The Art Of Saying “No” And Other Leadership Strategies | Ep. 239

In this insightful interview, Bradley engages Eric Anderton in a conversation about his journey, his leadership philosophy, and the strategies he employs to help construction leaders maximize their potential. Eric shares his unique EAR (Encouragement, Accountability, Recognition) framework for effective leadership communication, discusses the importance of setting an aspirational hourly rate, and emphasizes the power of saying “no” to tasks falling outside a leader’s role or below their aspirational hourly rate.

Detailed Show Notes:

Eric’s Background: Eric shares his diverse upbringing, moving around Europe and the United States, and how it has shaped his comfort with meeting new people and understanding different cultures.

Aspirational Hourly Rate: Eric introduces the concept of an aspirational hourly rate, a tool that helps leaders focus on tasks with the highest impact on their business. If a task falls below this rate, it should be delegated.

EAR Framework of Leadership: Eric presents his EAR (Encouragement, Accountability, Recognition) framework for effective leadership communication. Encouragement is about telling your team, “You can do it,” accountability involves asking, “Did you do it?” And recognition is acknowledging “You did it.”

Recognizing A-Players: Eric emphasizes the importance of consistently recognizing top performers (A-players) in a way that is personal and impactful to them. He warns against overlooking these individuals while focusing on improving the performance of B or C players.

Talent Identification and Development: Eric compares running a business to managing a sports franchise, where talent identification and development are crucial. He advises leaders to continuously evaluate their teams and ensure they have the right people in the right roles.

Saying No: Eric discusses the importance of saying “no” to tasks falling outside a leader’s role or below their aspirational hourly rate. This helps leaders to focus on tasks with the highest impact on their business.

Sales and Marketing: Eric shares his early career experiences in sales, the importance of understanding your target audience and their needs, and being persistent. He also discusses the importance of training and empowering employees to perform their roles effectively.

This interview is a must-listen for anyone interested in leadership, personal growth, and effective business strategies. Eric’s insights, drawn from his extensive experience and expertise, provide valuable lessons for leaders in any industry.

Buy the one book every construction leader must read: www.ConstructionGeniusBook.com

If you buy 10 or more copies, Eric will conduct a FREE Q&A and Leadership Training session for your leadership team via Zoom. Contact Eric directly for more details at eric@constructiongenius.com

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The Art Of Saying “No” And Other Leadership Strategies

In this episode, we are switching roles. I am the one being interviewed, and it is by Bradley Hartmann. He is the host of The Construction Leadership Podcast. We discuss a whole bunch of very interesting things. He gets me to open up a little bit, which sometimes I’m a touch uncomfortable about. We talk about things like how you as the leader of your company need to establish an aspirational hourly rate that drives your decisions with regard to what you take on and what you delegate, the importance of recognizing A-players, and the power of saying no. These are three of the many topics that we get into. I know you are going to enjoy it. We also talk about sales, marketing, and leadership communication. Check out this interview, enjoy it, and I appreciate you reading.

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Mr. Eric Anderton, welcome to the show.

Bradley, thank you for having me.

This is a joy because I have been looking at your face there without here for a long time as I have been a fan of your podcast and learned a lot not only from your content and your guests but also from how you went about doing that. I’m excited to have you. Thank you for making time.

That’s my privilege. Thank you for your kind words.

Let’s go on the way back machine. You are twelve years old. If you can geographically place us where you are, give us a little context about your family life and what you were passionate about at that time.

I’m twelve years old. I’m living in Bristol, England. I’m living with my dad. I was originally born in Bristol. I’m English. I had spent much of my first ten years or so moving around Europe and the United States with my mom, but then I moved back with my dad when I was ten. I lived with him for a few years. I’m going to what’s called a public school in England, which is a private school. It was a mid-tier private school. I was not doing very well academically because I was not a very good student. I played some rugby and enjoyed playing rugby. I listened to a lot of punk music that was in the ’80s.

That’s when all of that blew up. I assumed you were very articulate and well-spoken. I find my Chicago roots often have me listening to my podcast, and I’m like, “Why is he talking so fast?” Give us a little context. What did your family do, how did you end up there, and why did you ultimately come over here to the US?

My parents divorced when I was young. My dad always lived in England. My mom moved around Europe and ended up in America in California. When I was fifteen, I moved back to live with my mom. I finished high school in the United States and went to college. From there, I started my career here in Northern California.

