Beyond $1,000,000 Podcast

Mastering Onboarding, Training, and Team Communication: A Q&A Bonus Episode With C4C
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[00:00:00] Introduction
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Scott L: Thanks for tuning into the Beyond a Million Dollar Podcast. Today we have some great conversation lined up.

My guests are Mike Katounas owner of Home Works Painting in Chantilly, Virginia, and Rick Holtz of H. J. Holtz and Son Painting out of Richmond, Virginia.

Every so often on the show, we tackle some questions from contractors, just like you. And I personally really like these episodes. They're some of the most valuable pieces for you to consider as you work on your business.

Scott L: Let's jump into this episode. I think you'll find it very practical and very helpful in changing your company for the better.

My name is Scott Lollar and I'm a 35 year veteran of the painting industry where I've been part of growing several multimillion dollar painting companies. I have worn all the hats and have experienced everything you have experienced, are experiencing, or will experience. There is lots of chatter about getting to a million dollars, but what very few focus on is what it takes to blast through death Valley and create.

The multi million dollar company of your dreams. We [00:01:00] don't focus on fads, tricks, or shortcuts. We focus on solid foundational business principles and data that deliver results. This is the Consulting4Contractors Beyond $1,000,000 Podcast.

All right. Welcome, Mike and Rick. Happy New Year.

Mike K: Happy New Year.

Rick: Happy new year to you.

[00:01:20] Training and Development for Contractors
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Scott L: So, one of the questions we have received a lot is about training. How do you do it? When do you do it? Do you do it? Is it necessary? And it really comes from the issue of workforce, which is the workforce is, shrinking all the time, it seems like. So we're taking, non trades people and making them trades people.

So, I thought we'd talk about that today. talk a little bit about how you feel about training. is it necessary? or assuming it is necessary, what are you doing about it? Rick, you have some comments that you recently talked about. Why don't you start?

Rick: [00:02:00] Sure. Well, training is something that we've always talked about in my company for years and years, and we've never really had a formal training plan, and I think most contractors, when they think of training, they think of some sort of formal training plan, and somehow we look around our companies and employees grow.

So they're, getting trained, they're, getting skills, they're acquiring skills somehow. And I think it's hard for us to go from trying to get the work done to trying to have this pie in the sky training program. So, one of the things I looked at this year, because every year we say we're going to train more, and we're going to be deliberate about it, and we never do.

I have an employee in my business that has been in my business since 2000, so going on 24 years. He has some partial disability, coming in, so he can only earn a certain amount this year. And I said, we're going to put him [00:03:00] out in the field, and he's going to be our trainer. And I'm going to get the crew leaders and the project managers, when they identify certain employees that need some training, he'll just go work with them.

And I'm just going to budget his whole salary, all of his hours to training and just see how that works. Take the training to them as opposed to bringing them in to train.

Scott L: Yeah, interesting. So have you thought through how you're going to track it or how is it even going to be brought to your attention or who's going to monitor or manage him and/or the person receiving the training? Do you know that yet? Or is it work in progress?

Rick: Well, my operations manager, he'll answer to him. And I think everything needs to be funneled through him. Cause somebody, in my company, at least if somebody doesn't own it, it never, it never works out. It fails. so I'd like to run that through Kelly and he'll be asking the project managers when he meets with them weekly or at the foreman's [00:04:00] meeting weekly who, wants Robert, what's Robert going to be doing?

And then Robert will report back to Kelly to see if it's effective.

Scott L: At H. J. Holtz Son,

You have a lot of painters. We got a lot of carpenters and all sorts of things, but do you have a process at your company that It's your way and this is how we do it", Is there a documented system that you would say that people could follow or get trained on?

Rick: This way is systems and processes We've just gotten too large To wing it and I know in other parts of the business that you and I've talked about Scott you call it the wild west We can't keep doing that. So no we don't but we're working on it

Scott L: Yeah. Yeah. Mike, you are really drifting towards a sub you're a, blended model right now, but if you had your way, probably it'd be all subs, I'm guessing. Is that fair to say?

