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.
Don't miss out on this opportunity to gain the knowledge and strategies you need to take your contracting business to new heights. Subscribe to Contractor Cuts today and empower yourself with the tools and insights to thrive in the industry.
Contractor Cuts
The Difference Between a Good Project Manager vs a Great Project Manager
Clark Turner and James McConnell explore the critical differences between good and great project managers for contracting companies, offering insights that can transform your hiring process and business growth trajectory.
• Good PMs have technical knowledge, but great PMs can effectively teach and translate that knowledge for clients
• Great PMs possess emotional intelligence to identify when clients feel uncomfortable and proactively address concerns
• Finding the right balance between being people-oriented and task-focused is essential for PM excellence
• During interviews, look beyond confidence and immediate availability to identify curiosity, ownership mentality, and receptiveness to criticism
• The first PM hire is especially critical as they represent 50% of your workforce and set the tone for company culture
• Hold out for "unicorn" candidates rather than settling for merely adequate PMs
• Great PMs take complete ownership of everything within their control without deflecting blame
• Curiosity is a fundamental trait that drives continuous learning and improvement in exceptional PMs
If you need help with your hiring process or growing your contracting business, contact Clark at clark@zanga.org.
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! 🚀
Go to ProStruct360.com or schedule a meeting with Clark at Have a question or an idea to improve the podcast?
Email us at team@prostruct360.com or text us at +1 (678) 940-5747
Want to learn more about our software or coaching?
Visit our website at ProStruct360.com
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 James McConnell. Thanks for joining us again.
Speaker 1:No problem.
Speaker 2:So today we are talking about the difference of a good project manager and a great project manager, and if you're listening to this and you're hiring, this is the perfect one to listen to. If you're not hiring, if you are a one-man show, listen to this, as. Stop listening right now, hang up the phone. No, if this is you, if you're not hiring or looking for a project manager currently, think about yourself as a project manager.
Speaker 2:These are qualities that we find that is oh, that guy's fine, he's a good project manager versus this guy's great, this guy's killer, like I don't know how we were running things without this guy on our team, right? And so we want to really define the differences, compare the good and the bad, or really the good and the great, because you can find a good project manager pretty easily. And so what we're going to do is talk about comparing them and then also what we see an average PM during the hiring process versus what we actually don't see from a great PM, that you need to kind of look under the hood a little bit more to understand. You know, does this person have these characteristics and features? Yeah, so, starting out comparing good versus great, I think, james, when we were talking about this beforehand. You had a really good point on this one, the. A good PM has technical knowledge. A great PM has the ability to convey that knowledge in a consumable way. Go.
Speaker 1:Okay, anyway, thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 2:I think that was you said that I was like boom, that's number one. I mean, that is it in terms of the difference of a good and great who both have knowledge, right, but what makes it great the difference of a good and great who both have knowledge?
Speaker 1:right, yeah, but you know what makes it great? Well, you know, when I was just a young buck in college, I had three or four different majors and one of them was outdoor education and that's all about experiential learning, experiential teaching, experiential learning, experiential teaching. And one of like the uh, great thought thinkers, or whatever you theologians for that kind of world, is john dewey. Yeah, and that's one of his big things is you. You can have all the technical knowledge in the world, you can be an expert in something, but the ability to teach is different. Yeah, and so you can have all of the skills, you can have all of the knowledge, but there's this next level of being able to convey that and being able to convey it to multiple different people, multiple different brain types or personality types. Yeah, because you can come at it from this angle or this angle Back the bus up and come a different way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If you're reading from that person, they're not following you, they're not understanding, or their actions show that they're not following you, understanding you. And so one of his big things was and it goes back to the teaching aspect for the client, which for me I think is a super important part of the holistic picture of your client relationship is being able to educate them and teach them in the areas that they need to know. And so a good project manager, they can get the job done, but they don't necessarily take the client along with them. A great project manager can say I see you're a little stressed about the timeline.
Speaker 1:We are at the concrete phase of this project. We have to have an inspection before we pour the concrete. We have to have an inspection after we get the framing done, we have to have an inspection. So it's going to be slow, we're going to have a slow and then, once the sheetrock gets up, we're going to be slow. We're going to have a slow and then, once the sheetrock gets up, we're going to be running and we're going to have like it takes a good project manager to be able to back up and, instead of receiving questions from a client as an attack, it's oh, you're proactively. You don't understand where we're at right now. That's okay. Here's how it's going to lay out. Yeah, so there's. That's the difference between those two in my mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's good. I think you know when, when you first start saying it, you know being a teacher, being able to teach, is like, well, what's that? What's that have to do with the project manager and I think it's great with crews. But, most importantly, we talk so much about what we're selling as a customer's experience and that's how you get referrals, growth, callbacks is that they had a great experience with your company and so, if I can almost have empathy to where I'm understanding what a red flag might pop up in their brain from their side of things, right, because from our side it's like, yeah, there's a little paint on the trim that we got. That's not like I can fix that real quickly, but for a customer, oh my gosh, we're going to repaint the whole place, right?
