The mental health crisis sweeping through construction has reached alarming proportions, with suicide rates among workers soaring to five times the national average. But what's driving this crisis, and why aren't more industry leaders talking about it?
Ryan Englin, a 15-year veteran consultant and author of "Hire Better People Faster," brings powerful insights into the hidden struggle of construction workers and the leadership failures that perpetuate it. After growing up with a blue-collar father but choosing a different path himself, Ryan offers a unique insider-outsider perspective on what's really happening on job sites across America.
"People don't leave jobs; people leave people," Ryan explains, challenging the common industry complaint that "nobody wants to work anymore." He highlights how construction companies frequently overlook fundamental human needs – from basic respect to social connection – that could transform their workforce challenges.
Beyond addressing mental health, the discussion dives into provocative territory about how the construction industry has failed to adapt to the changing workforce landscape. While knowledge-economy jobs evolved to offer remote work, flexibility, and clear advancement paths, many construction companies still operate on outdated models that fail to demonstrate they value their people. Ryan offers actionable strategies for construction leaders to create workplaces where people not only want to work but want to stay.
Whether you're a construction business owner struggling with retention, a field leader trying to build a stronger team, or simply interested in the future of the industry that builds our world, this conversation will challenge your assumptions and offer fresh perspectives on making construction careers both successful and sustainable. Listen now to discover how caring about your people might be the most profitable business strategy you're not yet implementing.
PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH
FOLLOW ALONG:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thesitevisit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesitevisit
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ryan, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm fantastic.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I have a halls in my mouth right now, so you're going
to hear clicking on my teeth.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You all right.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Good for the voice.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yeah, yeah, especially if you're doing this
a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Yeah, I mean, how many podcasts have you done in
your Titans of the Trades?
Just over 100.
That's quite a lot, and they'retypically an hour long.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
No, no, these are construction.
This is for construction guys.
How long does it get from onejob site to the next?
15, 20 minutes?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Oh, I see, I see the strategy.
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, I want to be able to finish one before they
get out of the truck.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
And there's also the download thing right, Like if
it's over a certain amount oftime that you have to download
it.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, yeah, because you'll see streams versus
downloads, okay.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, so there's kind of a thing there too, when it's
over an hour and over a certainmemory size, anyway I used to
do shows that were over an hourand, um, people were like, hey,
can we just get to it faster?
Like that was the feedback Igot.
So I'm like, all right, let'sjust jump in and let's rip the
band-aid off and get it done.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So you uh about um.
You have your consultancy corematters and you, you are a uh uh
, a speaker, a podcaster,motivation uh, strategies, et
cetera.
How long have you been doing itfor core matters?
Almost 15 years Veteran.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
You know what they say Everybody's an overnight
success.
After 15 years, nice, I'm stillstill like where is that?
I like it?
No things.
Things are going great and, um,the the amount of time I've
spent near the industry andaround the industry, it's, it's
almost one of those things thatnot having grown up in the
(01:43):
industry, I think gives me anadvantage, because I see things
that people that grew up in theindustry didn't.
I grew up in the trades, but Ididn't grow up in construction.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Okay.
So when you say grew up in thetrades, how did you manifest
that?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
My dad was a blue collar owner operator.
Oh, he was.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Okay, so you grew up in the family, but you didn't do
it yourself.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I didn't do it myself .
No, I mean, I knew how torewire motors, I knew how to you
know plumb things, I knew howto do a lot of stuff in the
skilled trades.
My dad taught me, yeah, but Inever did it as a profession.
Gotcha, okay, I went thecollege route because that's
what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
You're an insider, you're an outsider insider, yeah
.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well, that's six years of my life.
I'll never get back, so I'm nota big fan of college anymore.
No, it's changed a lot, yeahyeah.
But I learned a lot and Ilearned a lot, and I think a lot
of what I learned in collegeand in my corporate experience
I'm able to pull in today and Ithink that's what makes what we
do so different for the industry, because they're not used to
(02:48):
that when we got on the calloriginally a few moments ago, we
were talking about all thethings that people aren't
(03:10):
talking about in construction.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I'm so um, uh, there's lots of landmines around
.
People think that they're goingto step on and it's actually
less than they think, but it'sthe worry that business might go
down or they might have aclient or a customer or somebody
that says, hey, I heard yousaid this thing, so yeah, but
let's get into it.
(03:32):
Welcome to the Site.
Visit Podcast Leadership andperspective from construction
with your host, James Falkner.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Your host, James Falkner Business as usual, as it
has been for so long now thatit goes back to what we were
talking about before and hittingthe reset button you know you
read all the books, you read theemail, you read Scaling Up, you
read Good to Great.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
You know I could go on.
We've got to a place where wefound the secret serum.
We found the secret potion.
We can get the workers in.
We know where to get them.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
One time I was on a job site for a while and
actually we had a semesterconcrete and I ordered a
Korean-Finnish patio out frontof the site show.
Yesterday I was down at Dallasand a guy just hit me up on
LinkedIn out of the blue andsaid he was driving from
Oklahoma to Dallas to meet withme because he heard the Favorite
Connect platform on your guys'podcast.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Home.
It crush it and love it, and wecelebrate these values every
single day.
Let's get down to it.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
You know, it wasn't too long ago that I had someone
tell me hey, I can't post that,I need help, my clients will
leave.
Like, what are you thinking?
What are you thinking?
What do you mean?
Oh, is that my cue?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
That's a perfect gap, don't worry about it.
Okay, that's where the musicwill come in, and I love what
you just said there.
That's going to be good, allright.
So, ryan, let's get back intothis, that example.
You're saying you think they'regoing to lose clients because
they've said something, orsomething like that.
Take me through that.
What do you think is the mainfear of people?
(05:14):
To not speak up or to not talkabout difficult things?
What do you think thatmotivation of that is?
Is it a myth?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I think people are so good, we're so good at
justifying what's going on inour business and it's not me,
it's never me, it's alwaysoutside factors right, that we
tell ourselves these storiesthat aren't real.
And what I've learned over theyears is that every single
client of mine wants me tosucceed.
(05:42):
And when I work with acontractor, every single client
that they have whether it's anowner or a GC they want them to
succeed because their project isdependent on that construction
company's success.
And if you just raise your handand say, hey, would you be able
to help me?
We can't do that because we'remen, we don't ask for help, we
(06:05):
don't do these things.
And it really is this mindsetof if I can't figure it out, I
shouldn't be asking for help,because asking for help is
weakness.
Yeah, if I tell somebody I'mshort-staffed and that project
may not get done on time, I justraised my hand and said I'm
(06:27):
weak, I can't handle it myself,and I think that's something
that's missing in the trades.
You know we talk about what ittakes to get people to want
these jobs or to want to stay inthese jobs.
You know what people want ustalking about Is us caring about
them being in these jobs, youknow, if I hear one more safety
(06:49):
briefing about, well, this isour policy and this is how we do
this and this is how we do that, you know, those guys walk away
and they go.
The only reason we have allthese safety briefings and all
these safety policies is becauseof OSHA, because my boss is
afraid that OSHA is going towalk on the job site and shut
them down.
That's the only reason.
But you know the real reason wehave all this safety stuff?
Because we want you to go homeat the end of the day and be
(07:10):
able to play with your kids.
We want you to go home inbetter shape than you came this
morning, not worse.
But we don't talk about that.
I don't know why we don't talkabout it, but we don't talk
about that.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
So what do you think of the, the masculinity quotient
, or the?
And it doesn't necessarily beneed to be a um, I mean being
masculine.
I listened to this on podcast.
It's like a behavioral set.
It's not necessarily rooted in,you know being.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying we got tofeminize the trades or anything
like that, I'm not saying that.
But we live in a society rightnow where we are more connected
than we've ever been, Yet we aremore lonely than we've ever
been.
Yeah, I just went to a men'snight at church and they said
that 57% of men 57% don't have abest friend.
Yeah, I read, I heard that theother day.
(08:03):
Right, I mean what?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
And you need three.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
They do not have someone they can go to when they
need help?
And I'm sure you know this, butin the trades the suicide rate
five times national average.
So what people are saying withthis is you know what?
I'm just gonna end it because Idon't know how to fix it.
Nobody cares about me anyways,so what's it matter?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
So where do you think that this here's the
interesting part about the andthis is not something that
anyone's proud to talk about,but I think we need to have real
conversations about this Interms of the suicide rate of
construction, there's the hugespectrum of construction jobs
(08:50):
and positions, all the way downfrom sweeping a job site, all
the way up to being a PM orbeing a VP.
So when you see thedistribution of the suicide
occurrences, they're probablylowered down on the distribution
there, right on the site side.
(09:11):
And then on top of that, whatdo you think are the main
factors of the unhappiness, to apoint that somebody might be
thinking those things on the jobsite?
And the next question is isthat inherent in construction or
is it inherent in jobs thatperhaps on the lower scale of
(09:34):
distribution, were not plan A?
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Well, I'm just going to say I'm not an expert in this
.
By no means am I an expert inthis.
But think about just theindustry in general and I adore
the industry but for a lot ofpeople, they either got into
construction because that's whatdad did right, they just
followed in dad's footsteps,that's what a best friend did
(09:59):
and he's like come with me.
Or we see this too they didn'tmake the best life choices as a
teenager, got set back in othercareer paths and said you know
what?
I'm going to go thisconstruction route because
they'll accept me.
You know, we don't talk aboutsecond chance programs in SaaS
platform world, right.
Nobody wants somebody to be aprogrammer, but we talk about
that in construction and so ifyou just go from that, we know
(10:22):
that a good percentage of themen that are out there working
in construction right now didn'thave the best upbringing, made
some bad choices in their lifeOkay Right, and that stuff
perpetuates into other areas oflife, whether it's relationships
, financial, whatever.
So there's this huge burden onespecially field workers that
have struggled in life and thenwhat we do is we put them on a
(10:44):
job site.
We do not create opportunitiesfor them to have friends at work
.
We do not create opportunitiesfor them to get some R&R or take
vacation time.
I mean, I met a client.
I've got a client a few yearsnow.
When I first met him I said howlong do I got to work for you
to get PTO?
Five years, Five years beforeyou give me one paid day off.
(11:07):
You know what he says to me.
He goes, and our average guy isonly here about three and a
half, so I never had to pay PTO.
Like in his mind it was a win,I see.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
And I'm thinking, you don't even give these guys a
day off to go rest.
And he's like well, they justwant to work crazy.
They'd work seven days a week.
They'd work all of thisovertime if they could, because
that's what they grew up in,that's all they know.
And so when you stack all ofthese things on top of them and
then they're working crazy hours, they're not getting to spend
time with their family, theydon't have a lot of friends,
(11:41):
because men in this country arelonely.
We don't have other men tospend time with.
You stack all those things ontop of each other and it creates
a real recipe for mentaldistress.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
And that's what I think is going on.
So where does so?
there's obviously a financialinvestment there on the company
side, because time is money andtheir projects need to be, are
on a schedule, etc.
And if the let's say a sublet's, let's just talk as a sub
(12:17):
trade.
For instance, you were hired bythe prime contractor, you've
won the bid, you're going tostart the work and there needs
to be an alignment of valuesfrom the developer who hires the
prime contractor, who thenagain has the tendering process,
(12:38):
and that may be part of it.
What do you do to maintainmental health on your
construction site?
Well, one of the things Becauseit needs to go down the value
chain.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
It has to.
Yeah, and I can't tell you howmany times I've heard.
So we work with a lot of subsmore than we work with the
primes, because that's where thefront line's at.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
And the things that we hear that these prime
contractors expect of the subsand the way they treat these
guys and some other stuff.
You're right, they'redefinitely down the value chain.
One of the things we've doneand this is a shout out to a
good friend of mine, ron butwe've started to introduce
marketplace chaplains to ourclients.
I don't know if you've heard ofthem, no, what's that?
So they've got 2,200 chaplainsall over the country.
(13:20):
You know what a chaplain is?
No, so the military has themand there's large organizations
have them, but chaplains are.
Think of it as someone you canjust go to and have a real
honest conversation with.
It's completely private and youcan just pour your heart out to
somebody.
A lot of chaplains are based ina faith and so there's a faith
component to it as well.
(13:41):
But what marketplace chaplainsdoes is they come out and they
look at all your job sites andthey say you know what?
We got two chaplains thataren't far from here.
We're gonna have them comevisit your job sites twice a
month and these guys go out andgals go out and they just
introduce themselves and say,hey, I'm here if you ever need
to talk, I'm here if there'sanything I can do for you.
They don't work for the company, so it's a lot easier to
(14:03):
confide in them.
And one of the things I loveabout what they do is they
actually extend that benefit tothe immediate family.
