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Hosts Spencer Horn and Christian Napier discuss a better way to build and strengthen teams in any organization.
00:13 - 00:28
Christian Napier: Well, hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Teamwork a Better Way. Special Friday episode, Spencer. I'm Christian Napier. This is Spencer Horn, 1 of my dearest friends. Spencer, how you doing? Oh my gosh, I am so good and it's a
00:28 - 00:33
Spencer Horn: good day because I have a friend in Christian. So good to be with you.
00:34 - 00:55
Christian Napier: Well, it's great to be with you. And, it's been nice to get a little bit of rain and respite from the heat, although it's returning here, but we've got an amazing guest Spencer that you have lined up. And I can't wait for you to introduce him and to talk about our topic. Cause I think it's so important, especially today.
00:55 - 01:36
Spencer Horn: Yeah. So today we have a Garrett bake who I have had the pleasure of meeting in this past year and just absolutely love what he does and how he, you know, what he stands for, his energy, his enthusiasm for, you know, entrepreneurship, especially in the construction space. And he has, He's a founder of what's called the American Contractor Network. These are services that he's providing for these businesses to help them succeed. He has spent 15 years, Christian, working as a police officer in a variety of high-profile positions including SWAT and narcotics and gang units. And undercover,
01:36 - 02:09
Spencer Horn: you see a lot of stuff and you deal with a lot of stressful situations. I think the training that he received was some of the best in the world to be able to deal with those high pressure situations. He's been able to take that and really bring it over into the entrepreneur space and focusing on contractors because that's when he got out of the police service. I don't know if that's the way you say that when he left the service in the police force. He started his own businesses, several of them, and he started a contracting
02:09 - 02:49
Spencer Horn: company and a window washing business and landscaping business. When he retired from that, he began helping other contractors. So many of the problems that exist in business, they're the same problems. I'm not sure Garrett will talk a little bit about that. So he developed a unique approach to be able to help these businesses succeed and helping scale them to many 7 and 8 figure businesses. While having more time for their life, spending less time at work as so many small businesses are consumed, As you know, as an entrepreneur, by everything that it takes to run those
02:50 - 03:26
Spencer Horn: businesses. He's developed what's called the Build Pro framework, which is a game plan to help businesses and really taking the business leaders lives to the next level. He's married, the father of 3 has got incredible kids, had the chance to meet them, and he spends his free time giving back to the first responder community, very cool. And as well as traveling and enjoying life with his family. And so today we're excited to talk to Garrett about so many things like organization, accountability. So welcome, Garrett Bake, good to have
03:26 - 03:31
Gerritt Bake: you. Thank you, thank you. Great to be with you, Christian and Spencer, the dynamic duo.
03:33 - 03:50
Spencer Horn: Well, so 1 of the things that people who are listening are going to, you know, want to know what's it like to, to be undercover in narcotics and work on SWOT, what, just what's that like and how did you, you know, those are high pressure roles and how did that help you as you transitioned into entrepreneurship?
03:51 - 04:26
Gerritt Bake: Yeah, that's a good question and also a very complex question. So I'll try and answer it as simply as possible. I'll tell you this, right? And everything that we do in life can be as simple or as complicated as we make it. And 1 of the reasons that I do what I do now is because I actually failed more than I succeeded. And so I went through that process of trying to figure out how do you balance work and family life? Right? How do you make progress without having to deal with a lot of the baggage
04:26 - 05:00
Gerritt Bake: that comes with growth and progress? Right? So I think the best part of being a police officer was the ability and opportunity to serve, right, and give back to the community. But conversely, the other side of that is, you know, you sacrifice yourself in the process, right? So it was that constant search for that balance between the 2 of those. How do you give but without giving too much where in the end you have nothing left to give either to you know your community or your family?
05:02 - 05:28
Spencer Horn: So important because if you don't have anything left to give, it turns into a virtuous cycle of maybe destruction. Because you don't have enough to give to your family, they don't have enough to give back to you, you go back into those dangerous situations and you're not present. I mean, there's just so much pressure and stress. I can only imagine. I mean, I've had my own balance issues, but not in life or death situations.
05:29 - 06:00
Gerritt Bake: Yeah. You hit the nail on the head there, Spencer. It doesn't matter what you do for work. If you're in any type of leadership position, you're having to deal with some type of balance, right? And as the 2 of you know, you know, dealing with the organizations that either you've worked with or worked for, businesses don't have problems. They have people in their problems, right? And you are a person too, and add your problems to the pile and the better you get at understanding how to deal with your own the better you are at dealing with
06:00 - 06:01
Gerritt Bake: other people's problems as well
06:03 - 06:45
Christian Napier: well I've got a question for you I think it's interesting you spend and maybe we'll get into the careers in law enforcement in a bit, but I wanna ask about this transition from law enforcement to entrepreneurship because as you talked about it was challenging at times as you said finding balance in law enforcement with personal life and the work life and everything. Well, it's also different to find that in entrepreneurship because you basically live and breathe that job. So I'm curious to hear what drew you to entrepreneurship instead of saying, okay, I wanna go get the
06:45 - 06:55
Christian Napier: 9 to 5 desk job where, you know, I clock in, I clock out, I go home, I'm done. You know, what was it that took you to the entrepreneurship
06:56 - 06:58
Spencer Horn: crowd? More punishment. Right.
