The SiteVisit

You Get the Culture You Deserve: Hard Truths for Leaders with John Nieuwenburg, W5 Business Coaching

• James Faulkner • Season 6 • Episode 177

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Imagine mastering your craft for years, then discovering that running a business requires an entirely different skillset you never learned. That's the reality for thousands of construction business owners who find themselves trapped in what business coach John Neuenberg calls the "E-Myth" - the entrepreneurial myth that technical expertise automatically translates to business success.

Drawing from his experience coaching over 320 blue-collar businesses, John unravels why construction companies struggle to scale beyond the founding owner's capacity. The conversation explores a powerful framework: systems run the business, people run the systems, and the owner leads the people. Without this structure, construction companies find themselves perpetually putting out fires instead of building profitable operations.

The discussion dives deep into culture formation, revealing that "you don't get the culture you want; you get the culture you deserve." John explains how business owners who focus exclusively on customer acquisition while neglecting team development create fundamentally imbalanced companies. Through practical examples and compelling metaphors, he demonstrates why the complexity of relationships grows exponentially as teams expand - requiring systematic approaches rather than heroic individual efforts.

Whether you're running a thriving construction company or still working with "a truck and a helper," this episode provides invaluable guidance on building systems that scale, developing recruitment strategies that work, and maintaining your sanity along the way. Tune in to learn how to transform your construction business from dependent on you to working for you.

PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
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the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
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Speaker 1:

All right, John Neuenberg, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing. Great Thanks for asking how about you?

Speaker 1:

I'm doing well. You're in sunny Kelowna. Is it sunny there right now? Should be.

Speaker 2:

It is so sunshine, the weather's getting better and golf is getting better as a result as well.

Speaker 1:

Do you go to Sun Peaks?

Speaker 2:

No, I don't ski anymore, but we spend three and a half months in Scottsdale because the golf and the weather are better there.

Speaker 1:

Oh, scottsdale, yeah, golf in the desert is amazing. I love it. I really do. There's no more chunking shots. You got that horrible turf up here. That's just like clay underneath. It's horrible.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well the thing about golf is that, no matter what, there's always room for improvement.

Speaker 1:

I'll say so, yeah, well, the thing about golf is that, no matter what, there's always room for improvement. I'll say so. Today we're going to talk. You are a business coach and you've coached many construction professionals on how to scale their business, how to do recruiting, and we're going to talk about that because this is something that people don't really know that they need.

Speaker 1:

it's kind of like um massage therapy people walk around injured all the time, don't realize you got to get in there and uh work out those uh knots, yeah and um, yeah, so really excited to talk to you about that and you have been doing the students since, so it's quite a long time.

Speaker 1:

Got some history got some experience. Yeah, and 320 businesses of experience you've been doing this for. You were saying anywhere between two to five years of sort of account cycle that you have with customers, sometimes maybe a little bit longer, your clients. So, yeah, pretty interested to talk to you about a number of things related to the blue collar industry. Yeah, so pretty excited. Awesome, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast, leadership and perspective from construction with your host, james Faulkner. Business as usual, as it has been for so long. Now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button. You know you read all the books you read the evening. You read Scaling Up, you read Good to Great. You know I could go on. We've got to a place where we found the secret serum.

Speaker 3:

We found the secret potion. We can get the workers in. We know where to get them.

Speaker 2:

Once I was on a job site for a while.

Speaker 1:

Actually, we had a semester concrete and I ordered a Korean-Finnish patio out front of the site show. Yesterday I was down at Dallas and a guy just hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the Favorite Connect platform on your guys' podcast Own it, crush it and love it, and we celebrate these values every single day. Let's get down to it. Okay, john, let's talk coaching. Why do people need coaching? Like, what's the deal In construction? What are you finding, what are the trends and what are you noticing out there that people think people either do or they don't realize they need your services?

Speaker 2:

You know, there's a great book that every entrepreneur should read. Every blue collar business owner ought to read the E-Myth.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I remember the E-Myth.

Speaker 2:

And the E-Myth is the entrepreneurial myth. And the entrepreneurial myth is just because you're a good technician doesn't mean you're good at the business of the technical work. So the story in the book is Sarah loved baking cherry pies. She loved it so much she opened a bakery. Then she found out just because she was good at baking didn't mean that she knew how to run a bakery. So how long does it take to become a Red Seal certified electrician? Five years, something like. How much business training did you get during that? Five years Zero.

Speaker 1:

So you're good as an electrician, but you've never had any business training, can you see what the problem is?

Speaker 2:

Oh, I totally see what the problem is so why do you need a coach? Because you need someone to help you become better at business.

Speaker 1:

And how long do you find people have been in business before they realize the thing's on fire and they need to find somebody, and then they come across you.

Speaker 2:

You know that's a great question. It can vary a lot. You know, typically what happens is somebody gets a truck and a helper and that becomes two trucks and three trucks and four trucks. And typically what happens is they get to a place where they're stressed to the max, they have run out of ideas and they don't know how to solve the problems that are in front of them. And the question they ask themselves is when did I last feel I was in control of this business? How do I get back to that place where it seemed a little easier? Do I get back to that place where it seemed a little easier? And a lot of times that's what happens.

