[00:00] Bryan Williams: If we’re going to let them go anyway, why not give them the chance to redeem this opportunity? I think oftentimes we have these conversations behind doors rather than with the person because we’re concerned they’re going to quit, they’re going to complain. And I like to say to my clients, allow an adult to be an adult. I do think fear is a huge factor and we cover it with niceness. We think being nice is the best route. And specifically with me, with my team, with my family, with my friends, I believe kindness delivers truth as well.
[00:37] Logan Shinholser: Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Contractor Growth Network podcast. I’m Logan Shinholser, joined by Bryan, who is the owner of Squirrel Solutions. So, Bryan, just to give you a softball to lead this thing off, what does the name Squirrel Solutions come from?
[00:52] Bryan Williams: Nice, Logan. I am excited you asked that. It’s one of my favorite stories to tell people. And it kind of starts a little bit with my family. So I have four little ones. My wife and I have four kiddos, ages five to 10. And we love to watch a good movie.
Well, years ago, we were watching this movie called Up. Anybody who knows the Pixar film Up will kind of know where I’m getting at with this before I get there. But there’s three main characters. There’s Carl, Carl Fredricksen. He’s about 80 years old, and he loses his wife and he’s trying to get to this place called Paradise Falls. Through that process of him trying to get there, he encounters a Boy Scout. Basically, his name is Russell. Russell’s about nine-ish years old, and his only goal is to help an elderly citizen in the community so he can get that last badge. Through their journey of trying to get to Paradise Falls, they encounter a dog who has technology that can allow him to speak. And that dog’s name is Doug. He’s searching for this bird named Kevin.
So I’m giving you all of the buildup to that. But every time Doug is speaking, he can get distracted. And whenever he becomes distracted, he says “squirrel.” And we would make a joke of it with our kiddos, with our friends. Obviously, many people know this reference of whenever you’re distracted, you say “squirrel.” And my goal with homeowners, with clients, with builders, is to really solve their squirrels.
And it means more than just that movie. I remember my first client in Nashville, Tennessee — it’s actually north of Nashville, Tennessee. And he was a team of two people. And his daughter became sick. And as his little infant daughter was sick, he couldn’t get to the hospital to help her out. He couldn’t get to the hospital to be with his wife and his other two children. And he saw work, or certain things about work, as a distraction. And that’s kind of where it birthed. It was like, hey, I can help you solve those distractions. So that’s where the name comes from. Squirrel Solutions. That’s my goal — is to come into owners’ lives and really just help them solve the distractions that, you know, they weren’t necessarily striving to have as a business owner. So that’s where the name comes from. It’s a pretty fun story for me to tell.
[03:06] Logan Shinholser: So what are some of those distractions that you’re talking about? Because as a business owner myself, there’s like a million of them. I can’t imagine that you’re solving all of them. So what are some of the common squirrels, if you will, that people come to you and you’re like, hey, that’s my jam.
[03:18] Bryan Williams: Yeah. So, you know, if you look at my name, it’s fractional HR and operations. So it does cover a multitude of things. However, the focuses that have really, really been honed into over the past decade is HR — with handbooks, with recruiting, with onboarding, with termination policies — but then also operations. Making sure that there’s clarity between what is your job description, what is your SOP that you should be creating. So it kind of varies with what the client needs in that specific season.
I love following a practice, EOS, building out rocks and really making sure: what is the distraction of this quarter, and how does the human resource portion help aid you in to accomplish that goal or that rock?
[04:02] Logan Shinholser: So with this, are you preaching along the lines of EOS where it’s like, that’s what you follow and you have clients with Traction? I guess, like how aligned with the EOS model are you stepping in and actually implementing?
[04:17] Bryan Williams: That’s a good question. I am not an official EOS implementer. I don’t claim to be, but I’ve spent nearly a decade practicing, processing, reading through and implementing them in other different professions that I’ve had. So I do feel pretty connected to EOS as a model that works. Why change it too much?
However, each client needs something different. So what they need is structure. EOS is a form of that structure. So we may use that, we may use another model. The goal is to have consistency, data that’s being built, and then structure that we can look to in the past to improve the process for the future. So, you know, EOS, I love it. I do stand behind supporting companies that do it. But those that don’t, that don’t feel they love the rigid structure there — we just need structure. We just need some type of consistency, some type of cadence. Just like you would do in any other sport, with exercise, with conditioning. We just need that consistency. So I do fall behind it, but I have other ways I do it as well.
[05:16] Logan Shinholser: Got it. And then you approach this from — when you say HR and fractional, like COO — I’m sure they go hand in hand, or at least at our company, they go very much hand in hand. Where usually it’s like, is it a people problem or is it a process problem? So it kind of goes together, I guess. What’s a typical engagement with you look like? And then we’ll start to dive into a little bit more. But let’s say a remodeler comes in and they go, I need help. What is a typical scenario that they need help with? And then what do you actually do to help?
[05:45] Bryan Williams: That’s a good question as well. Typically they’re going to come to me for recruiting. Most people, more often than not, will come and say they have a gap in a role that needs to be filled. Maybe a designer, maybe a project manager, a carpenter, a draftsman, whatever it may be.
The true issue is often not that they need a hire. I shouldn’t say that — sometimes there is that case. But there’s two issues that could happen: the hiring gap or the role design gap. The hiring gap is, hey, we don’t have enough time to actually do the job. We need people to take care of that. I have a current client up in Michigan who’s looking for a designer because they don’t have enough people to handle the face time with clients, right? So you can’t create people, and you can’t solve that by doing more admin hours after hours, right? You have to have a person to handle those hours. But then there are also moments where it’s a role design gap, where we actually don’t need more people. We need more structure or clarity in what we’re doing.
So most people do come to me with that hiring need, or that reactive need I should say, where they’re needing a hire three days ago, we’re needing a termination process three days ago. But you know, I like to see HR ops as preventative care. Yeah, there’s time to go to the ER, there’s time to go there for that emergency. But if you do well with your preventative care, we don’t need to go to that ER situation where we’re needing something two or three days ago.
[07:15] Logan Shinholser: How often does somebody come to you going like, Bryan, I just need you to hire this one role, and then you’re stepping back and going, well, before we throw bodies at the problem, let’s actually figure out, are we solving the symptom or solving the problem? And you actually don’t end up hiring — you just kind of restructure either the process or the reporting or whatever it is around it. So how often are you then saying, you’re right, you do need to hire, versus hold on, I think we can do this without hiring?
