Brad and Steve engage in a candid discussion, tearing down myths that hold back blue collar businesses. They explore the common pitfalls of business owners and the critical elements for business success - from getting clarity on what the business truly does to the significance of core values and the impact of authentic leadership. 

But it's not all doom and gloom! They also shed light on the potential for transformative change within the industry, emphasizing ways to bring about effective leadership and growth through refined processes and strategic clarity.

They share their insights on supporting business owners and the vital role of process, people, and technology in achieving sustainable growth. And they also emphasize the importance of effective leadership and business acumen

 Highlights: 

-Want to have a good laugh Brad and Steve start off the show with some funny references to the movie Office Space

- Get clear on what your business does and doesn't do. Focusing on your strengths and profitability is essential.

- Understand your core values and integrate them into every aspect of your business to build trust and integrity.

- Together, they examine the critical importance of clarity in business operations. From the significance of honing in on core values to the impact of targeted niche focus, they dissect the keys to substantial business growth amidst the grind of daily operations. 

- They discuss how business owners often neglect important aspects such as sales cycles, KPIs, and financial performance.

Connect with your hosts:

Steve Doyle:

Website

LinkedIn

Email

Brad Herda:

Website

LinkedIn

Email

Welcome to Blue Collar BS, a podcast that busts the popular myth that we can't find good people, highlighting how the different generations of today, the boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z, are redefining work so that the industrial revolution that started in the US stays in the US.

Welcome back to the Blue Collar BS podcast, where I am am Brad. And I'm Bob. You are Bob. You are part of the bobs. No, Steve, you are not the bobs. So we're going to start off with that already. Perfect. Thank you.

So, for this episode, Steve and I are brainstorming and trying to find things that might be of interest and how can we support our listeners in becoming more effective leaders and bring their business acumen and levels up a notch from different things. And we were messing around. Pre show and office space reference came up as to what is it that you do here? Question. Yeah, so? So Steve and I are going to do a little bit of what is it that you do here? Opportunity. Which is a lot of the things we do with our clients as well, because we got to dig into the opportunity to find that stuff out. So are you on board with that, Steve, since you made me look like a fool with our last guest a.

Little, let's, uh, let's go with, uh. I'll quit thinking right now because that's.

The best way to roll with be. Do you want to be the bobs?

So tell me what it is you do here, Brad.

Well, I'm the owner of the business, Bob. I own the business. What more do you want to know, Bob?

Well, we understand that you're the owner of the business, Brad, but tell us really, what is it that you do here?

You're really good at that. Well, I show up every day, I get my cup of coffee, I make sure the guys go out on the shop floor or they get their routes put in. Then I go back to my office, I look through some emails, I maybe do a little Amazon shopping, go back out and check a couple more emails, get in my car, go visit some job sites, go have some lunch, get back at 02:00 do a little bit more email work. Maybe I get a proposal out. I don't follow up with customers. I let Bill do that, and I go home to my hot wife and we just have fun all night. Wow.

I mean, that's amazing. Tell me more how this actually works because you're out here crushing it.

Tell me more.

Like, I want to reproduce this. How can we repeat this with everyone here? This is great.

So do you see a problem with this? Do you see a problem with any of that, Steve?

Just a little bit. Because we know reality. That's not it.

So how many of those business owners have you ran into in the blue collar world that that's what they do every day. They show up, they come in, they fuck around all day, they go out, they think what's going on, and then all that shit piles up and their employees have no clue what the fuck is going on all the time.

Right?

And at the end of the day, they don't even have a job. They own the business and the business doesn't. It's running on autopilot by the grace of God that they're actually surviving.

Yeah, absolutely. Run into this quite a bit. I mean, I got a great list of TikToks to watch as a result of them sending them to me because they're really fluent in managing their handheld devices. But when it comes to truly working either in their business or on their business, it kind of is up in the air. Rarely are they working on their business. We do find them working in their business, but under stressful conditions because they're doing the things that we just got done joking around about. We joke around about it because that is actually reality.

Right? They're not paying attention to their sales cycle. They don't have the KPIs in place. And for those KPIs, key performance indicators. And there's a difference between performance and results. Right? Performance we can adjust and take advantage of and make things happen every day. Right? So Barry Bonds adjusted his performance in order to get to the result of home run record. For those that love baseball, Barry Bonds is not the home run king of all time. So if you want to take that up with me, we can have a discussion offline on that.

