Ep. 62 – Visibility Wins: Make the Invisible, Visible

Hard work shouldn’t feel like guesswork. Sy sits down with Zach Estes, founder of Lean Dirt, to unpack a simple, battle-tested way to run civil construction with less chaos and more clarity. We get straight into the 2-3-4 framework, two systems, three actions, four routines, that turns hidden information into visible standards and transforms accountability from a speech into a system.

We start by reframing value vs waste and why civil construction is real value creation, then zoom into the tools that make teams faster: a single home for project information, a clean action system that leaders actually use, and “success statements” that define outcomes for every role. Zach shows how to rate performance green, yellow, or red without micromanaging, how to write standards people can follow, and how daily logs close the loop with estimating so bids reflect real production, not wishful numbers. Sy shares field-tested wins and misses, from switching software to the cost of a gas line strike, and how transparency with crews creates buy-in when margins are thin.

We also explore practical tech that pays off immediately. A basic to‑do app beats a notebook for capture, organization, and review. AI becomes a pocket coach for routes, checklists, calculations, and training scripts. And “mise en place” applies to project data as much as tools: everything in its place, accessible in one spot. The thread running through it all is purpose: clarify why you wake up, put it where you’ll see it, and then make the plan, the numbers, and the tasks just as visible. That’s how you move from firefighting to forward motion.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a teammate, and leave a quick review so more builders find it. Got a question or a guest you want on the mic? Drop us a note at bluecollarbusinesspodcast.com and let’s tackle it together.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Sponsor Message
• 1:19 Cy’s Business Transition And Pain Points
• 2:52 Meet Zach And The Lean Dirt Mission
• 4:06 What Lean Really Means And Where It Began
• 6:11 Why Civil Construction And Value vs Waste
• 9:05 Mentors, Herb Sargent, And Industry Crossovers
• 12:28 The 2-3-4 Playbook Explained
• 15:10 Make Information Visible, Kill Hidden Work
• 18:40 Transparency, Accountability, And Field Reality
• 22:05 Success Statements: Holding Roles To Outcomes
• 27:08 Information Systems That Have A Home
• 31:00 Action Systems, To‑Do Discipline, And Tools
• 34:30 AI As The Admin Superpower For Trades
• 37:32 Communicate Visibly, Not Just Verbally
• 40:10 Sponsor Plug And Marketing Shoutout
• 41:20 Final Advice: Clarify Purpose And Act
• 43:00 How To Reach Zach And Show Wrap

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

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. 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. The information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox. Guys, welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast, brought to you and sponsored by our friends over at ThumbTag. If you've owned your craft and you care about results, but you're spending too much time just chasing leads that just don't fit what you're trying to do. You need a solution that connects you with customers who appreciate your skills and jobs that fit your team schedule and area. Thumbtack delivers just that. Without subscription fees or pricing surprises, as your business grows, ThumbTax, centralized tools and automation keep things running super smooth. Ready to grow? Visit thumbtag.com slash pro and book your personalized strategy session today. Let them know the blue collar business podcast sent you guys there. Guys, as you guys know, I have been going through such transformation with my own business, trying to figure out business. What is business? What you think you know, what you thought you know, and what you're learning along the way. And uh the gentleman today has been a great LinkedIn follower. I've I've learned some stuff. Um, he's passionate about what he's doing. And as you guys know, this is the resource for you. I'm gonna be learning just as much as you guys are gonna be learning today, but um, none other than uh the man Zach Estes. This guy is a founder of a company called Lean Dirt, basically helping us daily performance coaching for civil construction companies, coaches contractors from two to 70 million in revenue across North America in different lien systems, leadership, communication. Wherever you might be struggling, this is the man to help you. Man, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you? Thanks, brother. Uh, I appreciate it, man. I'm doing just lovely. How about yourself? Well, literally, um I'm very open and vulnerable on this show and on YouTube and very transparent about where we are. And man, we have been in such a transition. And I don't know if you would say call it leaning up. Um, that is a pretty common term across our industry. But at the same time, my guy, I I have had to do something different because I didn't really know what was right, but I knew what I'm doing currently was wrong because now I'm actually producing a little bit of these systems, finiting these uh procedures down and really truly finding profitability or revenue, or is it even worth going after all to begin with really quickly now? And so that's just changing my entire mindset of what is business, right? What is the dirt game, what is the pipe game, civil construction as a whole, because there's so many little niches. But you're a guy that a lot of us don't know is out there. There's people that like yourself have built a system from what I'm so excited for you to share, where it came from and what the background of it is from, and where it's proven you already know it works, but if you can, you know, implement it into your own smaller business or large business, there's results to be seen. Share a little bit, my guy.

SPEAKER_01: 3:51

Yeah. So uh I call my business Lean Dirt. That's the name of the business itself. And and it's not even my system. I have I'm taking zero credit for this. I'm just a student of the system. I'm a student of, and it's not even it's not even really a system, it's a way of doing business. And honestly, it's a way of doing life. It it super applies to relationships, family, you name it. But let's talk about it in the context of business. Lean originates from um kind of the manufacturing industry. Uh, and really Toyota is kind of the flagship model for this Toyota production system. If any of your audience has ever heard of anything associated with that. Operational excellence, you think operational excellence, that comes from Toyota. That comes from Japanese manufacturing. Um, Kubota, I mean, like you n you name it, uh, that is the entire mindset of kind of even a Japanese culture. And honestly, what's crazy is that uh this gets into a little bit of history lesson, so you might have to pull me in. Prior that there's a guy named Edward Demming, he's American, and he had no audience in America. Americans wouldn't listen to him because we were prideful. Uh we couldn't be told what to do post-World War II because we were the champs. Uh, meanwhile, there was a hungry and starving, literally audience in Japan who needed an economy to come back. And they said, let's listen to this guy who's talking about reducing waste, making the most of what you have and uh producing. And that's kind of what where lean originated from. That's what the Toyota production system originated from. Um, so I've I've been I've been applying lean. I started as a manufacturing engineer um over 10 years ago. Um, I started in manufacturing, ended up working for a huge hospital system in Tennessee, uh, and then a media corporation, and then a business and leadership coaching organization, led that, grew that, and then started my own business uh focused on helping civil construction implement lean systems and processes.

