Why Trades Business Owners Keep Fixing the Wrong Problems – Trades Business Coach in Edmonton

Cash flow is tight. There is never enough time. The crew is not performing the way you need them to, and you spend the day putting out fires. Those things are real. They are also almost never the problem.

In this conversation with Trevor, Bruce Baker of The Business Builders by Workplaces walks through why trades owners spend years fixing symptoms, what actually sits underneath them, and what changes when an owner finally looks in the right place. Twelve years of building businesses in Edmonton, condensed into one conversation.

Twelve years, and it started with a layoff

Why coaching on its own and consulting on its own both fall short

Trevor: Let’s start with a little of your history and background. How did you get started in all this?

Bruce: It started in the beginning where I was the typical academic, and had a fascination with people and workplaces, and hence the name Workplaces came out of that. I had the privilege, and I do consider it a privilege, of leading different areas in the business. My core was HR and I ended up as an HR executive for a large multinational. Ultimately the exposure I had to multiple business environments caused me to become the business geek, especially with a major focus on human behaviour.

Throughout my corporate career I got exposed to a lot of consultants and coaches, the things they do and the things they don’t do, and like anybody else you judge, you evaluate, and you see where you get the value and where you don’t. One thing that appeared to me is that coaching and consulting, individually, are not overly effective. Coaching is there to stimulate the mind to execute from an emotional standpoint. Consulting is there to provide subject matter expertise and hopefully help the receiver implement it. There was definitely a miss there.

In 2014 I was laid off, unfortunately, because I was having a great time building the HR function in that company. It was a blessing in disguise. If I look at our economy, domestically and nationally and internationally for most countries, small business is the backbone. And if they are the backbone, why is the expertise I had learned so expensive, and such a challenge for a small to midsize business to get hold of?

So I decided to do it differently. We started the company as HR All-In, giving small business HR expertise at a price they could afford, but connected directly to their bottom line. The only way you become a strategic partner at the table, whether you are HR, IT or finance, is to show bottom line impact, and the only way to do that is by measuring numbers. That is the language of business.

I thought the first year or two would be unprofitable. It was the complete opposite, and we scaled. Eventually we realized we were not just being called to solve HR issues. We were being called on process improvement, efficiencies, profitability, financials, the whole gamut. So we rebranded to Workplaces, and very recently refreshed the brand again to The Business Builders by Workplaces. Twelve years now.

Who a trades business coach in Edmonton is really for

The calling behind the company

Trevor: You said this is a calling. A calling is different from a career. What does that calling represent, and who are you called to help?

Bruce: A calling is when you see an incredible gap, something that needs to be solved, and from a principled standpoint it is just not acceptable. The gap we saw was a significant hole in the fabric of our business world that nobody was solving, and the pain continues to exist.

Who carries that pain? The small business owner. A lot of these folks come from a very humble trades background, though it does not have to be trades. Like me, they see something and think, I could do that better. Beyond wanting autonomy, wanting to feel they can run their own business, a lot of them genuinely believe they can make a difference in people’s lives. If you think about it, that is the purpose of a business. Anybody who tells me they are in it for the money, good luck. That is a very short term endeavour.

They start and grow a business because they want autonomy. They want to be well off. They want to spend time with their families. They want to be healthy and have some balance. Unfortunately what we see is the opposite. Burnout. Families broken. Businesses where the owner works for the business rather than the business working for them, and making them prosperous, not just financially but personally.

Money, time and people

The three symptoms every owner walks in with

Trevor: What are the common problems they come to you with?

Bruce: It is an interesting question, because the first word is problem. We all believe they are problems. But one hundred percent of the time they come to me with symptoms. Just because my arm hurts does not mean my arm is the problem. There is something else going on inside. A doctor asks what the symptoms are. What are you feeling?

With business owners it is really the top three. One, my business is not making enough money, or at the extreme, my cash flow is not there and I cannot afford payroll any more. Maybe I should downsize or restructure or start again.

The second is, I am overwhelmed and exhausted. It feels like I am working for a taskmaster, and I have no time for my family or myself. When I started this business I thought it would give me the chance to contribute to people in a better way and also be rewarded. Most of them say they do not want to become a multi-millionaire. If it happens, bonus. What they are striving for is to contribute and get some level of reward back. And they do not get it.

The third, and the most complex, is people. The business owner and their relationship with others, starting with themselves. Most of them have lost confidence, or they have been knocked down so many times that in psychology you would call it learned helplessness. There is just no way out. Bruce cannot help me, Jen cannot help me, there is no hope.

Then it cascades. If they have employees, the employees feel the same way. When you talk to the owner about their team you get the old line, you cannot get good help these days, or this generation, that generation. Then it cascades to customers, and then to suppliers, and that is your supply chain problem. People is the most significant complexity in business, if not the only one. Money and time are an outcome of your ability to be effective with people, starting with yourself.

Your sub is not the problem

A construction owner, six systems, and an hour a day back

Trevor: What is step one in exposing that?

Bruce: You remind me of a client. Brand new, two weeks in. Construction company, two owners. For many years now I have always watched how people interact with their phones. At the start it is always, excuse me, sorry, I just have to get this text. That is a very simple way of seeing the symptoms. Over time you see far less dependence on the phone, the texting goes away, and the focus is there.

You sit with them, you talk, you relieve some of their stress. I got a hug two weeks ago from one of the owners, which is fantastic, but it does not last long. You go to any motivational programme and you are up in the clouds for about a day, then it disappears because you do not implement anything.