[07:39] Bryan Williams: Yeah, that varies. Because if a person is adamant about hiring, I don’t want to discourage that. You know, if you think that this person needs to be on your team, let’s go for it. But let’s start structuring what onboarding looks like. Let’s start creating a true job description for this. Let’s do a time study of what you are doing that’s covering this role, but then also what this person is going to be doing.
And sometimes through that process, while I’m actively recruiting, we realize, hey, we actually don’t need this type of role. Maybe we need to shift gears. I was talking to a client up in the New York area and he was hiring for a project manager. He wanted somebody to be able to take the bags off of him and put it on them. But throughout the process of really doing that time study — seeing what he loved, what he didn’t love, where he was strong, where his working genius was — we realized he actually needed somebody who was really good with the finance portion. So we actually made a step to do an estimator, more of an estimator-project manager role there.
So there are more often than not shifts in the recruiting than there is a “let’s stop recruiting,” because I do want to affirm the owner. They know what — or they believe they know what — they need for their company. And I don’t want to discourage that.
[08:53] Logan Shinholser: So is the time audit typically where you would start to go, hey, maybe we do want to hire this, but what we don’t want to do is hire them and then they come in and they go, great, how do I know if I’m going to be successful in this role? And it’s like, well, I hired you to fit. Like, what is your main tool to figure out what the next step is? Or can you talk to me more about how do you know when it’s time to hire? Or let me take a step back. A business owner comes to you and goes, Bryan, I think I want to hire, but I’m open to whatever you got. How do you then figure out what the solution is?
[09:28] Bryan Williams: Yeah, I think that this kind of goes back to the EOS model, or that structure that we have throughout our week or our months. What are those to-dos that keep falling down and not being taken care of? What are those gaps that clients are frustrated about, team members are frustrated about? Where is that bottleneck happening? You see those things as you’re going through those structures with whatever method that you use.
So if they’re not doing that, I often will encourage: let’s create that time study. I’ll be quite honest, most clients don’t like it when I enforce it. It’s just a stress to them. It’s a frustration to them. They don’t know how detailed to be. But for those clients that do move in that direction, after about a three or four day period, they start seeing things in their habits that say, oh, I actually do have time — or the counter, I actually don’t have time. So those are the two different routes that I’ll typically go into to say, hey, do we really need this person? And is this the person that’s truly going to solve the issue that we actually have, or are they just what we think is the next step?
[10:34] Logan Shinholser: And how often are you seeing with some of these issues, like you need a very specific role like a designer or a PM or a lead carpenter, versus, hey, your systems are just messed up. Like you have no way to track this stuff. You don’t know what’s going on. I think before we actually go out and hire a very specific role, maybe the role that we hire for is an operations person or somebody that’s actually going to untangle your back end.
[11:01] Bryan Williams: Yeah, I think more often than not, the companies that I’m working with, they’re needing that stability first. What does the cadence of our week, of our day, even look like? You know, I’ve implemented something to the point of a morning huddle. Just do a quick morning huddle with all your designers, or specifically with your carpenters, or project or production managers that aren’t doing a weekly meeting with their production team. Like, well, how do you know what’s happening? How do you know a bottleneck’s going to come, or how the clients are feeling, outside of just being at the end of the job and doing the post-mortem or the autopsy at that point?
So I think more often than not, companies that come to me, they’re also needing not just a hire, but the stability so that this person who’s being hired comes into structure, they come into knowing KPIs. All those things happen when you have the foundation set. You can’t create a KPI and not be able to check it and make sure it’s being done.
So many clients that I have have hand-built job descriptions dated back to 2016. Job descriptions that haven’t been opened or updated in seven years. Those don’t have the same power as when you’re consistently reforming and creating — and I shouldn’t say reforming, but just brushing up and making sure that it’s still relevant to today’s age. With AI, with the different systems that we have, job descriptions should kind of lean into those things if that role needs that. But there are job descriptions that still are doing hand sketches, you know? So there are things that we have to definitely do with those clients to make sure that they are ready for the new hire to come into their team.
[12:36] Logan Shinholser: And with that, is that like you own it? Because I know as an owner, all the stuff that you’re describing, I’m like, I don’t want to do that. Like, I know I have to do it. And I know until a lawsuit happens, the employee handbook takes a back seat. But as soon as it happens, then I’m like, all right, now it’s like — you know you should lose weight, but until you have the heart attack, you kind of needed the heart attack to lose the weight. So are you stepping in and then owning that seat, or are you then trying to convince the owner to do it? I guess, what does that look like?
[13:04] Bryan Williams: Yeah, fractional partnership. I’m owning that seat. I’m owning that seat. I’m coming in. I am getting all of your state law and expectations up to code. We’re looking at job descriptions, we’re looking at pay, we’re looking at market analysis for compensation, benefits. I’m pretty much the HR manager or HR coordinator for the team while I’m there.
And that does obviously include the recruiting, that does include the training, but it becomes more of — going back to that — we’re preventative care, where we’re thinking about the future, we’re thinking about how do we look at 2027 quarter two, quarter three, based off of our revenue, based off of our current team culture, and how do we plan appropriately so that when we do need that next person, they’re coming into a healthy and clear environment. Rather than the ER situation where it’s like, hey, we need to do surgery right now. And though it can happen, though I’ve done that many times, it’s not the ideal situation for the company, because now we’re just kind of in a triage situation.
[14:06] Logan Shinholser: And how much ownership are you putting on it? I’ll give you an example. I had a different business coach back, I don’t know, a handful of years ago, and we would talk and basically the goals that I would set out, he’s like, okay, great, how do we do it? And unbeknownst to me, because I was newer at this stuff, I was setting these unrealistic goals. Where it’d be like, if somebody came to you and said, Bryan, I want to lose weight, and you go, perfect, what do you want to lose? And I’m like, well, I’m about 175 right now. I’d like to be down to about 110 this time next year. And you’re going, great, how do we put a plan together for that? Versus, hold on, you may die if you get down to 110, or that’s going to set a world record for most amount of weight loss. I don’t think that’s realistic.
So are you stepping in as simply the facilitator, going, whatever your goals want to be, I’m here to help, as crazy as it sounds? Or are you also going, all right, well, realistically, this is what we can do, or this is what we should do? And you’re almost putting your foot down as the voice of reason at times.
