Construction Brothers

Eddie’s going deep for today’s quote–all the way back to Sun Tzu’s Art of War (which you can hear for free on Youtube if you can spare 72 minutes.)“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sometimes people will use these two words interchangeably. Here’s the difference:Strategy is the long-term plan. What you plan to achieve in the distance.Tactics are the thoughtfully crafted short-term methods for working out that strategy. In exploring Sun Tzu’s words, we discuss Tyler’s business and bodies on Everest.We acknowledge that tactics may vary as you work backward from the strategy.Check out the partners that make our show possible.Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedInIf you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

We might be just a bit late for graduation in some parts of the country, but this week we’re awarding some senior superlatives for the construction industry.Here are the categories. You’ll need to listen to hear the winners. Best partner for a zombie apocalypse: We ponder who would be best able to help us survive an onslaught of the undead. We ponder weapons, transportation, and power distribution.Most likely to do best on Naked and Afraid: We ponder (trying to keep our imaginations in check)  whether a roofer, carpenter, HVAC technician, or general laborer would do best in isolation in their birthday suit.Most likely to be able to build a whole building by themselves: Could anyone do it? We share an opinionMost likely to have the best hair on a jobsite: Who’s sporting the most impressive locks?Most likely to have the most entertaining injury story: Who’s going to have us laughing and wincing?Most likely to ramble on and on about the importance of their jobs: Who will have us rolling our eyes? Most likely to genuinely impress potential romantic partners with their construction stories: Who’s weaving tales to make them swoon? Will they try to impress with their skill or their bravery?Biggest prankster: Who’s looking to catch you off-guard?Most likely to win a Nobel Prize: Who’s heading to Stockholm? (That’s where they award most of the Nobel prizes.)Most likely to start a sentence with “Well, actually…”: Who’s going to set us straight.The most creative in-the-moment problem-solver: Who’s the best guy to have around when the crap hits the fan?Most likely to bring an acoustic guitar to the jobsite: Who’ll serenade the crew? (And how did Tyler not end up as an option on this one?)Most likely to have a run-in with OSHA: Who’s breaking the rules?Most likely to develop a work-related ulcer: Who’s sucking down the Pepto Bismol?Most likely to cause others to develop an ulcer: Who’s sending someone else to the GI specialist?Valedictorian: Who seems to always come out on top?Greatest Impact: Who’s really changing things?Check out the partners that make our show possible.Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedInIf you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

Eddie’s got another quote. This one is attributed to historian Daniel J. Boorstin.“The greatest obstacle to discovery is ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.” Sound applicable? We think so. Eddie looks back to the early days of the podcast. We thought we knew a lot. We did not. Fast-forward five years, we now find ourselves fully aware of our ignorance. Our advice based on our experience? Admit that you don’t know much. Ask the stupid questions. You won’t know more unless you ask more questions. Don’t get trapped in arrogant ignorance.  Check out the partners that make our show possible.Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedInIf you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

00:00 - Ennui and another TylerWe know that you come here for philosophical insight and existential explanations, so today we’re discussion ennui. Tyler shares… tries to share about this state of listlss… listsles… listlessness and dissatisfaction.After this fun, we welcome our new vocal presence, Tyler Cook. Tyler shares about the secret to connecting with Zoomers. It’s all about tier lists and brackets. So today we’re going to do a tourney bracket.05:23 - The bracketToday we’re exploring niches. We don’t want to share any spoilers here in the notes, but here are some opinions that are shared as we process this competition. Concrete is tough.Drywall corners are hard.Flooring is not comfortable work.Spending your day staring upward will do a number on your neck.We don’t want to fall off a roof.Dooky’s not fun.OSHA keeps telling us not to touch a live wire.Demolition is fun for 30 minutes.Eddie is confident that he’s done with roofing.Welding sometimes happens in really dangerous places.If you're interested in jumping straight to some specific first-round debates:6:06 - Carpentry vs. masonry7:40 - Drywall vs. concrete 10:20 - Ceiling vs. flooring16:01 - Roofing vs. HVAC23:37 - Landscaping vs. painting24:48 - Electrical vs. excavation 30:44 - Glass installation vs. demolition33:21 - Semifinals39:15 - FinalsThe takeaway from this process? Man, tradespeople do some tough stuff. Check out the partners that make our show possible.Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedInIf you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

