Contractor Cuts
Join the ProStruct360 team on the Contractor Cuts podcast as we delve into the ins and outs of building and sustaining a thriving contracting business. Gain valuable insights and actionable tips from our experts who have successfully grown their own contracting company from the ground up.
Our show is dedicated to helping contractors like you unlock the secrets to increased profitability, efficient organization, and seamless processes within your company. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, our episodes cover key topics essential for your business growth and long-term success.
Make the most of your time between job sites by tuning in to our podcast and learn firsthand how to navigate the challenges of the contracting industry. Get ready to transform your business with valuable information that can potentially change the trajectory of your success.
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Contractor Cuts
Introducing New Co-Host James McConnell: A Walk Through His Story to Becoming a Veteran Contractor
Join us in welcoming our new co-host, James McConnell, whose extensive contracting experience is set to invigorate our conversations. As James steps in, we bid a heartfelt farewell to Jared Flowe. James brings a wealth of knowledge from his journey, which began as a simple passion project and transformed into overseeing contracting companies across the country.
In this episode, we tackle the complexities of career progression in the construction industry. From project management to heading construction operations, we discuss the nuanced shifts in responsibilities and the importance of earning respect among diverse personalities. This isn't just about climbing the career ladder; it's about cultivating trust within your team and honing communication skills that enhance client relationships. James offers invaluable advice on managing remote locations and creating effective client engagement agreements. Tune in for insights that could transform your contracting endeavors.
Struggling to grow your contracting business? The Foundations Program is designed to help contractors break free from the chaos and build a business that runs smoothly. You’ll get a customized training program, 1-on-1 coaching, and access to a full paperwork database—including contracts and the Client Engagement Agreement. Join the Foundations Program today! 🚀
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Welcome to Contractor Cuts, where we cover the good, the bad and the ugly of growing a successful contracting company.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Contractor Cuts. My name is Clark Turner, I'm Jared Flo. Thank you for joining us again this week. So today we want to make a big announcement about the podcast, what we're doing, what we're changing. We're moving a lot of things around. We have a new format that we're rolling out. We're changing things around. Jared is moving on on some other ventures as well, and so we're rearranging how the podcast is going to lay out. So I got a new co-host coming in next after this, but we wanted to kind of talk about the new format. Jared's not gone forever, but we're just trying to make it fit for everybody to really kind of change things up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I really am excited about this. I think that we've been down this road and done a lot of different podcasts in the same format. Just, you and I are talking and I'm sure people are annoyed with hearing us Right and so just bring some new, fresh ideas and perspectives into it. You know, a couple of the people that we're thinking about are some of them are boots on the ground. They've got a lot of experience and some more details that they're going to be able to bring to the table. So I'm excited for the listening audience of this new change. It's going to add some fresh, new content to it and, um, you know I'll be stepping away, but I'm I'm excited for, you know, the the next things that I've got and, um, you know I'll miss everybody for sure, and hopefully everybody misses the big red, the big red beard.
Speaker 2:Now, if, if, if listeners take off after this, it's going to be an indictment on you.
Speaker 2:That's right, it's. It's been. We've talked, we've been talking about this for a while. It's been three years of doing kind of the same format and so, uh, two guys that are coaches that aren't really in the field anymore. That's been three, four, five, six years since we've ran jobs ourselves. Uh, it feels like it could get sales, so we're switching some stuff around. If you stay tuned, next on this podcast you're going to hear an intro to James McConnell. He is our new resident co-host with me. He's been running contracting companies for many years. He's got multi-state, so, anyways, we'll do an intro with him when it comes to desk estimates.
Speaker 2:he is the expert Sniper on building estimates, dealing with crews, dealing with homeowners, so he's going to be in here. He's super entertaining, he's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:But I love the energy that he's going to be able to bring to it and a lot of the new, fresh information that we're talking about it's going to be great, it's going to be great.
Speaker 2:It's going to be really, really good. He's going to be awesome. Well, jared, thank you so much. We'll see you soon, I'm sure, but until then, here is the new episode. Enjoy Bye. Welcome to Contractor Cuts. My name is Clark Turner and I'm James McConnell.
Speaker 2:Thanks for joining us. So today we are launching the new podcast with James as the new co-host. I wanted to take today, where James is going to be kind of filling us in. I want to hear and introduce you all to who James is and kind of his background and why he's got so much knowledge in construction and why I think he's a great fit for the show. So, james, why don't you start by telling us kind of bring us to the beginning from, I know, coming out of college, getting into construction. How did that happen? What made you kind of choose construction and go that route? I know it kind of fell backwards into it as to just trying to make money, but going that way, you started out kind of doing some stuff and doing commercial and then you came in and we partnered up probably 10 years ago.