So if your kid's going throughsomething, they can actually
reach out to a chaplain and havesomeone to talk to
(14:25):
no-transcript.
It can create a major, majoruptick in not only the mood of
your employees but theproductivity of your employees,
because happy employees are moreproductive employees.
Just to know that there'ssomeone that they can talk to
and I think that the bottom lineof this is people in the trades
(14:46):
, especially construction.
They just want to know thattheir boss cares about them.
Just for a minute.
So you care about me and I wasjust talking to a company and we
care way too much.
We take advantage and you knowthere's a balance.
But here's what I know is thatthey're not getting credit for
(15:07):
the things they do.
They're just being taken forgranted and it's because we
don't want to talk about thatstuff.
I can't tell you.
I mean, I've sat in rooms withsuperintendents talking about
how nobody wants to work.
Everybody's entitled,everybody's lazy.
I'm like your crews.
No know, you're saying thatabout them.
Do you think that might be partof the problem?
Speaker 1 (15:31):
So on the on.
So you're a recruitingspecialist and when I say that
in terms of how how to berecruiting, in terms of
recruiting strategies, like whatdo you say to these companies
in terms of positioning and theemployer value proposition and
who they are as a company, etcetera, Like I mean this is,
this is a huge piece of this Um.
But when you, as you go, Ithink you you kind of nailed it,
(16:00):
uh, when you were saying, likehow people get in construction,
it's also how um companiesevolve over time.
They started off just as aperson who can do something and
then they ended up with acompany, they ended up with
employees and they end up withdoing tax returns and all the
stuff.
So those are the companies,that sort of the you you know
(16:23):
five to 30 employee kind ofcompanies that are like so
redlining all the time.
They're like you want me to dowhat?
Pro D, Pro D, what Like Ihonestly I'm dealing with the
client, I'm dealing with this,I'm dealing with these guys, I'm
doing all this stuff.
I'm putting out fires and I meanyou obviously see, that is that
(16:45):
there's no bandwidth.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I talk about this a little bit in my book.
I share a story about this.
Tell us about your book.
What's it called?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Hire.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Better People Faster.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Okay, cool and people can get that on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah audio book.
It's available.
Okay, cool, we'll put that inthe link.
Here's the thing about theexact story you just talked
about.
I'm in the trades, I'm workingfor some Yahoo, I walk away and
go.
I can do this better than hecan.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Walk away.
I wake up 10 years later I got40 trucks, I got 60 employees
and I'm like what did I do?
And I'm really good at buildingstuff.
That's what I do.
I'm amazing at working with myhands and finding guys that can
work with their hands and buildstuff, but no one ever taught me
to run a business Right.
No one ever taught me how to bean amazing leader.
(17:35):
No one ever taught me aboutcompany culture.
You know, I talk about my dadand his story.
I watched my dad struggle hisentire career and it wasn't
because he was a bad person or abad person to work for.
No one ever taught him theskills of doing this stuff and
building effective teams.
And that's what I want to do,and I think it all starts with
two things.
Have we built a company thatpeople want to work at?
(17:58):
In other words, when they seeyour website or they see your
truck or they hear about you,they go.
That's different.
I want to be a part of that.
I'm excited to be a part ofthat.
Oh, you mean, you're not hiringright now.
I'll wait, I like that.
That's one.
They want to work there.
And then, when they do workthere, they want to stay.
They wake up every morning andthey go.
(18:19):
You know what?
I know that the grass isn'tgreener anywhere else.
I know for a fact that there isno better opportunity out there
for the than the one I haveright now.
I'm excited to wake up tomorrowand go see James at work, cause
I got a friend there and youknow we're going to go grab
drinks afterwards.
Like I'm excited about that,are?
we in a we engage people.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Are we in a bigger, better deal economy?
All the time People are like,hey, there's always grasses
greener on the other side.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Oh, I don't think the grass is when we build that
kind of organization.
There is no grass on the otherside.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
No, I get that, but those are few and far between.
Yeah, but we can make them.
I'm not saying you can't Justsaying for the average company
that is trying to hold on toemployees or recruit new ones
that hasn't employed what you'retalking about, which they
should, I'm not saying theyshould, it's totally plan, plan,
awesome plan.
(19:14):
But how do for those companiesthat haven't done that kind of
thing?
Are most of their employeesthinking bigger, better deal
Somewhere else?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
So I just had an HVAC tech at my house yesterday I
won't name names and he's comeout to my house a few times over
the last couple of years.
He goes.
Man, today's the last dayyou're going to see me.
I said, really what's going on?
He goes.
I got another job down thestreet, pays $2 more an hour,
gives me an extra week of PTO.
And I just looked at him.
I said, so problems with yourboss.
And he said he said no, no, no,a couple extra bucks an hour
(19:58):
and extra week of PTO.
He goes and there's a littlething of my boss and I said,
really what's that?
He goes.
I'd rather not say oh, that big.
That big.
Here's what I know.
People don't leave jobs, peopleleave people, and we know this.
So if you have a problem withpeople not wanting to join your
(20:19):
team, it's not about they don'twant to work for your company.
They don't want to work foryour company, they don't want to
work for you, they don't wantto work for your leaders.
If people are leaving for adollar more an hour, two hours
more an hour, they're notleaving your company.
They're not Disloyal becausethey want to make an extra buck
or two.
They're leaving because theydon't see a future with you or
they don't want the future thatthey do see.
(20:43):
That all goes back to thismental health, the relationships
, the feeling cared about, feellike I belong, I've got friends
and I know people are listeningto this.
Going that costs money.
I'm not going to be able to beprofitable.
There's no way I'm going to beable to afford it If everybody's
just hanging out being friendsall the time.
I'm not saying you go, set upping pong tables and Xboxes.
(21:03):
That's not what I'm suggesting.
I'm not saying you go set upping pong tables and Xboxes.
That's not what I'm suggesting.
Give guys 15 minutes at lunchwithout beating on them to just
say, hey, let's do a fancyfootball league, let's just have
a little fun.
Let's just do men's stuff, likestuff that men do for fun.
You know what?
Schedule a golf outing on theweekends.
You know, start a golf league.
Hey, anybody can come do it.
(21:24):
We're just all going to gettogether on Saturday morning
we're gonna go play golf.
Create opportunities for theseguys to create friends at work.
Create opportunities for themto feel like they belong there
and people will want to workthere and people will want to
stay.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Okay.
So I'm, as you're talking this,I'm visualizing the job site.
I'm visualizing thischarismatic person that's
talking to the rest of thefrontline crew crew leader,
maybe, foreman, perhaps that's apretty, you have to have a
pretty special person.
I'm thinking look, there's theowner, and the owner has a
(22:00):
mandate Look, I want you to dofantasy football, I want you to
do that with all your crews.
Tells the five differentforeman look, this is what we
want to do.
Those five foremen need to bewizards at inspiration, they
need to be wizards at havingenthusiasm and they need enough
(22:23):
bandwidth to be able to do thosethings, to be able to push off
the fact that maybe the prime,the PM of the prime, is showing
up at the job site that day andis going what are you guys doing
?
You realize we're behindschedule.
You're talking about fantasyfootball and not saying that
that's not what's happening.
(22:43):
But that would be the myth thatthe owner might think shit.
if I do that and I've got theseguys saying that there, what's
it going to look like for us?
He knows, from a macro point ofview it should look good, but
not everyone gets it.
Not everyone's on the sameplaybook playbook.
(23:12):
So do you think that there is?
I like the idea.
At least there's a new lexiconof terms, this chaplain concept
oh, not concept, it's real, butI haven't heard that term before
.
So I think there needs to be anew movement in terms of
language, in terms of what isacceptable, what is not.
And also, I continue tostruggle with the term mental
(23:39):
health, because to some peoplewho haven't dug in and figured
out what that term encompasses,they think it means I'm crazy.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Like I need to go to a psychiatrist.
I need to be on medicationbecause of chemical imbalances
in my brain.
That, to some people, that'swhat mental health means.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Oh, because that's what the media is portrayed as.
The media is great at spinningthings.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Well, because that's what the media is portrayed as.
The media is great at spinningthings Well.
I think construction in generalhas found ways to add more
color to what mental healthmeans.
However, here's an example andthis previous podcast people can
listen to.
Where I brought this example isthere are frontline field
workers who you said might havenot made good life decisions and
(24:26):
they end up on the job site.
And here they are and they havea whole backdrop of stresses
that they might not be talkingabout, but there's only so many
things that people can have intheir attention at a single time
.
And they've got three spots thatare crowded and screaming at
them that you don't even knowabout while you're working with
(24:48):
that person on the job.
So you have that person therewho is dealing with those things
.
But then you have the GC owner,let's say okay, the prime
contractor, who is totallyunderwater because he misquoted
all the materials, maybe becausesome tariff thing changed and
(25:12):
suddenly everything's moreexpensive.
May not have been his fault,I'm with you Totally out of
their control, right?
And that person has their ownthree things screaming, has
their own three things screaming.
Okay, so now we have twoelements of life stresses
(25:34):
situational stresses that arethinking that person might be
like if I don't I'm talkingabout the higher management, gc
owner, prime contractor isthinking you know, maybe I don't
know how I'm ever going to getout from under this rock, what
am I going to do?
This is my whole life,everything's counted Like.
(25:55):
It's feeling very similar tothe person who's thinking how do
I get further in my life?
How do I get out of thissituation?
What do I do?
They're both dark, really dark.
But when we talk about mentalhealth and construction, we're
not going all the way up thevalue chain, we're only talking
(26:16):
about the field level and I callBS on that.
Yeah, because so, and thenlet's so.
Let's just say, for all intentsand purposes, we nail somehow
through programs, um, the entiremental health calculus.
We figured it all out.
(26:36):
We've got programs, it's allworking, everyone's happy.
We now have a price per squarefoot problem that financially
pushes everything out of reachfor everyone, because nothing is
free.
So where we are and I'm inVancouver, which is this is like
one of the worst scenarios forthis we have field workers who
(26:59):
are working on a project.
They work on it in a proud way.
It's the transfer of passionfrom a developer all the way
down to hey, now you go buildthis thing, it's my dream.
You're not going to get part ofit, we'll just pay you whatever
we can pay you.
They have to do that and theyknow they will never be able to
afford to buy that and live init, or even rent it because it's
so expensive $1,000 to $2,000 asquare foot here to $2,000 a
(27:26):
square foot here.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Well, so now you bring up one of my other rants
about the trades and about theworld we live in right now.
You know it's so interesting tome that we live in a world
where we value the attorney morethan we value the plumber or
the framer or the excavatoroperator the people that build
(27:49):
the infrastructure in which welive.
We do not value them as much aswe value the attorney, because
the attorney is going to keep mefrom doing something stupid or
get me out of trouble.
The attorney exists for thesole purpose of fixing things or
keeping things from going bad,and we value them at five, six
hundred, a thousand dollars anhour.
Yet the person that laid thenetworking cable for you and I
(28:13):
to have this call right now yeah, we scoff when they're like I
need to make more money, I can'tlive here.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
We're like are you?
We have?
We've seen this.
We have job sites that we can'tget people to because they're
in a very expensive part of townand the guys aren't going to
drive 70, 80 miles to get tothat job site.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Because you don't have contractors or frontline
craft workers living near thatjob site.
They got to drive across townfor two hours.
Like I'm not going to do it forwhat you want to pay me.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Well, they don't get paid for that two hours.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
They don't, they don't.
So what we're saying is wedon't value your time, but we
value the PM's time, becausewe'll let the PM work remote
three days a week.
We don't want them to be in thecar all the time, but we don't
value the time of the craftworker, and that's where I think
we have a.
That is where we need to make abig shift.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
So is this a governmental shift we need to
make?
Because if you put this to theprivate sector to have to fund
this whole thing, everything'sjust going to become more
expensive In everything, Becauseyou know what Human energy is
the same as fuel energy.
It's the same thing.
When fuel costs go up,everything goes up.
(29:29):
Food gets more expensive,everything does when the energy
it creates to buildinfrastructure goes up, and
that's the human energy.
The food costs go up becausethe warehouse costs more.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Well, I mean, I'm not a big fan of government
involvement in this kind ofstuff.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Why not oh?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Why?
Why not?
Well, how do they pay for it?
They either turn on theprinting presses and there goes
inflation, or they tax us more.
Like how do they pay for this?
Speaker 1 (29:51):
No, because I think what's happening now is that
what we were paying for is nowbeing scrutinized to the fact
that we might actually pay forthings that matter
Reappropriation of funds thathave been wasted in the past are
now going to a place perhapslike this, because we do realize
and this is the same withCanada, same with America is we
(30:13):
do realize that we have to getour act together when it comes
to making things, buildingthings and supporting the right
things.
Otherwise, we're going to wakeup.
