid, or maybe there was a change order that we didn't get sold, or something through the actual operation and production side of it.
00:22:49.069 --> 00:23:08.589
But as you can tell, I'm very passionate about said subject right there because I've literally been Learning and living it over the last couple of years and going and starting to feel the key go in the lock and go, Oh, he can tell if he's on the project and he knows how much gravel is in that project.
00:23:08.669 --> 00:23:12.750
And he's two weeks in and he's calling me going, Hey, something's wrong with this bid, man.
00:23:12.990 --> 00:23:17.949
We got two 2k tons in this thing, and I'm at 2800 and I'm 600 foot down the road.
00:23:18.029 --> 00:23:19.389
Like something don't make sense.
00:23:19.549 --> 00:23:29.149
And we know in the job, right then, where we can do something about it to maximize profitability or even become profitable within that project.
00:23:29.470 --> 00:23:42.669
So I just wanted to hit those points home because you're uh, you know, when you get past that decade mark, all of this, you have to know this, or you don't go past that from what I've seen and and from the people I have talked to.
00:23:42.909 --> 00:23:52.269
But to get to this point, it is literally just selling and business and and and you're thinking things are going great and you have this best year, and you're like, man, where's all this money at?
00:23:52.429 --> 00:23:55.389
And you and you lost your buck because you weren't watching your costs.
00:23:55.470 --> 00:24:03.549
You didn't know that this extra crew was hurting, you didn't know this component list on that job was going to be that expensive because we didn't do a proper takeoff.
00:24:03.709 --> 00:24:10.029
And so estimation, production, and accounting are the three legs and wheels.
00:24:10.109 --> 00:24:22.509
And if you don't have those three legs and wheels talking every single week on a living document, which we I call a whip report within our world, sorry, Ben, to just go off on this, but no, you're super points.
00:24:22.589 --> 00:24:27.949
You were you were driving home, and uh I just wanted to kind of explain a little bit further.
00:24:28.029 --> 00:24:32.750
Hopefully, we didn't lose anybody and going, Oh, I don't know what labor burden is, I don't know what production rates are.
00:24:32.829 --> 00:24:33.309
Yes, you are.
00:24:33.389 --> 00:24:34.509
We've been talking about it.
00:24:34.669 --> 00:24:36.189
Don't overthink it.
00:24:36.429 --> 00:24:39.709
Hell, chat GPT can help you get pretty dang close.
00:24:39.949 --> 00:24:43.629
So there's tools, I know it's probably not the best tool.
00:24:44.029 --> 00:24:46.750
There's so many things I can dive deeper into.
00:24:46.909 --> 00:24:48.509
Like you you just mentioned whip.
00:24:48.750 --> 00:25:00.909
That that could be a whole hour, especially with uh the trades, if you don't if you don't have your over-under billing figured out and and what that means.
00:25:00.990 --> 00:25:05.230
And and a lot of companies that are like under a million dollars don't necessarily worry.
00:25:05.470 --> 00:25:08.109
And I'll give you an example.
00:25:08.349 --> 00:25:12.669
Uh my dad, man, he ran a great business.
00:25:12.829 --> 00:25:17.629
Uh, one of the things he wasn't doing though is looking at that whip or the over-under billing.
00:25:17.709 --> 00:25:25.309
And I just remember um one week we just he looked at his availables, what was in the bank.
00:25:25.549 --> 00:25:30.909
And one week he'd be like, all right, we got however many thousands of dollars in the bank.
00:25:31.149 --> 00:25:34.429
Uh, I can go buy this and we're good.
00:25:34.669 --> 00:25:40.909
And then in two weeks, he'd look again, or he'd go to our bookkeeper and hey, where are we at?
00:25:40.990 --> 00:25:44.269
And it was like way lower.
00:25:44.349 --> 00:25:46.109
And it's like, what the heck?
00:25:46.269 --> 00:25:49.949
And I at first I thought, man, we have a terrible bookkeeper.
00:25:50.109 --> 00:25:52.269
Like, she doesn't know what she's doing.
00:25:52.750 --> 00:25:56.990
But what it was is we were robbing Peter to pay Paul, right?
00:25:57.149 --> 00:26:01.309
Like costs were going out, but we weren't accounting for that in the bank account.
00:26:01.389 --> 00:26:11.949
It was all on the income statement, and so yeah, you you you got to change your game with a trades industry because you're putting out thousands of dollars at a time.
00:26:12.109 --> 00:26:15.389
It's not like jobs done, you get paid that day.
00:26:15.629 --> 00:26:17.309
That doesn't happen for us.
00:26:17.470 --> 00:26:19.309
Like, if that happened, that's a cash cow.
00:26:19.470 --> 00:26:19.949
Good luck.
00:26:20.029 --> 00:26:21.069
That's amazing.
00:26:21.389 --> 00:26:23.230
But that's not how it happens for us.
00:26:23.389 --> 00:26:27.789
So, what you want to do is stay uh overbuilt.
00:26:27.949 --> 00:26:31.470
And what that means is you get paid before you do.
00:26:32.109 --> 00:26:42.909
And as soon as you reach the mark of you're at a net zero, you get the next payment, and you have it in your expectations with your customer.
00:26:43.149 --> 00:26:47.309
And and I would always uh we would always tell them something visual.
00:26:47.629 --> 00:26:52.829
We do not tell them once we hit this dollar amount, we're going to charge you.
00:26:53.069 --> 00:27:05.549
So, with our work, because a lot of it's like remodel, we would say, all right, we did the demolition, we did the insulation, we put up the drywall, now we're at paint, right?
00:27:05.709 --> 00:27:13.629
So before we put on you know one layer of paint or primer, that's the next progress payment.
00:27:14.029 --> 00:27:19.230
And because that's visual, the customer is on board with it.
00:27:19.549 --> 00:27:19.869
Okay.
00:27:20.589 --> 00:27:33.709
So, anyways, uh that's where uh a lot of companies fail, is they they don't know when or they they get nervous to have that conversation.
00:27:34.109 --> 00:27:40.189
Uh I was just talking to a company, they called me up because they saw me on a podcast or a video.
00:27:40.589 --> 00:27:44.189
And so they I don't know how they got my number, but they called me.
00:27:44.269 --> 00:27:51.230
And so we had a little video chat, and they were there two partners, they're just starting up a business.
00:27:51.389 --> 00:27:56.189
And the one guy, he's super hungry and you know, seems like he'd be good at sales.
00:27:56.349 --> 00:28:10.269
The other guy, very uh lot of empathy, feels like he doesn't want to cheat out any customers, and he just is really having a tough time charging them when you know maybe they don't get the job.
00:28:10.509 --> 00:28:25.309
And I said, and and we just kind of work through some things, and I and we went into some personality profile stuff because the culture and and understanding a person is so critical to business, right?
00:28:25.470 --> 00:28:28.269
If you want to sell, then you gotta understand people.
00:28:29.069 --> 00:28:42.349
So uh I just and look, I'm still learning, like I'm going through stuff right now that I have to understand more about the other person, right?
00:28:42.429 --> 00:28:46.829
And it it could be even deep, like our own marriages.
00:28:47.069 --> 00:28:49.709
Like, what do we need to do to understand?
00:28:50.109 --> 00:28:59.309
And so I just told them, look, you you can do this, but you have to preface it, you have to set out the expectations.
00:28:59.549 --> 00:29:01.389
Don't let it be a surprise.
00:29:01.629 --> 00:29:05.549
You could talk about it probably two to three times before you even arrive on site.
00:29:05.709 --> 00:29:11.949
So when they first call in, talk to them about hey, this is this is the process.