Mike K: Yeah, I've [00:05:00] definitely gone more sub heavy over the last couple of years. I was more employee heavy, I'd say six, seven years ago, and then maybe a couple of years later, it became half and half, and then over the last few years, it's been probably In terms of the distribution of work, maybe 70, 30, 75, 25 in terms of subs versus employees. the training model has probably not been as important on our side of things, but we still, have a way that we want jobs completed and a protocol to be followed. So, we still meet with the subs and set expectations for that. But, it doesn't have to be as rigorous just because, we do allow the subs to, do the work in the way that they do it, especially because we were not allowed to have that kind of control.[00:06:00]

But, we definitely have certain parameters. We want to keep it within.

Scott L: Yeah. Now, with you, you do have, I would say, a process and you actually did develop your own. SOPs,

Mike K: Yeah,

Scott L: many did you develop? I don't know an exact count, and you might not either.

Mike K: well, what we ended up doing, this was, several years ago now, we took the PCAs, SOPs, purchased them. And then, probably over the next year at every crew leader meeting with my employees, we sat down one by one. we would spend approximately 10, 15 minutes, and just get as far as we could with it.

And sometimes we'd knock out a couple of SOPs because they were pretty short. And then other times we'd not even finish a full SOP, but just kept it time, controlled. And, we would just walk through every step [00:07:00] of every SOP, starting with interiors and then moving on to exteriors.

And, just talking to the guys and reading them out loud and then saying, does this make sense? Would you do it exactly this way? In many cases it'd be like, yep, that's good. That's good. And then in other cases it was, well, actually we should add this or we don't need to do that. not big, huge changes, but, just making them our own.

And it just depends on how you learn the trade and, maybe even, in different regions of the country, everybody has been taught something a little different here and there. So we just made them our own and, and now they, we have the Home Works SOPs.

Scott L: Yeah, and do you currently are you bringing a new staff at all or not too much?

Mike K: We, we hired one new painter last year, and he's a flex, painter, more than anything, we've, [00:08:00] either stayed the same or, I would say probably a couple of years ago, we had about 10 employee painters. Now we're, at five and so it has, we have cut it down, but we just made up for that by, using subs, to replace, the employee painters.

Scott L: Yeah, so when you brought in the new person Was there someone responsible to help them understand the I think yours around maybe 12 or 15 interior the same exterior but whatever number there are it was that someone's responsibility to take them through it Or is it more on the job or you have these nice SOPs that would they sit on the shelf?

Mike K: Yeah. in this past year, when we brought in, Sergio, we did, do it the old way, which I wish we hadn't, but, basically it was on the job. He was an experienced painter, and with the other four painters that we had, we, they're split into [00:09:00] two crews of two. And so we would have them go back and forth between one crew and then to the other crew and, Ideally, we would have had him coming in and spending a little bit of time training if he was brand new, we probably would have, to painting in general.

we probably would have done it a little differently, but given his experience and where we were in the middle of, like spring or summer, I can't remember exactly when it was when we hired him, but a busy time of the year, it just, it made it a little difficult. And, we were without an operations manager as well.

So I was taking on that role. So that made it even that much more challenging. So, and that's probably no different than what a lot of painters across the country kind of deal with where they just don't have the, hours or the time to, to sit down and do formal training, which, is probably why, listening to Rick and his idea of bringing it to the [00:10:00] painters, it's an outside the box thinking and, sounds like it makes a lot of sense.

[00:10:05] Improving Onboarding and Employee Retention
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Scott L: Yeah, Rick, does your company hire a lot of non painters that have never touched a brush, never done anything, or are you more inclined to hire someone with some experience and tweak them?

Rick: You know lately I feel like we're getting more potential employees that have experience. It's strange and I've definitely seen an uptick in people coming through that have some painting experience that are interested in working for us. So I think that's definitely different than it was a few years ago because I felt like we would get anybody, you know anybody that was looking for steady work.