We're going to have India andChina on our doorstep and
they're going to be knocking andwe go.
Oh, by the way, we controlgoing to wake up.
We're going to have India andChina on our doorstep and
they're going to be knocking andwe go oh, by the way, we
control everything.
Now.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
And it's kind of globally macro.
We could get into the whole.
How do you?
Speaker 2 (30:33):
balance a budget at the government, but we're not
going to talk about that.
But no, I think that it's.
We need to change the narrative.
Okay, Construction is anindustry that turned a blind eye
to the rise of the knowledgeworker.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yep, I agree with that.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Construction is an industry that said, well, that's
not going to affect me, that'snot going to impact me, and we
ignored it.
And if you think about what thenewspapers and the libraries
did in the late 90s and theearly 2000s, they're all gone
now Because they ignored it.
They said that's not going tohappen to me.
People are still going to wantto read their newspaper with the
coffee, like, yeah, they get toon their phone.
They didn't think about this,and the construction industry
(31:11):
did the same damn thing.
In what respect they ignoredthe rise of the knowledge worker
.
You know I can go work fromhome and make $22 an hour
answering customer servicephones for Amazon.
I live wherever I want, I workcrazy hours, but I get to do it
from home.
Well, I know a lot of companies.
I can't even get started in thetrades for more than $17, $18
(31:34):
an hour, it doesn't matter where.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
I live, then why would they do it?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
That's my point.
And so, as an industry, wedidn't say wait a minute, we've
got to solve this problem of theremote worker.
We've got to solve this problemof the remote worker.
We've got to solve this problemof this is our competitor.
I'll never forget one of myfirst podcast episodes, Gosh,
this was four or five years agoand I was talking to this guy.
He was the president of Nariremodelers industry and I said
(32:00):
you know what?
Who's your biggest competitorright now?
If you're paying $24 an hour orless, he's like well, it's the
guy down the street.
You know the other remodeler,he's the one that's going.
No, it's Amazon and Target,because I can get a job working
in an air-conditioned warehousefor $24 an hour.
That's four or five years ago.
(32:22):
We ignored the fact that peoplevalue things like an Amazon same
day or being able to contact acustomer service rep who's
sitting in their house.
We ignored the fact thattechnology boomed and gave an
opportunity to knowledge workand as an industry, we ignored
that.
We said it's not gonna matterto us, because people that wanna
work with their hands wannawork with their hands.
We did nothing to protect theindustry's image.
(32:43):
We did nothing to change someof the poor perceptions of the
industry.
We did none of this stuff.
We completely ignored it.
And now we're waking up andgoing.
40 to 60% of people inconstruction right now are
retiring within the next 10years and the amount of people
coming in isn't even close to afraction of what we need to
(33:04):
support the infrastructure inthis country.
It's not even close to afraction of what we need to
support the infrastructure inthis country.
It's not even close, becauseit's not just the new stuff
we're building, it's all thestuff that's breaking, that got
built 40 years ago, that we gotto fix.
Now too, yeah, totally.
And we've ignored that.
And we have an entiregeneration of people that said
you know what People inconstruction?
We could probably reach out tomost employers and say this they
(33:26):
just don't give a damn about me, they don't care.
You want me to prove it?
During COVID, what did we do?
We segregated people intoessential and non-essential.
That's what we did.
Now, if you were in the trades,most of them were essential.
But what happened?
We had all this extra influx.
We had governments, we hadstates saying we got to fix the
(33:48):
infrastructure, we're going tofund all of this construction
work, everything else.
Covid went away and we wentback to the way we were.
Nobody cares anymore.
And all of a sudden, we don'thave the funding that we did.
We don't have people willing topay $300 to get a plumber out
to fix their toilet, because youknow what?
I'll just YouTube it and I'llfigure it out myself.
(34:11):
And so all of a sudden, peoplehave said, well, if they don't
care about me, then I'm going togo do something else.
I don't think we have a hiringissue in the trades.
I don't think that we have alabor shortage in the trades.
I think there are plenty ofpeople that would do this work
if they just felt we cared aboutthem just a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Do this work, if they just felt we cared about them
just a little bit more.
So what are the factors ofcaring about somebody?
Sentiment, income.
What are the factors?
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Now, how many times have you heard?
I've heard this a lot how manytimes have you heard a foreman
or a superintendent said youknow what you got to leave your
crap at home?
How many times have you heardthat this isn't severance?
We are human beings.
We don't get to turn it offwhen we walk onto the job site?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
No, I get that, but what about other jobs?
Everyone has to shut it off tooeverywhere.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, but there can be an element of support in that
.
Hey, you know what?
Why don't you take the rest ofthe day off?
And the guy's like, well, Idon't get PTO for another two
years.
Well, that's why we give peoplepaid time off so they can go
get their act together, so theycan go take care of stuff.
But in the trades we don't dothat.
We say, hey, if you're not hereto work and turn your wrench,
(35:10):
you don't get paid.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
So do you think that there is an industry self-esteem
that is kind of lacking?
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
So how do we does there need to be a?
Who's the who's the kind oflead who would you say is a, is
a lead influencer inconstruction that is driving the
people aspire to listen to and,like you remember her sort of
(35:41):
the rise of the JordanPeterson's, if you will yeah,
Like who is that in constructionthat's making people listen and
maybe people stand up forthemselves and coming, getting
people to come together from aconceptual point of view, Cause
it seems splintered to me, oh,it is Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I mean, maybe NCCR is working on it through build
your future.
But you have to remembersomething these organizations
and these people that areworking to be this unified voice
, they all grew up inconstruction, so they're doing
the stuff that they knew how todo and they're hoping they can
figure out a better way to do it.
Well, we needed some people tocome from outside and go here's
what we're doing, like, I lovebuild your future and I love
(36:19):
what they're doing.
And I love how they recognizethe fact that we have to bring
multiple trades together,because if, if, my, uh, if my
foundation guy is short staffed,my framer can never get to work
, my plumber can never get towork.
So we have to bring themtogether and say we got to solve
this problem and I love whatthey're doing.
But then they create baseballcards to hand out to kids in
(36:40):
high schools and they putbillboards on the freeway.
That's not where the kids aretoday.
Kids are online and, yeah, theymight do a little bit of stuff
online, but they're not doingthe stuff online that needs to
be done.
They're thinking kids are goingto hand out baseball cards of
what it's like to be a plumberor an operator.
Yeah, that's not enough.
Like we got to thinkdifferently about this and it's
(37:02):
not the kids that are theproblem.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Well, I guess this okay, let's get to that in a
second I guess the signal fromwhat those guys are doing the
baseball cards and thebillboards at least there's
effort it might not be directedin the right way or the approach
might not be that modern, andmaybe it's like they get to
drive by the billboards like, ohthere it is, wow, our work is
in front of us.
We've seen that it's like it'sthe.
(37:26):
You ever heard that old adagethe best ad ever didn't make it
in the magazine because theboss's wife didn't like it.
It's kind of that same thing.
It's like it's up there foreveryone who isn't, who, it
doesn't matter if they see it.
Yeah, but, um, so let's talkabout what you just said there,
um, about the when parents, andyou can talk to this yourself in
(37:50):
terms of what your experiencewas, because you were telling me
that you went to college andyour dad was in the trades and
so the, the paradigm of whereyou're not going to go into
construction son, daughter,whatever um, you're going to go
get an education, that wholecalculus.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Do you think that's changing or do you think that's
super sticky still?
I think there's pockets whereit might be changing, but I
think, if we look at a macrolevel, it's not changing.
I mean, there is more talk.
Not everybody follows the media.
Not everybody is on the news.
People stay away from that.
They get in their little echochamber and they only hear what
they're supposed to be hearing.
(38:38):
But I think, macro level, kidsare still going to college.
Parents are still lining themup for that.
Parents are still lining kidsup for knowledge work, because
knowledge work is cool,knowledge work is respectable.
I can go to the country cluband brag about my kid who's now
working for Google or Apple orFacebook, but I'm not gonna go
to the country club and bragabout my kid who's working for
(38:59):
some construction contractorthat no one's ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Okay, so here we go the parents.
The career path of the child isa signaling feather in the cap
of the parents.
So let's just get into this fora second.
We're now in a time wheremeaning and purpose with adults
(39:24):
is at an all-time low.
Everyone's looking for a thing,for some kind of zip, like
something that, oh, why don't Ifocus on my kid's career?
Wow, maybe I can start to feelgood about myself from that, so
that then, if they go well, waita minute, you want to go into
the trades.
What do you hang on?
(39:44):
A second Someone at your schoolcame and told you that this is
an opportunity for you andsidestepped me.
Who's been telling you for awhile that I wouldn't be proud
of you if you didn't try and getas most out of your life as
possible for one, that Iprovided the opportunity to be
able to give you enoughbandwidth to be able to do that
I didn't have.
And it's all about that, morethan it is about hey, you know
(40:09):
what we're going to need tobuild a lot of stuff in the next
20, 30 years and that 16,17-year-old could be doing some
amazing stuff.
And it's getting less dirty,dangerous and dull on a daily
basis.
Construction is becoming really, really exciting with robotics,
ai.
There's so many cool things.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Oh, I'll never forget the first time I did a crane
simulator.
Oh, it was the coolest thing.
And they're telling me, yeah,these new cranes, like they're
gamified, like it's fun tooperate a crane.
All of a sudden I'm with you,but I love how you describe that
thought form of the parent andthat so-called conversation.
I don't know that people wouldarticulate it that way, but the
(40:52):
behavior reflects what you justsaid.
Absolutely.
The behavior is there and andthat's where I think we have the
problem because you can getinto the trades and after a
four-year apprenticeship youbecome a journeyman or whatever
path you go down, you can make60, 70 grand a year, but we
don't.
You know, we talk about themoney and we talk about how good
it is, but we don't talk abouthow cool it is because, frankly,
(41:15):
it's not cool.
If you're in the trades, likeI'm, so ingrained in the
construction world, I just thinkit's the coolest stuff.
And the things that I've seen,the things I know, is just the
coolest stuff, like I geek outabout it.
But if I'm not, you know whatmy experience with construction
is?
I'm going to be late getting tomy job today because they shut
down the road.
That's my world forconstruction.
(41:42):
Oh, my house is behind becausesome GC can't get their act
together and get thesecontractors together.
That's my experience withconstruction it's all negative.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
So there's one other, like whenyou look at um, there's an
example I had on a number ofpodcasts ago.
I had a uh, there was afacilitator for trades and
construction and constructionopportunities who was putting
this program together for highschools, and this person, uh, I
(42:06):
had a call with this person andhe told me that he got an email
from a mom that said how dareyou provide and influence my kid
to think that they would gointo construction?
I did not give you thepermission to do this.
(42:28):
Wow, okay, so that's somethingthat actually happened, that
this person told me.
Now I have to think also fromthe mom's perspective.
Sure, we got to look at, like,why is she thinking these things
?
In this particular example, itcould be a dad, it could be
whatever, but just in this caseit was a mom.
So I just watched a um, the newuh surgeon general just did a
(42:58):
speech yesterday or this morning, I think.
I just saw it on YouTube and itwas talking about processed
foods and how the medicalindustry, how it's all super
backwards.
And then I look at the averagediet of the person on the job
site.
It is a to-go food culture.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
So you look at the mom and the mom's saying well,
my little Johnny is not going togo and take a crap in a plastic
box and is not going to eatSubway his whole life because I
don't want that for my child.
You can understand what shemeans Like, think about that.
(43:37):
Moms are super protective.
They're like bear moms.
Right, they're going to do thatand you can't blame the mom for
that, but you do have to.
So I think that the entireindustry needs a shakeup.
I think, in general, our socialdiscourse and diet and our
lifestyle everything needs ashakeup.
(43:57):
So it's not just, you know,specific to construction, but
you know, having um, the one guy, um uh, john Luca, who I had on
, uh, this was on that panel inthe building show in Toronto.
He's like we treat people onsite like animals, yeah, and we
(44:17):
can't do like, here's your foodyou don't talk about.
You know how great somethingtastes.
It's more like just it's emptycalorie crap.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
What do we do?
We call them hands.
Right, they're the hands.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, but you know what when?
Speaker 2 (44:30):
their hands don't work anymore, I go get another
set of hands, but this all goesback to how we started.
People don't believe you careabout them.
If they don't care about them,they're not going to care about
you.
And when somebody makes anopportunity for a dollar more an
hour, they're going to be likebeats the heck out of this, but
you were saying that before wegot on the call.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
You know to have great conversations about
construction, but yeah, but weneed to start doing things.
I think everyone can just talk.
Yeah, yeah.
I wonder, like, when I heardthis surge in general thing, I
thought, wow, subway's introuble.
When I heard about a processedmeat, that's all they have, yeah
, right, like what's going tohappen here?