06:59 - 07:01
Christian Napier: From 1 frying pan into another.
07:02 - 07:36
Gerritt Bake: No, it's a great question. I actually, oddly enough, got my degree in business management while I was working as a police officer. But my first foray into being a business owner was actually when my first son was born, I started a window washing business, you know, because that's a smart thing to do with a brand new baby and a wife who's who's working full-time. And that lasted for a couple years and then back into the world of working for someone else. And then I actually had my second contracting business when I was a landscaper. I had
07:36 - 08:08
Gerritt Bake: that while I was working as a police officer. So you want to talk about balance. I was working as a landscaper from 6 a.m. Till about noon. I'd go home and shower and shave and take care of the necessities. And then I'd hit work, police work from 2 PM to 10 PM. There was no balance. Right. And so it was interesting that you talk about what made me want to do that. Well, there was a couple of things, right? Number 1, I'm sure you guys talk about behavior profiling and patterns and natural tendencies that people have.
08:08 - 08:37
Gerritt Bake: I've always had the tendency to lead. I've always loved leadership and the opportunity to lead. And I had those opportunities working as a police officer, but government has a lot of red tape and things that could have been done more quickly and more efficiently never really were. And so I got to the point where I really wanted to kind of test things for myself and say, Hey, I've got this skill set. I've got this framework. I've got these things that I've learned. What would it look like if I didn't have these restrictions?
08:51 - 09:32
Spencer Horn: But you just traded restrictions, you know, from the government to restrictions of, you know, how do you make your life successful and not go broke? There's other constraints that you deal with, especially if you're an entrepreneur, small businesses, you know, that pressure can feel like life and death because you are every day Worried about keeping the lights on and so that that pressure is is incredible. So how 1 of the themes that's really important to you is accountability will you talk about that and just the strategies that that you use to really be able to to
09:32 - 09:53
Spencer Horn: be accountable to The community to to you know the government to your family to your business And What did you learn and what do you teach? I know you're an incredible teacher, I've seen you teach. You are really good at getting people involved. So how did you talk about your accountability process?
09:54 - 10:24
Gerritt Bake: That's a good question as well. Accountability for me is something I struggled with a lot growing up. And I think I found comfort through sports, right? And I was lucky enough to have, you know, what we would call the old school coach, right? If you screwed up, you were doing burpees, or you're doing laps, or you're doing up downs, or you're doing something. And at the time, you saw it as punishment, right? You saw it as, oh, I screwed up and now I got to do this thing. But what I came to understand is that accountability
10:25 - 11:01
Gerritt Bake: is really what unlocks an individual's potential. And I learned it proactively through my police career and now applying it to business outside of that. And if you're a business owner, entrepreneur, or even thinking about it, I want you to think about what I'm saying, but through the lens of what you're experiencing right now. So think about it this way. I was part of the SWAT team for many years and people don't understand how much training goes into being in a specialty position like that. There's a lot of military units that are the same way, the Rangers,
11:01 - 11:33
Gerritt Bake: the SEALs, they do a lot of training. In fact, I was watching a clip from a video the other day of a sniper in the Marine Corps who said that he would go through an entire box of ammunition a day, Or a case I should say of ammunition a day, right? So you talk about repetition, repetition, repetition. But what really kind of changed things for me was when I became part of the SWAT team, because as a police officer, there's accountability. Sure, you have a supervisor, you have a squad, you're responsible for the calls in your
11:33 - 12:03
Gerritt Bake: district, you have to make sure you stay up to date on your reports, you know, there's a certain level of accountability, but the SWAT team kind of took it to the next level, because what they taught me is the mentality of accountability, right? So for example, every time we would deploy, we would always have what we called an operations plan. Now what's an operations plan? Well, it tells us exactly what's gonna happen, how's it gonna happen, and then what role everyone plays in making sure that that actually happens. Then, and this is 1 of the most
12:03 - 12:38
Gerritt Bake: important parts, at the end of that operation, we would all gather around and we would repeat, okay, what was your responsibility, Garrett? Oh, I had this. Okay. How did it go? Did you do well? Did you not do well? And then anyone in the group that thought either you did a good job or more importantly, you screwed up, had an opportunity to voice their concerns. And when it first happened to me, of course I screwed up because I was a new guy. It was hard to receive criticism back from somebody that you respected, right? But what
12:38 - 13:16
Gerritt Bake: I realized is that criticism was the key to getting better. If you spend too much time sugarcoating or making somebody feel good or worried about offending someone, you actually are hurting them more than helping them. And so in those situations, you wanted that raw, that real, that honest feedback, whether it came from them, you know, just being a mentor and that type of tone or they were legitimately angry at you because you really screwed something up. Right? And so imagine, for example, if you're going into a house and you're looking for a bad guy and he's
13:16 - 13:42
Gerritt Bake: got, you know, warrant for attempted murder and he's hiding somewhere and you know, he's got a weapon. Well, you're going to go into the house, but you got to be super careful because you don't want to get hurt. Definitely don't want 1 of your teammates to get hurt. So we had certain procedures on how to, what we call dominate a room. And so I go in if I was the first 1 and I'd go right. But when I turn right, what's exposed? My back, my entire backside. And so if someone's hiding in that corner, they've got
13:42 - 14:09
Gerritt Bake: a free shot at me, right? So the second person's job is to step in almost simultaneously and cover my back, right? And that way we're covering each other. Okay? Third person steps in and steps into the center of the room. So we dominate the room as quickly as possible. Why? Because if there's a threat, we want to be able to handle it. But then we also don't want to leave 1 of our teammates exposed. And there were a couple of times when I should have gone right and I went left. And because I did that, the
14:09 - 14:39
Gerritt Bake: second person who was supposed to go left had to now consciously think about, oh, wait, he went left. I was supposed to go left and I have to go right. So there's a delay. Now, ultimately I was the 1 that was exposed, but it wasn't his fault, right? It was my fault. And so this was day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year of accountability. And after a while you start to crave it. I would crave people to tell me, Hey, what is wrong? What did we screw up? What can we do
14:39 - 15:05
Gerritt Bake: better? Because my feelings weren't ever going to get me the results that I wanted. Only the facts were. So when we talk about accountability, it's not just about an accountability chart and having clear roles and responsibilities, it's really unlocking the potential of the individual and the only way to unlock the potential of every individual in your organization, including you, is through accountability.