As you look back on that and think about your leadership journey, are there any principles that came about during your childhood about moving around, seeing different cultures, what was similar, what was different, and being able to bring that with you?

I haven’t reflected too much on that other than I am comfortable meeting people that I don’t know. I’m not necessarily an extrovert, but I’m comfortable meeting people I don’t know. I’m comfortable with different cultures. I’m, generally speaking, more interested in other people than I am myself. You can tell I’m a little uncomfortable talking about myself because I find people more interesting. That’s why I like doing my podcast and interviewing them because I find that every person and company has a unique story. They share some similarities in terms of the issues that they face because they are full of people and people are the same from culture to culture. Each one is unique, and that uniqueness is what attracts me to it and interests me.

That has shown through your book that there is a range of business issues and challenges that have been around for a long time. You address in a way that I feel like you are one of us and it’s an easy thing to read. We are going to hit on some of the frameworks that you described there. For my own business, as we are growing, there are some things in terms of overall leadership and communication. I’m going to ask you about the EAR framework here that I immediately was able to grasp and use. Those are so valuable, but they are often hard to find. Somewhere in all your experiences there, it provides a ton of value to the readers of your book.

You graduate college. You start with Copiers Plus. In your LinkedIn bio, you said you started listening to tapes with Zig Ziglar. What also separates you from other folks that I have read who are experts in the construction industry is you do have a way of making sales and marketing relative to the construction industry easy, which a lot of people struggle with. Tell us a little bit about that journey and what you learned and what you took away from that first job in sales.

I was living up in Humboldt County, which is in Northern California, famous for redwoods and marijuana. I was involved in a campus ministry. I was teaching a Bible study up there, so I wanted to have some freedom as far as my schedule so that’s why I got into sales. I went to work for this very small copier company. I went to work for them because I liked the guy.

I didn’t know anything about sales other than I was willing to go make cold calls and all that stuff. I was listening to Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, and all of those classic sales guys cutting my teeth and going through the pain of learning how to sell things and learning how to build relationships with people. That stood me in good stead because I understood that one of the keys to being successful in sales is identifying your target audience, the people who need the services, or the product that you sell. Also, understanding the pains that they have and why they want to buy your product or your service. Also, simply being persistent and always showing up and never giving up. If you combine an understanding of your audience with a sense of persistence when it comes to sales, then you will be successful.

This is a good segue into something I will tee up for you an experience that maybe this real person’s name is Dan or maybe Dan is an amalgamation of other people, but we are going to get into it. In sales, they often talk a lot about understanding your value and how much your time is worth. Way too many salespeople, and you are going to share some stories about construction folks, who think, “Here’s my salary and I could figure out an hourly rate.”

Other people are like, “It’s variable, so I have no hourly rate,” which is not right. You talk about this idea of an aspirational hourly rate and how you challenged one of your clients to embrace the fact that he should be charging $833 an hour. For some of the folks reading this now, the idea that someone’s time would be worth $833 is probably unimaginable. Go into that principle and how you coach people to think that way.

I appreciate that because it’s funny. I was having a conversation with one of my clients who’s an executive in a construction company. What we were doing is we were taking his salary and we were then putting in all the benefits and we divided that by the hours that he worked. I was encouraging him that if you are doing any tasks that fall below that salary amount, and for him, it was a little lower than $800. He’s not the CEO of the company, but if it falls below that, then you need to delegate it. If your salary, your benefits, and everything come together with your bonuses and you are maybe getting $200 an hour, if you are doing a $50 an hour task, you know right away, “This is something I need to delegate to other people.”

Particularly, as your company grows, your time becomes more and more valuable. In my mind, you should set an aspirational hourly rate that goes beyond even what you are making with your salary. The reason why is that immediately begins to filter the activities that you are doing and it gives you a simple framework that you can use to understand what you need to either delete or delegate to other people because you cannot waste your time doing things that are not in alignment with that aspirational hourly rate. If you begin to discipline yourself that way and filter all of the things that you do through that framework, it will completely change the way that you spend your time.

How might you coach someone who’s reading and saying, “I get what you are saying, but here’s the deal. This activity is important, and my expectations for excellence are to do what we do, it has to be done right, and only I can do it. If I have to train someone else and by the time I get done training them, it’s not even worth it. I will do it myself.” How might you get these individuals because there are many reading who are thinking along those lines?

If you are thinking along those lines, you have to understand that you are limiting yourself. You are correct more than likely that other people cannot do it as well as you, but let me ask you this question. Who decides what’s acceptable? At the end of the day, whoever decides what’s acceptable or good enough is your customer.