(45:12):
Do you think they're not goingto fight back for this?
Do you think they're suddenlygoing to have like stuff that's
not like sodium nitrate food?
You think that's?
You know they're not going tohave cold cuts anymore?
No, like what is going tohappen.
This is going to be insane.
So I think in construction it'slike okay, well, why don't we
be as an industry?
We have the ability to be theleaders and it's not.
(45:34):
As I was saying earlier,construction is not going to be
this old school picture fromwhen they were building the
Empire State Building.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
The guy you know having lunch on the beam, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
That's not that anymore.
It's not.
It's not.
It is using robotics, it isusing drive by wire.
It is like using cool equipment.
It is.
It's awesome, right, and thisis only going to get cooler and
entre new.
Everyone you were mentioningabout the, the attorney.
That is worth three to fourhundred dollars an hour.
(46:11):
Well, you know what it's?
A lot of these lower-levelattorney jobs.
Yeah, sure, if you want someoneto show up in court for you,
represent you, okay, that'sgoing to be there for a while,
but you want a paralegal?
Done.
See you later.
Ai.
Hello, it's going to take awhile before Elon's Tesla
humanoids are going to besitting because of the change in
(46:32):
environment.
The built environment ischanging every five minutes,
right, and you're going to tripover that shit unless the camera
footage is updated every fiveseconds.
So we're going to need to havehumans doing this stuff for
quite a while.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, we have a client that does reinforcing
steel, they do bridge work andthey're doing robotics now and
everybody was like, oh my gosh,this robotics is going to
replace it.
No, what it did was it allowedthe men that knew how to do the
iron work to go do the real ironwork?
Cause this robot all it does islay down and it just puts down
decks.
That's all it does.
(47:06):
So sick, I love it, you know,but it's cool to watch.
It's cool to watch.
But I'll never forget that sameclient was on Dirty Jobs with
Mike Rowe.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Oh, yeah, actually, mike.
Rowe is one of these guys right.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah, yeah, he's.
He could be the guy.
I think he's doing a lot ofgood things for the trades.
He really talks a lot aboutgetting the kids in schools and
education and everything else,but I really do think that he's
still missing out on the parents.
Have you interviewed Mike?
Speaker 1 (47:33):
before what have you interviewed, mike?
Speaker 2 (47:37):
I have not, I have not.
We should go find him, weshould, we should Well, so I
mean, but think about this for asecond, think about this for a
second.
We create a TV show to showcaseconstruction jobs, agricultural
jobs, these really cool jobs.
And what do we call it Dirty?
Speaker 1 (48:02):
jobs, great for marketing.
What did you just tell everymom in?
Speaker 2 (48:04):
America, yeah, good point.
And we do this all the time.
We come up with these taglinesand these slogans.
I'll never forget there wasthis plumber in Arizona.
They're the smell good plumber.
I mean, that's just a knock atthe entire industry, except for
them, of course.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
And how many times Ben Franklin does this.
You know they have a taglineabout you know, if we're not on
time, it's free, or somethinglike that.
What are they doing?
They're telling everybody inthe industry we're not on time,
right, and this is what thepublic hears.
And then we wonder why peopledon't want a dirty job.
I don't want my kids to have adirty job.
(48:40):
Why would I want my kids to bedirty all day?
And then that's it.
I don't explore it, I don'tlook at it for them, I don't go,
wow, they could be really goodat this.
They can be very successful.
They could be an entrepreneur.
I mean, the trades is probablyone of the easiest industries to
get into, startup and grow intoa CEO because you can start
your own company.
Yeah, it's one of the few outthere that you can do that, but
(49:06):
we can't get past the fact thatthey're dirty jobs.
So you know our kids aren'tgoing to have a shot at it.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
So when you go into, can we just talk about you and
what you do for companies?
Obviously you have your podcastand you.
So what are the, what are themain things that you hop in
there and you kind of put yourcape on and you go fix for
people or at least set up forthem?
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Well, first thing we got to do is stop the bleeding.
Everybody, every contractor outthere, is bleeding in some way
or another.
They don't have enough peoplecoming in, so jobs are behind.
They got jobs that aren'tprofitable.
They've got rampant turnover.
They've got toxic leaders.
Whatever it is, we come in, weassess, we stop the bleeding.
First thing we got to dobecause we can't get them to pay
attention to that next levelstuff like becoming the employer
(49:51):
of choice, and that's step twowe have to become the employer
of choice.
We have to be so prevalent inour local community.
We have to have a reputationthat is not tarnished by the
rest of the industry.
We have to have people that areout there bragging about how
amazing we are, and we have aprocess we take our clients
(50:12):
through it's called the choiceframework to become the employer
of choice and then, once we dothat, we've got to get people
performing.
So now we start looking at yourorganization and, as we start
designing the organization andunderstanding who reports to who
, we make sure everybody's clearon what's expected.
One of the biggest complaints weget when we survey teams,
(50:32):
especially in the field, is Idon't know what my boss expects
of me, cause today it's this andtomorrow it's that, and I have
no idea because no one's eversat down and had that
conversation.
We just don't do that in thetrades.
We just say, hey, go get towork.
And then when they're notperforming, we tell them they're
not performing.
What's that phrase?
No news is good news.
If I'm not yelling at you, thatmeans you're doing a good job.
(50:58):
Wow, Anybody that's gotchildren know that doesn't work.
You've got to encourage thatpositive behavior.
You have to reinforce thatpositive behavior and if you
don't, you're just going to getmore of the negative behavior.
So let's get really clear onhow to have those conversations
and let people know they'reperforming.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
So how do you think so, when people are bringing on
or talking about positions theyhave available in their company,
what are some like techniquesthat you can think of that, like
interview techniques when theyhave a candidate, for instance?
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Yeah, so the interview is my favorite part.
I love the interview.
I love interviewing people.
It's so much fun.
I love getting to buildrelationships.
Keep in mind that the interviewis a sales process, Except
you're the buyer.
As the owner, you're the buyer.
Your job is not to stand thereand sell your company.
(51:54):
They're standing in front ofyou.
You have to decide if you wantto invest in them, if you want
to buy them, buy their time.
Right, that's what we do.
I give them money, they give metheir time.
I'm the buyer, which means theyhave to sell me.
But too often we're sodesperate we show up.
You're like, yep, they can fogthe mirror, we're good.
And you hire them and theydon't work out and it's like
(52:17):
nobody wants to work.
Well, if you would have taken10 minutes to have a
conversation with them, maybeyou would have found out what
motivated them.
Maybe you'd have found out whythey're leaving their old job.
Maybe you would have found outwhy they want to make more money
or why they want to work foryou.
And if we just focused a littlebit more on the why in the
interview, it creates suchbetter opportunities for
(52:37):
everybody.
(53:03):
The flipping of the powerdynamic there, turning into the
buyer rather than the selling.
Do you think people will hearthat message in a way and then
exploit that message and saythings like why should I hire
you?
Is it that kind of message wetalk when we're doing sales
teams which we don't do a ton inconstruction anymore, but we
have sales teams.
One of my favorite interviewprocesses is to ask them about
their past performance.
Tell me about a time you weretop performer, tell me about
some of your big wins and sharethat.
And then you just pause and youlook at them and you just say
(53:24):
you know what, I'm just not herein top performer.
And you just stop Like you'vegot to sell me and now I just
rejected you and told you no,all in one sentence.
And if you're in sales, guesswhat?
You got to be okay with both ofthose.
So I want to see do you squirmyour way out?
Or do you actually sit down andhave a conversation with me?
(53:50):
And we see companies do that alot, where they they get to a
point where that confidencelevel shifts and they're no
longer worried about if I don'thire this one, there won't be
another one, because that'swhere they're all at right now.
We just had a conversation witha company.
They have somebody.
I asked him.
I said who's the problem onyour team?
And everybody pointed to theexact same person.
So, foreman, nobody wants towork for him Completely toxic.
(54:14):
If one guy that's figured outhow to work with him kind of
Nobody else wants to be on hiscrew.
So why do you keep him?
Well, because we can't replacehim.
There's plenty of people outthere that want to do this work,
I promise you that.
But maybe they don't want to doit for you, or maybe they don't
want to come work for youbecause you've got this toxic
(54:34):
person.
But see, they don't have theconfidence yet.
And once you have thatconfidence, it's really easy to
walk away and say you know what,there'll be a better one.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
Do you think that the archetype of that one foreman
that's just toxic or isdisruptive in that way?
Typically those people are verytalented too, right, and that's
the hard part is that theiroutput per minute is so high.
It's just like, oh no, oh, youcan't do it, I'll do it.
(55:03):
That kind of person, right?
That person that know it all,but super talented.
And that's the rub all the time, because you're thinking, ah,
okay, well, yeah, I mean Orioncomes to me and says, wow,
there's lots of people thatcould fill this position.
I can tell you that you saythat to them and they go and in
their mind they're like, yeah,but the person does this, this,
(55:25):
this, this.
That's too much work for me,because it is work for the
recruiter, which is often so.
What do you think of?
Like?
I've seen a bit of a disconnectbetween recruitment managers
talent, talent people so not asthe third party, but somebody
(55:46):
who works in an organization,who is hiring people that
there's a disconnect betweenwhat they do and then what the
boss expects, and then exactlywhat happens.
They're like this fake thing inthe middle.
That is not a truerepresentation and they don't
have a lot of charisma to beginwith.
They're just kind of likephoning it in and I mean, do you
(56:08):
see that quite a bit, oh yeah,and here's why Recruiting is not
an HR activity.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
We give it to HR because it's people-related, but
recruiting is a marketingactivity.
Think about that for a minute.
You've got an open opportunity,you're posting it on a job
board as an ad and you're sayingcome work for me.
That is marketing all over theplace.
Yeah, but we give it to an HRperson who grew up in a world of
compliance and checkboxes, andthen they lack charisma, they
(56:37):
lack connection, and then theyare the representation of our
company to the rest of the worldand it's no wonder we struggle.
So one of the first things wedo is if they don't have Usually
HR people don't like recruitinganyways.
And so if they don't haveusually HR people don't like
recruiting anyways.
And so if they don't have arecruiter, we'll help them find
a recruiting coordinator who'susually like an inside sales rep
(56:57):
or a customer service rep.
Those are the people that doamazing at recruiting, but they
don't think about that.
They think, oh, I got to hirean HR person and that just
doesn't work.
So recruiting is a marketingactivity.
I want your listeners to hearthat.
Give and that just doesn't work.
So recruiting is a marketingactivity.
I want your listeners to hearthat.
Give it to your marketing team.
They'll do a much better job?
Speaker 1 (57:14):
Yeah, actually I have .
At SiteMax I have one of ourCSMs recruiting another CSM
right now Doing the firstinterview.
He is a senior CSM, but thepoint of that is because they're
going to talk the same language, they're going to ask different
questions than I'm going to ask.
I'm going to do once we got ashort list, I'm going to do the
(57:36):
cultural fit and make sure thatyou know is this person an
a-hole or not?
Do I want this person in mycompany?
Yeah, I got to do that part.
But, I really, really want ourperson who's living and
breathing that position all thetime to be talking the language,
and then there's no surprise,also when the person gets here.
Speaker 2 (58:00):
Yeah, I heard so many times.
I'll bring together thesuperintendents.
I'll say all right, what canrecruiting do better?
Start sending us quality people.
What do you mean?
They're not sending qualitypeople Because there's this
belief that if we need someonenew on the job site, we just let
the recruiter handle everything.
The recruiter doesn't know.
(58:21):
And so I say, good, definequality people so I can look out
for them.
They're like well, why aren'twe having that conversation Like
what does quality mean?
Let's focus on that, figurethat out.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
Cool.
Well, I think um you and I cantalk for hours on this stuff.
I love it, you know, um, Ithink we, you know doing, we're
both in the hundreds of podcasts.
I mean, yeah, god, the amountthat I've done, it's up there.
Yeah, it's crazy so the amountof conversations we've had.
(58:55):
It's really cool to sit withyou and be able to exchange with
you like this, and it's veryeasy, by the way.
So you make that very easy.
So thank you very much.
Maybe we should do a follow-up.
What do you think let's?
Speaker 2 (59:09):
do it.
Speaker 1 (59:09):
Let's do it Okay, Ryan, People can get you on
LinkedIn.
Is that your preferred?
Speaker 2 (59:16):
That is my social platform.
I'm Gen X, so I'm just kind ofstuck on the business platform.
But yeah.
Linkedin and thencorematterscom Perfect Okay, and
if your listeners areinterested in an autographed
copy of my book, they can go tocorematterscom.
Slash free book and forshipping and handling, I'll sign
(59:37):
a book and send it to them.
For the old S&H.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
I like it.