Speaker 2:

A lot of times, though, the owner then says well, that's not going to work, that's not for me. I need to figure this out. How can I get some help? And that's when they start looking for someone to help them an advisor, a coach, mentor, maybe someone who's been in the industry for 30 years. But at some point you can't do it. People recognize they can't do it on their own, or what's the definition of insanity? Oh yeah, the same thing again, because it's not working.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's interesting, especially when you said that you know they start with a truck and then they said that they start with a truck and then they get another truck. I always find that when a business is more rooted in the actual trade, that specific skill, as opposed to a general contractor, which a lot of people are going to BCIT and going to project management school etc. There's more structure there and there's more best practices, if you will, whereas as a trade you can start with none of those and just like go and do the thing and the thing's going to get you some money pretty quick because there's a big demand for that stuff and you might undercut just because if you've got a smaller team. But then when you start to, I find that on the sub trade side side, there's a lot of inventions that are going on for process and those inventions are not necessarily they something that they have found via uh examples or going to seminars, or these are inventions that they've made themselves.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, ad hoc chicken wire, it's totally ad hoc. And what I find strange about it, as those processes become deeper rooted over time, they start to say and then when a little bit of success starts happening and you challenge those processes, they go oh, no, no, no, this is the way we've been doing it for years. Yeah, and those processes um can sometimes be quite good, but then they got to modernize those things.

Speaker 1:

We find that a lot at sitemax with software is that they go and try and find a software that mirrors this thing they invented, yeah, and they can't find it well, let me the way I, sometimes you I use a metaphor to explain that idea sometimes.

Speaker 2:

So you're the captain of a boat in the navy and it's 50 feet in the cruise tenant, you're the most qualified engine room guy. How often is that captain in the engine room? A lot. He's the principal guy. He's the guy who knows the best what the engine room guy. How often is that captain in the engine room? A lot. He's the principal guy. He's the guy who knows the best what the engine room needs. So now let's make you a captain of 150 foot boat. The crew is 50. How often is that captain in the engine room with tools? Better be almost never. Maybe with a fire.

Speaker 2:

Now you're a captain of a aircraft carrier. There's 2000 people on board. How often is that captain in the engine room at all? Well, maybe to give somebody a 20 year certificate. You know 20 years of merit. Because now that captain has a guy who manages the guy who's the engine room guy. So the title is the same the. You know you're a business owner, but what business owners? So the title is the same. You're a business owner, but what business owners? The point that you're trying to make is that as the business grows, 50 million Right, that system is no longer adequate. But to your point, that's the one I'm comfortable with?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, that was then. Yeah, that is that, that was then. And what do you also think about the social, cultural dynamic of companies that hire their friends and their relatives? And you know, we see that a lot is just because of the um, especially in the trades, like the actual sub trades and depending on on how um there's there's, there's some trades that are, you could call them, dirtier than others, some that are more sophisticated I don't mean sophisticated in a way to insult any other trade, but there's some fine specific metal working or versus digging holes or just excavation, I mean, like some.

Speaker 1:

Each of them have their technical elements, yeah, but, um, there are some things that, um, I always say shock creed is one, because you know you, you stand in a muddy hole and you're spraying concrete, right? So if you start that and you're just going to go through all the people you know hey, I got a job for you on site. The low barrier of entry to get in there, and then the whole paradigm of using your network to be able to hire, is good, but it's also, if you're not a networking person, you're going to find the lowest hanging fruit around your family relationships or friend relationships you have. So what you end up with then is you end up with, let's say, somebody running the books, who is your friend's mom or who had an accounting background, and now you have this dynamic of a kind of a professional relationship, but there's a bunch of baggage there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, complicated.

Speaker 1:

It's complicated, right, it's like yeah, so do you see that? A lot of complicated cultures of companies based on weird relationships, that ensue.

Speaker 2:

Let me start by making this assertion you don't get the culture you want. You get the culture you deserve, the culture you deserve. Take me through Double click on that.

Speaker 1:

Pardon me Double click on that. The culture you deserve. Go for that.

Speaker 2:

Well, most people don't actively engage in developing the culture in the business, and so the culture is a byproduct of a bunch of decisions kind of like the ones you're describing. So lots of business owners think that culture is kind of this cherry on top of the cake thing. It's a nice to have, it'd be great, but in fact it's just the opposite. It's actually the foundation of your business, most businesses. If you've got the culture right, the rest of the business would be a lot easier. But here's the thing about a lot of people.

Speaker 2:

A lot of business owners think about recruiting as something they do off the side of their desk.

Speaker 2:

It's something that's kind of odious and I don't like to do it and I'm not very good at recruiting and I don't know how to hire to do it, and I'm not very good at recruiting and I don't know how to hire.

Speaker 2:

But that same owner will put a lot of effort into getting a new customer into marketing, into sales conversion, and so what happens is the business gets tilted the wrong way.