If the person that you employ is able to accomplish the task in a manner that is acceptable to the customer, even if it’s not at the level of quality that you can deliver that task, then that is good enough. I’m not trying to get you to lower your standards in any way. I’m asking you to set your standards realistically.

If you do not delegate tasks to other people and if you do not take the time to train them to do them acceptably, then you will never be able to grow your business. You will always be frustrated not only by the performance of other people but by the fact that your time is taken doing things that you know other people should be doing.

I have a ridiculous example that’s very personal. For a while, I wanted excellence in everything we did including invoicing. Each one was a special little piece of art and I would put their logo, I chose the font, and I would do all of this. I had a coach of my own similar to you saying, “Who decides that?” I said, “I’m going to call someone who’s very design-oriented.” I called them up and said, “Do you get value from the little things we do in the invoice?” They said, “I don’t even look at the invoice. It goes directly to Carol and she handles it.” It was a 2×4 across the forehead, but exactly what you are talking about. Maybe the invoice example doesn’t resonate with our readers, but a lot of people are doing something very similar in their own business.

That’s what you want to do, that invoice example. The silly analogy that I use many times is what I call the hotdog analogy. If you are a star hitter, you are on a baseball team and you are in the batter’s box, and the owner of the baseball team is yelling at you from the stands asking you to come into the stands and sell hot dogs, that would be insane. The problem with a lot of construction leaders is that they are hot dog vendors, not star hitters. They spend their time selling hotdogs instead of staying in that batter’s box and hitting a home run.

I’m a big fan of a guy named Steven Pressfield who’s a writer. He wrote a blog post about Frank Sinatra doesn’t move the piano. It is that same idea of individual tasks. I was with the doctor last time. I went through three different nurses before I got to the doctor, and the doctor was there for eight minutes. These things are all around us, but until you put on a lens where you see how other industries are doing what is very standard and acceptable, sometimes we struggle with that.

Ask yourself if the aspirational hourly rate is a very good filter to use. The other one is the hotdog vendor analogy or the invoice. I like the invoice one as well because some of us obsess over things because that’s the way we are and we think they are important. They are not. If you can answer, “What my client, the one who gives me money, and what they say is good enough, I’m going to hit that and be satisfied with that.”

My team is in a state that is somewhat challenged by this. I have a sign-up here. It says, “No is a complete sentence.” For the better part of the last years, I have been completely unsuccessful but relatively unsuccessful in changing my behavior to do on a significantly smaller scale. As you are coaching your clients and you are saying, “If you want to grow at the rate that you want to, that you are capable of the classic line, what got you here won’t get you there. You got to start saying no to stuff.” For me as the owner of our business, it all looks like helping people. It all looks like fun, and we don’t have systems where people aren’t cutting me off ahead of time. For folks that are reading that are also struggling with that, how do you help?

You must define your role and responsibility. As you said, “What got you here will not get you there.” The reason why many construction leaders and construction company owners are where they are is because they always say yes. At a certain point, those yeses, what they do is take you away from tasks that either other people should be doing or that you shouldn’t be doing at all.

You have to give yourself permission not to be a people pleaser. It is simply to be able to say no in a very clear way and understand that what no does is it frees you up to focus on the highest and best use of your time. If you are focused on the highest and best use of your time, that’s when you are going to have the largest positive impact on your clients and your employees. No is a gateway to yeses, yeses to spend your time well, but you have to be willing to go through the pain of saying no so that you can then get to that yes.

I felt guilty and I feel bad. A friend who I very much like and admire was writing a blog post. He said, “I’m interested to get your thought on this. Can you give me a little blurb? I can add it in there and promote you.” This is the thing that I would always say yes to. I’m behind on my book writing my blog post, and I stared at it.

My first compromise was, “When you are done writing it, send it to me. I will see if anything jogs my memory.” My assistant then says, “What are you doing? Why?” He said, “If you don’t have it by the end of the day Friday, we are going to move on. No worries.” This was a painful reaction for me and I’m not good at this, but I was like, “That was a small victory.” You can imagine if I’m struggling with something like that, there are much larger significant hurdles that I also need to work through as well.

Define your role and responsibility. Ask yourself, “Am I executing that role and responsibility at the highest possible level?” If it falls outside of my role and responsibility, if it’s below my aspirational hourly rate, if I’m selling hotdogs, all I need to say is no.