Okay, that's awesome.
Well, thank you very much, ryan, it's been a pleasure All the
best.
I'm going to see you out there.
I can't wait to see you again.
Well, that does it for anotherepisode of the Site Visit.
Thank you for listening.
Be sure to stay connected withus by following our social
(01:00:02):
accounts on Instagram andYouTube.
You can also sign up for ourmonthly newsletter at
sitemaxsystemscom slash, thesite visit, where you'll get
industry insights, pro tips andeverything you need to know
about the site visit podcast andsitemax, the job site and
construction management tool ofchoice for thousands of
contractors in North America andbeyond.
(01:00:23):
Sitemax is also the engine thatpowers this podcast.
All right, let's get back tobuilding.
Ryan, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm fantastic.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I have a halls in my mouth right now, so you're going
to hear clicking on my teeth.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You all right.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Good for the voice.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yeah, yeah, especially if you're doing this
a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Yeah, I mean, how many podcasts have you done in
your Titans of the Trades?
Just over 100.
That's quite a lot, and they'retypically an hour long.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
No, no, these are construction.
This is for construction guys.
How long does it get from onejob site to the next?
15, 20 minutes?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Oh, I see, I see the strategy.
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, I want to be able to finish one before they
get out of the truck.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
And there's also the download thing right, Like if
it's over a certain amount oftime that you have to download
it.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, yeah, because you'll see streams versus
downloads, okay.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, so there's kind of a thing there too, when it's
over an hour and over a certainmemory size, anyway I used to
do shows that were over an hourand, um, people were like, hey,
can we just get to it faster?
Like that was the feedback Igot.
So I'm like, all right, let'sjust jump in and let's rip the
band-aid off and get it done.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So you uh about um.
You have your consultancy corematters and you, you are a uh uh
, a speaker, a podcaster,motivation uh, strategies, et
cetera.
How long have you been doing itfor core matters?
Almost 15 years Veteran.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
You know what they say Everybody's an overnight
success.
After 15 years, nice, I'm stillstill like where is that?
I like it?
No things.
Things are going great and, um,the the amount of time I've
spent near the industry andaround the industry, it's, it's
almost one of those things thatnot having grown up in the
(01:43):
industry, I think gives me anadvantage, because I see things
that people that grew up in theindustry didn't.
I grew up in the trades, but Ididn't grow up in construction.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Okay.
So when you say grew up in thetrades, how did you manifest
that?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
My dad was a blue collar owner operator.
Oh, he was.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Okay, so you grew up in the family, but you didn't do
it yourself.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I didn't do it myself .
No, I mean, I knew how torewire motors, I knew how to you
know plumb things, I knew howto do a lot of stuff in the
skilled trades.
My dad taught me, yeah, but Inever did it as a profession.
Gotcha, okay, I went thecollege route because that's
what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
You're an insider, you're an outsider insider, yeah
.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well, that's six years of my life.
I'll never get back, so I'm nota big fan of college anymore.
No, it's changed a lot, yeahyeah.
But I learned a lot and Ilearned a lot, and I think a lot
of what I learned in collegeand in my corporate experience
I'm able to pull in today and Ithink that's what makes what we
do so different for the industry, because they're not used to
(02:48):
that when we got on the calloriginally a few moments ago, we
were talking about all thethings that people aren't
(03:10):
talking about in construction.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I'm so um, uh, there's lots of landmines around
.
People think that they're goingto step on and it's actually
less than they think, but it'sthe worry that business might go
down or they might have aclient or a customer or somebody
that says, hey, I heard yousaid this thing, so yeah, but
let's get into it.
(03:32):
Welcome to the Site.
Visit Podcast Leadership andperspective from construction
with your host, James Falkner.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Your host, James Falkner Business as usual, as it
has been for so long now thatit goes back to what we were
talking about before and hittingthe reset button you know you
read all the books, you read theemail, you read Scaling Up, you
read Good to Great.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
You know I could go on.
We've got to a place where wefound the secret serum.
We found the secret potion.
We can get the workers in.
We know where to get them.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
One time I was on a job site for a while and
actually we had a semesterconcrete and I ordered a
Korean-Finnish patio out frontof the site show.
Yesterday I was down at Dallasand a guy just hit me up on
LinkedIn out of the blue andsaid he was driving from
Oklahoma to Dallas to meet withme because he heard the Favorite
Connect platform on your guys'podcast.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Home.
It crush it and love it, and wecelebrate these values every
single day.
Let's get down to it.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
You know, it wasn't too long ago that I had someone
tell me hey, I can't post that,I need help, my clients will
leave.
Like, what are you thinking?
What are you thinking?
What do you mean?
Oh, is that my cue?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
That's a perfect gap, don't worry about it.
Okay, that's where the musicwill come in, and I love what
you just said there.
That's going to be good, allright.
So, ryan, let's get back intothis, that example.
You're saying you think they'regoing to lose clients because
they've said something, orsomething like that.
Take me through that.
What do you think is the mainfear of people?
(05:14):
To not speak up or to not talkabout difficult things?
What do you think thatmotivation of that is?
Is it a myth?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I think people are so good, we're so good at
justifying what's going on inour business and it's not me,
it's never me, it's alwaysoutside factors right, that we
tell ourselves these storiesthat aren't real.
And what I've learned over theyears is that every single
client of mine wants me tosucceed.
(05:42):
And when I work with acontractor, every single client
that they have whether it's anowner or a GC they want them to
succeed because their project isdependent on that construction
company's success.
And if you just raise your handand say, hey, would you be able
to help me?
We can't do that because we'remen, we don't ask for help, we
(06:05):
don't do these things.
And it really is this mindsetof if I can't figure it out, I
shouldn't be asking for help,because asking for help is
weakness.
Yeah, if I tell somebody I'mshort-staffed and that project
may not get done on time, I justraised my hand and said I'm
(06:27):
weak, I can't handle it myself,and I think that's something
that's missing in the trades.
You know we talk about what ittakes to get people to want
these jobs or to want to stay inthese jobs.
You know what people want ustalking about Is us caring about
them being in these jobs, youknow, if I hear one more safety
(06:49):
briefing about, well, this isour policy and this is how we do
this and this is how we do that, you know, those guys walk away
and they go.
The only reason we have allthese safety briefings and all
these safety policies is becauseof OSHA, because my boss is
afraid that OSHA is going towalk on the job site and shut
them down.
That's the only reason.
But you know the real reason wehave all this safety stuff?
Because we want you to go homeat the end of the day and be
(07:10):
able to play with your kids.
We want you to go home inbetter shape than you came this
morning, not worse.
But we don't talk about that.
I don't know why we don't talkabout it, but we don't talk
about that.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
So what do you think of the, the masculinity quotient
, or the?
And it doesn't necessarily beneed to be a um, I mean being
masculine.
I listened to this on podcast.
It's like a behavioral set.
It's not necessarily rooted in,you know being.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying we got tofeminize the trades or anything
like that, I'm not saying that.
But we live in a society rightnow where we are more connected
than we've ever been, Yet we aremore lonely than we've ever
been.
Yeah, I just went to a men'snight at church and they said
that 57% of men 57% don't have abest friend.
Yeah, I read, I heard that theother day.
(08:03):
Right, I mean what?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
And you need three.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
They do not have someone they can go to when they
need help?
And I'm sure you know this, butin the trades the suicide rate
five times national average.
So what people are saying withthis is you know what?
I'm just gonna end it because Idon't know how to fix it.
Nobody cares about me anyways,so what's it matter?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
So where do you think that this here's the
interesting part about the andthis is not something that
anyone's proud to talk about,but I think we need to have real
conversations about this Interms of the suicide rate of
construction, there's the hugespectrum of construction jobs
(08:50):
and positions, all the way downfrom sweeping a job site, all
the way up to being a PM orbeing a VP.
So when you see thedistribution of the suicide
occurrences, they're probablylowered down on the distribution
there, right on the site side.
(09:11):
And then on top of that, whatdo you think are the main
factors of the unhappiness, to apoint that somebody might be
thinking those things on the jobsite?
And the next question is isthat inherent in construction or
is it inherent in jobs thatperhaps on the lower scale of
(09:34):
distribution, were not plan A?
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Well, I'm just going to say I'm not an expert in this
.
By no means am I an expert inthis.
But think about just theindustry in general and I adore
the industry but for a lot ofpeople, they either got into
construction because that's whatdad did right, they just
followed in dad's footsteps,that's what a best friend did
(09:59):
and he's like come with me.
Or we see this too they didn'tmake the best life choices as a
teenager, got set back in othercareer paths and said you know
what?
I'm going to go thisconstruction route because
they'll accept me.
You know, we don't talk aboutsecond chance programs in SaaS
platform world, right.
Nobody wants somebody to be aprogrammer, but we talk about
that in construction and so ifyou just go from that, we know
(10:22):
that a good percentage of themen that are out there working
in construction right now didn'thave the best upbringing, made
some bad choices in their lifeOkay Right, and that stuff
perpetuates into other areas oflife, whether it's relationships
, financial, whatever.
So there's this huge burden onespecially field workers that
have struggled in life and thenwhat we do is we put them on a
(10:44):
job site.
We do not create opportunitiesfor them to have friends at work
.
We do not create opportunitiesfor them to get some R&R or take
vacation time.
I mean, I met a client.
I've got a client a few yearsnow.
When I first met him I said howlong do I got to work for you
to get PTO?
Five years, Five years beforeyou give me one paid day off.
(11:07):
You know what he says to me.
He goes, and our average guy isonly here about three and a
half, so I never had to pay PTO.
Like in his mind it was a win,I see.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
And I'm thinking, you don't even give these guys a
day off to go rest.
And he's like well, they justwant to work crazy.
They'd work seven days a week.
They'd work all of thisovertime if they could, because
that's what they grew up in,that's all they know.
And so when you stack all ofthese things on top of them and
then they're working crazy hours, they're not getting to spend
time with their family, theydon't have a lot of friends,
(11:41):
because men in this country arelonely.
We don't have other men tospend time with.
You stack all those things ontop of each other and it creates
a real recipe for mentaldistress.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
And that's what I think is going on.
So where does so?
there's obviously a financialinvestment there on the company
side, because time is money andtheir projects need to be, are
on a schedule, etc.
And if the let's say a sublet's, let's just talk as a sub
(12:17):
trade.
For instance, you were hired bythe prime contractor, you've
won the bid, you're going tostart the work and there needs
to be an alignment of valuesfrom the developer who hires the
prime contractor, who thenagain has the tendering process,
(12:38):
and that may be part of it.
What do you do to maintainmental health on your
construction site?
Well, one of the things Becauseit needs to go down the value
chain.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
It has to.
Yeah, and I can't tell you howmany times I've heard.
So we work with a lot of subsmore than we work with the
primes, because that's where thefront line's at.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
And the things that we hear that these prime
contractors expect of the subsand the way they treat these
guys and some other stuff.
You're right, they'redefinitely down the value chain.
One of the things we've doneand this is a shout out to a
good friend of mine, ron butwe've started to introduce
marketplace chaplains to ourclients.
I don't know if you've heard ofthem, no, what's that?
So they've got 2,200 chaplainsall over the country.
(13:20):
You know what a chaplain is?
No, so the military has themand there's large organizations
have them, but chaplains are.
Think of it as someone you canjust go to and have a real
honest conversation with.
It's completely private and youcan just pour your heart out to
somebody.
A lot of chaplains are based ina faith and so there's a faith
component to it as well.
(13:41):
But what marketplace chaplainsdoes is they come out and they
look at all your job sites andthey say you know what?
We got two chaplains thataren't far from here.
We're gonna have them comevisit your job sites twice a
month and these guys go out andgals go out and they just
introduce themselves and say,hey, I'm here if you ever need
to talk, I'm here if there'sanything I can do for you.
They don't work for the company, so it's a lot easier to
(14:03):
confide in them.
And one of the things I loveabout what they do is they
actually extend that benefit tothe immediate family.
So if your kid's going throughsomething, they can actually
reach out to a chaplain and havesomeone to talk to
(14:25):
no-transcript.
It can create a major, majoruptick in not only the mood of
your employees but theproductivity of your employees,
because happy employees are moreproductive employees.
Just to know that there'ssomeone that they can talk to
and I think that the bottom lineof this is people in the trades
(14:46):
, especially construction.
They just want to know thattheir boss cares about them.
Just for a minute.
So you care about me and I wasjust talking to a company and we
care way too much.
We take advantage and you knowthere's a balance.
But here's what I know is thatthey're not getting credit for
(15:07):
the things they do.
They're just being taken forgranted and it's because we
don't want to talk about thatstuff.
I can't tell you.
I mean, I've sat in rooms withsuperintendents talking about
how nobody wants to work.