00:29:12.189 --> 00:29:18.750
Because in my business, they're usually panic because they have some kind of water damage or something going on in their house.
00:29:19.309 --> 00:29:24.269
You know, you call them again right before you leave, and you kind of give the process again.
00:29:24.429 --> 00:29:28.429
Then you get there, and we had an expectation sheet.
00:29:28.750 --> 00:29:33.069
We basically summarized the process for the customer.
00:29:33.309 --> 00:29:34.589
It wasn't a contract.
00:29:34.829 --> 00:29:39.069
The contract was separate, but we said, hey, we have to have the contract sign.
00:29:39.230 --> 00:29:43.470
We already talked about having, and he was having trouble just getting a contract signed.
00:29:43.549 --> 00:29:48.429
I'm like, then talk about it twice, and then once you get there, talk about it again.
00:29:48.589 --> 00:29:50.990
That you have to have that before you start.
00:29:51.230 --> 00:29:57.629
And most people want to start right then and there because they got three inches of water in their basement or you know, whatever it may be.
00:29:58.269 --> 00:30:08.509
So it's not a hard sell, but they're worried about who the insurance wants to do the work because you know, insurance is paying the bill.
00:30:08.909 --> 00:30:18.109
So, but just having that conversation, helping them understand all right, now that we're gonna start work, we can't start unless you sign that.
00:30:18.189 --> 00:30:20.189
But here's all the expectations.
00:30:21.069 --> 00:30:25.470
You know exactly what to expect from us, and you know what we expect from you.
00:30:26.109 --> 00:30:28.189
This is when you will pay.
00:30:28.589 --> 00:30:28.990
Right.
00:30:29.149 --> 00:30:33.949
And then you talk about we're gonna get you an estimate so you know exactly what it is you're gonna pay.
00:30:34.109 --> 00:30:42.189
If there's any change orders, if there's any supplements to the insurance, everybody will know what those are before we do it.
00:30:42.349 --> 00:30:44.589
There will be no surprises, right?
00:30:44.669 --> 00:30:48.189
And that's another thing that contractors have a hard time with.
00:30:48.509 --> 00:30:57.629
Um, so once you have these expectations set, then it's an easy conversation later because you already had the discussion.
00:30:57.789 --> 00:31:00.109
You don't pop it up in the moment.
00:31:00.269 --> 00:31:02.349
That's the worst time, right?
00:31:02.990 --> 00:31:08.109
Again, all of these things are things that we should learn in our own personal relationships.
00:31:08.349 --> 00:31:15.549
But um, so the whip surprises, yeah, that that should get eliminated because you're always overbuilt.
00:31:15.789 --> 00:31:23.230
Don't you're not the bank, don't be underbuilt, don't be doing work when you're owed money.
00:31:23.470 --> 00:31:27.629
So you've got to set the expectations from the very beginning before you start.
00:31:27.789 --> 00:31:32.669
And if there's red flags, don't chase revenue to go after profit.
00:31:33.869 --> 00:31:40.990
Right now, as far as you know, how you price things, let's go back to that a little bit.
00:31:41.149 --> 00:31:51.869
So, yeah, I'm on the I'm on this committee and we're giving feedback to the software, to the insurance companies.
00:31:52.269 --> 00:31:55.230
We're trying to make our voice heard within an industry.
00:31:55.389 --> 00:32:11.549
So if you're not involved in whatever association you're a part of, whether it be legislation, code stuff that you don't like in your area, permit fees, uh, it get together with your association and start talking about it.
00:32:11.789 --> 00:32:14.750
So I was also part of the home builders association.
00:32:14.990 --> 00:32:16.750
That was a big issue in that, too.
00:32:16.909 --> 00:32:20.429
Permits and inspections, like and how long it was taking.
00:32:20.669 --> 00:32:25.549
And so we're like, hey, if you don't improve your service, why would we pay more for a permit?
00:32:26.029 --> 00:32:37.389
You know, and so we testified in front of the uh the county commissioners, and you know, we had a big battle over it, but they were gonna try and up everything by like 30%.
00:32:37.789 --> 00:32:40.269
And anyways, it ended up only being like 5%.
00:32:41.789 --> 00:32:44.109
So yeah, it was crazy.
00:32:44.429 --> 00:32:45.629
That is crazy.
00:32:45.949 --> 00:32:53.230
You hit something I'm also super passionate about, had no idea what an overbilling or underbilling was.
00:32:53.389 --> 00:33:00.829
And when the people that did know showed up, looked at me and like, you're telling me you're underbilled on every single job, like every single one of them.
00:33:00.909 --> 00:33:03.629
And I'm like, what does that mean?
00:33:03.869 --> 00:33:07.709
Maybe uh I really don't even know what the hell you're talking about.
00:33:07.949 --> 00:33:10.669
So, but you're exactly right.
00:33:10.829 --> 00:33:24.349
If another thing is, guys, if you guys, and obviously, Ben, you're in a little bit different world than most of us are in because you deal with insurance companies for revenue more than you know, maybe private or public, wherever the funding's coming from.
00:33:24.589 --> 00:33:35.069
But staying overbilled is everything and working off of their money rather than your money that you normally don't have because you're trying to freaking pump everything into a business to grow it, right?
00:33:35.230 --> 00:33:41.549
And so staying out in front of overbillings and having a way to be able to present that.
00:33:41.709 --> 00:33:43.629
So, okay, let me use an example.
00:33:43.869 --> 00:33:47.949
Hey, starting this job, got a contract, my billings on the 20th.
00:33:48.029 --> 00:33:51.389
Am I gonna be mobilized by the 30th of this month?
00:33:51.629 --> 00:33:53.709
Okay, well, I'm gonna go ahead and send a bill.
00:33:53.949 --> 00:33:54.750
Side, what?
00:33:54.829 --> 00:33:55.869
You're not even on the site.
00:33:55.949 --> 00:33:56.829
You're exactly right.
00:33:56.909 --> 00:33:57.389
I'm not.
00:33:57.549 --> 00:34:14.670
I haven't showed up with the sill fence, the the felt that goes under the construction entrance, the plastic, this, that, that, all the costs that already are impacting the business before I get to the job side and even start or pay a man to do anything, we're taking costs on.
00:34:14.909 --> 00:34:18.030
So don't do that at all regards.
00:34:18.190 --> 00:34:31.710
I'm gonna shoot that mobilization out, probably hit a 5% here, a 5% here to ensure that my costs are covered for labor, my costs are covered for any material, uh, silt fence, uh, erosion control methods.
00:34:31.789 --> 00:34:34.190
It's usually the first on our particular jobs.
00:34:34.349 --> 00:34:36.110
Go ahead and try and get some of that.
00:34:36.269 --> 00:34:39.389
Hey, the worst they're gonna say is nah, you're crazy.
00:34:39.789 --> 00:34:48.670
Okay, so you're telling me I haven't put in some middles, you're telling me I haven't done this for the job and this for the job and this for the job yet, because I have, and you've you've approved them.
00:34:48.909 --> 00:34:53.230
So at what point do we start getting paid after we've been incurring costs?
00:34:53.470 --> 00:34:59.070
And somebody taught me how to literally, and it's uncomfortable at first.
00:34:59.230 --> 00:35:02.349
You know, I've been both of those partners you were talking about earlier.
00:35:02.429 --> 00:35:06.510
I've been that over-eager, zealous, just I'm gonna go take over the world.
00:35:06.590 --> 00:35:10.829
And I've been, but I'm also that nice guy, got a big heart at the end of the day.
00:35:10.990 --> 00:35:13.550
And being nice, don't pay your bills.
00:35:13.630 --> 00:35:16.670
There's a difference between being nice and being kind.