[15:09] Bryan Williams: Yeah. Let me give a quick differentiator. So I am not a business coach. All of my clients have business coaches, which I’m really thankful for, because I pair really well with what their goals are. However, in HR, you do kind of move as a space of counsel, right? You give that counsel and you give the bad news — which is why it’s really important to have — I shouldn’t say bad news, the real news. It’s really important to have an HR director, manager, whomever, however you want to call it, that has enough humility to follow the shepherd, right, to follow the lead of whomever the owner is, but enough confidence to say, but this may not be the right direction, or this may not be the right decision, or hey, let me help and support you in this decision differently.
So going to your analogy of the fitness — there’s the difference between watching a video, or somebody coming in and saying, hey, run the lap, and then somebody who’s saying, I’m going to run the lap with you. Hey, I noticed that you kind of skipped at that part. Or hey, when you turn this corner, you should change your velocity in this way.
So I move more as a partner where I’m a part of the team. I’m meeting the different staffers, I’m meeting with my clients. My clients call me five, six o’clock in the evening because they want to process through things, because I’m a part of it. I’m engaged differently than maybe a coach would be, who’s just more so kind of telling you where to go. I like to call myself sometimes quarterback of certain departments.
[16:33] Logan Shinholser: And you do it remotely, correct?
[16:37] Bryan Williams: It is remotely. But I would say 90% of the time I do visit my clients at least once a quarter, just to make sure I have that face-to-face contact. We like to do a quarterly meeting. I like to meet with different people. I like to see the projects, meet new hires that have happened, because I do think that face-to-face is important. So I do kind of come up there or go to wherever they are from time to time.
[16:57] Logan Shinholser: And of all the things that you do — we talked about recruiting, we talked about the onboarding — then where do we go from there for the ongoing, I guess, preventative maintenance, if you will? Where do you feel like you are strongest?
[17:10] Bryan Williams: Yeah, I think that operations skill is my strongest skill, mainly because of my history of work. So prior to owning Squirrel Solutions, I oversaw about six different companies in the Nashville area. About 35 members strong, but with the ownership group. And operations being both clear, concise and consistent is really, really important to me, because a lot of the murkiness of business, a lot of the frustrations, is because something wasn’t clear. A lot of the training issues and the retention is because something wasn’t clear. A lot of the HR really happens because operations wasn’t strong and clear for a company.
So I really find myself strong in that area. However, I’ve kind of gotten a name of recruiting pretty well too. I’m pretty great at that. So I do recruit quite a bit for my clients when needed, because I do want them to make sure that when we’re putting people and bringing people into the system, they truly fit what we’re trying to do and grow, and they’re not just a warm body fitting a spot.
[18:11] Logan Shinholser: And would you say things are clear? Like, my wife works for a huge bank. She doesn’t have clear KPIs. Now she’s up until like 2am working on stuff. So clearly she is motivated enough to get the stuff done. But it’s not like they go, okay, by this date, you need to have this as your metric, and this is how we’re going to then compensate you on it.
So when you’re talking about clear understanding of things, is it you’re putting a number on everybody within the company? Is it more of like, are they hitting the core values? How do you then know when you bring somebody into a new organization they are going to be successful, and you’re actually measuring that success so that the owner who hired you goes, Bryan, that was a great move?
[18:58] Bryan Williams: Yeah. You hit on two of the spaces. Culture is important, right? That is vital to make sure that they’re moving as the team expected them to move. And that’s different for each role. A salesperson is going to be very different than a carpenter in what that looks like.
But I do think a number should be placed on every single team member. It doesn’t have to be a huge, very vital or important number, but some type of responsibility, some type of buy-in to say this matters the most. It’s similar to — I’ll even say it like this. You know, I have four little kids and we’re teaching them chores, right? So after dinner, one child cleans the table, one child puts the dishes in, one child puts the chair. You know, they have their different responsibilities. So at the end of that day, that evening, at the end of that night, if we say, hey, was it a good night? Was it a good dinner? We can kind of track it back to culture. Did we find joy in it? Did we have fun with it? But then also effectiveness and efficiency — did everybody do the tasks that they have?
So for me, you will know if you have strong KPIs, you will know if you have strong clarity in your company, if you can look at each person and ask them, hey, did you have a good week? Did you have a good month? And why. Their why is what really showcases: do they know what makes this a good, strong month, week or day for their specific position?
I’ll give you a quick example. It’s not actually in the construction world, but it’s popping into my head. I was working with a cafe, and with this cafe specifically, there was the cashier. And we asked her that question: what makes you have a good day? She said that customers come, they’re happy, and then they get their coffee within a certain amount of time. Great. That sounds right, right? That sounds like a pretty decent why, or what, to making a good day.
The company owner spoke to me: hey, I don’t know if I care about the time that they get their coffee, but I care about if they return, if they repeat, if they have cleanliness in the store or in the place. How many people come back and say, hey, this order wasn’t correct? So their alignment was a little different of what made it successful or not. Neither was, per se, wrong, but they weren’t aligned. So that’s what I mean by clarity — everybody is saying, the owner, the department lead, and the team member are all aligned with what makes this role successful for this day, this week, and this month, or this quarter.
[21:14] Logan Shinholser: So one of the things that I know, at least for me, and I’m sure a lot of your clients deal with it, is the amount of complexity that we add to it. So it’s not that this cashier, it’s either they’re happy and they get their coffee within five minutes. And it’s not the owner, that it’s like they come back and it’s clean. It is: they got their coffee, they’re happy, they came back, they’re clean, they referred their friends. You then figured out how to also work the fryer. You then also — so it’s like you don’t have a very simplistic —
Like, I think in sales, everybody always uses — and I use it with weight loss because it’s the easiest one — you want to lose weight, yes or no? That’s the most simplistic thing. But in reality, there’s so much complexity that we all add, where we’re saying we actually want you to do these 17 different things. And a lot of times they conflict.
So when you step in and you go through that exercise with somebody, how often are you having the owner of the company go, well, I want this project manager to communicate well, to know construction, to know how to manage the project, to know how to do project management software, to also then be resourceful, so if their subs call out, they have other subs? Basically it’s like we’re requiring them to do so many things. How do you typically approach something like that? And tell me if I’m wrong, but I feel like that is a thing that people go through as a business owner.