Speaker 2:

So there's lots of emphasis on selling and getting customers and not enough effort on building the strength of the business and, as a result, that business has a lot of stress. The business owner has to get that back in balance, and so there needs to be as much effort, as much effort as you're putting into sales and marketing, that much effort ought to also go into managing the team, leading the team, creating the culture that you want, understanding clearly what each job is meant to be, what the specs of the culture that you want. Um, understanding clearly what each job is meant to be, what the specs of the job ought to be, how to hire the right person, how to create the onboarding that brings them on in a professional and qualified kind of way, um so when you, when you talk about look, can we just chat a little bit about culture, because I always find its origins within a company a very interesting piece.

Speaker 1:

Right so let's say, john, you start a brand new company, okay, yeah, and you're employee one of one. Yeah. And it's called John Inc. Yeah, and it has 10 customers. Yeah. And there is a how you do things. Yeah. So there's now a culture of John Inc. That your customers might say well, you know, you should maybe talk to John. They do this and this and this. Now we have employee number two. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So now it's your interaction with this other person. Sure, so now the culture is the net behavior of both of you, yeah, so, in accordance to different audiences, a to employee number two and their network. Yeah, and your customers. So there's the HR piece and then there's the customer piece. So, but, as you go to employee three, four, five, six and beyond, you end up still with the net behavior of the business. But you, as John, as president of John Inc now has to steer. It can't, it can only steer an influence. It can't actually be that cherry on top. Everyone expects you to be. Yeah, and if you have the rest of the corpus of employees are not contributing to a. This is how we do things around here, mantra or framework or whatever you want to call it. It's going to be a dog's breakfast.

Speaker 1:

It almost always is yeah. So when you, at what point do you and it's hard to retrofit the desired cultural outcome that you're looking for, because I think often what happens you probably get into this when you're coaching companies as a new client is you probably go in, I would assume, and you do an assessment and you talk to people and you do interviews and you figure out what the hell's going on there in order for you to get your bearings.

Speaker 1:

So once you do that, are you finding that there is a huge disconnect on what the business owner thinks they have and then what the result is from the interviews you have with the people that you're asking the questions on? What's it like around here? Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, one of the hardest things about being a business owner for lots of new business owners is they are put into the position of being a leader and they've never studied or learned how to be a leader. They've never learned delegation. For many business owners, what they think of as delegation is actually abdication, and so all of that leadership stuff is kind of on the side of what they do. It's another one of the things that they don't like to do, so it's avoided.

Speaker 1:

Can we stop for a sec? Something you said there is really really good and I think it's worth expanding on. So abdication versus delegation, so obviously one meaning hey, this is person abc, this is your new responsibility, there's some new tasks you're going to be accountable for, and the other one is shit I don't want to do and it's you're just, it's tossed. Here you go make it happen. It's tossed without accountability and without, so can you just Without?

Speaker 2:

accountability, so clear set of goals or KPIs or measures of what success looks like. There isn't adequate coaching, right About training or support or help, or there's an expectation how come you didn't get this done? Well, what do you want me to do? How come you didn't get this done? Well, what do you want me to do? I got a wonderful gift one time. The first time I hired a VA, a virtual assistant, I spent about 10, 15 minutes with that virtual assistant. What's a virtual assistant? Yeah, on Zoom, showing her something I wanted to do, something I wanted.

Speaker 1:

This is a real person. Yeah, Okay virtual.

Speaker 2:

My virtual assistant.

Speaker 1:

It means something else to you days, I think.

Speaker 2:

So she gave me a gift. About 30 minutes after I asked her to do that, she sent me an SOP, a standard operating. She wrote out and documented her best understanding of what I asked her to do, and it's brilliant because it clearly demonstrates that she knew. She was able to give evidence that she knew what I was looking for. She also had to learn the process, because she's the one who wrote it. I didn't write it, she wrote it. And the third thing is that SOP is so good I can give it to any other party-capable person and they'd be able to reproduce it. So let me put it a different way. A business, in principle, is a three-legged stool. So the first leg of the stool is systems run the business. People run your systems. You lead your people. That's the leg one. So how did they get those French fries to taste the same in your town or mine? And the fries are made by a 16-year-old and the parents of the 16-year-old can't get him or her to clean their bedrooms. How did they do that?

Speaker 2:

They have great system. Here's how we do it. This is the recipe. We reproduce it time and again. So if systems run your business, the business is stable. If people run your business, the business rises and falls on the quality of the people. People need to be led by you.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so that's the first leg. The second leg is about 85% of what happens in a business ought to be routine. This is how we make fries, but one day we run out of potatoes. Oh my gosh, what should we do? Well, james is getting a phone call at 10 o'clock at night. We ran out of potatoes. What should we do? And we figure out a solution for the emergency in the moment. So then the third leg of the stool is we don't look for a people solution. We always look for a system solution, and what that means is that we want an answer to the question what do we do the next time we run out of potatoes Because Jane's not going to pick up the phone? So that's, in essence, what needs to be in place as you scale your business.

