Breaking Barriers: Women Thriving in Construction with Dr. Gretchen Gagel

Dr. Gretchen Gagel shares her journey in the construction industry, focusing on her role in industry committees and promoting diversity. She discusses technology's impact on scaling AEC businesses, overcoming gender biases, and the importance of diversity and organizational agility. Dr. Gagel reflects on leadership differences in various-sized companies and her chair role at Brinkman Construction. The episode explores strategies for attracting women to construction, addressing labor issues, and the role of cohorts in leadership development. It concludes with Dr. Gagel's insights on AI's impact, influential leaders, and organizational culture.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
That's the main goal here.
I do goof off a lot.
I do play a lot of golf and travel quite a bittoo.
But Women Thriving in Construction, this globalinstitute, I came up with the idea about four
years ago.
And I have to say it just came from frustrationof why are we keep I was sitting in another
meeting.
So I've always been very interested in in notjust serving my clients, but improving the

(00:24):
industry.
I think that's why my peers nominated me intothe National Academy of Construction.
I care deeply for construction.
I love construction.
And I was sitting I sit on the constructionindustry culture task force for Australia.
I sit on AGC's diversity and inclusioncommittee.
We're having another conversation about apeople shortage.

(00:49):
Construction companies scale their business?
Or have you ever wanted guidance on how to getmore growth, wealth, and freedom from your AEC
company?
Well, then you're in luck.
Hi.
I'm Will Foratt.
And I'm Justin Nagel, and we're your podcasthosts.
We interview successful AEC business leaders tolearn how they use people, process, and

(01:10):
technology to scale their businesses.
So sit back and get ready to learn from theindustry's best.
This is Building scale.
Hey, listeners.
It's Will here.
Our mission is to help the AEC industry protectitself by making technology easy.
If you've ever listened to our show, then youknow that the three pillars of scaling a

(01:32):
business are people, process, and technology.
So if you suspect technology is your weak link,then book a call with us to see where we can
help maximize your company's IT andcybersecurity strategy.
Just go to buildingscale.net/help.
Today's guest is doctor Gretchen Gagle, founderof The Greatness Consulting and author of

(01:54):
Building Women Leaders, a blueprint for womenthriving in construction.
Gretchen is a powerhouse in the constructionindustry with forty years of leadership and
consulting experience.
She holds a mechanical engineering degree andMBA in finance and a PhD in leadership culture
and change agility.
Former chair of Brinkman Construction andfounder of Women Thriving Construction, a

(02:16):
global institute, Gretchen was inducted intothe National Academy of Construction in 2021.
She's an advocate for empowering women leadersand male allies in construction, energy, and
mining industries, driving innovation throughinclusive leadership.
Her book, Building Women Leaders, A Blueprintfor Women Thriving Instruction came out this
year, literally last month, I believe, and andshe can correct me in a moment here if I'm

(02:39):
wrong.
And then, she hosts the Greatness Podcast andis a frequent speaker on agile leadership,
inclusivity, and building high performingteams.
And with all that said, Gretchen, welcome tothe show.
Thank you.
I'm so thrilled to be here.
Yes.
Your so book came out last month.
Right?
Yeah.
Actually, depending on when this posts, it'sfresh off the press and Okay.

(03:00):
Really exciting.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Excited.
We're gonna talk a little bit about that.
But before we do, tell us a little bit aboutyourself.
You have this intro as I was going throughintros, and I do this all the time.
I was like, this doesn't even give a a glimpseof how awesome you are and insanely great you
are, based on all of our conversations.

(03:20):
So give us give us a little bit more meat onthe bone, and then tell us about how you got
into construction space.
Yeah.
So I grew up in Kansas.
And when I told my father I wanted to go toengineering school, he really discouraged me.
He said, girls don't do that.
And I think he wanted to go me to get my MRSdegree, find a nice man to take care of me.

(03:41):
And in fact, disowned me when I turned up myHarvard admission to go to engineering school,
which, that was a really pivotal point for mewhere I made what I felt was the right decision
for me to go study engineering.
I co op for Lone Star Gas.
And interestingly, Ralston Purina hired me astheir first female operations manager out of
engineering school.

(04:01):
So 62 men and me running a dog food plant inOklahoma, my glamour days, as I say.
And I had a great career with them.
But after my MBA, I joined FMI in '94 doingstrategy work at first for contractors.
As you can imagine, some of our contractorclients said, I'm not sure that Gretchen needs
to come out and do my strategy.

(04:24):
I think maybe I need David or John or Will orJustin.
And I ended up starting the owner servicesgroup at FMI to advise on the client side with
General Motors, Intel, Marriott, Starbucks,United Airlines.
And that's really been the bulk of my career inthe construction industry is is advising them
on how to effectively deliver billions ofdollars of construction.

(04:47):
That's I can imagine, especially at that time,big macho men, don't necessarily wanna get the
advice from the sole, or or one or maybe one ortwo women, consultants in that space.
Yeah.
I was woman sorry.
I didn't mean to
No.
All good.
No worries.
Let's walk through some of some of that.
Let's let's talk about some of those funstories because I'm sure you have a ton.

(05:11):
Gosh.
Where do I start?
I was just gonna say, yeah, Cynthia Paul waswoman number one.
I was woman number two in forty years.
I think there were 170 of us when I joinedthere.
You know, one that stands out in my mind wasvery late in my career at FMI.
I left FMI, left the industry for a bit andthen was president of a different company.
But when I was leaving FMI twenty years ago,the president of the company called me and

(05:33):
said, hey, my friend, so and so contractor, hasgotten in deep trouble on a very complicated
project, and he needs some help.
They're having a meeting, and you're the personto lead this meeting.
And I called him and I got the we kinda callhim the pedigree questions, you know, whether
you're are you sure kind of, are you sure youcan handle this?
And I called the president of our company backand said, I'm not doing this meeting.

(05:55):
Like, I I have to fly back from Detroit OneO'clock In The Morning.
And he said, don't worry.
I'll take care of him.
And it was a meeting with the contractor, hisproject manager, the owner, his project
manager, and the architect.
And it ended up being a $20,000,000 changeorder on a $40,000,000 guaranteed maximum price
project.
It was a very grueling, grueling twelve hourmeeting.

(06:18):
And I won't go into the details, but at the endof it, we're just I mean, literally, we're all
exhausted.
I've kinda taken them through the emotion toget through, like, and how do we get this
project back on track?
And he said to me in front of the group, thecontractor said that he was right.
You were the right person to do this meeting.
And the project manager for the client said,tell her what you really said.