[22:39] Bryan Williams: Yeah, it’s a thing, but it’s a thing that we don’t have to. I think sometimes simplicity is where we start. Let’s build the foundation. What is the most important thing of this role? Once we’ve mastered that, let’s build upon it, right? And we continue to build, because we’re not expecting — or I’m not expecting — somebody to change overnight. I’m not expecting somebody to change over a week. It’s going to take time.
But if we build a strong layer of foundation where they know exactly how to — using our analogy of the cashier — if every single time she comes in there, she looks and says, okay, is it clean? Is it good? I’m walking the store, I’m walking the restaurant while I’m doing that. And I’ve made sure that I’ve essentially done that foundation. Also add the question: hey, how’s your coffee? Right? Now we’ve added one statement. Now that she’s perfected that first portion — okay, now that she’s asked about their coffee, what are the things that you’re getting? What is the feedback? Oh, they’re saying they wish they had oat milk rather than normal milk. That brings back to the cashier statement: hey, while you’re at the register, ask them those questions, because you kind of are learning through the first statement of being clean, now the second statement of checking in on the client. Now you’re bringing that data into the actual register to say, okay, I know what people think and how they see things, or even where they’re sitting. Hey, by the way, I know that you’re going to put your stuff over there — at 12 o’clock it gets kind of hot, I would recommend getting over there.
Those types of things are built upon that foundation of whatever you think is the most crucial aspect of that job. And a lot of clients that I have, and business owners, we complicate things. We try to put everything at the same priority, where everything is super, super important at every single moment. When in truth, we have one goal. The goal is to make the client happy and to know them. And we have different methods of which we try to do that.
[24:27] Logan Shinholser: Got it. And then with that, going back to that same cashier example — so, okay, great, we can teach somebody, because at a cashier, especially, this level is typically more entry level of stuff. So the expectation — well, tell me if I’m wrong — may not be necessarily that they’re like, oh, how’s your coffee? And I wouldn’t sit over there, by the way, can I get you — like, so you start to almost require somebody where — I mean, even nowadays with Chick-fil-A, it almost feels like when they say “my pleasure,” it’s more like, all right, you didn’t really mean it, you just said the script and I could feel it. You might as well have just said, yeah, don’t worry about it, man. So how much of it is realistic, where you can start small and build upon it, versus you kind of have to call a spade a spade and be like —
[25:15] Bryan Williams: Well, Logan, here’s the thing. We have to go back to that culture thing that I spoke of earlier. We’re hiring the people that will fit that role. There are certain things that I shouldn’t have to train a person on. I want them to come with some of — with entry level roles, that is a culture role. That is all about: do you fit the future of the company? Do you fit the brand of the company? And if you fit those cultural things, I don’t have to really get on you about certain tasks. I do need to explain it. I do need to train it. I need to make sure we’re processing.
And you made a statement earlier about kind of throwing them into the fire as far as training, and I have thoughts on that. But at the end of the day, if you’re hiring the right culture person and you’re training them effectively on the skill, there are things that won’t fall through the gaps, because you already know that this person will catch them.
[26:06] Logan Shinholser: So how often are you going into a business and going, I’ve got to be honest, your culture sucks? Or like, you say these core values, you want it one way, but because you are the fire creator — are you going in and having to kind of just set people straight and be like, look, I don’t think this is necessarily a company thing, I think it’s a you thing?
[26:26] Bryan Williams: Yeah, that’s a fun question that I have to dance with quite often. Of how do I articulate well to — typically it’s an essential person on that team, whether it be the owner or maybe a director or departmental leader, that may be influencing a culture in not a way that we want. And then we have to have that conversation of — this is EOS, I’ll kind of bring this up — a people analyzer. Like, they may fit really great on skill, but are they detrimental to the team’s growth?
I have a project manager right now in Austin, Texas, that he’s been with the team for about seven or eight years. The company’s only been around for about eight or nine. So he’s very crucial to the development of this team. The owner is very aware that this project manager has a bit of an anger issue, that training is hard for him, development is hard for him. So the team under him can’t really grow, because there’s not enough psychological safety in that space to be vulnerable in the spaces that they don’t do well.
So we’re having that kind of discussion now of, hey, as the company owner, if you’re not actively engaging in the culture, somebody’s going to take charge of that culture. And really it goes back to that, you know, me following the shepherd, following the leader. How do you want us to gauge this? Because I can see some routes that this goes negative, and we’ve lost people in that team because of that. And as I’m recruiting, as I’m bringing people on the team, I’m becoming more direct to, hey, this is the type of person that you’re going to be working under — being honest and open in that type of conversation. However, that’s still a problem that we have to address.
So I think company owners, when they’re bringing me into the situation, they’re acknowledging there’s something wrong, they’re acknowledging there is an issue. Now they just need the tools and the strategy of how do we resolve it with the least amount of casualties.
[28:24] Logan Shinholser: Talk to me a bit more about how do you approach change management within an organization. I mean, a lot of this to me is behavioral shifts. How do you get people bought in? Is getting — you know, focusing too much on buy-in versus like, look, these are the numbers. If you don’t hit these numbers — like, I want you to be bought into the sales quota, and if you don’t get bought in, you’re not going to do it. But ultimately it’s like, if you don’t hit the sales quota, we don’t have a job for you. So how do you dance that line of balancing change management and recognizing that people are people, with also going, hey, we got a job to do, let’s get it done?
[29:00] Bryan Williams: Yeah. So whenever I come into a company, I do a people audit. And in my people audit, what I’m trying to gauge is: where do they fall in the culture? What do they see as the culture, separate than what you put on your website? Maybe that is true, but sometimes it’s not. And then where do they fall in the skill?
And after I’ve done that, what I do is I silo different people in my head and in my data into the team, and I say, hey, if I need this type of change, who are going to be my best cheerleaders? Right? If it’s a tech change, if it’s a skill change, I need those people who are respected as the people who have the best skill. So I want to vet with them, I want to process with them. I want them to feel empowered to know that they’re a part of the decision of what’s coming. If it’s a cultural change — hey, we’re showing up late, we’re not giving the customer the best experience ever — then I go to those cultural people and I do the same thing.
