How can a father-son dynamic in a blue-collar business navigate modern technological advancements while maintaining traditional values?

In this episode of Blue Collar BS we delve into the fascinating world of blue-collar business through the experiences of Les and Asher O'Hara. With Les being a seasoned entrepreneur and his son Asher bringing fresh, tech-savvy insights, they share their journey of blending old-school craftsmanship with cutting-edge technology.

From the importance of aligning company values with recruitment strategies to leveraging social media for attracting younger talent, this episode is a treasure trove of practical advice and inspirational stories.

Highlights:

1. Bridging Generations: Learn how Les O'Hara, a Generation X entrepreneur, integrates the latest technologies into his businesses with the help of his millennial son, Asher, transforming traditional methods with new-age efficiencies.
2. Family Dynamics in Business: Discover the unique challenges and benefits of working in a family-run business, especially in the blue-collar sector. Les and Asher discuss the importance of clear communication and mutual respect.
3. Recruitment Reimagined: The episode highlights innovative strategies to attract younger generations into the trades. From leveraging social media to creating compelling company narratives, discover what really works in today's market.
4. Adapting to Technological Advancements: Hear how Asher swiftly adapts to new software and digital tools, alleviating stress for his father and accelerating business processes—demonstrating the vital role of tech-savvy young talent.
5. Practical Advice for Growth: Les and Asher share crucial insights into maintaining a constant recruitment process, emphasizing the need for a company to market itself not just to customers but to potential employees as well.
6. The Future of Blue-Collar Work: Explore the potential of young entrepreneurs taking over established blue-collar businesses, revitalizing them with new energy and fresh perspectives. 

Connect with our Guests:

Asher

LinkedIn

Les

Website

LinkedIn

Les’s Company Websites:

The Contractor Huddle

North Shore BrickWork

Connect with us:

Steve Doyle:

Website

LinkedIn

Email

Brad Herda:

Website

LinkedIn

Email

Welcome to Blue Collar B's, 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.

Back, everyone, to this episode of Blue Collar B's. Hope everyone is having a great day. If you happen to notice here, my guest co host, we'll call him a guest co host, because today he's MIA. He actually had somewhere else to be and super proud of him. He's out rocking it, presenting on stage. So, unfortunately, he couldn't be with us today. So we're going solo with our awesome guest today. So today on this episode of Blue Collar B's, we have Les O'Hare.

He was a serial entrepreneur. He's the owner of. Of North Shore brickwork out of Milwaukee and Chicago. He's also the owner of the contractor Huddle. Welcome to the show, Les O'Hare.

Thank you for being here, Steve. Honored to be here. Love the show. Love everything you guys are doing, you and Brad.

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. And I see we also have another guest, too, on our show.

Yeah. I'd like to introduce you to him. That's my second youngest son, Asher O'Hara. And, Asher, tell him a little bit about yourself.

Yep. I never had much interest in the business. Like most kids, I'm a football player. Still playing. I'm playing in the arena league next year. But this is a great job to have. I love helping him out, and I think he'd say I'm doing a good job.

Awesome. This is gonna be exciting. So before we get started, before I forget, Brad always teases me on this. So, Les, which generation do you fit in with?

I'm generation x.

All right, Asher, which one you fit in with?

I'm a millennial. Proud to be.

Right. This is gonna. This is gonna be great. So as a father son duo, let's kind of go down father son duo first in the blue collar space, right? How has that. Let's start with Les. How has that kind of work for you, bringing your sons and your son into the business?

Yeah. Cool story is that luckily, my father, who had a roofing business my whole life, he also was a policeman in Chicago. He brought me into the business. I had to ask him for a job when I was. When I had my first son, Julie and I have four boys.

Okay.

So they saw dad coming to work for my dad. And so now, as they're all now graduating, college. They're all getting into the real world, and I'm trying to recruit them into my businesses.

That's awesome. So, Asher working for your dad. How's that going?

Yeah, it's. It is. It's not much different than a normal conversation. He's a pretty dry guy. We have some humor, even on work, but it's going good. I haven't hit his bad side yet, so I am hoping not to.

Right.

Because family dynamics in small businesses is always interesting. You know, as less you, as less. You probably see that with some of the clients you work with, knowing you work with some small businesses. What are some things you actually see in the small businesses from a family perspective, family dynamic perspective, that helps make it work.

Boy. It's much more often that it doesn't work. Yeah. That's what a lot of my coaching clients that we're talking about is. They're bringing in family different ages. It could be sisters, older sisters, young daughters, and sons into the business. And no one really has some common language because of the different age group. And the great comparison I think I have is, when I joined the business, my dad was old school, and everything was pen and paper, and I had graduated college.

I had worked for principal financial group. I started learning about CRMs. I started learning about computers and technology, and I brought that into the business of which he fought me tooth and nail all the way through.