15:07 - 15:49
Spencer Horn: I mean, I love that mindset that you talked about because you're like the only way I can get better. So that's where the mindset started is you recognized that you could get better. But that's a cognitive approach. I know personally that because of my personality, I'm totally into behavioral analysis and tendencies. And my tendency, Most of my tendencies are to reject that feedback because I wanna be the 1 who's making great choices and you're not supporting me and that is a huge failure. But I had to come to that understanding cognitively. I imagine there was something
15:49 - 16:09
Spencer Horn: else besides just that understanding. What did it take for you with that relationship that you had with, with your, you know, with your leaders, with your, with your, your team members for you to be able to accept that though. I mean, there has to be some conditions for you to get over that initial pushback and resistance.
16:11 - 16:16
Gerritt Bake: What was that? Great question. And you know this, cause you and I have very similar behavior patterns.
16:16 - 16:21
Spencer Horn: Problematic behavior patterns. I'm telling you on my case anyway, I don't know about you, but for me.
16:21 - 16:51
Gerritt Bake: You can call them problematic. I call them opportunistic, but of course, same thing. But regardless of your behavior pattern, you tend to gravitate towards people who are like you, right? And so a lot of the SWAT team members were what we would call alpha personalities, right? Very aggressive, very wannabe leaders, so on and so forth. And in that environment, typically on the street, what would that be? Well, that would be, you know, 1 gang wanting to fight another gang or 1 guy at the bar wanting to find another guy at the bar or you know what
16:51 - 17:21
Gerritt Bake: I mean? In all these and you see these conflicts in these confrontations, sports are the same. But what changed was you actually caring more for the other individual than you actually cared for yourself, right? Because I was mentioning, yeah, exactly, it's that connection. Because it's not just about you, right? Do I wanna go home at night? Yeah, I had got a wife, I got kids, like I wanna go home at night, but I also have a buddy who's got a wife and has kids. And then I have my other friend who's married and has kids. And
17:21 - 17:32
Gerritt Bake: then, so it's really, what am I willing to do to make myself better that by making myself better, I'm actually helping and protecting the people around me?
17:35 - 18:13
Christian Napier: Well, I've got a question to follow up on this because it seems to me, and again, I don't come from that environment, so I'm looking at it from perhaps a different lens, but when I look at that, it seems to me that when you accept those kinds of assignments, you go into those kinds of organizations, they have this kind of culture established, right? You walk in there and you assimilate yourself into this kind of a culture right and and everybody Buys into it because the stakes are so high if we don't buy into it. We could
18:13 - 18:53
Christian Napier: be dead, you know So we all accept this kind of a culture and it's not established overnight necessarily. And so I'm curious when you go help a business, you know, and they hear this story and yeah, yeah, I want to, I want that. I want that kind of culture. How do I build that because I can't just like Flip this switch and then all of a sudden you know my company's running like a SWAT team, so so how do you? How do you actually? Translate that experience that you've had into helping leaders create a plan that
18:53 - 19:23
Christian Napier: will help them transform their own organizations because you know I can listen to you and I get super pumped I'm like yes that's what I want to do and then I go away I'm like well how am I gonna do that I don't know I mean and maybe I'm not even maybe I'm not even the alpha personality because Spencer and I have very different personalities. How could I possibly build this kind of culture of authentic accountability in my organization? Garrett, we need and crave Christians on the team.
