Management

How To Hire And Keep Great People With Mitch Gray – [The Tim Faller Show] S4 E10

December 5, 2022 00:41:34

Mitch Gray joins the show to discuss hiring and keeping great people. He talks about the importance of understanding interpersonal relationships and getting intentional about finding people with passion, as passion feels energy. Understanding that everyone wants to feel valued, empowered, and a part of something larger than themselves, no matter what level of employee. This is core to the successful hiring and retention of great employees.

Mitch Gray is the founder of Mitch Gray Media, author of HOW TO HIRE AND KEEP GREAT PEOPLE, and host of The Mitch Gray Show. After spending over two decades leading teams as a business owner, manager, pastor, non-profit founder, and community organizer, Mitch developed a strong passion for leaders and employees. Mitch’s mission is to empower teams to perform and individuals to pursue their passion.

Mitch, Tim, and Steve discuss

The challenges of recruiting the right employees
How to convey passion to all levels of employees
Tips to do a better job of hiring
And more…

Click here to listen.

The Key to Good Management is Listening with Christine Miles [Tim Faller Show] S4 E9

November 28, 2022 00:48:17

Today on the Tim Faller Show, Christine Miles joins the show to discuss how better listening skills lead to better communication. Christine explains why listening is so complicated and suggests some easy ways to listen better. She also highlights the importance of communication in creating trust between co-workers.

Christine is an author, professional keynote speaker, consultant, executive coach, thought leader, and entrepreneur. She is the Founder and CEO of EQuipt, a training and consulting company that helps leadership teams grow sales, develop people, and create cultures of understanding. She developed The Listening Path™, a transformational workshop on listening to understand, which has been taught at various Fortune 100 corporations, universities, law firms, and privately-held companies. She is the author of What Is It Costing You Not to Listen? which will encourage you to examine how you are listening. You’ll discover that not only are many of the problems in your life due to not listening effectively, but listening helps to solve most problems.

Tim, Steve, and Christine talk more about:

Failure to listen can cause culture problems within an organization
Improving turnover through listening
How listening can help your company’s bottom line
And more…

Co-Building Long Distance Jobs with Jordan Smith [The Tim Faller Show] S4 E6

October 31, 2022 00:36:04

Jordan Smith joined the show to discuss partnering with another remodeling company to complete a job two hours outside his service area. He discusses the benefits, risks, and challenges associated with the job type and the steps he took to mitigate problems.

Jordan and his wife Veronica started the Smith House Company four years ago to create beautiful and functional spaces that harmonize with their natural surroundings.

Join Jordan, Tim, and Steve as they discuss:

How to handle projects that are outside of the current service area
The risks and benefits of partnering with another remodeling company to complete a job
How to handle the relationships between the design company, build company, and customer

Click here to listen…

Concierge Service With Aimee Cianfarani – [The Tim Faller Show] S4 E3

October 10, 2022 00:33:47

Today on The Tim Faller Show, Aimee Cianfarani discusses how her company has made concierge services (a/k/a handyperson services) a successful part of the overall business. In this high-failure segment of the industry, Aimee and her team have overcome significant odds to find great success by applying a strategic approach and using marketing as a key part of the process. Aimee said hiring the right person for this role is also critical.

Aimee is the Concierge Services Coordinator at Teakwood Builders in Saratoga Springs, NY. Aimee has helped grow Concierge Services from a one-person operation into significant operations with jobs booked into 2023.

Listen to this episode where Aimee, Tim, and Steve talk about:

How to use this to service upsell customers to more significant projects or as a follow-up to other projects to keep them happy
Determining the right customers and employee talent for this service
And more…

The Impact Your Production Team Has on Marketing with Spencer Powell – [Best of The Tim Faller Show]

September 12, 2022 00:39:17

Raise your hand if you are a salesperson… Maybe a few business owners raised their hands, but most likely, our production people and our Project managers, Lead carpenters, and Production managers all kept their hands down. Not so fast!

In this episode, we step out of our comfort zone a little and talk about your production teams’ impact on sales and marketing. For this discussion, we bring in an expert in the marketing world who has worked with hundreds of remodelers and home builders all over the country, Spencer Powell.

Spencer is the President of Builder Funnel, a Colorado-based firm that provides sales and marketing services for homebuilders, remodelers & contractors. Spencer earned his Inbound Marketing, HubSpot, and HubSpot Partner Certifications in 2010 and has been practicing and teaching inbound marketing to businesses ever since.

Tim, Steve, and Spencer talk more about:

The impact production has on the Client Experience
The Top 3 things that will create negatives in the clients’ mind
The Top 3 things that create a positive reaction with a client
How the production team can create vital content for the marketing effort
How owners and leaders can get buy-in from the team and show the impact they have on the business

Active Listening in the Job Interview with Christine Miles – [Best of The Tim Faller Show]

September 6, 2022 00:36:25

In the interview process, actively listening is key. But how? And how do we change if we “really need someone”? Then, of course, there are all the other times that when we look back at a difficult situation, whether a client or an employee, we see all the signs of the challenge were there, but we did not listen. Guest Christine Miles is here to share some insight and answers on how to avoid that situation.

