Mastering Leadership in the Contracting Industry: Insights from Industry Experts

In this episode of the Successful Life podcast, host Corey Berrier delves into the complexity of leadership in the contracting industry, drawing upon conversations with industry leaders Dylan McCabe, Brigham Dickinson, and Drew Hardin. Corey discusses key lessons from these leaders' vastly different paths, emphasizing the importance of setting boundaries, learning from failure, emotional intelligence, and active listening. The episode underscores how personal experiences, like overcoming financial hardships and personal losses, shape leadership capabilities. By sharing these real-life examples, the podcast aims to help listeners enhance their leadership skills, improve company culture, and foster a supportive work environment.

00:00 Introduction to Leadership in Contracting
00:44 Dylan McCabe: Balancing Boundaries and Leadership
05:55 Brigham Dickinson: Overcoming Failure and Emotional Resilience
08:44 Drew Harding: Humility, Mental Health, and Leadership
12:35 Key Takeaways on Leadership and Trust
17:46 Conclusion and Resources

Chapters

• 0:00 Leadership and Self-Reflection in Business
• 8:40 Building Resilient Leadership and Teams

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:55

Corey Barrett, welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, corey Barrett, and today we're going to be talking about, we're really going to be taking a deep dive into the intricacies of leadership in the contracting industry, reflecting on conversations with leaders like Dylan McKay, brigham Dickinson and Drew Harden, and I want to highlight these three conversations because they weren't vastly different but their experience in the industry and how they got to where they are was massively different. Industry and how they got to where they are was massively different. So you know, the first part I want to talk to you about is Dylan McCabe, which was the last podcast that I put out, and Dylan and I talked about how he took on. You know, he was working for an apartment complex or apartment building in school or something like that, and he just talked about how he wasn't able to balance all the things that he had to do and he wasn't able to balance how much people needed him because he didn't have any boundaries set. And I'm sure for you in your business, it's probably exactly the same. Lots of times. We don't know what boundaries to put in place, and that could be both actually professionally and personally, and I think boundaries are important and I think, if you put in, the boundaries that he put in were not allowing people to contact him after a certain period of time. So in other words, his office hours were like eight to five or something like that, but for a long time he didn't realize that he had the ability in that position to not answer every single question. And I'm sure you have employees that'll say, hey, got a minute, got a minute, got a minute. And those got a minute conversations will literally take you all day to get through and you will get absolutely nothing done. And so the other thing that we talked about is now he's taken that life experience when he got ran into the ground and he's transferred that into the new business he's running now, called Limitless. Limitless was called Limitless, which is a buying group for reefing companies, which I think is pretty cool idea. It's pretty cool idea.

Speaker 1: 3:45

Um, he talked about some, some things about his faith that I thought were very important and he talked about how he he got, you know, he found god, he got very spiritual and then decided, you know, and then he would wind up he would catch himself telling people how they needed to do things instead of, you know, being more empathetic and catching. You know, coaching, I should have said just like you would. An employee, potentially, if you're an owner, unless you have some emotional intelligence, it's hard not to just tell people what to do and expect them to do it. But people don't hear that whenever you're talking with them. They don't hear when you're screaming at them. They don't hear when you're raising your voice. But they hear when you can just take a second, digest what they're saying, think about it and then answer the question.

Speaker 1: 4:32

And this comes into, in my opinion, sales 101, which is active listening. And if you can employ active listening in your everyday life, in your family life, your business life, I can tell you will change everything. And as a sales guy, this is an opportunity for you to allow people to tell you exactly what is on their mind, whether that be a spouse, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, employee, a boss. If you've got somebody who's got a massive ego and God knows, we know plenty of those people in the industry those people just want to talk. They just want to tell you everything that's on their mind and likely they don't even really care what you have to say, and likely they don't even really care what you have to say, which is a huge benefit for you to sit back, take notes, listen to what they're saying, because they're going to tell you exactly what they want you to do next, and you just have to listen and not try to solve all the problems in the world.