19:24 - 19:29
Gerritt Bake: Oh, 100%. Like, trust me, I've tried to play the game of like all alphas and it's a train
19:29 - 19:31
Christian Napier: wreck. It's a train
19:31 - 20:06
Gerritt Bake: wreck. So great, great question. So Christian, I think number 1 and the most important thing is leadership. Understanding that leadership starts at the top, right? It's not recruiting a bunch of what you perceive to be leaders. It's really you understanding that you are a leader, right? And either success or failure of your organization or your team is 100% your responsibility, right? There's a book by the Arbinger Institute called Leadership and Self-Deception. And it's 1 of the best books I've ever read Because the biggest hurdle that every leader has to overcome is the understanding that whether it
20:06 - 20:38
Gerritt Bake: works or it doesn't work, it's still your fault. Right? Because when you're in control, then you can do something. So when we talk about the culture of an organization, There's a couple things that come into play, right? Number 1 is that your organization, i.e. Your culture, is a reflection of you. The problem is that most business owners don't go in consciously thinking of, okay, what type of culture do I want to create? They go in thinking of either the results that they want to get out of the organization or the type of people that they want
20:38 - 21:11
Gerritt Bake: to have inside of their organization. And it's not that it's a bad thing. It's that they don't set the framework or the foundation for the culture of the organization. So 1 of the first things that I always have people do is a core values exercise. Why? Because I want them to know who they are and conversely, the type of culture that they wanna create inside of their organization. Not every team is going to be like the SWAT team. And that's a good thing. You don't want that, right? But you can still have the same level of
21:11 - 21:45
Gerritt Bake: accountability inside of there. All accountability is, is again, a clear plan, a clear understanding of what the roles and responsibilities are for each member inside of that team or organization and then the ability to come back afterwards and dissect what worked on a project, what worked for the quarter, what worked for the year, what didn't work, and ultimately what needs to happen to make it better next time. So accountability again is about results. It's not necessarily just about putting a bunch of alpha personalities in a room.
21:47 - 22:27
Spencer Horn: You know, when, when you talk about feedback, I, I spend Garrett more time working on senior executives giving feedback in a way that can actually be received. Because they don't have that culture, first of all, and based on how you perceive the world, if someone gives you feedback and you feel like that they're somehow hurting you or don't have your best interest at heart, you know, you talked about having each other's best interest at heart, then you take that feedback as an attack, as punishment like the burpees, right? But if on the other hand, you perceive
22:28 - 23:04
Spencer Horn: that that person has your best interest at heart, It's easier to accept that. The challenge is most leaders and I just, I'm in my experience. I want to see if you notice this too, and yours is that most leaders don't. Give feedback necessarily in a way that people can hear, you know, in, in a life or death situation, it's like, hey, you went left, you were supposed to go right. More of what happens is people are, maybe they're not achieving their goals or they're consistently or they're showing up late and you don't know why and you
23:04 - 23:32
Spencer Horn: allow those behaviors to continue without addressing them the proper way instead of most leaders just sit down and say, you need to do this, you need to change this, you need to do X, Y and Z. Well, the problem with that type of accountability or feedback is there's no ownership on the part of the person you're talking to. You're telling them what you want them to do instead of getting them to buy in. And most leaders don't know how to create the kind of accountability where people want to give their discretionary effort and want to do
23:32 - 23:47
Spencer Horn: things for the organization, which are the behaviors that lead to the results. I don't know if I'm making sense, but I just see so many leaders that are telling instead of helping people find their own internal accountability. Does that make sense?
23:48 - 24:16
Gerritt Bake: It does. And really what you're talking about is kind of the next level of accountability. And, you know, at a very surface level, you know, I'm a very black and white person, right? So here's what we're going to do. Here's how we're going to do it. Here's the role that everyone's playing in getting there. Ready, break, right? But underneath that, as you know this, and I've heard you speak before, right? There's different types of personalities. There's different types of leadership styles. There's all these different pieces to the puzzle, if you will. And as a leader, you
24:16 - 24:33
Gerritt Bake: have to get good at reading people, right? So we talk about culture, not just attracting the right people to the organization, but as you mentioned, you don't always want the same type of person in the organization. You want different behaviors. You want different strengths, Right? That's what makes you a more, a more robust company.
24:34 - 24:35
Spencer Horn: But that makes different problems.
24:36 - 25:04
Gerritt Bake: It does too. It does too. But as a leader, and this is where, you know, I had to, to learn how to do this outside of, of police work. Oh, 2 things. Number 1 was how to listen. If you asked my wife, the first 15 years of our marriage was a whole lot of me talking and not a lot of me Listening and I had to learn that in order for our marriage to survive, you know And continue in the direction that I wanted it to go So I think listening is is the most important thing,
25:04 - 25:38
Gerritt Bake: right? When you bring somebody in to talk about most, more often than not things that didn't work the way that they were supposed to, or aren't being done the way that you want them to, You will get way more out of someone by asking questions and you will demanding answers. Right? And Chris Voss, I'm sure you're familiar with him, wrote a book called Never Split the Difference. He was an FBI hostage negotiator for many years. And he has this methodology of, you know, what he calls active listening, right? And inside of it, of course, he puts
25:38 - 26:12
Gerritt Bake: it in the framework of his job, which was negotiating with terrorists and with, you know, bad people doing bad things. But really, it's the same, is you can be a very good listener and you can get to the root of every problem without actually sacrificing not only who you are, but the results that you want to get. And so I think that's the first thing. The second thing, there's a gentleman by the name of Dan Martell, he's a business owner and I think he's also a business coach. But I was listening to him a couple years
26:12 - 26:43
Gerritt Bake: ago and he brought up this really good point that I've implemented in my business and then also passed on to other people. And he calls it the 131 rule. He said, businesses are gonna have problems like we keep talking about. He said, but if you can train your people on not coming to you with problems, but coming to you with solutions, then it changes as we're talking about the culture of your organization, right? And you mentioned when you were on my show, talking about positioning yourself as a leader as being the solution to all things, and
