November 5, 2025 • 63 mins
Hard work shouldn’t feel like guesswork. Sy sits down with Zach Estes, founder of Lean Dirt, to unpack a simple, battle-tested way to run civil construction with less chaos and more clarity. We get straight into the 2-3-4 framework, two systems, three actions, four routines, that turns hidden information into visible standards and transforms accountability from a speech into a system.
We start by reframing value vs waste and why civil construction is real value creation, then zoom into the tools that make teams faster: a single home for project information, a clean action system that leaders actually use, and “success statements” that define outcomes for every role. Zach shows how to rate performance green, yellow, or red without micromanaging, how to write standards people can follow, and how daily logs close the loop with estimating so bids reflect real production, not wishful numbers. Sy shares field-tested wins and misses, from switching software to the cost of a gas line strike, and how transparency with crews creates buy-in when margins are thin.
We also explore practical tech that pays off immediately. A basic to‑do app beats a notebook for capture, organization, and review. AI becomes a pocket coach for routes, checklists, calculations, and training scripts. And “mise en place” applies to project data as much as tools: everything in its place, accessible in one spot. The thread running through it all is purpose: clarify why you wake up, put it where you’ll see it, and then make the plan, the numbers, and the tasks just as visible. That’s how you move from firefighting to forward motion.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:09):
Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast
where we discuss the realest,rawest, most relevant stories
and strategies behind buildingevery corner of a blue-collar
business.
I'm your host, Cy Kirby, and Iwant to help you what it took
me, trial and error, and a wholelot of money to learn.
The information that no one inthis industry is willing to
share.
Whether you're under that shadetree or have your hard hat on,
(00:30):
let's expand your toolbox.
Guys, welcome back to anotherepisode of the Blue Collar
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(01:12):
session today.
Let them know the blue collarbusiness podcast sent you guys
there.
Guys, as you guys know, I havebeen going through such
transformation with my ownbusiness, trying to figure out
business.
What is business?
What you think you know, whatyou thought you know, and what
you're learning along the way.
(01:34):
And uh the gentleman today hasbeen a great LinkedIn follower.
I've I've learned some stuff.
Um, he's passionate about whathe's doing.
And as you guys know, this isthe resource for you.
I'm gonna be learning just asmuch as you guys are gonna be
learning today, but um, noneother than uh the man Zach
Estes.
This guy is a founder of acompany called Lean Dirt,
(01:56):
basically helping us dailyperformance coaching for civil
construction companies, coachescontractors from two to 70
million in revenue across NorthAmerica in different lien
systems, leadership,communication.
Wherever you might bestruggling, this is the man to
help you.
Man, thank you so much forjoining us today.
How are you?
(02:17):
Thanks, brother.
Uh, I appreciate it, man.
I'm doing just lovely.
How about yourself?
Well, literally, um I'm veryopen and vulnerable on this show
and on YouTube and verytransparent about where we are.
And man, we have been in such atransition.
And I don't know if you wouldsay call it leaning up.
(02:39):
Um, that is a pretty common termacross our industry.
But at the same time, my guy, II have had to do something
different because I didn'treally know what was right, but
I knew what I'm doing currentlywas wrong because now I'm
actually producing a little bitof these systems, finiting these
(03:02):
uh procedures down and reallytruly finding profitability or
revenue, or is it even worthgoing after all to begin with
really quickly now?
And so that's just changing myentire mindset of what is
business, right?
What is the dirt game, what isthe pipe game, civil
construction as a whole, becausethere's so many little niches.
(03:23):
But you're a guy that a lot ofus don't know is out there.
There's people that likeyourself have built a system
from what I'm so excited for youto share, where it came from and
what the background of it isfrom, and where it's proven you
already know it works, but ifyou can, you know, implement it
into your own smaller businessor large business, there's
(03:48):
results to be seen.
Share a little bit, my guy.
SPEAKER_01 (03:51):
Yeah.
So uh I call my business LeanDirt.
That's the name of the businessitself.
And and it's not even my system.
I have I'm taking zero creditfor this.
I'm just a student of thesystem.
I'm a student of, and it's noteven it's not even really a
system, it's a way of doingbusiness.
And honestly, it's a way ofdoing life.
It it super applies torelationships, family, you name
(04:12):
it.
But let's talk about it in thecontext of business.
Lean originates from um kind ofthe manufacturing industry.
Uh, and really Toyota is kind ofthe flagship model for this
Toyota production system.
If any of your audience has everheard of anything associated
with that.
Operational excellence, youthink operational excellence,
(04:32):
that comes from Toyota.
That comes from Japanesemanufacturing.
Um, Kubota, I mean, like you nyou name it, uh, that is the
entire mindset of kind of even aJapanese culture.
And honestly, what's crazy isthat uh this gets into a little
bit of history lesson, so youmight have to pull me in.
Prior that there's a guy namedEdward Demming, he's American,
(04:55):
and he had no audience inAmerica.
Americans wouldn't listen to himbecause we were prideful.
Uh we couldn't be told what todo post-World War II because we
were the champs.
Uh, meanwhile, there was ahungry and starving, literally
audience in Japan who needed aneconomy to come back.
And they said, let's listen tothis guy who's talking about
(05:17):
reducing waste, making the mostof what you have and uh
producing.
And that's kind of what wherelean originated from.
That's what the Toyotaproduction system originated
from.
Um, so I've I've been I've beenapplying lean.
I started as a manufacturingengineer um over 10 years ago.
Um, I started in manufacturing,ended up working for a huge
(05:38):
hospital system in Tennessee,uh, and then a media
corporation, and then a businessand leadership coaching
organization, led that, grewthat, and then started my own
business uh focused on helpingcivil construction implement
lean systems and processes.
SPEAKER_00 (05:55):
Why'd you move from total manufacturing and like
manufacturing background over toprobably the uh most overhead
heavy non-cash flow businessmodel ever into the civil
construction space?
Yes, we need you.
(06:15):
Um, obviously, if you've youfound something that worked, but
um how did you find out, youknow, moving from that to this?
SPEAKER_01 (06:25):
Here's the thing.
Uh, I so this kind of gets intothe philosophy of lean.
If I'll answer your question,but I'm gonna back up into it.
So the fundamental structure ofwhat lean is all about is that
there's value and there's waste.
Another way to say that is thatthere are things that the
customer is paying for, and thenthere's everything else.
(06:47):
And everything else is what thebusiness is paying for.
Okay, value and waste, value andwaste.
If you look at the economy as awhole, the reason I'm passionate
about civil construction is one,it is hard work.
It's hard work, it's risky work,but it's value added work to the
economy.
As an example, as a coach, Idon't add value to the economy.
I purely reduce waste in theeconomy.
(07:09):
I try to make things moreefficient.
I'm not adding value to theeconomy.
Manufacturing industry addsvalue, construction adds value.
Um, I do not personally addvalue.
So I'm trying my best toimplement to come alongside
value adders to the economy whoare doing hard, risky work um
(07:30):
and just make their liveseasier.
Like that's that's my focus.
That's my goal.
SPEAKER_00 (07:34):
Hmm.
Literally, the who was the firstperson to reach out to you, I
guess, from our side of theworld and was like, hey man,
could you help me?
SPEAKER_01 (07:46):
So uh interesting.
Um, the one that comesoriginally to mind, I was the
COO of a at a business andleadership coaching organization
prior to this, and I helped uhoperationalize that business.
They he brought me on reallybecause my skill set, my
background.
Um, and one of our firstcustomers is uh really who kind
(08:07):
of inspired me.
His name is Herb Sargent.
Are you familiar with Herb?
SPEAKER_00 (08:11):
Dude, Herb is the man I I have on my LinkedIn, I I
literally have my own smalllittle herb post links to go
back and read because the wisdomfrom the true blue experience a
man has experienced throughlife.
You you you can't there ain't noAI writing like that because the
(08:34):
way he you can tell he's livedit and he's preaching it and
what he's done for you know onhis exit with the Aesop and all
the the company he's built, man.
Um been trying to get him on theshow for some time.
He's yeah, maybe I can make aconnection for you.
He's uh we have texted a littlebit prior to this, but he's uh I
(08:55):
think he's in enjoying lifecurrently as well.
SPEAKER_01 (08:58):
He is, he's a stud.
He's a stud, and he's investinginto other business owners in
this industry.
Uh, I don't know if you'refamiliar with Benjamin Holmgren,
uh, Benjamin's ground crewgroups.
Like I think he's a mentor formany of those peer groups.
All that to be said, Herb was aclient of ours, probably, I
mean, this is four-ish yearsago, maybe five years ago.
(09:18):
Um and he was kind of the firstone in that industry.
Uh, or let's just call it likehorizontal construction, even in
like paving uh utilities, youknow, whatever, that um dirt
world that I really hadfamiliarity into.
However, even a couple of yearsbefore that is when I um I
interacted with Aaron Witt fromBuildwit um and got him on the
(09:42):
entree leadership podcast when Iwas working for Dave Ramsey.
And so uh it's just a smallworld, right?
It's a small world.
Um and and uh so that was kindof my foyer to um this whole
industry is is seeing whatHerb's doing, see what Sgt.
Corp's doing up in Maine and andall along the East Coast now.
(10:02):
Um, and then just started havingmore and more interactions with
customers and clients andfriends who are in this industry
or in in a related um sector ofthis industry.
SPEAKER_00 (10:13):
That's so cool.
What a monumental originalcustomer going, hey, can you
help me?
And I know Aaron as well wentout on his podcast.
He will be on this show justfollowing the year.
Shout out to Dirt World Summittoo.
We'll be are you going to DirtWorld Summit?
SPEAKER_01 (10:31):
Yeah, I'll be there.
I see you in a couple weeks.
SPEAKER_00 (10:33):
There you go.
Literally, it's like two weeksaway.
Uh, customer of mine bought me aticket.
I'm very excited to go.
Uh, first time for myself.
But um, no, his whole team isdoing big things over there as
well.
But to have Herb as one of youroriginal customers, what what
sitting here in my head was theamount of experience that he
(10:53):
has, what this should be an openavenue for you.
What could you have, you know,came in and helped him with?
SPEAKER_01 (11:00):
See.
So I'll I'll say he wasn'tdirectly my client whenever I
was working at the organization.
He was our client.
Um, however, and I'll I've heardhim say this multiple times of
what he took away from that.
Um, but but I want to share foryour audience the fact that he
came to us.
We're a bunch of guys in our 30sum who aren't in this industry.
(11:23):
We were business and leadershipcoaches.
Uh, that's like that, that'swhat our organization was.
Now we have a ton of experienceworking with all sorts of
industries, right?
It's just business principlesand practices.
Um, but he sought outmentorship, he sought out advice
from non-industry experts,right?
Like he's willing to humblehimself and say, other people
(11:48):
have figured this out, otherpeople have knocked up their
head against the headaches thatI'm having.
Uh, it may look a littledifferent, it may not be with
heavy machinery or laying pipein the ground, but it deals with
people and it deals with systemsand it deals with processes and
communication, and that's allbusiness.
So, yes, there are there aretried and true, like specific
(12:10):
issues that are happening withinthis industry, but man, I would
just encourage your audience tobe like Herb Sargent, look
towards other industries for thesolution.
It's way easier to um see thetrees for the force.
SPEAKER_00 (12:24):
That's a really good point because I'll speak to
myself.
Um, you know, our we've had afractional PM, fractional CFO,
fractional bookkeep, fractionalaccount, like fractional
everything.
You know, I'm trying to figurethis out.
I'm starting to get a little bitof fractional fatigue, I'll tell
you that.
But at the same time, stayingthat's a good.
(12:45):
Um, but I can see the usefulnessof it.
And man, two years ago, I didn'teven know what that was.
But I had to start getting intoa different level of uh I heard
a quote, it was uh discomfort isthe true key.
Um no, I'm totally jacking thisup.
(13:06):
I think it's actually, yeah, no,it's right here on my book.
I wrote it down, it was so good.
Discomfort is the tuition youpay for access.
You know, you don't know as abusiness owner that you know
you're expected by everybodythat works for you, all your
subs, whatever, vendors, theyexpect you to know.
(13:27):
And when you don't know, it's soscary for us to lean out and go,
hey, I really suck at this.
Everybody in my entire companyis telling me repetitively, and
I don't know what to freaking doabout it.
I want it to be better.
I just don't know how to numberone do the research and and
figure out exactly what I needto implement.
(13:49):
We're scared to implementanything new because the last
three or four things that weimplemented are still not even
implemented.
And what I found out, you know,shout out to Ms.
Shalina because she has comehelped us build the systems and
ensure that everybody was heldaccountable while we were
starting these new systems.
(14:10):
And that's on my scale of it.
And then you you go all the wayto the end of the scale to to
herb of hey, I want to perfectculture, I want to figure out
how we figured communicationallinks and are people listening
to what is actually coming out,rather than just barking and
really wanting to find out andperfect that.
That's that's unbelievable.
(14:30):
But you got guys like me who arejust trying to grow in scale.
And in 23, I had a 25 pluspeople, and we were going every
which direction but forward.
And it was on me to go, heydude, figure out the systems.
And so where I'm going with thisto lead up to my question is
(14:52):
what are some of the largestpatterns you would see or
breakdowns that you commonly seewithin I'm in our we're in our
10th year, so in that zero to 10year realm, and I think that's
probably most of our audience.
