July 31, 2024 • 41 mins
What if managing a business was no different from raising a family? Join us as we sit down with Brett Brewer, a seasoned expert in the construction industry, who shares his journey from running a single business to juggling a second venture. Brett reveals how effective communication is crucial in balancing business responsibilities with family life, highlighting the importance of setting clear expectations and keeping the lines of communication open with your spouse.
Brett discusses real-life scenarios where pre-planning and setting expectations proved vital in both personal and professional life. Despite meticulous planning, unforeseen challenges required him and his wife to adapt and revisit their strategies, emphasizing the need for continuous communication. Brett also shares his transformative approach to leadership by fostering a sense of ownership among his employees, moving from a top-down directive style to a more collaborative environment. His family-oriented approach in business illustrates that respect, empowerment, and clear communication are foundational principles that drive growth and harmony.
NOTABLE QUOTES
"[Business is] like with children—you have one child and it's like, ‘Man, this is great.’ You have two and you're like, ‘Man, one was so easy.’ And then you have three and it's like .’Two was way easier.’" – Brett
"Of course there's different little nuances as you build that business up, but it's essentially something… repeated. It's literally at a scale now." – Philip
"If you're a guy, you have this big, great plan. It looks beautiful, it's all nice and neat on your paper and it goes nothing to plan." – Brett
"We set expectations in the conversation, whether it's the original or the second, of what we’re doing [and] why we’re doing it." – Brett
"As long as you create that expectation in the conversation, it should be pretty simple to stay on the same page." – Brett
"In our spousal relationships that’s when we get upset with each other and more fights happen because of that lack of expectation, that lack of communication up front. " – Philip
“I give the vision of where I would like to see us get. My management tells me how we're going to get there." – Brett
"When you allow somebody else to tell you what they can do, you get so much more buy-in out of that than you telling them what they need to be doing for you." – Brett
"Somebody is not going to stay with the company if they're miserable." – Philip
"We want to minimize big failures, but the small ones that don't cost a lot of money are great because you learn really quick." – Brett
"As soon as you lack communication, you lack quality…, you start lacking your values of what your company is built on." – Brett
"It's important for you to learn to communicate and adapt your communication style to [the people beneath you on the ladder.]" – Philip
RESOURCES
Brett
Website: https://www.omniunderground.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brett__brewer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-brewer-aa3248161
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brett.brewer.37
Philip
Digital Course: https://www.speakingsessions.com/digital-course
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's going on, guys ?
We've got Brett Brewer here.
He has been in the constructionindustry since he was 16 and
has started his own company atthe age of 33.
He is currently six years intobuilding and growing his
business and is a dedicatedfamily man, blessed with a
loving wife and three children,and a God-fearing Christian who
(00:21):
is deeply humbled and gratefulfor the life he leads.
And today we're going toactually dive into the fact that
he had one business, gotinvolved in a second business,
was kind of running both at thesame time.
He's back to one business allat the same time, while having a
family and kids and a wife.
And we know as married men,especially if we're fathers,
(00:44):
about the many dynamics there ofcommunication, of keeping
everybody happy or trying to asmuch as possible, and almost
this whole like serving multiplemasters at once.
And so I think Brett would be agreat example for us to be able
to learn and extract some ofthat knowledge from him as he
went through this, because Iknow he is very family-oriented
(01:06):
man and we were talking offlinea little bit about that and the
importance of that and actuallysome of the struggle he had at a
certain point.
But before we get into that,brett.
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh man, phillip, I appreciate it.
It's been a long time comingand I appreciate the intro too.
That definitely doesn't feellike an intro I should be
getting, but I do appreciatethat, excited for today.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
So you're you're doing the work.
Have you been putting a lot ofwork since we've been yeah,
since we've been getting to knoweach other and what you've been
putting in the work doing a lotof those things.
So really looking forward todiving into that with you.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, yeah, no.
Likewise, let me know where youwant to start and we'll jump
right into it.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
All right.
So let's kind of get this bigpicture.
I really want us to go fromwhere you went with the one
business.
You kind of started building upthe second business and kind of
what that looked like.
I'm sure your wife she's beenused to you kind of being the
crazy business owner.
You have a team with you andeverything.
So you're not literally asolopreneur doing all the work
(02:09):
and all that stuff.
But there's still a lot ofday-to-day stuff that you're
doing.
And now you decided I'm goingto go ahead and help out a buddy
and essentially run hisbusiness.
Talk to us about that dynamic.
What was going on there?
What was the communicationfront looking like on the home
front?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, no, that's great.
So the first business took me afew years to kind of get it
running, we'll say for the mostpart by itself, which allowed me
to kind of open that door totake on another business.
So, like you said a minute ago,a buddy of mine, similar
industry.
So structure was completely thesame.
My idea for that was to be ableto jump in and just kind of
(02:52):
help serve somebody else'sbusiness, to kind of kickstart
them off in an area that Ididn't actually get myself.
I had a lot of trial and errorand basically learned by all my
mistakes.
So the goal was to try to teamup with him to help him not make
the same mistakes I did.
As far as the communication side, though, that got really tricky
because it's like with childrenyou have one child and it's
(03:15):
like man, this is great, youhave two and you're like man,
one was so easy.
And then you have three andit's like two was way easier.
So it was kind of same dynamictwo businesses.
It was like, oh yeah, I got it,we can do it.
We jumped into it and Irealized real quick it was going
to take a lot more initiativeon my end than I anticipated I
(03:35):
was really going to need to putin which we all have the same 24
hours in the day.
So it took time away from areasthat I obviously didn't expect,
Family being one of them.
So for me to run both businessesand keep family balanced, that
was a struggle for sure thefirst few months, and it was
(03:55):
just really understanding thenew steps I needed to take.
My point of view, or side of it, was I'm literally going to do
the same thing I did over thelast couple of years.
I'm just going to do the samething I did over the last couple
of years.
I'm just going to do it here.
We're going to plug and play itand it wasn't as seamless as I
anticipated because I had it allup here figured out.
Explaining it to others thatdidn't was a little bit tougher,
(04:16):
especially in that business.
Three of us were wearing likesix different hats at the same
time.
So kind of.
Going back to the family sideof things, the communication
failed there and it took thehard conversation that the wife
has to have sometimes with thehusband or vice versa, depending
on the situation of justreconnecting hey we really need
(04:37):
to sit down, we need to figurethis out.
So I think really, big scheme ofthings is making sure that when
you're going to jump into thistype of stuff, you have your,
your significant other, has yourback, has the same vision you
have with it, understanding thesacrifices you've got to make to
to be able to make the visionor dream a reality.
It's like with anything else.
(04:58):
This one did definitely take meby surprise a little bit
because I was thinking, hey, Igot it, I did one, I could do
two.
Shouldn't be a big deal and itwas, but it was great because it
gave me more of a perspectiveof what I needed to do to grow
more as an individual, not justin the business, but as a father
, as a husband, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, and you mentioning about going from one
to two, to three kids for you,obviously I don't have the
perspective of three, but goingfrom one to two kids, that was a
huge jump and I can and I wasactually talking to my wife
about if we had three.
So you can chime in here as youwant, but going to three, I
feel like at that point you'realready kind of used to a little
(05:40):
bit of the chaos.
Like with one it's like youjust kind of pass back and forth
so somebody always has freetime.
When you go to two you're kindof playing man to man, and then
three you're going to zonecoverage by that.
But by that point you're usedto you don't really ever have
free time, especially in thoseearly years, because you're
having to watch at least a kid,if not sometimes two.
(06:01):
Once you get to three you'rekind of like you're just kind of
adding on to the chaos.
It's already chaotic, so whocares?
But going from that one to twowas definitely tough on us and
we didn't realize how tough thatwould be.
But I think that's also theignorance is bliss perspective
that you get that God gives us.
So we're like, oh, it's notthat bad, that first baby wasn't
(06:21):
that bad, those first sixmonths a year wasn't that bad.
And then you get back into it.
You're like, why did we do this?
And then you forget and want itagain.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean and it's funny too that
we're on this perspective butlike having kids and growing in
business is really comparable,you know, because, like we said,
the one to two, two to three,three to four, I mean to each
their own it's the same inbusiness, you know, when you hit
those milestones or thoseceilings and you're capped out
and then you go to the nextlevel, that next level, scary
(06:53):
through the process, you'rethinking why are we doing this?
And then you get to the end,where you've delegated, you've
put the right people in theright seats, and you're like, oh
, I can breathe.
That wasn't so bad and it'sjust.
It's that that perspectivealways cracks me up, because
it's it's you could reallyconnect the two.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, exactly Exactly , and you can learn from those
past processes that you've donebefore.
Okay, when we did this, we hadto add these things and of
course there's different littlenuances as you build that
business up, but it'sessentially something that's
just repeated.
It's literally at a scale now.
So, okay, if we're getting alot more sales in, so we need to
get more people to fulfill.
Or maybe now we have a ton offulfillment people but we have
(07:36):
so many because we had to addthe fulfillment people that we
actually need more salespeople.