26:43 - 27:17
Gerritt Bake: then, well, the business can't grow because everybody's dependent on you. Well, Dan talks about this, you know, 131 rule where he says, if you can get an individual in your organization to identify the 1 problem, sure there might be 15 things going wrong, but what's the real root problem, the 1 problem, and get them to think through 3 potential solutions to that problem, and then be able to identify the best of those 3 solutions. Now, instead of coming to you with a problem, they're coming to you with a solution to that problem. And so now, not
27:17 - 27:39
Gerritt Bake: only are you training people to be accountable, to identify problems, but also solutions to problems, but now you're also training them not to be dependent on you. Right. So I think it's kind of a combination of those 2 things, which is the next level of accountability. Number 1 is your ability to listen and get to the root of that problem But then number 2 is now training your people to be problem solvers instead of problem finders. I
27:42 - 27:42
Spencer Horn: Love
27:46 - 28:33
Christian Napier: Spencer's doppelganger has appeared along with Spencer. We got Spencer in stereo here. I don't know what just happened. So I like it though. I want to follow up on this because I think it's fantastic. Now that we've got 2 Spencer's, but coming back to this, idea of accountability, listening and then letting people come to you or training them to come to you with solutions, not just problems. I don't know if it's the denominator I think of accountability is trust. If you don't have any trust in your people, then you won't get afford them the opportunity to
28:33 - 29:16
Christian Napier: do what's assigned to them you talked about accountability like hey we all have our assignments we have our roles and responsibilities going to sports like you like we we hear the term in American football assignment sound right so everybody plays their role, they fill their gaps. If someone doesn't, you know, or if I see, oh, well somebody's dropped, maybe I try to compensate for that person and then I leave my area vulnerable and I get attacked on that area and the opponent scores on me. And so I'd like to ask you about the role that trust
29:16 - 29:33
Christian Napier: plays with accountability and how you develop trust, you know, build trust in your team so that you have confidence to delegate the things that you should be delegating to them and not trying to be accountable for everything yourself?
29:34 - 30:05
Gerritt Bake: Great, great question. I wanna start off with a phrase that we use and it came from the military, but we used it all the time. And it's trust, but verify, right? And it's an understanding that I want to trust you, but it's also my responsibility to make sure you're doing the thing that you're supposed to be doing. So I think that's important when it comes to anything involving teams or a leadership position or so on and so forth. But it kind of goes back to, you know, 1 of the things that a lot of business owners
30:05 - 30:33
Gerritt Bake: don't have is what we call a hiring process, right? And I know we've talked a little bit about behavior profiling, which is great, right? It helps give you kind of a lens, a look inside the person and say, what's the likelihood that they're going to succeed in this position? So you have a higher likelihood of success but regardless you also have a training opportunity right when you hire somebody if if you hire me for a sales position and I had a resume It says 20 year sales experience and we, you interview me and I'm a nice
30:33 - 31:00
Gerritt Bake: guy. And you're like, man, I really think this guy can succeed and you hire me. Well that's great. But now you're assuming that I'm going to be a good salesperson because you like me and because I got 20 years experience when the truth is I could be horrible at sales, but you don't know that. I'm just really good at talking to people and I got 20 years of bouncing around from job to job. Right? So the hiring process itself is where you start to build this trust and this accountability. Now, going back to police work at
31:00 - 31:31
Gerritt Bake: every level of the organization that I was in, starting off with being a recruit on the streets, as soon as we hit the streets, I had 4 months of field training, right? So we had 5 months in the academy and then 4 months of field training. Well, field training had 4, what we called phases. Phase 1, I sat in the passenger seat, my FTO or field training officer drove and he told me what to do and I just either wrote down people's information or ran a card or you know wrote a report, Whatever. I literally just
31:31 - 31:57
Gerritt Bake: mostly sat there, but just did whatever he told me to do. Right. So it was the, the watch me phase, watch me do it. The second 1, phase 2, now I'm driving, but he's in the passenger seat and we're kind of working together. Okay. Here's an accident. What do we do on an accident? Oh, here's a guy who was speeding. What do we do here? Oh, we're taking someone to jail. What do we do? And so we're working together, right? So phase 2 is the do it with me phase. Phase 3, I was on my own.
31:57 - 32:19
Gerritt Bake: He was in the passenger seat, but he wasn't saying anything. He wasn't involved, of course, unless there was an emergency and he needed to be but he would literally just sit there and just take notes and at the end of the shift we would talk about what he saw and You know what was working and what wasn't and maybe some corrections that I could make and in the last phase He was actually in a different vehicle And he would just shadow me. I would take the calls. I would do the traffic stops. I would take someone
32:19 - 32:51
Gerritt Bake: to jail. He would just kind of follow along. Right now, the reason they have those 4 phases is because by the end of the third phase, if you can't figure out how to do this job on your own, it's probably not what you should be doing. Right? As a business owner, because we have too many feelings involved, this doesn't mean don't have feelings, but because we have too many feelings tied to that process, I spent so much time and so much money and so much energy hiring who I believe is this right person that we start
32:51 - 33:23
Gerritt Bake: to lax on trust and accountability because we throw accountability in the back seat and we just throw trust and say, okay, you drive, right? But again, the person may not know what is expected of them, how it's expected of them, so on and so forth. And so trust and accountability are partners, but they start at the beginning when you first hire the person. So it's really hard. And, and, you know, if you're watching or listening to this, I get it. You have an organization, you're 5, 10, 15 years old. You've had people that have been with
33:23 - 33:50
Gerritt Bake: you for years. It's hard to change culture when you're not changing people because trust and accountability haven't been working together since day 1. So it's going to take a while. But if you're at a position where you're a younger organization or you're a smaller organization and you want to start building, The best way to build is to put trust and accountability next to each other in everything that you do.