00:35:16.990 --> 00:35:23.950
And let me tell you something, the nice guy gets taken advantage of every day and twice on Sunday in the construction world.
00:35:24.110 --> 00:35:36.190
And there's one thing to be sitting here with documentation, knowing your costs, knowing your chance of profitability, but also knowing how it's going to get billed and front loading those schedule of values.
00:35:36.350 --> 00:35:53.870
So you're grabbing your money before any of the rest of these guys come in and screw up the job or some subcontractor stops payment or whatever, you're getting most of your money up front within the commercial realm of how we get paid within that first payup or two.
00:35:54.269 --> 00:36:01.630
But um, underbillings, if every if you got 10 projects going on, you're doing three to five million dollars and you're in the underbilling category.
00:36:01.789 --> 00:36:05.710
I promise you, I understand your life is hell right now.
00:36:05.870 --> 00:36:09.710
And you don't know how you're gonna pay all the bills, but you will, you'll figure it out.
00:36:10.030 --> 00:36:16.670
But understanding what a WIP report, a work in progress report is, if you guys need one, reach out to me.
00:36:16.750 --> 00:36:18.190
I've got a template that I'll share.
00:36:18.269 --> 00:36:19.870
It's basic, it's Excel.
00:36:20.190 --> 00:36:40.510
Um, we use it within a software now, but you have got to have accounting, estimation, and production working in that document every single freaking month at least, but try and do it weekly, and you will have indicators and red flags about hey, why do we have a$50,000 material pack on this job?
00:36:40.590 --> 00:36:42.030
And we haven't built it this month.
00:36:42.190 --> 00:36:43.789
Can we go ahead and bill for material?
00:36:43.950 --> 00:36:46.269
And uh, whoever dropped it off out there?
00:36:46.510 --> 00:36:48.269
Oh, well, I I guess so.
00:36:48.350 --> 00:37:00.829
Well, then all of a sudden, you just swung from being 65k short for the month of the billing of the gold target, and then all of a sudden you're billing the material and you're using their money to pay for the freaking material rather than your money.
00:37:00.990 --> 00:37:05.309
And so it's uh definite something else I'm passionate about.
00:37:05.470 --> 00:37:07.789
But one last thing is the culture.
00:37:08.030 --> 00:37:11.070
Culture is me and you are on the same wavelength there.
00:37:11.150 --> 00:37:13.390
I screwed up culture, I screwed it up bad.
00:37:13.630 --> 00:37:16.269
Lip serviced, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that.
00:37:16.430 --> 00:37:18.670
Now, we did a lot of things, don't get me wrong.
00:37:18.990 --> 00:37:24.269
Did a lot of things for culture, and I wouldn't I wouldn't say I ever had bad culture.
00:37:24.350 --> 00:37:29.150
Now, toxicity is a totally different thing if you allow that within your decent culture.
00:37:29.309 --> 00:37:36.430
If you have decent culture and you got a few bad toxic people, I promise you it turns bad culture within a few weeks, few months.
00:37:36.670 --> 00:37:43.150
Every single person will be leaving believing everything that's coming out of their mouth because they hear it more than they hear it out of your mouth.
00:37:43.390 --> 00:37:48.269
And so um repeatable uh unacceptable behavior.
00:37:49.070 --> 00:37:53.309
Yeah, I was gonna say it's a buzzword that people have become numb to.
00:37:55.630 --> 00:37:57.070
That's that's how I feel.
00:37:57.230 --> 00:38:43.470
So the way I was able to get it figured out is I one, I think I think contractors to to get unstuck if if they're feeling like there's a spot that they're in, uh whether it be revenue-wise or they're getting frustrated with employees or they're you know, whatever it is, then you should probably get either a mentor that's in the industry or start networking with people that are in the same industry, but maybe different markets, so you don't feel like your competitors uh go to industry events, but probably getting a business consultant that understands your industry.
00:38:44.030 --> 00:38:50.750
I I don't necessarily recommend somebody that's just, hey, I had a business before and I'm a consultant.
00:38:50.829 --> 00:38:53.550
Like there's those are dime a dozen, right?
00:38:53.630 --> 00:38:55.630
And so who do you trust?
00:38:55.950 --> 00:39:05.550
Because if it's somebody that just tries to force their processes that they used on you, that's a red flag.
00:39:06.829 --> 00:39:10.030
Everybody starts asking you, and I I was the same way.
00:39:10.190 --> 00:39:29.630
Like, I got in this consulting group, and it was a it was a peer group, and so there's like 10 companies in this group, and we were each other's board of advisors, and there was a company that had a lot of stuff really put together, and so we were all kind of leaning on that guy a little bit, and we were like, Yeah, send me your process, I'd love to see that.
00:39:29.870 --> 00:39:31.309
And he was like, No.
00:39:32.030 --> 00:39:33.789
And I got I got pissed.
00:39:33.950 --> 00:39:37.710
I was like, what the heck am I doing here if if you're not sharing that?
00:39:37.789 --> 00:39:39.390
Like, that's part of this.
00:39:40.269 --> 00:39:43.390
And he finally got Are you there?
00:39:44.990 --> 00:39:49.309
Oh, sorry, I swiped my touchpad and you went away.
00:39:49.470 --> 00:39:50.030
Alright.
00:39:50.350 --> 00:39:59.470
So he got back to me finally and he said, if I give this to you, you're gonna try and implement it.
00:39:59.950 --> 00:40:03.550
And then it won't work because you don't have the same culture I do.
00:40:04.030 --> 00:40:14.990
In fact, the other problem is you're gonna try and implement it, and my guess is that you won't get feedback from your people as to how this should be done, and you're just gonna try and push it.
00:40:16.430 --> 00:40:18.990
And so, you know, that challenged me.
00:40:19.150 --> 00:40:22.910
It it it made me even more upset, and so I'm like, what does he talk about?
00:40:23.070 --> 00:40:30.829
So I I looked into it, and I'm and then I read a lot of Patrick Lincioni books, really good stuff.
00:40:30.910 --> 00:40:32.990
That's that's what spoke to me, right?
00:40:33.390 --> 00:40:42.030
And it talks about culture in the advantage and uh uh the ideal team player, two very good books.
00:40:42.829 --> 00:40:55.630
And so we we tried figuring out our culture, and and part of it was you know, every every time I see integrity on somebody's culture list, I'm like, is it though?
00:40:55.950 --> 00:41:00.910
Like that's it it just seems like I just have cynicism.
00:41:01.470 --> 00:41:07.630
And I don't mean to, but it's a good value.
00:41:08.590 --> 00:41:10.269
But is it inherent?
00:41:11.230 --> 00:41:19.710
And so we looked at one of the one of the things that we did that Lincione suggests is look at all your star players.
00:41:19.789 --> 00:41:22.030
What's the common denominators?
00:41:23.470 --> 00:41:26.990
And we had to look at ourselves, even as a leadership team.
00:41:27.309 --> 00:41:28.190
Do we have this?
00:41:28.350 --> 00:41:30.269
Is it inherent in us?
00:41:30.829 --> 00:41:42.430
And we came up with three values uh no job beneath us, uh, do without having to be asked, and determined to succeed, right?
00:41:42.910 --> 00:41:48.510
So it's like uh humility and uh being hungry.
00:41:49.630 --> 00:41:51.309
But that's what we came up with.
00:41:51.390 --> 00:41:56.030
That's the phrases that we had, and I was like, there's still something missing.
00:41:56.670 --> 00:42:02.430
And so then we looked at who was no longer with us, and what was the common denominator there?
00:42:02.590 --> 00:42:06.910
Because whatever the opposite of that is, that's probably a value for us.
