Episode 90
Meet them where they are at!
Have you ever wondered why someone in the blue collar space might seek out a business coach?
One of the fundamental reasons highlighted in this episode is the need for an outside perspective and influence in businesses that often have a limited support staff and a flat organizational structure. This lack of external perspective can lead to challenges in various areas such as pricing, profitability, process inefficiencies, and people management.
The episode also illustrates through anecdotes and real-life examples how business coaches help propel the growth of blue-collar businesses. These examples showcase the tangible impact that coaching can have on improving processes, increasing productivity, and driving revenue and profitability.
The discussion emphasizes the importance of meeting business owners where they are, understanding their specific challenges, and working to create tailored solutions and actionable plans.
Additionally, the episode emphasizes the value of business coaches as connectors and referral opportunities, as they often have a robust network and industry expertise that can benefit the businesses they work with. Overall, the episode provides a compelling insight into the critical role of business coaching in supporting the growth and success of blue-collar businesses.
Steve and Brad convey the message that business coaching isn't just about soft skills or abstract concepts like mission and vision – it's about understanding the unique challenges blue-collar businesses face and providing actionable, results-driven support.
Highlights:
We share real-life examples and success stories from their own experiences working with blue collar businesses, including dramatic increases in revenue and profits, as well as solving productivity issues through streamlined processes and cross-training.
Steve and Brad talk about the importance of meeting their clients where they are and guiding them through a step-by-step process to address their specific business challenges, stressing the need for accountability and support.
The episode highlights the value of having a business coach who can hold a company accountable, provide perspective, and connect business owners with the right network of professionals, allowing them to focus on the "how" while the coach finds the "who".
Brad and Steven encourage listeners to be cautious when seeking coaching, training, or education, and to trust their instincts in finding the right solutions for their business, as well as engaging with the podcast by liking, sharing, rating, and reviewing to contribute to the show's improvement.
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Brad Herda:
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Transcript
Welcome to Blue Collar BS, a podcast that busts the popular myth that we can't find good people highlighting how the different generations of today, the boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z are redefining work so that the industrial revolution that started in the US stays in the US.
Brad Herda [:Welcome back to the Blue Collar BS podcast with your, your co host, Brad and Steve. And Steve, welcome, Steve. Here we are today in, I don't know, whatever month it is, January here, the blizzard of 2024, as we see here going through this, and we got playoff weekend here in the NFL. We got all sorts of things going on. Playoffs, playoffs. By the time this airs, we'll already have a Super bowl champion and we're in the middle of spring training and getting ready for baseball by the time this show, right. So, Steve, what are we going to go through today, my friend? What's happening?
Steven Doyle [:What's happening? So we get a lot of questions when we're out talking with prospective clients and whatnot. Maybe we're out networking and at least for me, and we talk preshow, right. Is why do people hire business coaches in the blue collar space? Why do people need someone to come alongside them or help them out in a business?
Brad Herda [:Are you asking me rhetorically or are you asking me specifically rhetorically?
Steven Doyle [:Let's go rhetorical first and then we'll dive into some specifics. So rhetorical. We joke around, right? We joke around. Not necessarily why us, but why a business coach? Why does somebody need to have someone help with that level of in their business?
Brad Herda [:Well, usually it's the opportunity to just have outside perspective and outside influence, right? Most, many, I shouldn't say most many blue collar businesses do not have a massive support staff or a high level executive. Right. They're pretty flat.
Steven Doyle [:Correct.
Brad Herda [:You got the owner, you might have a financial person, you may have an HR person here and there, and then you got all your employees. So it's pretty flat and usually it's very tight knit. It was friends of it's people you knew. It's different things because you ran it as a hobby. In many cases, particularly on the trade side, started out as I did it, I did this, I hired my buddy. Next thing you know, I got his budy's buddy. And you get a very closed window of what's going on and you do what you've always done because it's comfortable, right. And being pushed outside of comfort when you sit there and go, and this is always my favorite one.