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Spencer Horn: Okay. So, your great, great feedback, but think of the business owner that's listening to this saying, I just lost somebody. I'm already down, you know, a person. And now I need to spend time hiring them, sorting through all the prospects to find the right 1 and then spend how much time training them. I can't even keep my head above water with the team that I have. I'm shorthanded already, how am I going to dedicate that time? And so what ends up happening is that training gets short shrift because they're so stretched. HR departments are, they're working
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Spencer Horn: so many hours and they just can't keep up with the demand, especially in construction because there's such a shortage of people who want to do the work. And so, so many construction companies are struggling to have a full deck of cards. How do you, what do you say to that business owner that is in that treading water phase and like, I can't, how do I find time to transition to the training so that I can get out of this mess?
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Gerritt Bake: Yeah, that's a great question. First of all, they all got to take a deep breath. Like, you know, it's, it's always worst case scenario, right? What's the worst case scenario? Now, obviously in police work, it was a little more of a worst case than, than say in construction, but regardless, it's a worst case scenario. Right.
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Spencer Horn: This is a high pressure situation.
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Gerritt Bake: Yeah. I, I'll, but I always take them to worst case scenario, right? What's the worst thing that could happen? The worst thing that could happen is your business implodes. That's the worst thing that could happen. And then what? Now, this is funny because a lot of business owners, that's like the scary thing in the back of their mind that they don't want to talk about. But when you think about it, the worst thing that's going to happen is I declare bankruptcy, I close my doors. Okay. And then what? Well, then I'll probably start over again. Okay.
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Gerritt Bake: So the worst thing that's going to happen is you take all your knowledge, skills, and experience, and you start over. That's the worst thing that's going to happen. And when they can get over that fear, it's like, okay, are there a lot of fires burning? Yes. But what's the big fire that I need to deal with? Right? So it's a priority prioritization thing. But more specifically to the question that you asked, right? Every problem in a business falls in 1 of 2 categories. It's a process problem or it's a person problem. That's it. There's nothing else.
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Gerritt Bake: And so when we talk about I don't have time for hiring, I don't have time for training, I don't have time for whatever the thing is what you're really saying is not that you don't have time for It's that you don't have a process behind it, right because a process standardizes things, right? It makes things function the same right it allows you to run things When a more efficient manner So that hey, I already have a job description for this project management roles, for example. I already know what I'm looking for. And so when the resumes
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Gerritt Bake: come in, here's my first filter, second filter, you know, obviously you and I like to use behavior profiling, take this quick assessment. All right, so now I have 3 candidates. What is the next thing? Well, I always, I'm a huge advocate of job specific interviews, right? So instead of just coming in and you tell me about how awesome you are and all your experience, I'm going to run you through a scenario of like, hey, here's what's happening on this job site. What do you think we should do? Well, if you've got the experience and you've dealt
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Gerritt Bake: with it before, you're going to give me an answer and it's probably going to be the answer I'm looking for or you're not, right? So everything is just a process. So I always take it back to that when people are like, I'm short handed, I need to hire somebody. You don't need to hire somebody. You need to hire the right person. But before you hire the right person, you got to get that other thing figured out first. Right? What are the roles and responsibilities? What are the processes that I need inside of there at a very
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Gerritt Bake: high level now, but eventually detail, but a very high level so that when I bring somebody on, it's not a, Oh wait, I got to answer this phone. So John, hold on, wait, we got to go to this job site. So we're going to skip this. And in the end, all they're doing is shadowing you, which doesn't really do anything, because now you're just paying somebody to be your roommate in your car. Right? So again, process or person problem. If you're short handed, figure out why you're short handed and where figure out what exactly you need
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Gerritt Bake: that person to do and just work it backwards. And then the other thing, and people don't realize this, whether you're completely fully staffed or not, always be in hiring mode. It doesn't mean you're actually gonna hire them, but you're always in hiring mode. I would rather have a pool of 4 or 5 qualified project managers ready for, for, for me to hire. Cause I've already interviewed them. I've already vetted them. I know they're good so that when the company hits that next level or that next project is secured. I know I need a project manager. I
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Gerritt Bake: don't have to start at 0. I've got a pool of qualified candidates that I could just pick up the phone and say, hey John, we're ready to hire. Oh, you're good where you're at? Or you found another job? Okay, cool, onto the next, onto the next. Instead of freaking out about, now we're shorthanded.
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Spencer Horn: Great, great advice. And sorry, Christian, just 1 observation. I love, this is very similar to what you said in the beginning, most entrepreneurs are looking for the results first instead of the culture. So you're talking about, like Stephen Covey said, first things first, right? You're talking about processes and systems. You're talking about culture and values, and you're building a foundation that will make things easier as you go, is what I'm hearing you say.