Speaker 1:10 years ago.
Speaker 2:And where you came to the residential side up, probably 10 years, 10 years ago, uh, and where you came to the residential side, Um, and we've well, let's take everyone to kind of the path of that where you and where you've come from and where you're going.
Speaker 1:So it really all started for me when I was working at the brick in Milledgeville as a restaurant and I got my first tax return it was like $800. So I bought a bunch of tools. So rich yeah, I was rich Filthy I bought a bunch of tools and my first project was making my mom a Scrabble board out of like a log. I cut it in half and I used a Dremel and I like cut out all of the squares and I just got really into it. And my uncles are all in, uh, in construction and I've kind of always been like a hands-on guy. So it was. It was really getting into construction was just like normal, natural. But then, um, I had a buddy that was building playgrounds for this guy out of Watkinsville, georgia commercial playgrounds like schools and churches have and I started doing that with them. We would drive around the southeast. It was like this guy named Joe Delatore and it was me and like these three other guys and we would just build playgrounds around the southeast. It was a blast.
Speaker 1:I did that for like two, three years. So I did that for like two, three years and then I ended up staying in the city that we went to school in Milledgeville because my now wife was still in school and I wanted to stay there. So I got a job framing houses was completely green got on with this guy and he taught me a ton and that was I think I learned some of the most dense lessons from that two year experience. But then I moved to back to Atlanta area where I'm from and started selling roofs for a buddy's dad Hated that I'm not a salesman. This was like door-to-door cold calling for storm chasing, essentially.
Speaker 2:That's barely construction. Yeah, it's more, just straight sales.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hated that so much I spent very little time doing that. I would just drive to Milledgeville and stay with Meredith. It was not a fun time. But I then got into a commercial job with this company in Roswell and I did that for like three years. We worked with all the real estate investment trusts. But we also did commercial projects, like I did one in, uh in Nashville. Uh, uh, a parking garage, yeah, um, and random stuff like that. You were on the work crew, or were you like managing those?
Speaker 2:I was project managing Sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so went from you know the physical labor for a while to selling roofs to project management and commercial. I really didn't like commercial. Maybe might have just been the company I was working for, but I was pretty much done. I was done with construction I've told you this before but I'd be driving down the road, just you know, miserable. Like seeing kinkos, like I could work there.
Speaker 1:I could be a manager at kinkos happier yeah yeah, um, and my brother and I was telling my brother-in-law how unhappy I was. I was telling everybody that would listen how unhappy I was and uh, he, uh. He said you should call. You should call my buddy Clark. I went to school with him for a while and I called you. Uh, had an interview. He called me after I left and the rest is history, as they say. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So what you're leaving? You signed on with me because it was something a little more steady and a different environment.
Speaker 1:I felt like it was one of those like don't throw the baby out with the bathwater situations. I had kind of a really hard couple of years and I just gotten married. Like it was just a really a lot of transition and I think, meeting with you and Jared, I was just really comfortable with the, with the environment. I felt like there was an opportunity for me to kind of step into something that was small and maybe and maybe grow with it, and that's exactly what happened, so that was cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So James came in as a project manager. At the time that you started with us I was project managing and kind of rewinding our story as a company. I was, I'd started the company.
Speaker 2:Probably James Jared had started maybe two years before you, one to two years before you came on, and I brought him in and Jared started running only our REITs, the Real Estate Investment Trust, that were buying homes in Atlanta and then flipping them and putting renters in them.
Speaker 2:So they were all $1,000 to about probably $20,000, $25,000 of work per property, the quick in and out two weeks that were in and out. And so Jared I put in charge of that side and I was still running homeowners, larger scale projects, investors, more of the straight GC world, and so I brought James on as a project manager and that was actually my first step out of the field. When James came on it was I'm managing Jared, I'm now managing James on his jobs and I think I was running some jobs on the side myself. We were just kind of cherry picking which ones I can kind of armchair, quarterback and and handle without being on site constantly with you know the higher needy clients that you were handling. So you came into that next move. That was growing, that was working, and then we brought on other project managers and you were probably in the PM role for how many years, would you say?
Speaker 1:I don't know how what's the word? It felt like it was like two or three years, but it was kind of like an informal transition, like I was still project managing but I had project managers under me.