Speaker 1: 5:35

And so this is really where leadership comes into place. And look, you've got to be a leader, both personally and professionally. And you may be thinking well, I'm just a service technician, I'm just a roofing sales guy, but you still have people that you have to lead. And as an owner or even a manager or whatever, you have people not only in business that you have to lead, but you also have a family that you have to lead. You have kids. You have to lead. And whether you think people are watching you or not, they are, they're always watching you. And this is a way. Being a good leader is a way to create a good company culture, and we talk about company culture a lot, because it's all about how you address people, it's about how you listen, it's about the things that you find important and help them to think, to believe that you find them important. Whether you do or not, it's really. It's really important for people to know that you care, because people will do good, they'll go the extra mile if they know you care.

Speaker 1: 6:51

So the other thing, the next one I want to talk to you about, is the my conversation with brigham dickinson. And then brigham runs power Selling Pros and several other things, but Brigham is I mean it was one of the most heartfelt conversations that I've ever had and he just talks about how the emotional roller coaster of starting a business and really failing miserably at the first business and not wanting to accept help and figuring out that his hopes and dreams and his big idea had crumbled in about five months, which is a hard pill to swallow he moved his family to a different state. He had these big dreams, these aspirations, and at the end of the day he failed. And so he really gets in to what that felt like and how. That day was that he had to hit his knees and just cried his eyes out and his kids saw him crying his eyes out and he had explained to the kid what was going on. And that's a hard pill to swallow and I don't know if you've ever been in that position. I personally have not been in the position where a child saw me crying. But I've certainly been in the position to where you have to hit your knees and beg for some relief, because you know for me, if I'm trying to control the situation, if I have expectations of how something's going to go and I don't set boundaries for myself, I'm likely going to be upset, I'm likely going to set myself up for a disappointment and personally I don't really love that.

Speaker 1: 8:40

You know, one of the other things that you know Brigham tied in very well was the way he operates at home, is how he operates in his business. He treats people with respect. He does get you know, he gets you know he's, he's, he runs a business. So sometimes our character defects come out and and you know I can speak to that in my own life. You know, sometimes you don't even know when these character defects are coming out and lots of times they come out for me and ego or or just being prideful of not wanting to ask for help. And it's a rough place to be and fortunately for me I'm in recovery and, based on the program that I'm in, you have to ask for help if you want help. It's not just going to come knocking on your front door and I would say that's probably that way for most people, but I think a lot of people struggle with the ability to ask for that help, and a lot of that's pride and a lot of that's ego.

Speaker 1: 9:43

Which really ties me into my next subject, which is my conversation with Drew Harding, which was just I mean Drew Harding, just dude, this guy. I mean the things that he's gone through from working in the family business to striking out on his own and and really like knocking it out of the park only for google to, you know, take away his, his ad spend or triple his ad spend. I think, actually, what he said, and you know he struggled with a lot of pride and ego in that situation until he got brought to his knees and really in particularly with that Google ad thing and then, in particular, with his family. You know he left his family. I think he said he had gone to visit them and got back home. He had gone to visit them and got back home and the next day he found out that his mom had overdosed on prescription pills and she was dead, and so he was devastated and his dad and him, I think, were in a bit of a struggle because he had left the business.

Speaker 1: 10:52

I think, if I remember correctly, business. I think, if I remember correctly, so he had to make a decision, being I don't know, a couple of hundred thousand dollars in debt, having a business that was ultimately tanking because of what Google had changed that affected his business incredibly to moving back to Tennessee and helping his dad and then, you know, turning his life around, turning that, really that shit sandwich, into a thriving business now and still had struggles when that was happening. Right he was. You know the humility that he found in that situation and now what he's carried over to in his current business is pretty profound. You know he took that experience with his mom having mental health issues and drug issues, and now he focuses on being, focuses on mental health with inside the company. You know his insurance covers mental health like 100 percent. He's just a massive advocate because it made such an impact on him when his mother died.

Speaker 1: 12:12

And so I think these, you know, you know Drew realized that he had to make some critical decisions and you know, based on those decisions, we're going to depend on the outcome of where he's at today and you can't you know there's no crystal ball that you can't predict how things are going to turn out. You just got to make the best decision for yourself and that self-awareness and that leadership is vital to the success of his company. Now, and he's an avid learner, right, he doesn't feel like he knows everything. Because if you do feel like you know everything, likely you're going to have problems, and I can speak for myself on that one. You know, when I think I have all the answers, I'm in deep trouble. So you know he had a lot of positive things that he that came out of that experience with his family and the experience in California, and now you know he's, you know he's transformed his mindset into, you know, someone who is a learner and doesn't know everything and is willing to take risks, and that is the example of a good leader.

