Lose the Alarm Clock

Sleep and I have a precarious relationship. On the one hand, it’s a necessity. But the downtime can feel wasted, like I could have been getting more accomplished.

I’ve heard it said that the uninspired sleep late, while those perusing a passion naturally wake up early. I can relate. I relish the quiet hours before the rest of world is awake, to focus and breeze through important tasks that require concentration. It sets the tone of productivity for my entire day. A few arguments for rising early:

• You may not be smarter than the others in your field, but you can outwork them. Waking up early puts you on track.
• Quick replies and early morning notes send a message to customers about your commitment.
• By knocking out a to-do list early, I have time to invest in people later. It may be my family, customers or the community, but I can use the daylight hours to focus on people rather than tasks.

Maybe it’s time to stop setting an alarm, and let your enthusiasm wake you up early. You’ll be amazed at what you gain by using those pre-dawn hours.

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Skill vs. Judgment

In the last few days, I was talking with our CFO about what distinguishes between a good hire and an average one. He said something like this:

By watching how someone handles their personal life, we get a good glimpse of how valuable they can be to the company. Character, values and good judgment sometimes make up for a lack of skill. We can teach skill, but not necessarily good judgment.

I agreed. Skill is easy to learn compared to values taught once an adult. Ideally, we make the right hires across the platform, but the first benchmark is character. 

To me and our company, character, values and good judgment make up for a lack of skill in the beginning.

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How One Company is Using Shoes to Shine a Positive Light on the Skilled Trades

Attention to detail, dedication and love of the craft: these are just a few qualities of the skilled tradesmen that keep our industry going. But with busy jobsite schedules and an ever-changing economy, the high-quality work that they produce sometimes goes unnoticed in favor of moving on to the next project. CBO recently caught up with Dave Schneider, chief marketing officer at Red Wing, to talk about the company's new initiative, America Working, that aims to shine a light on the hard work of our industry craft workers. See our conversation below. 

Project Cost Escalation

In recent years, companies have begun to raise concerns about the increase in costs for their major construction projects, looking for clarity as to why costs have doubled from what they were 20 years ago. Industry analysis confirms that project costs have grown about 200 percent in the last 2 decades, but only approximately 60 percent of that growth can be accounted for with inflation.

Why You Should Develop a Navy SEAL Culture in Your Business

Spartans, samurai, Green Berets, Navy SEALs. These are the best of the best in the military world. Countless stories have been told about their selection process, training, death-defying missions and pure heroism. In particular, SEALs serve as the premier unit within the United States Navy, operating on sea, air and land. Much of what the public knows is shared through the amazing stories of heroes, such as Marcus Luttrell, Chris Kyle and Rob O’Neill.

Retail Transforms; Stores Remain

A portion of the ULI 2018 Look Ahead keyed in on retail. Their commentary may best be summarized, “Retail isn’t dead, it’s just changing. Give it some time to adjust.”

In 2016, total retail sales approached $5 trillion, broken down:

$4.3 trillion from traditional, or maybe not so traditional, bricks and mortar transactions

$.5 trillion from Internet

$62 billion from the web, but being fulfilled by the bricks and mortar stores

So about 10% of the total was Internet sales, which will rightly continue to grow. Simultaneously, we’ll see an enhanced experience and entertainment value of bricks and mortar stores in the U.S. Going forward, the Internet and physical stores will continue to compete and complement each other, including the “last mile.”

As most of us know, the U.S. has the largest ratio of gross leasable retail per capita of any country in the world, at just under 24 sf per person. (Australia has 11 sf per person and Germany, being at the other extreme, is about 2.5 ft.) Maybe we are “over-retailed” a bit, which is some of the transformational aspect facing those in the industry.

On our radar, we have several retail redevelopments transforming existing bricks and mortar to the other types of retail, entertainment and commercial offices, all intermixed. The image above shows us razing a circa ‘60 a department store to be replaced by a cinema with full food and beverage offerings that will reposition the experience of this mall as a shopping and entertainment destination. As the markets change, so will we. 

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How to Prepare Your Fleet for the ELD Mandate

In December 2015, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published the final version of the anticipated Electronic Logging Device (ELD) mandate, providing a two-year window for organizations to become compliant. As of December 18, 2017, that two-year window will come to a close, and it’s time for drivers and fleet owners to embrace compliance with the new ELD mandate.