Speaker 2:I was still running projects. You were like a senior project manager where you were kind of helping train them as they were coming in, and that was. It was twofold One to get you kind of the training of managing people, because you hadn't really done that in the past and I was.
Speaker 2:It was a testing that to see if you can even move into that job role and be getting you some experience and managing people and understanding the how to manage and what do people need and the differences. Because being a project manager is a totally different skill set than being a general manager or a head of construction. Because a project manager is I'm in the front seat, I'm driving, I'm in charge, I'm taking care of everything. I'm the buck stops with me. I've, I'm in charge, I'm taking care of everything. The buck stops with me. I've got to answer to everybody and when something goes wrong, it's my fault, no matter what.
Speaker 2:As a head of renovations, which is where you eventually move to manage our project managers, that skill set is I am a shepherd of these guys, I am their support, I am their assistant, I'm officially their boss, but I'm here to make them better and, as we've always said, when you have someone working for you, the goal is to make them a better person in 12 months from now, personally and also a better employee and a better worker professionally. So how do we grow each employee underneath us, professionally and personally? So, from your perspective, moving from and I know this was years ago, but moving from a project manager into head of construction I think that was the job title that you moved into. What was the biggest transition for you between those?
Speaker 1:Well, I remember when you going back a little bit even further, I remember when you first asked me if I wanted that role. You didn't really have a name for the role, but we were outside of one of those what was that flip with the big porch in front we had a picture, or the big deck. Remember that one? Was it a TV show? It was a TV show one. It was like one of the first ones.
Speaker 2:The Flipping the South that eventually became Flip or Flop. Yes, yeah, it was like one of the first ones the flipping the South that eventually became flip or flop.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, it was that one and we were outside that house and you were like asking me do you want to do this? And I was like no, no, no, yeah, and then I don't remember how long it was after that that we ended up actually doing it. But the biggest transition was well, it's funny Cause you mentioned earlier like, as a project manager, everything's your fault, no matter what. Yeah, uh, that's how it felt. I felt more that way as head of construction and as a project manager. Um, and pretty immediately I remember feeling, um, it was's stress. It was really stressful and it was, you know, being younger than being younger than the people that you're managing is not. As you get older it gets easier because it's like age becomes less of a thing, but when you're so green, still you're probably 25.
Speaker 2:yeah, managing a 50-year-old yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's certain personalities that are just not going to be okay with that. Yeah, I mean from the people being managed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially in construction, there's a lot more macho. Yeah, you got to earn your stripes yeah.
Speaker 1:You haven't earned your medal, son, yeah, and you. There's a certain amount of truth to that. But then there's also the and I think what you saw was that I I just had, I was more aware of the total package around us, and so I think that the biggest transition is like you think about project managing differently. If you're, if you're still project managing and you're doing this role, which I was, that was a really hard place to live, because as a project manager, you're living in the weeds. Everything is is yeah, you gotta, you gotta be reactive, whereas in the well, not necessarily you want to be proactive, but in project well, not necessarily you want to be proactive, but in project management, you're just way more you're in charge of all the reaction.
Speaker 2:When a spark happens, you've got to put the fire out.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, uh, whereas in the head of department role, um, most of my time was spent, uh, trying to forecast problems, trying to forecast, problems, trying to forecast. When was this client going to be pissed off about something? As you start to notice these patterns of like this is happening again, I need to either speak with the project manager and make sure they're aware of what I'm seeing, or immediately get involved with some of the crews or whatever, whatever that is, I think, one of your struggles.
Speaker 2:Coming into it too, if I, if I may.
Speaker 3:I'd love to hear it.
Speaker 2:You weren't good at your job. You were terrible with people. No, I think one of your the the biggest transitions I saw with that you were like learning and going through is as a project manager. When I say everything is your responsibility, you have full control, right, like? You can talk with your vendors, you can call and make sure the carpet guy is going to be there on time, you can call and verify with the homeowner and you can outgrind any issue as a project manager because you ultimately are the person in the middle moving all the parts.
Speaker 2:When you transitioned into head of construction. You are now holding people accountable and trusting that they go do what you've promised, right. And so there is a difference of you can't just go execute and deliver on what you're promising. You're trusting the guys that are working for you to go deliver on your behalf of what you've talked about with customers. And so there's a lot of like, oh, like you're misrepresenting me, you can't do that. And how do you? How do you back up and allow people to have mistakes and coachable moments without taking it personally and it being like you've? You know you're screwing this whole thing up. Just move, I'm going to handle this job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah gonna handle this job. Yeah, right, yeah, um, that's a that's. I think that's really accurate. I, and I think this is also a personality thing, but also an age thing. Yeah, and that's how you get jaded quick, like, like, like, people let you down a lot and learning that that's not, um, there are things you can control and sometimes you got to move on from people and that that, to this day, is like one of like you've seen it happen in in the room when you have to let somebody go. That's like just still really hard for me. I don't like. I don't like the being in control of somebody's money.