Tyler’s struggling today, but Eddie’s bringing the wisdom. Actually, he’s passing along wisdom from John F. Kennedy.Here’s what JFK had to say: “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”Eddie shares about lessons Dad passed along about how to use down time. If things are slow but you know the time is coming when they won’t be… Then use that time to do the things that you know will need to be done.Tyler recounts examples of times when he’s experienced this phenomenon. The bros talk through the questions you should ask yourself when you have the time to examine your process. These questions will help you to identify areas of weakness that you can fix before harm comes to you and your team. See the future. Fix the problem before it arrives. Check out the partners that make our show possible.Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn -  Tyler's LinkedInIf you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

He brought us coffee.00:00 - IntroductionToday we welcome Jay Jenkins. Jay is Principal in charge of Higher Education and Operations at May Architecture. We invited him to the studio to learn about building a team that’s equipped to handle the unique challenges of college and university construction. Jay points out that colleges and universities are little cities unto themselves. Eddie brings up the fact that Jay’s teams have worked on projects at the University of Georgia and at Georgia Tech. Jay explains that each educational institution has its own culture. Jay says his job is making sure his team of architects and designers have the tools they need. Then he just stays out of their way. 06:46 - Principles of success Tyler asks Jay to share what owners and their teams do to position Jay and his people for success. Jay says that honesty is frankly the most helpful thing.Jay shares about the complications involved in communicating to all of the relevant parties on college projects when construction projects affect groups that might not usually need to communicate with each other. It always starts with listening closely and thoughtfully. Then it’s often necessary to filter and reframe–to see if you’re properly understanding what’s being said. Tyler asks Jay to expand upon the importance of listening. Jay emphasizes the need for objectivity and making an honest effort to grasp the needs of the other party. If you can’t truly grasp that need, you can’t communicate it to the team with the means to solve it. Tyler points out that we’re all pretty good at talking, but we’re not always great at presenting prompts. Eddie asks about the give and take between Jay and Gil, an architect he has worked with in the past. Jay shares about how the availability of a long-term conversation partner has been helpful.This openness led to the development of 3 guiding questions within their firm:1) Are you committed to letting the best idea win?2) Are you passionate about what you do? 3) Are you building expertise within your team?16:40 - Looking back Eddie asks Jay to share about times when the challenges became greater than usual. Jay explains that sometimes the university’s team’s goal was actually to keep architects from being brought into a project because of the concern that things would become more complicated than necessary. Jay’s job was to ensure that the job was done right–in a manner that would take liabilities into consideration and similar concerns. Jay talks about the options that are provided by architects and responses given by the owners. Eddie shares his appreciation for Jay’s role as communication facilitator–a person who comes between two parties to ensure that messages are making it back and forth.    24:15 - The greatest challengesEddie asks about factors that complicate college projects–students, donors, etc. Jay says that the hardest thing is actually when the owner doesn’t know what they want. Building consensus with end users is also a challenge, though. Jay gives examples of the diverse end-user-groups involved in a sample building: IT, health care, instructors, administrators, etc. Politics sometimes come into play. Eddie asks about the importance of long-term, multiple-project relationships with owners and contractors. Jay says they are simply huge. Over 95% of their work is repeat work with clients. Growth comes from providing exceptional experiences for everyone involved. It’s about creating great experiences. Jay says you’d be surprised at how far a simple thank-you goes.37:04 - Finding good helpEddie asks Jay to share about the challenges of finding reliable, high-quality people as his team grows. Jay explains that they seek people who are eager for feedback. This feedback from contractors is more useful than anything else for designers interested in growing professionally, he says. Jay shares about an eye-opening moment when he discovered how much he hated losing. As the owner, he says, you win in every meeting. On the consultant side, that’s not how it works. But that makes the wins sweeter.43:11 - Megaphone messageJay says that he’d like people to view their work as a career rather than a job. Have a passion for what you do. Build value in yourself. If you focus on the input, all the things you want out of a career will come out of it.  Find Jay on LinkedInCheck out the partners that make our show possible.Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedInIf you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