(06:41):
And he said to me, I said, I don't think awoman can help us solve this problem.
And and at least he had the courage to say thatto me and then to retract that feeling and say,
you're absolutely the right person to help uswith that.
But it's just a lot of unconscious bias.
He wasn't he wasn't being mean.
He wasn't, he he just really, in his mind, itit needed the toughness of a man to solve that

(07:07):
problem.
So what what is that that differentiator that awoman brings in these scenarios that maybe it
maybe it's not the toughness, as as hedescribed, but like what what are the the I
don't know.
It's not secrets, maybe it's secrets.
I don't know.
What what are their differentiations?
Like what is different that's brought to thetable when maybe it's a woman consultant or a

(07:29):
woman later?
Yeah.
You know, when I when I did my PhD, I went downa lot of rabbit holes.
So you can imagine doing engineering, finance,going and studying human behavior.
I literally was like kid in a candy store justin one of the rabbit holes I went down, I found
a piece of research talking about the IQ ofteams and what makes a team smart, like a team

(07:51):
that's able to solve problems.
And it is not the collective IQ of the team.
It's one of the top things is whether or notthere's women on it and the diverse thinking
and whether it's different socioeconomicbackgrounds, different ages, different
generations think differently.
I mean, look at I see a one year old that canrun an iPad.
Right?
And so I think that I really haven't everdeeply studied like, what is it about women?

(08:15):
But I do know that bringing different peopletogether on teams and gender being one of the
most important factors makes teams smarter.
And I and I do believe that women struggle withconfidence, but I know men that struggle with
confidence.
And I know women that struggle with the softskills because we all had to be the toughest
possible person thirty years ago to make it inthe industry.

(08:37):
You know, smoke cigars when we played golf andwore the Blue Blazer and the and the penny
loafers and everything.
So it's kinda hard to describe what it is thatwomen bring, but they I I feel like they bring
a lot.
Well, that's why we're talking to you.
Yeah.
Because, we agree.
You said you did a PhD.
What was your dissertation
about?
Oh, my gosh.
My dissertation was so fun.
I I joke I had to move to Australia.

(08:59):
I defended my my PhD twenty days before I movedto Australia in 02/2018, and that I used up all
my favors with all my friends in America.
So I had to move to a different country.
I
studied 47 corporations.
I bought a random sample of 5,000 CEOs emails,all over a thousand employees.

(09:20):
I studied a 26 business units and I measuredthe type of leader that that business unit
leader was reported by their direct reports andthen the presence of agile routines.
I really wanted to study what leaders do, whatactions they take that make an organization
nimble and able to react to stock marketinterest rates, inflation, whatever those

(09:43):
things are that are going on.
And I found some very specific behaviors thatsupport the agility of organizations.
And about I'd say about a third of my samplesize was construction companies.
Okay.
Get and just to tease the audience.
Mhmm.
What were some of your findings?
Yeah.
And I and I write about it in this book.

(10:04):
You can't get a PhD in it and not write aboutit.
Right?
I love that.
Leadership and the agility.
But one thing was bureaucracy is not a badthing.
You need structure.
Bureaucracy means structure.
It's when there's too much structure that itstrangles an organization.
And that's one of the things I found thatleaders that are even on the verge of laissez

(10:25):
faire, like let people solve problems.
They're not always jumping in and micromanagingcreates more agility because people have the
freedom to make decisions and to react tosituations.
So that was, and that too much power.
We have to have power to influence.
You have knowledge power, positional power,reverent power.
There's all these different sources of power.

(10:47):
But if you display too much power, then yousquelch that, agility as well.
More to read in the book in terms of thedetails.
So if you were to just real quick, I'm sureit's I'm sure it's in your book.
You looked at CEOs that essentially leadersthat were at companies over a thousand

(11:07):
essentially over a thousand people.
Right?
Why those and why not smaller?
You know, it's really interesting because Iwanted to understand we inherently think that
smaller companies companies are more agile.
And so I took my sample.
So that's why I started big.
And I needed a 26 business units.
I had I thought I was gonna get that with 25companies.

(11:27):
I took 40.
The other thing I did is I split my samplesize.
I'm not gonna remember exactly the year, likepre 1960, post 1960 founding.
And I split my sample size between like lessthan 5,000 and more than 5,000 or maybe it was
10,000.
But I split them into the smaller and thebigger and the older.

(11:48):
No difference in the agility scores.
So that's unconscious bias that an oldercompany can't be agile.
In fact, you look at a company like Samsung.
They started out with groceries years ago, soyou can be large and sustained and be agile.
And that's why I picked the larger companies tostudy.

(12:08):
Okay.
And I'm sure you got a little bit more datathere too.
Yeah.
That's one thing about a PhD, 10,000 pieces ofdata and a 72 page dissertation.
And my disc profile, if you know the discprofile, I'm a DI results in people.
So I had to dig really, really deep and with nosee, no attention to detail to finish that

(12:29):
dissertation.
But actually, the biggest thing I got out of myPhD was critical thinking.
Really, the ability to challenge everything andsay, okay, somebody's making a claim.
What's the evidence for that?
Because that's that's what you do.
So, obviously, you went to school to get thePhD.
You had your MBA.
Right?
It was kinda like you were like, how do thingswork?
How does money work?

(12:49):
How do people work?
Is this a little bit the beauty of your degreeskinda, you know, in sequence there?
So how did you become a a chair at Brinkman?
Like, there's a lot more stuff that's happeningother than schooling pieces during this time
frame.
Right?
So, like like, how how did you become the chairthere?
Well, so yeah.
I I was president of continuum advisory groupwhen I was doing my PhD.

(13:12):
So I was flying a 20 flights a year and sittingin class from eight to five every other
Saturday year round for three years.
Oh my god.
I had a fair amount of burnout after that.
I really don't
remember Burnout?
No.
How is that possible?
Yeah.
But it's interesting because when I becamepresident in 02/2013 of Consumer Advisory
Group, I kind of rebuilt the company that I'dbuilt in the nineties, you know, Procter and

(13:35):
Gamble and, help them implement lean practicesglobally.
So it was hard, but it I'd done it before.
I'm a very curious person.
And so that's why the PhD was so great becauseit was an opportunity to go and apply
everything I was learning in my PhD right offthe bat with my clients.
I served on, I think I've been on a dozennonprofit boards, Bridges to Prosperity, a

(13:58):
construction board.
We built footbridges around the world andempower and fund build the capital for those
bridges to happen.
I was chair of that board.
And I actually went to my mentor, Hugh Rice,who started the FMI office in Denver and
started their investment banking side of thebusiness.
And I said, Hugh, I think I'm ready for aconstruction board.
And so I just started putting the word outthere.
And sure enough, Hugh called me and said, I'vebeen contacted by a recruiter.