Not hard, and yet it is.

It’s simple but it’s not easy. It’s hard because you have to go through the pain of saying no, but then if you get into that habit, it becomes more familiar to you, particularly if you haven’t been very good at saying no.

I got a friend who says, “Reads easy, does hard,” and I’m like, “Yes.” Let’s talk about the EAR framework of leadership.

I always smile because this is something I came up with myself and it’s always a little cheesy. You need to remember the messages that you as a leader should be communicating to your direct reports every single day, all you have to do is grab your ear. E stands for Encouragement, A for Accountability, and R for Recognition.

In my experience of decades of working with construction companies, what sets apart the best from others is their ability to communicate effectively. It’s not technical skills. Most people have technical skills. They know how to build. What they don’t know how to do is how to communicate and how to lead. Each one of those has a particular message behind it. Encouragement, the message is, “You can do it.” With accountability, the message is, “Did you do it?” That’s the question. The R is recognition, “You did it.”

Encouragement, accountability, and recognition are the conversations you have to have every single day with the people who report to you. The way to implement the EAR framework very simply is to think about the people who report to you and ask, “Is there someone who needs empowerment in terms of their role and responsibility?”

If I’m going to be able to encourage them and say, “You can do it,” I must first have trained them to be able to do what I’m asking them to do. I should think about someone who’s not performing at the highest possible level. Perhaps I haven’t trained them or I haven’t empowered them, and so I need to do that so I can then earn the right to look them in the eye and say, “You can do it.” If I had done that, then I have also earned the right to hold them accountable to have those difficult conversations where I ask them, “Did you do it?” If not, “Why not?” Then, “How can I help?” That’s a conversation that great leaders have to have.

Once I have seen them perform at a high level and I have held them accountable, then I recognize them. One of the misses that people have often in recognition is, first, they forget to recognize their A-players. They see someone who’s like a B-player perform well and they immediately get so excited that they recognize them. My contention is that businesses like professional sports, not like rec sports. In rec sports, everyone gets a trophy. In professional sports, only the winners get the trophies.

You need to make an aggressive effort to make sure that you are recognizing your A-players. When you are recognizing your A-players, you should first be consistent in doing that. You should not forget them, then you should be personal to them. What I mean by that is you should make sure that you are recognizing them in the way that they want to be recognized.

Some people, for instance, don’t want to be called up in front of the whole company and given a trophy. They don’t like that. They like something more personal and something more tailored to them. Make sure that when you are recognizing people, you are taking into account how they like to be recognized and make sure that you are personalizing it in such a way that it has an impact on them.

I’m wondering how you might help reorient some folks who might be thinking, “The EAR framework, Encourage, Accountability, and Recognition, that’s great. The other part of this is I’m hiring these folks. We are paying them six figures. I expect them to do the job. When I was coming up through the ranks, I didn’t get my first compliment until I was 22 years in the business. Why do we have to do this now?”

That’s a great point. First, I would agree with you. Don’t give out cheap recognition. Don’t do it. My argument is that human beings need structure in their lives and an affirmation that they are going in the right direction. Encouragement, accountability, and recognition give that to them. What you are doing is you are not babying people.

Your goal, because you are paying them six figures, is to maximize their performance. Whether you like it or not, the fact is 95% of people benefit from that human interaction that I’m describing through encouragement, accountability, and recognition. There are a few people who don’t need that, but most people do. If you want to get a return on investment from your time and the money that you are giving them, that idea of accountability, encouragement, and recognition is 100% necessary.

You hit on something, and I want to make sure we don’t gloss over it, this recognizing of A-players. It’s tangential to what I was describing. These guys are awesome. I expect them to do that because they are the most senior, profitable, and highest paid, yet if you want your organization to grow, the next level of growth is probably not going to come from the C-player who became a B minus. It’s from the A guys who have all that talent. I don’t think that is said often enough. Do you have anything else to reinforce that at all before we move on because it’s powerful?

Let’s say you have a group of ten people. Two of them are going to be barrel scrapers. You want to be rotating those people out of your company. The mindset that you need is the mindset of a general manager of a sports franchise where you are never settling. I know that you have projects scheduled, so you can’t fire the C-players every day all the time because sometimes you need people on the job site.

If you have got a C-player, you are saying, “I note that, and I know that I have got to get that position filled with a B or an A-player.” I’m never going to settle. I’m always going to be filling the top of my funnel of potential employees with candidates. I know that’s a lot of work. It is a lot of work, and you are going to always have to do that work.