Speaker 2:Whatever it is, there will be emergencies, there will be flags, there will be things that they don't know.
Speaker 2:That, if they just knew it from a different perspective, everything's okay and this is okay and we're calm, and so being able to not only know exactly how things are going to go, but being able to teach the customer the educational side of hey, this is probably worrisome to you, but let me let you, let me kind of fill you in the back. The backend is why that's not a big deal, yeah Right. And being able to convey to them to where they understand in non-technical terms exactly why things are going smoothly or why things aren't going smoothly, like what went wrong and why it went wrong and what I'm doing to fix it. Identify that a customer is uncomfortable or unknowledgeable about something and proactively dealing with it and calming their nerves, which that takes some interpersonal skills to be able to identify, that, have that empathy and be kind of, have a uh, almost a sensitivity meter of like, okay, wait, wait, wait. That person feels a little prickly all of a sudden. What happened? Let me back up and I think what?
Speaker 1:what you said? There is a good indicator. Like not using industry terms necessarily, but finding a common ground. You don't want to be like, okay, so you know how. Two by four, it's two inches by four inches, and you need a fastener that's just a fancy word for a screw or a nail. Like you don't want to be like that Condescending Condescending, that's the word I'm looking for, but there's. You also can't overwhelm a client with terms they might not even be familiar with. Yeah, and it's like that's not impressive at a certain point. It's like you're hiding behind something now. Like you're hiding behind something now. Like you're you're throwing all these big words at me to obscure what's actually happening. That's like the feeling a client has.
Speaker 2:I, we do a pal meetings once a week with our project managers, where we, you know, the goal is to sit down and go through their jobs and help kind of catch any balls that are falling through the cracks, help kind of give them coaching on a job level to be an extra set of eyes on jobs, because there's so many things going on you're going to drop things and forget things. So it's a spot where we kind of give them a client experience grade. We call our PAL grades Project Manager Action List grades, and then we also help them in kind of armchair quarterback their jobs to where when they got questions. How do I do this? What about this? And in those meetings I always ask my PMs well, it was always like a one to 10.
Speaker 2:How happy is this customer? Where are they at? And the guys that could hit that number are the guys that we're looking for. Those are the great, the good, the good project managers that are fine to run in jobs and get jobs done. Oh, this client loves me. And then I talk to the customer at some point. They're like he's a nice guy, he's great, but you know, I probably wouldn't use him Like we've had. We've had customers call and be like hey't want to work with, thinks that everything's great and doesn't have the the ability to have that emotional uh meter of like oh, this person's not enjoying this conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right and so again, that's very difficult to find in an interview. I don't know how to necessarily sort through in an interview setting to help help get that from somebody and sometimes it's not even a fair heuristic Cause like the client might not be giving anything to them.
Speaker 1:Like you know, we're really not satisfied with this, just like yeah, it's great to see you. Okay, thanks, yeah, thanks so much and everything. All the emails have exclamation points Like things are great and like, for whatever reason they are upset or they are they do feel like this person can't actually get it done.
Speaker 2:So it's just confusing. Yeah, and it's not one-off clients to either. Yeah, like what that's, there's going to be those clients. It's kind of the pattern that you get from from PMs, I think. Also, most this kind of goes along with some stuff we're going to talk about later in a great PM.
Speaker 2:But for me, the, the ability in this for the ownership of everything that I am in control of, right, and so if a, if a project manager feels a personal ownership of everything that I, that I'm in charge of, which is everything on the job site, it's not a matter of I just need to get this done so I can get out of here. It's more of a how is this person experiencing this, and can I do a little bit extra to fill them in, to make sure their experience is good? Versus what's the minimum I can do to get out of this house because I'm so freaking tired of being here? And so I think that type of a mindset the, the personal ownership is where this comes from, because it's like, hey, I want this person to experience this and I'm not okay with with a B, I want an A and I, and I want to make sure that I'm in control of this and that this person that I'm checking in with my customer um, you know how are things going. Are you okay with everything? Is there anything that's concerning you that's going on here? And giving them that space to critique stuff and not getting defensive and not getting Well, yeah, well, we're doing that, because both and not having this, this defensive edge on you, but really saying OK, let me hear more about that. Yeah, well, cool, let me explain why we did it that way. I probably should have done this ahead of time.