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Christian Napier: Okay, now to my question. Sorry, Christian. No apology needed at all, but I find this conversation fascinating, right? So, you know, not all business leaders or entrepreneurs are naturally adept at creating systems and processes, right? They may have great ideas. They may be super creative. They may be inspirational. They may be great at relationships. They may not be very good at these processes and systems and so and We learn from your experience in law enforcement That processes get fine-tuned over time you iterate and you repeat over and over and over again, right? So you're probably not
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Christian Napier: going to get it right the first time, which means that learning from your mistakes can be very expensive because you have to continually refine. So this is where I want to kind of transition and ask you a little bit about this build pro framework that you've created, right? Okay, maybe the shortcut my process and I don't use that in a derogatory or negative way, but I can build on the lessons that other people have learned who have created successful systems and I can learn to incorporate those into my own business rather than me having to learn
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Christian Napier: all that myself, figure it all out myself. So Tell me a little bit about this BuildPro framework that you created, how you created it, and how it's being used to help business owners and leaders achieve success.
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Gerritt Bake: Yeah, good question. I think that a lot of business owners, including contractors, look at it as a point of pride to point at their wall and go, hey, look, I got a master's degree from the school of hard knocks. And they like to talk about the bumps and the bruises and the cuts and the scrapes and the broken bones and, you know, the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars that, you know, they paid for that degree, right? And it's a sense of pride. But you don't actually have to get a master's degree from the school
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Gerritt Bake: of hard knocks. Now, are you going to experience life in business? Sure. That's part of the game. And I'm fully 100% behind the concept of, you know, you have to learn the lesson before you can move on. That being said, it doesn't mean that you can't have tools at your disposal to learn that lesson quicker. Right? So the BuildPro system was created with 2 things in mind. Right? Number 1 is an understanding of where a business eventually wants to end up. And the second thing is what are the pieces that will help it get there? So
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Gerritt Bake: think about this. The 2 of you are in business, the 2 of you consult businesses. At the end of the day, every single business is going to experience an exit. I should say every business owner is going to experience an exit. And it's either gonna be, you know, the person passes off, the person sells to their kids, there's an employee buyout, they get rolled up with another company, there's a merger, right? There's going to be an exit that's going to happen. And if exit is the end game, then why aren't you building towards that exit right
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Gerritt Bake: now? And having conversations with multiple private equity partners, equity groups and whatnot, who are actively looking, you know, in my space for contracting businesses to purchase, there's a set of criteria that they're looking for, right? And so what we did is we said, okay, what are the criteria that they're looking for? How do we take that, combine it with basic business principles and create a system that will help contractors build the business that they want today, but that there's ready for them. If at some point, you know, there's an emergency or some life change or whatever
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Gerritt Bake: happens, they can walk away confident knowing that their business will sell for the amount that they know that it's worth. Right. So the first thing that we look at is what we call a business operating system. And that's what the build pro system is. How do I run a business the same way every single time? Right? This is the systems and processes game. Now, you brought that up, Spencer, I'm not a systems and process guy naturally. I'm not. It's something that I have to learn. Now, to kind of caveat just for a moment, if you're not
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Gerritt Bake: a systems and process guy, well, congratulations, it's 2024. There's a couple things available to you. The first 1 is our friend chat GPT, which can do a lot for you. So If you're having an issue, you can literally ask chat GPT, Hey, I am a residential remodeler that works in this area. I have these types of employees. Here's my business model. Help me create a simple SOP for ordering materials, right? And it'll give you a starting point and then all you got to do is fill in the blanks. The second way to do it is more
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Gerritt Bake: of a manual way, but it can also be done. Find someone who knows nothing about your business and then have them ask you question after question after question. And the question is, and then what? Job comes in and then what? Name the materialist And then what? And as you go answering this question, eventually you'll create at least your first version of your SOP. And as you mentioned, Christian, there's constant refinement. So those 2 things, but going back to the big picture, right, is creating a business operating system, right? That's what a business needs. How do we
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Gerritt Bake: do the same thing every single time? What makes the SWAT team elite? Isn't the weapons or the vehicles or the cool gear that they carry. It's the repetitions that they put in to do the same thing every single time so that I know that John behind me, if this situation happens, I'm going to do this. I already know what he's doing, right? Because we've worked together for so long and we follow the same process, right? The second thing is a business that can run without the owner. And this is where ego takes a hit. Because at
45:49 - 46:13
Gerritt Bake: the end of the day, you became a business owner because you wanted to be in charge. But in order to have a business that's worth more, you actually want a business that runs without you, which actually means you're not in charge, right? So it's kind of a little play there, but you want to have a team in place that you can sell with the business because you can't sell yourself. Nor do you want to. I don't want to sell a business for $5 million, but I'm required to stay on for 36 months as the quote unquote
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Gerritt Bake: general manager. Now I'm not even the owner anymore, but I got to stay on for 36 months. Like who wants that? But if you build a business that runs without you, now you have a sellable asset, right? And then the third thing is profitability, which I know this conversation is about that, but how do we have a business that's profitable at a certain level? Be that 15, 20, 25, 30% net profit, that's what becomes attractive. So the BuildPro system was created to help contractors build a business that, 1, they could enjoy the lifestyle that they want
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Gerritt Bake: to now, But then 2, when that time comes, because it will, they're able to sell for the amount of money that they want to sell for and then walk off into the sunset.