Brad Herda [:When I talk to manufacturers and trades folks, when they go through their quilt process. And they go, oh, yeah. We put a 40% markup on material, and we call it good. Okay. So you put a 40% markup. So it's material. Labor times 1.4. I said, okay.
Brad Herda [:And do you get money at the end? And they go, no, we usually don't. Yeah, because you're putting a markup on it, not a margin, and you're not doing it. You're just making it simple and easy. And it was great when you didn't have. You're doing it for yourself. You could get away with it. You got employees and you got other things. Yeah.
Brad Herda [:You can't do that anymore. You're going to go broke or out of business very quickly.
Steven Doyle [:Isn't that weird how often we actually see that? Once we are engaging with our clients, and it's just like, this isn't going to work, and no wonder you're stressed and you're overwhelmed and really just not bringing anything home. There's nothing left at the end.
Brad Herda [:Yeah, because we forgot that we got to go, oh, my batteries for my makita or Milwaukee tool or Dewalt or whatever you're using. I got to get a new battery pack. And there's $204, $800 shot to hell for everything on the site. Yeah. We forgot to account for those overhead costs in our structure moving forward.
Steven Doyle [:So now that we got the rhetorical question out of the way, what have you found with your businesses that have reached out and contacted you? What have you found to be the reasons they're reaching out to you? And these are the ones that you've got booked, you've helped them out.
Brad Herda [:For those that are listening, usually it comes through a. Most of the time, it's not direct. It's usually from somebody else. It's usually from their insurance person or the financial advisor or the banker or somebody along those lines that the owner went to that individual looking for support and guidance and said, yeah, we're not getting into your business that deep here. Talk to Brad or talk to Steve or talk to whomever is that referral opportunity. And then that's usually how it goes. Most of the time, very few are direct reach outs.
Steven Doyle [:Right. So once you've had the conversations and everything is they've signed you on for, you reflect back on it, what have they signed you on for? What are we working on?
Brad Herda [:That's a loaded question.
Steven Doyle [:You're right. It is.
Brad Herda [:It is a very loaded question. So it's meeting them where they're at. At the end of the day, most blue collar owners, they got problems and they got them, and it's there. And you're not going to start with mission, vision, values and all that fun stuff and all the soft things that really, really matter. You got to come at them and get them through a different fashion, a different way, and bring them into the conversations when it's appropriate. If the first problem is we're not making money at our weld and fab business, well, let's figure out how we can make money in our weld and fab business. Are we underpriced? Are we undervalued? Let's look at an industry benchmark report. Let's look at a lot of different things to see where the gaps might lie and understand what you're trying to accomplish.
Brad Herda [:The biggest thing is just creating a picture and a vision, hence the name vision forward, a vision for them to look forward instead of always being stuck in the rearview mirror. And that's really, I think both of our roles is moving organizations towards moving them ahead instead of always looking backwards. And we can get stuck. We can get stuck in that blame game of all these one time onlys that happen? Well, all those one time only happen for various reasons, usually not just because it was only a one time.
Steven Doyle [:Yes. What I found with the clients that I'm working with in the trade space, very similar to what you said. You're meeting them where they're at, and they're looking for something very specific to help be solved with, whether it's their process, it's their people or their tech. For me, that's usually where we come in and walk alongside them. And typically it's more on the process and the people side, where on the process side, we're not operating on all of our cylinders. Everything we do, we tend to be driving the struggle bus. We like the triangle tires on the bus. We get enough momentum.
Steven Doyle [:We get to go over the point and then slam back down again. And it's like not all the departments are working together, talking together. So we just get the sheer momentum of the bus moving again and then boom, again. Right. So the visualization, right, we understand that visualization. And just about the time when we start rounding those points off, and now you got a hex and you start getting a little bit more momentum, and all of a sudden everything starts getting round again. You start getting people aligned on the bus. And then we get the bright idea, hey, let's change something.