Speaker 1: 13:30

So if you're thinking about, you know, having leadership issues and maybe it's leadership underneath you, inside of your company, if you're the owner, maybe it's you're the, you know, maybe you're the sales manager or the service manager and you're having struggles with leadership above, and both of those things are completely reasonable for people to be going through. It's not fun, but it's reasonable. And you just got to ask yourself, you know, are you being mentored? Are you continuously learning? Do you have a strong support system? Or are you just a cog in the wheel there for a paycheck? Because sometimes people stay in a job because the pay is good, and I've had a lot of discussions recently on Facebook about this, about what is more important productivity or personality. Well, if you have somebody that's got a good personality, likely they're going to be a good producer. But if you've got somebody who just cares about producing, their personality is probably not that great. And when you're a leader, you've got to lead by example, and if you are a shit leader, you're going to have shitty employees. If you are a great leader, you're going to have great employees. I'm not saying everything's going to be perfect, but by all means it's going to be better than if you're a terrible leader. So there's some you know.

Speaker 1: 14:56

Look, there is a level of resilience that you must have in this industry. It's not an easy industry and mentorship I mentioned earlier learning, having a good support system both at home and at work is massive, and communication is key for all of these things. So you want to be transparent, you want to be empathetic and you want to be able to overcome these leadership challenges, and this is how Dylan, brigham and Drew all three emphasized the clear communication with their teams, the clear communication with their loved ones, and how to delegate and trust. And that's a big one. You know it's very hard in this industry to delegate tasks that you can do yourself. But is it helping your business financially to not delegate? It is not.

Speaker 1: 15:59

You've got to be able to trust people. If you're an untrustworthy person, likely you think everybody else is untrustworthy and I can't tell you how to fix that other than start doing the right thing and gaining trust with your employees. That takes a lot of time. A good friend of mine says when you lose trust it's like dumping out of a bucket and to get trust back is like one drip at a time and I found that so true in my own life. And if you've lost trust with your team, it may be time to rebuild that team, but you got to rebuild yourself first. You can't rebuild a team underneath the same leadership and sometimes it means you got a clean house. Sometimes it means you got to take a look in the mirror and decide are you the problem or is your team the problem?

Speaker 1: 16:52

And likely. If you're the leader, you're the problem Because people look up to you and they do the same things that you're doing, and so you want to talk about the importance of these things with your team. You want to talk about the importance of delegating tasks and in trust and a lot of that transparency comes with your pricing and being honest about how much stuff costs. And a lot of guys think that because you're making, because your business is doing $10 million a year, that you're taking home 9.5 of that, which is just crazy to think.

Speaker 1: 17:29

But being uneducated about how much it costs to run a business is not their fault. You've got to educate your team on what it costs you to run that business. You've got to educate your team on it costs you $400 or $500 to run out to a house in a truck, and if you're running out to a house multiple times to fix something silly, it could have been the first time you may be racking up $1,500, $2,000 worth of fees inside of the business that you really, as the technician, would never know about unless that leader is effectively communicating that with you and you can't look at this like they're coming down on you, but it's just the truth of the matter. If you don't bring these things as a leader to the surface, how are your people supposed to know? They're not. They don't have a crystal ball, they're not clairvoyant, I think, is the word I'm looking for. They can't know what you're thinking. They just can't.

Speaker 1: 18:43

So just look, go back and listen to those three shows the one with Dylan McKay, brigham Dickinson and Drew Harden and you're going to really understand the importance of balancing leadership responsibilities and personal well-being. And I would encourage you to subscribe to the show because you're going to get more information like this. It's going to help you tremendously. And look, if you are having struggles with your hiring process, reach out to me because I can help you with that. I'm just taking on a good position with WhoHire and you can go to WhoHirecom and check that out and book a time and we'll have a conversation about and you can go to WhoHirecom and check that out and book a time and we'll havea conversation about how you can easily and effortlessly start hiring people that are going to be the exact right fit for your company. So I appreciate you guys listening and we'll see you next week.