But they went through and had performance opportunities and could adjust performance throughout the days and weeks and months to get to the result that we're looking for, right? So what is my quote volume every month? What is my quote volume per week? What is my miles driven per day? Dead mileage time going back and forth. If you're a freight company, what's my average trailer load per week? All those things that get up into your business that most owners won't take the time to pay attention to until it's too late, right? And then the bobs come in and start interviewing because we're going to go through a major restructure or an opportunity or the PE firm that you think you want to sell your business to comes in and goes and interviews everybody or tries to look@your.org chart. And they're saying exactly that. What is it you do here? Everybody. And it becomes scary as hell to answer those questions along the way.

Yeah, absolutely. So, Brad, I know on this show we kind of want to deep dive a little bit in some key areas where we come in alongside business owners to help them improve performance in their business in a very various ways.

Right.

We both help businesses out in very similar ways, but yet they're different ways as well. So help our listeners understand and our audience understand. What are the top three ways that you come alongside business owners and help them with their business?

First thing is get clarity on what their business is, what it is they do and don't do. Many try to do. It's like windows, doors, and more. Yeah. So you're fixing bathroom sinks or you're installing kitchen cabinets because you happen to be there. Bad use of time, bad opportunities along the way. So really getting focused on what it is that they are good at and where the dollars are coming from. Understand profit margins in your business.

Second thing we work on is understanding. The question is, what is it that you do here? What is it that everybody's expected to do so that the entire organization knows what's expected of them. And when people know their expectations, it's amazing the work that can happen. And how much more capacity do you end up with an opportunity, because they know what's expected, and you can plan and have a corning. And the biggest thing is, we work on also understanding, what does it cost you to wake up every day.

Elaborate on that.

So, most tradesmen material times 1.4 markup, if they're smart enough, they'll do a 40% margin, which helps a little bit, but they'll typically just do simple math. 100 times 1.4 for $140. And then there's pennies left over because they got to pay the cable bill and they got to. Oh, shit. I got to buy more battery packs for my Milwaukee tools. That just went bad. I've got my insurance that's due, my workman's comp, my. This is.

And that's. And all those other things that, regardless if I turn one wrench, plumb one hot water pipe, those costs are all there, and they're often not accounted for. To understand in your pricing model what that looks like. Once you have an understanding of that, we can amortize those costs out to be able to say, hey, every day it's costing you $400 to wake up. And if you only plan on working 200 days, that number goes up. And then we can adjust our hourly rate and figure out what that looks like to build those costs in and go, oh, shit, now I'm making money, right? Yeah, I got money left over because that's the way it's supposed to work, right? Those would be the three areas. What about yourself, Steve? What are your three key focus?

So we always start out very similar to how you mentioned. We focus on clarity, but with my clients, we really try to laser focus and we niche down. Who is it we truly are going to serve in this blue collar space? Like we're not going to serve everybody because our message gets convoluted. Let's niche down to scale up. Once we focus on niching down, then we get into the three pillars, people, process and technology. So with our people, well, first we focus on process because we can have people, but if we don't have the process to do things consistently, then our people are just going to be sitting around waiting for the business owner to tell them what to do. So we first focus on process. We got people, then we have tech.

So we focus on the process first. How are we getting repeatable results consistently? Once we understand our audience so we can scale, then we focus on people to get the right people in the right seats, in the right roles, focus on the right things in the right lanes, because now when we do that, we have the opportunity to scale quickly. And when we scale quickly, we need tech to help us. So what is the tech that we need the people to do? And the cycle continues because it's a continuous learning thing and the growth scales exponentially fairly quickly when we narrow our focus, laser focus on our messaging for who we serve, how we serve it. Now, our employees understand that. Our process reflects that. Our employees understand that. And we have the technology to execute.

When you're everything to everyone, you're nothing to nobody.

Yes, absolutely. So that's where we come in with how we do our business here.

Yeah. And we end up at the same place just through different paths, because all those things have to take place. It's just, again, like one of our previous guests said, meet them where they're at.

Right.

Because it might be. We need to get focused first. It might be. No, the process is completely fucked up and that's where we need to start. And then once we start it, those questions come up about, oh, well, your process is so jacked up because you're trying to serve windows, doors and more windows, doors, plumbing, deck, roofs, lawn care maintenance, pool services, and we hand Christmas lights too. Well, no shit. Your customer service rep doesn't know what to do because you're trying to create unicorns out of everything instead of letting everybody be superstars in their own lane. And it's okay to take things left and right of your niche.

It's perfectly okay because your message is going to attract those that have the right values left and right. But when your key audience knows that you are the solution, it's freaking amazing what can happen.