Can you think of a more difficult decision than the one that President Truman had to make in 1945? We can’tSometimes sitting still and not doing anything is the riskiest thing to do. Tyler recalls a conversation with friend of the show Henry Nutt III. Henry recounted a situation where his boss left him in a room and told him to sit tight until the boss returned. Henry sat around for a while and then decided to go ahead and do what it was that he thought had to be done in this room. His boss returned and decided that Henry had leadership skills. Entrepreneurship involves risk. It requires initiative and a willing to act when others might be unwilling to do so.Eddie encourages us to ask ourselves honestly what we could change about ourselves in order to improve our productivity or some other form of success. Chances are that we know what needs to be done and we’re simply not acting on that knowledge. Inaction often makes failure more likely that action. Here’s the whole quote as attributed to Harry S. Truman: “There is some risk involved in action, there always is. But there is far more risk in failure to act.”Check out the partners that make our show possible.Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedInIf you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

Check out this link to learn more about the tools discussed in this episode.00:00 - IntroductionRob Coakley is the equipment manager at Lithko Contracting. He’s here today to discuss a decision familiar to every construction business owner: to rent or to buy.  Rob shares some of Lithko’s history in order to set the stage for the complexity of the rent/buy decision. It boils down to this: Having a capital constraint along with a scalability issue put Lithko on the path toward rentals–more out of necessity and a desire for simplicity than to save money.Managing rentals on a large scale involves a hefty amount of record-keeping and management. Lithko brought Rob on board to make the end cost of equipment a competitive advantage. He explains how many contractors who own equipment will bury equipment costs in order to win jobs. This often leads to financial trouble in the long run. 06:21 - Conventional wisdom (or at least preference)Eddie describes the conventional contractor approach to tool acquisition: If I can put it in the job and buy the tool, I’m going to buy the tool. This often leads to tools sitting in the weeds. Rob follows up on this and points out that an owned tool can become part of the landscape of a job while the pace of progress slows, whereas being on a rental timeline can motivate you to keep the project moving along. That clock doesn’t stop ticking. He also explains that ownership does actually make sense for many smaller contractors. It’s when your business scales up that the argument grows stronger and stronger for renting–even to the point of renting everything. We discuss why GCs hire specialty contractors. Rob then discusses how he talks to owners of companies that Lithko acquires. He lays out a rental-based approach to pricing projects. If it can be done without eating into profits, then there’s no reason not to rent. Your long-term risk drops significantly.   13:05 - Record-keeping when scaling up Eddie asks Rob to explain how he and his team at Lithko has handled the increasingly complex task of record-keeping as they’ve grown. Lithko has grown from a $135-million business in 2008 to a $1.8-million business last year. With this growth came information-management challenges. Rob explains that you need to know what your cost will be at the end of the job and where you are today. That gap, of course, determines whether or not you're profitable. When Rob began investigating solutions for the scaled-up version of this process, he found that Quickbase was a handy no-code/low-code solution for building the customized software he needed. He compares it to Lego kits and sand-castle building. We discuss the importance of mastering project timelines in order to optimize the scheduling of rented equipment.   22:15 - Lithko’s Quickbase sand castle Eddie asks Rob to run through some of the components that are most important to their customized Quickbase management package. Rob explains that they’re always short-term planning. It’s all about well-thought-out reports and dashboard items. He explains how they use the dashboards to allow record-keepers and managers to easily. This includes selectively sharing access with vendors so they can participate in the bidding process. Rob shares about safety compliance components and the mobility features that enable decision-makers to access the data needed for decisions made in the field. He explains how data from their ERP system is integrated and discusses incident tracking.We discuss equipment breakdowns and maintenance records for owned equipment. Rob walks through the process of bids, sourcing, and reliable equipment-sourcing relationships. He lists the numerous pieces of data that work together to determine project costs.47:15 - The impactEddie asks about the bottom-line impact of this Quickbase-based system. Rob explains that information from past projects informs talks with vendors and enables his team to deepen their relationships. All of these things together have resulted in Lithko cutting their bottom-line equipment costs in half since 2007. 01:00:50 - Megaphone MessageRob encourages everyone to be open to change–whether that’s a new process or a new tool. Whatever role you serve within your company, be ready to accept change. It’s the only way you’re going to grow. Find Rob on LinkedIn  Check out the partners that make our show possible.Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedInIf you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

You are surrounded by people. You’ll be affecting these people in one way or another. You can choose what that effect will be. You can treat them kindly. You can show them grace. Or you can step on them. You can rip on them. You can take advantage of them.Today Eddie encourages you to be an encouraging presence in the lives of the people around you. It’s not always easy to do this in a competitive industry, but it’s also not impossible. Do everything you can to be as good as you can be to the people around you. Be a bright spot.Check out the partners that make our show possible.Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedInIf you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!