But then we come to the point of a decision. And I tell all of my clients: you have to be trusted. I don’t mind being the bad guy, but the owner of the company has to be trusted and respected. And you have to build that. That’s not something that always comes, and sometimes they’ve already lost it by the time I get there. But we have to build that so that when you make a decision that people don’t like, they still trust and believe that you’re doing it for the sake of the company and for the sake of the team.
And that’s really hard. But it’s something that me and the team leaders or the team owner has to really push through. You have to be able to make that decision. True followers of a company will follow you even when you make a poor decision once or twice, or a different decision than they hope for, once or twice.
So you have to have those trends of, hey, I’ve made this decision, I believe in this decision, I want your buy-in in this decision, but give me 30 days, give me six months, give me a year, and then we’ll come back and see did it actually result in what we hoped for. And I think sometimes that circle back also helps with teams, when we don’t just make a decision and then we complain about it for six weeks or six months, but we say, hey, at the point of December 12th, we’re going to come back and meet and see how did it go. And then that gives them a different level of buy-in, because they can then critique or empower the decision that we made.
[31:15] Logan Shinholser: Talk to me a bit more about when you have existing team members and you’re trying to get that change happening. At what point do you go, I can’t teach an old dog new tricks, I think the easiest route is just to replace?
[31:30] Bryan Williams: I don’t always think replace is the right thing, because there will always be a generational thing where sometimes older members, or sometimes newer members, sometimes different life changes with family growth, with passion growth, will happen if you have a team that is strong enough. And this is, in my personal opinion, the benefit and the joy of working with smaller businesses, boutique-type businesses. We don’t have to follow this corporate route of what the next position has to look like.
So right now I’m working with a company up in Illinois and they have a team member that’s been there for quite some time, and he’s nearing retirement, but he’s not quite yet ready. Tech for JobTread is hard for him. Communication things are hard for him to develop. And we’re like, what do we do? Because we’re trying to teach this old dog two tricks. And it’s not that he doesn’t want to. I think that goes back to it too — like, maybe the want. It’s not that he doesn’t want to learn it, but it just takes some time. He makes a lot of errors.
So how do we shift his role to still bring benefit to the team? So we are slowly preparing him to be a trainer, to be one of the onboarding trainers for carpenters. He’s really, really great with the trades. How can he be more a part of the engagement with the trades?
I think sometimes clients that I have, when they’re open to reforming a role that will make sense for that person and the team — and it still has an expectation. You still have to bring profit or bring some type of clarity to the team. So we have to keep that KPI. We can’t just keep people because they’re loyal, but we can create something that makes sense for that person oftentimes.
[33:07] Logan Shinholser: So you’re kind of shifting the role. Because I had this, I don’t know, five years ago, and it was this whole idea of process over people, in the sense — and as you can imagine, it did not land well with the rest of the team when I would make that statement. But it was all about, look, just because you’re here and you can do this one thing really well, I may not have a role for you. It needs to be around the process of how this stuff needs to go, and how does it benefit the overall organization? That’s the most important piece. And then can we fit you into it?
And it sounds like this is a little bit more of — not necessarily what’s your best skill set, but it still has to make sense here. Where if you look to this person and said, look, I’ve got to be honest, the number one issue that we have as a company right now is we’ve got to get everything into JobTread. And if that is not this person’s role, it may make sense to then separate. You’re not necessarily saying we’re going to completely shift everything around it. It’s more of, this is what we have to have, that’s what we want you to do. If you can fit it, perfect. If not, can we find something else that’s still beneficial and it works out in their working genius, if you will?
[34:14] Bryan Williams: Yeah. And I agree with what you’re saying. Process is important, and I’m not pushing back against that at all. I think what I’m trying to say is open and honest communication is vital. This person up in Illinois that I’m speaking of, he is aware of this conversation. He knows that we’re struggling through where do you go.
And I think oftentimes we have these conversations behind doors rather than with the person, because we’re concerned they’re going to quit, they’re going to complain. Rather than saying, there is a way to have this conversation effectively where they become a part of the think tank. And I like to say to my clients, allow an adult to be an adult. Allow them to be an adult. Let’s have the conversation and see if they respond. If we’re going to let them go anyway, why not give them the chance to redeem this opportunity and say, hey, what if I do this now?
With all that being said, Logan, I don’t say let’s change the whole process for one individual. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying through this process, you make your case to whomever that person is, to how you can make this work. And we’ll see if that makes sense. And if it doesn’t make sense, then let’s at least leave in a space of respect — that I gave you that opportunity, that we’ve processed through it.
And I think one of the most common things that I see in a lot of the clients that I work with, or potential clients that I work with, is that hesitation of having the real conversation that needs to be heard with whomever that adult is. And even with this specific example: what if he had this conversation three years ago? Would we be in the same situation that we are in now if we would have told him, hey, three years ago when we implemented JobTread, we need you to be pushing forward, this is the future of the company? But because of the kindness — or I will say niceness, because I think those are two different words — the niceness of the company, owners not wanting to force an old dog to do new tricks, now we’re in a situation where we’re like, hey, we have to do something, this is not progressing. We’ve had to make hires to kind of resolve some of his deficiencies. So it’s costing the company now, because we didn’t have that open and honest conversation three years ago.
[36:17] Logan Shinholser: And how much of this would you say is niceness versus you’re just operating out of fear?
[36:23] Bryan Williams: That’s semantics right there. You can choose however you want to use it. I do think fear is a huge factor, and we cover it with niceness. We think being nice is the best route. And specifically with me, with my team, with my family, with my friends, I believe kindness delivers truth as well. It delivers truth as well. And it does it with compassion, it does it with grace, but it still does it. It doesn’t run away from that truth that we need to give.
So, you know, again, that goes to strategy. It goes to having a culture that trusts the ownership, that knows that my goal is not to harm you, but it is to push forward this engine that we’re going for. And I want you to be a part. However, you have to make sure it makes sense each year that we do this.
[37:03] Logan Shinholser: Yeah, there was — I forget the name of the book, it’s escaping me right now, but I’ve referenced it several times. In the very first chapter they talk about — basically, she was like, yeah, I was a manager and there was this one person that was super nice, really liked him a lot, but their work product sucked. Radical Candor. Kim Scott.
[37:21] Bryan Williams: Yeah, Kim Scott.
[37:21] Logan Shinholser: Okay, I keep getting that one and Crucial Conversations mixed up. But it basically talked about that exact thing of, their work product sucked. And they finally said, sorry, we’ve got to let you go, the work product sucked. And that person was so mad, because he was like, why did nobody tell me this? Like, I could have at least — maybe you tried to fix it and it didn’t work. But basically it was this whole frustration around it.