Speaker 2:Right, and having that ability is almost innate in some people and some people just don't have it. It's almost uncoachable. But there is some steps that you can take with people to help them kind of open up that side to where we're asking them hey, check in with that customer, why don't you check in with that client? See how their, their experience is going? And? And the more they do that, the more they they understand of experience, how good it is. Yeah, what?
Speaker 1:this is just kind of coming to me now. We've talked a little bit about it, um, I think last last podcast, but the curiosity yeah and that's I don't know how you identify that in like the first or in a couple interviews, but curiosity, but curiosity is is one of those things that's not, I don't think is trainable. Like you have people that are curious and people that aren't curious, and that's one that's like a curious project manager. Can anybody, a curious person, can receive a criticism without it feeling like an attack, because it's like, hmm, interesting, yeah, interesting, okay, uh, how do I go about? And like that is valuable, that's very valuable, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think you can't train someone to be curious, but you can put processes in place that that capture what you're trying to get across to the customer. So I say that because what I want every person to do project manager, company owner when you're running a job is I want you to look at your software, open up every job twice a week at minimum and ask the three questions that we always talk about where it's. Is there anything on this that I can tell the customer that they currently don't know? Is there any information I could push to the customer? Number one, Number two is there anything I can do here to get this job going faster, closer to the finish line? I mean those type of questions.
Speaker 2:I can train someone to open up every job and ask those to themselves, and those two questions alone do that curiosity. Because if I'm telling the customer, hey, what is there anything I can push your customer, well, they don't know that the dumpster is coming on monday. Let me push that to them. We're now eliminating the customer being frustrated because they parked in the garage and the dumpster is now blocking them because I pushed that ahead of time, right, and so let me do devil's advocate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, please, please, the I do. I hear what you're saying, yeah, but I think that that takes curiosity when you sit down and say is there anything I can push to the client, and it's like a non-curious person is like here we go, here's the list, anything I can push to the client. No, not really. Yeah, got it, got that. Uh, instead of like what is scrolling through, what is what? Hey, man, is that dumpster? Is that dumpster full? Okay, great, I'm going to order you another dumpster and blah, blah, blah, hey client, blah, blah, blah Like that's curiosity, actually leaning into the process versus this is just a list of things I need to check off and you know, whatever, whatever, okay.
Speaker 2:But I, I would. I would push back on you, I'll push back on your pushback. You're going to devil's advocate my app, devil's advocate, I'm angel advocating against you on this. Of course, the attitude of someone, the ability to be curious, is one thing. The attitude of someone who's not curious that says, hey, I want to be better at what I'm doing, so I need to look at this, how do I do that? And coaching someone on how to look at every line item and see is there anything that needs to be done on this one? Is there anything that? That is, you don't have to be curious to look at every single line item. You have to have the attitude of I want to do well, but just because you're you want to do your job well doesn't make you innately curious. Right, and so you can train on processes to have a really good project manager. Maybe the great ones are naturally curious on job sites, and that's the difference of good and great. But I think as a company, if you're going to hire five project managers, you're not going to get five perfect, great ones. What we want to do is build processes to where we can help the good ones become great or at least be really good, and so I think part of the process building is how do I capture the greatness that someone naturally does and process it inside of my company to where this is how we do things, and so you might not be a curious person, I can't teach you that, but what I can teach you and hold you accountable to is are you looking at every line item? Are you asking those questions? Are you pushing stuff?
Speaker 2:And we've had guys that we I mean there's one project manager that I'm still friends with, that that I literally talked to last week. He was not a good project manager. He just isn't naturally minded that way, and I sat down with him and had that conversation. I was like hey, do you enjoy this? You're doing twice as much work for the same output as other PMs that are good at this. Do you enjoy doing this job? He's like no, not really, and he didn't work here. We let him go and it was a great situation because I helped him move on to what he was doing next.
Speaker 2:But again it was like there's the curiosity, and then it's like you're, you're struggling with just falling directions and so if you can't do that, you can't work here. I don't, I don't need you to be curious, but if I can find that guy, he's, he's, he's, he's a diamond, right, and I'm going to hold on to that. So, yeah, I think I think that's good. Something else comparing good to great finding the right balance right. We've had project managers that are super task-focused and others that are super people-focused right, all they care about is relationships and they don't get their job done. Or other ones that care only about the task and customers don't like them. Because he is so task-oriented, I gotta do this, it gotta be this way it has to be and he cares more about tasks than people. And so, finding the balance in a project manager James, would you prefer someone more people-oriented or task-oriented as a project manager?