Or, hey, we want to generatemore revenue, so now we need to
do more marketing first toreally be able to build that up.
Like where's that bottleneck?
And you're able to build on topof that and slowly put in these
pieces over time.
But when you've never done it,it's hard to know, like what are
those things and everything.
(07:57):
But to go back to what we werekind of originally talking about
, you mentioned about, youdidn't realize the expectations
of what it would take to go fromthe one business to two
businesses and really on thatfamily front so besides your
wife obviously coming in andbeing like, hey, we need to have
(08:18):
a conversation, was there likea pre conversation of that, that
, whenever you were going intothat second business, that you
were kind of you kind of set uplike hey, here's what I'm
expecting and and basicallylaying that foundation of like,
hey, yeah, I'm probably notgoing to have quite as much time
for the family, which thatobviously turned into less than
(08:39):
you thought but did you havelike a pre-conversation before
starting that second business?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
but did you have like a pre-conversation before
starting that second business.
Yeah, so you cut out a littlebit, so I'm going to try to
answer it the best way I can,which I think I understood with
the end of your conversation orthe your question, so with with
the wife.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Is what we're talking about, correct?
Yeah, yeah, so did you have a?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
pre-conversation with her before going into that
second business.
Yeah, so basically I laid outthe offer to the second business
and I reviewed it with the wifeshe's part owner in the first
business.
If I could be honest, when itcomes to my wife, she's, you
hear, the better.
Half a hundred percent of thatis with her.
So where I lack and a lot ofthat's kind of overseeing
(09:23):
certain things she's really goodat pointing out.
So always, yes, secondconversation was had almost in
every type of situation thatrequires us to make a decision
that could potentially affectthe family, whether personal,
financial, whatever it may be.
But the way that conversationlooked was basically us kind of
looking at what it's going totake, how much time I originally
(09:51):
like now currently put in thefirst business, how much time we
think the second business isgoing to take up, and then how
much time that leaves us for ourfamily and activities.
And, like most things,especially if you're a guy, you
have this big, great plan.
It looks beautiful, it's allnice and neat on your paper and
it goes nothing to plan, and sothat's essentially what it
looked like.
The second conversation was had.
It ended great.
We were all on the same page.
(10:12):
However, we were just notreading from the same book the
business was reading from, andso it definitely brought a
different dynamic, because whatwe both thought was going to
happen in fact didn't.
So it really brought us out of,I guess, our comfort of having
to have those tougherconversations and this isn't
working out the way we expected.
(10:32):
What got me really thinking wasat what point do we have to
either say we're going to figureit out in this amount of time
and give us that leniency, orare we going to just kind of
shut it down?
You know, walk away, let themknow.
Obviously we're good, but it'sjust not working out for us.
Personally, I think we were ableto make it work.
(10:52):
It just took us kind of hittingsome rocks, you know, through
the venture and really justtrying to put the right pieces
in play.
Again, this company was new, soit had no systems, it had no
processes, so everything wasdone manually.
It was done based off of whatsomebody was thinking, when they
were thinking it, when theycommunicated it, when you had
(11:14):
time to receive emails.
So it was a bit messy that wewere able to really clean up and
it's taken off really well nowto where it's like it's one of
those situations where I don'tthink I'm as needed anymore.
So we decided to, you know,pull out and let the business
kind of do its thing.
It's what we helped build itfor.
We weren't in it for the longhaul, we were in it for just
kind of partial.
(11:35):
But I also think that's whatmade the second conversation
easier is we knew this wasn'tgoing to be a 10, 15, 20 year
venture.
This was just going to besomething we were going to help
some friends do.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, and I think that pre-conversation was the
biggest thing that I think a lotof people in marriage, but also
in business, miss out on isthey don't have that
pre-conversation.
And of course, when we're notdoing something yet, it's really
hard to say, oh, this, this andthis are going to happen.
And then even if we do, if wecould start up the exact same
business, it's still not goingto go exactly to plan.
It's not going to be exactlylike the first one was, and
(12:13):
hopefully it's better than thefirst one.
But even then you can try tohave the most detailed, perfect
plan.
It's never going to goaccording to plan.
But what I think is mostimportant, and the thing that
you did very well, was y'all hadthat pre-conversation, y'all
talked about that and they alldiscussed that.
And of course, your wife waswilling to start that tough
(12:33):
conversation.
Hey look, I'm not happy withthis current situation, not
where she was at a point whereit's like, hey, well, I'm out of
here because you don't love meanymore, or anything crazy like
that which could have beenunderstandable given a situation
like that, but she was willingto have that conversation.
And that's oftentimes, when wedon't do that first conversation
(12:56):
, to say, hey, here's what Ithink is going to happen,
especially in our marriage, whatI think is going to happen what
do you think when do you thinkI'm missing things on?
But then also kind of settingthe expectation and the
boundaries of how much time andeffort are we going to put into
this for, and neglect the family, so to speak, in this busy
(13:16):
season?
But then, as maybe you'respending more time, like you
were, we don't go back and havethat next conversation either,
because that's the, that's thetruly tough conversation.
It's easy beforehand, just likegoing to the gym and working out
.
It's easy to say, man, I'mgoing to go hit the weights, I'm
going to do this, that and theother, and you get in there and
all of a sudden you're like man,I'm just tired.
(13:38):
Oh, man, this is so much harderthan I thought it was going to
be, because you were ready to go.
But once reality hit, it was acompletely different thing.
And so y'all's marriage, thatwas that reality setting in, and
your wife was willing to havethat conversation again.
Of course you as well, butshe's the one that brought it up
, and I'm sure it's because youkind of had blinders on.
(13:58):
You were just trying to makethe business work out and all
that stuff.
And so before I go to the nextpart, I mean do you have any
thoughts on that, like what waskind of your idea around all
that and like why you kind ofwent about having those
conversations?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah.
So you touched on something aminute ago about expectations
and a lot of people business,personal, whatever I've ran into
a bunch of people, more peopledon't want to have the hard
conversations because they'rehard.
I think one of the things mywife and I do so well and I
think what we do so well in thebusiness not just in management
(14:34):
but through employees as well,all the way to like boots on the
ground is we set expectationsin the conversation, whether
it's the original or the secondof what.
For the hard conversation tonot be hard anymore, it doesn't
(14:54):
have to be hard, especially whenyou're both understanding the
expectation is this and ourtimeline is that, and if it does
, if those don't meet, then weneed to reevaluate it.
We've already agreed on that.
So those tougher conversationsare really easy to have when you
know what the expectation isand it's mutual.
You both understand it.
(15:15):
It's both the same expectation.
So when the wife or the husbandor the boss or the project
manager or whoever has to havethe quote unquote hard
conversation, as long as thoseexpectations were said, meant
and agreed on, it's reallysimple to just stay communicated
and connected on the same page.
So I liked the fact that youtouched on that expectation,
(15:38):
because that's huge.
Just because you communicatedoesn't mean you're
communicating appropriately orright to the individual that
needs the communication.
So I think, as long as youcreate that expectation in the
conversation, it should bepretty simple to stay on the
same page.
If you're not or the plandoesn't go as detailed or as
planned in entrepreneurship ithappens every day.
(15:59):
It makes those difficultconversations not so difficult,
which makes them easier to have,and I think we should be having
more of those.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Personally, yeah, I agree and really setting that
expectation, because if you'vesaid something to offend me, but
then I just, you know, getangry at you and I just hang up
this call or whatever.
You're like, what in the world,what did I do?
What did I say?
You're going to be completelyconfused.
But and this is of course, Ididn't set the expectation up
(16:27):
front.
Or let's say, maybe, like youjust start throwing a bunch of
f-bombs and I told you at thebeginning of the podcast hey, we
don't custom my podcast.
And you just start throwing abunch of F-bombs and I told you
at the beginning of the podcasthey, we don't cuss on my podcast
.
And you're just throwingF-bombs and I'm like dude, like
we're done, we're not doing thisconversation anymore because
you won't abide by this, thenyou're going to understand.
But if I just like all of asudden hang up or like stop the
recording, I'm like dude, youcan't tell me anything about, I
(16:49):
couldn't cuss or whatever, likeyou know, and that's just an
example, obviously cussing.
But if I don't set thatexpectation up front, then when
(17:10):
you violate my expectation thatwas uns we really get upset with
each other and more fightshappen because of that lack of
expectation, that lack ofcommunication up front.
And this is kind of going down arabbit hole here, but that's
what happened in a lot of myrelationships before my wife,
before meeting my wife is, I hadthis unmet expectation that I
(17:34):
wouldn't really talk about whatwhich was my faith I would you
know.
I would bring it up Like I wentto church and all this stuff and
I would kind of casually talkabout it, but I didn't set it as
like, hey, this is a minimum,like going to church with me
being religious, being in theBible, stuff, like that.
And until actually it was oneperson I dated before my wife
(17:55):
that I finally set thatexpectation and I was saying
that up front and for me it waswell, I didn't want to push that
too hard, but then therelationship would always get
rocky and of course it wouldfall out.