And that, for me, it really helped shape how I’ve approached a lot of this stuff. Where it used to be like, if I bring this up, are they going to be mad at me? Are they going to be scared? Are they then going to quit and say, fine, screw it, you build this website, or you remodel this kitchen on your own, I’m out of here. And I’ve kind of had to learn more about — people want to do good, if you will. It’s not necessarily like, well, I better screw them before they screw me. But that book was super helpful for that stuff.
[38:11] Bryan Williams: And to that point, Logan, I think it goes back to that preventative maintenance. You should always, as a company owner, as a department leader, find intentional times to build psychological safety and belonging with your team. So that when hard moments come up, all of that bank that you’ve been building in them — they trust it, they believe it, they hear you. Their ears are open, their hearts are open. Whatever it is that you need to say is received better. Because it’s different. Me giving correction to my child and some random neighbor giving correction to my child will feel different. It can be the same exact direction, but one, they have a connection with, one they have a trust with, one they have safety with. The other — like, I don’t know if you’re here to harm.
So with my clients, one of the biggest things I also say is make sure that we’re building that time to build, again, that psychological safety and that sense of belonging, so that they feel that the team is being considered not only when it’s good, but also when the bad times come we can still have those open and honest conversations.
[39:12] Logan Shinholser: How do you do that, though, in a realistic way? Because I don’t think Elon Musk is out there building psychological safety with all of his employees. So how does somebody who’s not naturally a nurturer, if you will — maybe I’m off mindset-wise around this — but how do you do that?
[39:29] Bryan Williams: Yeah. Elon Musk also doesn’t have a small business, so I have to add that, you know — big corporation. I don’t know if this should be the reference that I use, but there’s a reference in scripture with Moses. If you know the story, Moses is over Israel during some of the biblical times. And Jethro, which is his father-in-law, says you need to create governments, somewhat like smaller subcategories of people, where you’re then tasking those people to do those same things.
So kind of translating that into our industry: the department head should be doing that, right? So that means if you are a design manager or production manager, are you spending time with your production managers or your project managers? Are you spending time with your drafters? Are you spending time with your estimators? Whomever is under your purview, spending time with them. And then the owner, he or she should be spending time with the production manager, he or she should be spending time with the design manager, so that that trickle effect will happen. So that when the carpenter is making a mistake, it’s not the owner who’s coming to them to talk, it’s their project manager who’s coming to them to talk. Because it seems like the project manager can handle that three to five people. So that’s where that psychological safety has — and you have to task those different things to the different roles that are responsible for that flock.
[40:45] Logan Shinholser: That just sounds like so much effort. Like, I get it, on paper it’s like, you do it as the owner to your direct reports, which are the managers, and the managers have to go down. But that’s now like, do you then have to babysit? And I know that’s not the right word, but —
[40:58] Bryan Williams: I don’t think that. And I’ll give a more manageable experience. You know, if I don’t know how many children you have directly, but I have four children. If I had 12 children, that’s a lot. To the four children that I have, I can give them time. I can create systems. For instance, with my children, I have three girls and a boy. Each weekend, every Saturday morning, one of my daughters and I are going out on a date. On the last Saturday of the month, my wife and my son go out on a date. We are building the structure with the amount of children that we have. Things that are not — we’re not being sentimental. We just know every Saturday morning I’m doing this, right?
So the same thing can happen with the project manager or with a designer. Hey, I have four people on my team. In the span of a month, I need to make sure I make some type of intentional moment with them, whether that be an email — hey, I haven’t seen you in a few days, just checking in, seeing how you feel. That small thing, a handwritten note, small things like that, that may take five minutes of our time, that builds that belonging and that psychological safety.
Another way of building psychological safety is being vulnerable yourself, being open and honest. Hey, I made a mistake. That statement to somebody who reports to you gives them comfort to say, I can also make a mistake.
So I think going back to the statement of owners, we sometimes get overwhelmed. It’s very simple. We don’t have to take on the world. We just have to take on the portion that we were given. And unless you have a team of 12 people under you, then you probably can manage it. And if you do have a team of 12 people under you, find those one or two people that are maybe the key leaders, and then have them be the people responsible for the other 10 people on that team. So you still build that system up that allows for everybody to be known, seen, and heard.
[42:39] Logan Shinholser: How much of this do you need to have built out before you should go back out and try to hire to put out whatever the fires you’re dealing with are?
[42:47] Bryan Williams: I don’t think you have to wait for that. I think you have to just be honest in the recruiting process. You have to just be honest about where you are strong and where you’re not. It’s similar to, you know, where is your unique proposition, is what people will say. Oftentimes this is where I’m unique in the greatness. But because you’re coming into this specific culture, I want to make sure I’m interviewing for the right person that can handle a disorganized manager or a direct manager.
I’m recruiting right now as well for somebody up in Mena, Arkansas, and the conversation that they’re open about is that that project manager is quite direct to his carpenters, and they don’t stay around because they can’t handle that pressure. I don’t like that. We’ll fix that one day. But we still need a person. We can’t stop. We still need a person to come in and do that work. So as I’m interviewing and processing, I’m vetting through the reality of what the company needs in this moment, with the hopes that you’ll be able to transform as we also grow in the company.
[43:43] Logan Shinholser: And how honest are people in the hiring process? We have started to shift way more into that, where we even set up — we have a practical, that during our interview process you have to go through a practical. And the practical is not a generic scenario. It is: here’s an exact problem that we are dealing with right now. I want you to go out and solve it, or talk about it, or basically show how this thing would go based off of a real life thing.
When you’re going into an organization, are people typically, in their interview process or their hiring process, are they open and honest around what the scenario really is? Or is it more of just, let’s bring somebody in and they’ll figure out where all the skeletons are when they get here?
[44:24] Bryan Williams: Yeah, it goes back to the niceness. A lot of people are nice. They’re nice in their interviews, they’re nice in their recruiting process. They’re not giving the truth in the process so that we can know if this person is going to stay. So they get the new hire because they sold a really great polished company, and then the retention is affected, because that person says in 60 days and 120 days, hey, this is not what I anticipated, this is not what I expected. If they even give you any information — they may just leave.