SPEAKER_00: 5:55

Why'd you move from total manufacturing and like manufacturing background over to probably the uh most overhead heavy non-cash flow business model ever into the civil construction space? Yes, we need you. Um, obviously, if you've you found something that worked, but um how did you find out, you know, moving from that to this?

SPEAKER_01: 6:25

Here's the thing. Uh, I so this kind of gets into the philosophy of lean. If I'll answer your question, but I'm gonna back up into it. So the fundamental structure of what lean is all about is that there's value and there's waste. Another way to say that is that there are things that the customer is paying for, and then there's everything else. And everything else is what the business is paying for. Okay, value and waste, value and waste. If you look at the economy as a whole, the reason I'm passionate about civil construction is one, it is hard work. It's hard work, it's risky work, but it's value added work to the economy. As an example, as a coach, I don't add value to the economy. I purely reduce waste in the economy. I try to make things more efficient. I'm not adding value to the economy. Manufacturing industry adds value, construction adds value. Um, I do not personally add value. So I'm trying my best to implement to come alongside value adders to the economy who are doing hard, risky work um and just make their lives easier. Like that's that's my focus. That's my goal.

SPEAKER_00: 7:34

Hmm. Literally, the who was the first person to reach out to you, I guess, from our side of the world and was like, hey man, could you help me?

SPEAKER_01: 7:46

So uh interesting. Um, the one that comes originally to mind, I was the COO of a at a business and leadership coaching organization prior to this, and I helped uh operationalize that business. They he brought me on really because my skill set, my background. Um, and one of our first customers is uh really who kind of inspired me. His name is Herb Sargent. Are you familiar with Herb?

SPEAKER_00: 8:11

Dude, Herb is the man I I have on my LinkedIn, I I literally have my own small little herb post links to go back and read because the wisdom from the true blue experience a man has experienced through life. You you you can't there ain't no AI writing like that because the way he you can tell he's lived it and he's preaching it and what he's done for you know on his exit with the Aesop and all the the company he's built, man. Um been trying to get him on the show for some time. He's yeah, maybe I can make a connection for you. He's uh we have texted a little bit prior to this, but he's uh I think he's in enjoying life currently as well.

SPEAKER_01: 8:58

He is, he's a stud. He's a stud, and he's investing into other business owners in this industry. Uh, I don't know if you're familiar with Benjamin Holmgren, uh, Benjamin's ground crew groups. Like I think he's a mentor for many of those peer groups. All that to be said, Herb was a client of ours, probably, I mean, this is four-ish years ago, maybe five years ago. Um and he was kind of the first one in that industry. Uh, or let's just call it like horizontal construction, even in like paving uh utilities, you know, whatever, that um dirt world that I really had familiarity into. However, even a couple of years before that is when I um I interacted with Aaron Witt from Buildwit um and got him on the entree leadership podcast when I was working for Dave Ramsey. And so uh it's just a small world, right? It's a small world. Um and and uh so that was kind of my foyer to um this whole industry is is seeing what Herb's doing, see what Sgt. Corp's doing up in Maine and and all along the East Coast now. Um, and then just started having more and more interactions with customers and clients and friends who are in this industry or in in a related um sector of this industry.

SPEAKER_00: 10:13

That's so cool. What a monumental original customer going, hey, can you help me? And I know Aaron as well went out on his podcast. He will be on this show just following the year. Shout out to Dirt World Summit too. We'll be are you going to Dirt World Summit?

SPEAKER_01: 10:31

Yeah, I'll be there. I see you in a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_00: 10:33

There you go. Literally, it's like two weeks away. Uh, customer of mine bought me a ticket. I'm very excited to go. Uh, first time for myself. But um, no, his whole team is doing big things over there as well. But to have Herb as one of your original customers, what what sitting here in my head was the amount of experience that he has, what this should be an open avenue for you. What could you have, you know, came in and helped him with?

SPEAKER_01: 11:00

See. So I'll I'll say he wasn't directly my client whenever I was working at the organization. He was our client. Um, however, and I'll I've heard him say this multiple times of what he took away from that. Um, but but I want to share for your audience the fact that he came to us. We're a bunch of guys in our 30s um who aren't in this industry. We were business and leadership coaches. Uh, that's like that, that's what our organization was. Now we have a ton of experience working with all sorts of industries, right? It's just business principles and practices. Um, but he sought out mentorship, he sought out advice from non-industry experts, right? Like he's willing to humble himself and say, other people have figured this out, other people have knocked up their head against the headaches that I'm having. Uh, it may look a little different, it may not be with heavy machinery or laying pipe in the ground, but it deals with people and it deals with systems and it deals with processes and communication, and that's all business. So, yes, there are there are tried and true, like specific issues that are happening within this industry, but man, I would just encourage your audience to be like Herb Sargent, look towards other industries for the solution. It's way easier to um see the trees for the force.