So what are the same common justbreakdowns and how these
companies operate day to daythat we are all beating our head
(15:15):
up against the wall that youcould help us through here?
SPEAKER_01 (15:18):
Yeah.
Do you do you care if I justgive you the whole playbook?
Do it.
It may get pretty detailed, sopull so pull me in.
But um two, three, four.
That's what I want to you toremember.
Two, three, four, two, three,four.
Two systems one information, oneaction.
An information system and anaction system.
(15:39):
That's the two systems.
Three are three actions.
These are three actions that youas a leader in your business
should take every single day.
You should learn and grow inthese skill sets.
The three actions are clarify,improve, and coach.
And then and then the four isfour daily routines.
(16:02):
And whenever I say that, I'veI've often uh I'll get like, I
don't have I don't have time forone routine.
What do you mean four routines?
Uh but just trust me for asecond.
The four routines are a processfor planning, a process for
improvement, a process forreflection, and a process for
(16:23):
preparation.
Two, three, four.
Two systems, three actions, fourroutines.
That that's like none of thatcosts money, by the way.
I'm not trying to sell youanything.
There's nothing here.
This is just purely informationthat you can absolutely act on.
Um, and so to answer yourquestion, those three actions,
(16:46):
if we think about those threeactions really quick, clarify.
Um whenever I say clarify, Imean make it visible.
One of the biggest things youcan do for your business is to
make your systems and processesvisible.
And and that is I visited dozensof job sites this year across
(17:08):
all of North America, and sooften how people how hundred
million dollar businesses inexcavation.
So it's not like you have to dowhat I'm saying.
I'm just saying they haveheadaches.
Uh$100 million in businesses areusing sticky notes and notebooks
to keep their projectinformation um between seven of
(17:31):
their project managers.
So then they're having dailymeetings that last 90 minutes
long, and as soon as thatmeeting's over, guess what?
The whole thing is pointless.
One phone call happens,information changes, you don't
find out until the next meeting.
And so it's just hidden.
That's what I want you to hear.
The the information, the work,the communication, it's hidden.
(17:54):
And to clarify something meansto make it visible.
And so we go back to the twosystems.
We need a system forinformation, we need to make the
information visible, we need asystem for actions, we need to
make the actions visible.
I'll stop for a second and dude,I'll let you breathe.
SPEAKER_00 (18:10):
I am, I am, no, I am soaking it all in because
literally, as I was writingthis, I was thinking, I mean, he
said the playbook, uh well, I Iwould pick you apart, but there
is disciplines that I have hadto learn in my own life.
I'm a father of three.
And if I want to be a part oftheir life, there's some
non-negotiable time that I haveto set, even if something
(18:34):
explodes in the business, theydeserve to add to be there.
And so um, shout out to Mr.
Newland.
He he gave me that a couple ofyears ago, and it has changed my
life.
But some of these things thatyou're listening, yeah, I mean,
I had to change up my dailyroutines.
I didn't just get to get out ofbed at whatever time.
(18:54):
It is this time you are upbecause you have all of this to
do before you even get there,man.
And that's just one simplelittle discipline, you know what
I mean?
SPEAKER_01 (19:05):
But the act can I also say yes, the reason you get
up at whatever time it is thatyou get up is because you have
clarified your purpose as to whyyou need to get up.
So good, my dude.
So you've made it visible.
Well, even if it's just in yourhead, you've made it visible,
you've made the purpose visible,and so now you're acting on it.
Yeah, keep going.
SPEAKER_00 (19:24):
No, I and the other thing I was gonna say is how
important the zero to ten yearguy is building visibility and
transparency to the teams thatyou're freaking building.
I wish I would have understoodthat I was only hurting myself.
Oh, well, we have these foldersfor ops and we have these
(19:47):
folders for admin, they can'tsee this, this can't see that.
And once you make it fullytransparent and everybody sees,
hey, here's the profit, here'swhat we stand to make.
And when margins are reallythin, if we smoke a gas line on
a smaller margin job like we didyesterday, hey guys, we lost all
the profit on this job on daytwo because somebody didn't want
(20:07):
to move a little bit of spoilout of the way.
And but now we go out there, wetalk about it.
We're gonna freaking talk aboutit on Monday in front of
everybody.
Video, go over what did we dothat we could have possibly.
I know that sounds so small, butit it's those systems that build
the transparency.
Why are they gonna sit there andlisten to me?
(20:28):
Because they know we just smokedour entire profit hissing into
the air as the gas was blowing.
And we don't hit stuff, man.
We really don't.
We're very we've had a watermain and and this gas main this
year, and four to five crewsrocking between four or five
counties pretty quickly.
You can you can start damagingsome stuff.
But we we train, man.
(20:48):
But the visibility andtransparency, I looked at my
project manager, he was soembarrassed to tell me that you
know, two of these, our mainguys, uh, just had a brain fart
and going a little too fast, andthere's no reason to be going
this fast, especially not rightnow.
And I looked at him and I said,Hey man, you know the contract
(21:09):
total.
If they send us a$5,000 bill forfixing that gas main, how much
profit's left on this job?
And his face went white.
And I'm like, but that's butit's not just me sitting here
screaming as an owner, hey guys,we're freaking broke.
Everything's super tight, we gotto make what we got work.
(21:32):
They're pushing back becauseI'll be honest with you, man.
I gave them everything.
I I wanted them to haveeverything nice, and I was
swiping credit cards and rackingthis up and doing this, but they
had everything.
And now it's a couple yearslater where everything's either
a little worn out, or half ofit's uh been sticky fingered
away or dropped in a hole orwhatever it may be.
(21:55):
That's again, my own system'sfailing myself because I could
have a tool inventory systemlike we do now.
But either way, my dude, it'sbuilding that transparency that,
hey, this small tool line itemright here that we got to keep
replacing affects theprofitability of the business
sitting in a room collectively,building the transparency of
hey, here's our own internalpre-con, here's our production
(22:18):
rates, here's what we can make.
If you go over that, go do it.
It's that simple.
And the results from that is sofreeing.
But I'm I'm telling you, thezero to 10 guy, 10-year guy is
he can't get it through hishead.
And the guys that do before theyhit 10 are the guys that are
(22:40):
absolutely moving and grooving.
Uh, I'll give a shout out to uhyou know Black Mountain.
That dude has built a team onhe's on media as well through
TikTok and whatnot, and theythey've come out of nowhere.
Like literally, boom.
And it's it's all about buildinga team, holding people
(23:01):
accountable, and buildingtransparency within the business
so we're all moving towards thesame common goal.
That's what I have learned whereI screwed up in the first eight
years of business.
SPEAKER_01 (23:12):
Let's talk about uh holding people accountable.
This this is a really practical.
This was Herb's uh greatestthing that he took away from
coaching with us.
Um, so there's a tool, we'llcall it a tool, um, that you can
use called success statements.
Have you ever heard of successstatements?
It's essentially uh just adescription of an outcome.
(23:35):
A description of an outcome.
It's one sentence that's adescription of an outcome.
So if you hired me to be aproject manager, what are what
are three categories ofresponsibility that you would uh
give me as your project manager?
What would you say myresponsibilities as a project
manager are?
SPEAKER_00 (23:53):
Uh scheduling, number one.
Number two, um, definitely allduties of the job, meaning
equipment and manpower.
And then probably number threeis ensuring that uh we're
staying on budget with withinthe estimated non-estimated
cost.
SPEAKER_01 (24:14):
Love it.
Let's talk about scheduling.
Let's use this just as anexample.
What do you want to be trueabout the schedule?
SPEAKER_00 (24:23):
I want I want it done under the time we've
allotted in the estimate.
That's what I want to be true.
Uh, but that's not always thecase, right?
So I would say every single day,how many days we've spent, I
want the estimate to show howmany days we estimated with, and
I want, and this is really trulywhat happens now as the schedule
(24:46):
is going, they they are racingthat same bar, and once they get
there and they're like, Well, Istill got 300 feet left.
SPEAKER_01 (24:56):
So tell me how would you describe it if if I'm a
brand new project manager, youjust hired me on your team.
Okay, how would you describewhat you want to be true about
scheduling?
One sentence.
I couldn't even uh uh what wouldbe the greatest indicator of
success about scheduling if youunderstand on true you knew you
(25:17):
would know that I'm doing myjob.
Uh if it was visible, but Idon't know where you're going,
honest to God.
Maybe even just like uh, youknow, the schedule is is on
time, on budget, whatever.
You could say on time, you couldsay within five percent of our
estimate.
Um you know, you have some sortof parameters for what the
(25:41):
outcome, the desired outcome isfor scheduling.
Have some sort of parameter, onething, and then we want to be
able to say we want to be ableto evaluate that outcome.
Is it true?
Is it consistently true?
If we look at this weekly, is itconsistently true?
Is it inconsistently true,meaning it peters up and down
(26:03):
every other week?
Or is it not true at all?
And we need to figure out how toget to true.
So, success statementsfundamentally, if I were just to
summarize it for um your entireaudience, this is what Herb
applied for Sargent.
Um, it's being able to say it'sit's a way in which you can
systematically hold your teamaccountable to their role.
(26:25):
Every role on your team needsthree to five success
statements.
Uh each of those successstatements is one sentence that
describes the desired outcome.
It describes what you want to betrue, period.
So you should be able to look atthat sentence and say, is that
not true?
Is it inconsistently true, or isit consistently true?
(26:48):
And then and then what do youdo?
Well, then now you have a way inwhich you can evaluate that
person.
Even if it's a littlesubjective, you you make make it
clear, you have the writtensentence that's visible.
It's not just in someone's headlike scheduling.
It's like a specific sentencethat we can break down and beat
up on and be like, what doesthis even mean?
(27:08):
Are we on the same page as towhat success looks like for
scheduling?
Or do you have something in yourhead and I have something in my
head, and now the standard's notclear?
It's not clear because it's notvisible.
If we can make it visible, writeout the sentence and evaluate
it, regular, green, not true andconsistently true, consistently
true, regular, green, visible.
(27:30):
That's how you make things,that's how you hold people
accountable.
They don't even need you to comeand rate them and evaluate them.
They can constantly come back tothis visible standard and say, I
know I'm not green right now.
I'm probably yellow.
I need to figure out what do Ineed to go do to get from yellow
to green.
I'm red right now.
What do I need to do to get fromred to yellow?
(27:51):
It's that it's that simple.
That is free.
You don't need a tool for that,you don't need to buy anything
for that, right?
It's just a way in which you'reworking.
So that all if we if we zoom outfor a second, let's take a
couple steps back.
If we zoom out for a second,what did we do?
All we really did was twothings.
We clarified and we improved.
(28:14):
We made visible, we madeinformation visible, and now we
can hold someone accountable tothat information.
It gives them direction for acttaking action in their job.
So that's clarified.
That's a role, that's a skillset of a leader.
And then we made it animprovement because now it's
actually easier for that personto do their job effectively to
the standard that we want themto do it.
(28:36):
So it's easier for them to dotheir job and they're clear,
they're visible on what it isthat they should be doing.
Cost no money.
SPEAKER_00 (28:44):
I would completely agree with all of that.
I mean, I love the thoughtprocess of a success statement
because it gives them goal anddirection without you ever
having to hover.
Hey, uh, and it's I loveself-evaluation.
I did I started that on our wedo 30, 90-day UVAWs, and then we
(29:05):
we do yearly UVOLs uh and orwith our supers.
I've learned this over the lasttwo years.
I wish I'd have started thissooner as well, is you know,
career roadmaps.
Like give these guys an ideainto your head where they can
play a role in this businessone, three, and five years from
here.
Like, this is where you'regoing.
I want you to make sure this isclear on paper.
(29:25):
I want you to sign it, me tosign it, so you understand what
you're working towards.
And but even down to the projectlevel, hey, I see where you're
going.
Under time and under budgetwould be my one sentence, of
course, every single time.
But literally, if you couldbreak that down to hey, I know
(29:45):
gravel's a huge swinger on thisjob.
Can we keep it within 5% orless?
Can we make sure there is likehardly any waste left?
Can we run a gravel bucket or abedding box to ensure that?
When we're yeah, there's justzero chance for waste.
And if we can keep that under5%, there's this, or whatever
(30:08):
the case may be.
I can see, hey, if you meet thisproduction rate, that's great.
You'll be in the green.
But if you can get anything plusthis per day, it's going to add
this amount of time.
And if we know that from thefront of the office, we can
build that into the job that isimportant to the customer as
well.
Now we're taking priority to thecustomer.
(30:29):
While like I can see so muchvalue in that thought process.
There's no doubt about it.
And especially applying it tothe civil world.
And it's it's not abundantlyoverly complicated.
It's having a good foundation ofprinciples to come back to, two,
three, four, like you said.
And I I'm gonna implement it.
(30:50):
I'm pretty excited that you werewilling to just give the old
playbook to the audience becausethere's so many men and women
out there, dude, just trying tofigure this out.
You know, Sergeant was, I thinkthere's 50.
Uh, how many years have theybeen in business?
I mean, it's been a long time.
But either way, these most ofthese guys are just trying to
(31:12):
eventually one day get there,and they're getting punched
every six months, every six dayswith something new from that one
to three-year role.
Now, from three to seven,they're trying to figure out
this profit train.
Oh, we may be chasing a littletoo much revenue, Cy Kirby, and
you may need to reel that backin.