But then when it came to thefirst relationship I set that at
we fell apart because of that,but it wasn't like oh I hate you
at the end, like the other oneswhere it wasn't as good and
(18:17):
clean of a breakup.
And then of course with my wifewe did hit some hurdles but we
worked through those becausethat expectation was set up
front versus oh.
I'm not going to really say it,although I'm going to kind of
casually mention about how it'simportant to me but not mention
the actual importance of that.
So really setting thatexpectation is important because
(18:38):
then people can judge thatbased on that.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah, and so kind of taking this over to the business
side, you kind of alreadyalluded to this a little bit,
but I would like to understandmore of like how you set that
expectation.
I think especially well, really,even in small business, but
especially in the corporaterealm, we see a lot of this of
where there's this unmetexpectation or unknown
(19:06):
expectation of what employeesare supposed to do.
And even if you are an employeethat tries to be an
overachiever and tries to beproactive and ask what the
expectation is, a lot of timesthe leadership or the management
one they probably don't evenknow it themselves because it
wasn't passed down from topleadership.
(19:29):
But also they don't just set anexpectation either, and then
they don't obviously end uphaving the hard conversations as
well.
So how do you, especially inthis situation where you went
from you were leading your onebusiness to you were taking more
time to go to the secondbusiness, how did that
conversation look like and howdid you go about setting those
(19:49):
expectations?
And if you've got an example ofwhat you literally did, that
would be awesome to hear as well.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, so we do things a little bit different, I think
, than your normal corporatetype of company.
Obviously, we're structured ascorporate.
I want to stay asfamily-oriented as possible when
it comes to the small business.
One communication is a loteasier to have with a group of
50 versus 250.
One communication is a loteasier to have with a group of
50 versus 250.
Two, it makes it a little bitmore intimate when it comes to
(20:17):
the individual.
So, like employees, I knowwho's married, who's not, who
has a girlfriend, who has kids,who doesn't.
And it allows us to be just alittle bit more on the personal
side, because I do think thereis that fine line where you can
you know too much personal tobusiness.
But I think there's a goodratio.
(20:38):
We set our expectations in allof our meetings, right, so I'm
going to kind of go backwards.
So all of our guys hear ourexpectations on a weekly basis,
not just through our core valuesthat they see on a daily, but
we're acting them as well On topof in the meetings.
We're literally going over whatwe expect them to do on a
day-to-day basis.
(20:58):
Now how did we come up with theexpectations?
You mentioned that coming fromthe top down, and naturally I
will be obviously the seat uptop.
I give the vision of where Iwould like to see us get.
My management tells me howwe're going to get there.
So I don't actually set theexpectations for my management
(21:18):
team.
I give them where I want thecompany to be and I allow them
to get us there.
Now I'll oversee it.
I'll make sure we're in theright direction.
We collect data throughout thedays and weeks and we kind of
compile them into averages so wecan kind of see where we're
trending and whatnot.
So when that hard conversationhas to happen, it doesn't have
to be so hard, because I wasn'tthe one that said we can get us
(21:40):
there in the timeline.
They said they can get us there.
It was the leadership, in fact,that was the ones that came up
with it.
So our conversating to that'ssuper simple and it's just
weekly.
But it's like where are we at?
What's the heartbeat look like?
Because my project manager andmy supervisors have created the
daily average to get us to myexpectation of where I want the
(22:03):
company to be.
They're the ones that aregetting the expectations broken
down into the daily and weeklyrequirements that they have to
fulfill, that the team has tofulfill in order for us to
really fill out the biggerpurpose of what the company's
trying to do.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
I really like that.
It's a great structure.
But there's one thing and I'mgoing to go back to my example
of my wife that I hope peoplehaven't overlooked.
You had a certain frequencywith that and for one of the
reasons why I had to have atough conversation with my wife
about the religious part wasbecause I had set that
expectation but then I failed tocontinue and obviously I wasn't
(22:42):
going to beat it in like, hey,this is the most important thing
, this is the most importantthing.
But I failed to continue tobring up that expectation and as
I started to see it fall off alittle bit, I should have
brought it up sooner.
So it was really on me, but Idid bring it up and then that's
when it kind of clicked for herand that's when it clicked for
me in my life in general thatwhile I set the expectation, I
(23:06):
didn't continue to really set itor continue to say it enough
times that it actually madesense.
Because when you're not livingit and breathing it, when it's
not in your head, it's notsomething that is going to be
known.
And this is kind of likemarketing 101.
This is core values in acompany.
You can put them on a wall.
(23:26):
You can say them once or twice,but if you don't continue to
say them, people are going toforget about them or they're not
going to think that they reallymatter that much.
It was just something thecompany decided to do one time
or talk about one time.
And the same thing with thatexpectations and that's what
y'all are doing is y'allcontinue to go through those
expectations.
And, of course, in themanagement review it's a little
(23:48):
bit different, because you'reliterally trying to make sure
and get a pulse on where we'reat.
Are we actually hitting thoseexpectations and the goals of
the company?
But then the way that they'reactually delivered to the
employees, the people down belowproject manager and managers,
and everything is going to bedifferent.
It's not like, hey, are youmeeting our expectations?
But I'd love to hear kind of,how do you have any clue how
(24:11):
they're kind of delivering thator making sure that those
expectations are getting hit andbeing talked about, without
literally being like, hey, thisis our expectations, Don't
forget guys, this is ourexpectations.
Like this obviously needs to bea more natural thing.
So how are y'all going aboutspreading naturally those
expectations of the company andthe future and vision of the
(24:32):
company as well?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
So we've got foremans on ourcrews and we have lead men on
our crews, which is obviouslythe foreman's right hand, and
then we've got basically justyou know, your construction
labor, that kind of falls inbetween different levels to
different individuals, based offof what they can bring to the
(24:54):
table skill-wise.
So you've got your crews.
Right now we're running four.
What we'll do is we'll bringour foremans and our leads in,
because those are going to bethe guys that have earned it.
We don't do seniority, so itreally allows us to see the
individuals that want to reallygrow and are willing to do the
extra and go the extra mile forthe company.
(25:16):
We'll bring our leads, ourforemans, in and we do the same
thing I do with my leadershipteam on the management end.
Our leadership management teamdoes the same with foremans and
leads.
They don't tell them what theyexpect.
They basically have theconversation and let the foreman
and the lead, let them knowwhat they're capable of and they
(25:37):
create their own expectation.
And so it's a trickle-downeffect from the way I do it with
our management and the way ourmanagement does it with our
foremans and our leads.
And then our foremans and ourleads they delegate certain
tasks to certain individualsbased on what that individual is
doing for the day, and so itmakes it very streamlined,
(25:58):
because for a long time it wasme telling everybody what to do,
and then they go out and do it,and then I've got to make the
corrections and then we reallystarted plugging and playing.
You know the right person,right seat, based off of
traction, and that's been agreat book and like a great
outline for us to kind of putinto our platform, to kind of
(26:19):
just expand off of what wealready do, off of what we
already do.
So at the end of the day, whenyou allow somebody else to tell
you what they can do, you get somuch more buy-in out of that
than you telling them what theyneed to be doing for you.
I don't know there's certainindividuals out there that you
(26:39):
can have that like I need you togo out and do this today and
you take it, you run with it andyou go get your job done.
Then there's others that getoffended, maybe because of the
tone or how you said it.
Every single person we've ranthis by has buy-in.
They don't get offended, it'stheir idea.
I mean, most people want theiridea to be used.
(26:59):
There are those situationswhere it doesn't work out with
their ideas.
So we explain why and you knowpretty much run our play.
But for the most part, ifyou're a leader, you're going to
figure out how you're going toget done what you know needs to
get done based off of what youthink is possible.
Expectation doesn't meet ourexpectation, then we have a
(27:24):
different conversation.
But it's never going to be like, well, you need to do this
because this is how much we knowwe can get.
We explain to them how we knowthey can do more and we let them
go out and pretty much put thatin play and then when they see
more production, we turn itaround.
It was their idea, they did agreat job and if it wasn't for
them we wouldn't have figuredthis one out.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
So it literally we're building everybody up from the
bottom up a lot of times wethink about how can we get
(28:07):
employee retention, how can weget employee satisfaction and,
of course, the first thing,which of course there is a
certain I would say.
I mean there's a good chunkthat money is going to be the
thing.
But at the end of the day,somebody is not going to stay
with the company unless ifthey're getting paid like six
times what the market is gettingpaid or something.
They're not going to stay there.
If they're miserable, if theyfeel like all they are is a cog
(28:29):
in the wheel, if they feel likethey are not given the respect
they're not able to do what theywant to do, if they're not
enjoying it, they're not goingto stay there unless if it's a
crazy amount of money and nobusiness is probably going to
pay six times what your marketrate should be.
