Best Clips! 1 year podcast Anniversary

We started bringing you interviews every week, every Wednesday with experts in the Millwork field, all about Millwork from engineering to project management to new exciting products and processes to recruiting people problems, all of the above. And, uh, today you're going to see some clips of some of our top episodes that we've had so far in year one. And next week we'll be back bringing you new episodes, new interviews with industry guests.

So make sure to subscribe, uh, follow like whatever platform you are, uh, consuming this podcast on. We are on all of them and, uh, come back next week for a new one. And I hope you enjoyed this recap of some of our most interesting interviews this week, this year, in year

So you outlined here also, communication and within that, drilling in a little bit to that what are some of the kind of methods, whether it be processes or tools or things that usually come to mind with communication and how you coach and manage your team to to communicate effectively.

So obviously communication is really centered around like the, if the PM's ability to anticipate things before they happen is the best response that you can expect to see outta your pm. If that PM's not anticipating what's rea what's gonna happen instead of, and just reacting to it, we've got a problem on our hands. And that's usually where the frustration builds.

And so really like thinking, again, I'm gonna split this off into two things just like I set up, is drafting and engineering this means a clean set of drawings are given to you before you ever start, right? Like it's been through, it's gone through scope, anything's xed out, it's taken some extra care, if you will. And as. Put out there, they're trying to anticipate all the things that you might come across before you ever come across 'em.

How many times of a pm that you've, that your listeners have deal with doesn't even think that they've looked at the drawings at all. Like they know the good ones and the good ones are going through it. From an engineering focus and our world, again, post process processor, near processing, post approval that means really all the RFIs that have changed that from the start to now are documented correctly. And that it is accessible for your team to get to.

So it's that clear communication that this changed. Here's what I'm, here's the new directive. Please proceed with this. It also means getting clear field dimensions that are written down for them in a consistent way that isn't on 10 different. I don't, I'm not looking for data on 10 different documents. I'm centralizing it all to one, and they're taking that time to make your job the most efficient, right?

It's that spoke of that wheel, if you will, and putting all that information together, those two intersections of RFI and engineering need to mi meet. So I will say that, is that, so how do we, that all sounds good, but what

do we do with that? I'd really challenge your listeners to, start writing, really identifying what works for your company. Again, scale is a part of the equation here, but really make sure all your managers, assuming you have multiple. Are doing it similarly, every single time. You don't want to get it from Joey one way and Bobby and Sue another way. It's not the way that is gonna make anybody successful. You guys can drive that more than you guys think.

You are a customer of them and you can set expectations to say, Hey, I need it this way. I would also suggest things is this is a world that things are happening fast. Architectural drawings are not as clean as they used to be back in my day. It sound old at this point.

But things are changing and I would say that given the ability to have that web-based, live, whatever you want to call it, that I can get this information while I'm on site or even at home or wherever, traveling on the road to get it to the team that I know that they're gonna see it. So web-based services are all over there for drawing management, file management, all that stuff. But you need a way to get that. Ability to get that information into a centralized location.

So there's, again I'm gonna, Jacob criticizes me. I might have a plan grid. I might as well have a plan grid polo on because he criticizes me for that. Obviously I'm a big believer of it's still plan grid to me, but it's technically called Autodesk Construction Cloud Now. I'm an energy user as well, and teams, those are great services that are out there that we use at Adams Group.

And you touched on this a little bit, but a lot of times it's not planned. It's not something that is orchestrated or architected in any way. It's out of necessity or just, Hey, there's nobody else and I either am a business owner or I need somebody I that to help fill this role. And you get pull, the business owner pulls that person in cuz they're, the most tenured or most experienced.

But that also leads to some of what we're seeing today, which is a lot of underdeveloped leaders and managers are underequipped. I'd say this industry is. Like a lot of people say, and I'm true of, it's true for me as well. Nobody kind of goes to school and says, oh, I'm gonna go into the millwork industry. Unless you go to pit state, maybe.

But a lot of us find ourselves here through life circumstances and as such there's not a lot of opportunity where it's like, Hey, I'm gonna go and be mentored and coached to be a millwork leader, to be a millwork manager. Talk a little bit about that and how how the typical path kind of leads to what we see today.

I would say a lot of the example that's been set and for people as is not positive, it's I would say the generation or two ahead of me coming up were not gentle teachers, they were a lot of throwing things and cuss words and you learned the hard way and. And then you've got the people who are entering the industry from other businesses and stuff that I think are having a positive impact on leadership in general.