SPEAKER_00: 12:24

That's a really good point because I'll speak to myself. Um, you know, our we've had a fractional PM, fractional CFO, fractional bookkeep, fractional account, like fractional everything. You know, I'm trying to figure this out. I'm starting to get a little bit of fractional fatigue, I'll tell you that. But at the same time, staying that's a good. Um, but I can see the usefulness of it. And man, two years ago, I didn't even know what that was. But I had to start getting into a different level of uh I heard a quote, it was uh discomfort is the true key. Um no, I'm totally jacking this up. I think it's actually, yeah, no, it's right here on my book. I wrote it down, it was so good. Discomfort is the tuition you pay for access. You know, you don't know as a business owner that you know you're expected by everybody that works for you, all your subs, whatever, vendors, they expect you to know. And when you don't know, it's so scary for us to lean out and go, hey, I really suck at this. Everybody in my entire company is telling me repetitively, and I don't know what to freaking do about it. I want it to be better. I just don't know how to number one do the research and and figure out exactly what I need to implement. We're scared to implement anything new because the last three or four things that we implemented are still not even implemented. And what I found out, you know, shout out to Ms. Shalina because she has come helped us build the systems and ensure that everybody was held accountable while we were starting these new systems. And that's on my scale of it. And then you you go all the way to the end of the scale to to herb of hey, I want to perfect culture, I want to figure out how we figured communicational links and are people listening to what is actually coming out, rather than just barking and really wanting to find out and perfect that. That's that's unbelievable. But you got guys like me who are just trying to grow in scale. And in 23, I had a 25 plus people, and we were going every which direction but forward. And it was on me to go, hey dude, figure out the systems. And so where I'm going with this to lead up to my question is what are some of the largest patterns you would see or breakdowns that you commonly see within I'm in our we're in our 10th year, so in that zero to 10 year realm, and I think that's probably most of our audience. So what are the same common just breakdowns and how these companies operate day to day that we are all beating our head up against the wall that you could help us through here?

SPEAKER_01: 15:18

Yeah. Do you do you care if I just give you the whole playbook? Do it. It may get pretty detailed, so pull so pull me in. But um two, three, four. That's what I want to you to remember. Two, three, four, two, three, four. Two systems one information, one action. An information system and an action system. That's the two systems. Three are three actions. These are three actions that you as a leader in your business should take every single day. You should learn and grow in these skill sets. The three actions are clarify, improve, and coach. And then and then the four is four daily routines. And whenever I say that, I've I've often uh I'll get like, I don't have I don't have time for one routine. What do you mean four routines? Uh but just trust me for a second. The four routines are a process for planning, a process for improvement, a process for reflection, and a process for preparation. Two, three, four. Two systems, three actions, four routines. That that's like none of that costs money, by the way. I'm not trying to sell you anything. There's nothing here. This is just purely information that you can absolutely act on. Um, and so to answer your question, those three actions, if we think about those three actions really quick, clarify. Um whenever I say clarify, I mean make it visible. One of the biggest things you can do for your business is to make your systems and processes visible. And and that is I visited dozens of job sites this year across all of North America, and so often how people how hundred million dollar businesses in excavation. So it's not like you have to do what I'm saying. I'm just saying they have headaches. Uh$100 million in businesses are using sticky notes and notebooks to keep their project information um between seven of their project managers. So then they're having daily meetings that last 90 minutes long, and as soon as that meeting's over, guess what? The whole thing is pointless. One phone call happens, information changes, you don't find out until the next meeting. And so it's just hidden. That's what I want you to hear. The the information, the work, the communication, it's hidden. And to clarify something means to make it visible. And so we go back to the two systems. We need a system for information, we need to make the information visible, we need a system for actions, we need to make the actions visible. I'll stop for a second and dude, I'll let you breathe.

SPEAKER_00: 18:10

I am, I am, no, I am soaking it all in because literally, as I was writing this, I was thinking, I mean, he said the playbook, uh well, I I would pick you apart, but there is disciplines that I have had to learn in my own life. I'm a father of three. And if I want to be a part of their life, there's some non-negotiable time that I have to set, even if something explodes in the business, they deserve to add to be there. And so um, shout out to Mr. Newland. He he gave me that a couple of years ago, and it has changed my life. But some of these things that you're listening, yeah, I mean, I had to change up my daily routines. I didn't just get to get out of bed at whatever time. It is this time you are up because you have all of this to do before you even get there, man. And that's just one simple little discipline, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01: 19:05

But the act can I also say yes, the reason you get up at whatever time it is that you get up is because you have clarified your purpose as to why you need to get up. So good, my dude. So you've made it visible. Well, even if it's just in your head, you've made it visible, you've made the purpose visible, and so now you're acting on it. Yeah, keep going.

SPEAKER_00: 19:24

No, I and the other thing I was gonna say is how important the zero to ten year guy is building visibility and transparency to the teams that you're freaking building. I wish I would have understood that I was only hurting myself. Oh, well, we have these folders for ops and we have these folders for admin, they can't see this, this can't see that. And once you make it fully transparent and everybody sees, hey, here's the profit, here's what we stand to make. And when margins are really thin, if we smoke a gas line on a smaller margin job like we did yesterday, hey guys, we lost all the profit on this job on day two because somebody didn't want to move a little bit of spoil out of the way. And but now we go out there, we talk about it. We're gonna freaking talk about it on Monday in front of everybody. Video, go over what did we do that we could have possibly. I know that sounds so small, but it it's those systems that build the transparency. Why are they gonna sit there and listen to me? Because they know we just smoked our entire profit hissing into the air as the gas was blowing. And we don't hit stuff, man. We really don't. We're very we've had a water main and and this gas main this year, and four to five crews rocking between four or five counties pretty quickly. You can you can start damaging some stuff. But we we train, man. But the visibility and transparency, I looked at my project manager, he was so embarrassed to tell me that you know, two of these, our main guys, uh, just had a brain fart and going a little too fast, and there's no reason to be going this fast, especially not right now. And I looked at him and I said, Hey man, you know the contract total. If they send us a$5,000 bill for fixing that gas main, how much profit's left on this job? And his face went white. And I'm like, but that's but it's not just me sitting here screaming as an owner, hey guys, we're freaking broke. Everything's super tight, we got to make what we got work. They're pushing back because I'll be honest with you, man. I gave them everything. I I wanted them to have everything nice, and I was swiping credit cards and racking this up and doing this, but they had everything. And now it's a couple years later where everything's either a little worn out, or half of it's uh been sticky fingered away or dropped in a hole or whatever it may be. That's again, my own system's failing myself because I could have a tool inventory system like we do now. But either way, my dude, it's building that transparency that, hey, this small tool line item right here that we got to keep replacing affects the profitability of the business sitting in a room collectively, building the transparency of hey, here's our own internal pre-con, here's our production rates, here's what we can make. If you go over that, go do it. It's that simple. And the results from that is so freeing. But I'm I'm telling you, the zero to 10 guy, 10-year guy is he can't get it through his head. And the guys that do before they hit 10 are the guys that are absolutely moving and grooving. Uh, I'll give a shout out to uh you know Black Mountain. That dude has built a team on he's on media as well through TikTok and whatnot, and they they've come out of nowhere. Like literally, boom. And it's it's all about building a team, holding people accountable, and building transparency within the business so we're all moving towards the same common goal. That's what I have learned where I screwed up in the first eight years of business.