The reason why sports franchises go downhill is because their recruiting efforts go downhill as well. They stop being able to identify the talent, bring that talent in, and develop it. If you are in business, you are in the business of talent identification and development for the rest of your life. Make sure that you are noting the C-players and moving them out.

Take a look at those B-players, that middle group of six people or so, and think about whom they are associating with and how you can identify the key skills or behaviors that they need to change in order to improve their performance. If you can give them the right support with that encouragement, accountability, and recognition, then they can aspire and perhaps attain A-player’s status from time to time at a more consistent level. You always want to be evaluating your roster, never settling, and asking this question, “Do I have the right people in the right seats doing the right jobs?”

Tell me a little bit about your thoughts and how you coach folks. You can tell me if I’m wrong. When you are coaching executives, often some are changing their behaviors but also empowering them, making them more confident, and enabling them to change the paradigm and change the behavior of their team.

What happens if we got an executive who’s reading now and he says, “I tell my guys over and over again that their job is to make decisions?” Often, because of a fear of failure or making the wrong decision, they are delaying it, they are not making it, or there’s more bureaucratic work when I’m okay with them making a decision and failing, but they are not. How do we change that?

The first thing I would say is I would ask the executive, and I might do this through a 360. I might find out whether or not that executive truly is okay with people failing because he or she may be saying, “Yes, I am okay with people failing, but when someone fails, that person gets nailed.” That’s the first thing I would be doing.

The second thing I would do is make sure that the executive is clearly defining for the people who report to him or her, the role and responsibility that each one of their direct reports has and clearly outline to them the parameters for decision-making in terms of the dollar amount or the intensity of the decision that they are responsible for. In other words, let’s say you are working on a project and any change orders up to $10,000, you can make that decision. If it gets over $10,000, let’s have a conversation.

My expectation is that you do not come to me with anything that is less than $10,000 when it comes to a change order. That’s one example. If you clearly define those parameters, you paint the picture, “This is what I expect you to do,” and then you can begin to hold them accountable. When you have clearly defined the parameters and you don’t blow your lid if they do screw something up that’s within their role and responsibility, then you can begin to work with them when they come back to you and say, “What about this and that?” You can remind them, “That’s within your role and responsibility. You make the call.”

Let’s switch a little bit around improving team performance and changing behaviors. Let’s talk a little bit about the adoption of new technology and sometimes the cascading and unintended consequences that come from that. I don’t know about you, but I have been enamored with this ChatGPT and its ability to help shave hours a week off my time.

Also, routine communication and some cases ideation on certain workshops or speaking opportunities. That’s at the forefront of my mind, technology adoption in the construction industry. There are pockets of high achievers and early adopters. My experience has shown there are an awful lot of folks that are still buying new fax machines. For folks that are struggling with that in our audience, how might you go about talking to them about that topic?

When it comes to adopting new technology, one of the problems construction companies have is now, it’s a very hot space. You have a whole bunch of different people coming out of the woodwork with their technology pitches to you. You have got to filter through those and see which ones you might want to implement.

In my experience talking with many people who go through technology adoptions and implementations and who sell them, in construction specifically, you have to keep in mind where you make your money. Where you make your money is in the field. If you are going to bring in a piece of technology that impacts the field, you have to start in the field with a conversation with the folks who will be using the technology. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they make the decision about whether or not new technology is adopted ultimately. If you want that technology to be adopted successfully, you do need to get the buy-in of the field if it’s something that’s going to impact them.

The way that you do that is you go to someone in the field who is open to new technologies and open to the discussion and you ask them, “What is the biggest problem that you have in terms of building your projects profitably?” Let them tell you what that big problem is and then ask yourself the question, “Is there a technology that can solve that problem?”

If I give all of my guys iPads in the field, will that give them an opportunity to report their time more efficiently and, as a result of that, I can track it and be more profitable? That’s one very simple example. The point is, if you don’t have buy-in, you can drive all of this change from the top of your organization. If you don’t have the buy-in throughout your organization, then there’s going to be resistance to the adoption of the technology.

If they don’t see the why, if they don’t understand how this helps to save time, save money, increase safety, or make things easier, then they won’t adopt it. You have to be able to clearly understand the business case behind the adoption of technology and then be able to get the buy-in of the people who will be using the technology. What I would say is that when you do begin to implement technology, start small, start localized, start with one project, and get some wins under your belt. Don’t bring in this entire system and expect everyone to adopt it right away and for it to transform your company. Start small, get some wins, build a case, and then go from there, learning as you go, and iterating in the use of the technology so that you get the maximum benefit from it.