Right.

So our arguments were me trying to adopt technology and him not wanting to do it.

Yeah.

The interesting thing now with us is almost the same thing, but now my sons, they already are affluent, with all of the technology and the language and getting through there. So now I'm becoming old school, even though I consider myself techie. Yeah. They are doing things that I. In half the time that it would take me to do. So that's. That's great.

So, Asher, what input do you have on that? Like, what's working for you from a tech side?

Yeah, I'm only. I'm about a month in here. I just got out of a different job. I was working roofing down in Florida. I was a quality champion. Didn't love it. Chasing materials all over, all day long. I thought I could avoid the roofing curse that my dad passed on to me, but I did my time in there, and now I'm just learning the software, and I'm good at talking to people, so the phone calls is easy to me, but it's nice because the software comes fast just from playing games.

Being on my phone as a not. Not really kid we didn't have iPhones just yet, so I'm just on that brink of being an iPad kid, but it's coming easy and it's nice to show him some new stuff that he doesn't know yet.

So what is the most favorite thing that you've actually shown your dad as it relates to the business?

I would say something in our pipelines where he wants some automations to be sent out. I'll go in there. He didn't know how to do it for months. I went in there first day, fix it up, and he. He's wondering what the heck just happened. So something where it's been in front of his face the whole time, but he didn't figure it out.

Right?

Yeah, been there.

So, I mean, just knowing that from a tech standpoint, Les, how much stress has that relieved from you bringing in not just your son, but somebody that's younger, that understands the tech into your businesses?

One of the biggest game changers now. Because when you get into tech, almost any initiative that I want to do, a Facebook funnel to get more leads in, or a cold email marketing campaign, and you start going down this route of warming up domains and connecting zapiers and webhooks, it all needs someone that could learn it. And what's great about these generations is they just jump on YouTube. They say how to do this, they watch it, they do it, it's done. We're moving on to the next thing. Whereas, for example, if I gave that to someone older than me, forget it. It's a week long plan and they need a consultant, and nothing gets done. So I brought these boys on and it's like, things are going fast.

We're moving things forward a lot better now.

Yeah. I was going to chime in and say, you're the. This is coming from the guy who's got his sister and his two sons in the family business. So you're just like the people you're coaching. Luckily, it's working so far.

Yeah. It's when you practice what you preach, extremely successful. So it's amazing what happens. I want to now kind of shift the conversation a little bit more towards. I'm going to talk to Asher on the importance for companies to adapt for recruiting for a different generation. So you've worked a little bit in the trades and in a couple different businesses. What have you seen works better for attracting younger talent into the trades?

That's a great question. Yeah. I don't know as much of recruiting people around my age into it as much as the real world slaps you in the face real quick because college degrees don't take you so far nowadays. And as far as marketing and adapting, everybody was at one point, you're either the first in on Facebook ads. There's always something new that's coming out, and if you're first in it, you're becoming a millionaire or you're rich and you're just trying to find the next big thing and what works best for your business and customers. So looking for that all the time is fun, and hopefully we find the next big thing.

Okay, excellent. So, Les, what have you seen change? Let's just say in the last five years, what have you seen change in businesses in respect to attracting talent?

Well, it's almost the competitive advantage that you need. I work with two great companies that help with your hiring and recruiting for business. And really, that's kind of, you know, as well as I do constantly recruiting. It's. It's a sports analogy team. You're looking to upgrade your talent. And so where is the talent nowadays? It's. It's not going to really in our trades.

It's going to be the young youth that have energy, that have the new ideas, that can adapt to the technology. So how are you putting your company in the best light to attract the millennials and the gen zs to want to be a part of it? That is a challenge. LinkedIn, for me, is where you really have to plant a flag for your company and really do great posting, I think social media, this is where those younger generations are consuming. Asher and his brothers, they send me all the time TikToks and refuse to download the app. You know, same, same.

I don't have the app anymore, so don't throw me under the bus.

He listened to me finally, you know, it's adapting. We never heard of TikTok, even probably one or two years ago, but now it's a recruiting platform for, you know, real smart companies to get. So recruiting and hiring for this younger generation is key things that I'm really seeing, at least for us, in the trades now, is that this younger generation, because of this gap of not, you know, the trades are dying. These older trades people are retiring. It's the baby boomers that out of the business. There is such a momentum now of younger people realizing they could get in the trades. And with a little bit of business savvy, they have a multi million dollar company in a very quick time span. So it's becoming almost like when I'm on Twitter, which, unfortunately, I'm on Twitter.

Too much. But there is a lot of young, sharp millennials and Gen Z that are buying these companies, and they are trying to figure out their way of scaling them.