Speaker 1:I would err on. It would depend on the, on the hire, like the first hire, I need someone that is more person oriented than task oriented, which seems counterintuitive. But if you've been doing your own thing for a minute, maybe you love the, maybe you are all about the people and you want somebody to take over the tasks. Yep, okay, great. I would venture to guess, more often than not, guys that have been in this for a minute and they're trying to grow is because they want to step out of the client facing aspect of their job and focus on the tasks and the minutia so that they can work themselves out of that job. So that they can work themselves out of that job. But I would want somebody that is more relationship-based and can do the tasks. But it's a double-edged sword because if you are super, we've had guys that are more relationship-based and the tasks follow the relationship.
Speaker 2:I'm pushing them up the hill, trying to get them to do their tasks.
Speaker 1:Well, if the relationship is good, the tasks will follow. If the relationship is bad the tasks fall because they don't deserve my time.
Speaker 2:Yes, I know who you're talking about. But yeah, like the, the, the focus, if I like the person they're going to, they're going to get 100% of me. That won't work for me. No, no, I think something else. It's a bit of a trick question. In terms of which one would you rather? Because I think it's A how dare you.
Speaker 1:I'm sitting here in good faith and you're trying to trick me.
Speaker 2:Well, it's that what you said, but I think it's also what am I hiring for? Right? We had one department in Atlanta that was nothing but turns between tenants in and out. Task boy, I don't need you to be personable, I don't need you to have teeth, I need you to get in there and get the job done. I don't need you to present well, I don't need you to.
Speaker 2:You know like I need execution of task, and you know that project manager that was running over there one of them had about 17 jobs open at a time, just in and out, and it'd be a week-long job and he'd be doing 17 at a time. Because I just need you to execute, I don't need you. These are the three things that I need you to communicate. Send it to the customers, cc your boss on it. That's all we need from you. And you go to the other side of it where, if, if I'm trying to convince you to spend $400,000 on an addition with me, you got to like me, right, like the tasks are important and having things organized important, but if you don't trust me and understand that I have the same vision as you on this project, you're never going to. You're never going to go with that. So the task-oriented project manager is not a sales guy, is not going to be able to communicate with a customer or make the customer enjoy it as much as the person and the connection and the relationship-oriented person. So I think it depends on the job we're hiring for.
Speaker 2:Is which one I'm leading Now? You've got to have both. We're hiring for is which one I'm leading? Now you got to have both. Right, if you're nothing but personable and I see that in you in an interview, I'm asking a lot of the organizational questions how do you keep organized? You know what's the process to get things done for you. How do you do that? And starting to understand how they accomplish tasks. And then, if they're more task oriented you know I'm seeing how personable they are in the interview I'm, you know, feeling out that side of it as well. So I want both. You know I it's almost impossible to find someone 50, 50. Um, most people lean one way or another. And so how, if you're leaning one way, I want to hear from you how you make up for the other way. You know how. How do you engage the other side of things and have the self-awareness that I'm not great with tasks, so I do it this way my task.
Speaker 1:I get my tasks done out of trauma and baggage, my dad not telling me. That's how I kind of process my tasks. You're hired. If X doesn't get done, then Z. I'm not a good person, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right. So the other finding the balance between the good and great is quality versus speed awareness. I think this is a good one, too, in terms of some guys want to take seven days to do a one day job because they need it to be perfect, and some guys take one day to do a seven day job because I got to get in and out, because I got to get in and out, and so a PM that can be aware of the speed versus quality on a job site and also communicate that to the customer as to I'm pricing this for this. This is a priority for you. To get this done cheap and fast Great. Let me talk to you about quality and what that's going to look like, right, and so being able to understand that and be aware of that balance when you're doing any sort of work in the construction industry is super important to be a great PM.
Speaker 1:David is a master at this. Yeah, when he's, david's one of our project managers in Austin, when he's on a job site with a client you know they're they're walking around the house for the first time. Yeah, he'll spend so much time like they're in the living room and he's like now see this transition, you see how this window you always keep this window open. Okay, then the floor in here is going to lose color quicker than this one. The sheetrock in here, where we're taking this out, this is a different finish on the sheet rock than this room. So which one do you want? And are you okay with having a mixture or do we need to redo everything? Yeah, and asking those types of questions and getting into like, how is this person going to exist in this space? Yep, really uncovers a lot of the piccadillies that people are gonna like they're not gonna let you out of the house because of some of these things, and so you need to find those on the front end so you can charge for them, and that's kind of the training behind it is like, what are they going to be picky about? Because some people are like they don't. They don't care about sheetrock, there could be maladies all over the place and that's not important to them. But sheetrock, there could be maladies all over the place and that's not important to them.