And so, to me, doing thingslike this is what really helps
(28:53):
keep employees around, becausethey want to be there, they feel
like they have some ownership,they feel empowered to be there,
and not that you should payless than because of that, but
you're able to not have to paymore because that's apparently
your only way to be able to keepthat employee around.
(29:15):
And unfortunately, there's alot of businesses that seem to
want to just throw dollars atpeople and hope they stick
around.
You're not building thatloyalty that way.
So I want to commend you andyour team on doing that, because
that is not something that alot of companies do.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, no, I definitely appreciate that it.
It gives us a whole differentperspective.
Obviously, six years ago, sevenyears ago, I was an employee
for somebody else, as a number,so it just gave us a little bit
more to, uh, to really pushtowards.
More to really push towards tomake it to where we're creating
more of a family than we arejust a corporation.
So I do appreciate that, thankyou.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yeah, of course.
And then one thing when I hearthis in the back of my mind, I'm
hearing this naysayer say well,that's all fine and dandy, but
what happens when an emergencycomes up or something becomes
urgent?
You can't necessarily wait forsomebody to quote, unquote make
the decision or come up with theidea.
You're going to have to tellthem what to do.
(30:15):
So how do you handle thosesituations where it's rather
than like hey, what do you thinkwe should do?
It's like hey, I need you to dothis because, kind of going
back to what you said, you gotthe different employees.
I want to say like the olderschool employees, those ones
that are probably over 50, youcan tell them what to do and
they'll do it, especially thoseunder, probably, the age of 30
(30:36):
or 35.
It's more like hey, what do youthink?
You have to really kind of gettheir buy-in and you can't
necessarily tell them what to dobecause they're going to be
offended.
But there are situations whereit's just a hey, we need to get
this done, and it's not likeyou're trying to put your thumb
on them or put your foot on themand be like, hey, I'm the big
boss, but there are times thatthat just has to happen.
(30:58):
So how do you or how does yourteam handle those situations
where it is a hey, we need to dothis now kind of situation?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah.
So I think, with our industryspecifically being the
underground utilities, I thinkthere's certain situations that
would call for that,specifically where someone
doesn't know how to make thatdecision.
Even in those really serioussituations, there's still enough
time to ask the employee that'sasking for some help.
So if we're going to call upobviously we have a ladder
(31:29):
system right, chain of commandis just that you have to or
it'll just be a mess.
So if you're calling yourdirect report, the guy that's
right above you, if you'recalling him and asking him, say
you're potholing to try to findutilities, you can't find the
utility and the phone call ishey, what do you want me to do?
I can't find this.
You have to at least give twosuggestions on what you think
(31:57):
the solution is.
That's a mandatory, it'snon-negotiable.
If you don't have twosuggestions, don't call us Now.
We also have our foremans thatwatch our guys.
If they see someone's been onsomething for 30, 40 minutes
longer than they're supposed to,they'll make sure that they'll
check into what I'm getting atis.
We'll run into guys that don'tlike to ask those questions.
They don't want to feel dumb.
(32:18):
I don't want you to think Idon't know what I'm doing, even
though I told you I've neverdone this before, and it happens
, but think I don't know whatI'm doing, even though I told
you I've never done this before,and it happens.
But as long as we're gettingtheir buy-in and they're calling
us and they're like, hey, Ithink I should do this and I
think I should do that, itallows them to think outside the
box.
And then, if we're constantlyyep, I agree, yep, I agree, the
(32:39):
next conversation on the thirdor fourth call is a hey, we
trust you, you're good on thesetypes of conversations or
questions.
Just go ahead and make the call, cause we, we believe that
obviously you're the right guyfor the right seat.
You've shown us, you know, youknow what to do.
You just want to just doublecheck and make sure it's correct
.
We're more or less giving thempermission to fail, knowing
(33:02):
they're probably going to havethe right answer, because every
time they've called us, at leastone of the two has been correct
.
The ones that don't want to ask,because it's just part of it.
We definitely make sure thatwhen we're teaching that, hey,
when you make a phone call, thisis what we want, we'll give
them two scenarios that theyshould have come up with and we
ask them to choose and thenexplain to them why they were
(33:25):
right or why they were wrong andwhat they did.
So a lot of it's front loadedwith the newer guys just
breaking that process down andthen letting your team fail.
I mean it's going to happen.
We want to minimize bigfailures, but the small ones
that don't cost a lot of moneyare great, because you learn
really quick.
So I mean really for us it'sthat if you're going to call and
(33:48):
ask a question, you better haveat least two scenarios that you
think are going to work andwhich one you think is going to
be the best one.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Again, setting that expectation up front about what
you want there, and I like that.
You're still getting them tohave that buy-in and even if
they are not meeting theexpectation because they're
newer, most likely they justreally don't know what to do.
You're giving them a couple ofscenarios, letting them try and
pick one and then explainingthat that's an awesome way to do
(34:19):
that, because that not onlyshows that hey look, I want to
give you a couple of situationsfor you to learn, rather than
hey, just do this one, or hey,do this one because it's better,
like that's not a great answer,so I'm sure there's more
explanation than that, butthat's a that's a great way to
do that, because then it helpsthem learn different situations
(34:39):
that are solutions they possiblycould use and be able to
understand why one is betterthan the other.
Because that's what, as we getthat experience, we learn that
like, yeah, you could do it thatway, but really this way is
better.
And I've seen that in themanufacturing environment, where
the standard operatingprocedure was to do it this
certain way, but then theperson's actually doing it this
(35:03):
other way.
But then the person's actuallydoing it this other way, but
they didn't feel empowered to beable to talk to their manager
and say, or the industrialengineer that probably came up
with that SOP to say, hey, Iunderstand, you did this SOP and
of course it works, butactually I save, let's say,
three to five seconds on eachmodel that I put out or each
(35:23):
part that I'm building, becauseof doing it this way, and so
that expectation, that culturehas not been built up to allow
or empower the employee to beable to communicate up what
they've found and everything.
So it's awesome that you'redoing that within the company
and really building up thatculture and that communication
process.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, definitely, culture was big for us.
Communication is obviously yougot to have it?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah for sure.
So, brett man, this has been anawesome conversation.
Literally talking aboutcommunication, conversations,
everything like that, I thinkit's so important.
And how important do you thinkthat communication is or good
communication, rather, is in thesuccess of a business?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, I mean outside of looking at safety.
I think it's the most important, because as soon as you lack
communication, you lack quality.
As soon as you lackcommunication, you start lacking
your values of what yourcompany is built on at least
what it should be built onanyways, is built on at least
what it should be built onanyways.
So communication is huge.
Understanding how tocommunicate is, it's, easier
(36:30):
said than done.
You communicate different thanI do.
It's my job to understand howyou communicate so I can
structure the way I communicateto you, and doing that through
companies.
Like I said, easier said thandone.
But it's one of the mostimportant things because at the
end of the day, that's whatdrives the company Communication
.
You have to have it,non-negotiable.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Completely agree, and you mentioned something there.
I don't know what perspectiveyou were talking in, but I need
to learn how.
I need to know how tocommunicate to you, versus the
other way.
Is that you saying that fromlike a leader to somebody
beneath you on the ladder, ifyou will, or what did you mean
by that exactly?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, correct, that's exactly what I meant.
So what we, what we teach ourguys really and when I say our
guys like management leaders,foremans, anybody that's in a
lead role is to understand allof your, your teammates
weaknesses and strengths.
So if you're really bad atcommunicating, I'm probably not
going to put you on the podcastto communicate for our company.
(37:31):
It just is what it is.
But if you're really good at it, I'm probably going to put you
there.
So if I put you somewhere thatyou're really bad, you're
probably not going to enjoy whatyou do.
So that's half the battle rightthere.
But really, at the end of theday, yeah, it's communicating to
your team, the way they learnSchools, they teach you one way
(37:53):
and at the end of the day, weall learn differently, and
that's what I've really takenaway from entrepreneurship is we
may be able to use the sametype of marketing structure, but
it's all different in each ofits own, and so every individual
I've learned is a little bitdifferent when you need to
communicate with them.
So understanding how they needto be talked to, the tone they
(38:16):
need for them to be as presentas possible, like that's all
factors that go into what we dowhen we communicate.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
And I appreciate you elaborating on that point and I
just want to make sure that'swhat you were saying.
It does need to go both ways.
If you're just the employee ornon-leadership, you should learn
how to communicate with otherpeople as well.
But I do think there needs tobe that emphasis from leader to
employee or senior leader tomiddle management to be able to
(38:44):
learn to communicate to thepeople beneath you on the ladder
, because it's important for youto learn to communicate and
adapt your communication styleto them.
Actually, I had a manager onetime that said that we needed to
learn how to communicate to him, and that always blew my mind.
I'm like that makes no sense,because you're the one that's
(39:05):
supposed to be managing us.
Why do I need to learn how tocommunicate to you?
Like, yes, at the end of theday, we should learn how to
communicate to each other, butif anything, you should learn
how to communicate to me versusme to you.
And he was just like nah, youneed to learn how to communicate
to me and he did not want to gothe other way.