00:42:07.950 --> 00:42:17.390
And take ownership was another value, and this is before I read the book Extreme Ownership, right?
00:42:19.230 --> 00:42:25.630
And so because those became our core values, like they were inherent in the best of us.
00:42:25.789 --> 00:42:29.789
That now our hiring practices changed.
00:42:30.430 --> 00:42:35.070
So we we weren't that big of a company, but I hired a full-time recruiter.
00:42:35.230 --> 00:42:50.430
That's how serious we were about our hiring, and so we had a full-time recruiter, it was an employee of ours, and it took us about three years to really dial in that position.
00:42:50.990 --> 00:43:10.350
It didn't work at first, but then we got it figured out, and they had to be like the epitome of that, of those four core values, because they had to find people with those core values and they would screen them, but they had a route, just like a marketing route.
00:43:10.590 --> 00:43:19.150
They went to the tech schools, they went to Lowe's and Home Depot early in the morning when all the contractors were arriving to get their material.
00:43:19.390 --> 00:43:25.789
Like we were we were looking for whoever, and if if it was the owner of the business, we were saying, Do you own the business?
00:43:25.950 --> 00:43:30.670
And if the answer was yes, we're looking for contract, we're looking for subcontractors.
00:43:30.829 --> 00:43:33.710
If the answer was no, are you happy in your job, right?
00:43:33.789 --> 00:43:37.630
We didn't want to piss off the owner and make them think that we were just trying to steal their guys, right?
00:43:37.950 --> 00:43:47.230
But we were seriously looking everywhere, and then uh we had some entry-level positions, and we just figured where are those diamonds in the rough?
00:43:47.309 --> 00:44:01.789
And so there's a there's a grocery outlet store in town, it's like the cheap grocery store, and a lot of people, hardworking people, they cash their checks at that store on Friday and then get food for their family.
00:44:02.030 --> 00:44:07.470
And so we're like, we're gonna go there, we're gonna set up, you know, with the grocery store's permission.
00:44:07.630 --> 00:44:09.309
So we talked to the grocery store owner.
00:44:09.470 --> 00:44:11.789
He's like, Yeah, as long as you're looking for people for me.
00:44:12.030 --> 00:44:14.829
And we're like, uh, that's not a problem at all.
00:44:14.990 --> 00:44:16.829
And so we we did that.
00:44:17.230 --> 00:44:30.269
So we just had a route that they were going to, you know, colleges, tech schools, uh, the lumber yards, you know, it you go to the watering hole for whatever position that is.
00:44:31.230 --> 00:44:33.950
And so that's that was their marketing route.
00:44:34.030 --> 00:44:35.789
That's what we're calling a marketing route.
00:44:35.950 --> 00:44:37.550
It was their recruiting route.
00:44:37.789 --> 00:44:54.350
But they would screen, and then they were in on that first interview because if that interview did not go well, I wanted that person to sit in the discomfort knowing that you didn't you didn't screen this.
00:44:54.910 --> 00:44:55.950
Well enough.
00:44:56.510 --> 00:44:58.670
And this is what we're really looking for.
00:44:58.829 --> 00:45:01.230
So there was always a debrief.
00:45:02.030 --> 00:45:11.070
And then after that interview, if they make it through that, then we did a one-day paid working interview.
00:45:12.510 --> 00:45:21.789
Every single person that made it through that, we would pay them for a full day, and they would work with each department in our company.
00:45:22.829 --> 00:45:31.630
Because Patrick Lencioni said, I would rather fly across the country and back with somebody to get to know them before I hire them.
00:45:32.030 --> 00:45:35.950
It would cost me less to do that than hire the wrong person.
00:45:37.630 --> 00:45:40.510
So we took a whole day.
00:45:40.990 --> 00:45:46.350
And the first time I did this, I did not do a good job of prepping my team.
00:45:46.590 --> 00:45:52.190
And I was a little upset at the end of the day at the debrief, but then I was like, I could only be upset with myself.
00:45:52.350 --> 00:45:59.870
And so, but because of that, my team was kind of upset at me, and they're like, Oh, I'm gonna show him because we had another interview the next day, a working interview.
00:46:00.990 --> 00:46:09.230
And so we uh we did it again, and I was like, guys, I don't want to hear, oh, he was nice, I think I can work with him.
00:46:09.630 --> 00:46:12.670
That's garbage, like that doesn't tell me anything.
00:46:13.230 --> 00:46:22.750
What I need to know, what did they say, what did they do to help you believe that they had that core value?
00:46:23.309 --> 00:46:26.030
And I want specifics on each core value.
00:46:26.590 --> 00:46:32.110
I can train skills, we can all train the skills, but do they have our core values?
00:46:32.190 --> 00:46:33.710
That was the most important thing.
00:46:34.269 --> 00:46:38.190
And obviously, you have to figure out skills for certain positions.
00:46:39.390 --> 00:46:46.350
So we we did that, and uh we had the most fun at the end of that day.
00:46:46.590 --> 00:46:49.150
My people killed it, they just nailed it.
00:46:49.230 --> 00:46:54.670
I didn't even have to say anything, and they figured out if that person was a good fit or not.
00:46:54.750 --> 00:47:00.190
And I was like, guys, that was amazing, and they felt so good about it, right?
00:47:00.269 --> 00:47:06.430
Like they figured it out, and so from there on out, like hiring was our favorite thing to do.
00:47:06.590 --> 00:47:15.070
In fact, people we didn't hire loved the process so much, we we were creating cheerleaders out of people we didn't hire.
00:47:15.390 --> 00:47:17.550
They're like, man, I wish I could work there.
00:47:17.710 --> 00:47:18.990
That seems awesome, right?
00:47:19.150 --> 00:47:26.269
Like, we were getting five-star reviews from people that they weren't our customers, they were just people that went through our hiring process.
00:47:26.670 --> 00:47:29.950
And so uh we just showed our culture and everything.
00:47:30.110 --> 00:47:40.510
It was about so besides the core values, we determined what was most important to us and why does why does that company exist?
00:47:41.630 --> 00:47:44.990
We exist because we care about the individuals that work there.
00:47:45.230 --> 00:47:52.829
That's why we try to pay more, that's why we got them the benefits, that's why we tried really hard to find the right team members, right?
00:47:52.990 --> 00:47:55.710
So it all revolved around that.
00:47:56.510 --> 00:48:02.910
Um anyways, we I feel like that helped us be very successful in our culture.
00:48:03.070 --> 00:48:10.110
And then we did weekly coaching to make sure everybody knew where they stood in every department.
00:48:10.190 --> 00:48:11.150
Everybody had coaching.
00:48:11.230 --> 00:48:13.630
Now, we weren't the most consistent at this.
00:48:13.789 --> 00:48:18.110
I wish we were better, but you always knew where you were at.
00:48:19.309 --> 00:48:23.230
Not just your performance, but within those core values.
00:48:24.190 --> 00:48:31.470
Quarterly, the leadership team would get together and we talk about every individual and where they were at and the core values.
00:48:31.870 --> 00:48:36.269
We would ask each manager to send us information so we could determine where they were at.
00:48:36.510 --> 00:48:42.910
And look, that's that's what really set us up for who should be staying, who should be going, right?
00:48:43.870 --> 00:48:50.510
Because the people that don't fit the culture, they're just a suck on the life of everyone else.
00:48:51.309 --> 00:48:54.030
And so you had to get rid of them fast.
00:48:56.030 --> 00:49:09.390
But the time you take to hire, like, it was a process for us to hire, and sometimes we lost people because it just took too long because we were trying to schedule that the screening, the interview, the and the working interview.