And then, with what a I and some of the other organizations are doing they're recognizing that's an issue.

And yeah, I, I didn't see a path, like I came from an educational environment where it was like, Hey, this is how you become an architect and there's a path to success. You're not gonna make a ton of money, but maybe you'll be that rockstar, but you'll be fulfilled. And then in woodworking it was what is the career here? And, but, I saw. Okay. I know. Turns out there has been

And there wasn't a company that laid it out for me and was like, Hey, interesting, if you stick with us here, you can be engineering manager and then maybe you can be this, I it tends to be in these millwork companies, okay, if you start in the shop and everybody else says you can't really do any of these other roles unless you have shop experience. You need to know what we do before you can engineer it, before you can project manage it. That's like the stigma and the belief of the industry.

And so everybody aspires to, Hey, I'm gonna, do my time in the shop or in the field to eventually earn my spot of being a carpet walker and I can sit in air conditioning and then earn that higher wage to get on salary. Maybe I'll be a project manager. And that's it. Most companies though, are owner operated and it's unless you're that guy's right hand man, until the owner or him dies, or the sun, there's not really a way to aspire to much higher than that level in most companies.

And but I was young and arrogant enough to think, Hey, maybe I can forge a trail and figure out how to make a career out of this. And, so I took the engineering path.

I was like, Hey I see parallels in other industries but from there, once I became an engineering manager, I realized, okay, I need people that are gonna want to do a good job and how do I get people, I've gotta figure out how to create, even at Mortenson I, was engineering manager and I very actively was how do I make this a destination shop was my mindset of okay.

Yeah. And sometimes that means having the mindset of people might come here to work here as a launching pad to get somewhere else and I have to be okay with that and keep that pipeline going. And that, that mind shift has always been hard for owners and a lot of people because there's that fear of I don't want to invest in somebody and then somebody's gonna steal them. But that a hundred percent holds people back from investing in their people and creating a culture of oh, I want to go work.

I wanna go work for Millwork by Design. Cause I've seen people work five years there and either they end up. Promoting and gaining skill and getting status or whatever they're trying their career path, or maybe it is a temporary thing and they move on to something better, which is positive as

Today I'm proud of the fact that there are millworks by design alumni, let's call them out in the industry who who had a great experience with us or learned a lot in during their tour of duty with us and who are now out there building value, in other places. Sometimes those people even turn into our clients, they go to work for general contractors and we end up, and so I think that owners have to get over the the scarcity mindset.

Oh, everybody who I hire needs to stay here for their entire career, right? Of course we want to have long-term people, or we want to have longevity, but it's naive to think that you're gonna keep everybody that you hire. And so why not? Why not do the industry a favor and invest in everybody and, and if, and some of them are gonna stay and continue to help build the operation here, and some of them are gonna be launched into other careers.

And to the extent that we can launch as many people out and have a positive impact on our industry, I see that as, a net gain.

You don't want to have high turnover, but if there's no turnover

Yeah. And through that, I think we always think of, are we finding, are we developing people that are basically, eventually gonna be masters of what we need them to do? But the reality is we have tasks and responsibilities in our company that require varying levels of experience and skills. And so if you end up with all master carpenters, eventually you're gonna have nobody that really. Wants to sweep the floor, and that you can't afford for them to go sweep in the floor. Or anything in between.

But also sometimes you might have somebody that comes in for two years and find, hey, they're not the fit. And we've already been developing somebody behind them. And we've developed a culture that shows that, hey, you can come here for a couple years, learn and move on. And that attracts that. That basically has that effect of you. It develops the pipeline for you. People see Millworks by Design as someplace I want to go.

Even if I only spend a year or two or three years there, it's gonna be a good experience. I'm gonna gain experience and that attracts me to want to apply there, to go spend time there.

You and I, when we had a chance to talk at the AWI convention in Phoenix, talked about the complexities of it, and so I think the biggest challenge is when I came on board, it was kinda like, oh, this is a construction business. Thinking of the install side of the subcontract portion of the business. Oh, this will be easy. I know it, I'm servicing the same customers that I've serviced. I've been a general contractor.