Everybody's entitled,everybody's lazy.
I'm like your crews.
No know, you're saying thatabout them.
Do you think that might be partof the problem?
Speaker 1 (15:31):
So on the on.
So you're a recruitingspecialist and when I say that
in terms of how how to berecruiting, in terms of
recruiting strategies, like whatdo you say to these companies
in terms of positioning and theemployer value proposition and
who they are as a company, etcetera, Like I mean this is,
this is a huge piece of this Um.
But when you, as you go, Ithink you you kind of nailed it,
(16:00):
uh, when you were saying, likehow people get in construction,
it's also how um companiesevolve over time.
They started off just as aperson who can do something and
then they ended up with acompany, they ended up with
employees and they end up withdoing tax returns and all the
stuff.
So those are the companies,that sort of the you you know
(16:23):
five to 30 employee kind ofcompanies that are like so
redlining all the time.
They're like you want me to dowhat?
Pro D, Pro D, what Like Ihonestly I'm dealing with the
client, I'm dealing with this,I'm dealing with these guys, I'm
doing all this stuff.
I'm putting out fires and I meanyou obviously see, that is that
(16:45):
there's no bandwidth.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I talk about this a little bit in my book.
I share a story about this.
Tell us about your book.
What's it called?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Hire.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Better People Faster.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Okay, cool and people can get that on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah audio book.
It's available.
Okay, cool, we'll put that inthe link.
Here's the thing about theexact story you just talked
about.
I'm in the trades, I'm workingfor some Yahoo, I walk away and
go.
I can do this better than hecan.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Walk away.
I wake up 10 years later I got40 trucks, I got 60 employees
and I'm like what did I do?
And I'm really good at buildingstuff.
That's what I do.
I'm amazing at working with myhands and finding guys that can
work with their hands and buildstuff, but no one ever taught me
to run a business Right.
No one ever taught me how to bean amazing leader.
(17:35):
No one ever taught me aboutcompany culture.
You know, I talk about my dadand his story.
I watched my dad struggle hisentire career and it wasn't
because he was a bad person or abad person to work for.
No one ever taught him theskills of doing this stuff and
building effective teams.
And that's what I want to do,and I think it all starts with
two things.
Have we built a company thatpeople want to work at?
(17:58):
In other words, when they seeyour website or they see your
truck or they hear about you,they go.
That's different.
I want to be a part of that.
I'm excited to be a part ofthat.
Oh, you mean, you're not hiringright now.
I'll wait, I like that.
That's one.
They want to work there.
And then, when they do workthere, they want to stay.
They wake up every morning andthey go.
(18:19):
You know what?
I know that the grass isn'tgreener anywhere else.
I know for a fact that there isno better opportunity out there
for the than the one I haveright now.
I'm excited to wake up tomorrowand go see James at work, cause
I got a friend there and youknow we're going to go grab
drinks afterwards.
Like I'm excited about that,are?
we in a we engage people.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Are we in a bigger, better deal economy?
All the time People are like,hey, there's always grasses
greener on the other side.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Oh, I don't think the grass is when we build that
kind of organization.
There is no grass on the otherside.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
No, I get that, but those are few and far between.
Yeah, but we can make them.
I'm not saying you can't Justsaying for the average company
that is trying to hold on toemployees or recruit new ones
that hasn't employed what you'retalking about, which they
should, I'm not saying theyshould, it's totally plan, plan,
awesome plan.
(19:14):
But how do for those companiesthat haven't done that kind of
thing?
Are most of their employeesthinking bigger, better deal
Somewhere else?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
So I just had an HVAC tech at my house yesterday I
won't name names and he's comeout to my house a few times over
the last couple of years.
He goes.
Man, today's the last dayyou're going to see me.
I said, really what's going on?
He goes.
I got another job down thestreet, pays $2 more an hour,
gives me an extra week of PTO.
And I just looked at him.
I said, so problems with yourboss.
And he said he said no, no, no,a couple extra bucks an hour
(19:58):
and extra week of PTO.
He goes and there's a littlething of my boss and I said,
really what's that?
He goes.
I'd rather not say oh, that big.
That big.
Here's what I know.
People don't leave jobs, peopleleave people, and we know this.
So if you have a problem withpeople not wanting to join your
(20:19):
team, it's not about they don'twant to work for your company.
They don't want to work foryour company, they don't want to
work for you, they don't wantto work for your leaders.
If people are leaving for adollar more an hour, two hours
more an hour, they're notleaving your company.
They're not Disloyal becausethey want to make an extra buck
or two.
They're leaving because theydon't see a future with you or
they don't want the future thatthey do see.
(20:43):
That all goes back to thismental health, the relationships
, the feeling cared about, feellike I belong, I've got friends
and I know people are listeningto this.
Going that costs money.
I'm not going to be able to beprofitable.
There's no way I'm going to beable to afford it If everybody's
just hanging out being friendsall the time.
I'm not saying you go, set upping pong tables and Xboxes.
(21:03):
That's not what I'm suggesting.
I'm not saying you go set upping pong tables and Xboxes.
That's not what I'm suggesting.
Give guys 15 minutes at lunchwithout beating on them to just
say, hey, let's do a fancyfootball league, let's just have
a little fun.
Let's just do men's stuff, likestuff that men do for fun.
You know what?
Schedule a golf outing on theweekends.
You know, start a golf league.
Hey, anybody can come do it.
(21:24):
We're just all going to gettogether on Saturday morning
we're gonna go play golf.
Create opportunities for theseguys to create friends at work.
Create opportunities for themto feel like they belong there
and people will want to workthere and people will want to
stay.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Okay.
So I'm, as you're talking this,I'm visualizing the job site.
I'm visualizing thischarismatic person that's
talking to the rest of thefrontline crew crew leader,
maybe, foreman, perhaps that's apretty, you have to have a
pretty special person.
I'm thinking look, there's theowner, and the owner has a
(22:00):
mandate Look, I want you to dofantasy football, I want you to
do that with all your crews.
Tells the five differentforeman look, this is what we
want to do.
Those five foremen need to bewizards at inspiration, they
need to be wizards at havingenthusiasm and they need enough
(22:23):
bandwidth to be able to do thosethings, to be able to push off
the fact that maybe the prime,the PM of the prime, is showing
up at the job site that day andis going what are you guys doing
?
You realize we're behindschedule.
You're talking about fantasyfootball and not saying that
that's not what's happening.
(22:43):
But that would be the myth thatthe owner might think shit.
if I do that and I've got theseguys saying that there, what's
it going to look like for us?
He knows, from a macro point ofview it should look good, but
not everyone gets it.
Not everyone's on the sameplaybook playbook.
(23:12):
So do you think that there is?
I like the idea.
At least there's a new lexiconof terms, this chaplain concept
oh, not concept, it's real, butI haven't heard that term before
.
So I think there needs to be anew movement in terms of
language, in terms of what isacceptable, what is not.
And also, I continue tostruggle with the term mental
(23:39):
health, because to some peoplewho haven't dug in and figured
out what that term encompasses,they think it means I'm crazy.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Like I need to go to a psychiatrist.
I need to be on medicationbecause of chemical imbalances
in my brain.
That, to some people, that'swhat mental health means.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Oh, because that's what the media is portrayed as.
The media is great at spinningthings.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Well, because that's what the media is portrayed as.
The media is great at spinningthings Well.
I think construction in generalhas found ways to add more
color to what mental healthmeans.
However, here's an example andthis previous podcast people can
listen to.
Where I brought this example isthere are frontline field
workers who you said might havenot made good life decisions and
(24:26):
they end up on the job site.
And here they are and they havea whole backdrop of stresses
that they might not be talkingabout, but there's only so many
things that people can have intheir attention at a single time
.
And they've got three spots thatare crowded and screaming at
them that you don't even knowabout while you're working with
(24:48):
that person on the job.
So you have that person therewho is dealing with those things
.
But then you have the GC owner,let's say okay, the prime
contractor, who is totallyunderwater because he misquoted
all the materials, maybe becausesome tariff thing changed and
(25:12):
suddenly everything's moreexpensive.
May not have been his fault,I'm with you Totally out of
their control, right?
And that person has their ownthree things screaming, has
their own three things screaming.
Okay, so now we have twoelements of life stresses
(25:34):
situational stresses that arethinking that person might be
like if I don't I'm talkingabout the higher management, gc
owner, prime contractor isthinking you know, maybe I don't
know how I'm ever going to getout from under this rock, what
am I going to do?
This is my whole life,everything's counted Like.
(25:55):
It's feeling very similar tothe person who's thinking how do
I get further in my life?
How do I get out of thissituation?
What do I do?
They're both dark, really dark.
But when we talk about mentalhealth and construction, we're
not going all the way up thevalue chain, we're only talking
(26:16):
about the field level and I callBS on that.
Yeah, because so, and thenlet's so.
Let's just say, for all intentsand purposes, we nail somehow
through programs, um, the entiremental health calculus.
We figured it all out.
(26:36):
We've got programs, it's allworking, everyone's happy.
We now have a price per squarefoot problem that financially
pushes everything out of reachfor everyone, because nothing is
free.
So where we are and I'm inVancouver, which is this is like
one of the worst scenarios forthis we have field workers who
(26:59):
are working on a project.
They work on it in a proud way.
It's the transfer of passionfrom a developer all the way
down to hey, now you go buildthis thing, it's my dream.
You're not going to get part ofit, we'll just pay you whatever
we can pay you.
They have to do that and theyknow they will never be able to
afford to buy that and live init, or even rent it because it's
so expensive $1,000 to $2,000 asquare foot here to $2,000 a
(27:26):
square foot here.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Well, so now you bring up one of my other rants
about the trades and about theworld we live in right now.
You know it's so interesting tome that we live in a world
where we value the attorney morethan we value the plumber or
the framer or the excavatoroperator the people that build
(27:49):
the infrastructure in which welive.
We do not value them as much aswe value the attorney, because
the attorney is going to keep mefrom doing something stupid or
get me out of trouble.
The attorney exists for thesole purpose of fixing things or
keeping things from going bad,and we value them at five, six
hundred, a thousand dollars anhour.
Yet the person that laid thenetworking cable for you and I
(28:13):
to have this call right now yeah, we scoff when they're like I
need to make more money, I can'tlive here.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
We're like are you?
We have?
We've seen this.
We have job sites that we can'tget people to because they're
in a very expensive part of townand the guys aren't going to
drive 70, 80 miles to get tothat job site.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Because you don't have contractors or frontline
craft workers living near thatjob site.
They got to drive across townfor two hours.
Like I'm not going to do it forwhat you want to pay me.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Well, they don't get paid for that two hours.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
They don't, they don't.
So what we're saying is wedon't value your time, but we
value the PM's time, becausewe'll let the PM work remote
three days a week.
We don't want them to be in thecar all the time, but we don't
value the time of the craftworker, and that's where I think
we have a.
That is where we need to make abig shift.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
So is this a governmental shift we need to
make?
Because if you put this to theprivate sector to have to fund
this whole thing, everything'sjust going to become more
expensive In everything, Becauseyou know what Human energy is
the same as fuel energy.
It's the same thing.
When fuel costs go up,everything goes up.
(29:29):
Food gets more expensive,everything does when the energy
it creates to buildinfrastructure goes up, and
that's the human energy.
The food costs go up becausethe warehouse costs more.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Well, I mean, I'm not a big fan of government
involvement in this kind ofstuff.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Why not oh?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Why?
Why not?
Well, how do they pay for it?
They either turn on theprinting presses and there goes
inflation, or they tax us more.
Like how do they pay for this?
Speaker 1 (29:51):
No, because I think what's happening now is that
what we were paying for is nowbeing scrutinized to the fact
that we might actually pay forthings that matter
Reappropriation of funds thathave been wasted in the past are
now going to a place perhapslike this, because we do realize
and this is the same withCanada, same with America is we
(30:13):
do realize that we have to getour act together when it comes
to making things, buildingthings and supporting the right
things.
Otherwise, we're going to wakeup.
We're going to have India andChina on our doorstep and
they're going to be knocking andwe go.
Oh, by the way, we controlgoing to wake up.
We're going to have India andChina on our doorstep and
they're going to be knocking andwe go oh, by the way, we
control everything.
Now.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
And it's kind of globally macro.
We could get into the whole.
How do you?
Speaker 2 (30:33):
balance a budget at the government, but we're not
going to talk about that.
But no, I think that it's.
We need to change the narrative.
Okay, Construction is anindustry that turned a blind eye
to the rise of the knowledgeworker.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yep, I agree with that.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Construction is an industry that said, well, that's
not going to affect me, that'snot going to impact me, and we
ignored it.
And if you think about what thenewspapers and the libraries
did in the late 90s and theearly 2000s, they're all gone
now Because they ignored it.