Speaker 1:But the trim god, they need that. Trim to every, every. Every joint needs to be back cut. Everything needs to look like a you know, professional trim carpenter has has done it. Okay, we can get that guy. We just we need to charge more. Right now all we have is three inch baseboards and just coming in and getting it done well, and there's a lot to what you just said, I think.
Speaker 2:I think the first thing I thought about was that takes knowledge, that takes experience, and so someone coming in who's been doing it for two years, even if they're very good at being aware and quality and speed and let me explain this to the customer Is this sheetrock? Okay, that's, that's, uh, that's sheetrock Is this asbestos.
Speaker 2:But but if they don't know, if the and a lot of it's just I did it wrong and so I learned, learned that way. So that's why it's so important to have a head of construction, someone that's looking over the estimates, asking these questions. It's why we require 80 photos at a job site. So I can, I can be your extra set of eyes and ears, so hopefully we don't learn the hard way, but you learn through my experience as your boss. But yeah, I think that's really good to be able to have that. So you have to have that knowledge and then, on top of that, have the ability to convey that to the customer. And the third level of that is how do I convey that without losing the customer? Because if you just send it over in an email, it's scaring them, right, saying that stuff.
Speaker 2:So it's the advocacy side with your customer, to where our processes surround how we deliver information, when we deliver and how, and guiding the customer through the process, knowing it. So, yeah, that's good, all right. So let's go into interviews. What we see in an average project manager that makes us hire them, that maybe we should not really care that much about, right, and a lot of these are from past experiences of hiring the wrong people or not the best people. They might be fine, but they ended up not working here because they weren't great, and so the first one on this list is someone who's super confident. I wrote feed the beast as one of our.
Speaker 1:I got to know that you're going to feed the beast.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was the line that he said to us during the interview and, like suckers were like oh, this guy, this guy, this guy wants work. You know a little cheesy a this guy, this guy, this guy wants work. You know, a little cheesy, a little corny, but he's after it. And uh, he was number one in his, his mind, and uh wouldn't let anyone treat him otherwise. And so, uh, there was a, uh, an ego and a false confidence and stuff that he didn't know about and and a bunch of other stuff, but for us it was, it was uh about and a bunch of other stuff, but for us it was.
Speaker 1:It was appetizing to hear that and I think that that was. I've always been attracted to unruly confidence, but, like you have to back it up. Yeah, you really need to back it up, cause if not, it's like ah, I was hoping you were the beast. Yeah, yeah, why aren't you the beast? Why?
Speaker 2:aren't you the beast? Well, and I think there's a difference. Confidence can come with humility, cockiness doesn't right, and so I don't mind you being confident, but I also need you to be teachable.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, the funny thing about humility is the word hummus. It's grounded, it's earth, grounded in reality. Yeah, the Latin root. And so if you are confident and you can back it up, that's humility, that's an understanding of what's actually happening in reality, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I know, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, no, you're hired for sure. The next one the ability to step in today and start running jobs. We've seen guys that are like you know what, this guy knows what he's doing, he can step in. I put next to that someone who used to run their own company.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes those are attractive, good PMs that often don't work out, and that's because they have systems and processes that they run their jobs and often thinks that that's the best way to do it, Because if they didn't think it was the best way, they wouldn't have done it that way and there's a reason that their company is not in business anymore because the way that they ran it. And so teaching an old dog new tricks can be done, but it takes the right personality and humility and someone who steps in and saying listen and a shot caller, and a shot caller who steps in and saying listen and a shot caller and a shot caller, but it but it takes a lot more hands on and it takes a lot more skill to manage that guy because he he he's probably pretty right in a lot of what he does and what he says and there's going to be certain things that he's not right in, but it gets all lumped together.
Speaker 1:And it takes. It takes something on their side that you have no control over, and that's a buy-in and respect for the company. Yep, not necessarily you as a human, but uh, okay, I'll fall in line. I don't agree with this, or?
Speaker 2:that. I think it's a waste of my time to do it that way. Yeah, but.
Speaker 1:I'm being paid for my time and if they want me to waste and I've said my piece- then okay, those, those hires can become cancers in the company too.
Speaker 2:They they can almost and not not to be dramatic, but almost kind of rise up as a, as a um anti-leader in the company that people follow. But that kind of is leading people away from being together as a company, right, I don't know why they got that sexy edge to them?
Speaker 1:The devil may care. James Dean attitude. I know what you're talking about. The real cute ones. The real cute ones, they wear a leather jacket. They say things like hey, I know.