Scott L: Yeah. So, in, notwithstanding what you just told us about the person that's gonna be training in the field, if you hired some new people, how would they assimilate and onboard in your company? And I'm talking not about paperwork. I'm [00:11:00] not talking about painting, actually.

Rick: Sure, well, this is where I see a huge deficiency in our company. They would be assigned to a crew leader based on the jobs we have currently going. And if there's one that has a lot of prep work, whether it's an interior or exterior, depending on the time of year, that's probably where they're going to go, where we just need bodies.

And, I don't know, for some reason it just really became apparent to me this year. We've, been hiring. I feel like a higher quality employee, attitude wise and skill wise, and I feel like they're coming into this company that they've heard about and they're just getting lost and I feel like they're not being treated in a hospitable way.

And that's concerns me because to have that quality of employee coming into our company and not showing that we value them is a big concern because then you're not going to retain them.

Scott L: Yeah. what is your burnout rate or, burnout's right, the wrong word, how, [00:12:00] what's your attrition rate with new hires? Would you, do you happen to know that? Would you say a lot of them don't stay or you don't really know?

Rick: I'd say one out of four.

Scott L: Stay?

Rick: No, we lose one out of

Scott L: okay. Gotcha.

Rick: We lose one because I'm thinking right now from last year, we hired probably six new employees and we've lost one.

Scott L: okay. And do you put them with certain, okay, you said, hey, we just put them with someone that has a lot of prep work. That means they're not going to paint anything for a while.

Rick: Yeah, to feel them out. And I think that's hard because maybe that crew leader is not the best crew leader at communication. Maybe they're not the best crew leader to give them the overall picture. I don't know. I just, I feel like we really lack in onboarding new employees and we need a system.

And that's, one of our big priorities for this year because it's concerning to me. You try to look at it from the employee's point of view, you're coming into this big [00:13:00] company or, any company, it's all new. It's like a deer in headlights and they need to be led a certain way and they need to be made to feel comfortable.

And if you're not doing that, you're going to lose them. And like you said, the pool is shrinking every day. So when we get somebody, we need to try to keep them.

Scott L: Yeah. So I have a couple of things I want to mention, and then I do have another question as it pertains to this. A lot of our clients we've seen building training rooms in their, facilities. Phil VanderLaan built one, Mark Black built one, I know Chris Soule has a full kitchen because they do most of the cabinets right now.

But these are full mock ups. They're not, closed, they're open faced, so it doesn't, it's not a, it doesn't take up a, a huge footprint in your shop. But they built full mock ups so that. People could actually go in there and physically put, and actually Jason Matthews has the same thing, where people can go in there and actually do everything that they're asked to do. So they're, they can [00:14:00] train and, taking the SOPs, actually we're taking the SOPs that Mike developed because they're very thorough and, an excellent baseline. Like he already said, everyone says, well, I can't use Mike's.

We do it differently. No, you don't. You're applying paint to walls. Come on. Tweak it. if you do it left to right and not right to left, who cares? Just tweak it. Tweak what's already out there. But, the idea of actually having someone train on core, some core things, prep protection, some application, we don't have to teach them how to wallpaper and spray or clean a spray or even yet.

But, and then we're sending them out. we're actually vetting candidates. This is what Rick just said . Our industry is prone to throwing them out there to whoever has a spot and then whoever has a menial task to just get done. Putty holes for the rest of your life, right? Or caulk for the rest of your life.

And, I think that strategy is a, is, sometimes a problem [00:15:00] because, we know the workforce, today's workforce is looking for opportunity. So, if all they go is, yeah, what did you do today? Well, I puttied holes. What do you do every day? It's the same. They're not, they're gonna, they're gonna maybe just flame out if we don't give them a variety of tasks.

The other thing is we give them to crew leaders who maybe aren't very nurturing and And that's also a problem. So I think finding someone, especially if there's someone in the organization that's been a teacher, teachers are wonderful people to teach, right? So very nurturing. And then the other thing that we advise is we really like the idea of taking a new crew member and moving them around to your different crew leaders for feedback.