Right? So let's go down that route. The younger generation actually now owning businesses, because this is something that, as a Gen Xer and Brad the boomer, I mean, he's a late Gen X. We call him a boomer anyways. But those two generations witnessing the Gen Z's and millennials coming in to offer them money, what have you seen is. Let's talk resistance at first. What have you seen as far as the resistance with the Gen X and Boomers regarding the Gen zs and millennials coming in? Hey, we're coming in to buy your business.

I don't know if I've seen any resistance, but I'll give you a great example is two of my businesses that I had, the family roofing business, I sold it and exited out about nine years ago. And who did I sell it to was a younger Gen Z that came on. He became my general manager. Him. He had a lot of ideas, a lot of energy technology. He bought it. It's now 10th largest roofing company in the country.

What?

Yeah. So the next one walked in off of the door. At the time, I had an H Vac restoration company. It was. It was a national franchise. He walked in the door, young, energy, boldness. And he comes in and he says, I want to work for you for free for two weeks. Let me show you what I can do.

He came in for free. This is a good lesson for the younger generation. Then he ended up in three years, I sold him that business. He ended up taking it to the west coast, multiple states. He just exited out of that for multimillions. This business model of younger people coming in to the exhausted older people who bored and burnt out and then can take it. Like I did with my dad. My dad was doing about 600,000.

I came in, infused the energy. We did 6 million in about five years, and we were off and running. So for. For boomers and gen xers like me, we want the younger generation to come in and say, hey, come learn. Come, come see these businesses. We'll mentor you and then give us an off board.

That's awesome. So, Asher, what do you have to add to that as knowing that there's probably some hesitation from Gen X and gen boomers? What have you seen?

Well, I mean, I'm getting the idea and inspiration now to take the contractor huddle over.

There you go.

That's what I'm getting.

Finally you got the hint.

I think that's what you're selling me right now. But I don't know much about resistance. I have a lot of friends that start something of their own, and it's not anything crazy yet, but they're doing something where we grew up and they're making a good living. They were able to stay at home if they want, they could work when they want, and it's just doing something they're good at, such as a landscaping company. You get one truck and you're all of a sudden you could recruit anybody, go knock on their door. I think a lot of us in my age range, at least over 23 or so, have the skills to knock on a door, talk to someone. We're not worried. I feel like the generation below me will definitely have problems talking to people because from day one they're looking at a screen.

And so I have young kids and I'm making sure that they know how to talk because my parents did a good job at giving us those people skills. Because without that, you're nothing, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. My oldest one is 15 and she loves her screen. And it's just like, no, we're going to, we're going to take away the screen time for a minute. For next couple hours, you're going to have to talk to people, like face to face.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's a great point. Kind of want to talk now, less in your contractor huddle. You guys talk a lot about hiring and ways to hire. So without getting too much into, like, the cool nuts and bolts of that at a high level, what are some suggestions that you have for businesses that are struggling to recruit talent? What's kind of like the top three things that they should look at?

Well, it's really similar to finding your customer, is what I've learned and what I teach is that you have an avatar of who potentially is going to come into the business. The way you brand and market the business to the consumer has to be equally appealing to the potential employee. Why would they want to join you? Is there a compelling story? Is there some uniqueness about your company that they would be proud of nowadays? So one is you really have to tie in your marketing to include the recruitment of people that help you grow the business.

Yep.

Point I wanted to make was that just like you always need to be marketing for customers, you always have to be having a shingle out there, meeting people as the owner, shaking hands, mentoring people. A lot of people that have come to work with me over the years have been people that I've mentored and found them positions. So that was key.

I'm going to jump to Asher, what are you looking for or your friends looking for? When maybe looking at a job transition.

My closest friends, they went the college route and then just got an entry level and working their way up in corporate. It's cool to see and hear about how that goes down. Cause I'm not familiar with it. I myself, I guess entry level or looking for a business. I found it. I got into a business just for my brother. He works down here for a roofing company. That's who I was working for.

He's their top salesman. He had. He said, come move out to Florida, you'll work 70 hours weeks, which I was for a while. I needed to provide, and it was exhausting. But I feel like my generation were open to at least trying. And I did that, saw what I liked, what I didn't like. And, of course, it starts with up top, the boss and everything. You gotta at least respect them and get along with them.

So that comes pretty easy, having less as my boss. And I just am doing my best to help him out and take his time so he could come visit us more. Cause he's in the business a lot. He works hard on it.

Yeah.

So, Asher, what is one thing a company can do to attract younger talent?

I think the first thing is to get in front of their faces and be seen, show what you offer. And a lot of that is advertising on social medias. I've myself clicked on companies on Instagram. Like, I would work there. And it's just making sure they could see you, because you'll never have a chance, if not because a lot of people aren't going out there knocking on a business saying, will you hire me? It's more so on. Indeed. Or LinkedIn. So I think just having that outreach, getting in front of their faces, that's your best chance to hire young talent.

What is it that draws the young talent in? Meaning when they're on social media, what is it they're looking for that catches their eye?