What I undervalued or underappreciated was the manufacturing component to what we do and the complexities therein. And so I've learned a lot. I think a friend of mine once told me who owns his own shop You don't really feel like it's yours until about five years in. And I didn't know that at year one, year two, year three, I'm four and a half in and it's starting to feel like it's, it's ours. And Really influencing that change and, figuring out what parts of the business need to be worked on.

My history before here certainly has played a critical role in the overall understanding of the industry. There's a lot of guys in the industry that have come from the general contracting background, and I think that's very important to understand how projects work at a base level, how they're designed, how they're put together. Like you, I think you had mentioned in a podcast I had watched. always thought you wanted to be an architect.

I think a lot of people want to get in the industry from that, and I wanted to be an architect too. My dad was a general contractor and had architects on staff and so I always wanted to be an architect. So I do have a love for the industry and there's nothing more fulfilling than see a raw piece of dirt turn into something amazing that's gonna be there for a hundred years plus potentially. So it's very fulfilling, but I've learned a lot and there's a lot, there's a lot still to learn.

Is what has been invaluable to you in your learning journey and understanding the complexities of this industry versus what you thought it was?

We made the switch to Energy and giving them a good plug they do a great job at the peer-to-peer communication, behind the scenes stuff, which is extremely valuable. So that's been my gateway into creating some relationships within the industry. Of course, having friends and peers that own other businesses certainly has added a lot of value to what I bring to the table.

But still working on building some great relationships, like you said, meeting you meeting, many other people and bouncing ideas off one another. I am fortunately and unfortunately a put the cards on the table I like to get to know people and know processes and know systems, and I think that's important in, being able to be vulnerable and share my story with people and challenges and in hopes that, I can benefit somebody else and then also have them benefit me.

So I've learned a lot, certainly from, some industry professionals that have been very helpful and contributing to the success that we've had.

And there's probably, you probably got some response of yeah, you think this is easy, it's just like a construction company, but it's not. Was there some humbling or an ability to be humble that has been valuable for you in Hey, look I'm learning, I'm new to this. I'm willing to learn versus maybe somebody who would come in and just insist, Hey, this is easy. I can do it, and fall on their face

But I think one of the, one of the advantages I have not being a woodworker is I don't get bottlenecked up with the woodworking.

Was the software and the kind of the programming side of things? Um, the problem solving, I guess more so, yeah, problem solving.

I really just, engineering ended up being a nice central place where you could make changes to organizations. Engineering is positioned perfectly to be a change management. and you've seen this yourself in your background. We've had this conversation before I think that's what brought me there more than anything that that was the right place to introduce new ways of doing things.

Um. And it seemed to be the minds that get it the most or, or maybe just we screw with things the most, I don't know, but Um, but yeah, I, I found that in my experience as well, everywhere I went as, you know, an engineer and then engineering manager, it was like, okay, you're the IT guy as well. Um, and I think that does make sense. Uh, or at least in practice how it works out is you're kind of the one who's able to, you know, they go to, Hey, we're looking at, we need a solution for

this. How can you, what, what do you think we could do? As well as you kind of have your hands in the most things to be able to affect change.

Everybody's kind of the, every owner that I talk to, it's, well, if I could get more through engineering, I could get more through my shop. My shop has untapped capacity, right? Or I could sell 10 more million, but I can't get the shop drawings or get it through engineering to get it to my shop in time. Some version of that, right? Um, and everybody has a little bit of that.

Or on the flip side, hey, I've got all this knowledge tied up in this one person, this, this engineer that everything's dependent on. I can't multiply them, I can't replicate them. Um, what do you find is kind of some of the, the core, uh, reasons for that? Um, and I know energy, you guys, you know, uh, paired with the software, obviously as an operating system and a way to attack this, but in your experience, I know you've solved these problems in a number of ways at different companies.

You talk a little bit about your thoughts on that and your philosophy around engineering.

yeah. So, so you do hear this all the time from companies. Engineering is our bottleneck. Engineering is our bottleneck,

That's harder than actually getting the software up to date, getting the machine up, up, you know, up and running. It's Hey, look, you're gonna change the way you think about things. And a lot of the things that were constants before no longer apply, or we've now got new information, uh, you know, new processes, new software, new things. So, um, do you find that

I mean, and this is not a shot at the industry, but I do think that there's a lot of old thinking, you know, there's a lot of resistance to, to change and I'm sure this industry is not unique in that. But, um, you know, I, I. it's it's nice seeing, there are, you know, a lot of younger people, uh, in the groups that are building up shops, and it's nice to see them come at it with a, you know, a fresh perspective.