Because it's inevitable that you send someone out and you'll get a crew leader that's very high functioning and production oriented. And they'll say, yeah, this person's awful. Just awful, right? And you make a decision based on that, right? And that's really a bad criteria. like, okay, what does [00:16:00] awful mean?

And I would suggest that we don't allow that kind of rating. Like, hey, tell me exactly what it is, and tell me what you did to help them. And so if you pass them to the next crew leader, and they go, That's pretty, this person's pretty good. And then third creator, crew leader. I love this guy. So, so you have all these different ranges.

So, so to have an opportunity to spread them around, and we know that some people will get along better with others, but, I think there's, some validity to first having a documented system and. a training period that probably is more in your shop than on the, in the field. It doesn't have to be three weeks long, but some basics, some safety, some ladder safety, some electrical safety, some respiratory safety, some basic things on a one on one trainer before they go out to the field, and then put them with someone that can nurture them and, continue that.

Because we hear it all the time. This person can't caulk. Well, no one knows if they were trained to caulk, right? There's no system, there's no checklist. [00:17:00] And so we throw them out there and we set them up for failure.

So I think some pretty simple things. But like Mike said, who has time to do it? I think, creating some time and a simple process will really help. I want to ask a follow up is when you have new employees, how, do you get feedback? How do you rate them? How do you decide if they're quote unquote good or, what's, do you have a probationary period?

What's the process that you assimilate and help people win? Rick, you have something?

Rick: Well, for us, it's always a 90 day period, and the project managers and Kelly are going to talk to the crew leaders or where these employees are working and get verbal feedback, but we have nothing formal.

it's interesting. You almost see where you need to train your crew leaders when you get new employees, but it's always a 90 day period.

Mike K: Yeah, we do the same thing. We do a 90 day period. And then it is just like the, informal, feedback from the crew leaders of [00:18:00] what they see and, But it's interesting too because, I've had guys who, sometimes it's not so much what they're, skill level is it's like it's the relational part of it too, where one crew leader gets along really well with the new guy and then I try them out with another crew and they're like, no, we don't, they're just not clicking.

So it, it's, it's more than just the skill level to it's like how well they get along and that sometimes will determine the kind of feedback you get, I think if they're not getting along very well, they'll make some comments of like, well, he's not that good of a painter and it's like, well, hold on, and so it's, it's sometimes a little more challenging than just the straightforward, like, can you caulk, can you, Can you do drywall repairs and things like that?

It's, it, sometimes gets into, the gray areas.

Scott L: Yeah. Emotional intelligence.

C4C: Well, we are about halfway [00:19:00] through this episode of the beyond a million dollar podcast from Consulting4Contractors, and we still have some great content left for you. Before we get to that, though, I wanted to let you know about some resources that are available to you via the show notes. You'll find links to our website, social media outlets, and highlights of this show.

You'll even be able to schedule a discovery call with Scott and our team to find out how Consulting4Contractors can help your contracting business. It's very low pressure. We'll ask you just a couple questions, see what your current situation is, and then get you started toward the contracting business of your dreams.

The best part about it, it's completely free. So just click on the link in the show notes, or you can visit our website at www.consulting4contractors.com and reach out to us there. Again, that website is www.consulting4contractors.com. Now [00:20:00] here's the remainder of the show.

[00:20:05] Operations and Crew Leader Meetings
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Scott L: All right, next question. What are your company meeting rhythms? And what do you do at these meetings? How often do you have them? Who do you have them with? And what are the, what's the agenda? Mike, you go first.

Mike K: Yeah. meetings are extremely important at Home Works Painting. And I know, you watch TV, you hear people talk about meetings and they roll their eyes, like, another meeting, if you make them purposeful and you have an agenda, then, everyone gets on the same page and you move towards the same goal.