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Spencer Horn: You talked about the 131 system. That actually falls into exactly what you're talking about. There's a business leader from the 80s and 90s, his name was Ralph Steyer, and he was the CEO of Johnsonville Sausages. He wrote 1 of the greatest Harvard Business Review articles of all time saying, how I learned to let my workers lead. But the whole idea was the business wasn't growing past him. He was that bottleneck in the growth of the business. And same thing, you've got to get out of your own way many times and really let the business begin to
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Spencer Horn: grow when you're not there and that is hard, hard, hard to do. But it starts with little things like that 131, teaching your people to start to think critically. He got so serious about helping his leaders grow and develop, he put a sign on his desk. And because everyone would always come to him for approval and questions. It feels good to have everybody come to you, right? You've got all the answers. You've got all the experience. Back in the day, this is how we did it, right? That's what a lot of construction leaders are talking like.
47:59 - 48:29
Spencer Horn: And the sign said, the answer is the question, Which is kind of that 131. What's the problem that you have? What are 3 ideas and what do you suggest? So throw it back at them to start to help them to think. Well, here's my last question. We're kind of coming up against it. You have talked a lot about systems and structure and discipline. How do you balance that with flexibility and creativity and innovation?
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Gerritt Bake: That's a good question. There's a healthy balance between the 2, right? But for me, I'm more of a guidelines outcome-oriented person than I am a process-oriented person, naturally, right? And this is, regardless of whether you're a process driven person or an outcome driven person, you have to realize there's a certain place that you want to get to, right? And in order to get there, you have to establish the parameters. And this is where, again, allowing that space for your team, your leaders inside of your team or even yourself to make some mistakes. But as long as
49:07 - 49:40
Gerritt Bake: you're staying inside of those lines and headed where you need to get to, then it's acceptable, right? And in manufacturing, I don't have a ton of experience in manufacturing, but in manufacturing, you know, there's the certain set of parameters that as long as we're in those parameters, we're good. It's funny if you if you go to large corporations, big box companies, there's something called shrink, which I'm sure you're familiar with, right? Which is how much are we willing to let walk out the door lose and still be within where we need to be with our profitability
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Gerritt Bake: and so on and so forth? Well, circle K convenience store, I always wondered because late at night, what do we always get calls as, as a police officer? You get the beer runs, right? Well, between 11 a.m. Or 11 p.m. And like 2.33 a.m., it's the beer runs. Well, they used to lock everything inside of coolers, which made it a lot easier. But somebody had the bright idea that, hey, we should have displays of beer cans, 18 packs, 12 packs, by the door. And these guys would just walk in the door, take 3 or 4 18
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Gerritt Bake: packs, walk to their car, and then, you know, take off. It was a beer run. And we would go because they would call the police of the theft, but we couldn't find the person, didn't have a description and whatnot. And we said, what do you guys want to do? Well, actually, we don't want to do anything. And we were surprised because they actually accounted for that in their big picture, you know, their budget and so on and so forth. They allowed for that variability, if you will. Hey, we know that we're going to lose 3% to
50:40 - 51:12
Gerritt Bake: theft and we're okay with that. Walmart's the same way, right? So as a business owner, it's important to understand that even if you're a perfectionist, it's not going to be perfect. And that's okay. You have to start thinking towards the outcome. If you're an outcome oriented person, you have to realize that you need guardrails, right? You need parameters because if not, you'll end up in left field somewhere, I'm wondering how you got there. So it's kind of a combination of everything. You're looking at accountability, right? You're looking at structure, systems and processes. You're looking at building
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Gerritt Bake: your leaders, but it's all within what you believe to be the guardrails, the framework, right? What you believe is acceptable for you as a leader.
51:24 - 52:00
Christian Napier: Wow, great advice. And this, like I said, this has been a fascinating conversation. I've taken a lot of notes down here, Garrett. I appreciate you taking almost an hour out of your day to join us and have this conversation with us and with our viewers and listeners and if those folks who are tuning in want to learn more about what you do about the BuildPro framework, about the American Contractor Network, or they just want to learn more about Garrett. What's the best way for folks to reach out and connect with you?
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Gerritt Bake: Thanks Christian. The best way to do it is really to follow me on social media. As you can tell, I like to be in front of a camera, so I talk a lot. But I have a lot of stuff that I like to put out there. In fact, most of my stuff is free because I believe that There's a lot of information out there that, you know, could be valuable for you in the moment. So let's see if we can get that to you. But if you wanna have a conversation with me, you can send me
52:24 - 52:35
Gerritt Bake: a direct message through social media. I'm on all the social media platforms, or you can go to americancontractornetwork.com. There's a calendar link there. You can schedule some time where we can talk one-on-one. All right. Fantastic.
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Christian Napier: And Spencer, you've spent decades helping teams around the globe achieve high performance and developing leaders. What's the best way for people to reach out and connect with you? Thank you, Christian. Just LinkedIn. Spencer Horn, find me on LinkedIn.
52:56 - 53:00
Spencer Horn: And where can people find Christian Napier's brilliance?
53:01 - 53:25
Christian Napier: Where's Waldo? Let's see, the red and white striped shirt. LinkedIn as well. Yeah, just look me up on LinkedIn happy to connect with anyone there on LinkedIn and Thank you listeners viewers for tuning in. Thank you Garrett for sharing so much wisdom and insight and experience with us today. Viewers, listeners, please like and subscribe to our podcast and we'll catch you again soon.