Speaker 2:

And let me give you another perspective how many handshakes does it take for three people to give each other a handshake? How many handshakes is that there's a formula for this. So the answer is three, and the formula is X squared minus X divided by two. So three squared is nine less three is 6, divided by 2 is 3. Okay, so you talked about scaling. Let's now make it 10 people. How many handshakes does it take? Well, 10 times 10 is 100, less 10 is 90, divided by 2 is 45. Wow, well, the group grew by 3. We went from 3 to 10. The complexity grew from three to 45. 15x, 15x. So tell me, why do your systems have to scale? Because it gets more complicated. Very good point, guys. Now we can't rely on having coffee meetings to make, uh, the culture set or the expectation set systems have to replace. You have to rely on your systems to deliver or get people what they need in order to be able to do the work you're asking them to do so?

Speaker 1:

do you find that a lot of construction companies are too reliant on the people power part and not enough systems?

Speaker 2:

Definitely.

Speaker 1:

John will do that, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so they don't recognize the value of systems. Now I've been talking about SOPs and a lot of you know I was talking to a group of cabinet makers the other day and they did cabinets for high-end kitchen homes, kitchens, you know, and multi-million dollar businesses. And I'm I did this thing about, you know, the, the three-legged stool and the recipe and the french fries. And guys said to me well, you know, I'm not making french fries every. Every job's different, every time is different. And my, um, my response I like to tell these kinds of stories, but would you get on an airplane if you knew the pilot didn't do the pre-flight checklist? Would you? Would you allow a surgeon to do surgery on you?

Speaker 2:

But if there wasn't a pre-operation checklist, we started with 30 scalpels. I only see 29. What do you think happened? So even something, as you know, individual or customized as a kitchen would be the actual, you know, product can't be an SOP. But the system we use to deliver that problem, the checklist we use to make sure that we work through a repeatable process to deliver the quality product that we're looking for, that can be systematized. The kitchen's going to look different. Okay, that's not the thing we're focused on. What we're focused on is can I reproduce the method we use to deliver that kitchen time and again without me being there at 10 o'clock at night on a Friday?

Speaker 1:

Yes, but I think do you think, a lot of systems get cannibalized by people wanting to have personal value, that they are needed. So they tend to say, oh well, we don't need these systems because if we have those then I am Well not that this is factual, but they might think that they are replaceable.

Speaker 2:

Well, you can look this up the seven-step architectural process architects use to deliver their product. So the system is a routine way that we do it. But if you got five different architects together, they each produce five different versions of a house, and so when it comes to craftsmanship or the creative part, that can be different.

Speaker 1:

The system should be the same. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

So there's a distinction there. The individuals, the surgeon took 10 years to become a surgeon. I'm not going to, they're not making French fries, they're doing heart surgery. But how do we make sure that hospital a and hospital B are going to deliver a healthy outcome from surgery? Yeah Well, that's where the system comes into place.

Speaker 1:

So one of the notes I have here is boosting efficiency via these systems and the result is profits, and now there's less wastage, there's less fixing errors, et cetera. Is that mostly it?

Speaker 2:

So you know, the kind of business owners I work with are in the $1 to $2 to $3 to $4 million kind of space. I've got a rant about this which I'll share with you. The small business community is very badly served by the accountants who specialize in that area. That's because they have mismatched expectations. So the accountant thinks of their business as doing compliance and tax reporting. That's how they think of their job, and so they'll produce a beautifully accurately prepared P&L and give that to the business owner. And the business owner looks at that and has no idea what that means. And they ask the accountant, and the accountant often doesn't give very good advice because they don't actually know. They're not qualified. Honestly, they're not qualified and yet the business owner doesn't understand that that's the case. Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

And so lots of times I'd ask a business owner give me your gross margin. They don't know what's the difference between gross margin and markup? What do you mean? Well, they're two very different numbers. How do you do your quoting? How do you do your pricing? Do you use markup or gross margin? And so I have clients, I have case studies of clients that went to their account year after year after year. How come accountants saying no, everything's great, you're doing great, and yet they were losing money. 10 minutes of talking to me, it's like well, tell me your gross margin. It was well below what it needed to be in order for that business to be successful. What that business owner learned is that he was doing work and giving it away in fact, literally giving it away and so they they became better at understanding the mechanics, the scoreboard of business. So like going to the hockey game and not having a scoreboard there, that's how they're running their business. Yeah, I mean there's. There's how they're running their business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, there's also like the operational systems. I can think of dealing with some contractors and you have, you know, two people coming to site to do the job of one, and one's just kind of on the phone walking around and maybe they were there for a site visit to report something, but typically not, um, and that's just just just leaking money out. But it's very difficult, I think, for a lot of business owners and operators to be very hard lined on that, as in no, no, no, no, okay, mike, what are you doing? Why are you at that site? What are you doing there? Get a lot. You should be at this other site and maybe it's a.

Speaker 1:

I think there's lots of money. That is, for instance, like I've seen things where materials, for instance, an entire roll of material will be purchased and then, because the whole roll is into the cost of the job, they leave the rest of the roll there and you're like, why would you not take that back? It's not like the end user needs that roll. It's garbage for them. They're going to stick it in the dump anyway. I think there's just leakage everywhere. Construction is very difficult to control. And then you've got tools and tool tracking whether or not, the people care about their vehicles. How many times are they driving them into the ground?