And so for us, we have crew leader meetings that are, every two weeks, every other Monday, at 6:30 in the morning, before they go out to the jobs. On the weeks where we don't have crew leader meetings, we have, operational meetings, ops meetings. That's with the [00:21:00] key personnel. Myself, my office manager, salespeople, operations manager.

And so in those meetings, we're going over upcoming jobs for the next two weeks so that when we have the crew leader meetings the following week, we are repeating that. We're, so we go over jobs like twice, with our staff once in the operations meeting and then the second time at the crew leader meeting.

So the crew leaders only getting a one time, but, we really want to make sure that we are on the same page with what needs to be done on the job, what's included, what's not included, any special material orders or equipment needed, or just, special things relating to the customer. Like, Hey, don't go there before 8:30, they got to drop off their kids to school.

Those kinds of things going over details that are not necessarily in the contract. But we're also at the ops meeting going over just any, agenda items that at that particular time, it could [00:22:00] be, we do a scorecard. Like, in EOS, where we're just, measuring how many leads came in, over week to week, how many actually converted into estimates, and then how many jobs did we win, what's, the number of guys working, on the average day.

and, and things like that. We're at the beginning of the year now. So something we're going to be talking about at the ops meeting is we do a home show every February. And so just planning for that, making sure we have all the materials, the giveaways and, looking at the schedule of who's working, what hours, what shifts, things like that.

So just, going over those types of things and these, and plus it's the, because we are working, separate, like I'm on the road sometimes I'm in the office. Danny's usually in the office, but sales guys are on the, road a lot and ops people are [00:23:00] sometimes in the office and it's just nobody's ever on the same schedule.

So it's a way for us to get face to face, check in with each other, see what's going on. And, just, it helps keep us close.

Scott L: Yeah. So, at the ops meeting, one of the things I, you said was we're, reviewing the jobs that are coming up, would that be in a time period? Next two weeks? What is

Mike K: Right. Yeah. So, when we have an operations meeting on a Tuesday morning, we are going over, we will go over, like, if there was any concerns about current jobs, like, maybe, hey, this job, something's going on here, something's going on there, whatever. But, primarily, we're going over the jobs that start the following week and the week after that.

Because that following Monday we'll have the crew leader meeting, which happens every two weeks too, so we're going over those same, jobs that happen over the following two weeks.

Scott L: Yeah. So [00:24:00] in your crew leader meeting then, you're handing your crew leaders their next two week assign, the two weeks of assignments is what you do in your company.

Mike K: That's right. Yeah, we, do everything on the big screen and projection, and, just pull up the contracts, pull up pictures, sometimes even the, estimators notes, that again, things maybe that just are not necessarily written in the contract itself, but are very important to, successfully completing the job.

Scott L: Yeah. And so the question that someone's already just asked in their head is what happens when there's a change. So you handed out a job to crew leader one for eight days from now, and something happened and you need to change that. What, how do you, how did, how does the paperwork, I know what people are thinking.

So let's talk about the paperwork, which in your case is not paper.

Mike K: Yeah.

Scott L: How do you [00:25:00] handle that situation? Or so how, do they even get their work orders and their information? colors, scheduled notes, all of the stuff you just said, you look at, and then how would you, move that information to a new crew leader if the schedule changed?

Mike K: Yeah, and that happens, quite often, more often than I'd like it to, but the good thing about doing it, the crew leader meeting is sometimes, we're going over a job for, Luis, but Franklin, my other crew leader is chiming in on his thoughts of what he sees. So even though it may not be Franklin's job, he's looking at it, giving his input if necessary and vice versa.

So, it, if I'm assigning that job to Luis, but then a week later, maybe Luis's job went a little longer because of a change order or something. And now I need to shift crews and I give that job to Franklin. Well, he's already aware of it, but obviously, he probably was not as engaged as Luis was thinking [00:26:00] that it wasn't going to be his job.

So, we'll text message with each other, and I'll say, Hey, look, we're, changing up the schedule. They can see, their schedules. We, have a Google sheet that I share with the guys, where it looks like a calendar, and shows where every employee is working, and it has a link to the contract, for everybody.