They said that's not going tohappen to me.
People are still going to wantto read their newspaper with the
coffee, like, yeah, they get toon their phone.
They didn't think about this,and the construction industry
(31:11):
did the same damn thing.
In what respect they ignoredthe rise of the knowledge worker
.
You know I can go work fromhome and make $22 an hour
answering customer servicephones for Amazon.
I live wherever I want, I workcrazy hours, but I get to do it
from home.
Well, I know a lot of companies.
I can't even get started in thetrades for more than $17, $18
(31:34):
an hour, it doesn't matter where.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
I live, then why would they do it?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
That's my point.
And so, as an industry, wedidn't say wait a minute, we've
got to solve this problem of theremote worker.
We've got to solve this problemof the remote worker.
We've got to solve this problemof this is our competitor.
I'll never forget one of myfirst podcast episodes, Gosh,
this was four or five years agoand I was talking to this guy.
He was the president of Nariremodelers industry and I said
(32:00):
you know what?
Who's your biggest competitorright now?
If you're paying $24 an hour orless, he's like well, it's the
guy down the street.
You know the other remodeler,he's the one that's going.
No, it's Amazon and Target,because I can get a job working
in an air-conditioned warehousefor $24 an hour.
That's four or five years ago.
(32:22):
We ignored the fact that peoplevalue things like an Amazon same
day or being able to contact acustomer service rep who's
sitting in their house.
We ignored the fact thattechnology boomed and gave an
opportunity to knowledge workand as an industry, we ignored
that.
We said it's not gonna matterto us, because people that wanna
work with their hands wannawork with their hands.
We did nothing to protect theindustry's image.
(32:43):
We did nothing to change someof the poor perceptions of the
industry.
We did none of this stuff.
We completely ignored it.
And now we're waking up andgoing.
40 to 60% of people inconstruction right now are
retiring within the next 10years and the amount of people
coming in isn't even close to afraction of what we need to
(33:04):
support the infrastructure inthis country.
It's not even close to afraction of what we need to
support the infrastructure inthis country.
It's not even close, becauseit's not just the new stuff
we're building, it's all thestuff that's breaking, that got
built 40 years ago, that we gotto fix.
Now too, yeah, totally.
And we've ignored that.
And we have an entiregeneration of people that said
you know what People inconstruction?
We could probably reach out tomost employers and say this they
(33:26):
just don't give a damn about me, they don't care.
You want me to prove it?
During COVID, what did we do?
We segregated people intoessential and non-essential.
That's what we did.
Now, if you were in the trades,most of them were essential.
But what happened?
We had all this extra influx.
We had governments, we hadstates saying we got to fix the
(33:48):
infrastructure, we're going tofund all of this construction
work, everything else.
Covid went away and we wentback to the way we were.
Nobody cares anymore.
And all of a sudden, we don'thave the funding that we did.
We don't have people willing topay $300 to get a plumber out
to fix their toilet, because youknow what?
I'll just YouTube it and I'llfigure it out myself.
(34:11):
And so all of a sudden, peoplehave said, well, if they don't
care about me, then I'm going togo do something else.
I don't think we have a hiringissue in the trades.
I don't think that we have alabor shortage in the trades.
I think there are plenty ofpeople that would do this work
if they just felt we cared aboutthem just a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Do this work, if they just felt we cared about them
just a little bit more.
So what are the factors ofcaring about somebody?
Sentiment, income.
What are the factors?
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Now, how many times have you heard?
I've heard this a lot how manytimes have you heard a foreman
or a superintendent said youknow what you got to leave your
crap at home?
How many times have you heardthat this isn't severance?
We are human beings.
We don't get to turn it offwhen we walk onto the job site?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
No, I get that, but what about other jobs?
Everyone has to shut it off tooeverywhere.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, but there can be an element of support in that
.
Hey, you know what?
Why don't you take the rest ofthe day off?
And the guy's like, well, Idon't get PTO for another two
years.
Well, that's why we give peoplepaid time off so they can go
get their act together, so theycan go take care of stuff.
But in the trades we don't dothat.
We say, hey, if you're not hereto work and turn your wrench,
(35:10):
you don't get paid.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
So do you think that there is an industry self-esteem
that is kind of lacking?
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
So how do we does there need to be a?
Who's the who's the kind oflead who would you say is a, is
a lead influencer inconstruction that is driving the
people aspire to listen to and,like you remember her sort of
(35:41):
the rise of the JordanPeterson's, if you will yeah,
Like who is that in constructionthat's making people listen and
maybe people stand up forthemselves and coming, getting
people to come together from aconceptual point of view, Cause
it seems splintered to me, oh,it is Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I mean, maybe NCCR is working on it through build
your future.
But you have to remembersomething these organizations
and these people that areworking to be this unified voice
, they all grew up inconstruction, so they're doing
the stuff that they knew how todo and they're hoping they can
figure out a better way to do it.
Well, we needed some people tocome from outside and go here's
what we're doing, like, I lovebuild your future and I love
(36:19):
what they're doing.
And I love how they recognizethe fact that we have to bring
multiple trades together,because if, if, my, uh, if my
foundation guy is short staffed,my framer can never get to work
, my plumber can never get towork.
So we have to bring themtogether and say we got to solve
this problem and I love whatthey're doing.
But then they create baseballcards to hand out to kids in
(36:40):
high schools and they putbillboards on the freeway.
That's not where the kids aretoday.
Kids are online and, yeah, theymight do a little bit of stuff
online, but they're not doingthe stuff online that needs to
be done.
They're thinking kids are goingto hand out baseball cards of
what it's like to be a plumberor an operator.
Yeah, that's not enough.
Like we got to thinkdifferently about this and it's
(37:02):
not the kids that are theproblem.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Well, I guess this okay, let's get to that in a
second I guess the signal fromwhat those guys are doing the
baseball cards and thebillboards at least there's
effort it might not be directedin the right way or the approach
might not be that modern, andmaybe it's like they get to
drive by the billboards like, ohthere it is, wow, our work is
in front of us.
We've seen that it's like it'sthe.
(37:26):
You ever heard that old adagethe best ad ever didn't make it
in the magazine because theboss's wife didn't like it.
It's kind of that same thing.
It's like it's up there foreveryone who isn't, who, it
doesn't matter if they see it.
Yeah, but, um, so let's talkabout what you just said there,
um, about the when parents, andyou can talk to this yourself in
(37:50):
terms of what your experiencewas, because you were telling me
that you went to college andyour dad was in the trades and
so the, the paradigm of whereyou're not going to go into
construction son, daughter,whatever um, you're going to go
get an education, that wholecalculus.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Do you think that's changing or do you think that's
super sticky still?
I think there's pockets whereit might be changing, but I
think, if we look at a macrolevel, it's not changing.
I mean, there is more talk.
Not everybody follows the media.
Not everybody is on the news.
People stay away from that.
They get in their little echochamber and they only hear what
they're supposed to be hearing.
(38:38):
But I think, macro level, kidsare still going to college.
Parents are still lining themup for that.
Parents are still lining kidsup for knowledge work, because
knowledge work is cool,knowledge work is respectable.
I can go to the country cluband brag about my kid who's now
working for Google or Apple orFacebook, but I'm not gonna go
to the country club and bragabout my kid who's working for
(38:59):
some construction contractorthat no one's ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Okay, so here we go the parents.
The career path of the child isa signaling feather in the cap
of the parents.
So let's just get into this fora second.
We're now in a time wheremeaning and purpose with adults
(39:24):
is at an all-time low.
Everyone's looking for a thing,for some kind of zip, like
something that, oh, why don't Ifocus on my kid's career?
Wow, maybe I can start to feelgood about myself from that, so
that then, if they go well, waita minute, you want to go into
the trades.
What do you hang on?
(39:44):
A second Someone at your schoolcame and told you that this is
an opportunity for you andsidestepped me.
Who's been telling you for awhile that I wouldn't be proud
of you if you didn't try and getas most out of your life as
possible for one, that Iprovided the opportunity to be
able to give you enoughbandwidth to be able to do that
I didn't have.
And it's all about that, morethan it is about hey, you know
(40:09):
what we're going to need tobuild a lot of stuff in the next
20, 30 years and that 16,17-year-old could be doing some
amazing stuff.
And it's getting less dirty,dangerous and dull on a daily
basis.
Construction is becoming really, really exciting with robotics,
ai.
There's so many cool things.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Oh, I'll never forget the first time I did a crane
simulator.
Oh, it was the coolest thing.
And they're telling me, yeah,these new cranes, like they're
gamified, like it's fun tooperate a crane.
All of a sudden I'm with you,but I love how you describe that
thought form of the parent andthat so-called conversation.
I don't know that people wouldarticulate it that way, but the
(40:52):
behavior reflects what you justsaid.
Absolutely.
The behavior is there and andthat's where I think we have the
problem because you can getinto the trades and after a
four-year apprenticeship youbecome a journeyman or whatever
path you go down, you can make60, 70 grand a year, but we
don't.
You know, we talk about themoney and we talk about how good
it is, but we don't talk abouthow cool it is because, frankly,
(41:15):
it's not cool.
If you're in the trades, likeI'm, so ingrained in the
construction world, I just thinkit's the coolest stuff.
And the things that I've seen,the things I know, is just the
coolest stuff, like I geek outabout it.
But if I'm not, you know whatmy experience with construction
is?
I'm going to be late getting tomy job today because they shut
down the road.
That's my world forconstruction.
(41:42):
Oh, my house is behind becausesome GC can't get their act
together and get thesecontractors together.
That's my experience withconstruction it's all negative.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
So there's one other, like whenyou look at um, there's an
example I had on a number ofpodcasts ago.
I had a uh, there was afacilitator for trades and
construction and constructionopportunities who was putting
this program together for highschools, and this person, uh, I
(42:06):
had a call with this person andhe told me that he got an email
from a mom that said how dareyou provide and influence my kid
to think that they would gointo construction?
I did not give you thepermission to do this.
(42:28):
Wow, okay, so that's somethingthat actually happened, that
this person told me.
Now I have to think also fromthe mom's perspective.
Sure, we got to look at, like,why is she thinking these things
?
In this particular example, itcould be a dad, it could be
whatever, but just in this caseit was a mom.
So I just watched a um, the newuh surgeon general just did a
(42:58):
speech yesterday or this morning, I think.
I just saw it on YouTube and itwas talking about processed
foods and how the medicalindustry, how it's all super
backwards.
And then I look at the averagediet of the person on the job
site.
It is a to-go food culture.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
So you look at the mom and the mom's saying well,
my little Johnny is not going togo and take a crap in a plastic
box and is not going to eatSubway his whole life because I
don't want that for my child.
You can understand what shemeans Like, think about that.
(43:37):
Moms are super protective.
They're like bear moms.
Right, they're going to do thatand you can't blame the mom for
that, but you do have to.
So I think that the entireindustry needs a shakeup.
I think, in general, our socialdiscourse and diet and our
lifestyle everything needs ashakeup.
(43:57):
So it's not just, you know,specific to construction, but
you know, having um, the one guy, um uh, john Luca, who I had on
, uh, this was on that panel inthe building show in Toronto.
He's like we treat people onsite like animals, yeah, and we
(44:17):
can't do like, here's your foodyou don't talk about.
You know how great somethingtastes.
It's more like just it's emptycalorie crap.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
What do we do?
We call them hands.
Right, they're the hands.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, but you know what when?
Speaker 2 (44:30):
their hands don't work anymore, I go get another
set of hands, but this all goesback to how we started.
People don't believe you careabout them.
If they don't care about them,they're not going to care about
you.
And when somebody makes anopportunity for a dollar more an
hour, they're going to be likebeats the heck out of this, but
you were saying that before wegot on the call.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
You know to have great conversations about
construction, but yeah, but weneed to start doing things.
I think everyone can just talk.
Yeah, yeah.
I wonder, like, when I heardthis surge in general thing, I
thought, wow, subway's introuble.
When I heard about a processedmeat, that's all they have, yeah
, right, like what's going tohappen here?
(45:12):
Do you think they're not goingto fight back for this?
Do you think they're suddenlygoing to have like stuff that's
not like sodium nitrate food?
You think that's?
You know they're not going tohave cold cuts anymore?
No, like what is going tohappen.
This is going to be insane.
So I think in construction it'slike okay, well, why don't we
be as an industry?
We have the ability to be theleaders and it's not.
(45:34):
As I was saying earlier,construction is not going to be
this old school picture fromwhen they were building the
Empire State Building.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
The guy you know having lunch on the beam, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
That's not that anymore.
It's not.
It's not.
It is using robotics, it isusing drive by wire.
It is like using cool equipment.
It is.
It's awesome, right, and thisis only going to get cooler and
entre new.