Yeah, to each their own, it'sreally interesting.
(39:27):
Exactly, exactly.
On that one I'm going to say hewas wrong.
But yeah, to each their own.
For sure, at the end of the day, I left the company because of
his poor leadership, so thatsays a lot there, but then again
, I mean, somebody else mighthave liked the way that he led,
who knows?
(39:47):
Yeah, so, but Brett man, reallyappreciate you coming on sharing
this value on communication.
Talk to us about the strugglesas well as the triumphs, those
(40:17):
expectations.
We can resolve so many problemsin our lives.
Yeah, I agree, absolutely yeah.
And so I know you're not superactive on social media, but if
people do want to reach out toyou, they do want to follow you.
Where's the best place for themto do that?
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, so Instagram, facebook, linkedin, it's just
Brett Brewer, so it'll be firstname Brett, underscore Brewer.
You can find me pretty muchthose three You'll see us a
little bit more active.
We've got some stuff working onthe back and we're getting
ready to kind of bring tosurface, so you'll see a lot
more action, especially on thecompany side.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Awesome, I'm looking forward to that.
So, brett, once again thanksfor coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
No man.
Thanks for having me Appreciateit.
What's going on, guys ?
We've got Brett Brewer here.
He has been in the constructionindustry since he was 16 and
has started his own company atthe age of 33.
He is currently six years intobuilding and growing his
business and is a dedicatedfamily man, blessed with a
loving wife and three children,and a God-fearing Christian who
(00:21):
is deeply humbled and gratefulfor the life he leads.
And today we're going toactually dive into the fact that
he had one business, gotinvolved in a second business,
was kind of running both at thesame time.
He's back to one business allat the same time, while having a
family and kids and a wife.
And we know as married men,especially if we're fathers,
(00:44):
about the many dynamics there ofcommunication, of keeping
everybody happy or trying to asmuch as possible, and almost
this whole like serving multiplemasters at once.
And so I think Brett would be agreat example for us to be able
to learn and extract some ofthat knowledge from him as he
went through this, because Iknow he is very family-oriented
(01:06):
man and we were talking offlinea little bit about that and the
importance of that and actuallysome of the struggle he had at a
certain point.
But before we get into that,brett.
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh man, phillip, I appreciate it.
It's been a long time comingand I appreciate the intro too.
That definitely doesn't feellike an intro I should be
getting, but I do appreciatethat, excited for today.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
So you're you're doing the work.
Have you been putting a lot ofwork since we've been yeah,
since we've been getting to knoweach other and what you've been
putting in the work doing a lotof those things.
So really looking forward todiving into that with you.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, yeah, no.
Likewise, let me know where youwant to start and we'll jump
right into it.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
All right.
So let's kind of get this bigpicture.
I really want us to go fromwhere you went with the one
business.
You kind of started building upthe second business and kind of
what that looked like.
I'm sure your wife she's beenused to you kind of being the
crazy business owner.
You have a team with you andeverything.
So you're not literally asolopreneur doing all the work
(02:09):
and all that stuff.
But there's still a lot ofday-to-day stuff that you're
doing.
And now you decided I'm goingto go ahead and help out a buddy
and essentially run hisbusiness.
Talk to us about that dynamic.
What was going on there?
What was the communicationfront looking like on the home
front?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, no, that's great.
So the first business took me afew years to kind of get it
running, we'll say for the mostpart by itself, which allowed me
to kind of open that door totake on another business.
So, like you said a minute ago,a buddy of mine, similar
industry.
So structure was completely thesame.
My idea for that was to be ableto jump in and just kind of
(02:52):
help serve somebody else'sbusiness, to kind of kickstart
them off in an area that Ididn't actually get myself.
I had a lot of trial and errorand basically learned by all my
mistakes.
So the goal was to try to teamup with him to help him not make
the same mistakes I did.
As far as the communication side, though, that got really tricky
because it's like with childrenyou have one child and it's
(03:15):
like man, this is great, youhave two and you're like man,
one was so easy.
And then you have three andit's like two was way easier.
So it was kind of same dynamictwo businesses.
It was like, oh yeah, I got it,we can do it.
We jumped into it and Irealized real quick it was going
to take a lot more initiativeon my end than I anticipated I
(03:35):
was really going to need to putin which we all have the same 24
hours in the day.
So it took time away from areasthat I obviously didn't expect,
Family being one of them.
So for me to run both businessesand keep family balanced, that
was a struggle for sure thefirst few months, and it was
(03:55):
just really understanding thenew steps I needed to take.
My point of view, or side of it, was I'm literally going to do
the same thing I did over thelast couple of years.
I'm just going to do the samething I did over the last couple
of years.
I'm just going to do it here.
We're going to plug and play itand it wasn't as seamless as I
anticipated because I had it allup here figured out.
Explaining it to others thatdidn't was a little bit tougher,
(04:16):
especially in that business.
Three of us were wearing likesix different hats at the same
time.
So kind of.
Going back to the family sideof things, the communication
failed there and it took thehard conversation that the wife
has to have sometimes with thehusband or vice versa, depending
on the situation of justreconnecting hey we really need
(04:37):
to sit down, we need to figurethis out.
So I think really, big scheme ofthings is making sure that when
you're going to jump into thistype of stuff, you have your,
your significant other, has yourback, has the same vision you
have with it, understanding thesacrifices you've got to make to
to be able to make the visionor dream a reality.
It's like with anything else.
(04:58):
This one did definitely take meby surprise a little bit
because I was thinking, hey, Igot it, I did one, I could do
two.
Shouldn't be a big deal and itwas, but it was great because it
gave me more of a perspectiveof what I needed to do to grow
more as an individual, not justin the business, but as a father
, as a husband, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, and you mentioning about going from one
to two, to three kids for you,obviously I don't have the
perspective of three, but goingfrom one to two kids, that was a
huge jump and I can and I wasactually talking to my wife
about if we had three.
So you can chime in here as youwant, but going to three, I
feel like at that point you'realready kind of used to a little
(05:40):
bit of the chaos.
Like with one it's like youjust kind of pass back and forth
so somebody always has freetime.
When you go to two you're kindof playing man to man, and then
three you're going to zonecoverage by that.
But by that point you're usedto you don't really ever have
free time, especially in thoseearly years, because you're
having to watch at least a kid,if not sometimes two.
(06:01):
Once you get to three you'rekind of like you're just kind of
adding on to the chaos.
It's already chaotic, so whocares?
But going from that one to twowas definitely tough on us and
we didn't realize how tough thatwould be.
But I think that's also theignorance is bliss perspective
that you get that God gives us.
So we're like, oh, it's notthat bad, that first baby wasn't
(06:21):
that bad, those first sixmonths a year wasn't that bad.
And then you get back into it.
You're like, why did we do this?
And then you forget and want itagain.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean and it's funny too that
we're on this perspective butlike having kids and growing in
business is really comparable,you know, because, like we said,
the one to two, two to three,three to four, I mean to each
their own it's the same inbusiness, you know, when you hit
those milestones or thoseceilings and you're capped out
and then you go to the nextlevel, that next level, scary
(06:53):
through the process, you'rethinking why are we doing this?
And then you get to the end,where you've delegated, you've
put the right people in theright seats, and you're like, oh
, I can breathe.
That wasn't so bad and it'sjust.
It's that that perspectivealways cracks me up, because
it's it's you could reallyconnect the two.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, exactly Exactly , and you can learn from those
past processes that you've donebefore.
Okay, when we did this, we hadto add these things and of
course there's different littlenuances as you build that
business up, but it'sessentially something that's
just repeated.
It's literally at a scale now.
So, okay, if we're getting alot more sales in, so we need to
get more people to fulfill.
Or maybe now we have a ton offulfillment people but we have
(07:36):
so many because we had to addthe fulfillment people that we
actually need more salespeople.
Or, hey, we want to generatemore revenue, so now we need to
do more marketing first toreally be able to build that up.
Like where's that bottleneck?
And you're able to build on topof that and slowly put in these
pieces over time.
But when you've never done it,it's hard to know, like what are
those things and everything.
(07:57):
But to go back to what we werekind of originally talking about
, you mentioned about, youdidn't realize the expectations
of what it would take to go fromthe one business to two
businesses and really on thatfamily front so besides your
wife obviously coming in andbeing like, hey, we need to have
(08:18):
a conversation, was there likea pre conversation of that, that
, whenever you were going intothat second business, that you
were kind of you kind of set uplike hey, here's what I'm
expecting and and basicallylaying that foundation of like,
hey, yeah, I'm probably notgoing to have quite as much time
for the family, which thatobviously turned into less than
(08:39):
you thought but did you havelike a pre-conversation before
starting that second business?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
but did you have like a pre-conversation before
starting that second business.
Yeah, so you cut out a littlebit, so I'm going to try to
answer it the best way I can,which I think I understood with
the end of your conversation orthe your question, so with with
the wife.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Is what we're talking about, correct?