So Franklin can see Luis's jobs. Luis can see Franklin's jobs. And so when I make a switch, it's, they see the things that are changing there and they're checking it daily. And they can just click the link. They can see the contract, they can see their hours, everything like that. And then we have a color selection form online that customers fill out.

So once we get that, I basically forward that over to my crew leaders as well. The operations manager or myself right now, until I fill that position, does all the paint [00:27:00] ordering. And so we just let the guys know, Hey, we've ordered the paint, go pick it up here or it will be delivered, at this day and time.

So, we were using technology, between, whether it's Google sheets or sometimes monday.com, as well as PaintScout and, and just using our phones and mobile devices to communicate.

Scott L: Yeah, so essentially paperless. So people could click on the link, read the contract, read the work order, look at the color schedule. Everything they need is in that link and or in those links. And, so you're not handing out paperwork necessarily. You could print paper, but essentially everybody could digitally see the job, see the colors, see the notes, see everything they need to know to do a job.

Mike K: Yeah, and we don't do much handing off in terms of paper at all. One of the good things about doing it digitally is when a change order happens, with PaintScout, we'll write a change order. [00:28:00] Get it approved by the customer, and then once it's approved, I get an email as well as the rest of my office staff, we all get the email and we can notify the crew leader right away, just send them a text and the crew leader obviously is aware that there is a possible change order, so we'll say, hey, the change order was approved.

You can move forward with it. They can also then reopen that link for the quote and see the change order there. So if you were doing it by paper, you'd have to print out a whole new work order or contract and get it to the guys. And that's just sometimes not logistically possible in real time. So just being able to click the link and see the updated change order is nice.

Scott L: Yeah. Before we move on to Rick, I want to, ask you about your sales meeting then. The sales meeting, you're going over what and who's at, who's in that meeting.

Mike K: That was one I didn't even mention. We do that weekly. That's every Monday. And so we, I told you, we do a crew leader [00:29:00] meeting at 630. Once that crew leader meeting ends, we move to the sales meeting. So that's in person. On the other weeks where we don't have a crew leader meeting, we meet via Zoom.

And, we're going over the sales numbers for that month. And for that year, going over last week's estimates, anything that stood out, anything they need help with questions on, any current jobs issues that maybe have come up something maybe that might have been missed, in terms of when they wrote the estimate, also, checking in on monday.com. How are they doing with their follow ups? Are they staying on top of those and then, looking at, this upcoming week's, schedule of estimates and what that looks like and, and just what their upcoming week's schedule looks like.

Scott L: And in your company, you're not doing much or in very often with everybody, [00:30:00] all the painters, everybody together. Is that how often do you meet with everybody?

Mike K: No, we don't. we have in the past where I think when we had about, 10 or more painters, we would usually do a quarterly, all employee meeting. as we've gotten smaller on the employee side, that's happened a lot less. Sometimes when we're doing crew leader meetings, maybe because we've got to get equipment or something else might be going on.

We, being that I've got two crew leaders and a couple of other guys who are not crew leaders. Sometimes they're they'll be there anyways. And so it happens impromptu. When we were bigger with more employees, and I would suggest this for anybody who's has more employees, meeting at least on a quarterly basis and just using it as an opportunity for training, or, where the company is at.

We used, we would do that, see like where we are with sales for the year or what we produced. where we are with like a bonus programs and things like that.

Scott L: Rick, how about you? You probably have

no meetings. [00:31:00] You're just on your boat, just screwing around.

Rick: All we have is meetings.

Scott L: It's a 24 seven for you.

Rick: We have a big meeting coming up next Thursday. we have our annual kickoff meeting. We'll have everybody in the company there. We're gonna let them all know. Well, I'll start over. we, start over and do a review of how the company makes money. Because a lot of people don't understand where all that money goes.