Everyone you were mentioningabout the, the attorney.
That is worth three to fourhundred dollars an hour.
(46:11):
Well, you know what it's?
A lot of these lower-levelattorney jobs.
Yeah, sure, if you want someoneto show up in court for you,
represent you, okay, that'sgoing to be there for a while,
but you want a paralegal?
Done.
See you later.
Ai.
Hello, it's going to take awhile before Elon's Tesla
humanoids are going to besitting because of the change in
(46:32):
environment.
The built environment ischanging every five minutes,
right, and you're going to tripover that shit unless the camera
footage is updated every fiveseconds.
So we're going to need to havehumans doing this stuff for
quite a while.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, we have a client that does reinforcing
steel, they do bridge work andthey're doing robotics now and
everybody was like, oh my gosh,this robotics is going to
replace it.
No, what it did was it allowedthe men that knew how to do the
iron work to go do the real ironwork?
Cause this robot all it does islay down and it just puts down
decks.
That's all it does.
(47:06):
So sick, I love it, you know,but it's cool to watch.
It's cool to watch.
But I'll never forget that sameclient was on Dirty Jobs with
Mike Rowe.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Oh, yeah, actually, mike.
Rowe is one of these guys right.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah, yeah, he's.
He could be the guy.
I think he's doing a lot ofgood things for the trades.
He really talks a lot aboutgetting the kids in schools and
education and everything else,but I really do think that he's
still missing out on the parents.
Have you interviewed Mike?
Speaker 1 (47:33):
before what have you interviewed, mike?
Speaker 2 (47:37):
I have not, I have not.
We should go find him, weshould, we should Well, so I
mean, but think about this for asecond, think about this for a
second.
We create a TV show to showcaseconstruction jobs, agricultural
jobs, these really cool jobs.
And what do we call it Dirty?
Speaker 1 (48:02):
jobs, great for marketing.
What did you just tell everymom in?
Speaker 2 (48:04):
America, yeah, good point.
And we do this all the time.
We come up with these taglinesand these slogans.
I'll never forget there wasthis plumber in Arizona.
They're the smell good plumber.
I mean, that's just a knock atthe entire industry, except for
them, of course.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
And how many times Ben Franklin does this.
You know they have a taglineabout you know, if we're not on
time, it's free, or somethinglike that.
What are they doing?
They're telling everybody inthe industry we're not on time,
right, and this is what thepublic hears.
And then we wonder why peopledon't want a dirty job.
I don't want my kids to have adirty job.
(48:40):
Why would I want my kids to bedirty all day?
And then that's it.
I don't explore it, I don'tlook at it for them, I don't go,
wow, they could be really goodat this.
They can be very successful.
They could be an entrepreneur.
I mean, the trades is probablyone of the easiest industries to
get into, startup and grow intoa CEO because you can start
your own company.
Yeah, it's one of the few outthere that you can do that, but
(49:06):
we can't get past the fact thatthey're dirty jobs.
So you know our kids aren'tgoing to have a shot at it.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
So when you go into, can we just talk about you and
what you do for companies?
Obviously you have your podcastand you.
So what are the, what are themain things that you hop in
there and you kind of put yourcape on and you go fix for
people or at least set up forthem?
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Well, first thing we got to do is stop the bleeding.
Everybody, every contractor outthere, is bleeding in some way
or another.
They don't have enough peoplecoming in, so jobs are behind.
They got jobs that aren'tprofitable.
They've got rampant turnover.
They've got toxic leaders.
Whatever it is, we come in, weassess, we stop the bleeding.
First thing we got to dobecause we can't get them to pay
attention to that next levelstuff like becoming the employer
(49:51):
of choice, and that's step twowe have to become the employer
of choice.
We have to be so prevalent inour local community.
We have to have a reputationthat is not tarnished by the
rest of the industry.
We have to have people that areout there bragging about how
amazing we are, and we have aprocess we take our clients
(50:12):
through it's called the choiceframework to become the employer
of choice and then, once we dothat, we've got to get people
performing.
So now we start looking at yourorganization and, as we start
designing the organization andunderstanding who reports to who
, we make sure everybody's clearon what's expected.
One of the biggest complaints weget when we survey teams,
(50:32):
especially in the field, is Idon't know what my boss expects
of me, cause today it's this andtomorrow it's that, and I have
no idea because no one's eversat down and had that
conversation.
We just don't do that in thetrades.
We just say, hey, go get towork.
And then when they're notperforming, we tell them they're
not performing.
What's that phrase?
No news is good news.
If I'm not yelling at you, thatmeans you're doing a good job.
(50:58):
Wow, Anybody that's gotchildren know that doesn't work.
You've got to encourage thatpositive behavior.
You have to reinforce thatpositive behavior and if you
don't, you're just going to getmore of the negative behavior.
So let's get really clear onhow to have those conversations
and let people know they'reperforming.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
So how do you think so, when people are bringing on
or talking about positions theyhave available in their company,
what are some like techniquesthat you can think of that, like
interview techniques when theyhave a candidate, for instance?
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Yeah, so the interview is my favorite part.
I love the interview.
I love interviewing people.
It's so much fun.
I love getting to buildrelationships.
Keep in mind that the interviewis a sales process, Except
you're the buyer.
As the owner, you're the buyer.
Your job is not to stand thereand sell your company.
(51:54):
They're standing in front ofyou.
You have to decide if you wantto invest in them, if you want
to buy them, buy their time.
Right, that's what we do.
I give them money, they give metheir time.
I'm the buyer, which means theyhave to sell me.
But too often we're sodesperate we show up.
You're like, yep, they can fogthe mirror, we're good.
And you hire them and theydon't work out and it's like
(52:17):
nobody wants to work.
Well, if you would have taken10 minutes to have a
conversation with them, maybeyou would have found out what
motivated them.
Maybe you'd have found out whythey're leaving their old job.
Maybe you would have found outwhy they want to make more money
or why they want to work foryou.
And if we just focused a littlebit more on the why in the
interview, it creates suchbetter opportunities for
(52:37):
everybody.
(53:03):
The flipping of the powerdynamic there, turning into the
buyer rather than the selling.
Do you think people will hearthat message in a way and then
exploit that message and saythings like why should I hire
you?
Is it that kind of message wetalk when we're doing sales
teams which we don't do a ton inconstruction anymore, but we
have sales teams.
One of my favorite interviewprocesses is to ask them about
their past performance.
Tell me about a time you weretop performer, tell me about
some of your big wins and sharethat.
And then you just pause and youlook at them and you just say
(53:24):
you know what, I'm just not herein top performer.
And you just stop Like you'vegot to sell me and now I just
rejected you and told you no,all in one sentence.
And if you're in sales, guesswhat?
You got to be okay with both ofthose.
So I want to see do you squirmyour way out?
Or do you actually sit down andhave a conversation with me?
(53:50):
And we see companies do that alot, where they they get to a
point where that confidencelevel shifts and they're no
longer worried about if I don'thire this one, there won't be
another one, because that'swhere they're all at right now.
We just had a conversation witha company.
They have somebody.
I asked him.
I said who's the problem onyour team?
And everybody pointed to theexact same person.
So, foreman, nobody wants towork for him Completely toxic.
(54:14):
If one guy that's figured outhow to work with him kind of
Nobody else wants to be on hiscrew.
So why do you keep him?
Well, because we can't replacehim.
There's plenty of people outthere that want to do this work,
I promise you that.
But maybe they don't want to doit for you, or maybe they don't
want to come work for youbecause you've got this toxic
(54:34):
person.
But see, they don't have theconfidence yet.
And once you have thatconfidence, it's really easy to
walk away and say you know what,there'll be a better one.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
Do you think that the archetype of that one foreman
that's just toxic or isdisruptive in that way?
Typically those people are verytalented too, right, and that's
the hard part is that theiroutput per minute is so high.
It's just like, oh no, oh, youcan't do it, I'll do it.
(55:03):
That kind of person, right?
That person that know it all,but super talented.
And that's the rub all the time, because you're thinking, ah,
okay, well, yeah, I mean Orioncomes to me and says, wow,
there's lots of people thatcould fill this position.
I can tell you that you saythat to them and they go and in
their mind they're like, yeah,but the person does this, this,
(55:25):
this, this.
That's too much work for me,because it is work for the
recruiter, which is often so.
What do you think of?
Like?
I've seen a bit of a disconnectbetween recruitment managers
talent, talent people so not asthe third party, but somebody
(55:46):
who works in an organization,who is hiring people that
there's a disconnect betweenwhat they do and then what the
boss expects, and then exactlywhat happens.
They're like this fake thing inthe middle.
That is not a truerepresentation and they don't
have a lot of charisma to beginwith.
They're just kind of likephoning it in and I mean, do you
(56:08):
see that quite a bit, oh yeah,and here's why Recruiting is not
an HR activity.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
We give it to HR because it's people-related, but
recruiting is a marketingactivity.
Think about that for a minute.
You've got an open opportunity,you're posting it on a job
board as an ad and you're sayingcome work for me.
That is marketing all over theplace.
Yeah, but we give it to an HRperson who grew up in a world of
compliance and checkboxes, andthen they lack charisma, they
(56:37):
lack connection, and then theyare the representation of our
company to the rest of the worldand it's no wonder we struggle.
So one of the first things wedo is if they don't have Usually
HR people don't like recruitinganyways.
And so if they don't haveusually HR people don't like
recruiting anyways.
And so if they don't have arecruiter, we'll help them find
a recruiting coordinator who'susually like an inside sales rep
(56:57):
or a customer service rep.
Those are the people that doamazing at recruiting, but they
don't think about that.
They think, oh, I got to hirean HR person and that just
doesn't work.
So recruiting is a marketingactivity.
I want your listeners to hearthat.
Give and that just doesn't work.
So recruiting is a marketingactivity.
I want your listeners to hearthat.
Give it to your marketing team.
They'll do a much better job?
Speaker 1 (57:14):
Yeah, actually I have .
At SiteMax I have one of ourCSMs recruiting another CSM
right now Doing the firstinterview.
He is a senior CSM, but thepoint of that is because they're
going to talk the same language, they're going to ask different
questions than I'm going to ask.
I'm going to do once we got ashort list, I'm going to do the
(57:36):
cultural fit and make sure thatyou know is this person an
a-hole or not?
Do I want this person in mycompany?
Yeah, I got to do that part.
But, I really, really want ourperson who's living and
breathing that position all thetime to be talking the language,
and then there's no surprise,also when the person gets here.
Speaker 2 (58:00):
Yeah, I heard so many times.
I'll bring together thesuperintendents.
I'll say all right, what canrecruiting do better?
Start sending us quality people.
What do you mean?
They're not sending qualitypeople Because there's this
belief that if we need someonenew on the job site, we just let
the recruiter handle everything.
The recruiter doesn't know.
(58:21):
And so I say, good, definequality people so I can look out
for them.
They're like well, why aren'twe having that conversation Like
what does quality mean?
Let's focus on that, figurethat out.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
Cool.
Well, I think um you and I cantalk for hours on this stuff.
I love it, you know, um, Ithink we, you know doing, we're
both in the hundreds of podcasts.
I mean, yeah, god, the amountthat I've done, it's up there.
Yeah, it's crazy so the amountof conversations we've had.
(58:55):
It's really cool to sit withyou and be able to exchange with
you like this, and it's veryeasy, by the way.
So you make that very easy.
So thank you very much.
Maybe we should do a follow-up.
What do you think let's?
Speaker 2 (59:09):
do it.
Speaker 1 (59:09):
Let's do it Okay, Ryan, People can get you on
LinkedIn.
Is that your preferred?
Speaker 2 (59:16):
That is my social platform.
I'm Gen X, so I'm just kind ofstuck on the business platform.
But yeah.
Linkedin and thencorematterscom Perfect Okay, and
if your listeners areinterested in an autographed
copy of my book, they can go tocorematterscom.
Slash free book and forshipping and handling, I'll sign
(59:37):
a book and send it to them.
For the old S&H.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
I like it.
Okay, that's awesome.
Well, thank you very much, ryan, it's been a pleasure All the
best.
I'm going to see you out there.
I can't wait to see you again.
Well, that does it for anotherepisode of the Site Visit.
Thank you for listening.
Be sure to stay connected withus by following our social
(01:00:02):
accounts on Instagram andYouTube.
You can also sign up for ourmonthly newsletter at
sitemaxsystemscom slash, thesite visit, where you'll get
industry insights, pro tips andeverything you need to know
about the site visit podcast andsitemax, the job site and
construction management tool ofchoice for thousands of
contractors in North America andbeyond.
(01:00:23):
Sitemax is also the engine thatpowers this podcast.
All right, let's get back tobuilding.
Popular Podcasts
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!