Speaker 2:

I mean, it's fraught with all this stuff, checklists about that, but let me go back to the first part of your question, which is what that business owner was doing was crisis management. He was going onto the job site and wondering how come there was two guys there and a more proactive way to manage that is. Does that business owner have a daily huddle? Right.

Speaker 2:

And what's a daily huddle? Huddle, right, and what's a daily huddle? Well, a daily huddle is your opportunity to canvas your workers and have them tell you what they expected to do that day. And your job then is to see if what they're telling you, how that, matches your expectations, so you can catch that gap that you talked about before it ever occurs. And so every job site, every team, ought to get a 15-minute huddle. What's up? What are you going to do today? What are some KPIs from yesterday? By what measure do we know that you did a good job yesterday? And then the third one is where are you stuck? What's going to hold you back from doing what you need to do today? I don't have a role of this, that or the other thing. Well, it's good to know that before we get started, rather than me getting a phone call 11 o'clock hey, we don't have this. And now you're running off to home depot to put out another fire yeah, at 200% markup.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, and so that's another example of a great systematic way to ensure that everybody's delivering what you expect them to be doing that day.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I guess, if you see commercial contractors at Home Depot, skip that one at Home Depot, skip that one.

Speaker 2:

That's the problem.

Speaker 1:

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2:

Especially if it's 11 o'clock in the morning, because they're probably solving some fire that's occurred on a job site somewhere.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I know that's pretty funny. Is there in your experience? Do you found those? Is there sometimes a bit of an imposter syndrome with people Like they don't like, they're like oh, I don't really feel like a bit of an imposter syndrome with people Like they don't like, they're like oh, I don't really feel like a leader of this business, even though I am on paper.

Speaker 2:

They don't feel like they should even be there. So here is a dirty little secret All business coaching is personal coaching in disguise. Yeah, all business coaching is personal coaching in disguise. Now, I don't like to tell prospects that, because they think that's going to be some kind of woo-woo thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, get in a recliner.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's not the case at all. So you know, business coaching is about helping the business grow systems, tools and strategy about business but it's also about helping that business owner grow and that mindset if that's one of the things that's on their mind clearly we have to work through that because unless we work through that, a lot of the systems aren't going to work anyway. So the getting the mindset right or put a different way, there's success is kind of the foundation of success is on three A's. So number one is acumen Do you have the right skills? Number two is activity Do you have the right? Are you doing enough of the right things? And then the third of the three is attitude, or, more accurately, mindset.

Speaker 2:

And mindset is often the thing that's actually holding back the business owner. It's the way, that lens with which they view the world, their beliefs, their values, who they associate with. One of the interesting questions I like to ask a business owner is what are the first three words that come to mind for you when I say the word salesperson? You might be surprised to know just how many business owners have very negative connotations sleazy, manipulative, pushy and yet every business owner is a salesperson in some way, and subconsciously, somewhere in the back of their mind, they're going to be in front of a client and the back of their mind is going to be saying I don't like who I'm being right now because I hate being this sleazy kind of guy.

Speaker 2:

So it's an example of well, you know, how can you adjust your mindset so that you'd actually feel good about being in sales, that you'd actually be proud of it, that you'd consider it a service to humanity? Well, that changes entirely how you'd go about doing it, and so it's an example of a lot of business. Coaching is about coaching the human, the person.

Speaker 1:

So we talked about, like on the hiring people part a little bit there and touched on it. Now you have this concept about building a bench. Yeah, so you have your current workforce and then you also have people on the bench waiting. How do you do the waiting thing? Cause I would find that that is hard to do and somewhat, uh, cause when you're recruiting you have to have a funnel right, cause it's it's kind of like any prospect you have, you have to prospect and then you have you got a funnel and then you're going to have a close to close, or you've sent a job proposal or whatever. On the prospecting side of things, I think it's hard with the channels we have today, like once you've sort of gone out of your network, let's say, right, you have to then either be in order to get this bench that you're talking about, having an active bench. People's lives aren't going to wait for your business and they're not going to sit on that bench for long.

Speaker 1:

So how does that work?

Speaker 2:

Well, let me give you tell you a couple of stories about that.

Speaker 2:

So the first time I learned this was in the seventies, so I was in my early twenties and I was a manager of a men's store, a tip-top store, in Calgary, and Calgary in the 70s grew from about 100 to about 500,000 people. People were moving to Calgary to work in the oil business. Nobody was moving to Calgary to work in retail. So one of the practices we had is about once every three months, I would walk with my regional boss through the mall where I was located in the tip-top store that I was involved with, and my job was to point out the two best salespeople that weren't yet working for me. Okay, so how do you do that? Well, I'd be bumping into these people at lunchtime and having a coffee, or I'd, you know, be peeking around the corner to see what they were doing, and I wouldn't be there, you know, talking about this job opportunity, but something would happen in three or six months and now I could go and talk to them. Hey, you know what? I just got this thing opening up. How are you doing How's business, how's life, how do you like the work you're doing? I had people that I could approach. I wasn't starting from scratch.