Speaker 2:Fonzie type characters hey. And then the last one I got under like an average PM. That makes us hire them is someone just like you. Especially for the first hire, it's when you are lonely running things and you really connect with the dude that you like and you want to have a beer friend.
Speaker 2:You pay him to be your friend, yeah, no, it's like oh, that guy's got it. He's like you respect the way that that person is because it's very much like you and that's how you think things should run. And the problem is those type of hires are I don't need another me here, I need someone that's that's the opposite of me, that can make my weaknesses strong and where I can help them and they can help me, and so on. Those hires, especially early on, uh, once you get three, four, five project managers, there's going to be different personalities and hiring someone similar to yourself is not necessarily a bad thing, but oftentimes we overlook the bad because we really like the guy, yeah, uh.
Speaker 1:And Uh, and every Romeo needs is Mercutio.
Speaker 2:I couldn't have said it better myself, all right, so, uh, you need a foil, you need a foil. There you go. Uh, what don't we see in a great PM during the interview process? I like I like the way we phrase this one what we don't see in a great PM during the interview process. So these are the hidden things that I'm looking for and trying to uncover in a project manager. That's like a this guy's great, um, but it's hard to see in an interview. Or gal or gal, sure, or they. You have four daughters. I know, I know I'm, I'm pro women, for sure. Uh, uh, hobbies, doer.
Speaker 2:I wrote this one down as if I can find someone that likes to be busy, that has a high work level, that wants to do, wants to. You know, usually if people are woodworkers, they like to. I have a collection of wood that I tinker with and do this and build a dog house and build it Like. That type of person is going to be someone who has a high level of accomplishment, and so being high level accomplishment means they're not going to half-ass your job and just kind of put a little bit of effort in. They're going to go full fledged for you, and those folks are naturally curious, naturally curious, naturally inquisitive. I want to know how that works, I want to know this and they're going to learn faster, they're going to know more. They're going, they're going to treat your customers better because they they have a high bar for themselves and I don't have to constantly be pulling them up to the bar that I'm trying to set in the company.
Speaker 2:So again, the doer mentality of a person, if I can find that, I often ask in interviews like so, what are your hobbies? What do you do on the weekends? Like what's, what's what's fun for you, right? And if someone's like, uh, I like to watch TV, I'm like, okay, cool, so, okay, you know, that's, that's in the negative column for me. I like to watch TV too. But what else are you doing, what? Where are you spending your time? Where do you set your personal standards as a human? Next, ability to receive criticism and grow versus not being approachable. This is very hard to find in an interview, right, to find someone who can hear criticism, because you're not going to criticize them sitting in an interview. You don't have that depth of relationship. How would you read out if you're interviewing someone for a PM? How would you weed this out. How would you start kind of identifying someone who's able to grow and receive criticism and wants to learn here, even if they've ran their own company? Like, how do you find that?
Speaker 1:I'd ask questions about previous work experiences and try and get them to. I would try and lead them, without leading them, to give me a scenario where they were wrong. Yeah, a scenario where they made a mistake, without following it up with some BS like, yeah, this happened and that was a mistake that I made, but what I did to, uh, you know, rectify it was I just I made it right. Yeah, you know, there's there's not always a, there's not always a win. You don't always need a silver lining. There can just be a no, that was a failure. Yeah, and I want, want that, I want that self-awareness to where it's like don't, we don't need to beat around the bush, we all make mistakes, we all fall short. Uh, it's more important for me that you are aware of that, yeah, in your human condition than your ability to just bs me and talk about how you are.
Speaker 2:I think a good question too is what was the worst thing about your last boss? Right, if the, if your last like, if your answer to that is like he just didn't see me, he, he, you know, I tried my hardest and I didn't get any feedback and I didn't like I just didn't know where I was at all times and I felt like like I didn't get support. There that's a great answer, because that means you want that feedback. I want to hear that. If it's like this guy thinks he knew everything he tried to tell me to do, that Like you can start picking up on some of those.
Speaker 1:Micromanage always over my shoulder. And on my last buzz. My first boss and my middle boss they were all micromanagers too. Everybody's up in my business trying to get my sack lunch.
Speaker 2:Well, and if so, and even if your old boss was a micromanager, let's say that that's true and you're not, you are still. Uh can receive criticism. My response when I hear you say, uh, you know, he just micromanaged everything I did, I would say so. How did you deal with that? What happened, like what? What changed what? What? What did you? What were your?