Steven Doyle [:And these tires are too round.
Brad Herda [:Let's put triangles back on again. Let's get these triangle tires back on.
Steven Doyle [:Because those, it's like, this is what we know. We kind of like this. And we're like, no, right?
Brad Herda [:When the noise goes away, what are we supposed to. I can spend an entire weekend with my family and not have to worry about it. Why does this feel weird? This is not normal. This is not right. And working through those emotional changes and working through that frustration and going and guilt, a lot of times it's a lot of guilt of saying, hey, I'm taking the weekend off, but yet my guys are working. Okay, cool. Why is that a problem?
Steven Doyle [:Right, exactly. They got vacation time. Why not you, right?
Brad Herda [:You put all the energy in, you put all the risk in. It's your investment, your money, and you need to get a return on your time and energy in your business as well. And that's where there's usually a lot of struggle and there's money to be found. And I'm going to share this live. And we talked about this preshow, so I'm going to share this. Two things. Yes, true stories, 100% true stories. Will protect the innocent, keep them guilty.
Steven Doyle [:True story.
Brad Herda [:A true story.
Steven Doyle [:Not made up. All right.
Brad Herda [:Not made up. Client calls. They had their workman's comp audit, and it was going to be like $17,000 of hey, pay me now, otherwise we're canceling your insurance. After they got their audit taken care of, that particular business owner just did what they were told, went through it, and no big deal. Found out that they were completely, 100% incorrectly classified for all their staff and in their industry, territory and industry code. Got that resolved. Got that resolved with the state through an insurance friend of mine. So I said, who is a workman comp expert, said, here you go.
Brad Herda [:Go look at that. Made the connection. They took care of the problem. Poof. 17k. Just cash money. Just show me the money. The fun and the excitement when those things happen is spectacular.
Brad Herda [:Same individual, same business had a failure for some newly installed product. The initial quote from the installer was going to be like eight grand. We had a conversation about it, did some things, did some research, and now it's being taken care of underneath warranty, another eight grand. So it's like, here you go. And that's part of it, because if you always do what you always done, if you don't know what to do, if you don't know what's going on, another client just recently bought a building. The building that he's in is going to go underneath a land contract sale versus a direct standard closing purchase. The bank called him. He's supposed to close on January 15.
Brad Herda [:The bank called him and said, yeah, we're not doing your deal. On January 10. I said, so, first of all, who called you? And he's like, it's just the general banker, the commercial banker person. I said, so somebody saw something on a checkbox somewhere they didn't like and said, no, we're not going to do it. You need to get on the phone or go down to the bank and talk to the bank president. Talk to the bank president. He explained all the details, explained all things. The loan is going to close now.
Steven Doyle [:Weird.
Brad Herda [:It's having somebody there to be available for you that isn't the employee, that isn't your spouse, that isn't somebody that you can have those conversations with and have ideas and brainstorm some things.
Steven Doyle [:Right?
Brad Herda [:And that is the biggest impact for most of my clients, is that you're there as a resource to connect the dots and challenge.
Steven Doyle [:Right.
Brad Herda [:My role is to be a pain in the ass in a polite, kind way, but to be the pain in the ass for them and challenge them and get them to look at things differently.
Steven Doyle [:Right?
Brad Herda [:Yes.
Steven Doyle [:That's awesome.
Brad Herda [:Now you have some spectacular story as well. You have a massive growth story. I do share some of those things that you have done with one of your clients that have taken them basically 1011 x on net profit ish net profit.
Steven Doyle [:Well, it's a little more now.
Brad Herda [:30, 35.
Steven Doyle [:So how it happened, essentially, we were going back and forth. We had connected on LinkedIn, and we were just talking, sharing different ideas about stuff that could potentially be going on. It was just an initial questions, hey, these are some things that could potentially be blowing some stuff out, blowing profit out of your business. And through a couple of questions, we came in, we had meetings, sat down, said, okay, this is what we want to achieve between the two business owners. And we essentially started working together. That was roughly four years ago. And just to protect innocence, we'll just talk finances. Right now.