(14:22):
I think it's a great opportunity for you.
And it was a company, Brinkman went ESOP.
So they were putting their fur I was theirfirst board outside board member.
I asked the recruiter when he called me.
I'm like, did did you tell them I'm a woman?
Because, that would be atypical, right, too,for a contractor to bring their first outside
director as a woman.

(14:42):
But it's been a real joy.
In fact, I had my last board meeting last week.
I've I'm term limited out.
I've been there seven years.
Paul Brinkman selected me as the firstindependent chair for two years, and then I was
asked to extend for a year.
And it was a really great opportunity to be onthe formative side of a construction board,
especially with the the challenges that arehappening in, in the industry right now.

(15:07):
Yeah.
Well, congrats for hitting your term limit.
Didn't get kicked off.
Yeah.
That's always a good thing.
If you're not kicked out and you're just like,you know, that we can't we can't bring you
back, but we would love to.
So that's always interesting.
You're also it seems like again, I was goingthrough this intro or this bio.
It was like you are part of everything.
Like it's just there's so many and to yourpoint, doing all of that travel and then still

(15:31):
getting, you know, a degree, that to me is justit reminds me, I don't work anywhere near the
level that you do.
I don't try, I'm now invigorated because I'mlike, oh, I need to be, I need to do more.
Like, I need to be more like Gretchen.
Like that's pretty So one of the organizationsthat you I believe you found it was, women
thriving instruction.

(15:52):
What what is that?
And how does how does that play into all thethings you're doing?
Yeah.
This is I joke.
This is my last chapter.
And being busy keeps me out of trouble.
That's the main goal here.
I do goof off a lot.
I do play a lot of golf and travel quite a bittoo.
But Women Thriving in Construction, this globalinstitute, I came up with the idea about four

(16:14):
years ago.
And I have to say it just came from frustrationof why are we keep I was sitting in another
meeting.
So I've always been very interested in in notjust serving my clients, but improving the
industry.
I think that's why my peers nominated me intothe National Academy of Construction.
I care deeply for construction.

(16:35):
I love construction.
And I was sitting I sit on the constructionindustry culture task force for Australia.
I sit on AGC's Diversity and InclusionCommittee.
We're having another conversation about apeople shortage.
Right?
We're short seven fifty thousand to whatever inAmerica, whatever that number is.
And we're short 290,000 in Australia.
And I thought, why can we not get more than 10%women in construction?

(16:59):
Really, we're so smart.
And I had a lot of things going on personally.
And so I kinda dropped the idea.
And then when I started putting together thebook tour, I'm I'm spoke at AGC last week.
I'm speaking at groundbreaking women inconstruction and ECC and a lot of places.
Thought, Gretchen, if you're going to do this,if you're going to start this institute, you
need to start this now and kind of announce itto the world.

(17:19):
And I'm not trying to replace what NAWIC or theNational Association of Women in Construction
or what anyone is doing.
I'm trying to accelerate it and make sure thatthe most powerful people, including men, are
sitting at the table figuring this out.
And FMI is our official research partner.
We've published itswomenthrivinginconstruction.org is the website.

(17:42):
We published our first global status of womenin construction looking at 20 countries, and
we're working with NCCER and FMI on a trades inThe US study.
We just got the data for that.
Literally made my head explode.
What percentage of electricians in America doyou think are female?
I think I think I thought five percent orsomething like that.

(18:05):
Five to ten percent is what I thought.
Yeah.
2.4.
And many years ago, it was 2.1.
And plumbers is 1.9.
And, you know, you can argue the data.
I mean, you could say, it's five.
Okay.
It's five.
And if we have this massive labor shortage andwomen are 51% of the population and there are

(18:25):
10% of the construction at China's actually inthe lead at 16%, women in construction.
It just seems to me that when we got seriousabout safety, when we decided TRI or IR and how
we were going to measure safety and clientssaid, you can't get our jobs if you don't have
this.
We got a lot safer.

(18:46):
We stopped killing a lot of people.
So I'm trying to instigate the boldest thinkersthinking about how we help the industry become
an industry that women want to come to and wantto stay in.
Create a way to incentivize.
Win create a win win.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I guess the question is is I guess maybetwo.

(19:08):
One, you mentioned men.
So, like, what what do men have to say, thatare already in the industry?
Right?
And then how do you incentivize women to beencouraged to go into the space?
Yeah.
So the men are I I have met with, oh gosh, adozen former and current CEOs of the largest
construction companies in the world, men, andthey are on board.

(19:30):
They're joining our advisory committee.
Hopefully I'll have the advisory committeeinformation up there.
It's fun.
I've never built a nonprofit from scratch.
It's actually, it's daunting and fun at thesame time.
So they get it.
They're like, yep.
And what's interesting, one of them took acompany from 85,000,000 to 3,000,000,000, and
you would know that company name in America.

(19:51):
Oh, I think I know who that is.
We have to take we have to make the industrymore attractive in general.
You know, companies like Mortenson, Turner,etcetera, are going to flushing toilets, for
example, on their projects.
Like, let's professionalize.
Let's because young men are not attracted toour industry.
When you meet someone, the people that Iinterviewed, I interviewed almost 50 leaders

(20:13):
for the book, Men and Women, and they're like,oh, I kind of fell into it or something else
happened.
We don't have 10 year olds jumping up and downsaying, hey, I wanna be in the construction
industry.
We build and maintain the assets of society.
If we don't have enough people in construction,that's a societal problem.
That's a problem with elevators and airconditioning and roads and refrigeration and

(20:36):
all kinds of things that are critical to ourexistence.
Electricity redundancy, repair after storms.
So, yeah, the men are on board.
Your second question, Justin.
I don't know.
I don't have the answers.
What I have is the energy to find the answersand to bring the right people together.
I I use this analogy.

(20:58):
It's like there's a lot of little flameshappening around, like the state that Sydney
Australia is in is putting 20,000,000 intogetting women into construction.
They're taking women on tours of constructionsites and and I mean aggressively going after
women.
There's little flame here and a little flamethere.
Nobody's building it into a bonfire.

(21:18):
Nobody is saying, great.
How do we scale that?
How do we take what New South Wales is doingand replicate that in 10 places?
Years ago, there was an ABC chapter thatrecruited low income moms and their high school
daughters together.
What a great idea, right?
You're lifting a low income woman.
You're bringing in two women as a buddy systeminto the industry so they have a support

(21:41):
network.
So it's it's thinking creatively and scaling.
And I think fundamentally wanting to solve theproblem.
Like, we want women.
Well Well put.
Yeah.
So ask me in a year how it's going.
I'll come back.
Yeah.
You know, you're you're probably gonna be like,so we solved all the problems and now I have to

(22:02):
do something else.
No.
I'm kidding.
But like, you you get after it.
Like, you you're not you're not sitting around,twiddling your thumbs.
Like, you and whatever you do, and that'spretty obvious, based upon, you know, all of
the things that you've already achieved.
So so men men are on board, at least certainlythe the the high level leaders that you've,
spoken with.