This might be a terrible question. If it is, just tell me. You are a person who specializes in asking good questions. Some of the challenges we see with our clients, and maybe it’s a new technology, could fall under the general category of change management despite being in construction where we continuously find ourselves over budget or behind schedule on little projects or larger projects.

Internally, I feel like we do the same thing. We talk about what’s a reasonable timeframe for this. Here’s the terrible question. What’s your advice for leaders, we are talking very broadly about change management, on how to think about what is a reasonable timeframe so we don’t feel this pressure, overcommit, or also jam new things down people’s throats?

In terms of technology adoption, depending on the scale of it, I would say 6 to 12 months at least. If it’s something that spans the entire execution of a project, then you have to take into account your typical project timeline. If you are a large GC and you are doing a two-year project, for instance, then you may have to make that longer. It depends on the scale of the implementation and the scale of the project that it’s being implemented into.

In your book, you describe the seven attributes of some of the best construction leaders that you have been around and that you helped coach. Number three struck me for a couple of different reasons. They work with project partners they trust. Supply chain issues, commodity pricing, volatility, and the pandemic, there were a lot of strong relationships over the last couple of years that have gone strained.

You would say there was trust there or maybe a high amount of trust, and that’s gone. That has led to new relationships with different people. I will often ask where we are identifying risk and opportunity and what this year looks like and how we are going to help guide the organization. I will say this is a real linchpin here. To what degree do you trust Eric or Bradley? Sometimes the answer is, “It’s too early to tell. I don’t know.” How do you help people think about developing trust in situations where we are new to each other, we are feeling each other out, and we haven’t gone through a gauntlet or two to understand how we behave in those moments?

You hit on it there because the only way to build trust is through time and difficulties. One of the quickest ways to violate trust is when a difficulty comes up and you don’t tell the truth about the difficulty or the challenge. If you are working on a project, you are a sub, let’s say, and you screw something up, if you are straight up with the GC, I promise you good help is hard to find so the GC is always looking for subs who are good help.

If the GC is smart, I’m assuming they are, they know that mistakes get made. If you are able to own up to those mistakes and fix them as quickly as possible instead of pointing the finger at another sub or the GC, then that will help to build trust. Trust takes time and is something that can be violated very quickly, but it is built through conflict, difficulty, and challenge.

If you want to build trust in a relationship with your project partners, one of the best ways to do that is to tell the truth about what’s going on a project. If you make a mistake, raise your hand, and own that mistake as quickly as possible because one of the mistakes that we make in life is we allow time to pass when an issue comes up. The more time passes the more pain increases. If you want more pain and if you want to lose more money, let an issue come up and allow time to pass and you will get more pain and you will lose more money.

Let it fester. That’s a surefire way to increase pain and lose money. Are there some non-obvious ways that our audience can engineer situations to develop more trust early on in that relationship? Despite what you said is a certain point, we got to live together. We got to work together and we got to build trust that way. That’s how it works for humans. However, maybe at the early stages, there are some smart things you can do that are underutilized tactics to develop trust a little bit faster.

One of the quickest ways to do it from a positive perspective is to be responsive. If someone sends you a request and you have established the parameter that I’m going to respond to this request within X number of hours, then do so. Be a person of your word. One thing that you need to do right away is if you have project meetings every week to review where the project is at and how things are going, you need to attend those meetings, you need to be on time, and you need to have your act together.

Don’t show up at those projects not having your information or not being ready to answer the questions. Beyond even before any mistakes, drama, or issue comes up, if you are simply consistently showing up on time and if you are responsive to the request for information, that’s immediately going to develop that foundation of trust that you can then draw upon in the future when issues do arise.

I want to make sure we hit on strategy on why you say, “Why strategy second?” I often find the term strategy or strategic is easy to throw around and makes people feel smarter, yet a lot gets lost in what that means in terms of behaviors on the job. Go into that a little bit about the general idea and the concept of strategy in terms of your book.

The idea behind the strategy is very simple. I’m asking and answering the question, “How are we going to be successful?” When it comes to a business, success is determined by not just the money that I bring in at the top line. It’s determined by my bottom line, the profit that I generate. It’s also determined by my ability to retain great employees and great clients and to be building the types of projects that are in my wheelhouse.