Speaker 2:Future and their, their, their job status. Yeah, I think another thing that with what we're talking about, that's super helpful if you're listening to this podcast is these transitions of growth for a company. When I went from just running projects to myself to having us both run it and Jared running his and then me backing out as kind of head of construction, and then eventually you having all the project managers under you and you being head of construction. Yeah, those transitions aren't black and white. It's not Friday. You come in and say, ok, james, starting Monday, you're not in the field anymore. And now here are your five project managers are going to manage Right it is.
Speaker 2:It was a slow, methodical, well-planned but also shoot from your hip transition where you were starting to run some guys. You were kind of ahead of construction and ask James these questions, and James, why don't you help them with the estimates? And we kind of transitioned you into that role and then officially announced it to where you were, but then you still had to run some jobs on the side. So I think that's something that when we're coaching guys and going through coaching with any sort of contractor, the growth side is like how do I do that? Well, it's different per person, it's different per personality. That's why coaching is here. That's why we sit down and kind of walk you through when you're making your hires, when you're making those transitions, because it isn't like, all right, starting Monday, your new job role is this it's not an Amazon, a big corporation that now I'm moving up to senior VP and now I'm going to do this new role, but in a growing company, there was those transitions and then there's constant.
Speaker 2:I think what I was not surprised with, but something that I didn't I didn't see, see and plan for, was the amount of check-ins hey, what's going on with this? What do you need help with? What's not working? Where do you think you're failing? All of those types of conversations I think we had over beers of the us, kind of putting our heads together, which I think you felt was more me coaching you, but in reality we were both figuring out together in terms of like, all right, so how do we do with this, how do we deal with that? And there was a lot of that that I wish I had a coach during those moments who'd been through it. But I think that's one of the big transitions that that people don't realize, that that has to happen to be able to grow the company, to add levels to a company, to be able to grow to where it's it's.
Speaker 1:It's a little more self-sustaining something, yeah I think the that's um, that's where we I think we got into trouble a couple times too because like, uh, you want to grow. You want uh, at least for me. Like, like I always love like stepping into a new season or stepping into a new role or having a new responsibility, like I like change and looking for that person that's like hey, I think I found the guy, he's going to be able to take this and he's going to run with it. You start seeing things you know early and you're like like, ah, and you try and step into that and you want it so bad, you want that person to be able to step into it. And then you're like this isn't gonna work.
Speaker 1:That's not the guy, but I think they, especially early on. There's like we got to make this work with them. We got to make this work with them because if we can get these jobs and this, we can grow this much. And it doesn't work. Like there's some guys that you like you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. There's only so much that you can do. I can't want this job for you more than you want. Yeah, you, you've. That's like a famous Clark.
Speaker 2:I can't. I can't want this more than you want it. You know that's not going to work. I need you to be motivated to, to, to make this self motivate and want to be here and have some proactivity to say so let's fast forward. Some getting kind of uh more to the the recent times, james grew I and eventually stepped out of pro.
Speaker 2:I stopped growing in eighth grade. That's true. We, you know they can't tell you're sitting down on camera so nobody knows. But we started growing and I eventually, three to four years ago, was at a spot where Jared and I had eventually stepped out of ProServe, our construction company in Atlanta, and James kind of took that over and we had a bunch of different transitions that we were doing. Where James ended up going and where he's at now was he started taking over our expansion operations and so he was the first of our expansion to kind of test it out, and he's he's actually now part of, you know, business owner with me on all of our expansion. So we're we're partners in those.
Speaker 2:But, that being said, our first expansion was the Austin. We don't we're partners in those but, that being said, our first expansion was the Austin. We don't. We're not going to go through all of it, but we really learned that together and you jumped in, I mean you, you lived out there for six weeks, something like that, to kind of get it going, to figure things out and get it running.