(22:22):
What about young men?
Obviously, that we need to get everybodyinterested in building.
We we need that across the board, but you havemore young men than young women currently that
are interested in construction.
So, like, what is their take?
Like, how do they help?
How do they get, you know, their peers?
You know?
Like, if you're both leaving high school, like,how do you how do you get that, young man to

(22:44):
say, Susie, this is a cool thing.
Like, you should come and and join me on thistrade journey.
Yeah.
It was my number one of three tips for the menin the audience at AGC's National Convention.
This is not women thriving at the expense ofmen.
And we do have young men who feel like maybethey aren't getting the same opportunity levels

(23:04):
because women are being focused upon.
And that's unfortunate because really, with theshortage that we have, there's room for
everybody.
But I'll tell you a really wonderful story.
I was on a job site and with a female projectmanager, and she was whistled at by one of the
framers.
It's a wood frame apartment complex andprobably a 50 framers on the project.

(23:26):
And she went into the job trailer.
She told me this whole story and said, yeah,maybe they weren't whistling at me.
Maybe they were just whistling right.
And a young male superintendent went out,called every framer down and said, that's our
boss and you will treat her with respect.
And then called the owner of the company whobacked him up on it.
And I think and it's all kinds of poorbehavior.

(23:48):
It's poor behavior towards men, too.
My son's a mining engineer and worked in a rockquarry in Rogers, Arkansas for summer after his
freshman year.
And he was hazed.
And it's taking that back to thatprofessionalism and that respect.
And it's it's also I heard a young man speak inAustralia recently that he was turned down for

(24:08):
promotions because he wasn't seen as loud andin charge enough for construction.
Right?
Frankly, that's those of us that have survivedhave big personalities.
And so making space for all different types ofpeople to be successful in construction, but
really standing up and advocating for peoplewhen they when they do come into the industry.

(24:29):
What are some of those, you know, things thatyou've seen when you add new perspectives?
And this is certainly something I believe, butI don't have the data to it.
It's like when you bring in more perspectivesand what whatever that is, if it's gender, if
it's, economics, places, like whatever it is,race, like you find that there's different
perspectives, which give you a better view oflike, what are all the possible options for

(24:54):
whatever issue you're having.
Right?
Like it just opens up that door.
But what are, like, concrete things that you'veseen?
Like, hey.
Like, you know, one of these, companiesimplemented in more women in leadership and
then x was the result.
Yeah.
So I have a great podcast about this, not topromote my podcast on your podcast.
No.
Do it.
It's totally fine.
That's the that's cross contamination.

(25:14):
It's good.
Yes.
On the greatness podcast, Sam Clark, and hespoke about this at AGC.
We had Sam on our podcast a few years ago.
He's amazing.
He chairs the diversity and inclusion committeeor did.
He just stepped down as chair, and he wentthrough a specific training for unconscious
bias and dominant culture.
And as a third generation general contractor,He said he was shocked that other people are

(25:41):
experiencing a different version of the worldthan he is.
If the dominant the dominant culture is made upof and the dominant population in construction
is white males.
So it's not bashing white males.
It's just a fact.
Right?
Back to critical thinking.
And he sent 18 of his leaders through it.

(26:01):
Long story short, he went from, I think, and Iwrite about it in the book too.
I think he went from 200,000,000 to 500,000,000in three years.
He has a 99 engagement score.
And one of the the woman, Jamie Cardinal, thathe brought to speak with him at the conference,
so is the president of Turner Construction and,Jody that works for him and and, Jamie and Sam.

(26:24):
She has been in the industry twenty five yearsand she describes a pre clerk post clerk
experience.
Twenty two years of experiencing unconsciousbias.
And for three years being in an environmentwhere she doesn't experience that.
And they have women beating down their doors togo to work for them.
But that revenue increase and and he said thispublicly, so I'm not multiples of higher

(26:48):
profitability.
Multiples in a third generation contractor.
So I think those are the stories.
And as I said, I I looked at a lot of theresearch around around this in my PhD, but
those are the stories we need to be telling.
Well, if that's not some that there's a punchline right there, multiples.
That is a huge punch line right there in why Imean, changing that percentage up from, you

(27:16):
know, two and a half percent on, let's say,electrical, plumbing, etcetera, doubling,
tripling, multiplying that out by 10 x wouldsignificantly change in a positive way for the
construction industry.
Yeah.
That's a that's a huge punchline.
And that 99 engagement score, we spend so muchmoney replacing people over and over and over

(27:39):
and over again.
And it's not just the money, which they say, Ithink, is two and a half times the salary.
We have fast track projects.
You lose your superintendent, you lose yourproject manager, your project executive.
It's a it's a huge setback.
And we we can't afford to not treat our peoplein a way that they want to stay here.
Right?

(27:59):
We had a situation at a company that I won'tname where a person who was a professional
athlete left, and it was because he wasn'ttough enough to be in the industry.
And I thought, that's ridiculous.
If we're if you can be a professional athleteand you're not tough enough to be in
construction, there's something wrong with ourindustry.
Wow.
So, so how do we, how do we fix this laborissues, right?

(28:20):
It's not just the fact that we don't haveenough.
That is certainly a problem.
But then also the churn of this, of likebouncing around and leaving and not having, not
necessarily loyal tea to the company, butthat's essentially what it is.
We're saying like, I'm here because I want tobe here for the next twenty plus years.
That used to be a lot more important for us ina lot of aspects, Less now, but that doesn't

(28:44):
change the fact that if you have a greatcompany, people want to stay there.
Like, that's that is still true.
So what what are some of the possible solutionsto these labor issues?
First of all, we've been talking about laborissues for a really long time.
I mean, that's that's the thing about being inthe industry for forty years.
This is not a new conversation.

(29:04):
In fact, I heard a young Mackenzie consultantspeak at the ECC conference last summer, and I
just kinda shook my head.
I would like, it was like it was some newthing.
And he actually said he didn't think we couldget women more women into the industry.
So we just had to become more productive, whichI found that That's
that's a hot take?
Wow.
Yeah.
Wow.
I was like, oh, I'm gonna have to think aboutthat.