00:49:09.870 --> 00:49:12.829
And a lot of small companies, they don't take that time.
00:49:13.630 --> 00:49:17.710
And for us, we couldn't afford not to from there on out.
00:49:18.030 --> 00:49:25.789
So it was uh, you know, on the outside, it looked like, oh my gosh, how much money are you spending doing all this?
00:49:25.950 --> 00:49:31.630
And it was like, and we were making great money because now we're hiring people and we don't have to worry about them.
00:49:31.870 --> 00:49:37.950
When and look, I wasn't a huge company, but we we grew it and we got up to about 50 people.
00:49:39.150 --> 00:50:00.990
When you have 50 people, and because one of our uh core values was no job beneath us, including myself, every single person on the team was willing to be on an on-call schedule, was willing to go in a crawl space, be in an addict, go out at 2 a.m.
00:50:01.230 --> 00:50:09.309
to suck up water or coop, you know, whatever it is, do the cleanup, do the demolition, do the repairs, whatever it may be.
00:50:09.950 --> 00:50:11.630
We were all willing to.
00:50:11.870 --> 00:50:21.390
And that's accounting, my salespeople, my estimators, production managers, myself, we all did it.
00:50:22.269 --> 00:50:23.309
So we lived it.
00:50:23.470 --> 00:50:26.110
We we didn't just say, yep, this is what you gotta do.
00:50:26.269 --> 00:50:28.829
Now that's that's not my job to do it all the time.
00:50:28.910 --> 00:50:36.670
So there was a rotation, but it made it so nobody had that burnout of being on an on-call rotation because we all chipped in.
00:50:36.990 --> 00:50:40.350
Dude, I think uh that's honorable.
00:50:40.430 --> 00:50:42.590
Number one, you wanted to be on call too.
00:50:42.670 --> 00:50:56.750
And but your the culture and the core values, I uh I'll tell them myself a couple years ago, this may have been three years ago, I um want to hit on a couple of things here.
00:50:56.829 --> 00:51:06.110
But starting here, um, would I send out start of the year, actually the end of the year, around Christmas time, I'd send out this goal sheet.
00:51:06.190 --> 00:51:12.430
And it was just 15 questions about them, where they wanted to go, personally, professionally.
00:51:12.670 --> 00:51:13.870
Is there something I need to know?
00:51:14.030 --> 00:51:15.230
Is there a tool we can buy?
00:51:15.390 --> 00:51:17.390
Is is do you like this system?
00:51:17.630 --> 00:51:18.590
What can we change?
00:51:18.750 --> 00:51:21.309
What do we have to change to succeed?
00:51:21.550 --> 00:51:23.630
I mean, a lot of those answers I didn't like.
00:51:23.789 --> 00:51:26.910
I mean, they they stung, they gave it to me, but they cared.
00:51:27.150 --> 00:51:30.269
They cared enough to put the answer down on a piece of paper.
00:51:30.430 --> 00:51:35.470
And one of them recurringly three years ago, hiring process sucks.
00:51:35.710 --> 00:51:37.390
Hiring process sucks.
00:51:37.550 --> 00:51:39.390
And I'm like, you know what?
00:51:39.550 --> 00:51:41.070
We don't even have a hiring process.
00:51:41.230 --> 00:51:42.350
So they're not wrong.
00:51:42.590 --> 00:51:53.070
Like, if you'll show up when I need people and you're the first five or six applications and I don't have to interview and you speak, like you, you'll yeah, man, sign you up, here's a shovel.
00:51:53.150 --> 00:51:56.510
Oh, and then they're pissed off with their new hire for 30, 60 days.
00:51:56.670 --> 00:52:00.750
I just took my A-crew that needed just one guy to keep being the A-Crew.
00:52:00.829 --> 00:52:06.030
Well, now they're the C crew and not putting out any production, and I can't figure out why.
00:52:06.269 --> 00:52:12.030
Well, it's because I took some dude off the street, gave him zero training, zero knowledge of who we are.
00:52:12.269 --> 00:52:13.870
Can you operate a shovel?
00:52:14.110 --> 00:52:14.430
Okay.
00:52:14.590 --> 00:52:16.030
Hit the hit the crew, bud.
00:52:16.350 --> 00:52:17.630
And I and I did do that.
00:52:17.789 --> 00:52:30.110
But now it's without going off too far into the media sector, now that I'm out here with the podcast, and then everything that we do as a as a company at SciCon is on YouTube.
00:52:30.190 --> 00:52:32.430
Like for the last three years, you can go watch everything.
00:52:32.590 --> 00:52:39.789
And so, what are these guys, where are they going when they want to get better at 10, 11, 12 o'clock at night when they're fixing to fall asleep?
00:52:39.950 --> 00:52:44.190
Well, they're listening to a podcast, or they're watching a YouTube video, just like myself.
00:52:44.430 --> 00:52:48.829
And so all of a sudden, I started getting these flood of applications.
00:52:48.910 --> 00:52:52.510
I'm talking about from Washington to Maine, all across the country.
00:52:52.670 --> 00:52:57.230
Hey, man, uh, if there's ever a relocation possibility, I want to be that guy.
00:52:57.309 --> 00:52:58.990
And I'm like, what?
00:52:59.630 --> 00:53:03.309
I couldn't, and you're you've done utilities for 10 freaking years.
00:53:03.390 --> 00:53:04.430
Why do you want to come here?
00:53:04.510 --> 00:53:06.829
And I started talking with these guys, trying to give feedback.
00:53:07.070 --> 00:53:14.510
Like, why would you, well, man, we see your culture, we see your safety, especially in our in our world.
00:53:14.670 --> 00:53:16.350
Like, everybody wants to skimp there.
00:53:16.510 --> 00:53:17.870
We see how you treat your people.
00:53:18.030 --> 00:53:19.950
We see when they show up, they smile.
00:53:20.110 --> 00:53:22.750
You, you, you, they, they get to visibly see all of that.
00:53:22.910 --> 00:53:24.750
And so it started to gain some traction.
00:53:24.829 --> 00:53:29.470
And I'm like, okay, now I have a list of 50, 60, 80 people to go through.
00:53:29.630 --> 00:53:31.870
Let's go through four or five of them here.
00:53:32.030 --> 00:53:33.550
Screen these guys.
00:53:33.710 --> 00:53:36.750
Um, Miss D, who's kind of our front lady.
00:53:36.990 --> 00:53:45.470
Hey, give them a ring, see, see if they can hold a conversation, ask three or four basic questions, and let's let's see if we want to set up for an interview.
00:53:45.550 --> 00:53:47.150
And at that point, we'll bring them in.
00:53:47.309 --> 00:53:51.470
We'll have a little conversation about who we are and what we expect.
00:53:51.550 --> 00:53:54.829
And if you want to join our team, it's not just because you get to.
00:53:54.990 --> 00:53:57.870
It's because you see those seven core values over there.
00:53:58.110 --> 00:54:03.390
You have to understand families first, and you have to understand safety drives our projects.
00:54:03.470 --> 00:54:05.309
And anybody can shut it down at any time.
00:54:05.390 --> 00:54:08.750
Your number one day, one hour, shut the whole project down.
00:54:09.070 --> 00:54:11.550
Teamwork builds excellence, and then I can go on.
00:54:11.710 --> 00:54:18.990
And and people are, and I got so mixed up, like, oh, core values, man, man, you know, like that's part of business.
00:54:19.150 --> 00:54:27.230
But when I understood as boss that I could go out to a situation, a people situation, they're kind of sticky.
00:54:27.470 --> 00:54:31.870
It's, you know, you're sitting there like, man, if this goes this way, it goes that way, it goes this way.