Steven Doyle [:They were bringing home, at the end of the day, they were bringing home $200,000 a year is what they were bringing home, paying themselves that amount. When we first started working with them, as we kind of joked around in the beginning of the show, they were marking up their jobs, put ten points on the job, didn't necessarily factor in all their overhead and everything. And at the end of the day, they were essentially just getting by, and that was break even business.
Brad Herda [:Welcome to construction. Yay. Pretty much.
Steven Doyle [:Pretty much, right? So we had a lot of conversations about how we estimate what we're paying, what the overhead is. And year over year, we started making some changes. We looked at where is it we want to change ahead as far as the customers we want to support, what is the business we really want to be in? So having those hard conversations, and as Brad said, yeah, sometimes we are a pain in the ass because we're just asking those questions.
Brad Herda [:Do you really want to be windows, doors and more? Or should you just be windows and doors and be really good at it?
Steven Doyle [:Right. So the next year, after 200,000.
Brad Herda [:They.
Steven Doyle [:Went up about to the. They increased in revenue. Ten x, so they went from to about 10 million in revenue and their profits went up to 600,000. As we were working the plan, things started to change. They continued to increase. And now we're starting year five. So year four just ended, right? Year four, year five, something like that. Their revenue is now north of 45 million.
Steven Doyle [:And to protect the innocents, their profit went up quite a bit.
Brad Herda [:It's a ridiculous number, folks.
Steven Doyle [:It's a ridiculous number.
Brad Herda [:It's insane. But there were some very strategic. So here's the thing. Yes. Part of that is understanding how to go out and execute and have somebody by your side that is willing to push you every day to continue those conversations and not take no for the answer. I just happen to be wearing an orange shirt. That might be somebody that you're doing a lot of work with in the orange world, from a supplier perspective, customer perspective. Right.
Brad Herda [:And how many no's did it take before you finally got it all put together and found the right package to do the right thing to make that contract work and happen? Too often, we take the first step of the no. That's okay. Well, I tried. Well, fuck, I tried. You made a phone call and you got to know from a secretary or from a first person, really? No, we need to go beyond that if that's what you want to do and where you want to be, and that's the ideal. Go make it happen. I don't want to get all wishy washy and foo fooey, but if you believe it's going to happen, it's going to happen.
Steven Doyle [:Absolutely.
Brad Herda [:Some way, shape or form. If you believe you're going to be a $30 million organization, it may not be tomorrow. You're not going to go from $100,000 to 30 million overnight, because you'll implode at the end of the day, but you're going to go from $100,000 to 30 million over five years, eight years, ten years, if that's where you want to go. But no, there's a lot of energy and effort that needs to go along that way. And just had that conversation with a customer the other day saying, hey, you're here. You've told me you want to go there. You've also told me you have all these other family aspirations and things going on, and all of a sudden, are you sure you want to still go where you said you wanted to go? Because if you do, there's going to be some sacrifices on the other side of that, because right now, unfortunately, you are the business. And until we put people in place and get them up to speed and train and do the things, that hiring process takes time and energy.
Brad Herda [:And if you're good here, then stay here. Perfectly okay. Your decision, not mine. You get to decide, but don't tell me. Well, I wish we were twice the size and not want to do the work to get there. That's no bueno.
Steven Doyle [:It's quite a lot of work. So I'll give you another example. So, one of the gcs I was working with, they actually had productivity issues with their team. Yeah, weird. With their team produce processing invoices on an extremely large contract, north of 50 million in contract work. And at the inception of the project team, they were processing five to ten invoices a week, which really meant. Yeah. Right.