(29:26):
I think that when when we're deliberatelyfocused upon something, like we're getting more
focused around well-being, I'm tired of ushaving the high suicide rates.
And it's the same in Australia.
I think that's the other thing that's reallydriven all this home.
We're having exactly the same conversationsabout exactly the same topics and exactly the

(29:46):
same statistics in both countries.
It was very eye opening for me to go all theway halfway around the world and be having the
exact same conversations.
So now people taking well-being seriously.
I think people are taking mental well-being alot more seriously in our industry.
People taking it seriously that we have tocreate an atmosphere that people want to come

(30:10):
work with us, not just fall into our industry.
I think we need a hit Netflix series.
I mean, if we can do them about attorneys anddoctors and all kinds where I want a Super Bowl
ad, frankly, that's the other thing I'm, youknow, sometime in the next ten years I'm going
to have a Super Bowl ad about women inconstruction.
But we were so, I can say this is an engineer.

(30:35):
Engineers don't think about PR.
They don't think about public relations.
They think about how to keep buildings fromfalling down and how to build bridges that
don't fall down and all that, which is awesome.
And we appreciate that, by the way.
Yes.
I mean, people people don't think about it.
What do they think about with construction?
They think about disruption.

(30:56):
Right?
When a when a road's being repaved.
Well, we don't have magic wands.
You have to shut it down to repave it, people.
I mean, it's, and so I think we just reallyneed to think about our image and how we make
it such that people appreciate what we do.
The finance guys are not gonna fix things ifsomething goes horribly sideways.

(31:20):
Right?
It's construction.
They rebuild after disasters, all of that.
So, yeah, I think there's a lot of work to bedone, but I think if we get really smart people
thinking about it, we can make progress.
Well, so I think this is a good good time tokind of talk about something around cohort
cohorts.

(31:41):
You talked in our pre interview process thatyou run cohorts.
How does that tie into everything?
Yeah.
So when I got when I arrived in Australia,completely burned out.
I joke I was like the like the cartooncharacter that just comes slamming into the
ground.
I didn't know how I was gonna make a living.
I really just up and moved to Australia becauseof a personal relationship, and I've always

(32:03):
wanted to live in a foreign country.
And Quanta Services was a client of mine in TheUS, and I happened to ask Duke, their CEO, if
they owned anything in Australia.
During a cocktail party.
He said, yes.
We own five companies.
He introduced me to Mark Bemstead who ranAustralia for them.
He's now retired.
And he said, the pipeline industry association.
I thought, well, I started with Lone Star Gasin Dallas, Texas.

(32:24):
I might as well go back into pipelines.
And Australia is interesting because we don'tmake any cars.
We don't make a computer.
We don't make a cell phone.
There's a very low manufacturing base there.
So I joined, and I gave a speech about energycompany contractor alliances kind of forced
after San Bruno when there was a lot moreintegrity testing applied in the industry.

(32:46):
And the CEO, Steve Davies of this association,had a panel, a senior leader panel, and it was
all male.
And he stood in front of the entire audienceand said, I'm embarrassed there's not a woman
on this panel.
We have to do better.
So I took him up for coffee a few weeks laterand said, hey, the American Gas Association has
a women's leadership program.

(33:08):
What if we replicated it here in Australia?
And I had them write a letter to them so theydidn't think, you know, who's this wacko woman
that just showed up from America.
Right?
And, and the first program sold out in threehours.
They called me.
It was supposed to be 15 women, and they'relike, we're up to 25 already.

(33:29):
Oopsie.
And that was in March of twenty nineteen.
We are kicking off the tenth cohort of thatprogram, and I've replicated it now in the
crane industry.
We're doing cohorts two and three this year.
And I just ran a program in The United Stateswith the construction user roundtable.
In fact, there's another cohort starting inJune.

(33:50):
And the institute hopefully will touch hundredsof thousands of lives of women and men.
And I want men to read the book, by the way.
There's a lot in there about allyship and justgreat leadership things.
But these cohorts of women touch my soul.
They really and I've walked in their shoes.
Our cohort here in America had women fromGoogle, Toyota, Duke Energy, Fluor, Turner,

(34:16):
Barton Mallow, and 20 women at a time beingable to talk about leadership, talk about
strategy, talk about confidence.
We're not talking about the men, right?
We're just talking as women In construction,it's it's really amazing.
The one in Australia, Ninety Percent of thewomen report an increase in confidence.
90.

(34:36):
After going through the program.
It's about a six month program.
So,
yeah.
What what does a cohort do for a leader though?
Like, what, like, obviously, there's a ton ofinterest.
Right?
So 10 deep, they must be fairly productive.
What what is the result?
You get some more confidence?
What what are the other pieces that a leaderreally gains value when they enter in a call?

(34:59):
Yeah.
And because we reinforce all the topics andthey choose after the first in person meeting,
they choose the topics the cohort does.
So we had time management, for example, butpeople have to report back six weeks later,
like what new skills have they implemented?
Like, how am I managing my time moreeffectively?

(35:19):
Or emotional intelligence, understanding howwhere you're triggered.
Like, do you know in your body where you startfeeling that triggering of your amygdala where
you really just wanna go off on someone?
Do you Justin and Will, do you know where youfeel that in your body?
Stomach?
I don't know.
I feel like that
Depe well, it depends on the type, but I thinkit's either shoulder I think it's shoulders.

(35:42):
Yeah.
I think it's shoulders.
My shoulders if I my shoulders get up likethis, I know I'm really getting triggered.
I've had an emotional intelligence coach, BrentDarnell, who I may have been on your podcast
too.
He's been doing emotional intelligence andconstruction for twenty five years.
If he hasn't been on your podcast, you shouldhave him.
He was my coach.
I hired him for our all our team at, ContinuumAdvisory Group.

(36:05):
Nobody spent their training budget one year.
So the next year I spent it for all of them.
If you understand where you feel triggered,you're more likely to be able to catch yourself
before you say something that damages arelationship.
So step one, where am I being triggered?
Step two, what do I do when I feel that?

(36:28):
I have to and, you know, breathing.
It's okay to say, hey.
I'm having an emotional reaction to thisconversation.
Could we pick this back up tomorrow?
And it's not about not having emotions, butit's it's not saying that thing that damages
the relationship in the heat of the moment.
And we have a lot of heats of moments inconstruction.
Right?
We have a lot of pressure and deadlines.

(36:51):
So those are the concrete skills that theylearn in this leadership program.
How to diffuse a situation, how to havedifficult conversations with people, and a lot
of role playing.
It's very active.
It's not just me lecturing, but then they gooff and do things and then they report back six
weeks later to each other what worked, whatdidn't, what do I need to tweak, and and talk

(37:13):
about the next topic.
So they really are changing behaviors.
This is really about, increasing selfawareness, right, becoming more self aware
individuals.
And that's the first step is knowing what makesyourself tick in order to then be aware that
it's happening and catch yourself.
Like, there's definitely a process in terms ofthat.