Christine Miles is the author of What Is It Costing You Not to Listen?: The Power of Understanding to Connect, Influence, Solve & Sell, a professional keynote speaker, consultant, executive coach, thought leader, entrepreneur, and radio show host. She is the founder and CEO of EQuipt. Additional information on her may be obtained here.

Tim, Steve, and Christine talk more about:

The importance of learning to listen
Other situations we can benefit from actively listening
And more…

Let’s Revisit Zero Punch List Production with Mike Volochuk – [Best of The Tim Faller Show]

August 30, 2022 00:38:00

On our third episode, in March of 2018, we talked with Mike Barkhouse from Amsted Design Build about achieving “Zero Punch List” production.

We heard from a few listeners about that episode, and the concept of Zero Punch List, so we wanted to revisit it. We are now evangelists pushing to see the term “Punch list” eliminated from the remodeler’s vocabulary. In a zero punch list scenario, after a project, no items remain to be addressed or “punched” because the items will have been addressed during the project and not at the project’s end.

A punch list is so ingrained within the industry that it is tricky to conceive of not having one. Every blog article about working with a contractor says something about that punch list. Usually, “Don’t pay until it is done.”

Our guest for this episode is Mike Voloschuk, Production Manager at Hurst Design Build Remodel in Westlake, Ohio. Mike is a member of our Roundtables for Production Managers peer group, and when he mentioned how his firm had adopted the Zero Punch strategy, we invited him to join us and discuss it.

Mike has been with Hurst since 2008 and moved from Carpenter to Production Manager.

Tim, Steve, and Mike talk more about:

Background on Hurst Design Build Remodel (size of projects, type of work, etc.).
Why Hurst moved to Zero Punch List production.
How Hurst made the transition and how the team reacted and adapted to the change.
How Hurst is doing with the new production mindset and how the clients have responded.
And more…

Hindsight is 2020 with Tim Faller and Steve Wheeler- [Best of The Tim Faller Show]

July 25, 2022 00:29:48

If you’ve ever wondered what you’d do differently when starting your remodeling business if you only knew then what you know now, you’re not alone.

Tim and Steve do, too.

In this episode, the guys talk about what they’ve learned in their time at Remodelers Advantage and from their podcast guests that they wish they knew when they were running their own businesses.

They each identified the five biggest takeaways that make remodeling businesses stronger, more profitable, and built for growth. Learn what they think is important and why, including:

The power of job descriptions
Being financially transparent
Protecting profit through data
Making business decisions based on numbers, not feelings
Learning to sell, not just take orders
Getting to a zero punch list
And more …

Exploring the Decent Human Being Theory with Nick Slavik – [Best of The Tim Faller Show]

July 18, 2022 00:39:21

Many remodelers, builders and business owners make resolutions or commitments to create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and then they get caught up in the daily grind and it never happens.

Another challenge for many companies we work with is attracting and hiring people, especially new people to the industry, and getting them trained to “do things our way.”

Our guest today, Nick Slavik, has done an outstanding job of developing SOPs for his company and then implementing training to meet those internally. It turns out he has some other views of the world that are extremely helpful in running a business, as well.

Nick is the Proprietor of the Nick Slavik Painting & Restoration Co., Host of Ask a Painter Live, and contributes to This Old House. He has been a national and international speaker on topics such as entrepreneurship, trades reformation, working with millennials, harnessing technology for trades business, financial benchmarks, and industry standards. Nick has been a craftsman for more than 25 years. His company has been awarded more than 5 National awards for craftsmanship over the last 3 years. He has created a rigorous apprenticeship program where he finds, trains, and mentors young people in his craft. In 2018, he was made a family member at This Old House.

Tim, Steve and Nick talk more about:

Background and description of the Decent Human Being Theory.
Creating & developing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
Holding teams accountable and getting them to adhere to SOPs.
Balancing the demand for work, growing the business and training new personnel.
And more…

Best of the Tim Faller Show: Ep. 128: Onboarding New Staff with Chris Beck

July 5, 2022 00:46:34

When we discuss the labor shortage, we are often talking about how to find or develop good talent.

What we are now hearing from our Roundtables members is that they are finding people, getting them on the team, and then they fail. In many cases, these aren’t catastrophic failures, but slips in net profit or schedules or proper estimates, etc. We can write this off to “they misrepresented themselves” during the interviews. Or, we can take a closer look at our own onboarding process to ensure we are setting our new hires up for success, not failure.

To dive deeper on this topic, Tim and Steve welcome Chris Beck to the show to talk about how he and his team at Normandy Remodeling handle the onboarding process.

Chris has been with Normandy Remodeling in Hinsdale, IL for 14 years; eight as Superintendent, two as the Production Manager and four as Director of Production. Normandy has added five Superintendents over the past five years to cover increased production and they are on pace to set another annual Produced Sales record, their 5th year in a row.

Tim, Steve and Chris cover:

Definition and background of onboarding.
Documentation and checklists.
And more…