00:54:32.030 --> 00:54:33.309
You don't have to do any of that.
00:54:33.470 --> 00:54:35.390
Here's our seven core values.
00:54:35.710 --> 00:54:41.470
Did you meet these seven core values in option A or option B or whatever decision you made?
00:54:41.710 --> 00:54:43.550
Uh no, I didn't, boss.
00:54:43.789 --> 00:54:45.390
Hey, man, what are we doing?
00:54:45.550 --> 00:54:46.269
You agreed to it.
00:54:46.430 --> 00:54:49.710
First of the year with me, you sat in a room with every single team member.
00:54:49.870 --> 00:54:54.670
We were going to adhere no matter what, then it would come to production.
00:54:54.990 --> 00:54:59.070
So tell me where went wrong, how we got to this point.
00:54:59.230 --> 00:55:03.710
Maybe it is a flawed system within the company that drove you to this decision-making point.
00:55:03.950 --> 00:55:04.990
Okay, show me that.
00:55:05.150 --> 00:55:09.710
Let me go back, let me take a look, let me see if I can't figure out what got you to this point.
00:55:09.950 --> 00:55:16.030
But those core values of who that, and we always had core values, but we never had them wrote down.
00:55:16.269 --> 00:55:18.990
We just, oh, well, SAC kind of likes that, you know.
00:55:19.070 --> 00:55:27.710
Oh, hey, don't like one of the big things like with me is like, don't ever funerals passing by, pull over on the side of the road, put your flashers on, take your freaking hats off, show some respect.
00:55:27.789 --> 00:55:29.070
Like we're big on respect.
00:55:29.230 --> 00:55:34.990
Don't go acting up in a gas station when you're going into, you know, silly stuff like that that's never been said.
00:55:35.070 --> 00:55:42.110
But that's captured within our core values, not specific within a gas station, but we show respect in any environment.
00:55:42.350 --> 00:55:45.789
And and dude, to be able to exactly.
00:55:45.950 --> 00:55:51.550
And the last thing I want to follow up with is you said find a mentor.
00:55:51.710 --> 00:55:56.269
And I talk about, I literally believe I talk about influences on every single episode.
00:55:56.510 --> 00:56:01.309
But you know, we have done something in the last it launched in January.
00:56:01.390 --> 00:56:02.829
It's called the Underground Network.
00:56:02.910 --> 00:56:05.950
And we have now 20 different companies throughout the country.
00:56:06.030 --> 00:56:11.230
Uh, we did our first live webinar, and like the judgment in that room was flatline.
00:56:11.470 --> 00:56:12.190
There was no judgment.
00:56:12.269 --> 00:56:18.670
We had people, 18-year-olds that are just listening in to maybe have a good understanding of sales and estimating.
00:56:18.829 --> 00:56:22.750
That was the topic for the webinar, and never set foot in a trade in their life.
00:56:22.910 --> 00:56:33.150
And then I got 20-year-old business owners that have been in there trying to understand why they can't sell any more work right now with tighter margins and the and and the industry switching up.
00:56:33.470 --> 00:56:42.430
And man, the things I'm learning just by being the host and opening the environment where we all can get together, I'm learning from these guys.
00:56:42.510 --> 00:56:43.710
They're learning from them.
00:56:43.950 --> 00:56:58.350
But mentors, specific mentors within your trade, if it's not your local competitors, go find somebody because the amount of experienced, um, I wouldn't say experienced education, but literally that's what it is.
00:56:58.510 --> 00:57:01.470
They've lived through what you're fixing to ask them.
00:57:01.630 --> 00:57:03.390
Ask them how it worked out for them.
00:57:03.550 --> 00:57:06.190
But man, you, you, me and you are very aligned.
00:57:06.269 --> 00:57:08.590
I think we've been through the same struggles or something.
00:57:08.670 --> 00:57:09.950
You can't fake it.
00:57:12.990 --> 00:57:15.950
Uh I'm originally from Canada, but on the East Coast.
00:57:16.110 --> 00:57:18.910
So uh we're we're kind of close at heart there.
00:57:19.070 --> 00:57:30.510
But no, I I believe in everything that you're sitting here talking about, man, and culture and and and providing a space, or we see a need within the industry.
00:57:30.670 --> 00:57:34.190
We don't just, oh, let's just keep doing Orlane, they'll figure it out.
00:57:34.350 --> 00:57:49.630
We're we're trying to be innovators, in whether it be an estimation software for a very, I would assume, extremely hard estimation estimate to put out repetitively and quantity quantities of would be something like that.
00:57:49.789 --> 00:57:51.070
Never the same.
00:57:51.950 --> 00:57:59.230
So um, but to have culture in the hiring process that you've ended up with over the years, sir, is unbelievable.
00:57:59.470 --> 00:58:02.350
Uh that is that kudos for sure.
00:58:02.510 --> 00:58:05.070
I'm hoping to get there one day myself, one day at a time.
00:58:05.309 --> 00:58:06.829
Well, you're never done.
00:58:07.150 --> 00:58:09.630
Like it it never stops.
00:58:09.950 --> 00:58:24.750
Uh it's it's one of the most difficult things to work on, but it it can become such a joy because that's what you work on all the time as a leader, and it just trickles down through the organization.
00:58:25.550 --> 00:58:32.030
Um, and and that culture now drives how are we going to do our process?
00:58:32.110 --> 00:58:35.710
And you include your team on those decisions.
00:58:36.269 --> 00:58:43.710
You might you might do some of the heavy lift and and put your first run of it on, let's say it's a spreadsheet.
00:58:43.789 --> 00:58:49.789
This is our process from cradle to grave of a job, but then they get to pick it apart.
00:58:49.870 --> 00:58:54.030
You have a all hands meeting, let's go through it.
00:58:54.269 --> 00:58:55.309
All right, this is your part.
00:58:55.390 --> 00:58:56.910
How do you really do your job?
00:58:57.309 --> 00:59:06.430
Then you go through the next person, and it's like, then you might have three people that do the same job, and it's like, well, this is how I do it, but this is how they do it.
00:59:06.670 --> 00:59:10.190
And it's like, oh, why is that different?
00:59:10.350 --> 00:59:18.829
What well there was no process to begin with, so everybody's just trying to do it the most efficient way, and so we're like, all right, well, we're gonna let's figure out the best way.
00:59:18.990 --> 00:59:20.590
So what do you guys suggest?
00:59:20.750 --> 00:59:22.269
And well, this is why I do it.
00:59:22.350 --> 00:59:39.630
So there's just you know, discussion around that, and then we're you know, we always bring it back to well, how is it, how should we be doing this dictated by our core values, you know, or why we exist or the the goals that we're trying to achieve.
00:59:40.030 --> 00:59:44.990
So we bring it back to the culture, and that usually determines or tailors the way that we do it.
00:59:45.070 --> 00:59:46.750
It's the same thing with software.
00:59:47.789 --> 01:00:09.150
So I work for DocuSketch right now, and there was a reason that we used it in our business because we wanted to make it so that it was more efficient for our team, and we felt like okay, this is one software that actually will reduce the time and the redundancy for our people in the field.
01:00:10.350 --> 01:00:16.990
Uh, and so we had them do this and then uh it created uh even more efficiency for our estimating.
01:00:17.550 --> 01:00:25.150
Now our estimators they they didn't even have to go on site anymore because it was a 360 tour of the job site.
01:00:25.789 --> 01:00:37.710
It was like they were there, and then uh it was it's one of the only 360s that you can do multiple tours at different times, but you put the camera in the same spot.
01:00:38.269 --> 01:00:39.470
It's so cool.