Well, I think we're watching dumb videos and tweets all day. So when something real life hits you. And, you know, I do need a good job. Where I'm working right now is minimum wage hourly. Why not give this a go? It's. It's gotta at least show them that they could branch out from where they're at and grow. It's got to show some growth possibilities.

That's. That's for. For a lot of our listeners, they miss that mark because it's. No, I just need to be out there. I just got to put stuff on the web. I don't have time to be on social media. And yet, as we talked about a few times in this show, we have to meet people where they are. And the younger generation is on social, social platforms.

They're not going to your website. They're not necessarily going to LinkedIn to find out, hey, I need a job. So we have to be able to be open to meeting them where they're at. So that was a great point, Asher.

Thank you. I think that is crucial because we're not going to go find it ourselves. It somewhat has to fall in our lap for some of my similar age range.

Right. So I got kind of one last question for you guys. So we'll start with asher, and we're going to move to les. Asher. What is one piece of advice you would give your generation or Gen z about working in the blue collar space?

The blue collar threw me off. My first advice was, don't be afraid to create your own entity or business. That's something that can have a lot of success. Blue collar got to roll the sleeves up, and you could have a lot of money. You work up into a company or you branch off, you get mentored by the top guy. There's a lot of possibilities in a blue collar because that work is always going to be there. And it depends where you're at in the country. Some are some hotspots, but at least giving it a try and maybe doing the dirty work for a while until you can move up a rank and eventually you might get lucky enough or the owner sells you the company.

Right? That's awesome. So less the same question?

Yeah. Well, I remember what I wanted to say. The third thing, which will be part of answer, which is you really have to identify your core values and your vision from the business. And if that's communicated well and it's compelling, that's going to be one of the cornerstones of you to recruit these young men and women into your business. They want to join an adventure, and so how is your business going to be that adventure for them? Second thought I had on that was someone as a millennial or a Gen Z to do the social media for you that they already know what's working, what is the zeitgeist of their generation? Let them come up with these compelling pieces that will really help you in bringing in that crowd to get to know your company and have a little fun with your company, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So one last piece of advice from both of you. What would be, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give yourself five years ago, knowing what you know now about?

Yeah.

Go with it, Asher.

Sorry, Steve. I didn't mean to cut you off.

Oh, you're good. Go with it.

I would say at least be interested in what your parents doing. I always knew what my dad was doing. Been around the warehouses and seen some roofs. I didn't want to get into it. I hope you don't blame me. But it is something if you actually get the time, see what your parent does, see, you get a free information from them to see if you'd be interested in that or not. And I think there's a lot of value in having someone's experience for 30, 40 years in a company. That's the area of work you want to get into or not.

So just using your parents experiences, I'd.

Say, yeah, that's great advice. Less.

Yeah. So having four boys in the span of Gen Z and millennials, it's been a challenge. If I had to go back five years from now, I would have done a internship program to bring people in to learn about the company and even maybe be paying a paid internship. I always knew it was a good idea, but never did it. But I would then have such a rich database of young people that would know the business that maybe they would come back in several years after they tried the corporate route or companies, and just remember back. Oh, yeah. What, you know, less had over there was kind of interesting. That was five years.

If I could circle back, I would definitely have a kick ass internship program.

Yes. That right there, that's awesome. That's just companies aren't doing things like that. And that's just a great awareness. So I want to thank you guys both for being on the show for our listeners. Les, how can our listeners get a hold of you?

Well, the best place is LinkedIn Les O'Harrell, and it lists everything that I'm doing there. Our coaching business for owners of construction, it's the contractor huddle. Asher is helping me grow that. My other son, who is a Gen Z, who I wanted on this call too, but he had a golfing round. So how you have to deal with Gen Z? Him and I, Devin, are growing a CRM for construction business owners called Bill Twelve. And. And for Brad, you know, I'm up in Wisconsin Milwaukee. I'm going to buy him some cheese curds and a beer, shake his hand.

I wanted to meet him here on this call, but I definitely will get him out there to. If anyone needs masonry services in Illinois or Wisconsin, hit me up. I'll take care of you.

Awesome. Asher, how can people get ahold of you? They want to chat with you.

My social media is still more personal. I got my football stuff going on, so I'm on Instagram at ash O'Hara ten, and I'm diving deep into the contractor huddle. They gotta build my LinkedIn still. So I would just say on Instagram as a personal relationship.

All right, awesome. Well, thank you guys again. It's been a great conversation that we've had today here on Blue Collar B's podcast. Just a sincere thank you to you guys from both Brad and I and our listeners. So thank you guys for joining us on the show today.

Thank you, Steve. This was awesome.

Thanks for having.

All right, well, until next time, we'll chat with you later.

All righty.

Thank you for listening to Blue Collar B's, brought to you by vision for 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 Hurda. 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.