SPEAKER_01: 23:12

Let's talk about uh holding people accountable. This this is a really practical. This was Herb's uh greatest thing that he took away from coaching with us. Um, so there's a tool, we'll call it a tool, um, that you can use called success statements. Have you ever heard of success statements? It's essentially uh just a description of an outcome. A description of an outcome. It's one sentence that's a description of an outcome. So if you hired me to be a project manager, what are what are three categories of responsibility that you would uh give me as your project manager? What would you say my responsibilities as a project manager are?

SPEAKER_00: 23:53

Uh scheduling, number one. Number two, um, definitely all duties of the job, meaning equipment and manpower. And then probably number three is ensuring that uh we're staying on budget with within the estimated non-estimated cost.

SPEAKER_01: 24:14

Love it. Let's talk about scheduling. Let's use this just as an example. What do you want to be true about the schedule?

SPEAKER_00: 24:23

I want I want it done under the time we've allotted in the estimate. That's what I want to be true. Uh, but that's not always the case, right? So I would say every single day, how many days we've spent, I want the estimate to show how many days we estimated with, and I want, and this is really truly what happens now as the schedule is going, they they are racing that same bar, and once they get there and they're like, Well, I still got 300 feet left.

SPEAKER_01: 24:56

So tell me how would you describe it if if I'm a brand new project manager, you just hired me on your team. Okay, how would you describe what you want to be true about scheduling? One sentence. I couldn't even uh uh what would be the greatest indicator of success about scheduling if you understand on true you knew you would know that I'm doing my job. Uh if it was visible, but I don't know where you're going, honest to God. Maybe even just like uh, you know, the schedule is is on time, on budget, whatever. You could say on time, you could say within five percent of our estimate. Um you know, you have some sort of parameters for what the outcome, the desired outcome is for scheduling. Have some sort of parameter, one thing, and then we want to be able to say we want to be able to evaluate that outcome. Is it true? Is it consistently true? If we look at this weekly, is it consistently true? Is it inconsistently true, meaning it peters up and down every other week? Or is it not true at all? And we need to figure out how to get to true. So, success statements fundamentally, if I were just to summarize it for um your entire audience, this is what Herb applied for Sargent. Um, it's being able to say it's it's a way in which you can systematically hold your team accountable to their role. Every role on your team needs three to five success statements. Uh each of those success statements is one sentence that describes the desired outcome. It describes what you want to be true, period. So you should be able to look at that sentence and say, is that not true? Is it inconsistently true, or is it consistently true? And then and then what do you do? Well, then now you have a way in which you can evaluate that person. Even if it's a little subjective, you you make make it clear, you have the written sentence that's visible. It's not just in someone's head like scheduling. It's like a specific sentence that we can break down and beat up on and be like, what does this even mean? Are we on the same page as to what success looks like for scheduling? Or do you have something in your head and I have something in my head, and now the standard's not clear? It's not clear because it's not visible. If we can make it visible, write out the sentence and evaluate it, regular, green, not true and consistently true, consistently true, regular, green, visible. That's how you make things, that's how you hold people accountable. They don't even need you to come and rate them and evaluate them. They can constantly come back to this visible standard and say, I know I'm not green right now. I'm probably yellow. I need to figure out what do I need to go do to get from yellow to green. I'm red right now. What do I need to do to get from red to yellow? It's that it's that simple. That is free. You don't need a tool for that, you don't need to buy anything for that, right? It's just a way in which you're working. So that all if we if we zoom out for a second, let's take a couple steps back. If we zoom out for a second, what did we do? All we really did was two things. We clarified and we improved. We made visible, we made information visible, and now we can hold someone accountable to that information. It gives them direction for act taking action in their job. So that's clarified. That's a role, that's a skill set of a leader. And then we made it an improvement because now it's actually easier for that person to do their job effectively to the standard that we want them to do it. So it's easier for them to do their job and they're clear, they're visible on what it is that they should be doing. Cost no money.