Yeah, absolutely. So that got me, as you were talking about it kind of got me wondering, Brad, when we talk clarify or clarity for our clients, what are some of the messaging that you've seen without naming names, without naming clients, that kind of left your head scratching? We kind of joke around about windows, doors and moors, but what are some of those true examples? And we know windows, doors and moors is one but example of when the messaging isn't right. On the clarity side, there's so many.

More visuals that are out there than it is to make it verbalized. Right? Seeing the truck that's got the duct tape for the name on it on the side, that's the white truck that is now iron oxide. But I'm using duct tape or spray paint to put my business name on it. But yet we're going to claim that we have quality and on time service and high customer service levels. Things that make you go, do those things really line up and match.

That's a good Gen X song, too. Things that make you go.

How would you know that? Never mind. We won't go down that path right here. So making that opportunity, understand that, hey, this is who we serve. Have had clients that are trying to be, like I said, everything to everyone. It's like, stop. Just stop. No, retail is a bad place for you to go. No, stay b to b because you don't have the service for it.

You can't afford the time and energy to do all the SEO work and adwords and all those other things. And at the end of the day, the consumer doesn't care. And then you hear the story of, well, but George down the street is killing it. Yeah, but George down the street's in a completely different business. Right, and you think George down the street's killing it. But is he making any margin on any of that stuff? Is he putting any money in his pocket? Is there money going into his pocket? Or is he creating the illusion because he's in debt seven figures to support his lifestyle habits, et cetera. It just looks that way because we're in this vanity mode for most people in businesses. And that's what I love about the blue collar world, is that many of the guys and ladies that are in this world are wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

But you'd never know it because they're just good humans going out and doing the thing every day to service people and just do the job. And that part of it, that authenticity, it sometimes is, the messaging doesn't come out. The attracting of new talent, of understanding what your altruistic side is truly going to be. How much are you really giving to and where are you giving it to? And that's okay if you're donating to the food pantry every year and you're a prime supporter of that, but you don't want anybody to know. You're missing out on opportunity to attract younger talent. You're missing out on the community to know that you are part of it.

It's not bragging, it's just fact.

You are being part of that community and you're doing it because that's who you are, not because you're trying to attract and say, oh, look at me, I'm doing all this great stuff around the community. So I'm the best. We got a lawyer here in town that sponsors the shit out of everything all the time, and he's got a slogan and all those other things. He's making a ton of money, he's spending a ton of money. But at the end of the day, is it the best thing for each customer? Maybe not, but it's convenient and it's easy. And too often convenience and easy sometimes wins over the best solution, which means you've got to position yourself in the minds of those that you are better and serviceable and they like you and trust you more than the quick and easy route.

Right? Yeah, absolutely.

The fram oil filter commercial from back in the day. Pay me now or pay me later, right?

Right, yeah, absolutely.

Where's your head on that?

On the clarity side? Yeah, it's interesting. So I typically work with more business owners that are on the commercial side. So when we're on the commercial side, it's more mindset because we're coming out of, like for commercial construction, we're coming out of the mindset of residential construction where you're making money on volume. Usually.

That'S the plan anyhow.

That's the plan. And when you flip the switch and go to commercial, it's a complete different mindset in how you have to market yourself and position yourself and the whole mentality of, well, I'm coming out of residential. I can do everything. Guess what? When you come into commercial, you don't advertise you can do everything because nobody's looking for that everything button.

That's why I have a GC.

Yeah.

And the GC fills in the gap for I find the guy that can self perform the finished trim for smaller work, or I find the guy that have the guys that can do their own concrete or roofing or siding or whatever, and you self perform the things you can self perform and you find the who, not how for the other things.

Right. And from a commercial construction perspective, it's very interesting coming from commercial automotive where everybody does have a very specific niche. And if you try to get into on the manufacturing side, if you start trying to break into another niche, people don't trust you. They trust because you've delivered so much, but now you're like, hey, we have a new offering. They're like, okay, that's great. You've not done this before. I'm not going to trust you with a medium to higher volume component. To do this first time, you're going to have to prove to me that you can do it, which is a different mentality.

When we go over to the commercial construction side, where breaking into it, everybody's watching everybody try to lowball each other. We know when you try to break into commercial construction because you're the lowball person.

Right. The race to the bottom. Hey, guess what? I'm going to get this to you for $6 a square foot. Everybody and their brother knows it's 18 a square foot, but I'm going to give it to you for six. And I'm going to come in, I'm going to do it half ass. I'm not going to do well, but I'm going to charge you 18 next time, right? No, you're not going to be my guy.