They see these estimates, they see these work orders, they don't understand. So we do a basic, how the company makes money, we review 2023, we're going to go over our 2024 goals, and then we're going to go over the priorities of what we're going to try to tackle this coming year to get us to those goals.

And that'll be everybody on board. Everybody in the company will be there. They'll come in, it'll be from 7. 30 till 9. 30. So it's a couple hours.

Scott L: And who presents that? You?

Rick: Yeah. [00:32:00] Yeah.

Scott L: Awesome.

Rick: Yep.

Scott L: How many people will be in that room? Approximately?

Rick: 60 to 65.

Scott L: Yeah.

Rick: Somewhere in that neighborhood. Some people are off. I have a couple people that are off of work. Some guys take off in January.

Scott L: Okay, so you're talking you're doing reviewing 2023, you're doing some financial literacy basically saying hey This is how this thing runs This is how this engine runs and then this is you're basically giving them financial targets and also though, non-financial targets like, well, training, for instance, or whatever, you would, say, these are some, goals that we're have, we have for the company.

These are our financial targets and that's what you're presenting.

Rick: Yeah, and for us to hit these goals and for us to be who we want to continue to be in the marketplace, we need to take care of these things.

Scott L: Mm

Rick: Some like processes, systems, how are we going to increase our capacity[00:33:00] in different areas of our business? Things like that.

Scott L: I love that. And then do you get, any feedback or do people have questions? Is it, dynamic or is it mostly just present a

Rick: Yeah, we usually have some sort of exercise. We'll do some sort of exercise. My job coach Bill Silverman will be with me. So he'll help me. So we'll do some sort of exercise and then in years past, this will be the first one we've had in person since 2019. Because we went to small groups in 2020 I was meeting with like eight people at a time, you know, I'd have seven of those meetings, and I just thought this was a good year to have everybody back together.

So we'll do that, and we typically end it with some company awards from, we, we recognize some employees for their performance last year. So we'll do that as well, and end it that way, end it on a high note.

Scott L: Nice, nice. All right, so in your company, what, meetings are you part of? Let's start there versus what meetings [00:34:00] happen without you.

Rick: Every Tuesday, I have a management meeting in the afternoon, and that's going to be on my project managers, my operations manager. My sister who does, who's our CFO, our estimators and everybody kind of reports on their key metrics. project manager, how many jobs have got going? How many should finish this week?

How many are new jobs? How many are cabinet jobs? That sort of thing. sales guys, how many leads they got, how many estimates they did last week, how many they sold, how many estimates they have scheduled for the coming week. I want, it's like Mike said, we're not all together very often.

So when we get all together, I want to make sure everybody knows what everybody's doing.

Scott L: Mm hmm.

Rick: I don't want there to be any doubt that not everybody's got an oar in their hand and they're rowing and that's what we want to make sure that everybody sees and I think it's important for me to see that too as an owner because you want to make sure that everything's smooth.

Our job is to coordinate, spin the [00:35:00] plates. We want to make sure that's happening. And that's what we do, is go over all those key, metrics.

And we do that

every Tuesday.

Scott L: Is that Kelly's meeting or your

Rick: I introduce the meeting, and then we go around the room. It, leads, everybody has a part in that meeting. I used to lead the meeting, and, I got really frustrated with that.

And I was like, this is not how this meeting should be. It should be about them reporting what they're doing. And so we literally go around the room. And then the meeting, and I'll have some company information that, like, hey, we have a kick off meeting coming up January 11th, and we have a Christmas party and that.

So I'll do some of that general stuff, but that's pretty much it. And, yeah.

Scott L: Who reports the sales data then?

Rick: The estimators do.

Scott L: They do, Okay.

Rick: Well, so, there's a lady in my office, Karen. She's a project coordinator for paint. She actually will report on all the leads that came in that week [00:36:00] and then the estimators are just reporting the estimates that they've seen and completed and won so they so it's a joint effort.

Scott L: Got it.