SPEAKER_00: 28:44

I would completely agree with all of that. I mean, I love the thought process of a success statement because it gives them goal and direction without you ever having to hover. Hey, uh, and it's I love self-evaluation. I did I started that on our we do 30, 90-day UVAWs, and then we we do yearly UVOLs uh and or with our supers. I've learned this over the last two years. I wish I'd have started this sooner as well, is you know, career roadmaps. Like give these guys an idea into your head where they can play a role in this business one, three, and five years from here. Like, this is where you're going. I want you to make sure this is clear on paper. I want you to sign it, me to sign it, so you understand what you're working towards. And but even down to the project level, hey, I see where you're going. Under time and under budget would be my one sentence, of course, every single time. But literally, if you could break that down to hey, I know gravel's a huge swinger on this job. Can we keep it within 5% or less? Can we make sure there is like hardly any waste left? Can we run a gravel bucket or a bedding box to ensure that? When we're yeah, there's just zero chance for waste. And if we can keep that under 5%, there's this, or whatever the case may be. I can see, hey, if you meet this production rate, that's great. You'll be in the green. But if you can get anything plus this per day, it's going to add this amount of time. And if we know that from the front of the office, we can build that into the job that is important to the customer as well. Now we're taking priority to the customer. While like I can see so much value in that thought process. There's no doubt about it. And especially applying it to the civil world. And it's it's not abundantly overly complicated. It's having a good foundation of principles to come back to, two, three, four, like you said. And I I'm gonna implement it. I'm pretty excited that you were willing to just give the old playbook to the audience because there's so many men and women out there, dude, just trying to figure this out. You know, Sergeant was, I think there's 50. Uh, how many years have they been in business? I mean, it's been a long time. But either way, these most of these guys are just trying to eventually one day get there, and they're getting punched every six months, every six days with something new from that one to three-year role. Now, from three to seven, they're trying to figure out this profit train. Oh, we may be chasing a little too much revenue, Cy Kirby, and you may need to reel that back in. And once you get past that seven-year mark, and and you really start going through all this self-realization on the back end of it. But there's there's these guys in the in that five before that five-year mark that are still just absolutely full sending it straightforward. Kudos to you, but just have some foundational principles to make sure you are watching what's important because there is so many things that come at these owners every single day. And even, you know, like new flashy software, new this, this is gonna improve this efficiency here. Hey, and then you finally sell, you know, say something that's really been a trigger for them over the last six months, and they can take their attention over here. And oh, we're gonna get this implemented. Well, are you profitable on your jobs? Have we paid attention over there? I know this is gonna help in six, eight months, but what's going on right now? Have we been checking our whip report? Do we have a PM in place? Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 32:28

Oh man, one of the things about a mentor, a mentor of mine, his name is Paul Akers. He wrote a book called Two Second Lean. Um, and I highly recommend it. You can literally go to his website, download all of his books for free. He does everything for great YouTube channel as well. Um, but one of the things that he always says, and this is such a lean mindset, is use your wits, not your wallet. And if you use your wallet, it's because you're using your wits. Don't address a problem with your wallet. Address a problem with your wits. Think about the problem and figure out the best solution. Maybe you have to use your wallet, but let that be a witty solution, not a wallet-driven solution that you're just gonna throw money at it. So often I see people hire hire people and it being a wallet solution and not a witty solution. Really, where they need they probably need some systems and processes to hold them accountable inside of their existing structure. They don't need another person on their salary in their headcount that's straining the business.

SPEAKER_00: 33:31

Man, you're preaching to the choir here, might be like I learned the hard way, you know. We had seven or eight people in the office, and you know, a lot of them would have soared if I had what I have in place nowadays. You know what I mean? And so you just kick yourself, you're like, oh man, did I lose those people? But the one thing I try to when I get into that mindset, the one quote is uh don't judge yourself on yesterday's decisions with today's wisdom. And I've had to go through so much to get to this point, and I I get kind of down on myself, well, man, if I was doing this two years ago, so and so, what if this could have been? But it is what it is. You're here now and in the present, and having to prioritize every single moment. That superintendent who you thought two years ago wasn't going to make it three months is now the guy that's running the show, and you may have to get used to that and figure out how to adapt to his uh learning ability or his, you know, be able to deliver information to him differently than the other two studs that you thought were studs, but actually when you started looking in paper, they weren't so studly, they were actually costing you money, and it it's it's crazy. But the wallet and woody solution is kind of where I was going with that. I can be an absolute uh advocate for that because in the first five years, especially younger, don't know what you're doing, you'll throw money at anything. When you got money in the bank and there's revenue flowing, it's just, oh, I got that, whatever, yeah, a couple K, 10K, whatever. Just get it done, get it done, get it done. And man, before you know it, you can't be throwing your wallet around and you're having to get witty. So I would definitely grab a hold of that as a solution for both ways. Use that mindset. You got here by being nimble and and moving your way through what we call business. Don't, when you hit a problem, just throw your freaking wallet at it. I I love that analogy, man.

SPEAKER_01: 35:38

Yeah. Can we talk about the two systems?

SPEAKER_00: 35:41

Please, information or actions.

SPEAKER_01: 35:43

Yeah, let's talk. Do you mind if we beat up on your business? Please, go ahead. Tell me about where you keep project information. Is it in sticky notes, notepads, notebooks? Online, Word docs.

SPEAKER_00: 35:57

Uh, couple of years ago was an organized file structure that was visible within the admin team and the project management. Uh in the last week, okay, that'd have been three, four years ago at this point. We went all the way. Remember when I was talking about, hey guys, you see this shiny object? Well, Procor sunk their hook in the side of my mouth. And I paid for that crap for two years. And don't get me wrong, it is incredible at what it does for very specific uh contractors across the country, but it is very unforgiving and it's very hard to implement and it's very field heavy. And, you know, when you're trying to run lean, you don't have three people sitting around in trucks documenting every time when somebody goes to the Porta John or not. And like you still need to have daily documentation. But to answer your question, my dude, everything's in Builder's Trend now. We've stepped down. I was paying a lot of money to Procor, and we still didn't even have scheduling. And shout out to Builder's Trend. They actually just uh, I think because we were on a podcast speaking about Builder's Trend, got our financial piece added on just out of the blue last month. So shout out to them. But everything is housed within Builder's Trend from the contract point forward. Um, everything on what we call fantasy land that the boys never need to hear about, but we're selling is actually on Monday.com. Awesome, wonderful.

SPEAKER_01: 37:28

Okay, so fantastic. The fact that you could actually give me a place where you store that information, it's wonderful. Um, often like I I've had a client before, whenever they first started with me, and he just started holding up notebooks and like sticking it up.

SPEAKER_00: 37:42

Hey, I was like, looking up my daily notebooks.