Um, that, you know, kinda like you mentioned earlier, if I had started in another shop versus if I started on my own. This is one of those things that, you know, who knows, um, how that would've gone. Um. Because if that shop hadn't changed in the last 20 years, you know, I'm learning 20-year-old ideas and, uh,

them. 'cause for the longest time, you know, I've always heard it said is that it, there's a very low barrier of entry to just start a cabinet shop and be a cabinet guy. That's kind of been like the thorn in the side of good shop owners that have been around forever, right? It is like, oh, well, I'm constantly competing a price against. Some guy with a table saw in a shed.

There's more, um, serious people that are starting shots versus just, Hey, I'm gonna start and low bid a bunch of jobs, and then I run outta business.

And I think a lot of small shops are unfortunately costing themselves a lot of money. Uh, 'cause they still try to price things on time material. Um, and it's good to know those numbers, but really. You know, the market you're in is willing to pay a certain price for what you make, and you gotta figure out what that number is. And then to me it's working backwards to make sure you're doing it profitably. Um, you know, 'cause if I'm in, uh, Nashville, it's like the hottest market.

Like right now, people are paying a lot of money for cabinetry. But if I'm in the middle of, you know, Iowa, you know, that's, I'm not getting that price and I might be making the same thing. And so it's really understanding your market, um, that, uh, really drives a lot of

that. But, uh, I think that software has lowered, uh, the barrier to entry, uh, in a way because, you know, I look at my path, like I didn't know anything about cabinetry. You know, and once you can. For, for young people who are, you know, grew up with computers and software, uh, it's really not very difficult to learn.

And I'm just, of course, speaking about, uh, mosaic, but I'm sure others are somewhat similar in that you can kind of, you know, work your way through it just on being young and computer literate, I guess, from the beginning. And um, you know, so you. can, I think, uh, achieve some things that. Uh, maybe in the nineties would've been a lot harder starting from scratch. Um, but cncs, you know, uh, have never been more affordable.

Software's never been more accessible, and I think that the barrier to owning one is as low as it's ever been. Uh, when you look at the payment on a CNC versus the cost of an employee, I mean, it's not really even close.

Everyone has excel basically downloaded on their laptop already. And so it's like, oh, hey, let's, uh, let's put in a grid here and we can kind of track stuff. And that was, you know, that was a standard for, for, for quite some time. And Smartsheet said, Hey, wait, we can, we can really take this above and beyond. What if we were able to roll this information up into dashboards and deliver information to the right people? Uh, what if we were able to send automated notifications on that?

So they took a very similar look and feel. To Excel and then just built on all this functionality to really take that project management and work management, um, concept and deliver a tool that is, uh, that is right now market leading.

What is PMO?

A lot of that does still happen in emails and Excel. Right. And I'm sure you encounter this a lot, right? And even if. Companies maybe adopt something like Smartsheet or there's other, you know, similar tools out there, Airtable and, and even Excel online and things where they have some of those features, right? It's like, Hey, we can collaborate and it's cloud-based and this stuff, right?

But even if there's people that are using Smartsheet, a lot of times they're really just using it like Excel online and, and that's. Not leveraging it for what it's really intended for or what it's best at. Um, and so what I mean by that is a lot of people are just still kind of living siloed in like, well, I have my sheet, I mentioned earlier, my side sheet of like, Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm migrating it from my desktop in an Excel file to this online place.

But it's still just segregated, siloed information. And I imagine that's a lot of where you, you're working with clients is maybe And, and if anything I would say maybe is one of the benefits of, especially an enterprise organization use of, of Smartsheet is you can audit that. You can see all that. You can manage all that from like an admin perspective. Right.

Um, so I guess now bridging into the next stage of the conversation and, and for those listening, you know, we mentioned earlier everything we're talking about, if you have an ERP. Yeah, don't tune out yet because I guarantee you have cases of what we're talking about in your organization, even with an enterprise ERP system and a need for something like this, um, in pieces of your business.

So as you engage with companies, you know, you, you, full-time, now Cat Q Consulting, you have a team and you're working with clients, um, on their use of Smartsheet. Maybe they're already using it and they're engaging you how to improve it or implement it.