(37:36):
But to actually stop yourself or to even beable to say the words that are very
counterintuitive to what you want to say,that's there's definitely some tricks to that,
especially in the heat of the moment or in a ina flash of anger, trying to say what you just
said calmly.
That's skill.
That is not not natural to most people.

(37:59):
No.
And, you know, I did a CEO review once and thecomment was made, well, they're great 95% of
the time, but then there's rage mode.
And I was like, rage mode?
That's, you know, that's damaging.
It is damaging to relationships.
And I know I've done it.
I've been triggered.
I have said the wrong thing.

(38:20):
We all have.
I mean, I guess I haven't found anybody yetwho's never stuck their foot in their mouth or
didn't wasn't mindfully purposeful.
And the first part of the book, I believe thatleadership starts with you.
I created a framework called grounded selfleadership, grounding it in our values and our

(38:40):
purpose.
What do we stand for?
If you think about great leaders, you know whatthey stand for.
You know, you've not known me that long, butyou know some of the things that I stand for.
Right?
You get that.
And then how do you have courage and humility?
How many times have I said I don't have theanswer?
Right?
But we think as leaders, we have to have moreanswers.
I think you have to have less answers.
You do.
You have to pull people into the answeringmode.

(39:03):
How do we think critically and rest our brain?
And how do we take our personal leadershipbrand out into the world?
Leadership, we think about it.
Yes, it is the interaction with a follower,leader, follower, but it has to start with
yourself and really understanding who you wantto who you aspire to be as a leader.
And that's what I ask young leaders.
And I do a mixed gender first time leadersprogram too in the pipeline industry.

(39:27):
I love working with male leaders.
In fact, I coach some very senior male leadersin construction, energy and mining.
But I ask people, do you aspire to be a greatleader?
Because if you aspire to be a great leader,you'll invest in it.
You will try and learn new skills.
You will practice new things.
And I joke, I don't want to be a great golfer.
If I did, I'd take lessons and I'd go to thedriving range and do all those things.

(39:50):
I just want to be a good golfer that has funand plays almost hopefully every week.
But I do aspire to be a great leader and Iinvest in the things I think that will make me
a better leader.
So we run, spot on EOS, Entrepreneurs OperatingSystem.
So one of the concepts of, you know, rightperson, right seat is obviously core values.

(40:10):
Super crucially important.
Are they the person that resonates with theorganization, right?
Like, are they, are they true to that?
But then the other side of that is the seat,right?
Like, do they get it?
Do they want it?
They have the capacity to do it.
And when you think about that as like, well, ifyou want it, like, if this is the thing you
want to be a great leader, then your activitieswill showcase the fact that like you are

(40:32):
driving towards that thing.
If you have a, a part of your toolbox, that'snot full, you're going to try to fill that part
of the toolbox.
So if it's like having hard conversations or ifit is leveling people up or whatever, whatever
it is, you're going to dive into that thingbecause you wanna be a great leader.

(40:52):
Right?
Like that's, that's it.
Your actions always showcase the thing.
No matter what you say, your actions are thetruth.
At least that's certainly how I've seen it inmy short my short life, because I'm not very
old.
Yes.
Thank you for pointing out that out.
My much longer life, I have read a lot morethings, but that that's a really great point

(41:12):
about the best leader.
So Peter Nozler.
Peter Nozler is the P and DPR.
And Peter Nozler, I did quite a bit of workwhen they were doing quite a bit of work with
Intel many, many moons ago.
And Peter unfortunately passed away.
But if I wanted to know what books to read, I'dhave lunch with Peter and say, what what are

(41:33):
what are you reading?
What's, and just this curiosity.
We're learning so much about the brainneuroscience.
It is the next frontier understanding that wehave an amygdala.
I wasn't even talking about amygdala's tenyears ago.
Right?
At this little walnut jalapeno shaped thing inmy brain that goes off and fight or flight
that's trying to keep me alive all the time.

(41:54):
Right?
And so I I spend a lot of time reading aboutneuroscience.
I just we continue to and that's the otherthing I I gained in my PhD.
Social scientists are very brave.
They put ideas out there like servantleadership or transformational leadership, or

(42:15):
they try and explain very complicated thingslike leadership culture.
Edgar Schein became a friend and was my coachthe year before he died.
He's an MIT professor who wrote 40 books on onleadership and organizational culture.
And he described culture as the physicalartifacts, the stated beliefs, the stated
values, but then the shared beliefs we createthrough action.

(42:36):
And it's these people that put it out there andsay, this is what I think word culture is, or
this is what I think leadership is.
And then we learn something new and that thatmodel evolves.
But I really have a great appreciation forbecause they're not studying something like
gravity.
That's that's unknown, like the naturalsciences.
For sure.

(42:57):
Simon Sinek, although not directly in theindustry, but I know that he's done things
parallel to the industry.
Would he be considered part of that group aswell?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Simon, in fact, I just had coffee with one ofmy former PhD fellow students who does work
with Simon, who has a great new book out calledThe Power of Mattering.

(43:19):
His name is Zach Mercurio.
He is a brilliant, brilliant person who workswith Simon.
And these are the people that begin with whyand that TED talk that Simon did that really
touched people.
Or Amy Edmonson at Harvard, the author ofFearless Organization.
She's come on my podcast.
The you know, these these people that and whatI think Simon's message, when I think about it,

(43:45):
he explains it in a way that's understandableto people.
And you can be really smart and have reallygreat ideas.
It's like storming, forming, norming, andperforming.
I use that all the time.
I want to assess a team, went to work with amajor airline trying to help them deliver
capital projects, met with their sevendirectors.
Where are you on this curve?

(44:06):
And what does storming look like?
And how do we get to performing?
What are our norms?
But you can remember, you can understand thatmodel.
So I think Simon's another one of those greatpeople.
It's not only smart, but they can explainthings in a way that people understand and they
can remember.
That's why he's a role model of mine.
Yeah.
And Zach, the power of mattering.
Literally, have the hard copy that had justarrived at his house before he left to have

(44:30):
coffee with me.
How you help people feel like they matter.
Don't we all want to matter in life?
Right?
Don't we all want to feel valued?
And I think it ties so deeply to theconstruction industry.
He studied janitors, university janitors, andwhat makes them feel like they matter.
Sixty percent of people people in the world arein low choice careers, according to Zach.

(44:52):
What does that mean low choice careers?
Because they you know, I can say, oh, I'mpassionate about women and I wanna start the
women's this women thriving in construction orI'm gonna go back and get my MBA and shift out
of manufacturing and go do this.
I can be very deliberate.
They may not have resources available, to go toschool.

(45:13):
They may have been in a just a situationgrowing up where nobody encouraged them.
They have low confidence, whatever.
And so they they don't take a job because, ohmy gosh, I love being a janitor.
Like, I dreamed of being a janitor, but it wasa low choice and it's a way to earn a living.
Okay.
Got it.
I think we have a lot of low choice people inconstruction.