SPEAKER_01: 37:44

Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. Scratch pads are great, and don't let that be the thing that has all of your business's information for moving projects forward. Um here's here's what I'll say. Have you ever heard of that this is this is gonna be super tangential? Pulling from a Herb Sargent idea of let's look outward to other industries. Have you ever heard of Mise en plus? Do you know what that means? No, sir. That's like um uh so in the restaurant world, in the kitchen world, in the chef and cook world, French restaurants, mise en plus, it's a it's a uh, I don't know, it's a French, it means everything is in its place. Got it. Everything is in its place. If you've ever been to like a super fancy, fine dining kitchen, I don't know, some restaurant that's really expensive and costs more than you want to pay, go to their kitchen and and they are practicing something called misenplos, which just simply means everything has a home, everything is in its place. It's it's like having a toolbox that's uh has a shadow board behind it, you know, everything's foamed out. It's like, oh, every single wrench, every single socket has its home and it's labeled like that's meseenplos. I want you to think about that for your information system. Everything needs a home. Where does this information go? I want to be able to go to one place to see to see or access everything with one project. That's the if you think about like from a success statement idea, like what is the goal of our information system? I want to be able to go to one place for one project and see every single bit of detailed information or be able to quickly access it from that one place, every single bit of detailed information associated with that project. Who's the project manager? Who's the foreman? Who's the estimator? Who's the uh customer? Who's the customer contact? Who's the customer's customer? Who um, you know, it doesn't matter. Like who are all the vendors associated with this? What are all the invoices? What are all the change orders? Um and and you can totally do this on Monday. You could build this yourself. The point is everything needs a home and your information needs a home. And the more you can kind of categorize it per project, every project should have a home. And maybe it links to Builder Trend, and maybe it links to whatever, however, you know, whatever other tools that you have in your system. Um, but your information system needs to come back to this Misinplos idea where everything has a home, every project has one home. A project should not live in someone's notebooks and Monday.com and Builder's Trend and your Gmail. It should live in one place. All the information should be in one place. Now it may uh link to those other places, but I should be able to find it and access it in that one place.

SPEAKER_00: 40:39

No, I I completely agree. Everything should have its own, and it takes some time to figure out why. Um, you know, I I referenced, so I'll jump on two things you said, and I referenced earlier, you know, Monday.com was for like more of the fantasy land and the CRM. That stuff really never gets pushed past, you know, contract. So we it's so hard when you're getting everything thrown at you. You know, we jumped onto that Pro Core train thinking that, oh, we're gonna be able to get a lead in the door and run it through contract and everything schedule and all this stuff, and it just wasn't, it just wasn't that. And when you're trying to, it's so hard to find one thing, one-stop shops anymore. You know, there's a bunch of things out there that are really good at what they do, but really terrible on other ends of the coin. And so, Builder's trend, we have looked at it from a project management system. Everything lives within the files, all the plans, all the stamped plans, uh, production rates, the schedule. Basically, Dylan builds a schedule on the estimating side uh of Monday, and he carries that over and gives them a template as a superintendent. Hey, look, this is what I bid it like. Let us know, shoot us back a schedule once you get it built in Builder's Trend, and they're building their own schedule off of the days that were, you know, set in our estimated costs. And he may come back to us and go, boys, what do you mean I got seven days to do this? This is 14 days all day. And okay, but here we've got 21 days. Can we shave off? And so we're already talking about the profitability. Yes, how you bid a job is you want to go do it exactly the way you bid it, but about 70% of the time it's gonna change up before you even get on site. And so you want that field operations team to be able to set their own schedule, number one, but be talking back to the estimator before they get there, make sure they have a good understanding of the best pathway forward. And so we have found to keep fantasy land, everything leads, sources, uh, what we do in our marketing, all of that back up in the front of the office. But once it hits that point of contract, from schedule to punch out to finaling out, everything is umbrellaed up there. And the guys hop on there every single day. We do a daily log. What do we do? Who do we talk to? What machines? How many hours? Give me 10 pictures. Like, I want production data because but here's the other thing. We ask them to put their production data. Hey, I laid a hundred foot on this job and I did it with these guys, but these pieces of equipment, and now it's closing the loop back to the estimator. And so when times get tough and you have to get lean, the market gets lean, now your estimator knows exactly on the last three to six jobs. Okay, if I have this 210 and this wheel loader, I can get 260 feet in the ground, averaged just fine. Yeah, they had some bad days, but there were road crossings and whatever. This job looks identical or similar to and move forward. So I can 100% attest to one-stop shop for your project management data. I will tell you, audience, that I would not go looking for a CRM and a project management software together. It's just gonna get too conjumbled. Your guys are gonna go, well, what about this job I see here? And no, that's we're budgeting that for where we have 40% CDs. Get that out of your head. Like, it doesn't even need to be on the plat. So, um, but yeah, no, dude, the file systems and organization, nah, dude, there's so many better softwares out there to house everything. Last point I want to say is that what we have been sitting here talking about, none of it helps you unless you're willing to hold people accountable about the data going into. So um, that was kind of my main thing. And maybe we can put a success statement uh in regard to builder's trend, and maybe I can enact that to make sure we don't miss. I'm not gonna say we sit here and do it every day perfect every single week. There's weeks that they run hard. There, there's weeks they run late and then they catch it up on a couple of days, but it's so important to have it down every single freaking day. Yeah. After the why? Oh, because I don't want them to have a friggin' sleep, man. I don't want them to go home and forget it, you know. Uh, and it's not uh, oh, we laid 180 feet. No, I want to know about the engineer inspector that came and weasel around and cost us two hours. And he changed tried to change the plan up, and nobody knew about that until I caught an email three days later. I went back and looked at your log and he was on your site. I would have never known. But you forgot because you slept and it's Thursday, and I filled out the report. That's a that's just plain experience. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01: 45:53

So I'm gonna I'm gonna do uh a little bit of rapid fire here. So your audience may need to pause, take notes, whatever else. So we talked about information system. Uh the reason I call it an information system, and I'm not saying Monday.com and I'm not saying builders trend, blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying all these tools, is because it's just that. Those are all tools. You can build your own information system. The point is you want to be able to go to one place, find the information that you need. You don't need to go searching for it. If you're searching for it, then it's hidden and not visible. If you have to search for it, it's hidden and not visible. Okay, get away from system, uh, information system. Next one is an action system. Again, visible, not hidden. How do you currently keep track of what you're supposed to do every day? And what are your tasks? What's your task system?