Yeah, yeah, so did you have a?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
pre-conversation with her before going into that
second business.
Yeah, so basically I laid outthe offer to the second business
and I reviewed it with the wifeshe's part owner in the first
business.
If I could be honest, when itcomes to my wife, she's, you
hear, the better.
Half a hundred percent of thatis with her.
So where I lack and a lot ofthat's kind of overseeing
(09:23):
certain things she's really goodat pointing out.
So always, yes, secondconversation was had almost in
every type of situation thatrequires us to make a decision
that could potentially affectthe family, whether personal,
financial, whatever it may be.
But the way that conversationlooked was basically us kind of
looking at what it's going totake, how much time I originally
(09:51):
like now currently put in thefirst business, how much time we
think the second business isgoing to take up, and then how
much time that leaves us for ourfamily and activities.
And, like most things,especially if you're a guy, you
have this big, great plan.
It looks beautiful, it's allnice and neat on your paper and
it goes nothing to plan, and sothat's essentially what it
looked like.
The second conversation was had.
It ended great.
We were all on the same page.
(10:12):
However, we were just notreading from the same book the
business was reading from, andso it definitely brought a
different dynamic, because whatwe both thought was going to
happen in fact didn't.
So it really brought us out of,I guess, our comfort of having
to have those tougherconversations and this isn't
working out the way we expected.
(10:32):
What got me really thinking wasat what point do we have to
either say we're going to figureit out in this amount of time
and give us that leniency, orare we going to just kind of
shut it down?
You know, walk away, let themknow.
Obviously we're good, but it'sjust not working out for us.
Personally, I think we were ableto make it work.
(10:52):
It just took us kind of hittingsome rocks, you know, through
the venture and really justtrying to put the right pieces
in play.
Again, this company was new, soit had no systems, it had no
processes, so everything wasdone manually.
It was done based off of whatsomebody was thinking, when they
were thinking it, when theycommunicated it, when you had
(11:14):
time to receive emails.
So it was a bit messy that wewere able to really clean up and
it's taken off really well nowto where it's like it's one of
those situations where I don'tthink I'm as needed anymore.
So we decided to, you know,pull out and let the business
kind of do its thing.
It's what we helped build itfor.
We weren't in it for the longhaul, we were in it for just
kind of partial.
(11:35):
But I also think that's whatmade the second conversation
easier is we knew this wasn'tgoing to be a 10, 15, 20 year
venture.
This was just going to besomething we were going to help
some friends do.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, and I think that pre-conversation was the
biggest thing that I think a lotof people in marriage, but also
in business, miss out on isthey don't have that
pre-conversation.
And of course, when we're notdoing something yet, it's really
hard to say, oh, this, this andthis are going to happen.
And then even if we do, if wecould start up the exact same
business, it's still not goingto go exactly to plan.
It's not going to be exactlylike the first one was, and
(12:13):
hopefully it's better than thefirst one.
But even then you can try tohave the most detailed, perfect
plan.
It's never going to goaccording to plan.
But what I think is mostimportant, and the thing that
you did very well, was y'all hadthat pre-conversation, y'all
talked about that and they alldiscussed that.
And of course, your wife waswilling to start that tough
(12:33):
conversation.
Hey look, I'm not happy withthis current situation, not
where she was at a point whereit's like, hey, well, I'm out of
here because you don't love meanymore, or anything crazy like
that which could have beenunderstandable given a situation
like that, but she was willingto have that conversation.
And that's oftentimes, when wedon't do that first conversation
(12:56):
, to say, hey, here's what Ithink is going to happen,
especially in our marriage, whatI think is going to happen what
do you think when do you thinkI'm missing things on?
But then also kind of settingthe expectation and the
boundaries of how much time andeffort are we going to put into
this for, and neglect the family, so to speak, in this busy
(13:16):
season?
But then, as maybe you'respending more time, like you
were, we don't go back and havethat next conversation either,
because that's the, that's thetruly tough conversation.
It's easy beforehand, just likegoing to the gym and working out
.
It's easy to say, man, I'mgoing to go hit the weights, I'm
going to do this, that and theother, and you get in there and
all of a sudden you're like man,I'm just tired.
(13:38):
Oh, man, this is so much harderthan I thought it was going to
be, because you were ready to go.
But once reality hit, it was acompletely different thing.
And so y'all's marriage, thatwas that reality setting in, and
your wife was willing to havethat conversation again.
Of course you as well, butshe's the one that brought it up
, and I'm sure it's because youkind of had blinders on.
(13:58):
You were just trying to makethe business work out and all
that stuff.
And so before I go to the nextpart, I mean do you have any
thoughts on that, like what waskind of your idea around all
that and like why you kind ofwent about having those
conversations?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah.
So you touched on something aminute ago about expectations
and a lot of people business,personal, whatever I've ran into
a bunch of people, more peopledon't want to have the hard
conversations because they'rehard.
I think one of the things mywife and I do so well and I
think what we do so well in thebusiness not just in management
(14:34):
but through employees as well,all the way to like boots on the
ground is we set expectationsin the conversation, whether
it's the original or the secondof what.
For the hard conversation tonot be hard anymore, it doesn't
(14:54):
have to be hard, especially whenyou're both understanding the
expectation is this and ourtimeline is that, and if it does
, if those don't meet, then weneed to reevaluate it.
We've already agreed on that.
So those tougher conversationsare really easy to have when you
know what the expectation isand it's mutual.
You both understand it.
(15:15):
It's both the same expectation.
So when the wife or the husbandor the boss or the project
manager or whoever has to havethe quote unquote hard
conversation, as long as thoseexpectations were said, meant
and agreed on, it's reallysimple to just stay communicated
and connected on the same page.
So I liked the fact that youtouched on that expectation,
(15:38):
because that's huge.
Just because you communicatedoesn't mean you're
communicating appropriately orright to the individual that
needs the communication.
So I think, as long as youcreate that expectation in the
conversation, it should bepretty simple to stay on the
same page.
If you're not or the plandoesn't go as detailed or as
planned in entrepreneurship ithappens every day.
(15:59):
It makes those difficultconversations not so difficult,
which makes them easier to have,and I think we should be having
more of those.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Personally, yeah, I agree and really setting that
expectation, because if you'vesaid something to offend me, but
then I just, you know, getangry at you and I just hang up
this call or whatever.
You're like, what in the world,what did I do?
What did I say?
You're going to be completelyconfused.
But and this is of course, Ididn't set the expectation up
(16:27):
front.
Or let's say, maybe, like youjust start throwing a bunch of
f-bombs and I told you at thebeginning of the podcast hey, we
don't custom my podcast.
And you just start throwing abunch of F-bombs and I told you
at the beginning of the podcasthey, we don't cuss on my podcast
.
And you're just throwingF-bombs and I'm like dude, like
we're done, we're not doing thisconversation anymore because
you won't abide by this, thenyou're going to understand.
But if I just like all of asudden hang up or like stop the
recording, I'm like dude, youcan't tell me anything about, I
(16:49):
couldn't cuss or whatever, likeyou know, and that's just an
example, obviously cussing.
But if I don't set thatexpectation up front, then when
(17:10):
you violate my expectation thatwas uns we really get upset with
each other and more fightshappen because of that lack of
expectation, that lack ofcommunication up front.
And this is kind of going down arabbit hole here, but that's
what happened in a lot of myrelationships before my wife,
before meeting my wife is, I hadthis unmet expectation that I
(17:34):
wouldn't really talk about whatwhich was my faith I would you
know.
I would bring it up Like I wentto church and all this stuff and
I would kind of casually talkabout it, but I didn't set it as
like, hey, this is a minimum,like going to church with me
being religious, being in theBible, stuff, like that.
And until actually it was oneperson I dated before my wife
(17:55):
that I finally set thatexpectation and I was saying
that up front and for me it waswell, I didn't want to push that
too hard, but then therelationship would always get
rocky and of course it wouldfall out.
But then when it came to thefirst relationship I set that at
we fell apart because of that,but it wasn't like oh I hate you
at the end, like the other oneswhere it wasn't as good and
(18:17):
clean of a breakup.
And then of course with my wifewe did hit some hurdles but we
worked through those becausethat expectation was set up
front versus oh.
I'm not going to really say it,although I'm going to kind of
casually mention about how it'simportant to me but not mention
the actual importance of that.
So really setting thatexpectation is important because
(18:38):
then people can judge thatbased on that.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah, and so kind of taking this over to the business
side, you kind of alreadyalluded to this a little bit,
but I would like to understandmore of like how you set that
expectation.
I think especially well, really,even in small business, but
especially in the corporaterealm, we see a lot of this of
where there's this unmetexpectation or unknown
(19:06):
expectation of what employeesare supposed to do.
And even if you are an employeethat tries to be an
overachiever and tries to beproactive and ask what the
expectation is, a lot of timesthe leadership or the management
one they probably don't evenknow it themselves because it
wasn't passed down from topleadership.