And once you get past thatseven-year mark, and and you
(31:33):
really start going through allthis self-realization on the
back end of it.
But there's there's these guysin the in that five before that
five-year mark that are stilljust absolutely full sending it
straightforward.
Kudos to you, but just have somefoundational principles to make
sure you are watching what'simportant because there is so
(31:55):
many things that come at theseowners every single day.
And even, you know, like newflashy software, new this, this
is gonna improve this efficiencyhere.
Hey, and then you finally sell,you know, say something that's
really been a trigger for themover the last six months, and
they can take their attentionover here.
And oh, we're gonna get thisimplemented.
(32:17):
Well, are you profitable on yourjobs?
Have we paid attention overthere?
I know this is gonna help insix, eight months, but what's
going on right now?
Have we been checking our whipreport?
Do we have a PM in place?
Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (32:28):
Oh man, one of the things about a mentor, a mentor
of mine, his name is Paul Akers.
He wrote a book called TwoSecond Lean.
Um, and I highly recommend it.
You can literally go to hiswebsite, download all of his
books for free.
He does everything for greatYouTube channel as well.
Um, but one of the things thathe always says, and this is such
a lean mindset, is use yourwits, not your wallet.
(32:49):
And if you use your wallet, it'sbecause you're using your wits.
Don't address a problem withyour wallet.
Address a problem with yourwits.
Think about the problem andfigure out the best solution.
Maybe you have to use yourwallet, but let that be a witty
solution, not a wallet-drivensolution that you're just gonna
throw money at it.
So often I see people hire hirepeople and it being a wallet
(33:15):
solution and not a wittysolution.
Really, where they need theyprobably need some systems and
processes to hold themaccountable inside of their
existing structure.
They don't need another personon their salary in their
headcount that's straining thebusiness.
SPEAKER_00 (33:31):
Man, you're preaching to the choir here,
might be like I learned the hardway, you know.
We had seven or eight people inthe office, and you know, a lot
of them would have soared if Ihad what I have in place
nowadays.
You know what I mean?
And so you just kick yourself,you're like, oh man, did I lose
(33:51):
those people?
But the one thing I try to whenI get into that mindset, the one
quote is uh don't judge yourselfon yesterday's decisions with
today's wisdom.
And I've had to go through somuch to get to this point, and I
I get kind of down on myself,well, man, if I was doing this
(34:11):
two years ago, so and so, whatif this could have been?
But it is what it is.
You're here now and in thepresent, and having to
prioritize every single moment.
That superintendent who youthought two years ago wasn't
going to make it three months isnow the guy that's running the
show, and you may have to getused to that and figure out how
to adapt to his uh learningability or his, you know, be
(34:34):
able to deliver information tohim differently than the other
two studs that you thought werestuds, but actually when you
started looking in paper, theyweren't so studly, they were
actually costing you money, andit it's it's crazy.
But the wallet and woodysolution is kind of where I was
going with that.
I can be an absolute uh advocatefor that because in the first
(34:58):
five years, especially younger,don't know what you're doing,
you'll throw money at anything.
When you got money in the bankand there's revenue flowing,
it's just, oh, I got that,whatever, yeah, a couple K, 10K,
whatever.
Just get it done, get it done,get it done.
And man, before you know it, youcan't be throwing your wallet
around and you're having to getwitty.
(35:19):
So I would definitely grab ahold of that as a solution for
both ways.
Use that mindset.
You got here by being nimble andand moving your way through what
we call business.
Don't, when you hit a problem,just throw your freaking wallet
at it.
I I love that analogy, man.
SPEAKER_01 (35:38):
Yeah.
Can we talk about the twosystems?
SPEAKER_00 (35:41):
Please, information or actions.
SPEAKER_01 (35:43):
Yeah, let's talk.
Do you mind if we beat up onyour business?
Please, go ahead.
Tell me about where you keepproject information.
Is it in sticky notes, notepads,notebooks?
Online, Word docs.
SPEAKER_00 (35:57):
Uh, couple of years ago was an organized file
structure that was visiblewithin the admin team and the
project management.
Uh in the last week, okay,that'd have been three, four
years ago at this point.
We went all the way.
Remember when I was talkingabout, hey guys, you see this
shiny object?
Well, Procor sunk their hook inthe side of my mouth.
(36:19):
And I paid for that crap for twoyears.
And don't get me wrong, it isincredible at what it does for
very specific uh contractorsacross the country, but it is
very unforgiving and it's veryhard to implement and it's very
field heavy.
And, you know, when you'retrying to run lean, you don't
have three people sitting aroundin trucks documenting every time
(36:42):
when somebody goes to the PortaJohn or not.
And like you still need to havedaily documentation.
But to answer your question, mydude, everything's in Builder's
Trend now.
We've stepped down.
I was paying a lot of money toProcor, and we still didn't even
have scheduling.
And shout out to Builder'sTrend.
They actually just uh, I thinkbecause we were on a podcast
(37:04):
speaking about Builder's Trend,got our financial piece added on
just out of the blue last month.
So shout out to them.
But everything is housed withinBuilder's Trend from the
contract point forward.
Um, everything on what we callfantasy land that the boys never
need to hear about, but we'reselling is actually on
(37:25):
Monday.com.
Awesome, wonderful.
SPEAKER_01 (37:28):
Okay, so fantastic.
The fact that you could actuallygive me a place where you store
that information, it'swonderful.
Um, often like I I've had aclient before, whenever they
first started with me, and hejust started holding up
notebooks and like sticking itup.
SPEAKER_00 (37:42):
Hey, I was like, looking up my daily notebooks.
SPEAKER_01 (37:44):
Yeah, fair enough, fair enough.
Scratch pads are great, anddon't let that be the thing that
has all of your business'sinformation for moving projects
forward.
Um here's here's what I'll say.
Have you ever heard of that thisis this is gonna be super
tangential?
Pulling from a Herb Sargent ideaof let's look outward to other
(38:04):
industries.
Have you ever heard of Mise enplus?
Do you know what that means?
No, sir.
That's like um uh so in therestaurant world, in the kitchen
world, in the chef and cookworld, French restaurants, mise
en plus, it's a it's a uh, Idon't know, it's a French, it
means everything is in itsplace.
Got it.
Everything is in its place.
(38:25):
If you've ever been to like asuper fancy, fine dining
kitchen, I don't know, somerestaurant that's really
expensive and costs more thanyou want to pay, go to their
kitchen and and they arepracticing something called
misenplos, which just simplymeans everything has a home,
everything is in its place.
It's it's like having a toolboxthat's uh has a shadow board
(38:45):
behind it, you know,everything's foamed out.
It's like, oh, every singlewrench, every single socket has
its home and it's labeled likethat's meseenplos.
I want you to think about thatfor your information system.
Everything needs a home.
Where does this information go?
I want to be able to go to oneplace to see to see or access
(39:10):
everything with one project.
That's the if you think aboutlike from a success statement
idea, like what is the goal ofour information system?
I want to be able to go to oneplace for one project and see
every single bit of detailedinformation or be able to
quickly access it from that oneplace, every single bit of
detailed information associatedwith that project.
(39:32):
Who's the project manager?
Who's the foreman?
Who's the estimator?
Who's the uh customer?
Who's the customer contact?
Who's the customer's customer?
Who um, you know, it doesn'tmatter.
Like who are all the vendorsassociated with this?
What are all the invoices?
What are all the change orders?
Um and and you can totally dothis on Monday.
You could build this yourself.
(39:53):
The point is everything needs ahome and your information needs
a home.
And the more you can kind ofcategorize it per project, every
project should have a home.
And maybe it links to BuilderTrend, and maybe it links to
whatever, however, you know,whatever other tools that you
have in your system.
Um, but your information systemneeds to come back to this
(40:15):
Misinplos idea where everythinghas a home, every project has
one home.
A project should not live insomeone's notebooks and
Monday.com and Builder's Trendand your Gmail.
It should live in one place.
All the information should be inone place.
Now it may uh link to thoseother places, but I should be
(40:36):
able to find it and access it inthat one place.
SPEAKER_00 (40:39):
No, I I completely agree.
Everything should have its own,and it takes some time to figure
out why.
Um, you know, I I referenced, soI'll jump on two things you
said, and I referenced earlier,you know, Monday.com was for
like more of the fantasy landand the CRM.
That stuff really never getspushed past, you know, contract.
(40:59):
So we it's so hard when you'regetting everything thrown at
you.
You know, we jumped onto thatPro Core train thinking that,
oh, we're gonna be able to get alead in the door and run it
through contract and everythingschedule and all this stuff, and
it just wasn't, it just wasn'tthat.
And when you're trying to, it'sso hard to find one thing,
(41:20):
one-stop shops anymore.
You know, there's a bunch ofthings out there that are really
good at what they do, but reallyterrible on other ends of the
coin.
And so, Builder's trend, we havelooked at it from a project
management system.
Everything lives within thefiles, all the plans, all the
stamped plans, uh, productionrates, the schedule.
(41:45):
Basically, Dylan builds aschedule on the estimating side
uh of Monday, and he carriesthat over and gives them a
template as a superintendent.
Hey, look, this is what I bid itlike.
Let us know, shoot us back aschedule once you get it built
in Builder's Trend, and they'rebuilding their own schedule off
of the days that were, you know,set in our estimated costs.
(42:09):
And he may come back to us andgo, boys, what do you mean I got
seven days to do this?
This is 14 days all day.
And okay, but here we've got 21days.
Can we shave off?
And so we're already talkingabout the profitability.
Yes, how you bid a job is youwant to go do it exactly the way
you bid it, but about 70% of thetime it's gonna change up before
(42:30):
you even get on site.
And so you want that fieldoperations team to be able to
set their own schedule, numberone, but be talking back to the
estimator before they get there,make sure they have a good
understanding of the bestpathway forward.
And so we have found to keepfantasy land, everything leads,
(42:52):
sources, uh, what we do in ourmarketing, all of that back up
in the front of the office.
But once it hits that point ofcontract, from schedule to punch
out to finaling out, everythingis umbrellaed up there.
And the guys hop on there everysingle day.
We do a daily log.
What do we do?
Who do we talk to?
What machines?
How many hours?
(43:13):
Give me 10 pictures.
Like, I want production databecause but here's the other
thing.
We ask them to put theirproduction data.
Hey, I laid a hundred foot onthis job and I did it with these
guys, but these pieces ofequipment, and now it's closing
the loop back to the estimator.
And so when times get tough andyou have to get lean, the market
(43:36):
gets lean, now your estimatorknows exactly on the last three
to six jobs.
Okay, if I have this 210 andthis wheel loader, I can get 260
feet in the ground, averagedjust fine.
Yeah, they had some bad days,but there were road crossings
and whatever.
This job looks identical orsimilar to and move forward.
(43:58):
So I can 100% attest to one-stopshop for your project management
data.
I will tell you, audience, thatI would not go looking for a CRM
and a project managementsoftware together.
It's just gonna get tooconjumbled.
Your guys are gonna go, well,what about this job I see here?
(44:19):
And no, that's we're budgetingthat for where we have 40% CDs.
Get that out of your head.
Like, it doesn't even need to beon the plat.
So, um, but yeah, no, dude, thefile systems and organization,
nah, dude, there's so manybetter softwares out there to
house everything.
Last point I want to say is thatwhat we have been sitting here
(44:41):
talking about, none of it helpsyou unless you're willing to
hold people accountable aboutthe data going into.
So um, that was kind of my mainthing.
And maybe we can put a successstatement uh in regard to
builder's trend, and maybe I canenact that to make sure we don't
miss.
(45:01):
I'm not gonna say we sit hereand do it every day perfect
every single week.
There's weeks that they runhard.
There, there's weeks they runlate and then they catch it up
on a couple of days, but it's soimportant to have it down every
single freaking day.
Yeah.
After the why?
Oh, because I don't want them tohave a friggin' sleep, man.
(45:23):
I don't want them to go home andforget it, you know.
Uh, and it's not uh, oh, we laid180 feet.
No, I want to know about theengineer inspector that came and
weasel around and cost us twohours.
And he changed tried to changethe plan up, and nobody knew
about that until I caught anemail three days later.
I went back and looked at yourlog and he was on your site.
(45:44):
I would have never known.
But you forgot because you sleptand it's Thursday, and I filled
out the report.
That's a that's just plainexperience.
Fantastic.
SPEAKER_01 (45:53):
So I'm gonna I'm gonna do uh a little bit of
rapid fire here.
So your audience may need topause, take notes, whatever
else.
So we talked about informationsystem.
Uh the reason I call it aninformation system, and I'm not
saying Monday.com and I'm notsaying builders trend, blah,
blah, blah.
I'm not saying all these tools,is because it's just that.
Those are all tools.
You can build your owninformation system.
(46:13):
The point is you want to be ableto go to one place, find the
information that you need.
You don't need to go searchingfor it.
If you're searching for it, thenit's hidden and not visible.
If you have to search for it,it's hidden and not visible.
Okay, get away from system, uh,information system.
Next one is an action system.
Again, visible, not hidden.
How do you currently keep trackof what you're supposed to do
(46:33):
every day?
And what are your tasks?
What's your task system?
SPEAKER_00 (46:36):
Yeah.
So I've got tasks on Monday foryou know, up at the front of the
house.