01:00:39.550 --> 01:00:41.630
It you can see the job.
01:00:42.030 --> 01:00:50.510
This is before we started, and here's the job after we did demolition, and here's the job, you know, the finished product.
01:00:50.670 --> 01:00:55.550
We did a we did a two and a half million dollar uh church fire.
01:00:56.510 --> 01:01:05.230
Uh and the the difference between the before, the during, and the after is so impressive.
01:01:05.710 --> 01:01:13.950
But if I was missing something, or if I needed to justify something to the insurance, I wasn't missing anything.
01:01:14.030 --> 01:01:15.390
I had everything captured.
01:01:15.550 --> 01:01:21.309
I can go around taking pictures with a camera or my phone, but I will never get every corner of that.
01:01:21.390 --> 01:01:31.870
But if you're doing a 360 and then you're doing multiple timelines or multiple times that you're doing it throughout the project, ultimate documentation for the insurance company, right?
01:01:32.030 --> 01:01:36.910
Or the mortgage company, or the customer, or you know, whoever, like what was there?
01:01:37.070 --> 01:01:38.990
I can't tell you how many times.
01:01:39.630 --> 01:01:43.230
Geez, I I remember my dad, he he had a customer.
01:01:43.630 --> 01:01:47.150
We redid the whole house and we were all done.
01:01:47.630 --> 01:01:51.150
Customer was happy, but then they were like, I had a garbage disposal.
01:01:52.510 --> 01:01:56.190
Now, this is back when we were doing film, right?
01:01:56.350 --> 01:02:06.910
We were developing film to get our pictures, and uh fortunately my dad had a picture of underneath the sink, and there was no garbage disposal.
01:02:07.070 --> 01:02:10.910
And these these people, it was like they really did think they had it.
01:02:10.990 --> 01:02:13.870
I don't think they're trying to pull the wool over, they just thought they had it.
01:02:14.110 --> 01:02:18.990
I mean, it'd been three months since they've been in their house, so it was it was a big job.
01:02:19.150 --> 01:02:22.269
So but we were able to show them now.
01:02:23.550 --> 01:02:33.870
When we walk into a house and we might even not even do any work in the living room, but we're passing by there to go into the bathroom or whatever to remodel that.
01:02:34.829 --> 01:02:46.269
We take this 360 camera and we go throughout the house because that couch, if it has the littlest of scratches, we documented that it was there before we started any work.
01:02:47.630 --> 01:02:49.150
There's a crack in the ceiling.
01:02:49.230 --> 01:02:52.269
Well, we must have caused that because we're doing work in the house.
01:02:52.670 --> 01:03:04.269
We'll even take shots outside of the building, and and it's a good thing we did because it captured that there was an oil stain on the driveway, and that was there before we did anything, right?
01:03:04.670 --> 01:03:15.950
And so all the like it saved us so much money because we just captured all the details, whether it be outside or inside the house.
01:03:16.269 --> 01:03:24.829
So it was so congruent with our core values to use the software and the and the hardware that they had in these cameras.
01:03:25.070 --> 01:03:56.030
Um, and then because we had all these before and afters going back to culture, we had so many before and afters that we would put on our social media, but we didn't call out our own company, we called out our people, we called out our subs, we called out everybody else, and the effect that had wasn't necessarily on getting more work, it attracted the right people we wanted to hire.
01:03:56.190 --> 01:04:04.910
They were like, oh, that place rocks, and then the families, the friends of those people, they were the ones liking and sharing our page.
01:04:05.070 --> 01:04:16.269
Like you get to see all the uh you know, the algorithms or you know, how much people are liking and sharing on your side of it.
01:04:16.510 --> 01:04:23.630
And so I was able to compare to just the normal post, like choose JRCC or whatever.
01:04:23.870 --> 01:04:31.950
And then you look at one of these posts where it's celebrating your people, it had 10 to 20 times the engagement.
01:04:32.750 --> 01:04:38.030
And it's like we just need to do this all the time because that's what people really want to see.
01:04:38.269 --> 01:04:47.470
And because we were doing stuff like that, showing the progress, people love that before and after, but calling out the people that did the work, that's who they care about.
01:04:47.630 --> 01:04:52.990
When we went out to get five-star reviews, I don't want JRCC to get a five-star review.
01:04:53.309 --> 01:05:02.030
I want Joe, I want Matt, I want, you know, whoever my guy is that was on that job, I want them to get the five-star review.
01:05:02.269 --> 01:05:07.870
And people are way more likely to give that review for a person rather than an entity.
01:05:09.309 --> 01:05:12.030
So it all came back to culture.
01:05:13.070 --> 01:05:21.309
Blue-collar performance marketing's passion is to bring attention to the honest work done in blue-collar industries through effective results-driven marketing tactics.
01:05:21.470 --> 01:05:29.309
They specialize in comprehensive digital marketing services from paid advertising on Google and Facebook to website development and content strategy.
01:05:29.470 --> 01:05:37.950
I started working with Ike and the team earlier this year, and they've had a huge impact on our specific marketing campaign and trajectory of our overall company.
01:05:38.030 --> 01:05:47.470
Their expertise in digital ad management, website development, social media, and overall marketing strategy has been an absolute game changer for our sales and marketing at SciCon.
01:05:47.789 --> 01:06:06.110
If you're looking to work with a marketing team who does what they say, does it well, and is always looking for ways to help your company grow, book a discovery call with Ike by going to bcperformancemarketing.com backslash BCB podcast, or click the link in the show notes slash description below.
01:06:06.350 --> 01:06:07.470
Thanks, guys.
01:06:07.789 --> 01:06:08.829
You're not wrong.
01:06:09.070 --> 01:06:14.110
You're exactly, I mean, everything you said, man, it's uh true blue experience.
01:06:14.350 --> 01:06:16.430
I've seen the same thing with socials.
01:06:16.590 --> 01:06:21.230
Anytime we've got the guys in, we've got guys in the shot just saying thanks to the guys.
01:06:21.390 --> 01:06:27.789
Hey, this this road was hard to get across, or you know, dealing with the job side constraints.
01:06:27.870 --> 01:06:29.870
These guys did amazing, or anything like that.
01:06:29.950 --> 01:06:31.390
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
01:06:31.470 --> 01:06:32.269
Everybody shares.
01:06:32.350 --> 01:06:33.470
And of course they do.
01:06:33.550 --> 01:06:37.789
It's it's it's what it's all about to begin with, anyways, man.
01:06:38.030 --> 01:06:43.950
Is the people, the team, while you have them, what can you do with them and for them?
01:06:44.590 --> 01:06:50.350
And and always keeping that serve mentality for them, you know, to ultimately get where you're wanting to go.
01:06:50.430 --> 01:06:54.110
And as a leader, you know, I've ate some humble pie myself.
01:06:55.309 --> 01:06:56.510
2223.
01:06:56.590 --> 01:07:07.230
I I ate the whole thing real quick and needed to understand that, you know, there's there's more purpose here than uh names on trucks and names on on machines.
01:07:07.390 --> 01:07:08.430
There's it's the people.
01:07:08.510 --> 01:07:12.750
And I have the I had the people, but a lot of toxicity back then, let's put it that way.
01:07:12.910 --> 01:07:23.309
Again, I didn't have bad culture, but I didn't have celebratory culture where um we could all feel accomplished together because it's visible about our accomplishments.
01:07:23.470 --> 01:07:24.430
Does that make sense?
01:07:24.670 --> 01:07:30.990
There was no there was no open, visible transparency to the numbers of, hey, we were this profitable.
01:07:31.150 --> 01:07:32.670
Well, I didn't know what I was doing as well.