Yes. So from that clarity piece, especially more on the commercial side and the medium to heavy side manufacturing, the clarity and understanding with that laser focus of who you are and what you serve is very important from a trust perspective for your clients. So as we're building and working in that space, those are the key things that we work on before we can even ramp up to scale. Because everybody wants to ramp up. They want to make the bigger money with having less people. However, if we spray and pray and eat the spaghetti that's stuck to the wall, man, we're going to be pretty thin.

Let me ask you this question. On that side of it. So what has been your experience with owners and leaders wanting to get into core values.

Core values? Yeah, core values.

Playoffs. Playoffs.

Seriously? It's magic foo foo, but dust, that's nice. But when rubber meets the road, I need stuff done. I'm going to will it to be that way. What they don't understand is they're willing it to be a certain way. They have their values. Their values are lived out by their actions and activities that they are doing. And the world sees them.

And the world sees the incongruence that happens when you decide to fuck over that guy because you are pissed at him and you say, core values, integrity. Well, I don't trust you anymore. And the next guy is not going to trust you anymore because he heard the story, and the next guy is not going to trust anymore because he heard the story from the story. And it's a small freaking world, and it's not that hard.

Correct. And the big thing that they miss is the true importance. When we truly understand what our core values are, and especially with these smaller companies, small to mid sized companies, these core values, the employees that are there are staying there because the core values resonate with them as well. They have bought into it. They're living. They're breathing that now. When people are leaving these small to mid sized businesses, it isn't because the job sucks. It isn't because anything else.

It's because they lost trust in their leadership. And the reason they're losing trust in their leadership is because core values have been broken.

Correct. Completely agree. And that is a. I've been blessed to go through one of my clients early on where we were transitioning from dad to son in law and all these other fun things, and they had just recently done some survey work, and we really got into what the core values were of the organization, and they really live them every day. And I got to see them earlier this year at one of their annual meetings, and those core values are still active today, and they've doubled the business with the same amount of people because they found the right people. And then we've set the right expectations, and we've done those things. We've done that foundational work, that clarity work to be clear on what the path is and where we're going and who we're serving and all that fun stuff, to be in position to do that. Can you do the wework thing and put fuel on it and skyrocket to hell and we're there and the hockey stick and do all that? Sure.

But where did it get them? At the end of the day, right?

Absolutely.

You can chase the dollar, but if you're not clear on what it is and you're not going to stay true to your core values, it's going to be a shell of itself at some point in time.

Absolutely. Very quickly, honestly, that slippery slope becomes just a cliff at some point, and you fall off and you're left treading water for a while, trying to figure out what went wrong, what happened, and who is coming to rescue me, right?

Because it starts out with the one lie, which turns into another one, which now I got to cover this one to cover that one. It's a snowball. It's just not good. And you lose all credibility with your people internally and externally. Nobody wants to be lied to, ever. Don't tell me tomorrow. And then not show up for three weeks and keep telling me tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Don't do that.

Just tell me. It's going to be a week and a half because of X, Y and Z. I mean, I like it, but when you deliver on it, I can at least respect.

You know.

So, Steve, what is it that you actually do here?

Such a great question. Such a great question. It's been a great conversation today.

Brad no, really? Steve so, for the show, what is it that you really do here?

Steve well, on the show, Brad we.

Know what I do. What is that for the show, what is it that you really do here?

Steve well, see, Brad, some days we walk in and we turn on the computer and we stare at it for a while. And then all of a sudden, this microphone and camera pop up and it says, hey, you're live. And so we sit there and we listen to guests and we nod our head. And then when we're done, and then when we're done, you take your lumps and people say you're a millennial. And then when we're done, we end the show and I go about my day. That is what we do here on the show.

I wow. That is about as truthful as Steve has ever been on this show. The only thing he missed was his age bracket, that's all. And his fidget spinners, that's about all he missed.

I do see, I got one today. It's my capo.

Yeah, I know, I'm aware. I can see the paying attention, staying focused. Thank you very much for this great conversation and for those listening to the show. When you're ready to understand the value of clarity, purpose, function, values, process, people, technology, purpose. We're here to support you, so don't feel afraid not just reach out. It's okay, right? We're here to support people. We're not here to hit the clock like a lawyer. We're here to support people and keep the industry alive and keep progress moving forward so that we can have generational businesses thrive for years to come.

So, Steve, thanks for being here today.

Yeah, thanks, Brad, for showing up today.

Wow. On that note, goodbye. Thank you for listening to blue collar BS brought to you by vision forward business solutions and professional business Coaching, Inc. If you'd like to learn more on today's topic, just reach out to Steve Doyle or myself, Brad Herda. Please, like share rate and review this show as feedback is the only way we can get better. Let's keep blue collar businesses strong for generations to come.