Speaker 2:

So the other story I like to tell about this is in the 90s I had a job where I was very visible. I was in business in Vancouver Magazine. You know, I had a public kind of profile, and this is before the internet, where you could easily find people. And about once a quarter I'd get a phone call from a recruiter. And the way the call goes is hey, john, how you doing, how's the wife, how's the kids? And then they would say hey, look, we've got this assignment. We're wondering if you know anybody, could you introduce us to anybody who has this set of skills?

Speaker 2:

And what became clear to me is they were talking about me. Now, what's the game here? What's going on? Well, they weren't poaching, they were just asking for introductions to people on my network. And I didn't have to actually open the door to that opportunity if in some way I wasn't motivated to do that. But it was clear to me that I would just simply say hey, that sounds kind of interesting, tell me more. So if you're a plumber or you're going to the Home Depots or you're going to the plumbing stores or you're picking up stuff, who are you meeting who are the three, five, six best electricians in your town that aren't yet working for you? Could you hire a recruiter to be making those calls? Well, you can. On upwork you can hire someone for about 12 bucks an hour and they're really good and they can be making the phone calls and they don't have to disclose that it's abc electric company until that candidate says I'm interested okay, so okay, I'm totally.

Speaker 1:

I'm digging the strategy here. I'm just trying to think of how so construction in general is transparent and opaque at the same time. It's transparent in terms of the job sites. Often you can see into them. They're transparent that way. Maybe there's a site fence and everyone comes out at a certain time. But, they're opaque in terms of your ability to be able to get in there.

Speaker 1:

You're either on the job or you're not, or you're not getting through that gate. And so, in terms of knowing who the best electricians are, who the best in class is and who, you should pay someone on Upwork to go and find on LinkedIn their contact info to say, hey, can you give me some referrals on people like this, which would be, like them, hard to do? Yeah, it is Hard to do now. I just I think that the qualifying, the who, would be tough. It is yeah. So the bench thing, and then, once you did get a contact with them, I think it's almost like the bench is not, is more of a people that are Okay, you know the draft. It's almost like having an open draft all the time, because the bench means that they're ready to play at a moment's notice and that's not the case, whereas the draft is you're basically going and finding and you want to draft people, but you have a draft list.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So the other way that I think about this is who's got leverage? So if you're a business owner and you've got five, six, seven workers, each one of those workers has more leverage than you. Yeah, and what I mean by that is, if they quit, you're hooped, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Now you're in crisis mode. So how do you get leverage on your side? You need options, and so what that means is, at any given point, you've got something like a handful of replacements for any one of the guys that you have on your team, and so when they come to you and say I want a raise or I'm out, you're kind of stuck, unless you, in the back of your mind, were able to say, well, I've got five other people I could replace you with. And so there's an investment of energy, investment that you do up front to be in a place where you have that option. Or when you get the next big contract. And now you need to add two people overnight and you don't. How do you start that? So I get your point. It's hard, also hard getting customers, and you're doing a lot of work getting customers, but you're doing nothing about building the bench or the, the balance, the balance bar, to get it, uh, in proportion for your needs as things evolve over time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm definitely in agreement with that strategy, just as I would say tough to do. Now, what do you see in the mental health side of things in the trades? Do you coach your clients in that respect?

Speaker 2:

Boy, that's such a big question. I you know. There's one story I want to tell you about. This is a guy, a client of mine, who ran a factory and the factory had two shifts and so it started at 6 in the morning and the second shift ended at 10 at night. And this guy had an hour's drive from the factory to his home. And so 10 at night, three, four times a week, he'd be like why am I going to drive home? I'll get home at 11. I'll be in bed 11. And then I got to get up at 4, 4.30 to be back in for six.

Speaker 2:

This guy was a tough, persistent guy, driven, willing to pay the price. And then one day his wife said to him your business is your mistress. If you don't do something about it, I will. And that's when this guy said I'm willing to work 70, 80 hours a week, but I'm not willing to pay that price, I'm not willing to give up on my marriage too. And that's when this guy decided he needed help. And then he started looking for help. So you know, lots of guys I meet are working 70 hours a week. Well, you know, but if you could, how many hours would you like to work 30. Wow, that would be great. What would you do? You got the 40 hours back. What would you do? It would be great to see one of my kids' games. Oh, let me ask you, when was the last time you went to one of your games? One of the kids games haven't been there yet this year. What's that?

Speaker 1:

like for you? How would you rate yourself on a scale of one to ten as a father? So you're you're touching on something there that, um, there is a segment of the construction population that I don't think is really being addressed when it comes to mental health, and that is the business owner. A lot of economic uncertainty, especially when the interest rate changes. You got big crews and suddenly the jobs are falling off and now you, you know, legally you have to give so much notice, et cetera. I mean there's lots of pressures. You have jobs going sideways, all sorts of things. So many different factors of where the business can be a complex and a stress for that business owner can be a complex and a stress for that business owner. And yet what we talk about is often is only real mental health issues. On the site level there's not a lot. The question is, this is where it gets very, very complex. Is that we have high rates of drug addiction and suicide, et cetera in in construction and mental health issues.