Rick: Because it's interesting because she'll say that we got 10 leads one week and then they're saying that they had 12 or 13 appointments so we're like where those other three come you know what I mean so it's a checks and balances kind of thing.

Scott L: Got it. Okay. So you're basically tackling the sales, the, management, everything, into one meeting.

Rick: Really high level, really quick. It's not an in depth hours and hours. We usually can get around the horn in about 45 minutes.

Scott L: Do your crew lead?

[00:36:37] Company Meetings and Communication Structure
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Scott L: So who, so what other meetings do you have in your company? You're probably having one on one meetings as the owner.

Rick: I have one on ones.

Scott L: Yeah, Do you, okay.

Rick: Every, everything else I do are one on ones. The, only other thing I do is our monthly company meeting and every second Thursday of the month. Everybody comes in on a Thursday morning at 7 a. m. and we have a 30 minute meeting [00:37:00] and we go over anniversaries, work anniversaries. We go over birthdays.

We go over, how the company is, where we're, where we are in sales for the month, where we are on net profit, gross profit, any other like company stuff like T sheets, or,

Scott L: hmm. Yeah.

Rick: Company, messages that need to be delivered from me. We'll do a safety talk and then we have an employee of the month award to end the meeting.

And that's 30 minutes usually. Yeah, and now we've done it now where sometimes we'll do a FaceTime video if there's some guys that are working out of town because we won't bring them back in for 30 minutes, but be able to watch and participate.

Scott L: Any additional meetings with crew leaders or anyone else or is that it?

Rick: That's pretty much it. we have a crew leader meeting every week, but I'm not always there.

Scott L: Right. So

that

Rick: have a handoff. Yes, we have a handoff meeting every week on Tuesdays after my management meeting and Kelly runs [00:38:00] that. I do not. That's when he's going to go over all the jobs that are going to start the following Monday and beyond.

Scott L: Beautiful. And he's doing that with the crew leaders.

Rick: He does that, him and Karen do that, because Karen collects all the information from the client, so she knows a lot of the information too. So the two of them are disseminating that information to the project managers.

Scott L: Yeah. Excellent. So I want to highlight a couple things here that, both of Mike and Rick have talked about. So on Mike's side, what I want you to hear is his consistency, his meetings. if you've listened closely, he said exactly what time his meetings are, the frequency of his meetings, and I will tell you, because I know him, he doesn't miss.

People don't miss those meetings. It's not like, Hey, it's okay if I blow this off. It's, a no. So his meetings are, important. They're concise. Mike's a pretty, focused person. So his meetings are concise. They are, and they're, important. And he doesn't have too, more than he [00:39:00] needs.

He has as many as he needs. One of the biggest things that we hear from contractors is that they either think there's a value in a meeting that they don't have one or they've planned meetings, but then blow them off You have to do the meetings and they have to be non negotiable.

And so that's what I want you to hear from Mike's point of view, because he lives that and it really works for them and it keeps his company informed and on track. On Rick's side I love that they communicate to the team their goals, right? And I love that they talk about money, finances. This is how this works. this is what we're shooting for. We have a lot of conversation with things about when people want more money, raises, they want a bonus. They don't really know, how it works and they think they, can snoop around and find out you charged 20, 000 for this job.

They, they, think that you put 10 in your pocket. That's really what some painters think, that you're a millionaire. So I love that, that, the idea of giving this annual [00:40:00] goal. Here's where we're headed. Here's what it's going to take to get there. And then, on top of that, they report monthly.

Here's how we're doing. So some great comments. really good, feedback on meetings. Loved, love, love these. And I think that they're really important. I would also encourage some of you to do more with your crew leaders. I think bi weekly is the minimum, and and then I think do more with your teams.

You can't affect community, culture, and family, without meeting with them. So, and, for the most part, y'all who are cheap, it's just gonna cost you some money. You got to pay them to have a meeting. So, so have the meetings, make it non negotiable, make it valuable, Disseminate important information and I think you had some good feedback on meetings.

Appreciate it. [00:41:00]