(45:35):
I don't know what that I don't factually knowwhat that is, but I do talk to a lot of people
and they're like, well, I started to settledown and had a family and I need a stable
income, so I became a carpenter or I became anelectrician or something like that.
So the the why they're doing it is because Ineeded to do something compared to, like, the

(45:57):
why I'm doing it is because I really love thisthing.
Like, I'm driven by this thing.
That, I mean, that makes sense to me.
Like that there's a differentiation, even ifit's the same job.
Two different people, their perspective upon itcan be so different, which then has a very
different outcome if you run run that throughtime.
And that's where I talk about the image of theindustry where we get people excited about

(46:21):
doing the things that we do in our industry.
Because when people come into the industry, ifthey find the right trade or they find the
right thing to do, Vicki O'Leary, who has beenan ironworker for, gosh, probably thirty years,
I think.
I don't remember her numbers.
Her brother dared her to become an ironworker,but she really loved it when she when she found

(46:42):
it.
So people feel find very fulfilling jobs inconstruction.
We just need to be more of a deliberate choicewith more people, I think.
I I think it's interesting because like a lotof the, you know, people in construction that
I've interacted with and you if you drivearound a town somewhere they've built things,
they're very happy to be like, did electricalin that building or I did this or all these

(47:06):
different things.
There's such a pride to it because there's, youknow, a building which could be considered a
monument to the work at which you did, which isnot a lot, especially any like information jobs
don't have that thing where it's like, sharedinformation with you and that's cool.
And you built a thing, which I could then say,you know, second hand, I helped build that

(47:27):
thing, but it's not the same as in like, youtook your hands and built something.
And that thing now is going to stand here forseventy, a hundred and fifty years depending on
how long the building and what it is.
So that there's there is a unbelievable nottrophy.
That's not the right way to put it.
But there's there's a little proof of the thingI did right here that everybody gets to see,

(47:49):
which is really cool.
Yeah.
The pride.
And and, you know, I've worked on the BaltimoreRavens Stadium and different places, and they
put the plaques up of all the people that I'msitting in an apartment building right now in
Kansas City.
It was built in the nineteen twenties.
It's called the Hemingway because ErnestHemingway lived here when he worked for the

(48:09):
Kansas City newspaper, which I did not knowuntil I bought a condo in I think it was built
in 1929.
So are here we are a hundred years later andI'm sitting on the Fifth Floor not worried
about this collapsing.
Yeah.
And it is a pride in it is a necessary thing ofour civilization, people like football.

(48:30):
Football stadiums have to be built.
Right?
Light rail and all kinds of great things thatwe build in airports and yeah.
It's amazing.
I've I've my so my grandma was never inconstruction.
She worked for Sears though.
And when they built the Sears Tower, theyallowed the employees to, like, sign a beam
within the structure.
It wouldn't be seen, but it's in, like it's inthere somewhere.
Her name is in there.

(48:51):
So she's told me that story a thousand timeswhere it's like, there's such a pride because
like, you're literally part of history.
Right?
Like my name lives there.
Even if you can't see it, it lives in thatbuilding somewhere, which is really cool.
Yeah.
It is a very cool industry, and I love it.
And that's why when Wiley came to ask me towrite this book, I didn't I didn't like they

(49:13):
asked me to write the book because you canimagine That's a good feeling that somebody
wants
you to write something.
Yeah.
Women, forty years of construction, PhD inleadership.
That's a pretty unique spot there.
And my personal mission statement, which Iwrote, oh gosh, thirty years ago when I read
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is toleave the world a better place than I found it.

(49:37):
I use that for all my decision making.
You go.
I love that book.
And I went, gosh, will this work will will thisbook make the world a better place?
Will it help our industry?
Yes.
20,000 words later.
It's a 350 page book.
It's not an easy draft nine, and you're like,oh my gosh, I'm you know, it's never gonna

(50:01):
happen.
But, it's a great industry, and I feel honoredthat I can continue to do whatever I can to
help improve the industry.
And that's my focus.
Well Love that.
I love that.
So I I feel like it's a very good time to askyou because it's just a hot topic.

(50:22):
It's been a hot topic for the past two years.
How does AI affect essentially what you'redoing?
And what's your hot take on it?
Yeah.
So it's really interesting.
I made a choice not to use any AI with my book,and it was just a personal choice.
I didn't I didn't really have the time to learnhow to use it in the most effective way.

(50:42):
And I just made like I did my dissertationresearch without a research assistant.
And everyone said, why did you do that?
I said, I wanted once one time to do a massiveresearch study and do all of it.
And that's how Ralston Purina trained me.
I had to work every job in the plant.
Everybody did every job in the plant and learneverything from the ground up.

(51:02):
So writing this book, I I just kind of wantedto do it on my own, in my head, my thoughts,
everything.
I am I'm all over AI now.
It's kind of like when calculators came alongand people use slide rules went, oh my gosh,
you're not going to understand how this isdone.
Do we need to understand how this is done?
Do you need to understand what happens inside acalculator?

(51:24):
We all use calculators now.
What we can't imagine a world withoutcalculators.
Right?
They make math happen.
Real quick.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
Slide rule.
For those that are young and uninformed, pleaseexplain what that is.
I think I never used one.
I'm not that old.
I know it was before calculators.

(51:45):
Well, computers.
I used to have to sit in line in a hallway towait for a mainframe.
Even in MBA school, we didn't have personalcomputers.
Right?
So technology the challenge with technology,Eric Topol wrote a book, great book called The
Patient Will See You Now about disruption inhealth care.
It's a great book.
The Patient Will See You Now.

(52:06):
Technology is advancing so fast.
It's outstripping our capacity to keep up withit as humans.
You know, electricity took, like, forty fiveyears, and now we're down to three years of
adopting smartphones or whatever.
But we we're afraid of everything.
We were afraid of the cloud.
Right?
All our data is gonna disappear.
Now we can't build data centers fast enough tokeep all our stuff in the cloud.

(52:30):
Right?
Who keeps their stuff on their computer?
Artificial intelligence.
It's like Sarah Buckner at at Trunk Tools.
I don't know if you've heard of her.
She has a PhD.
Putting 3,000,000 pages of the requirements fora building into AI so that you can just say,
hey, what's the paint code for Room 72?
And it answers you.
You have to.
And somebody said something really, and I wishI could remember who said this brilliant thing

(52:54):
to me.
It's not like you're going to say, how do Iremove a tumor from a brain?
And you're going to go do brain surgery.
You have to be an expert in what you're talkingto AI about.
And my good friend Donna Mcgeorge, who wrote abook called The Chat GPT Revolution.
She's Australian, said AI is kind of like a a ahungover intern.