Steven Doyle [:So they could only process that amount, and that would mean they could process maybe $250,000 in invoices a week. And some people be like, man, that would be phenomenal if I could do that. Well, here's part of the problem. They had the process split between three different people in three separate departments. Right. So what ended up happening? So, bringing people in, we identified the gap. We mapped everything out, identified where things were working, where they weren't working with the team members. So we're working with the team members.
Steven Doyle [:And because everybody was overwhelmed with day to day tasks, we also mapped out where are the pressure relief valves. And so at the end of the project, we ended up producing a process that could produce five times more invoices a week. So from five to 55 is 25, Steve. Whatever. Five times? Well, ten. Sorry, my math is off today. Clearly.
Brad Herda [:Are you marking things up? 1.4. Are you putting Mark.
Steven Doyle [:I have markups on my markups for my markups. If we did ten a week, we're now producing 50 a week, and we can now realize 100 million in revenue weekly with the invoices going out and all of that responsibility. So it used to be broke up between three people. It went down to one full time position and it freed up an additional 80 hours. It freed up 80 people hours as part of the streamlined process. So when our clients are constantly bombarded with day to day stuff, we come in as the outside depends on the agreements we have because we're meeting people where they are. What are you really looking to do and what do you want to achieve? What is the goal to achieve?
Brad Herda [:My guess is that the company that you just described, they built up three unicorns because they were all unique people. Right. Those, oh, Sally, we can't. No, we can't change Sally. Oh, no, not, oh, Johnny's been here forever, and, yeah, he's got all the knowledge and experience. There's no way we could have somebody else take care of what, Mark? We go out and build organizational structures on unicorns instead of building organizational structures and roles that can be readily divested and done by others.
Steven Doyle [:And so what this also did is because of how it was streamlined. Now, there is an exact process. So if somebody, the one FTE is out, anybody in the company can come step in and do that job.
Brad Herda [:Weird.
Steven Doyle [:Which they didn't have that before.
Brad Herda [:Yeah. Why would we want more than one person to be able to send out invoices?
Steven Doyle [:Right.
Brad Herda [:Because that's how people get paid.
Steven Doyle [:That's right.
Brad Herda [:So you better have cross training. Right.
Steven Doyle [:So it really is the problems that our clients face. While there could range in what they are, the simple problem is the sheer recognition that, hey, we have a problem, we need it solved, and we need someone on the outside that can provide perspective but also hold us accountable. Correct. And that's what we as coaches do.
Brad Herda [:Be there for support, be there as a guide, be there as a connector, as a referral opportunity, because we have the ability to probably have more of the who's in our network most of the time than the business owner because they're too busy doing the jobs, they're too busy in their business. They're not out networking, they're not out expanding their knowledge base. They're focused on their own thing. And we got to find the who's for them so that they can take care of the how in a different fashion. Meet them. Where they're at is the biggest key to that. If you guys are out there listening and you're out there thinking about coaching, training, education, be weary of those that are trying to pigeonhole you right into a solution that doesn't fit your business, you can try it. You might like it.
Brad Herda [:You may say, oh, let's do this. Because it's the only thing you can find. Use your gut instincts to tell you where the right things are and what the right things to do are, because usually most people are pretty good at understanding, so.
Steven Doyle [:Well, thank you, my friend.
Brad Herda [:All right, sir. Mr. Doyle, enjoy that football game this week. Sunday nights here as the Detroit Lions take on the Los Angeles Rams. Stafford's coming home and let's hope for a victory and come know.
Steven Doyle [:That'll be interesting.
Brad Herda [:We'll be able to kind of look back and go, hey, we pontificated that, so we'll see.
Steven Doyle [:Absolutely. Well, you have a good one, my friend.
Brad Herda [:All right, man, we'll talk to you later. Yep. Thank you for listening to blue collar BS, brought to you by Visionford Business Solutions and professional business Coaching, Inc. If you'd like to learn more on today's topic, just reach out to Steve Doyle or myself, Brad Herda. Please, like, share rate and review this show as feedback is the only way we can get better. Let's keep blue collar businesses strong for generations to come.