(19:29):
But also they don't just set anexpectation either, and then
they don't obviously end uphaving the hard conversations as
well.
So how do you, especially inthis situation where you went
from you were leading your onebusiness to you were taking more
time to go to the secondbusiness, how did that
conversation look like and howdid you go about setting those
(19:49):
expectations?
And if you've got an example ofwhat you literally did, that
would be awesome to hear as well.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, so we do things a little bit different, I think
, than your normal corporatetype of company.
Obviously, we're structured ascorporate.
I want to stay asfamily-oriented as possible when
it comes to the small business.
One communication is a loteasier to have with a group of
50 versus 250.
One communication is a loteasier to have with a group of
50 versus 250.
Two, it makes it a little bitmore intimate when it comes to
(20:17):
the individual.
So, like employees, I knowwho's married, who's not, who
has a girlfriend, who has kids,who doesn't.
And it allows us to be just alittle bit more on the personal
side, because I do think thereis that fine line where you can
you know too much personal tobusiness.
But I think there's a goodratio.
(20:38):
We set our expectations in allof our meetings, right, so I'm
going to kind of go backwards.
So all of our guys hear ourexpectations on a weekly basis,
not just through our core valuesthat they see on a daily, but
we're acting them as well On topof in the meetings.
We're literally going over whatwe expect them to do on a
day-to-day basis.
(20:58):
Now how did we come up with theexpectations?
You mentioned that coming fromthe top down, and naturally I
will be obviously the seat uptop.
I give the vision of where Iwould like to see us get.
My management tells me howwe're going to get there.
So I don't actually set theexpectations for my management
(21:18):
team.
I give them where I want thecompany to be and I allow them
to get us there.
Now I'll oversee it.
I'll make sure we're in theright direction.
We collect data throughout thedays and weeks and we kind of
compile them into averages so wecan kind of see where we're
trending and whatnot.
So when that hard conversationhas to happen, it doesn't have
to be so hard, because I wasn'tthe one that said we can get us
(21:40):
there in the timeline.
They said they can get us there.
It was the leadership, in fact,that was the ones that came up
with it.
So our conversating to that'ssuper simple and it's just
weekly.
But it's like where are we at?
What's the heartbeat look like?
Because my project manager andmy supervisors have created the
daily average to get us to myexpectation of where I want the
(22:03):
company to be.
They're the ones that aregetting the expectations broken
down into the daily and weeklyrequirements that they have to
fulfill, that the team has tofulfill in order for us to
really fill out the biggerpurpose of what the company's
trying to do.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
I really like that.
It's a great structure.
But there's one thing and I'mgoing to go back to my example
of my wife that I hope peoplehaven't overlooked.
You had a certain frequencywith that and for one of the
reasons why I had to have atough conversation with my wife
about the religious part wasbecause I had set that
expectation but then I failed tocontinue and obviously I wasn't
(22:42):
going to beat it in like, hey,this is the most important thing
, this is the most importantthing.
But I failed to continue tobring up that expectation and as
I started to see it fall off alittle bit, I should have
brought it up sooner.
So it was really on me, but Idid bring it up and then that's
when it kind of clicked for herand that's when it clicked for
me in my life in general thatwhile I set the expectation, I
(23:06):
didn't continue to really set itor continue to say it enough
times that it actually madesense.
Because when you're not livingit and breathing it, when it's
not in your head, it's notsomething that is going to be
known.
And this is kind of likemarketing 101.
This is core values in acompany.
You can put them on a wall.
(23:26):
You can say them once or twice,but if you don't continue to
say them, people are going toforget about them or they're not
going to think that they reallymatter that much.
It was just something thecompany decided to do one time
or talk about one time.
And the same thing with thatexpectations and that's what
y'all are doing is y'allcontinue to go through those
expectations.
And, of course, in themanagement review it's a little
(23:48):
bit different, because you'reliterally trying to make sure
and get a pulse on where we'reat.
Are we actually hitting thoseexpectations and the goals of
the company?
But then the way that they'reactually delivered to the
employees, the people down belowproject manager and managers,
and everything is going to bedifferent.
It's not like, hey, are youmeeting our expectations?
But I'd love to hear kind of,how do you have any clue how
(24:11):
they're kind of delivering thator making sure that those
expectations are getting hit andbeing talked about, without
literally being like, hey, thisis our expectations, Don't
forget guys, this is ourexpectations.
Like this obviously needs to bea more natural thing.
So how are y'all going aboutspreading naturally those
expectations of the company andthe future and vision of the
(24:32):
company as well?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
So we've got foremans on ourcrews and we have lead men on
our crews, which is obviouslythe foreman's right hand, and
then we've got basically justyou know, your construction
labor, that kind of falls inbetween different levels to
different individuals, based offof what they can bring to the
(24:54):
table skill-wise.
So you've got your crews.
Right now we're running four.
What we'll do is we'll bringour foremans and our leads in,
because those are going to bethe guys that have earned it.
We don't do seniority, so itreally allows us to see the
individuals that want to reallygrow and are willing to do the
extra and go the extra mile forthe company.
(25:16):
We'll bring our leads, ourforemans, in and we do the same
thing I do with my leadershipteam on the management end.
Our leadership management teamdoes the same with foremans and
leads.
They don't tell them what theyexpect.
They basically have theconversation and let the foreman
and the lead, let them knowwhat they're capable of and they
(25:37):
create their own expectation.
And so it's a trickle-downeffect from the way I do it with
our management and the way ourmanagement does it with our
foremans and our leads.
And then our foremans and ourleads they delegate certain
tasks to certain individualsbased on what that individual is
doing for the day, and so itmakes it very streamlined,
(25:58):
because for a long time it wasme telling everybody what to do,
and then they go out and do it,and then I've got to make the
corrections and then we reallystarted plugging and playing.
You know the right person,right seat, based off of
traction, and that's been agreat book and like a great
outline for us to kind of putinto our platform, to kind of
(26:19):
just expand off of what wealready do, off of what we
already do.
So at the end of the day, whenyou allow somebody else to tell
you what they can do, you get somuch more buy-in out of that
than you telling them what theyneed to be doing for you.
I don't know there's certainindividuals out there that you
(26:39):
can have that like I need you togo out and do this today and
you take it, you run with it andyou go get your job done.
Then there's others that getoffended, maybe because of the
tone or how you said it.
Every single person we've ranthis by has buy-in.
They don't get offended, it'stheir idea.
I mean, most people want theiridea to be used.
(26:59):
There are those situationswhere it doesn't work out with
their ideas.
So we explain why and you knowpretty much run our play.
But for the most part, ifyou're a leader, you're going to
figure out how you're going toget done what you know needs to
get done based off of what youthink is possible.
Expectation doesn't meet ourexpectation, then we have a
(27:24):
different conversation.
But it's never going to be like, well, you need to do this
because this is how much we knowwe can get.
We explain to them how we knowthey can do more and we let them
go out and pretty much put thatin play and then when they see
more production, we turn itaround.
It was their idea, they did agreat job and if it wasn't for
them we wouldn't have figuredthis one out.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
So it literally we're building everybody up from the
bottom up a lot of times wethink about how can we get
(28:07):
employee retention, how can weget employee satisfaction and,
of course, the first thing,which of course there is a
certain I would say.
I mean there's a good chunkthat money is going to be the
thing.
But at the end of the day,somebody is not going to stay
with the company unless ifthey're getting paid like six
times what the market is gettingpaid or something.
They're not going to stay there.
If they're miserable, if theyfeel like all they are is a cog
(28:29):
in the wheel, if they feel likethey are not given the respect
they're not able to do what theywant to do, if they're not
enjoying it, they're not goingto stay there unless if it's a
crazy amount of money and nobusiness is probably going to
pay six times what your marketrate should be.
And so, to me, doing thingslike this is what really helps
(28:53):
keep employees around, becausethey want to be there, they feel
like they have some ownership,they feel empowered to be there,
and not that you should payless than because of that, but
you're able to not have to paymore because that's apparently
your only way to be able to keepthat employee around.
(29:15):
And unfortunately, there's alot of businesses that seem to
want to just throw dollars atpeople and hope they stick
around.
You're not building thatloyalty that way.
So I want to commend you andyour team on doing that, because
that is not something that alot of companies do.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, no, I definitely appreciate that it.
It gives us a whole differentperspective.
Obviously, six years ago, sevenyears ago, I was an employee
for somebody else, as a number,so it just gave us a little bit
more to, uh, to really pushtowards.
More to really push towards tomake it to where we're creating
more of a family than we arejust a corporation.
So I do appreciate that, thankyou.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yeah, of course.
And then one thing when I hearthis in the back of my mind, I'm
hearing this naysayer say well,that's all fine and dandy, but
what happens when an emergencycomes up or something becomes
urgent?
You can't necessarily wait forsomebody to quote, unquote make
the decision or come up with theidea.
You're going to have to tellthem what to do.
(30:15):
So how do you handle thosesituations where it's rather
than like hey, what do you thinkwe should do?