(53:14):
You know, you have to you have to check itswork, but it can move you so far down the road
so fast that it creates a lot of efficiency.
Well, it makes someone that knows mediocre inthe, in whatever the topic is and makes them
kind of like a senior person in that topic.
Right?
But it takes But
they still have to understand how to talk about

(53:36):
it.
Yes.
They
do.
Like, I have a PhD in leadership.
I studied fifty years of leadership theory.
You could write an AI article about what arethe 10 characteristics of great leaders.
And then somebody'd say, why is number three agreat characteristic?
You wouldn't have an answer to that because, Imean, you might, but it's, you know, it yeah.

(54:00):
Have to have the knowledge to back up what itis that you're creating.
But I think if companies aren't using it forlike proposal development so I sat next to a
gentleman on the plane leaving the AGC and in abusiness development role and he said, oh, I've
got this proposal I've got to work on onSaturday.
And I said, well, are you all using AI?
Have you fed your proposals in so that you canat least push a button?

(54:23):
No.
We're not doing that yet.
And I thought, oh gosh.
Well, that's how you're spending your Saturday.
You'd be better off if you spent the Saturdaylearning the AI to make sure that you could
push in these new things, so then you won'thave to do this on, you know, the following
Saturdays.
Put your time into the thing that's gonna beable to allow you to do this faster next time.

(54:45):
This is the learning fishing part.
Yeah.
And it's prompt engineering.
So women thriving in construction.
We've I put a think tank together of people inand outside the industry, young, old, brown,
black, white, male, female to test the conceptbefore I even started it.
Right?
Months ago.
And then, well, now we have a board and now wehave an advisory board and we put a lot of

(55:08):
thinking into how's the institute gonnaoperate.
I needed a strategic plan.
I put three sentences into chat GPT and pusheda button.
And in thirty seconds, ten seconds, I don'tknow.
I didn't count the seconds.
I had to draw a strategic plan.
Did I need to then modify it?

(55:29):
Did I know I had to know what to tell it.
We had to have all that thinking ahead of timeabout what the niche was that this institute
was going to do.
Right.
So that all had to happen.
But then to just structure a strategic plan outof that, had to write a really good prompt and
then I had to do some other things.
But it knows the elements of a great strategicplan.

(55:51):
And then I had to be able to review it to seeif anything was missing.
I think that's a good way to explain it.
I feel like in that scenario, you'reessentially saying like, hey, give me a
skeleton framework of this concept.
And then I am going to be able to tell you whatis right, wrong, whatever, and then add to it
because that's how you get something that is afull fledged, you know, project in comparison

(56:14):
or process compared to here.
I need to know client retention process or anew contract process.
And it's like, it'll give you something.
Like, it'll give you a place to start, but,like, you have to then put in your context to
way more to it.
So and as you play with it more and more, itlearns more about you, which is also it gives

(56:35):
you tone and different, different aspects andknows more about your business.
So it starts saying like, oh, well, you'restructured this way.
So that actually doesn't work for you becauseof this structure.
But yeah, people need to, they need to just hopon board and start going.
Yeah.
And it really gets your brain thinking.
So now I'm I've raised a lot of money as chairof Bridges to Prosperity, as chair of a

(56:56):
foundation.
I have raised millions and millions of dollars.
Right?
And I have this stack.
It's actually underneath my desk of all or
is it no.
I'm kidding.
Yeah.
Of all the materials I've gathered over theyears of fundraising experts and whatever.
Starting this new institute, I said, how nowand here's the strategic plan.

(57:17):
Now how would I talk to a donor?
What should I consider?
And then I got even more detailed male leaderin the industry or why invest in a startup?
Because I've never started anything fromscratch.
And so you're raising money for something thathasn't done anything yet.
Right?
And it gave me all these ideas of the script.
Then I take what's genuine to me.

(57:38):
Right?
And how I want to go out into the world andtalk about it.
But it's a great starting point and it's a lotof it generates ideas.
You go, oh, that's a good idea.
Yeah.
I should ask that question.
Love it.
This has been a ton of fun.
We have, one last question, though, that welove to ask all of our guests.
So if you could go back twenty years and giveyourself some advice, what would that be?

(58:00):
Don't sweat the small stuff.
As you get older, you know, things that youthought were a big deal, they're really in the
scheme of things.
I have a saying now, no one has cancer.
We have a lot of cancer in our family, butsomething will happen and I'll say, no one has
cancer.
Right?
And it's just my way of kind of saying theworld's not gonna collapse.

(58:22):
And to really back yourself, I feel like I havea lot of confidence, and I'm not a % sure why
people ask me that a lot.
Like, where does my confidence come from?
But being your own raving fan, being your ownmentor, being your own sponsor, being your own
advocate.
We can very easily go to getting down onourselves.

(58:43):
And mental health is actually at a ten year lowglobally.
And I think being kind and knowing that when Iwas working on my PC, I bought this pink
notebook And on the front, it said, I did mybest.
That's all we can do every day.
We're all human.
We're all gonna make mistakes.
We're all gonna say the wrong thing or dosomething.
But to learn from that, move on, back yourself,and and I think that's the advice I would give.

(59:08):
Don't sweat sweat the small stuff.
Love that advice.
Very it's so true.
This has been great.
If somebody wanted to get ahold of you or getyour book, what's the best way for them to do
that?
Yeah.
Gretchengaggle.com.
Gaggle is g a g e l.
So you can find me on LinkedIn, GretchenGaggle, gretchen gagle dot com.
The book is called Building Women Leaders, ABlueprint for Women Thriving in Construction.

(59:33):
That's available on Amazon andwomenthrivinginconstruction.org is the new
institute's website as well.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Awesome.
I will throw those, in the show notes as well.
And then is there anything else you'd like totell the people before we say our goodbyes?
No.
I would Justin and Will, I would just reallylike to thank you.
It's a it's a daunting task to write a book,but it's an even more daunting task to figure

(59:55):
out how to get it out into the world so thatpeople can benefit from it.
And as I said, I do hope men will read the bookas well.
It is really a book for everybody to understandhow to help people thrive in our industry.
Well, thank you for sharing your wisdom, andit'll be put on my reading list, my very long
reading list.
Awesome.

(01:00:15):
Yes.
I look forward to hearing what you have to sayabout it.
I will tell you.
For sure.
Yes.
So this has been a ton of fun listeners.
Gretchen is, like I said, amazing in in so manyways.
And any way that we can help, shed some lighton the awesome stuff she's doing, love to do
it.
And until next time.
Adios.
Adios.
Thanks for listening to building scale.
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(01:00:41):
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(01:01:05):
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