So what I try to warn my clients is, if we’re not honest now, they’re going to find out. It’s like marrying someone. You can date them all day long, but once they start living in the home with you, they’re going to find out. So let’s be honest before the marriage starts, so that we don’t waste time once it’s started, that we’re revealing things at that moment.
Now does that mean we have to reveal all of the skeletons in the closet? Not necessarily. But we do need to give a glimpse, or at least a little summary, of what they’re coming into, to ensure that they first trust us, because they’ll come in knowing that this company is honest. But then also, am I really going to be the best fit? And I would rather you disqualify yourself now than me spend 30 to 60 days onboarding you and then you leave and I have to start this cycle again. So if you want to disqualify — yeah, it’s not the best for me to see that, but I would rather that now, when we’ve not invested money into you and your development, than later.
[45:39] Logan Shinholser: Talk to me a bit more about the onboarding. How structured does it need to be? I’m sure it’s role specific, it’s different, but how much is it trial by fire versus we’re going to map out every 30 minutes on your calendar for the first 90 days? What do you propose?
[45:55] Bryan Williams: Yeah, so I remember when I first started doing this, I mapped out every single hour on their calendar. And that was not realistic. It did not make sense. It was stressful to the new hire.
[46:07] Logan Shinholser: You will go to the bathroom at 11:30.
[46:09] Bryan Williams: Yeah, I was putting in moments like, hey, this is your lunch break. It was just a bit overwhelming for that person. Simultaneously, I don’t lean to the other option either, of just trial by fire. How do you know that they’re succeeding? Which goes back to that clarity.
I really actually go through this philosophy — it’s called the gradual release of responsibility. And they follow three different steps. I break it down into four, but the initial method is three steps. It’s: I do, we do, and then you do. Very simple. I think it’s simple to a toddler, it’s simple to a client. And we can kind of fill in the blank of what that looks like.
So the “I do” is pretty simple and self-explanatory. I will show you, I will do all of the assignment, whether that be an estimator or a designer or whomever it is. I’m going to have you watch me a certain amount of times. I tell people that my number is minimum three. That’s a trend. When you do things three times, you start building trends. So I want them to see what my trends are of the “I do,” where they’re seeing, they’re asking questions, but they’re not touching anything.
A lot of people skip that phase right there, because they’ll do it one time and then they’ll say, okay, you got it, can you do it now? And then we call the person out in a month or two when they’re making mistakes, but they didn’t get a thorough ability just to watch and monitor. Some people just look, some people take notes, some people like recordings. Whatever it may be. But give them that “I do” stage.
Then you move to the “we do.” I personally break them off into two spaces. The “we do” first phase for me is, I will still do it and you will help, right? So then I’ll start processing through an estimate, and I’ll say, hey, what would you do here? Okay, cool. Because you’ve seen me do it three times now, minimum. Now you’re seeing me kind of still doing it. I’m leading the discussion, but I’m asking you, what would you do here, or did I do this right? Certain statements like that allow them to be engaged in the conversation of the “we do,” but you’re watching.
Then we switch roles. This is where the training kind of shifts, where they start doing and I start helping. So as they’re processing through things, I may say, hey, did you remember to do this? Hey, did you notice this part? Oh, man, what if this happened? I’m kind of putting a little bit of small hurdles in the process so that I can see how they’re thinking and how they’re walking through the process, and where they get nervous, or where the bottleneck happens in their process.
And then the final stage is I pretty much watch them. They do the whole process, and all I’m doing is watching. I’m engaging if needed. But that kind of takes us back to the “we do” together. But I’m really just watching and analyzing: are they moving in a fashion that I am pleased with? And we do, again, minimum three times for each of those sections.
Now, a lot of my clients will say, well, what happens after that? We rinse and repeat. If you notice that, hey, they’re doing 80% of their job right, but 20% isn’t right, we analyze: where do we need to start? Do we need to show them again, or do we just need to help them again? And we go through that process throughout the engagement of those first 90 days, until we feel that they have truly processed through every aspect of their job.
If you do that often enough, you’ll start having data. And if you have data, then you can say, generally speaking, they have to go through this seven times of the “I show you,” right? Or generally speaking, a good draftsman can go through this four times. And at that fourth time, if they’ve not done this, I see that they’re actually a little below average on whom I have hired in the past. So if you do that often enough with certain positions, you start getting a rhythm of knowing, how do I break out this onboarding process and this training process for anything that we come into?
[49:50] Logan Shinholser: And when you’re thinking about this for, let’s say, a role where it’s like, you’re going to shadow me three times and it’s an extensive process — it’s not like, hey, I’m just closing the books or something, that’s more of a finite thing. Let’s say it’s a project manager and you’re doing custom homes. So are you saying, great, I want you to follow me through the full process on this custom home three times, which you may only do three projects a year? So at that point you’re basically just shadowing me for a full year before we start to do “we do”?
Or are there situations where it’s like, I’m just going to show you the full thing on one, or we’re going to do this initial kickoff meeting three times? I guess I’m trying to understand, when do you know this was enough? Because we just don’t have that many at-bats at it.
[50:41] Bryan Williams: No, that’s a good one. And in the industry that we work in, we do post-mortems, right? So that gives a really, really good stopping place.
I’ll give an example of a company down in Brentwood, Tennessee, with their estimator, because I think this kind of falls into that space where estimating, you don’t really know if you’ve done a good job until the end of the job, right? You don’t know if my number was right.
So with this onboarding process, this company was really good at keeping post-mortems and their archive lists together, which was a positive to their onboarding experience. So we wanted this specific estimator who was onboarded to go through 12 jobs. That’s just the number that we decided. We had never done this before, so we don’t know if it was going to work out or not.
The first three jobs were going to be archived jobs, where they were going to watch what the previous estimator — he was the owner, the previous estimator — what he had done, and they walked and they just studied it. That’s all they had to do. Study. Report your findings. What did you notice? How did it feel? Oh, let’s look at the post-mortem. How did they end up? That was all they did. So that was somewhat of a completion moment.
Then we did the “we do it together.” Same thing. We had him walk with this specific client, because an estimate isn’t necessarily a sale. So they were able to do estimates that weren’t necessarily translated to production jobs, but they were able still to process through it. So through that, the owner would do an estimate. He did about, I think, two or three a week. So he chose the two or three that were complex for that month and he said, let’s do that together. So he did the same process. We don’t know what that’s going to be, but I know what you’re thinking now. Like, I get to know how you’re thinking through this estimate. Maybe where you overshot, where you undershot. Why didn’t you remember this line item here?