It's like hey, I need you to dothis because, kind of going
back to what you said, you gotthe different employees.
I want to say like the olderschool employees, those ones
that are probably over 50, youcan tell them what to do and
they'll do it, especially thoseunder, probably, the age of 30
(30:36):
or 35.
It's more like hey, what do youthink?
You have to really kind of gettheir buy-in and you can't
necessarily tell them what to dobecause they're going to be
offended.
But there are situations whereit's just a hey, we need to get
this done, and it's not likeyou're trying to put your thumb
on them or put your foot on themand be like, hey, I'm the big
boss, but there are times thatthat just has to happen.
(30:58):
So how do you or how does yourteam handle those situations
where it is a hey, we need to dothis now kind of situation?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah.
So I think, with our industryspecifically being the
underground utilities, I thinkthere's certain situations that
would call for that,specifically where someone
doesn't know how to make thatdecision.
Even in those really serioussituations, there's still enough
time to ask the employee that'sasking for some help.
So if we're going to call upobviously we have a ladder
(31:29):
system right, chain of commandis just that you have to or
it'll just be a mess.
So if you're calling yourdirect report, the guy that's
right above you, if you'recalling him and asking him, say
you're potholing to try to findutilities, you can't find the
utility and the phone call ishey, what do you want me to do?
I can't find this.
You have to at least give twosuggestions on what you think
(31:57):
the solution is.
That's a mandatory, it'snon-negotiable.
If you don't have twosuggestions, don't call us Now.
We also have our foremans thatwatch our guys.
If they see someone's been onsomething for 30, 40 minutes
longer than they're supposed to,they'll make sure that they'll
check into what I'm getting atis.
We'll run into guys that don'tlike to ask those questions.
They don't want to feel dumb.
(32:18):
I don't want you to think Idon't know what I'm doing, even
though I told you I've neverdone this before, and it happens
, but think I don't know whatI'm doing, even though I told
you I've never done this before,and it happens.
But as long as we're gettingtheir buy-in and they're calling
us and they're like, hey, Ithink I should do this and I
think I should do that, itallows them to think outside the
box.
And then, if we're constantlyyep, I agree, yep, I agree, the
(32:39):
next conversation on the thirdor fourth call is a hey, we
trust you, you're good on thesetypes of conversations or
questions.
Just go ahead and make the call, cause we, we believe that
obviously you're the right guyfor the right seat.
You've shown us, you know, youknow what to do.
You just want to just doublecheck and make sure it's correct
.
We're more or less giving thempermission to fail, knowing
(33:02):
they're probably going to havethe right answer, because every
time they've called us, at leastone of the two has been correct
.
The ones that don't want to ask,because it's just part of it.
We definitely make sure thatwhen we're teaching that, hey,
when you make a phone call, thisis what we want, we'll give
them two scenarios that theyshould have come up with and we
ask them to choose and thenexplain to them why they were
(33:25):
right or why they were wrong andwhat they did.
So a lot of it's front loadedwith the newer guys just
breaking that process down andthen letting your team fail.
I mean it's going to happen.
We want to minimize bigfailures, but the small ones
that don't cost a lot of moneyare great, because you learn
really quick.
So I mean really for us it'sthat if you're going to call and
(33:48):
ask a question, you better haveat least two scenarios that you
think are going to work andwhich one you think is going to
be the best one.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Again, setting that expectation up front about what
you want there, and I like that.
You're still getting them tohave that buy-in and even if
they are not meeting theexpectation because they're
newer, most likely they justreally don't know what to do.
You're giving them a couple ofscenarios, letting them try and
pick one and then explainingthat that's an awesome way to do
(34:19):
that, because that not onlyshows that hey look, I want to
give you a couple of situationsfor you to learn, rather than
hey, just do this one, or hey,do this one because it's better,
like that's not a great answer,so I'm sure there's more
explanation than that, butthat's a that's a great way to
do that, because then it helpsthem learn different situations
(34:39):
that are solutions they possiblycould use and be able to
understand why one is betterthan the other.
Because that's what, as we getthat experience, we learn that
like, yeah, you could do it thatway, but really this way is
better.
And I've seen that in themanufacturing environment, where
the standard operatingprocedure was to do it this
certain way, but then theperson's actually doing it this
(35:03):
other way.
But then the person's actuallydoing it this other way, but
they didn't feel empowered to beable to talk to their manager
and say, or the industrialengineer that probably came up
with that SOP to say, hey, Iunderstand, you did this SOP and
of course it works, butactually I save, let's say,
three to five seconds on eachmodel that I put out or each
(35:23):
part that I'm building, becauseof doing it this way, and so
that expectation, that culturehas not been built up to allow
or empower the employee to beable to communicate up what
they've found and everything.
So it's awesome that you'redoing that within the company
and really building up thatculture and that communication
process.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, definitely, culture was big for us.
Communication is obviously yougot to have it?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah for sure.
So, brett man, this has been anawesome conversation.
Literally talking aboutcommunication, conversations,
everything like that, I thinkit's so important.
And how important do you thinkthat communication is or good
communication, rather, is in thesuccess of a business?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, I mean outside of looking at safety.
I think it's the most important, because as soon as you lack
communication, you lack quality.
As soon as you lackcommunication, you start lacking
your values of what yourcompany is built on at least
what it should be built onanyways, is built on at least
what it should be built onanyways.
So communication is huge.
Understanding how tocommunicate is, it's, easier
(36:30):
said than done.
You communicate different thanI do.
It's my job to understand howyou communicate so I can
structure the way I communicateto you, and doing that through
companies.
Like I said, easier said thandone.
But it's one of the mostimportant things because at the
end of the day, that's whatdrives the company Communication
.
You have to have it,non-negotiable.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Completely agree, and you mentioned something there.
I don't know what perspectiveyou were talking in, but I need
to learn how.
I need to know how tocommunicate to you, versus the
other way.
Is that you saying that fromlike a leader to somebody
beneath you on the ladder, ifyou will, or what did you mean
by that exactly?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, correct, that's exactly what I meant.
So what we, what we teach ourguys really and when I say our
guys like management leaders,foremans, anybody that's in a
lead role is to understand allof your, your teammates
weaknesses and strengths.
So if you're really bad atcommunicating, I'm probably not
going to put you on the podcastto communicate for our company.
(37:31):
It just is what it is.
But if you're really good at it, I'm probably going to put you
there.
So if I put you somewhere thatyou're really bad, you're
probably not going to enjoy whatyou do.
So that's half the battle rightthere.
But really, at the end of theday, yeah, it's communicating to
your team, the way they learnSchools, they teach you one way
(37:53):
and at the end of the day, weall learn differently, and
that's what I've really takenaway from entrepreneurship is we
may be able to use the sametype of marketing structure, but
it's all different in each ofits own, and so every individual
I've learned is a little bitdifferent when you need to
communicate with them.
So understanding how they needto be talked to, the tone they
(38:16):
need for them to be as presentas possible, like that's all
factors that go into what we dowhen we communicate.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
And I appreciate you elaborating on that point and I
just want to make sure that'swhat you were saying.
It does need to go both ways.
If you're just the employee ornon-leadership, you should learn
how to communicate with otherpeople as well.
But I do think there needs tobe that emphasis from leader to
employee or senior leader tomiddle management to be able to
(38:44):
learn to communicate to thepeople beneath you on the ladder
, because it's important for youto learn to communicate and
adapt your communication styleto them.
Actually, I had a manager onetime that said that we needed to
learn how to communicate to him, and that always blew my mind.
I'm like that makes no sense,because you're the one that's
(39:05):
supposed to be managing us.
Why do I need to learn how tocommunicate to you?
Like, yes, at the end of theday, we should learn how to
communicate to each other, butif anything, you should learn
how to communicate to me versusme to you.
And he was just like nah, youneed to learn how to communicate
to me and he did not want to gothe other way.
Yeah, to each their own, it'sreally interesting.
(39:27):
Exactly, exactly.
On that one I'm going to say hewas wrong.
But yeah, to each their own.
For sure, at the end of the day, I left the company because of
his poor leadership, so thatsays a lot there, but then again
, I mean, somebody else mighthave liked the way that he led,
who knows?
(39:47):
Yeah, so, but Brett man, reallyappreciate you coming on sharing
this value on communication.
Talk to us about the strugglesas well as the triumphs, those
(40:17):
expectations.
We can resolve so many problemsin our lives.
Yeah, I agree, absolutely yeah.
And so I know you're not superactive on social media, but if
people do want to reach out toyou, they do want to follow you.
Where's the best place for themto do that?
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, so Instagram, facebook, linkedin, it's just
Brett Brewer, so it'll be firstname Brett, underscore Brewer.
You can find me pretty muchthose three You'll see us a
little bit more active.
We've got some stuff working onthe back and we're getting
ready to kind of bring tosurface, so you'll see a lot
more action, especially on thecompany side.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Awesome, I'm looking forward to that.
So, brett, once again thanksfor coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
No man.
Thanks for having me Appreciateit.
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