On I still make lists, dailylists, and uh weekly lists, high
points of what I need to befocused on.
Daily lists off of those weeklylists.
And I know that may soundelementary, but that's that's
(46:59):
the truth.
That's that's it.
SPEAKER_01 (47:01):
So have you ever read uh I'll give a resource
Getting Things Done by DavidAllen?
No, I love it.
Great resource.
Uh, I would even go further andbe like, he goes crazy detailed
into applying his specificsystem.
Um let me ask you anotherquestion.
I'm trying to help you, Cy.
Do y'all for email, do y'all useMicrosoft or Google?
(47:24):
We are Outlook.
Outlook, awesome.
So Microsoft has a uh productcalled Microsoft To Do.
I'm pretty sure you already payfor it if you're already paying
for Outlook.
Um, I would use Microsoft To Douh instead of your notepad.
Um, because what you can startto do is create standard lists,
(47:45):
daily lists, weekly lists.
You can put out, hey, I don'tactually I need to capture this
thing.
I need to put it somewhere intomy head.
I'm thinking about it.
I need to get it out of my headand put it somewhere.
And uh and then I can go andorganize and say, yeah, that's a
thing that I can do next month.
And so now it's somewhere, it'sin a trusted system rather than
having to live in your head.
(48:06):
So one of the things that umDavid Allen talks about in
getting things done, and I lookover here because I have this
massive bookshelf.
Uh, David, David Allen talksabout his system is kind of um,
or I should say like his processfor action is kind of three
steps.
He has more steps, but this isthe simplest uh version.
This is the lean version ofgetting things done.
(48:29):
Uh, number one is capture,meaning anytime you have an idea
or anytime you you have a to-door someone asks you to do
something, you need to be ableto capture it in a trusted
system.
Uh you need to know that when Icapture this, it's not gonna get
lost.
I'm gonna be able to come backto it.
Okay, so capture is number one.
Um that could be Microsoft to-doif you're using Outlook for your
(48:52):
audience.
If you're not using Outlook, ifyou're using something like
Gmail, I don't recommend GoogleTasks.
I recommend something liketo-doist.
Um, it's a really good, simple.
All you're looking for is asimple, uh, clean checklist
manager.
Like you need a checklist, it'sa to-do thing.
Um, you're creating it on youryellow bad.
(49:12):
It's awesome.
I would just suggest that it'seven easier with uh uh on
Microsoft To Do.
Um so to-do list for Googleusers, Microsoft to do for
Microsoft users, awesome, supercheap or free if you're already
paying for it.
Um so number one, capture.
Capture it into your trustedsystem.
(49:33):
Number two is organize.
Organize could be like, I needto uh get this out of the
capturing inbox of my system andput it either into a project or
a uh scope of work or give it adue date.
I need to I need to get it outof the capturing inbox, meaning
I need to do something with it,or I need to delete it.
(49:55):
Maybe it was just a harebrainidea that I need to be like, uh,
yeah, we're not we're not doingthat.
So that's part of organize.
So capture, organize, andreview.
And then the third step isreview.
So that's just being able tosay, okay, um, for today, at the
beginning of my day, I want tosee what actions are at the top
of my list today based on whatI've said today.
(50:16):
Like I need to maybe pull somethings into today's due date, or
what I've historically have saidthat I need to do on October
22nd.
Uh, what are those things at thetop of that list?
It's really hard to do that witha notepad uh because you can't
manipulate it.
Uh it's all kind of written downon a piece of paper.
But if you do it on somethinglike a Microsoft To-do or a
(50:37):
to-do list, it's obviously way,way easier.
SPEAKER_00 (50:40):
But if you if you had it on a to-do list, you
could probably, you know, itgets a lot of these guys nervous
because as soon as you saysomething like that, I go, hmm,
yeah, that's a really good idea.
Thought about it 85 times.
Why have I not done it yet?
Well, we used to be able to usethe excuse of, well, I got to
take time and actually do it.
(51:00):
No, guys, you don't anymore.
You can pick up the phone anduse old Mr.
Chad, GPT, is what I promoteChad, and go, hey man, build me
some templates that and I cantake a picture of my list.
I don't even have to type itanymore.
100% and use a prompt in ChadGPT.
Hey, take this list, organize itso I can put it into Microsoft
(51:22):
to do, slide it over, and I Iwill put it down as a discipline
that I need to it wouldintegrate so well with
everything else that I'm doingin my life.
Why I don't know I haven't donethat.
I'm sitting here kicking myself,but at the same time, you can
use things like that.
Hey, Chat GPT, give me a weeklytemplate with the things that I
(51:44):
just sent in this picture.
It's really that easy, guys, andit's at the palm of your hand.
And I encourage you, youblue-collar guys.
I know you got some of you guysprobably listening to this show.
Man, si, why are you preachingabout AI?
Because the blue-collartradesmen that figure out AI,
that it literally unlocks theadmin door for you guys.
(52:06):
100% that never even thoughtthat you could handle anything
admin.
Well, now you can.
You don't need anybody's help.
You've got somebody in the palmof your freaking pocket to be
able to teach you that has everydegree possible at any
university right there.
Just utilize it.
And it's things as easy astransferring your to-do list or
(52:27):
hey, I need to make an Excelspreadsheet or whatever it may
be.
Just seamlessly integrate that.
Don't sit there and kickyourself.
Well, I need to be doing that.
And guess what?
If you let it go for a week ortwo, ask chat again, hey, help
me clean this up to-do list.
I'm done with half of this.
It'll do it for you.
And then make corrections andstart over.
SPEAKER_01 (52:49):
And here's here's one of the things you may tell
you what I did uh this morning.
I'm putting together a littlebit of like a one-day
prospecting road trip justaround my area.
Um, just because I'm like, hey,I want to serve some folks that
are kind of my nayers.
And so I'm just gonna go delivercoffee, donuts, whatever, shake
hands, introduce myself.
All I did was say, hey, I havethis, I have these businesses
(53:11):
that I'm looking at.
Uh take this list and make me aroute and a map and a timeline
for where I should go to getback home by this time.
So, and then it's just plans myday for me.
It's like, okay, go here, spend30 minutes there, then go to
this next destination.
Oh, by the way, you gave me thislist, but maybe you should also
add this one.
(53:31):
You know, that's what it did forme.
And so it came up with a wholekind of prospecting uh trip for
me.
SPEAKER_00 (53:38):
It's crazy.
Truck routes.
Chad GBT, literally, I've I'veit's a language learning model
type of AI, guys.
You're teaching it constantly.
So as I ask you questions aboutSyCon, we have enough online
presence blogs for it to gograb.
It understands that we're acivil construction company,
(54:00):
already suggests it's crazy.
It is absolutely crazy.
I challenge a lot of my guysaround the office or the field.
Hey, use it every single day.
Or even in this application,I'll have somebody, uh, a
foreman or a super, hey, willyou check my math on gravel or
will you check my math onconcrete?
No, what I want you to do is youknow it's length times width
(54:22):
times height.
I understand you're confused onwhatever number to divide it by,
to tape it.
Just pick up your phone, ChadGPT.
I have these measurements, Ineed the volume and concrete.
And it will literally list itall out exactly how it got there
and teach you exactly how to doit next time and just screenshot
(54:43):
it for next time and then plugand play your numbers.
And you just taught yourself.
And and and and the largestthing in the skilled trades and
blue-collar world is training,man.
Training is the most expensive,that in downtime for guys like
myself that own a bunch ofequipment.
But training, oh my Atlanta, itdrives me crazy.
(55:04):
And then, you know, we'vestarted an internal video
training program as we'rebuilding video for external at
this at the same time.
So now these new hires got tosit there for 30 minutes.
It's about five, 10 minutes ofvideo, listening to me complain
about my nitpickiness of hey,you get out of a freaking truck,
you better have a hard hat on.
(55:24):
I don't care if you're in themiddle of the Sahara Desert, if
you're out of our truck, gettingpaid on our time, you wear a
hard hat.
It's a representation thing thatwe do, whether you're on a job
site, active or not.
That's what we are.
That's who we are.
And it's those little thingsthat they don't feel like that
first interaction after hiringthem.
Hey, why aren't you wearing yourhard hat?
(55:44):
Well, nobody freaking told me.
You know, my superintendent wasjust waiting for you to show up
and laugh about it.
You know what I mean?
You got to teach this mindset.
And then, hey, these trainingvideos, guys that have been
here, you need to know whatthese mean and what they're
coming in and hold themaccountable and and to that
standard.
But it's those little things,dude, that you know, we're
(56:07):
trying to change the pathwayforward and do things
differently.
SPEAKER_01 (56:12):
Yeah.
The last thing I would I wouldkind of leave your audience
with, the thing I'm constantlytelling my customers,
constantly, is every time youcatch yourself communicating
verbally, ask yourself how youcan communicate visibly.
Every time you can youcommunicate verbally, ask
(56:33):
yourself how you can communicatevisibly.
Verbal communication is good,necessary, it's not great,
because as soon as you say it,it's gone.
You make videos, you make videosfor your team.
You just said that.
You are making that informationvisible and accessible at any
time, right?
Not only did can they access itnow, whenever they're going
(56:54):
through the training, maybe yougive them the link or a QR code,
uh, you know, so they can scanit in the field next to the tool
on the side of the truck.
You whatever, right?
You make it super accessible,you make it visible.
Um lean, here's the here's thedeal at the end of the day,
y'all.
Lean is just a way of thinkingand acting.
And you can either think uhprecise and clearly, or you can
(57:17):
think fat and sloppy.
Um, and lean is the former ofthe two.
It's just how do how do youthink, how do you act and behave
and think in such a way that isnot sloppy, it's not uh
wasteful, and start moving inthat direction.
(57:38):
It's a daily, daily journey.
SPEAKER_00 (57:40):
Blue-collar performance marketing's passion
is to bring attention to thehonest work done in blue-collar
industries through effectiveresults-driven marketing
tactics.
They specialize in comprehensivedigital marketing services from
paid advertising on Google andFacebook to website development
and content strategy.
I started working with Ike andthe team earlier this year, and
they've had a huge impact on ourspecific marketing campaign and
(58:03):
trajectory of our overallcompany.
Their expertise in digital admanagement, website development,
social media, and overallmarketing strategy has been an
absolute game changer for oursales and marketing at SciCon.
If you're looking to work with amarketing team who does what
they say, does it well, and isalways looking for ways to help
your company grow, book adiscovery call with Ike by going
(58:25):
to bcperformancemarketing.combackslash BCB podcast, or click
the link in the show notes slashdescription below.
Thanks, guys.
Dude, I have loved ourconversation today.
I hope it helps so many.
I've got one last question foryou that I ask every single
episode.
We are in the 60s now.
It's kind of crazy, episodecount-wise, but what's the
(58:48):
takeaway for the blue-collarworker who's just sick and tired
of being stuck in the mud, man?
Mentally, emotionally,physically, no better person to
get this from.
Um, what would your piece ofadvice for them be?
SPEAKER_01 (59:03):
I think it's really important to understand why it
is that you wake up every day.
I think, kind of going back towhat you said this morning, why
is it important for you to getout of bed when you get out of
bed?
It's your purpose.
Uh, who are you serving?
Who's most important to you?
Um go back to what we saidthroughout this whole episode.
Clarify that, make it visible,put it on a sticky note in the
(59:27):
mirror in your bathroom, uh, putit on the background of your
phone so you constantly see it.
You have to do these things toremind yourself because we will
so often come again againstproblems and things that are
frankly just painful.
Um, that is going to distract usfrom doing what we were here,
put here to do.
(59:47):
Uh, and we just got toconstantly remind ourselves of
that.
Remind yourselves of thepurpose, clarify your purpose,
make it visible, start there,and then you can go to goals and
everything else, but um startwith your purpose.
SPEAKER_00 (59:59):
No, I couldn't agree.
More man.
Kiddos, beautiful wife, get up,got to serve them.
And right in the, you know, ofcourse, God above them, but
literally below them is a wholebunch of other families that
depend on me to get up and go dowhat I need to do every single
day.
So money shows up so they canget paid on Friday.
And uh whether that be our ownguys or subcontractors, vendors,
(01:00:22):
whatever it may be, but uh andthe relationships you have with
each and every one of thosepeople I just listed.
So well, Zach, I can't thank youenough for your time.
Um I likewise the 234 rule, lovethat.
It's all about visibility andtransparency within your
(01:00:42):
business and systems to holdpeople accountable and don't be
scared.
Um guys, as entrepreneurs, to toreach out and try something new.
Zach, if they want to reach outto you, where would they do
that, my guy?
SPEAKER_01 (01:00:55):
Yeah, you can go to leandirt.com uh or you can
follow me on LinkedIn.
Either way, on both of thoseplatforms, I'm pretty sure uh I
offer my phone number, so giveme a call, text me, what's at
me?
Um, I'm highly reachable.
SPEAKER_00 (01:01:10):
Well, seriously, guys, till next time.
I hope you guys are winding downyour year, getting ready for the
holidays.
It's coming up uh at the end ofthis episode, if you wouldn't
mind, dropping us a rating or afollowing on whatever spot um
Spotify, iHeart, Amazon, iTunes,iPodcast, I think is what it is.
I may have jacked that one up.
(01:01:31):
Whatever streaming platform youguys are on, I really appreciate
you tuning in for anotherepisode or dropping every
Wednesday, just as usual.