So my partner Jen and I decided yesterday’s session would focus on capacity, on how they see their day to day. We always say that time management as a concept is flawed. The brain cannot manage time, that is intangible. The brain can manage action. So we talk about the urgent and important component of actions. What are the right actions you are taking that are highly important and urgent?

We started the exercise and I looked at Jen and she looked at me, and I realized it was not going well at all. They understood it intellectually but they were not engaging emotionally.

So I got up and started asking one of the owners: why are your subs not showing up on time? Why are you running around like a chicken with your head chopped off, when you have payroll to do, and that failed inspection, and the client is unhappy and you have to get hold of the sub? He said, I tell the sub he needs to be there at three, he arrives at four thirty, and then the customer gets angry.

I said stop. What are we talking about? We are talking about symptoms. Then I said something he did not expect. Your sub is not the problem. Doing your payroll is not the problem. The problem is you.

Of course, like anybody, the reaction is, the problem is me? Yes. You are not holding your subs accountable. You are not holding your admin accountable. You do not have a process to get payroll approved that does not require you to fill in the spreadsheet yourself to work out field hours. So you have a systems problem and an accountability problem. You want to be the good boss.

What came out of his mouth yesterday was this. You can be the good boss. You can be a great leader. That does not mean you have to be a jerk. It just means you can hold people accountable, set expectations, and put some systems in place.

He agreed with the first two, right up until I said systems. He said, I just do not have time to build systems. Exactly. Why do you not have time? You are not allowing yourself the time to build them. Then I said the thing that intimidated him. Systems sound really complicated. Systems sound like a lot of work. Absolutely not.

So we challenged every one of his thoughts. If this could do that, and that could do that, and none of it involved you at all, how much time would you save? He said, not that much. Maybe an hour, an hour and a half a day. I said, multiply that by six, or seven, because that is how many days you are working right now. And then it clicked. What could you do with that time, inside the business and outside it?

Then I showed him the flip chart and said, we have five more to go. We spent the rest of the time on each one, challenging it intellectually and emotionally. Why do you not trust that person to do it? She is not that assertive, she will not put her foot down. Do you need her to be assertive? Why does she need to put her foot down? They do not listen to anybody. Is that a her problem or a him problem?

Every single time, what finally solves it for the owner, one piece at a time, is realizing it is not an external issue. Those are the symptoms. The problem starts with them, and that is exactly why the owner, the author of the company, is so important.

Layers, not quick fixes

Why the foundation goes in before anything else

Trevor: Once you have been working with a company for a while, what are the next steps?

Bruce: When you pick up a shell on the beach, or look at the trunk of a tree, there is hardly anything in nature that does not have layers of some sort. They grow over time. They become stronger over time. A business is a system that relies on the emotional fortitude and growth of the owner, who is the author of that company.

As soon as we finished that discussion yesterday he was relieved and starting to see the light. Then his partner jumped in and said, but we also need to look at that, and this. I pushed back. You are absolutely right, we do. But a house with a shaky foundation is not going to be a house at the end of the day, it is going to be a mess. The first layers you are setting here are critical. Once that is in place, we look at the next layer.

That is what we do with any business build, whether we are rescuing a business in trouble or growing and scaling one. We look at every layer. If a layer is not in place, we put it in place before the next one goes on. That creates strength on strength on strength.

We are also big proponents of sustainability, and not just environmentally. Everything we put in place is not just for today. It has to hold for at least five or six years out. What goes in today is not at the expense of what needs to come tomorrow. Everything complements each other.

Why the trades

What trade school never taught you about running a business

Trevor: Who should be reaching out to you?

Bruce: I would preface it by saying we do not exclude companies or industries. But the core, going back to the very reason we do what we do, is small to midsize trades businesses. With the arrival of AI, it is not really the people doing the hands-on work who are most exposed, it is the knowledge workers. These are the businesses behind the roads and the bridges and the buildings. They are the backbone of the economy. Living in Alberta, living in Edmonton, this is trades haven. That is our service area and those are the people we want to focus on.

Trevor: They are usually highly skilled and driven in their discipline. What they do not teach you in trade school is how to build a business. They do not teach you how to manage expenses, or job costing, or how to hire and train people, or how to build systems, or how to read a profit and loss statement and build a projection from it.

Bruce: It is interesting you say building blocks. I will pick on the trades specifically because I see it regularly. Everybody is hard on themselves to a degree, but trades folks are unnecessarily hard on themselves. It is the Alberta way, the get her done mentality. If they fail and they think they were not good enough, they are really tough on each other and on themselves.

When they come into building a business you still have to hold yourself accountable, but you also need to give yourself grace. You need to realize how effective you can actually be. When you fail, it is the best teacher in the world. When you succeed, you succeed because of who you are. We want to remind these business owners that their potential is significant. They just need to believe in themselves enough to move forward.

The free 90 minute Business Building Session

Trevor: You offer a 90 minute business building session. Explain that a little.

Bruce: We offer it to anyone who is game, anyone who wants to understand the depth of their own business and also understand who we are and how we work. There is no charge. You sit with us, you pick our brains, and we do an in-depth analysis of your business and tell you exactly where it is at. Easily nine times out of ten we provide insights the owner has not seen before and was not even aware of.

Whatever they are curious about or need more information on, we want them to leave with a few real golden nuggets they can take with them, whether they work with us or not. So far we have a ten out of ten score on that. If we part ways and never see each other again, we consider the job done, because we left them with something they did not have before and they never had to open their wallet. Maybe a cup of coffee. I will give them that.