Speaker 1:

And as you work your way up the value chain, all the way to the business owner. At what point is there a no? We don't actually think, we don't actually consider that. No, that's your responsibility. You decided to start your own business. That's your problem. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1:

Because at some point there is, the government will be getting involved in mental health programs. They already are. But at what point in the value chain does the government not care? Well, I'm saying not care or not recognize I guess of course caring is a slippery slope but at what point does it not recognize that a government program should get involved? Just because somebody was an entrepreneur, it doesn't mean they don't have. They're almost like redlining and they're like oh my God, I don't know if I'm going to make it, and I've got a whole family to pay for. I've taken on all this risk. I've got a whole family to pay for. I've taken on all this risk. I've got all this responsibility.

Speaker 2:

Our medical system is oriented around physical ailments, hospitals, surgery, medications. There's very little about our medical system that's pointed in the direction of mental health is because it's so difficult.

Speaker 1:

It is difficult because the definition is difficult.

Speaker 1:

Yes, Because, well, it's, it's so okay. So what is the bifurcation between a mental health crisis and life is hard? So struggle, for instance, what is the continuum on the spectrum of struggle to it's a mental health problem or it is. Life is difficult. So take the extremes. One is situations are hard. You have to emotionally deal with yourself. You might have other life issues and you're trying to get to a point of clarity and peace in your mind, and the other one is at the end. Here I'm going to go crazy. Here I'm thinking of ending it because I can't find a solution and I'm just done solution and I'm just done.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I think it's when you lose agency or you no longer feel like you have ability to influence or control the outcome, that's a very good point, and so you give up in despair or you resort to self-medication, alcohol drugs, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

So when you were saying that the medical system, you know, is sort of fall short on the mental health side of things, I know that you know, at SightMax we have, we use RBC for our health insurance. Sure, and this year they did provide a mental health Component, yeah, component. And you know, provide a mental health Component, yeah, component. And you know, I didn't see that before.

Speaker 1:

And it's for, you know, for coaching and counseling, et cetera. And yeah, I like I wonder. So I'll give you an example of something. We had a mental health discussion in the building show in Toronto and I had these two guests on who were advocating for mental health. For, you know, field workers, et cetera, superintendents, all the people that come on site and work hard hours every day, and it's tough, very physical, that there has been an attack on the self-esteem of the tenured worker, Like somebody who's in their 40s, early 50s, maybe early 60s, who has their output per minute is super high because they have so much experience. But now they're saying, well, okay, well, you're not a minority, or you're not a woman, or you're not a, and we don't value you anymore.

Speaker 1:

There's this self-esteem. The attack on the self-esteem of the people actually built the country in many respects and I think that that it falls, really, if you, if you're listening to the world saying that you should be devalued, and then on top of that you have other complexities, like a job went sideways or, um, you know you're going to be getting less hours here because you know whatever reason, that can really start to get pretty dark. It does. Yeah, I mean, have you, have you seen? Is this I'm not, I'm not suggesting that you've seen this within your clients, but do you share that sentiment? You can understand that paradigm of where that could be possible I don't know if you know my entire story.

Speaker 2:

Do you know? I did a TEDx talk.

Speaker 1:

I did know you did a TEDx talk, but I didn't listen to it.

Speaker 2:

Well, the reason I mention it is my TEDx talk is on the cultural taboos of society, about mental health and suicide.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Well, you're right in there, then, okay.

Speaker 2:

And that's based on my experience of attempting suicide in 2011.

Speaker 1:

You did.

Speaker 2:

Yes, holy smokes, okay. So I know the dark side. I've experienced it personally. And in preparing for the TEDx talk I was very afraid for my career. I thought you know, gee, I'm supposed to be this kind of guru or, you know, coach kind of guy and here, I'm talking about a very difficult period of life mental health difficulties and what I learned is that vulnerability is very scarce, and so what I learned is that lots of the clients I get show up because of the talk, not despite the talk. Okay.

Speaker 2:

Because they want and recognize they need that kind of help, and so I mentioned it only in the context of mental health being. You know you raise a significant issue that you see it in all the workers, and a lot of the work I do with business owners often isn't. It starts off talking about the business, but it's often about all the things that relate to their worldview, the lens with which, the values they have, the things that hold them back, and so all business coaching is personal coaching in disguise.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, on that continuum conversation of where mental health is recognized in that value chain, you start to once you get sort of past project manager and into you know an estimator or you know a VP or, and you start to move up that value chain to the owner. It's almost as though that those are the pressures that you are expected to deal with for the compensation you get. And also, if we talk mental health and construction, at what point is it only the people down here that we're talking about? And there's that in lots of industries. Oh, there is, I mean, in many places. If you look at the stock market, for instance, you know hedge fund managers, like when it goes sideways, man, I'm telling you it's hard. That's going to be the same.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what I think in construction and maybe you can add some color to this is do you think, perhaps because some disciplines in construction the barrier of entry is low and there aren't that many jobs that you can just like go to a job site and then say, hey, who's running this job site? And someone's going to point to oh, it's that person over there, and then you have access to talk to that person. Hey, I'd like a job. Do you have anything available I can do on site. If they look reasonably capable there at that time and that moment, you can probably give them something for the next day to come and do yeah, definitely. Whereas other industries are not set up like that. I can't just walk down to like the Royal Bank and like knock on their head, like is there something I can do tomorrow?