Uh, if you don't have asubscription and you've caught
us on a short, grab us at bluecollarbusinesspodcast.com.
You can watch or listen directlyfrom there, completely free, no
subscription needed.
(01:01:52):
Guys, really appreciate you,Zach.
And guys, till next time, besafe and be kind.
If you've enjoyed this episode,be sure to give it a like, share
it with the fellas, check outour website to send us any
questions and comments aboutyour experience in the blue
collar business.
Who do you want to hear from?
Send them our way, and we'll doour best to answer any questions
(01:02:13):
you may have.
Till next time, guys.
Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast
where we discuss the realest,rawest, most relevant stories
and strategies behind buildingevery corner of a blue-collar
business.
I'm your host, Cy Kirby, and Iwant to help you what it took
me, trial and error, and a wholelot of money to learn.
The information that no one inthis industry is willing to
share.
Whether you're under that shadetree or have your hard hat on,
(00:30):
let's expand your toolbox.
Guys, welcome back to anotherepisode of the Blue Collar
Business Podcast, brought to youand sponsored by our friends
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(01:12):
session today.
Let them know the blue collarbusiness podcast sent you guys
there.
Guys, as you guys know, I havebeen going through such
transformation with my ownbusiness, trying to figure out
business.
What is business?
What you think you know, whatyou thought you know, and what
you're learning along the way.
(01:34):
And uh the gentleman today hasbeen a great LinkedIn follower.
I've I've learned some stuff.
Um, he's passionate about whathe's doing.
And as you guys know, this isthe resource for you.
I'm gonna be learning just asmuch as you guys are gonna be
learning today, but um, noneother than uh the man Zach
Estes.
This guy is a founder of acompany called Lean Dirt,
(01:56):
basically helping us dailyperformance coaching for civil
construction companies, coachescontractors from two to 70
million in revenue across NorthAmerica in different lien
systems, leadership,communication.
Wherever you might bestruggling, this is the man to
help you.
Man, thank you so much forjoining us today.
How are you?
(02:17):
Thanks, brother.
Uh, I appreciate it, man.
I'm doing just lovely.
How about yourself?
Well, literally, um I'm veryopen and vulnerable on this show
and on YouTube and verytransparent about where we are.
And man, we have been in such atransition.
And I don't know if you wouldsay call it leaning up.
(02:39):
Um, that is a pretty common termacross our industry.
But at the same time, my guy, II have had to do something
different because I didn'treally know what was right, but
I knew what I'm doing currentlywas wrong because now I'm
actually producing a little bitof these systems, finiting these
(03:02):
uh procedures down and reallytruly finding profitability or
revenue, or is it even worthgoing after all to begin with
really quickly now?
And so that's just changing myentire mindset of what is
business, right?
What is the dirt game, what isthe pipe game, civil
construction as a whole, becausethere's so many little niches.
(03:23):
But you're a guy that a lot ofus don't know is out there.
There's people that likeyourself have built a system
from what I'm so excited for youto share, where it came from and
what the background of it isfrom, and where it's proven you
already know it works, but ifyou can, you know, implement it
into your own smaller businessor large business, there's
(03:48):
results to be seen.
Share a little bit, my guy.
SPEAKER_01 (03:51):
Yeah.
So uh I call my business LeanDirt.
That's the name of the businessitself.
And and it's not even my system.
I have I'm taking zero creditfor this.
I'm just a student of thesystem.
I'm a student of, and it's noteven it's not even really a
system, it's a way of doingbusiness.
And honestly, it's a way ofdoing life.
It it super applies torelationships, family, you name
(04:12):
it.
But let's talk about it in thecontext of business.
Lean originates from um kind ofthe manufacturing industry.
Uh, and really Toyota is kind ofthe flagship model for this
Toyota production system.
If any of your audience has everheard of anything associated
with that.
Operational excellence, youthink operational excellence,
(04:32):
that comes from Toyota.
That comes from Japanesemanufacturing.
Um, Kubota, I mean, like you nyou name it, uh, that is the
entire mindset of kind of even aJapanese culture.
And honestly, what's crazy isthat uh this gets into a little
bit of history lesson, so youmight have to pull me in.
Prior that there's a guy namedEdward Demming, he's American,
(04:55):
and he had no audience inAmerica.
Americans wouldn't listen to himbecause we were prideful.
Uh we couldn't be told what todo post-World War II because we
were the champs.
Uh, meanwhile, there was ahungry and starving, literally
audience in Japan who needed aneconomy to come back.
And they said, let's listen tothis guy who's talking about
(05:17):
reducing waste, making the mostof what you have and uh
producing.
And that's kind of what wherelean originated from.
That's what the Toyotaproduction system originated
from.
Um, so I've I've been I've beenapplying lean.
I started as a manufacturingengineer um over 10 years ago.
Um, I started in manufacturing,ended up working for a huge
(05:38):
hospital system in Tennessee,uh, and then a media
corporation, and then a businessand leadership coaching
organization, led that, grewthat, and then started my own
business uh focused on helpingcivil construction implement
lean systems and processes.
SPEAKER_00 (05:55):
Why'd you move from total manufacturing and like
manufacturing background over toprobably the uh most overhead
heavy non-cash flow businessmodel ever into the civil
construction space?
Yes, we need you.
(06:15):
Um, obviously, if you've youfound something that worked, but
um how did you find out, youknow, moving from that to this?
SPEAKER_01 (06:25):
Here's the thing.
Uh, I so this kind of gets intothe philosophy of lean.
If I'll answer your question,but I'm gonna back up into it.
So the fundamental structure ofwhat lean is all about is that
there's value and there's waste.
Another way to say that is thatthere are things that the
customer is paying for, and thenthere's everything else.
(06:47):
And everything else is what thebusiness is paying for.
Okay, value and waste, value andwaste.
If you look at the economy as awhole, the reason I'm passionate
about civil construction is one,it is hard work.
It's hard work, it's risky work,but it's value added work to the
economy.
As an example, as a coach, Idon't add value to the economy.
I purely reduce waste in theeconomy.
(07:09):
I try to make things moreefficient.
I'm not adding value to theeconomy.
Manufacturing industry addsvalue, construction adds value.
Um, I do not personally addvalue.
So I'm trying my best toimplement to come alongside
value adders to the economy whoare doing hard, risky work um
(07:30):
and just make their liveseasier.
Like that's that's my focus.
That's my goal.
SPEAKER_00 (07:34):
Hmm.
Literally, the who was the firstperson to reach out to you, I
guess, from our side of theworld and was like, hey man,
could you help me?
SPEAKER_01 (07:46):
So uh interesting.
Um, the one that comesoriginally to mind, I was the
COO of a at a business andleadership coaching organization
prior to this, and I helped uhoperationalize that business.
They he brought me on reallybecause my skill set, my
background.
Um, and one of our firstcustomers is uh really who kind
(08:07):
of inspired me.
His name is Herb Sargent.
Are you familiar with Herb?
SPEAKER_00 (08:11):
Dude, Herb is the man I I have on my LinkedIn, I I
literally have my own smalllittle herb post links to go
back and read because the wisdomfrom the true blue experience a
man has experienced throughlife.
You you you can't there ain't noAI writing like that because the
(08:34):
way he you can tell he's livedit and he's preaching it and
what he's done for you know onhis exit with the Aesop and all
the the company he's built, man.
Um been trying to get him on theshow for some time.
He's yeah, maybe I can make aconnection for you.
He's uh we have texted a littlebit prior to this, but he's uh I
(08:55):
think he's in enjoying lifecurrently as well.
SPEAKER_01 (08:58):
He is, he's a stud.
He's a stud, and he's investinginto other business owners in
this industry.
Uh, I don't know if you'refamiliar with Benjamin Holmgren,
uh, Benjamin's ground crewgroups.
Like I think he's a mentor formany of those peer groups.
All that to be said, Herb was aclient of ours, probably, I
mean, this is four-ish yearsago, maybe five years ago.
(09:18):
Um and he was kind of the firstone in that industry.
Uh, or let's just call it likehorizontal construction, even in
like paving uh utilities, youknow, whatever, that um dirt
world that I really hadfamiliarity into.
However, even a couple of yearsbefore that is when I um I
interacted with Aaron Witt fromBuildwit um and got him on the
(09:42):
entree leadership podcast when Iwas working for Dave Ramsey.
And so uh it's just a smallworld, right?
It's a small world.
Um and and uh so that was kindof my foyer to um this whole
industry is is seeing whatHerb's doing, see what Sgt.
Corp's doing up in Maine and andall along the East Coast now.
(10:02):
Um, and then just started havingmore and more interactions with
customers and clients andfriends who are in this industry
or in in a related um sector ofthis industry.
SPEAKER_00 (10:13):
That's so cool.
What a monumental originalcustomer going, hey, can you
help me?
And I know Aaron as well wentout on his podcast.
He will be on this show justfollowing the year.
Shout out to Dirt World Summittoo.
We'll be are you going to DirtWorld Summit?
SPEAKER_01 (10:31):
Yeah, I'll be there.
I see you in a couple weeks.
SPEAKER_00 (10:33):
There you go.
Literally, it's like two weeksaway.
Uh, customer of mine bought me aticket.
I'm very excited to go.
Uh, first time for myself.
But um, no, his whole team isdoing big things over there as
well.
But to have Herb as one of youroriginal customers, what what
sitting here in my head was theamount of experience that he
(10:53):
has, what this should be an openavenue for you.
What could you have, you know,came in and helped him with?
SPEAKER_01 (11:00):
See.
So I'll I'll say he wasn'tdirectly my client whenever I
was working at the organization.
He was our client.
Um, however, and I'll I've heardhim say this multiple times of
what he took away from that.
Um, but but I want to share foryour audience the fact that he
came to us.
We're a bunch of guys in our 30sum who aren't in this industry.
(11:23):
We were business and leadershipcoaches.
Uh, that's like that, that'swhat our organization was.
Now we have a ton of experienceworking with all sorts of
industries, right?
It's just business principlesand practices.
Um, but he sought outmentorship, he sought out advice
from non-industry experts,right?
Like he's willing to humblehimself and say, other people
(11:48):
have figured this out, otherpeople have knocked up their
head against the headaches thatI'm having.
Uh, it may look a littledifferent, it may not be with
heavy machinery or laying pipein the ground, but it deals with
people and it deals with systemsand it deals with processes and
communication, and that's allbusiness.
So, yes, there are there aretried and true, like specific
(12:10):
issues that are happening withinthis industry, but man, I would
just encourage your audience tobe like Herb Sargent, look
towards other industries for thesolution.
It's way easier to um see thetrees for the force.
SPEAKER_00 (12:24):
That's a really good point because I'll speak to
myself.
Um, you know, our we've had afractional PM, fractional CFO,
fractional bookkeep, fractionalaccount, like fractional
everything.
You know, I'm trying to figurethis out.
I'm starting to get a little bitof fractional fatigue, I'll tell
you that.
But at the same time, stayingthat's a good.
(12:45):
Um, but I can see the usefulnessof it.
And man, two years ago, I didn'teven know what that was.
But I had to start getting intoa different level of uh I heard
a quote, it was uh discomfort isthe true key.
Um no, I'm totally jacking thisup.
(13:06):
I think it's actually, yeah, no,it's right here on my book.
I wrote it down, it was so good.
Discomfort is the tuition youpay for access.
You know, you don't know as abusiness owner that you know
you're expected by everybodythat works for you, all your
subs, whatever, vendors, theyexpect you to know.
(13:27):
And when you don't know, it's soscary for us to lean out and go,
hey, I really suck at this.
Everybody in my entire companyis telling me repetitively, and
I don't know what to freaking doabout it.
I want it to be better.
I just don't know how to numberone do the research and and
figure out exactly what I needto implement.
(13:49):
We're scared to implementanything new because the last
three or four things that weimplemented are still not even
implemented.
And what I found out, you know,shout out to Ms.
Shalina because she has comehelped us build the systems and
ensure that everybody was heldaccountable while we were
starting these new systems.
(14:10):
And that's on my scale of it.
And then you you go all the wayto the end of the scale to to
herb of hey, I want to perfectculture, I want to figure out
how we figured communicationallinks and are people listening
to what is actually coming out,rather than just barking and
really wanting to find out andperfect that.
That's that's unbelievable.
(14:30):
But you got guys like me who arejust trying to grow in scale.
And in 23, I had a 25 pluspeople, and we were going every
which direction but forward.
And it was on me to go, heydude, figure out the systems.
And so where I'm going with thisto lead up to my question is
(14:52):
what are some of the largestpatterns you would see or
breakdowns that you commonly seewithin I'm in our we're in our
10th year, so in that zero to 10year realm, and I think that's
probably most of our audience.
So what are the same common justbreakdowns and how these
companies operate day to daythat we are all beating our head
(15:15):
up against the wall that youcould help us through here?
SPEAKER_01 (15:18):
Yeah.
Do you do you care if I justgive you the whole playbook?
Do it.
It may get pretty detailed, sopull so pull me in.
But um two, three, four.
That's what I want to you toremember.
Two, three, four, two, three,four.
Two systems one information, oneaction.
An information system and anaction system.
(15:39):
That's the two systems.
Three are three actions.
These are three actions that youas a leader in your business
should take every single day.
You should learn and grow inthese skill sets.