SPEAKER_00: 46:36

Yeah. So I've got tasks on Monday for you know, up at the front of the house. On I still make lists, daily lists, and uh weekly lists, high points of what I need to be focused on. Daily lists off of those weekly lists. And I know that may sound elementary, but that's that's the truth. That's that's it.

SPEAKER_01: 47:01

So have you ever read uh I'll give a resource Getting Things Done by David Allen? No, I love it. Great resource. Uh, I would even go further and be like, he goes crazy detailed into applying his specific system. Um let me ask you another question. I'm trying to help you, Cy. Do y'all for email, do y'all use Microsoft or Google? We are Outlook. Outlook, awesome. So Microsoft has a uh product called Microsoft To Do. I'm pretty sure you already pay for it if you're already paying for Outlook. Um, I would use Microsoft To Do uh instead of your notepad. Um, because what you can start to do is create standard lists, daily lists, weekly lists. You can put out, hey, I don't actually I need to capture this thing. I need to put it somewhere into my head. I'm thinking about it. I need to get it out of my head and put it somewhere. And uh and then I can go and organize and say, yeah, that's a thing that I can do next month. And so now it's somewhere, it's in a trusted system rather than having to live in your head. So one of the things that um David Allen talks about in getting things done, and I look over here because I have this massive bookshelf. Uh, David, David Allen talks about his system is kind of um, or I should say like his process for action is kind of three steps. He has more steps, but this is the simplest uh version. This is the lean version of getting things done. Uh, number one is capture, meaning anytime you have an idea or anytime you you have a to-do or someone asks you to do something, you need to be able to capture it in a trusted system. Uh you need to know that when I capture this, it's not gonna get lost. I'm gonna be able to come back to it. Okay, so capture is number one. Um that could be Microsoft to-do if you're using Outlook for your audience. If you're not using Outlook, if you're using something like Gmail, I don't recommend Google Tasks. I recommend something like to-doist. Um, it's a really good, simple. All you're looking for is a simple, uh, clean checklist manager. Like you need a checklist, it's a to-do thing. Um, you're creating it on your yellow bad. It's awesome. I would just suggest that it's even easier with uh uh on Microsoft To Do. Um so to-do list for Google users, Microsoft to do for Microsoft users, awesome, super cheap or free if you're already paying for it. Um so number one, capture. Capture it into your trusted system. Number two is organize. Organize could be like, I need to uh get this out of the capturing inbox of my system and put it either into a project or a uh scope of work or give it a due date. I need to I need to get it out of the capturing inbox, meaning I need to do something with it, or I need to delete it. Maybe it was just a harebrain idea that I need to be like, uh, yeah, we're not we're not doing that. So that's part of organize. So capture, organize, and review. And then the third step is review. So that's just being able to say, okay, um, for today, at the beginning of my day, I want to see what actions are at the top of my list today based on what I've said today. Like I need to maybe pull some things into today's due date, or what I've historically have said that I need to do on October 22nd. Uh, what are those things at the top of that list? It's really hard to do that with a notepad uh because you can't manipulate it. Uh it's all kind of written down on a piece of paper. But if you do it on something like a Microsoft To-do or a to-do list, it's obviously way, way easier.

SPEAKER_00: 50:40

But if you if you had it on a to-do list, you could probably, you know, it gets a lot of these guys nervous because as soon as you say something like that, I go, hmm, yeah, that's a really good idea. Thought about it 85 times. Why have I not done it yet? Well, we used to be able to use the excuse of, well, I got to take time and actually do it. No, guys, you don't anymore. You can pick up the phone and use old Mr. Chad, GPT, is what I promote Chad, and go, hey man, build me some templates that and I can take a picture of my list. I don't even have to type it anymore. 100% and use a prompt in Chad GPT. Hey, take this list, organize it so I can put it into Microsoft to do, slide it over, and I I will put it down as a discipline that I need to it would integrate so well with everything else that I'm doing in my life. Why I don't know I haven't done that. I'm sitting here kicking myself, but at the same time, you can use things like that. Hey, Chat GPT, give me a weekly template with the things that I just sent in this picture. It's really that easy, guys, and it's at the palm of your hand. And I encourage you, you blue-collar guys. I know you got some of you guys probably listening to this show. Man, si, why are you preaching about AI? Because the blue-collar tradesmen that figure out AI, that it literally unlocks the admin door for you guys. 100% that never even thought that you could handle anything admin. Well, now you can. You don't need anybody's help. You've got somebody in the palm of your freaking pocket to be able to teach you that has every degree possible at any university right there. Just utilize it. And it's things as easy as transferring your to-do list or hey, I need to make an Excel spreadsheet or whatever it may be. Just seamlessly integrate that. Don't sit there and kick yourself. Well, I need to be doing that. And guess what? If you let it go for a week or two, ask chat again, hey, help me clean this up to-do list. I'm done with half of this. It'll do it for you. And then make corrections and start over.

SPEAKER_01: 52:49

And here's here's one of the things you may tell you what I did uh this morning. I'm putting together a little bit of like a one-day prospecting road trip just around my area. Um, just because I'm like, hey, I want to serve some folks that are kind of my nayers. And so I'm just gonna go deliver coffee, donuts, whatever, shake hands, introduce myself. All I did was say, hey, I have this, I have these businesses that I'm looking at. Uh take this list and make me a route and a map and a timeline for where I should go to get back home by this time. So, and then it's just plans my day for me. It's like, okay, go here, spend 30 minutes there, then go to this next destination. Oh, by the way, you gave me this list, but maybe you should also add this one. You know, that's what it did for me. And so it came up with a whole kind of prospecting uh trip for me.