Speaker 2:But James's experience has been every seat that you can be in in construction, which I love to have you a part of the podcast because you've got a different perspective than Jared or I had, so I've been in a lot of the seats as well, but you've done plenty of stuff that I haven't done in terms of you've owned the expansions, the new locations how do we manage that? How do you live in Atlanta and manage a location in Austin, texas? How do we live in Atlanta? How does that work? How often should we visit All of that stuff? And you've done a fantastic job on that. I think the teams love working with you and love following you, but I think that's part of why I want you on this podcast is because those experiences is where all of the companies that we're coaching are headed. The growth expansion how do we get this to where it's making us money and we're not having to break our backs day in and day out?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, I mean back to the people side of it like that, it wouldn't work without David.
Speaker 2:David's our main man out in Austin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he you know there's people that you can. I don't think you can. You can give as much trust to somebody as I've given to David. Um, like on the regular, like you got to find the right person, you got to find somebody that really, if, if there were client issue after client issue and um, you know, I was constantly having to be on the phone with folks that would get really old for clients, it wouldn't work. It's like you're all the way on Atlanta, this guy's here. It doesn't happen because David takes care of his stuff.
Speaker 2:It's the difference of being a babysitter of a project manager and being a supporter of a project manager.
Speaker 1:Like, hey, let me, you're looking for this specific spec for this door, don't worry, but let me find it. Send me the spec, I'll, I'll look for it, I'll source it, you know, I'll invoice your clients, I'll build out this scope. I'll build, I'll do whatever I need to in the background to make you successful in the front and that's been really successful for us. Like I'm, I don't mind doing, you know, the digging, the ditches. Yeah, I really enjoy being in the background. I really enjoy. I really enjoy not having to deal. I mean, this is the dumbest thing in the world, but I really enjoy not having to deal with the, the, the clients at that level.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love being able to be in the front end dream with them step in if there's an issue along the way, but at the end of the day, they're not calling you about paint colors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because we're because of you know who David is and because of the processes and everything that we've set up. When I do need to interact with clients, it's before they're even frustrated, they're confused. I get to step in when they're confused and then the confusion, if you don't lean into it, turns into frustration and that's when your project starts kind of crumbling. And that was like I don't know if this is kind of off topic, but like a year or two ago when we were talking about the communication, advocacy and leadership, that's when I really started harping on the education side, because we kept seeing clients frustrated at like the same point each way.
Speaker 1:And the first time and the first approach to that was how do we defend against this? You know, how do we protect ourselves against this? And that felt good and it worked to a point, but then we still kept seeing the same things. We just had better armor to protect ourselves from it, but it's like we needed. How do we stop that from happening? And it's not. We've never said that this is part of our, our job for people, but if we want clients to experience the better, to have a better experience, then there's going to be things that we need to educate them on, because they don't know they're not. They're not in our, in our world, and the stuff that we don't normally talk about cause.
Speaker 2:We're in a day in and day out, so that education part is just assumed from us. And that's where the miscommunication and disappointment from customers come in. Is we assume that they understood how things work normally and they've never done a renovation. They've never. You know, they have separate assumptions. And what's funny is our, our client engagement agreement, which we give to all our our coaching clients. James was the original author of that. I mean, we've all tinkered with it, we've all put our brains together on it and worked together, but that came from James because it was how do we get that education to our customers ahead of time, as opposed to explaining it when they're pissed off? And when I'm explaining it when they're pissed off, it looks like an excuse, it looks like I'm trying to get out of having to pay for something, and so we're going to cover that in a future podcast, the educational piece and what you're doing for that. I think that's a Sorry. Sorry for jumping in, no, no, just blowing the next podcast, but no, I think that's a good thing that we're going to cover. I think the other thing is I also in a future podcast we're going to be covering expansion and what that looks like.
Speaker 2:And I think one thing that you mentioned there is expansion has been opportunistic for us, based around the people. Expanding with us. We can't take it In. Construction is different than expanding a subway right Subway. I need you, I need, I can hire any person to work the front counter at a subway and it works. I need four sleepy teenagers and we're good to go. We're good to go For construction. The guy showing up, knocking on the door, doing the estimate is the company and as good as that person is on the ground, that's showing up at that person's house. That is their experience of our company and so it's. How do we get the right people in place? And we'll have a longer podcast about expansion. But I think there's a lot more experience from you on that and we've learned a ton in the last three years two years, three years with our expansion efforts to where we're doing it in a better way at this point. So I think that's good for now. I think I think I've got a good feeling of who you are.
Speaker 1:Cool, cool. This has been really nice. Yeah, thanks, it's been fun All right.
Speaker 2:So next week join us again. We're going to get some some new podcasts rolling out with some really cool topics that we're excited about. But thank you guys so much for joining us and we're excited about this next journey with contractor cuts. All right, bye, thank you.