The three actions are clarify,improve, and coach.
And then and then the four isfour daily routines.
(16:02):
And whenever I say that, I'veI've often uh I'll get like, I
don't have I don't have time forone routine.
What do you mean four routines?
Uh but just trust me for asecond.
The four routines are a processfor planning, a process for
improvement, a process forreflection, and a process for
(16:23):
preparation.
Two, three, four.
Two systems, three actions, fourroutines.
That that's like none of thatcosts money, by the way.
I'm not trying to sell youanything.
There's nothing here.
This is just purely informationthat you can absolutely act on.
Um, and so to answer yourquestion, those three actions,
(16:46):
if we think about those threeactions really quick, clarify.
Um whenever I say clarify, Imean make it visible.
One of the biggest things youcan do for your business is to
make your systems and processesvisible.
And and that is I visited dozensof job sites this year across
(17:08):
all of North America, and sooften how people how hundred
million dollar businesses inexcavation.
So it's not like you have to dowhat I'm saying.
I'm just saying they haveheadaches.
Uh$100 million in businesses areusing sticky notes and notebooks
to keep their projectinformation um between seven of
(17:31):
their project managers.
So then they're having dailymeetings that last 90 minutes
long, and as soon as thatmeeting's over, guess what?
The whole thing is pointless.
One phone call happens,information changes, you don't
find out until the next meeting.
And so it's just hidden.
That's what I want you to hear.
The the information, the work,the communication, it's hidden.
(17:54):
And to clarify something meansto make it visible.
And so we go back to the twosystems.
We need a system forinformation, we need to make the
information visible, we need asystem for actions, we need to
make the actions visible.
I'll stop for a second and dude,I'll let you breathe.
SPEAKER_00 (18:10):
I am, I am, no, I am soaking it all in because
literally, as I was writingthis, I was thinking, I mean, he
said the playbook, uh well, I Iwould pick you apart, but there
is disciplines that I have hadto learn in my own life.
I'm a father of three.
And if I want to be a part oftheir life, there's some
non-negotiable time that I haveto set, even if something
(18:34):
explodes in the business, theydeserve to add to be there.
And so um, shout out to Mr.
Newland.
He he gave me that a couple ofyears ago, and it has changed my
life.
But some of these things thatyou're listening, yeah, I mean,
I had to change up my dailyroutines.
I didn't just get to get out ofbed at whatever time.
(18:54):
It is this time you are upbecause you have all of this to
do before you even get there,man.
And that's just one simplelittle discipline, you know what
I mean?
SPEAKER_01 (19:05):
But the act can I also say yes, the reason you get
up at whatever time it is thatyou get up is because you have
clarified your purpose as to whyyou need to get up.
So good, my dude.
So you've made it visible.
Well, even if it's just in yourhead, you've made it visible,
you've made the purpose visible,and so now you're acting on it.
Yeah, keep going.
SPEAKER_00 (19:24):
No, I and the other thing I was gonna say is how
important the zero to ten yearguy is building visibility and
transparency to the teams thatyou're freaking building.
I wish I would have understoodthat I was only hurting myself.
Oh, well, we have these foldersfor ops and we have these
(19:47):
folders for admin, they can'tsee this, this can't see that.
And once you make it fullytransparent and everybody sees,
hey, here's the profit, here'swhat we stand to make.
And when margins are reallythin, if we smoke a gas line on
a smaller margin job like we didyesterday, hey guys, we lost all
the profit on this job on daytwo because somebody didn't want
(20:07):
to move a little bit of spoilout of the way.
And but now we go out there, wetalk about it.
We're gonna freaking talk aboutit on Monday in front of
everybody.
Video, go over what did we dothat we could have possibly.
I know that sounds so small, butit it's those systems that build
the transparency.
Why are they gonna sit there andlisten to me?
(20:28):
Because they know we just smokedour entire profit hissing into
the air as the gas was blowing.
And we don't hit stuff, man.
We really don't.
We're very we've had a watermain and and this gas main this
year, and four to five crewsrocking between four or five
counties pretty quickly.
You can you can start damagingsome stuff.
But we we train, man.
(20:48):
But the visibility andtransparency, I looked at my
project manager, he was soembarrassed to tell me that you
know, two of these, our mainguys, uh, just had a brain fart
and going a little too fast, andthere's no reason to be going
this fast, especially not rightnow.
And I looked at him and I said,Hey man, you know the contract
(21:09):
total.
If they send us a$5,000 bill forfixing that gas main, how much
profit's left on this job?
And his face went white.
And I'm like, but that's butit's not just me sitting here
screaming as an owner, hey guys,we're freaking broke.
Everything's super tight, we gotto make what we got work.
(21:32):
They're pushing back becauseI'll be honest with you, man.
I gave them everything.
I I wanted them to haveeverything nice, and I was
swiping credit cards and rackingthis up and doing this, but they
had everything.
And now it's a couple yearslater where everything's either
a little worn out, or half ofit's uh been sticky fingered
away or dropped in a hole orwhatever it may be.
(21:55):
That's again, my own system'sfailing myself because I could
have a tool inventory systemlike we do now.
But either way, my dude, it'sbuilding that transparency that,
hey, this small tool line itemright here that we got to keep
replacing affects theprofitability of the business
sitting in a room collectively,building the transparency of
hey, here's our own internalpre-con, here's our production
(22:18):
rates, here's what we can make.
If you go over that, go do it.
It's that simple.
And the results from that is sofreeing.
But I'm I'm telling you, thezero to 10 guy, 10-year guy is
he can't get it through hishead.
And the guys that do before theyhit 10 are the guys that are
(22:40):
absolutely moving and grooving.
Uh, I'll give a shout out to uhyou know Black Mountain.
That dude has built a team onhe's on media as well through
TikTok and whatnot, and theythey've come out of nowhere.
Like literally, boom.
And it's it's all about buildinga team, holding people
(23:01):
accountable, and buildingtransparency within the business
so we're all moving towards thesame common goal.
That's what I have learned whereI screwed up in the first eight
years of business.
SPEAKER_01 (23:12):
Let's talk about uh holding people accountable.
This this is a really practical.
This was Herb's uh greatestthing that he took away from
coaching with us.
Um, so there's a tool, we'llcall it a tool, um, that you can
use called success statements.
Have you ever heard of successstatements?
It's essentially uh just adescription of an outcome.
(23:35):
A description of an outcome.
It's one sentence that's adescription of an outcome.
So if you hired me to be aproject manager, what are what
are three categories ofresponsibility that you would uh
give me as your project manager?
What would you say myresponsibilities as a project
manager are?
SPEAKER_00 (23:53):
Uh scheduling, number one.
Number two, um, definitely allduties of the job, meaning
equipment and manpower.
And then probably number threeis ensuring that uh we're
staying on budget with withinthe estimated non-estimated
cost.
SPEAKER_01 (24:14):
Love it.
Let's talk about scheduling.
Let's use this just as anexample.
What do you want to be trueabout the schedule?
SPEAKER_00 (24:23):
I want I want it done under the time we've
allotted in the estimate.
That's what I want to be true.
Uh, but that's not always thecase, right?
So I would say every single day,how many days we've spent, I
want the estimate to show howmany days we estimated with, and
I want, and this is really trulywhat happens now as the schedule
(24:46):
is going, they they are racingthat same bar, and once they get
there and they're like, Well, Istill got 300 feet left.
SPEAKER_01 (24:56):
So tell me how would you describe it if if I'm a
brand new project manager, youjust hired me on your team.
Okay, how would you describewhat you want to be true about
scheduling?
One sentence.
I couldn't even uh uh what wouldbe the greatest indicator of
success about scheduling if youunderstand on true you knew you
(25:17):
would know that I'm doing myjob.
Uh if it was visible, but Idon't know where you're going,
honest to God.
Maybe even just like uh, youknow, the schedule is is on
time, on budget, whatever.
You could say on time, you couldsay within five percent of our
estimate.
Um you know, you have some sortof parameters for what the
(25:41):
outcome, the desired outcome isfor scheduling.
Have some sort of parameter, onething, and then we want to be
able to say we want to be ableto evaluate that outcome.
Is it true?
Is it consistently true?
If we look at this weekly, is itconsistently true?
Is it inconsistently true,meaning it peters up and down
(26:03):
every other week?
Or is it not true at all?
And we need to figure out how toget to true.
So, success statementsfundamentally, if I were just to
summarize it for um your entireaudience, this is what Herb
applied for Sargent.
Um, it's being able to say it'sit's a way in which you can
systematically hold your teamaccountable to their role.
(26:25):
Every role on your team needsthree to five success
statements.
Uh each of those successstatements is one sentence that
describes the desired outcome.
It describes what you want to betrue, period.
So you should be able to look atthat sentence and say, is that
not true?
Is it inconsistently true, or isit consistently true?
(26:48):
And then and then what do youdo?
Well, then now you have a way inwhich you can evaluate that
person.
Even if it's a littlesubjective, you you make make it
clear, you have the writtensentence that's visible.
It's not just in someone's headlike scheduling.
It's like a specific sentencethat we can break down and beat
up on and be like, what doesthis even mean?
(27:08):
Are we on the same page as towhat success looks like for
scheduling?
Or do you have something in yourhead and I have something in my
head, and now the standard's notclear?
It's not clear because it's notvisible.
If we can make it visible, writeout the sentence and evaluate
it, regular, green, not true andconsistently true, consistently
true, regular, green, visible.
(27:30):
That's how you make things,that's how you hold people
accountable.
They don't even need you to comeand rate them and evaluate them.
They can constantly come back tothis visible standard and say, I
know I'm not green right now.
I'm probably yellow.
I need to figure out what do Ineed to go do to get from yellow
to green.
I'm red right now.
What do I need to do to get fromred to yellow?
(27:51):
It's that it's that simple.
That is free.
You don't need a tool for that,you don't need to buy anything
for that, right?
It's just a way in which you'reworking.
So that all if we if we zoom outfor a second, let's take a
couple steps back.
If we zoom out for a second,what did we do?
All we really did was twothings.
We clarified and we improved.
(28:14):
We made visible, we madeinformation visible, and now we
can hold someone accountable tothat information.
It gives them direction for acttaking action in their job.
So that's clarified.
That's a role, that's a skillset of a leader.
And then we made it animprovement because now it's
actually easier for that personto do their job effectively to
the standard that we want themto do it.
(28:36):
So it's easier for them to dotheir job and they're clear,
they're visible on what it isthat they should be doing.
Cost no money.
SPEAKER_00 (28:44):
I would completely agree with all of that.
I mean, I love the thoughtprocess of a success statement
because it gives them goal anddirection without you ever
having to hover.
Hey, uh, and it's I loveself-evaluation.
I did I started that on our wedo 30, 90-day UVAWs, and then we
(29:05):
we do yearly UVOLs uh and orwith our supers.
I've learned this over the lasttwo years.
I wish I'd have started thissooner as well, is you know,
career roadmaps.
Like give these guys an ideainto your head where they can
play a role in this businessone, three, and five years from
here.
Like, this is where you'regoing.
I want you to make sure this isclear on paper.
(29:25):
I want you to sign it, me tosign it, so you understand what
you're working towards.
And but even down to the projectlevel, hey, I see where you're
going.
Under time and under budgetwould be my one sentence, of
course, every single time.
But literally, if you couldbreak that down to hey, I know
(29:45):
gravel's a huge swinger on thisjob.
Can we keep it within 5% orless?
Can we make sure there is likehardly any waste left?
Can we run a gravel bucket or abedding box to ensure that?
When we're yeah, there's justzero chance for waste.
And if we can keep that under5%, there's this, or whatever
(30:08):
the case may be.
I can see, hey, if you meet thisproduction rate, that's great.
You'll be in the green.
But if you can get anything plusthis per day, it's going to add
this amount of time.
And if we know that from thefront of the office, we can
build that into the job that isimportant to the customer as
well.
Now we're taking priority to thecustomer.
(30:29):
While like I can see so muchvalue in that thought process.
There's no doubt about it.
And especially applying it tothe civil world.
And it's it's not abundantlyoverly complicated.
It's having a good foundation ofprinciples to come back to, two,
three, four, like you said.
And I I'm gonna implement it.
(30:50):
I'm pretty excited that you werewilling to just give the old
playbook to the audience becausethere's so many men and women
out there, dude, just trying tofigure this out.
You know, Sergeant was, I thinkthere's 50.
Uh, how many years have theybeen in business?
I mean, it's been a long time.
But either way, these most ofthese guys are just trying to
(31:12):
eventually one day get there,and they're getting punched
every six months, every six dayswith something new from that one
to three-year role.
Now, from three to seven,they're trying to figure out
this profit train.
Oh, we may be chasing a littletoo much revenue, Cy Kirby, and
you may need to reel that backin.
And once you get past thatseven-year mark, and and you
(31:33):
really start going through allthis self-realization on the
back end of it.
But there's there's these guysin the in that five before that
five-year mark that are stilljust absolutely full sending it
straightforward.
Kudos to you, but just have somefoundational principles to make
sure you are watching what'simportant because there is so
(31:55):
many things that come at theseowners every single day.
And even, you know, like newflashy software, new this, this
is gonna improve this efficiencyhere.
Hey, and then you finally sell,you know, say something that's
really been a trigger for themover the last six months, and
they can take their attentionover here.