00:00 - IntroductionWe’ve doubled our Tyler count today by inviting Tyler Williams to the studio. We start with some car talk: plug-in hybrids, 81 Chevies, and manual F-150s. Tyler W says he’s not loaded, but he’s keeping his eyes open for used trucks anyway. Everything is for sale. Eddie flashes back to being stranded in banjo country in his Brown Bomb Sierra.Tyler W shares about a conversation with the guy who developed the Raptor for the border patrol. This prompted him to pursue another product-development opportunity. Tyler C shares about his many Transit van aspirations. Before we get to the substance of the episode, we’ve pretty much locked in our plans to live together in a Sprinter van down by the river.  11:11 - What’s new with Tyler W?Tyler C asks guest Tyler to share what new things are going on in his world. Tyler W shares about tech developments related to ergonomics and how these developments have not led to the sort of decrease in injuries that you’d expect. He goes on to discuss a trip to Montreal, where he visited the headquarters of Movex Innovations, maker of all-terrain tracked carriers. He wants a bunch of them. He talks through some of the amazing capabilities of these carriers. He points to this as one example of a tool that people should use. Eddie raises the issue of the skills gap in construction. Tyler W says that he has seen that gap arise most visibly when someone is promoted to a foreman position. At the same time, he says that he’s hearing from many people that the gap is less severe than it has been in the recent past. We discuss progress made in reducing the stigma felt by high-schoolers who choose not to go to college. Eddie shares how he’s seen it in his kids and their friends. Tyler W points to the ridiculousness of expecting 18-year-olds to know what they want to do with their lives. He encourages young people to attend construction-related boot camps to see if maybe that route is a possibility. We discuss the issue of college debt. Tyler C asks how many people are better positioned for success as a result of their debt. 23:37 - Staying flexible Tyler W discusses the value of having a broad range of skills that make you economically nimble. He’s thankful for having a collection of experiences and skills that have equipped him for unexpected economic circumstances. Tyler C discusses gap years and the importance of giving yourself time to gain clarity on your interests and aptitudes. Eddie shares stories he’s heard of students basing their career choices on short Google searches about salaries. Tyler W points out that these Google searches don’t usually address personal happiness or overall life satisfaction. We explore mid-life career transitions and the shifts in priorities that come with marriage and family. Then we jump back to van-based business opportunities. Eddie flashes back to his Rebath days. He shares about how optimizing his van for that job informed daily decisions later in his career.  33:40 - What got us here? Also, LegoTyler W discusses the path that got him to his current position as an innovation specialist. We discuss how seeing inefficiencies earlier in our careers spawned a passion for efficient coordination at this point in our careers. Tyler C and Eddie discuss what they learned from working with Lego bricks and how their children are learning some of those lessons now. Tyler W relates this to what he’s learning from the book The Way of the Champion and shares how he’s applying the lessons from that book. We discuss the absolute essential value of life-long learning and resilience. If you have these two things, you will always be able to deal with what life brings you. The book The Comfort Crisis comes into this conversation.Eddie discusses the value of learning the hard way–marinating in research in a physical encyclopedia because your comprehension and retention may be better. Sometimes it's maybe even beneficial to be put in a situation where you can be punched in the face. Tyler shares about his involvement with martial arts.  58:45 - So, what have we learned?In wrapping up Tyler W has this to say: It’s about experience. He shares about a recent event designed to help his DPR innovation team really understand what the hands-on workers deal with every day. This is what everyone in the industry should be doing: seeking to understand what it’s like for others. Find Tyler Williams on LinkedIn Check out the partners that make our show possible.Find Us Online: BrosPodcast.com - LinkedIn - Youtube - Instagram - Facebook - TikTok - Eddie's LinkedIn - Tyler's LinkedInIf you enjoy the podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to us! Thanks for listening!