Speaker 1:conversations like with them. Also, their level of excitement to talk shit about somebody else is a good indicator. Yes, yeah, that's good. How quick do you want to back the bus up over this person? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And maybe the person is a terrible person that their boss was. Yeah, I don't care, because if you don't have the the wherewithal to know I'm talking to my potential future boss, about my old boss. I want to at least have some room and respect there. Then how are you going to talk to my customers when they're being jerks on the job?
Speaker 1:site Right, or when I make a decision that you don't agree with. How's that going to go?
Speaker 2:Yes, Yep, I. How's that going to go? Yes, yep, I think that's a good one. You know what we don't see in great PMs during interview process an internal want for growth, learning and constantly getting better. You know, I think that's a characteristic that's hard to identify in one conversation with someone. But, if you can, that is a great employee, that is a great project manager, someone that wants to get better. And again, part of that is hearing criticism feedback. Right, that I want to. I want to be better. Like, tell me more. Tell me more about that as opposed to you know, you can't say that about me, right?
Speaker 1:That, that sort of pushback on one thing my sister does. Um, she this is just something that's always impressed me about her. She'll, on random nights of the week, will just get her computer out and a notepad and she will just start researching a topic that she's thought of throughout the week and she'll just like write notes and then she's done with it, just learns it, just learns it Like scratches the curiosity itch, like that is such an impressive trait to me. It's always like that's so cool and like I do that sometimes. Now too, because she told me about it, I was like that's a, that's genius. Yeah, you like keep stoking that fire, cause. We keep talking about curiosity. And like, uh, you talking about curiosity, yeah, and like, uh, you either have it or you don't. And I want to retract because I think we are all born curious. You have to be curious. That's how you learn everything. For whatever reason, I don't know what kills curiosity. Maybe that's its own podcast in and of itself, but somewhere along, the way you don't nurture it, it dies.
Speaker 1:You think you know everything, you get senile, you get complacent. But like stoking that curiosity, if you can determine that the person that you're in front of trying to interview actively nurtures their curiosity, whether it's a hobby or you know, taking night classes or taking a pottery class, because what the hell could be fun, that's, I think, pretty valuable.
Speaker 2:I agree totally. I think that goes along with the next one the self-realization, self-awareness and humility. I mean, if you're aware of yourself, you know that you're not smart at everything, you know that you don't have everything, you know you can always learn more. And so being able to have that self-awareness if I can pull it out of you in an interview and understand you're a curious person or you know I really struggle with this Great, you know, if I want to hear what your struggles are, what you're not good at and how you deal with it, and I don't want to hear that you just work too hard, right, I want to hear legit struggles. And I've said this to people sending an interview saying if I don't know where your weaknesses are, I'm not going to hire you. And I feel like you know the last question that you told me that you work too hard. That's not a weakness. What is a real weakness? Because if I don't know it, I don't feel comfortable making that hire. Yeah, at that point they become like they're sitting with their priest.
Speaker 1:I did cocaine once.
Speaker 2:What is?
Speaker 1:that office episode where Michael is talking to David Wallace and he's like I work too hard and I care too much. Do you see what I?
Speaker 2:did there? Yes, yeah, and it's funny because that happens every interview. It feels like All right, ownership of everything they touch. We talked about this earlier. But if I can find someone who finds ownership in everything, they don't pass the buck. They don't blame others, they they take it on themselves because I don't care about it. I'm sorry, I just care about someone handling it, and that's what a great project manager does. The unholy.
Speaker 1:We yes, when you're having a conversation. It's like I think we missed that on the estimate. Who's we? One of my, one of the guys.
Speaker 2:Did you hire someone to write an estimate for you?
Speaker 1:My first boss out of, like my real, first real job. He would always say you got a mouse in your pocket. Yeah, yeah, cause that that is one of the most frustrating things, when someone won't take ownership and then brings you into the well. I didn't write this estimate up. I don't know who we is Like that's. That's a flag for me, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Or that's a flag for me, dog. That's a flag for me, though. The, the, along with that, the, the we. When your crew screws up, I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1:We write like like that's an ownership we yes that's a the.
Speaker 2:The carpet guys just didn't show yesterday. Hey, what happened with that job? Why is it? Why? Why is the customer sending me an email right now? Well, we didn't get the carpet installed, you're right, you didn't, even though it was someone else's fault, right, you were the project manager. You didn't make sure that the carpet guys were coming. You didn't do that. So take that ownership of that, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:It's like where do you go from there? Where? If the answer is, well, the carpet guys didn't show up, the next question is well, why did the carpet guys not show up? Whereas if it's, we didn't show up, yeah, yeah, I think, how are you going?