Speaker 2:

Well, you talked about the spectrum of the kinds of jobs that are on a construction site and you know there's some that require certification. So if you're an actor, you got to show up, you got to be an apprentice.

Speaker 1:

No, I get that I get that.

Speaker 2:

But what I'm getting at is, you know, at the building, the house across the street from me, I can hear the hammering. Yeah, there's two guys that are tearing off the roof, the shingles of that house, and that's exactly the kind of job where a guy could walk up and, okay, you go, you got a safety harness. Great, you're in right, okay, start.

Speaker 1:

so do you think that the reason that we have this mental health focus on this job site and of the value chain because of the fact that people can come from anywhere and everywhere and get into construction?

Speaker 2:

Yeah definitely.

Speaker 1:

It's like a landing spot for lots of people.

Speaker 2:

Construction sites, by definition, are kind of chaotic. It isn't like there's a factory. There isn't offices that are organized around some kind of scheme. There could be 20 guys on a job site, each with four different contractors and they're all kind of doing their own thing. They often come from troubled or difficult backgrounds, so there's lots of conflict that happens day after day. The supervisors aren't there managing the site, so it looks easy but it's very hard.

Speaker 1:

So do you think that we have this situation that I mean, I always struggle with the troubled background kind of moniker of a group of people who work in construction, because it's a tough one, because it's there. It's almost as if there's a kind of an ugly truth people don't want to talk about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure you know what I mean Because when I go on a job site or I have, you know, I've had contractors at my residence and you know when we and I'm getting into my business a little bit, but when we build software, I empathetically think of the struggles that those people are having on site and I don't want to make their life worse by giving them a crappy app that upsets them all the time and makes it even worse. So you know, I look at that element and I empathize with those and I can kind of see through it. I can see the kindness, I can see the talent, I can see what they're, I can see the talent, I can see what they're trying to achieve. And maybe they weren't given the shot or maybe they blew their shot. A while ago they made a few life decisions that weren't quite right, but I get this kind of a feeling like you kind of want to take them under your wing and help.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's the kind of empathetic leader that's going to get the culture that he worked for.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, very complicated. I mean, you've got a. You have a very complex minefield of things you've got to deal with when it comes to construction customers, that's for sure, or clients client, excuse me, yeah yeah, um, well, that's um, I'm um.

Speaker 2:

You know, I'll share this with you. I'm 71, um, I work three days a week. Um, I tried golfing five days a week and I found that that was boring as hell. So coaching is a very satisfying kind of work. It's meaningful, it makes a difference, and and so one kind of description of it is very difficult. One kind of description of it is that it's very satisfying.

Speaker 1:

That's good. I mean, yeah, I've got one other question how important is it, do you think it is, for business leaders to telegraph somehow, via demonstration, that the people who work for them would like to have their job one day?

Speaker 2:

Well, I might answer it a little bit broader than the way you framed the question, which is I have a definition of leadership that the best leaders are those that are most willing and most capable of having crucial conversations, and so the definition of a crucial conversation is anytime emotions and stakes are high, and so lots of leaders are not very good at having crucial conversations, and many of them avoid it, and so that's often the root cause of the problems that they're experiencing. And so, um, by becoming capable, confident of having a crucial conversation and having the skills to be able to do it, that by itself will make you a better leader and, as a result, have a better business and better culture okay.

Speaker 1:

So do you think that the that that is something that by demonstration that the people who I guess the point that I was getting at was I've seen people in companies, in trades that the owner's job they make it seem so crappy that the people under them would be like okay. So let me get this straight. If I were to work my ass off for X amount of years, I don't even want to get there, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

So I'm not going to stick around in this company because if I do crush it, I'm going to end up like that person.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's obviously a case where the leadership is very bad, isn't capable, and they're not demonstrating what it means to be a good leader, to be a good owner and inspiring. Yeah, you know you'd be wise, that worker you're referring to to go find a better culture.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, all right. Well, john, this has been very good chatting with you. I've enjoyed this. How do people get a hold of you? I'm used to find W5 coaching.

Speaker 2:

I talked about the Socratic method of leadership. So Socrates has the best way to have somebody's help and figure it out themselves. And how do you do that? You guide a conversation. How do you do that? You guide a conversation, how do you do that? Lots of questions, and what are the five core questions? Who, what, when, where, why? So W5, so there's a little hook that might help you remember Perfect my website w5coachingcom.

Speaker 1:

Good, and you're on LinkedIn as well.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I'm all, yeah, all the social platforms. All over it. All over it. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1:

Okay, well, this has been awesome, john. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2:

My pleasure, nice, to be with you today, james. I've enjoyed the conversation as well. Yeah, likewise.

Speaker 1:

Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the Site Visit podcast and Sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.