SPEAKER_00: 53:38

It's crazy. Truck routes. Chad GBT, literally, I've I've it's a language learning model type of AI, guys. You're teaching it constantly. So as I ask you questions about SyCon, we have enough online presence blogs for it to go grab. It understands that we're a civil construction company, already suggests it's crazy. It is absolutely crazy. I challenge a lot of my guys around the office or the field. Hey, use it every single day. Or even in this application, I'll have somebody, uh, a foreman or a super, hey, will you check my math on gravel or will you check my math on concrete? No, what I want you to do is you know it's length times width times height. I understand you're confused on whatever number to divide it by, to tape it. Just pick up your phone, Chad GPT. I have these measurements, I need the volume and concrete. And it will literally list it all out exactly how it got there and teach you exactly how to do it next time and just screenshot it for next time and then plug and play your numbers. And you just taught yourself. And and and and the largest thing in the skilled trades and blue-collar world is training, man. Training is the most expensive, that in downtime for guys like myself that own a bunch of equipment. But training, oh my Atlanta, it drives me crazy. And then, you know, we've started an internal video training program as we're building video for external at this at the same time. So now these new hires got to sit there for 30 minutes. It's about five, 10 minutes of video, listening to me complain about my nitpickiness of hey, you get out of a freaking truck, you better have a hard hat on. I don't care if you're in the middle of the Sahara Desert, if you're out of our truck, getting paid on our time, you wear a hard hat. It's a representation thing that we do, whether you're on a job site, active or not. That's what we are. That's who we are. And it's those little things that they don't feel like that first interaction after hiring them. Hey, why aren't you wearing your hard hat? Well, nobody freaking told me. You know, my superintendent was just waiting for you to show up and laugh about it. You know what I mean? You got to teach this mindset. And then, hey, these training videos, guys that have been here, you need to know what these mean and what they're coming in and hold them accountable and and to that standard. But it's those little things, dude, that you know, we're trying to change the pathway forward and do things differently.

SPEAKER_01: 56:12

Yeah. The last thing I would I would kind of leave your audience with, the thing I'm constantly telling my customers, constantly, is every time you catch yourself communicating verbally, ask yourself how you can communicate visibly. Every time you can you communicate verbally, ask yourself how you can communicate visibly. Verbal communication is good, necessary, it's not great, because as soon as you say it, it's gone. You make videos, you make videos for your team. You just said that. You are making that information visible and accessible at any time, right? Not only did can they access it now, whenever they're going through the training, maybe you give them the link or a QR code, uh, you know, so they can scan it in the field next to the tool on the side of the truck. You whatever, right? You make it super accessible, you make it visible. Um lean, here's the here's the deal at the end of the day, y'all. Lean is just a way of thinking and acting. And you can either think uh precise and clearly, or you can think fat and sloppy. Um, and lean is the former of the two. It's just how do how do you think, how do you act and behave and think in such a way that is not sloppy, it's not uh wasteful, and start moving in that direction. It's a daily, daily journey.

SPEAKER_00: 57:40

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. They specialize in comprehensive digital marketing services from paid advertising on Google and Facebook to website development and content strategy. 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. 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. 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. Thanks, guys. Dude, I have loved our conversation today. I hope it helps so many. I've got one last question for you that I ask every single episode. We are in the 60s now. It's kind of crazy, episode count-wise, but what's the takeaway for the blue-collar worker who's just sick and tired of being stuck in the mud, man? Mentally, emotionally, physically, no better person to get this from. Um, what would your piece of advice for them be?

SPEAKER_01: 59:03

I think it's really important to understand why it is that you wake up every day. I think, kind of going back to what you said this morning, why is it important for you to get out of bed when you get out of bed? It's your purpose. Uh, who are you serving? Who's most important to you? Um go back to what we said throughout this whole episode. Clarify that, make it visible, put it on a sticky note in the mirror in your bathroom, uh, put it on the background of your phone so you constantly see it. You have to do these things to remind yourself because we will so often come again against problems and things that are frankly just painful. Um, that is going to distract us from doing what we were here, put here to do. Uh, and we just got to constantly remind ourselves of that. Remind yourselves of the purpose, clarify your purpose, make it visible, start there, and then you can go to goals and everything else, but um start with your purpose.

SPEAKER_00: 59:59

No, I couldn't agree. More man. Kiddos, beautiful wife, get up, got to serve them. And right in the, you know, of course, God above them, but literally below them is a whole bunch of other families that depend on me to get up and go do what I need to do every single day. So money shows up so they can get paid on Friday. And uh whether that be our own guys or subcontractors, vendors, whatever it may be, but uh and the relationships you have with each and every one of those people I just listed. So well, Zach, I can't thank you enough for your time. Um I likewise the 234 rule, love that. It's all about visibility and transparency within your business and systems to hold people accountable and don't be scared. Um guys, as entrepreneurs, to to reach out and try something new. Zach, if they want to reach out to you, where would they do that, my guy?

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:55

Yeah, you can go to leandirt.com uh or you can follow me on LinkedIn. Either way, on both of those platforms, I'm pretty sure uh I offer my phone number, so give me a call, text me, what's at me? Um, I'm highly reachable.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:10

Well, seriously, guys, till next time. I hope you guys are winding down your year, getting ready for the holidays. It's coming up uh at the end of this episode, if you wouldn't mind, dropping us a rating or a following on whatever spot um Spotify, iHeart, Amazon, iTunes, iPodcast, I think is what it is. I may have jacked that one up. Whatever streaming platform you guys are on, I really appreciate you tuning in for another episode or dropping every Wednesday, just as usual. Uh, if you don't have a subscription and you've caught us on a short, grab us at blue collarbusinesspodcast.com. You can watch or listen directly from there, completely free, no subscription needed. Guys, really appreciate you, Zach. And guys, till next time, be safe and be kind. 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. Who do you want to hear from? Send them our way, and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. Till next time, guys.