Speaker 2:to fix it. I, yeah, yeah, I think, how are you going to fix it? I think that's right. I think it's a, it's a person that has that awareness. It's like, listen, I'm, I'm just going to get things fixed, but it takes some self-confidence in that right, like if someone who is, who is, doesn't have self-confidence, they're not okay with owning that because they want to make sure that you know that it wasn't me, right and so and so finding, finding that that in the person. Last couple we've got others focused with construction knowledge. We've talked about that a lot in terms of being a people, person but also the knowledge and the ability to know. Kind of talking about David, when you're giving that example earlier. I think Jared mentioned this on a past podcast. But one of our tests that we used to do with project managers is we did on James the day one that you started working here hey, there's our storage closet over there. Would you mind getting that organized Right? And James owned it, went in there. I mean, it was color coordinated alphabetically and everything.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you guys asked, because that storage closet has been on my mind.
Speaker 2:It needs a good organization, but you weren't above it, right? We had another guy that we had the exact same thing. He was, do you remember? Oh yeah, but it was like you know that's you're paying me to be. That's below me. I mean, it was pretty blunt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's below me. You know you was pretty blunt. Yeah, that's below me. You got a stallion in the stables Like let me run. It's like well, okay, so this isn't below you. You can't take instructions, you can't do what's needed, you can't own anything. Nothing's below anybody in this company. I'm the CEO and I'm cleaning toilets.
Speaker 1:You're going to need some stuff out of that storage closet. Don't you think it'd be good to know where it's at and how to access it quickly? What's a better way than for you to organize it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't even care about it. I care about watching their reaction when you ask them to do it. And the person that's like, sign me up, like that's what I'm doing today, it's going to find in an interview I can't be like, before you leave, there's a storage closet over to your left. So, again, that's how do you find that mentality that's?
Speaker 1:a good little hunting. Matt Damon little trick you just leave the door open to the closet to see if they need to organize.
Speaker 2:I'll be back in 30 minutes.
Speaker 1:And then everybody walks in and goes, starts slow clapping.
Speaker 2:So, all that being said, to wrap up, I think one sentence that you said when we were prepping this stuck out in my mind is hold out for that unicorn.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of us just hire For the first hire For the first hire, especially for the first hire. I think the first hire is the most important because that is the person that will eventually be your number two, most likely or will cost you the most money, because that's 50% of your workforce. And so when you get larger, when you're hiring your third or fourth project manager, even your second, you could be a little bit more risky because it's a gamble. But when I'm gambling 40K of my money on the first hire, that's two months of profits versus gambling 40K on the third hire, when it's two weeks of profits. That's a big difference in terms of hit that your company is taking and making a bad decision and being risky.
Speaker 2:But, that being said, holding out for that unicorn and doing the due diligence, I think one of my issues is when I was doing a lot of hires for project managers was I just wanted to find one to move on. My next thing I wanted to check the box of making that hire and so I would not look at the negatives. I would find I would rose color glass glasses on most things, because it was like hey, great, he's good, he's good, he's good, let's, let's, let's move on. He's as good as we're going to find and he's cheap, so let's do it Right. And so it wasn't the due diligence of interviewing 15 people for that. Instead, I'm going to keep looking. I'm going to. I went through a whole thing of hires and we didn't hire anyone. We're going to start over. Let's repost the job listing. Let's start at the beginning and go from there.
Speaker 1:You don't have time not to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's like you're, you're we've said this before A hire is literally taken $40,000, putting it on the table and hoping, lighting it on fire and hope that that guy can make you that money back.
Speaker 2:You're losing that money on the hire. Is this guy gonna make you that money back? Because it's gonna cost you a lot of money, not just in what you're paying them for the first three months before you fire them, but also in lost clients, damage on job sites, missed dollars all over the place. So there's tons of money that you lose with a bad hire, especially the first place. So there's tons of money that you lose with a bad hire, especially the first one. So make sure that you're holding out for that unicorn, checking these boxes and trying to really do your due diligence. Don't just do one interview. Take them to dinner, meet their spouse, get to know them Really, get on a deeper level of partnership in terms of that first and second hire, because those guys are going to determine if this company works or not, and so finding the right one is so important.
Speaker 1:And if you're having you know troubles in like relationships and dating, you could go back and listen to this and probably just use it as a dating podcast as well.
Speaker 2:That's true. Thanks, james. The dating coach yeah, anytime, all right, cool. Well, thanks for joining us. If you want to hear more, if you want any sort of coaching, if you're looking at making a hire and want our help in terms of the hiring process, or if you're looking for love. Or if you're looking for love, go to contact us. If you're looking for love, it's James at Zangaorg, and if you're looking for help with your growing your company, Hit up Clark at Zyngaorg. All right, thanks for listening. We'll talk to you later. Bye.