When I’m putting together a strategy, there are three legs that a strategy for a construction company sits upon. There’s a lot of detail behind each one of these, nonetheless, it is on a broad basis pretty simple. That is the right client, the right project, and the right location. I have to be able to determine and to be able to clearly articulate this is the type of work that we do, these are the types of clients that we build for, and this is the location that we work in.

If I can dial in all three of those together, then I can be pretty sure that I’m going to be able to build profitably and consistently. One of the mistakes that construction companies make is they take on the wrong clients and the wrong projects in the wrong locations. Let’s say of those three things, they have one of them. They have the right client, but the client is asking them to go do a job that’s outside of their geography. It’s maybe a little bit out of their wheelhouse, but they want to say yes to the client. They take it on, they underperform, and they ruin the relationship. When you are putting together your strategy, keep it as simple as you can. Right client, right project, and the right location.

I also feel like if I gave you a little bit more detail before this call, this would be 100% applicable to us and our business now. As you think about that right client, right project, and the right location, is one of those more likely to be violated first than others, or are they all the issues that you see where you say, “We only have two legs of the stool. No wonder it fell over.” Does one pop up more than others?

One does occur. I have the right project from a technical perspective. I know how to build it. Let’s say I’m a subcontractor and the typical size job that I’m doing is $1 million. A GC then comes along and says, “This is in your wheelhouse, but it’s a larger project. It’s $1.5 million or $2 million.” I have all the resources and the know-how to build the $1 million project. I have the know-how to build the $2 million project, but I don’t have the resources or the manpower.

I’m going from 2, 3, or 4 crews, and so now on the job I have got not only do I have my A-players but I have got the C crew on there as well. That affects profitability. It’s a subtle one there as well. I not only have to know the right project from a technical perspective but also a size perspective relative to my available labor pool so that I’m able to execute profitably.

I’m going to add two questions here to close this out here. I’m curious about your development as a business owner and business leader. Are there any books or any other media, whether it’s a movie, show, or anything in your career development that you look back and say, “These are some other ideas that other people lived and put on paper or shared with me that changed, to some degree, large or small, the trajectory of my career?”

I will give you a couple. The first one is The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. It’s a very slim little book. Peter Drucker, if you don’t haven’t heard his name, he was active from the ’50s through the early-2000s. Every single person who has written a business book in the United States in the last many years is standing on his shoulders.

You want to go to the source. The source is The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, particularly for leaders of construction companies. Read that book. It’s brilliant. The other one is this, and I will tell you a funny story. When I started my business in 2013, I walked in on one of my clients from a previous business that I was in. He said, “We were just talking about you.” He held up a book and said, “We have been reading this book. Will you do a workshop for us on this book?”

I’d never read the book before, but I said, “Yes, I will do it.” The book was The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. That was an extremely impactful book in my career. When I started my own business in 2013, a lot of the work that I did particularly initially was around the framework of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. That book and then his other book called The Advantage, which articulates a very clear and simple way to put together a plan for your business are both excellent books and ones that I would highly recommend.

I have The Advantage. A client gave it to me and I should have already read it but have not. The Effective Executive, I went out and looked at the first edition. It’s cloth covered. I couldn’t agree more. There are some individuals who are like, “I have never even heard of this guy.” I’m like, “Who is Theodore Vail with AT&T from the early 19th century?” He’s quoting some of these guys that are worth investing in finding out who they are, but it’s crazy how timeless those principles are. My guess is that was probably written somewhere in the late-’60s or early-’70s maybe.

They are awesome. I highly recommend it. The reason why you want to go back in time when you are reading these books around people is because people don’t change. We know that. That’s why we read a book that’s thousands of years old and we are like, “That’s like me.” It’s because people don’t change. Think about those deep works that have been around for a while. A lot of business books, and this is one thing I don’t like about business books, is they take one good idea, expand it over 120 pages, and you are like, “You have one good idea. This could be a blog post.” With Peter Drucker, that is not the case.

It’s a good transition. We are talking about books. How to deliver value within books? Make it obvious because I thoroughly enjoyed your book. I also feel like reading your book is a reference book of sorts, which is around, “I am not going through right now a recruiting and hiring challenge, but I will be in probably a few months.” You hit on these topics, you are concise, and you move through so many different aspects of it. As we close out here, number one, I want to make it super obvious where people can find it. Also, go in a little bit more of what you were talking about when you recognize where you got immense value and other books where you didn’t and how that influenced how you wrote Construction Genius.