01:07:32.750 --> 01:07:35.710
I was just learning to be a manager, a leader, or whatever you want to call me.
01:07:35.789 --> 01:07:42.030
See, you know, I went from a really good pie player, uh superintendent to all of a sudden overnight CEO.
01:07:42.190 --> 01:07:44.190
And, you know, that's the choice I made.
01:07:44.269 --> 01:07:49.230
And gotta, you gotta act apart and and ensure you learn as quick as possible for them.
01:07:49.390 --> 01:07:50.670
But um, Mr.
01:07:50.829 --> 01:07:53.309
Ben, I do have man, what a great episode.
01:07:53.470 --> 01:08:05.630
I gotta say, like seriously, we could sit here and probably talk for another two hours, I would assume, but we we lose a lot of most we've got to get together if I ever get out to Washington.
01:08:05.789 --> 01:08:10.990
I've never been out on the West Coast, so uh I would I would really be intrigued.
01:08:11.230 --> 01:08:12.430
Yeah, I bet it is.
01:08:12.510 --> 01:08:14.430
I actually know you said Yakima earlier.
01:08:14.590 --> 01:08:16.510
It's funny, you're like, ah, you probably never heard it.
01:08:16.590 --> 01:08:25.470
I had a family here that's uh a part of our church group, lived in Yakima uh five or probably seven or eight years of their family's lives.
01:08:25.550 --> 01:08:29.069
Uh he's an engineer and he built one of the hospitals up there somewhere close.
01:08:29.149 --> 01:08:34.189
I couldn't quite tell you, but anyways, um kind of funny and connection there.
01:08:34.269 --> 01:08:39.069
But I do have one final question here before we we close out for the day, brother.
01:08:39.309 --> 01:08:47.550
Um you kind of hit you hit it on the you you already said it already early in the episode of you know, what do these guys do when they're stuck?
01:08:47.789 --> 01:08:57.869
Um and I'm talking about, you know, maybe one of your team members that are on your team showing up at two o'clock wanting to pump poop out, uh, or have to pump poop out to get the job going.
01:08:57.949 --> 01:09:01.949
And I've been there in a ditch way out in the middle of nowhere where nobody even understands.
01:09:02.109 --> 01:09:25.150
But to those guys that are, you know, kind of stuck in a rut, just maybe maybe mentally, physically, emotionally, maybe got some family issues going on, whatever the case may be, what's a piece of advice for them from all your entrepreneurial experience and people experience that they can stay focused with about you know getting out of that stick in the mud?
01:09:25.949 --> 01:09:27.630
Take care of yourself.
01:09:28.029 --> 01:09:33.230
Make sure that uh you got to prioritize in your life.
01:09:33.310 --> 01:09:40.190
And so if that's your if that's your family, uh yourself, you need to prioritize that.
01:09:40.430 --> 01:09:47.869
Um it's not it's not worth the hours, it's not worth the money, it's not it's not worth any of that.
01:09:48.190 --> 01:09:57.949
So uh and and if you get right in those areas, you you will show up who you need to be at work.
01:09:58.750 --> 01:10:01.150
Literally, winning at home is everything.
01:10:01.470 --> 01:10:17.550
Winning at home, and I gotta tell you, I've seen I've personally uh lived through burnout myself, um kind of coming out through the other side with as many directions as I've been getting pulled here in the last uh 18 months.
01:10:17.710 --> 01:10:20.190
But uh no, winning at home is everything.
01:10:20.350 --> 01:10:32.350
And whether that's you have a family, whether you are solo in an apartment, your family's coming down the pipeline, um, taking care of yourself is number one priority.
01:10:32.510 --> 01:10:49.550
You have to have a hundred percent input before you can offer a hundred percent output and truly find a healthy input, whether it be running, whether it be whatever it is, maybe a peer group, just better yourself is what I would add on to that.
01:10:49.789 --> 01:10:54.670
And every single day you're choosing you and to work through those mental problems.
01:10:54.750 --> 01:10:59.630
There's other to stop doing the same thing and trying to get a different result, guys.
01:10:59.949 --> 01:11:06.029
Just bite into change and face it and keep it rocking forward.
01:11:06.270 --> 01:11:08.909
Um, man, Mr.
01:11:09.150 --> 01:11:14.190
Ben, you are a uh well of uh experience.
01:11:14.270 --> 01:11:20.430
And it's funny, you know, when I talk to some entrepreneurs, you can tell the ones that have kind of lived it.
01:11:20.670 --> 01:11:21.710
You know what I mean?
01:11:21.789 --> 01:11:27.310
Like you can't fake the struggles we've been through to have the understanding of what we've got.
01:11:27.550 --> 01:11:30.909
And uh, you know, I'm still learning myself, sir.
01:11:30.989 --> 01:11:32.270
I ain't got nothing figured out.
01:11:32.350 --> 01:11:34.110
I've got some things figured out.
01:11:34.270 --> 01:11:40.590
Um, but man, I am truly looking forward to the future and what and what 26 and 27 bring.
01:11:40.670 --> 01:11:42.270
Uh where can they find you?
01:11:42.350 --> 01:11:44.670
Where where where where can they connect with you?
01:11:44.989 --> 01:11:49.949
Well, uh, so I'm working at DocuSketch, that's the name of the company.
01:11:50.350 --> 01:11:55.390
Um, so they can reach out to me, whether it be email or phone number.
01:11:55.470 --> 01:11:56.510
I think you guys have that.
01:11:56.670 --> 01:12:01.869
Maybe the editors can put it on there, so that's totally fine for people to reach out.
01:12:02.270 --> 01:12:10.029
Um, you know, if if they're in the restoration industry, uh definitely get in that association.
01:12:10.430 --> 01:12:12.510
I'll I'll be at the conference, right?
01:12:12.590 --> 01:12:19.710
Like that's that's a great place to network with people, uh, people that probably are more knowledgeable than me, you know.
01:12:20.029 --> 01:12:27.069
So a lot of lot of good uh knowledge in that industry and that association.
01:12:27.470 --> 01:12:34.909
But yeah, I I don't I don't know if there's any other place that they'd find me besides just at work, right?
01:12:37.470 --> 01:12:39.869
Yeah, that is totally fair, sir.
01:12:40.029 --> 01:12:40.430
Totally fair.
01:12:41.310 --> 01:12:43.869
Unless they're in the mountains in Washington.
01:12:44.190 --> 01:12:48.670
I'm a big time snowmobiler, so you might find me there.
01:12:50.750 --> 01:12:53.150
Well, guys, you heard it here first.
01:12:53.230 --> 01:12:56.190
I can't thank you guys enough for tuning in for another episode.
01:12:56.430 --> 01:12:58.989
Truly hope you found value in today's episode.
01:12:59.069 --> 01:13:02.350
And if you have, tell somebody about it, share it with somebody.
01:13:02.510 --> 01:13:03.069
Um, Mr.
01:13:03.230 --> 01:13:11.949
Ben taught me a few things, um, and definitely the alignment in uh entrepreneurial duties to get where we're at today.
01:13:12.110 --> 01:13:12.590
Uh, Mr.
01:13:12.750 --> 01:13:19.789
Ben, I can't thank you enough for your time, sir, and your passion for your industry and passion for the overall blue collar trade industries.
01:13:19.949 --> 01:13:23.949
And until next time, guys, you guys be safe out there.
01:13:24.590 --> 01:13:33.869
If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it a like, share it with the fellas, check out our website to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue collar business.
01:13:34.029 --> 01:13:35.230
Who do you want to hear from?
01:13:35.390 --> 01:13:40.110
Send them our way, and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have.
01:13:40.430 --> 01:13:42.029
Till next time, guys.