And then we continue. Now this process is only what, six or seven months old. We haven’t completed a job that he’s actually done an estimate for, but we know the data is saying that he’s going to be better on track than someone that didn’t do any of this process. And when we do the post-mortem — or autopsy, whatever you call it — we’re going to go right back to this situation and say, hey, how did it actually line up? Okay, cool. Now let’s make sure we make those adjustments here.
[52:42] Logan Shinholser: So it’s almost like — I’m just thinking from a project management standpoint — the “I do,” if you don’t do that many projects, you could give them almost like, hey, here’s JobTread, look through this one person’s account. I want you to notice and study basically the estimate. Now you can see the margins, now you can see what the client communication is. So you’re almost giving just historical data to the person to say, hey, maybe it’s not three, maybe it’s really 10. But we do have 10 projects, and that’s enough data that you should start to see on your own the same trends that you would see as if we were doing three in person.
[53:17] Bryan Williams: Exactly. And for those people who are listening that may say, well, I don’t have the historical data — use JobTread or BuilderTrend or whatever you use. Use that to make a pseudo job. Make a fake job and have them measure, have them process through your building, your office, their home. We can be creative in how we do this.
Every one of my clients — I can’t say every client, but every one of my clients has an office space. Let’s think about the future of this office space. What if we wanted to remodel here? What would that look like? Give that to the estimator, give that to the project manager. Let’s build out a pseudo schedule for that. And that’s another way of practicing. Okay, now we’ve done that, let’s do your home. Do you feel comfortable with measuring out your home and doing the same process? And let’s just be creative, because yeah, we can’t all fit the 10-year organized company, but we can make it work for where we are.
[54:06] Logan Shinholser: I love that, because it’s like getting creative where it’s not hamstrung now, it is effort. And we’ve done this before when we’ve hired, like, video. Where it’s like part of the application process is you have to actually submit a video application of yourself. And that shows us first, can you film, can you edit? But then a big part of what we also wanted them to do was know how to interview. So part of the interview process for them was they had to role play with us interviewing, and we give them kind of crap answers. Like, hey, tell me, why did you get your space remodeled? And it’s like, I just didn’t like it. And if they’re like, great, let’s move on to the next thing, you kind of knew, maybe they’re not the best interview style.
So I like that idea of just, it doesn’t have to be you do it live on the job every time. You can create an environment that allows for it. But again, I guess you still have to as an owner have the willingness to then go through that, because it’s the ounce of prevention’s worth a pound of cure side of things. But you’ve got to be willing to put the ounce in.
[55:01] Bryan Williams: Yeah. And the willingness is, what are you motivated by? Do you want to do well in this company? That by itself should motivate you to say, hey, I have the willingness to try this, to see how it can result in a long-lasting company that I have.
[55:13] Logan Shinholser: Love it. And last question around all this stuff. When it comes to the ongoing — so you’ve gone through the initial hiring, then you go through onboarding, and assuming we had the right person with the right onboarding, how do you keep people, in your opinion, not fresh, but motivated and engaged at work? Because at some point the honeymoon period goes away, and now it’s like, great, you’ve got to intrinsically love something. So are there things that you are focusing on from an HR or from an ops standpoint to keep the team rolling the way that they should be?
[55:50] Bryan Williams: Yeah. So, in the performance reviews — and I always recommend people to do performance reviews at least twice a year. Four times is great, but it’s sometimes unrealistic. Once I don’t think is significant enough to show a change. But if you do it twice a year and you can set those days — a lot of my clients will do January and July as kind of those phases for them.
In the process of the performance review, at the end section, I try to make sure we push for a rock or goal over the next three months or six months. What is something that would make you excited to come in on Monday, and how will that help us get to the company goal of the year?
So there’s two different rocks or goals that you can put in. You can put one in that the company owner or the department lead enforces on the person. And I’m not against that. Sometimes you just need to. For instance, with the Illinois client that I was speaking of, one of those was learning JobTread, studying JobTread. That wasn’t something he was excited for. There wasn’t a lot of buy-in for it. However, it was something that we needed.
So I’m not against giving goals that are not always favorable to the team member. But when you do have that opportunity to give them something like, hey, what if we created a marketing team? Right now they’re creating commercials with their clients, so that when we have testimonials, it’s not just a written testimonial, but it’s a recorded one. They were excited about that rock. They wanted to do it. I didn’t initially think that that was a great idea, but now I’m like, hey, but that buy-in gave you a freshness to come in on Monday and be excited for me to hold you accountable in that space.
And the thing about it is, with companies, we have to remember the goal is to have these people around for many, many years. So for one quarter they focus on something they love, and that gives them a freshness for the next quarter. It’s worth it, because the next quarter maybe you’ll give them something they don’t love as much, but they’ll appreciate that their mind was engaged the quarter prior. And sometimes we think we have to put every single rock on them — everything that’s so important in quarter four or in quarter two. And it’s like, no, that’s not the case. Let’s just save that one for the next one and give them some exciting work to do that they want to have buy-in on.
[57:57] Logan Shinholser: Love it. Because I think I definitely put all the rocks very quickly, and I’m like, all right, everything’s a priority, and Q4 is coming up, so get ready. So yeah, I feel that one. So cool. Bryan, how do people get in contact with you? What’s the best place to go to learn more about you and how you could specifically help them with their business?
[58:17] Bryan Williams: Yeah, it’s pretty simple. Website is www.solvethesquirrel.com. I love doing discovery calls. I love processing through where your pain is, where you’re trying to go in the company, and see if there’s a route that doesn’t cost anybody anything. It’s just 45 minutes to an hour of just chatting a little bit about where you are and where you’re trying to get to. So that’s my first recommendation, definitely — is just to go to the website, look at some of the testimonials, look at some of the experiences, but then also schedule some time to talk with me.
[58:47] Logan Shinholser: Love it. Cool. Bryan, thanks for coming on here. And I guess it’s funny, I had a list of questions to go through, it’s mostly like hiring a salesperson, but I think this was way better. So this was awesome. I appreciate you coming on.
[58:58] Bryan Williams: Thank you so much for having me.
[59:00] Logan Shinholser: Cool. Thanks, man.