The key is that when you are writing a book, it helps to have a target audience in mind. My audience is very clear. It’s construction company owners and leaders. I know, because I have worked with them for many years, the issues that they have. I know what works and what doesn’t work, and how most construction leaders value and embrace a simple direct approach.

That’s what I have attempted to put into the book, specifically around the main issues of leadership, strategy, sales, and marketing. I have a copy right here. You can go out to Amazon. Let me tell you about the subtitle of the book because it’s Effective, Hands-On, Practical, Simple, No-BS Leadership, Strategy, Sales, and Marketing Advice for Construction Companies.

I always laugh a little bit when I read that, but let me tell you where I got that subtitle from. I got it from one of my clients. It was one of my clients said about the training that I do. It’s effective, hands-on, practical, simple, and no BS. If that’s something that you search for and you want it specifically for a construction company or you are in a construction company, then go out to Amazon. You can search the book up and you can read all the reviews. We are getting some killer reviews.

You can get it on Kindle or you can get it on paperback or Audible. I narrated the audible myself. It’s a tremendous book that I know will have a great impact. Let me give you another example. There’s this very large general contractor in Southern California. The CEO of the company bought a book for himself and all of his leaders, and they then had a book club.

What they did is they would meet once a month for a quarter and they would cover four chapters in the book. They’d ask the questions, “What did you learn? What did you notice? What would you do differently?” They would discuss the book, and that was one way to take the principles and implement them in your organization. That would be a great thing. It is to go out and purchase copies for not only yourself but also for the leaders in your company because they will get tremendous benefits.

I will take that one step further. There are many folks who are reading now who are partners or suppliers to builders who are living in this. I will say this is the book where you buy 50 or 100 copies for the team and say, “I listen to a podcast. This is what someone does for a living. He distilled twenty years’ worth of advice and proven value they have delivered to help people like you. Somewhere in here, there’s going to be something extremely relevant.”

That number one, it’s easy. For the value you can get, it’s extremely economical. It will come right to your door. That’s where going back to trust and relationships. It’s the sharing of insights and saying, “I’m out here looking for ways to make you successful, Mr. Builder.” Even if they are not big readers, books are going to stick around. People like books. They never end up in the circular file.

Whenever I send a proposal to someone with whom I’m talking about working in terms of my services, coaching, or leadership development, I always include it in the proposal, “My expectation is that you would get a 5 to 10 times return from any money that you invest with me. If you don’t think that’s possible, then we should not work together.”

Let me put that in the context of the book. The paperback is $20. If you think about 10 times the return on $20, that’s $200. I promise you. If you read one chapter from this book and implemented one idea, you would get a ten times return on that $20 right away. I know that you would. If you are looking for that ROI specifically in a construction company, I know that you will find it in the book.

I have learned a lot. You have been very generous with your thoughts and experiences. Also, you have great guests, and I have learned a lot from them as well. I would strongly encourage you. If you have not purchased the book already, do that. If you work with other builders, buy 50 or 100 copies. Hand them out to everybody. You are going to get value from that. The easiest way, and it’s free, go to your show and subscribe to that. My only hope and why I wanted you on the show is that our audience could get as much or more value than I have for my own company and our clients. With that, I will say thank you.

My pleasure. I’d like to make a special offer to your audience if I might, and that’s this. If you purchase ten or more copies of the book and then you can email me at Eric@ConstructionGenius.com and then put in the subject line, “Bradley book,” because then I will know it’s from this episode, if you purchase ten or more copies, then what I will do is I will come on with your executive team and do a complimentary 30-minute session with the team on a topic that will help them to improve as leaders. I would normally charge $2,000 for that 30 minutes and I will do it at no charge if you purchase ten or more copies of the book.

That’s generous. Thank you.

Thank you.

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Before you bounce away, make sure you check out Bradley’s podcast, The Construction Leadership Podcast. He’s got a number of great episodes up there that you can benefit from. If you have any questions regarding anything that I discussed in this episode, or if you need some help developing your leadership team in your construction company, reach out to me on my website, ConstructionGenius.com/contacts. Put in your details there. I will respond to you within 24 hours. Thanks for reading.

Important Links

• The Construction Leadership Podcast
• Eric Anderton
• The Effective Executive
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• The Advantage
• Construction Genius
• Eric@ConstructionGenius.com
• ConstructionGenius.com/contact