And oh, we're gonna get thisimplemented.
(32:17):
Well, are you profitable on yourjobs?
Have we paid attention overthere?
I know this is gonna help insix, eight months, but what's
going on right now?
Have we been checking our whipreport?
Do we have a PM in place?
Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (32:28):
Oh man, one of the things about a mentor, a mentor
of mine, his name is Paul Akers.
He wrote a book called TwoSecond Lean.
Um, and I highly recommend it.
You can literally go to hiswebsite, download all of his
books for free.
He does everything for greatYouTube channel as well.
Um, but one of the things thathe always says, and this is such
a lean mindset, is use yourwits, not your wallet.
(32:49):
And if you use your wallet, it'sbecause you're using your wits.
Don't address a problem withyour wallet.
Address a problem with yourwits.
Think about the problem andfigure out the best solution.
Maybe you have to use yourwallet, but let that be a witty
solution, not a wallet-drivensolution that you're just gonna
throw money at it.
So often I see people hire hirepeople and it being a wallet
(33:15):
solution and not a wittysolution.
Really, where they need theyprobably need some systems and
processes to hold themaccountable inside of their
existing structure.
They don't need another personon their salary in their
headcount that's straining thebusiness.
SPEAKER_00 (33:31):
Man, you're preaching to the choir here,
might be like I learned the hardway, you know.
We had seven or eight people inthe office, and you know, a lot
of them would have soared if Ihad what I have in place
nowadays.
You know what I mean?
And so you just kick yourself,you're like, oh man, did I lose
(33:51):
those people?
But the one thing I try to whenI get into that mindset, the one
quote is uh don't judge yourselfon yesterday's decisions with
today's wisdom.
And I've had to go through somuch to get to this point, and I
I get kind of down on myself,well, man, if I was doing this
(34:11):
two years ago, so and so, whatif this could have been?
But it is what it is.
You're here now and in thepresent, and having to
prioritize every single moment.
That superintendent who youthought two years ago wasn't
going to make it three months isnow the guy that's running the
show, and you may have to getused to that and figure out how
to adapt to his uh learningability or his, you know, be
(34:34):
able to deliver information tohim differently than the other
two studs that you thought werestuds, but actually when you
started looking in paper, theyweren't so studly, they were
actually costing you money, andit it's it's crazy.
But the wallet and woodysolution is kind of where I was
going with that.
I can be an absolute uh advocatefor that because in the first
(34:58):
five years, especially younger,don't know what you're doing,
you'll throw money at anything.
When you got money in the bankand there's revenue flowing,
it's just, oh, I got that,whatever, yeah, a couple K, 10K,
whatever.
Just get it done, get it done,get it done.
And man, before you know it, youcan't be throwing your wallet
around and you're having to getwitty.
(35:19):
So I would definitely grab ahold of that as a solution for
both ways.
Use that mindset.
You got here by being nimble andand moving your way through what
we call business.
Don't, when you hit a problem,just throw your freaking wallet
at it.
I I love that analogy, man.
SPEAKER_01 (35:38):
Yeah.
Can we talk about the twosystems?
SPEAKER_00 (35:41):
Please, information or actions.
SPEAKER_01 (35:43):
Yeah, let's talk.
Do you mind if we beat up onyour business?
Please, go ahead.
Tell me about where you keepproject information.
Is it in sticky notes, notepads,notebooks?
Online, Word docs.
SPEAKER_00 (35:57):
Uh, couple of years ago was an organized file
structure that was visiblewithin the admin team and the
project management.
Uh in the last week, okay,that'd have been three, four
years ago at this point.
We went all the way.
Remember when I was talkingabout, hey guys, you see this
shiny object?
Well, Procor sunk their hook inthe side of my mouth.
(36:19):
And I paid for that crap for twoyears.
And don't get me wrong, it isincredible at what it does for
very specific uh contractorsacross the country, but it is
very unforgiving and it's veryhard to implement and it's very
field heavy.
And, you know, when you'retrying to run lean, you don't
have three people sitting aroundin trucks documenting every time
(36:42):
when somebody goes to the PortaJohn or not.
And like you still need to havedaily documentation.
But to answer your question, mydude, everything's in Builder's
Trend now.
We've stepped down.
I was paying a lot of money toProcor, and we still didn't even
have scheduling.
And shout out to Builder'sTrend.
They actually just uh, I thinkbecause we were on a podcast
(37:04):
speaking about Builder's Trend,got our financial piece added on
just out of the blue last month.
So shout out to them.
But everything is housed withinBuilder's Trend from the
contract point forward.
Um, everything on what we callfantasy land that the boys never
need to hear about, but we'reselling is actually on
(37:25):
Monday.com.
Awesome, wonderful.
SPEAKER_01 (37:28):
Okay, so fantastic.
The fact that you could actuallygive me a place where you store
that information, it'swonderful.
Um, often like I I've had aclient before, whenever they
first started with me, and hejust started holding up
notebooks and like sticking itup.
SPEAKER_00 (37:42):
Hey, I was like, looking up my daily notebooks.
SPEAKER_01 (37:44):
Yeah, fair enough, fair enough.
Scratch pads are great, anddon't let that be the thing that
has all of your business'sinformation for moving projects
forward.
Um here's here's what I'll say.
Have you ever heard of that thisis this is gonna be super
tangential?
Pulling from a Herb Sargent ideaof let's look outward to other
(38:04):
industries.
Have you ever heard of Mise enplus?
Do you know what that means?
No, sir.
That's like um uh so in therestaurant world, in the kitchen
world, in the chef and cookworld, French restaurants, mise
en plus, it's a it's a uh, Idon't know, it's a French, it
means everything is in itsplace.
Got it.
Everything is in its place.
(38:25):
If you've ever been to like asuper fancy, fine dining
kitchen, I don't know, somerestaurant that's really
expensive and costs more thanyou want to pay, go to their
kitchen and and they arepracticing something called
misenplos, which just simplymeans everything has a home,
everything is in its place.
It's it's like having a toolboxthat's uh has a shadow board
(38:45):
behind it, you know,everything's foamed out.
It's like, oh, every singlewrench, every single socket has
its home and it's labeled likethat's meseenplos.
I want you to think about thatfor your information system.
Everything needs a home.
Where does this information go?
I want to be able to go to oneplace to see to see or access
(39:10):
everything with one project.
That's the if you think aboutlike from a success statement
idea, like what is the goal ofour information system?
I want to be able to go to oneplace for one project and see
every single bit of detailedinformation or be able to
quickly access it from that oneplace, every single bit of
detailed information associatedwith that project.
(39:32):
Who's the project manager?
Who's the foreman?
Who's the estimator?
Who's the uh customer?
Who's the customer contact?
Who's the customer's customer?
Who um, you know, it doesn'tmatter.
Like who are all the vendorsassociated with this?
What are all the invoices?
What are all the change orders?
Um and and you can totally dothis on Monday.
You could build this yourself.
(39:53):
The point is everything needs ahome and your information needs
a home.
And the more you can kind ofcategorize it per project, every
project should have a home.
And maybe it links to BuilderTrend, and maybe it links to
whatever, however, you know,whatever other tools that you
have in your system.
Um, but your information systemneeds to come back to this
(40:15):
Misinplos idea where everythinghas a home, every project has
one home.
A project should not live insomeone's notebooks and
Monday.com and Builder's Trendand your Gmail.
It should live in one place.
All the information should be inone place.
Now it may uh link to thoseother places, but I should be
(40:36):
able to find it and access it inthat one place.
SPEAKER_00 (40:39):
No, I I completely agree.
Everything should have its own,and it takes some time to figure
out why.
Um, you know, I I referenced, soI'll jump on two things you
said, and I referenced earlier,you know, Monday.com was for
like more of the fantasy landand the CRM.
That stuff really never getspushed past, you know, contract.
(40:59):
So we it's so hard when you'regetting everything thrown at
you.
You know, we jumped onto thatPro Core train thinking that,
oh, we're gonna be able to get alead in the door and run it
through contract and everythingschedule and all this stuff, and
it just wasn't, it just wasn'tthat.
And when you're trying to, it'sso hard to find one thing,
(41:20):
one-stop shops anymore.
You know, there's a bunch ofthings out there that are really
good at what they do, but reallyterrible on other ends of the
coin.
And so, Builder's trend, we havelooked at it from a project
management system.
Everything lives within thefiles, all the plans, all the
stamped plans, uh, productionrates, the schedule.
(41:45):
Basically, Dylan builds aschedule on the estimating side
uh of Monday, and he carriesthat over and gives them a
template as a superintendent.
Hey, look, this is what I bid itlike.
Let us know, shoot us back aschedule once you get it built
in Builder's Trend, and they'rebuilding their own schedule off
of the days that were, you know,set in our estimated costs.
(42:09):
And he may come back to us andgo, boys, what do you mean I got
seven days to do this?
This is 14 days all day.
And okay, but here we've got 21days.
Can we shave off?
And so we're already talkingabout the profitability.
Yes, how you bid a job is youwant to go do it exactly the way
you bid it, but about 70% of thetime it's gonna change up before
(42:30):
you even get on site.
And so you want that fieldoperations team to be able to
set their own schedule, numberone, but be talking back to the
estimator before they get there,make sure they have a good
understanding of the bestpathway forward.
And so we have found to keepfantasy land, everything leads,
(42:52):
sources, uh, what we do in ourmarketing, all of that back up
in the front of the office.
But once it hits that point ofcontract, from schedule to punch
out to finaling out, everythingis umbrellaed up there.
And the guys hop on there everysingle day.
We do a daily log.
What do we do?
Who do we talk to?
What machines?
How many hours?
(43:13):
Give me 10 pictures.
Like, I want production databecause but here's the other
thing.
We ask them to put theirproduction data.
Hey, I laid a hundred foot onthis job and I did it with these
guys, but these pieces ofequipment, and now it's closing
the loop back to the estimator.
And so when times get tough andyou have to get lean, the market
(43:36):
gets lean, now your estimatorknows exactly on the last three
to six jobs.
Okay, if I have this 210 andthis wheel loader, I can get 260
feet in the ground, averagedjust fine.
Yeah, they had some bad days,but there were road crossings
and whatever.
This job looks identical orsimilar to and move forward.
(43:58):
So I can 100% attest to one-stopshop for your project management
data.
I will tell you, audience, thatI would not go looking for a CRM
and a project managementsoftware together.
It's just gonna get tooconjumbled.
Your guys are gonna go, well,what about this job I see here?
(44:19):
And no, that's we're budgetingthat for where we have 40% CDs.
Get that out of your head.
Like, it doesn't even need to beon the plat.
So, um, but yeah, no, dude, thefile systems and organization,
nah, dude, there's so manybetter softwares out there to
house everything.
Last point I want to say is thatwhat we have been sitting here
(44:41):
talking about, none of it helpsyou unless you're willing to
hold people accountable aboutthe data going into.
So um, that was kind of my mainthing.
And maybe we can put a successstatement uh in regard to
builder's trend, and maybe I canenact that to make sure we don't
miss.
(45:01):
I'm not gonna say we sit hereand do it every day perfect
every single week.
There's weeks that they runhard.
There, there's weeks they runlate and then they catch it up
on a couple of days, but it's soimportant to have it down every
single freaking day.
Yeah.
After the why?
Oh, because I don't want them tohave a friggin' sleep, man.
(45:23):
I don't want them to go home andforget it, you know.
Uh, and it's not uh, oh, we laid180 feet.
No, I want to know about theengineer inspector that came and
weasel around and cost us twohours.
And he changed tried to changethe plan up, and nobody knew
about that until I caught anemail three days later.
I went back and looked at yourlog and he was on your site.
(45:44):
I would have never known.
But you forgot because you sleptand it's Thursday, and I filled
out the report.
That's a that's just plainexperience.
Fantastic.
SPEAKER_01 (45:53):
So I'm gonna I'm gonna do uh a little bit of
rapid fire here.
So your audience may need topause, take notes, whatever
else.
So we talked about informationsystem.
Uh the reason I call it aninformation system, and I'm not
saying Monday.com and I'm notsaying builders trend, blah,
blah, blah.
I'm not saying all these tools,is because it's just that.
Those are all tools.
You can build your owninformation system.
(46:13):
The point is you want to be ableto go to one place, find the
information that you need.
You don't need to go searchingfor it.
If you're searching for it, thenit's hidden and not visible.
If you have to search for it,it's hidden and not visible.
Okay, get away from system, uh,information system.
Next one is an action system.
Again, visible, not hidden.
How do you currently keep trackof what you're supposed to do
(46:33):
every day?
And what are your tasks?
What's your task system?
SPEAKER_00 (46:36):
Yeah.
So I've got tasks on Monday foryou know, up at the front of the
house.
On I still make lists, dailylists, and uh weekly lists, high
points of what I need to befocused on.
Daily lists off of those weeklylists.
And I know that may soundelementary, but that's that's
(46:59):
the truth.
That's that's it.
SPEAKER_01 (47:01):
So have you ever read uh I'll give a resource
Getting Things Done by DavidAllen?
No, I love it.
Great resource.
Uh, I would even go further andbe like, he goes crazy detailed
into applying his specificsystem.
Um let me ask you anotherquestion.
I'm trying to help you, Cy.
Do y'all for email, do y'all useMicrosoft or Google?
(47:24):
We are Outlook.