What does that look like and what are some of the most common kind of low hanging fruit things you, you encounter when you're consulting with clients?

And where you are on that process is gonna depend on kind of what, what those low hanging fruit look like and, and what you can, uh, you know, what you can do and where to get started. A lot of people, when they first come to Smartsheet.

They are coming to Smartsheet because they are using Excel, and every project manager has their own sheet that they're tracking who's doing what, and they get together every week for a big meeting and they all spend this time updating a big PowerPoint that's got version control issues. And, you know, hey, we pulled up the PowerPoint for the meeting, but my, my details aren't in there yet. And they say, okay, this is, we need something better.

I was recently in Austin, Texas, and they have a program, it's called the PTECH Program. And, um, when you are in eighth grade, you can decide whether to go into this program and then it's a, it's a welding specifically for welding. So if you go into the p-tech program, ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, you do these welding classes and by the time you graduate high school, you're a certified welder.

And, you know, you could go into the labor market making $30 an hour, like right outta high school. I mean, um, things like that are gonna be really vital to get people, uh, not only interested, but better educated about the, you know, the monetary rewards, the personal, you know, rewards of. Being a tradesman. So, uh, I think that's kind of, that's kind of concerning over the next five to 10 years. And then of course, financing, um, millwork is a high capital expenditure, um, industry.

So we do, you know, we make a lot of money, but then we spend every bit of that money on machinery and,

I could be wrong, but I don't really see robots building cabinets and, um, you know, a hundred percent building cabinets, uh, anytime in the foreseeable future anyways. Um, so I think people are always gonna be a part of this, I think. And I think they should be. I mean, I think there's a certain, I mean, that, that's what makes it cool, right? Somebody made this with their hands. I mean, yeah, machines cut the parts, but you know, someone put this together with their hands.

And they, you know, they filled, they sanded it, they made it look perfect. They painted it all the things. I mean, that's, that's what's kind of really neat about the woodworking and seeing that finished product and, um, yeah, that it's super rewarding. And I, I think people, uh, are gonna stay involved. I think they need to be involved and I, I think we need more of them.

So what the newbie did was go in with this knowledge of technology, with this knowledge of software, with the knowledge of everything that you and I are using to speak right now, right? Um, and sat down at a computer with this 25 year veteran and said, Hey, here's this program. We need to extract all of your knowledge and put it in there. I'm not going to ask you to do this. But what I want to hear is I want to know all of your knowledge.

So literally the newbie sat at the computer, transcribed, wrote, brought drawings, and did all that kind of stuff. The veteran is actually mentoring this young person without even knowing that they're mentoring, right? But at the same time, you're capturing all of that knowledge from that veteran for future new hires to then be able to digitally mentor the next hire and the next hire and the next hire. So it's all there in your system. right?

Instead of having to say, Hey, you're going to mentor this person. Uh, that being said, I do highly recommend using that older generation, that baby boomer generation within your facility for mentors. Not everybody's built to be a mentor, right? And it's, it's as leaders being able to identify, okay, which one is my.

Good mentor, which one has amazing amounts of knowledge that we need to extract, um, and pairing the people together well, and that's takes it's an art in itself is making sure that you're pairing those people together. But I, I def, I'm a big advocate of making sure that that sometimes you're going to have the younger person mentor, the older person on technology versus, uh, having the older person mentor the younger, if that makes sense at all.

Um, and two, yes, a lot of times it's those individuals are just not equipped to transfer knowledge. They're not teachers. They're not managers. They are individual contributors. They've been that their whole career. And there's a ton of institutional and knowledge, but they're, they've never been equipped in how to teach and mentor somebody that.

And so, a lot of the stuff that I've learned has been through weathering the storm through those individuals of like, Hey, look, I'm just gonna, I have to go above and beyond to get this knowledge from you. And some of it's by taking lashings, some of it's by watching. but like, not everybody is going to be that persistent to get through that. Right.

and so the, the most successful organizations I've seen are the ones that have institutionally, built in to their culture, transferring knowledge, process, driving process. And like we educate our people, we can onboard somebody with entry level experience or none. Hey, you guys have the raw talent. We're going to teach you what you need to know. That's how Boeing, that's how auto manufacturing, that's how all of them do it.

and But the rest of us, the majority of the industry, the smaller shops, focus on people. We're dependent on people, and unfortunately, we don't realize it until that person's about to retire how dependent we are on those people.