Outlook, awesome.
So Microsoft has a uh productcalled Microsoft To Do.
I'm pretty sure you already payfor it if you're already paying
for Outlook.
Um, I would use Microsoft To Douh instead of your notepad.
Um, because what you can startto do is create standard lists,
(47:45):
daily lists, weekly lists.
You can put out, hey, I don'tactually I need to capture this
thing.
I need to put it somewhere intomy head.
I'm thinking about it.
I need to get it out of my headand put it somewhere.
And uh and then I can go andorganize and say, yeah, that's a
thing that I can do next month.
And so now it's somewhere, it'sin a trusted system rather than
having to live in your head.
(48:06):
So one of the things that umDavid Allen talks about in
getting things done, and I lookover here because I have this
massive bookshelf.
Uh, David, David Allen talksabout his system is kind of um,
or I should say like his processfor action is kind of three
steps.
He has more steps, but this isthe simplest uh version.
This is the lean version ofgetting things done.
(48:29):
Uh, number one is capture,meaning anytime you have an idea
or anytime you you have a to-door someone asks you to do
something, you need to be ableto capture it in a trusted
system.
Uh you need to know that when Icapture this, it's not gonna get
lost.
I'm gonna be able to come backto it.
Okay, so capture is number one.
Um that could be Microsoft to-doif you're using Outlook for your
(48:52):
audience.
If you're not using Outlook, ifyou're using something like
Gmail, I don't recommend GoogleTasks.
I recommend something liketo-doist.
Um, it's a really good, simple.
All you're looking for is asimple, uh, clean checklist
manager.
Like you need a checklist, it'sa to-do thing.
Um, you're creating it on youryellow bad.
(49:12):
It's awesome.
I would just suggest that it'seven easier with uh uh on
Microsoft To Do.
Um so to-do list for Googleusers, Microsoft to do for
Microsoft users, awesome, supercheap or free if you're already
paying for it.
Um so number one, capture.
Capture it into your trustedsystem.
(49:33):
Number two is organize.
Organize could be like, I needto uh get this out of the
capturing inbox of my system andput it either into a project or
a uh scope of work or give it adue date.
I need to I need to get it outof the capturing inbox, meaning
I need to do something with it,or I need to delete it.
(49:55):
Maybe it was just a harebrainidea that I need to be like, uh,
yeah, we're not we're not doingthat.
So that's part of organize.
So capture, organize, andreview.
And then the third step isreview.
So that's just being able tosay, okay, um, for today, at the
beginning of my day, I want tosee what actions are at the top
of my list today based on whatI've said today.
(50:16):
Like I need to maybe pull somethings into today's due date, or
what I've historically have saidthat I need to do on October
22nd.
Uh, what are those things at thetop of that list?
It's really hard to do that witha notepad uh because you can't
manipulate it.
Uh it's all kind of written downon a piece of paper.
But if you do it on somethinglike a Microsoft To-do or a
(50:37):
to-do list, it's obviously way,way easier.
SPEAKER_00 (50:40):
But if you if you had it on a to-do list, you
could probably, you know, itgets a lot of these guys nervous
because as soon as you saysomething like that, I go, hmm,
yeah, that's a really good idea.
Thought about it 85 times.
Why have I not done it yet?
Well, we used to be able to usethe excuse of, well, I got to
take time and actually do it.
(51:00):
No, guys, you don't anymore.
You can pick up the phone anduse old Mr.
Chad, GPT, is what I promoteChad, and go, hey man, build me
some templates that and I cantake a picture of my list.
I don't even have to type itanymore.
100% and use a prompt in ChadGPT.
Hey, take this list, organize itso I can put it into Microsoft
(51:22):
to do, slide it over, and I Iwill put it down as a discipline
that I need to it wouldintegrate so well with
everything else that I'm doingin my life.
Why I don't know I haven't donethat.
I'm sitting here kicking myself,but at the same time, you can
use things like that.
Hey, Chat GPT, give me a weeklytemplate with the things that I
(51:44):
just sent in this picture.
It's really that easy, guys, andit's at the palm of your hand.
And I encourage you, youblue-collar guys.
I know you got some of you guysprobably listening to this show.
Man, si, why are you preachingabout AI?
Because the blue-collartradesmen that figure out AI,
that it literally unlocks theadmin door for you guys.
(52:06):
100% that never even thoughtthat you could handle anything
admin.
Well, now you can.
You don't need anybody's help.
You've got somebody in the palmof your freaking pocket to be
able to teach you that has everydegree possible at any
university right there.
Just utilize it.
And it's things as easy astransferring your to-do list or
(52:27):
hey, I need to make an Excelspreadsheet or whatever it may
be.
Just seamlessly integrate that.
Don't sit there and kickyourself.
Well, I need to be doing that.
And guess what?
If you let it go for a week ortwo, ask chat again, hey, help
me clean this up to-do list.
I'm done with half of this.
It'll do it for you.
And then make corrections andstart over.
SPEAKER_01 (52:49):
And here's here's one of the things you may tell
you what I did uh this morning.
I'm putting together a littlebit of like a one-day
prospecting road trip justaround my area.
Um, just because I'm like, hey,I want to serve some folks that
are kind of my nayers.
And so I'm just gonna go delivercoffee, donuts, whatever, shake
hands, introduce myself.
All I did was say, hey, I havethis, I have these businesses
(53:11):
that I'm looking at.
Uh take this list and make me aroute and a map and a timeline
for where I should go to getback home by this time.
So, and then it's just plans myday for me.
It's like, okay, go here, spend30 minutes there, then go to
this next destination.
Oh, by the way, you gave me thislist, but maybe you should also
add this one.
(53:31):
You know, that's what it did forme.
And so it came up with a wholekind of prospecting uh trip for
me.
SPEAKER_00 (53:38):
It's crazy.
Truck routes.
Chad GBT, literally, I've I'veit's a language learning model
type of AI, guys.
You're teaching it constantly.
So as I ask you questions aboutSyCon, we have enough online
presence blogs for it to gograb.
It understands that we're acivil construction company,
(54:00):
already suggests it's crazy.
It is absolutely crazy.
I challenge a lot of my guysaround the office or the field.
Hey, use it every single day.
Or even in this application,I'll have somebody, uh, a
foreman or a super, hey, willyou check my math on gravel or
will you check my math onconcrete?
No, what I want you to do is youknow it's length times width
(54:22):
times height.
I understand you're confused onwhatever number to divide it by,
to tape it.
Just pick up your phone, ChadGPT.
I have these measurements, Ineed the volume and concrete.
And it will literally list itall out exactly how it got there
and teach you exactly how to doit next time and just screenshot
(54:43):
it for next time and then plugand play your numbers.
And you just taught yourself.
And and and and the largestthing in the skilled trades and
blue-collar world is training,man.
Training is the most expensive,that in downtime for guys like
myself that own a bunch ofequipment.
But training, oh my Atlanta, itdrives me crazy.
(55:04):
And then, you know, we'vestarted an internal video
training program as we'rebuilding video for external at
this at the same time.
So now these new hires got tosit there for 30 minutes.
It's about five, 10 minutes ofvideo, listening to me complain
about my nitpickiness of hey,you get out of a freaking truck,
you better have a hard hat on.
(55:24):
I don't care if you're in themiddle of the Sahara Desert, if
you're out of our truck, gettingpaid on our time, you wear a
hard hat.
It's a representation thing thatwe do, whether you're on a job
site, active or not.
That's what we are.
That's who we are.
And it's those little thingsthat they don't feel like that
first interaction after hiringthem.
Hey, why aren't you wearing yourhard hat?
(55:44):
Well, nobody freaking told me.
You know, my superintendent wasjust waiting for you to show up
and laugh about it.
You know what I mean?
You got to teach this mindset.
And then, hey, these trainingvideos, guys that have been
here, you need to know whatthese mean and what they're
coming in and hold themaccountable and and to that
standard.
But it's those little things,dude, that you know, we're
(56:07):
trying to change the pathwayforward and do things
differently.
SPEAKER_01 (56:12):
Yeah.
The last thing I would I wouldkind of leave your audience
with, the thing I'm constantlytelling my customers,
constantly, is every time youcatch yourself communicating
verbally, ask yourself how youcan communicate visibly.
Every time you can youcommunicate verbally, ask
(56:33):
yourself how you can communicatevisibly.
Verbal communication is good,necessary, it's not great,
because as soon as you say it,it's gone.
You make videos, you make videosfor your team.
You just said that.
You are making that informationvisible and accessible at any
time, right?
Not only did can they access itnow, whenever they're going
(56:54):
through the training, maybe yougive them the link or a QR code,
uh, you know, so they can scanit in the field next to the tool
on the side of the truck.
You whatever, right?
You make it super accessible,you make it visible.
Um lean, here's the here's thedeal at the end of the day,
y'all.
Lean is just a way of thinkingand acting.
And you can either think uhprecise and clearly, or you can
(57:17):
think fat and sloppy.
Um, and lean is the former ofthe two.
It's just how do how do youthink, how do you act and behave
and think in such a way that isnot sloppy, it's not uh
wasteful, and start moving inthat direction.
(57:38):
It's a daily, daily journey.
SPEAKER_00 (57:40):
Blue-collar performance marketing's passion
is to bring attention to thehonest work done in blue-collar
industries through effectiveresults-driven marketing
tactics.
They specialize in comprehensivedigital marketing services from
paid advertising on Google andFacebook to website development
and content strategy.
I started working with Ike andthe team earlier this year, and
they've had a huge impact on ourspecific marketing campaign and
(58:03):
trajectory of our overallcompany.
Their expertise in digital admanagement, website development,
social media, and overallmarketing strategy has been an
absolute game changer for oursales and marketing at SciCon.
If you're looking to work with amarketing team who does what
they say, does it well, and isalways looking for ways to help
your company grow, book adiscovery call with Ike by going
(58:25):
to bcperformancemarketing.combackslash BCB podcast, or click
the link in the show notes slashdescription below.
Thanks, guys.
Dude, I have loved ourconversation today.
I hope it helps so many.
I've got one last question foryou that I ask every single
episode.
We are in the 60s now.
It's kind of crazy, episodecount-wise, but what's the
(58:48):
takeaway for the blue-collarworker who's just sick and tired
of being stuck in the mud, man?
Mentally, emotionally,physically, no better person to
get this from.
Um, what would your piece ofadvice for them be?
SPEAKER_01 (59:03):
I think it's really important to understand why it
is that you wake up every day.
I think, kind of going back towhat you said this morning, why
is it important for you to getout of bed when you get out of
bed?
It's your purpose.
Uh, who are you serving?
Who's most important to you?
Um go back to what we saidthroughout this whole episode.
Clarify that, make it visible,put it on a sticky note in the
(59:27):
mirror in your bathroom, uh, putit on the background of your
phone so you constantly see it.
You have to do these things toremind yourself because we will
so often come again againstproblems and things that are
frankly just painful.
Um, that is going to distract usfrom doing what we were here,
put here to do.
(59:47):
Uh, and we just got toconstantly remind ourselves of
that.
Remind yourselves of thepurpose, clarify your purpose,
make it visible, start there,and then you can go to goals and
everything else, but um startwith your purpose.
SPEAKER_00 (59:59):
No, I couldn't agree.
More man.
Kiddos, beautiful wife, get up,got to serve them.
And right in the, you know, ofcourse, God above them, but
literally below them is a wholebunch of other families that
depend on me to get up and go dowhat I need to do every single
day.
So money shows up so they canget paid on Friday.
And uh whether that be our ownguys or subcontractors, vendors,
(01:00:22):
whatever it may be, but uh andthe relationships you have with
each and every one of thosepeople I just listed.
So well, Zach, I can't thank youenough for your time.
Um I likewise the 234 rule, lovethat.
It's all about visibility andtransparency within your
(01:00:42):
business and systems to holdpeople accountable and don't be
scared.
Um guys, as entrepreneurs, to toreach out and try something new.
Zach, if they want to reach outto you, where would they do
that, my guy?
SPEAKER_01 (01:00:55):
Yeah, you can go to leandirt.com uh or you can
follow me on LinkedIn.
Either way, on both of thoseplatforms, I'm pretty sure uh I
offer my phone number, so giveme a call, text me, what's at
me?
Um, I'm highly reachable.
SPEAKER_00 (01:01:10):
Well, seriously, guys, till next time.
I hope you guys are winding downyour year, getting ready for the
holidays.
It's coming up uh at the end ofthis episode, if you wouldn't
mind, dropping us a rating or afollowing on whatever spot um
Spotify, iHeart, Amazon, iTunes,iPodcast, I think is what it is.
I may have jacked that one up.
(01:01:31):
Whatever streaming platform youguys are on, I really appreciate
you tuning in for anotherepisode or dropping every
Wednesday, just as usual.
Uh, if you don't have asubscription and you've caught
us on a short, grab us at bluecollarbusinesspodcast.com.
You can watch or listen directlyfrom there, completely free, no
subscription needed.
(01:01:52):
Guys, really appreciate you,Zach.
And guys, till next time, besafe and be kind.
If you've enjoyed this episode,be sure to give it a like, share
it with the fellas, check outour website to send us any
questions and comments aboutyour experience in the blue
collar business.
Who do you want to hear from?
Send them our way, and we'll doour best to answer any questions
(01:02:13):
you may have.
Till next time, guys.
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