4 Ways to Combat Lukewarm Leadership

Employees pay attention and watch more closely than they are sometimes given credit for. Indifference, lackluster communications and lethargic efforts are often more conspicuous than appreciated. When change is at hand and the future seems unstable, a leader’s performance can either diminish chaos or enflame it. In the backdrop of uncertainty, the smallest spark of ambiguity or apathy can ignite the pervading fuel of resistance among your workforce.

Top 5 Reasons Your Company Should Consider Grade Control

On some construction jobsites today, machine-control systems are just as prevalent as smartphones, excavators or even hardhats, while on other jobsites, you may only see stringlines and grade stakes. Often, construction business owners who are hesitant to adopt machine-control systems are intimidated by the technology, or they just don’t know where to start. However, if this describes you, your business could be missing out on a significant opportunity to improve grading accuracy and optimize productivity.

Navigating at Altitude

This week I attended our annual ULI Chapter meeting here, where Anita Kramer of ULI’s Washington headquarters presented ULI’s “Emerging Trends in Real estate 2018,” a real estate lookahead produced jointly with PWC. They interview several thousand in the industry, gathering thoughts and opinions combined with data from the field. A few summary takeaways:

• The “What inning are we in?” question keeps coming up, as if to say cycles have to end after a preset time has elapsed. Right now, the general feeling is that the market is steady as we go. Steady.
• This is a long cycle, not in boom/bust. One key to success in the next few years will be to expand horizons, market by market, property type by property type, over time.
• Current expansion is slow by comparison, but seems to be more sustainable–74 months, thus far.
• Most people interviewed felt all property types are on the upswing. 62% of respondents say business will be good next year and about 19% responded “excellent.”

This is just a start to the solid information we were given. More information to come on real estate facility trends, how generations are affecting the market, and more…

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What Is a Borderless Jobsite?

As more technology infiltrates the construction industry, physical borders are no longer enough to protect a site from potential costly damages. Construction Business Owner recently spoke with Pete Wilcox, inland marine director at Travelers Insurance, to understand the implications of new technology and the concept of the “borderless jobsite.”

5 Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from Amazon

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos spent his summers doing gritty work on a remote ranch with his grandfather, according to Brad Stone in his biography, The Everything Store; Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. Together, they repaired windmills, graded dirt roads and even built a crane to move the parts of a Caterpillar D6 Dozer. Sound familiar? Bezos took a similar, hands-on approach to marketing as he steered Amazon.com to a position of dominance.

Aim for a Clear Target with Evolved Marketing Tactics

If you are currently making time to browse LinkedIn, online publications and business emails, you will see an overwhelming volume of advice on how to improve your marketing approach: get better SEO, how to use social media, send better emails with more opens and more. Everyone has some advice or a strategy to offer. But until we understand why these changes are in demand, it can be difficult to prioritize making those commitments over the other daily business fires.

4 Marketing Myths Your Firm Needs to Face

The field of marketing has the perceived image of being fun. People tend to think of viral YouTube videos and Super Bowl ads. But when business executives get into the weeds of marketing, they quickly discover it’s not as fun or easy as it might seem. When efforts are guided by misconceptions about marketing, the result is often disappearing dollars with little to show for it. If you suspect you are harboring some misguided notions about marketing, take comfort in the fact that you’re in good company.

12 Questions for Better Business

As a CEO, president or business owner, your business day goes by rather quickly, doesn’t it? You start your day early in the morning, sometimes before dawn. You hardly have time to think about what is for lunch. The next time you look up, it’s near dusk and time for you to call it a day. You bring work home to review before going to sleep.

Your Ticket to More Free Time

Many business owners tell me their businesses don’t deliver the results they want and have taken control of their lives. They work too many hours, don’t make enough money and never have enough time to spend with family and friends. They have become trapped in their web of overcommitment. When this happens, stressed, unfulfilled business owners reach a point where they finally realize their priorities have to change.

When to Sleep On It.

 When I am faced with a problem to solve and there is not a clear path at the time, it has been my experience that consciously filing it in my mind for further processing is the best temporary solution. It is amazing the way this works. Over the next few days, it will surface from time to time, and generally the right course of action becomes clear a little while later.

From what I have read on the subject, our subconscious mind continues to work on a problem after we have moved on to another thought. And a “gut feeling” really does mean something.

So when do we trust our instincts and when do we listen to logic? Gut vs. Head.

My gut tends to lead me to the right decision when there is a large amount of information to consider and making the decision feels overwhelming. I then try to step away, take a walk and get a good night’s sleep.

I’m not sure about you, but the right choice for that time often comes to me when I’m not actively thinking about the problem, and when I am least expecting.

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37th IRMI CRC Champions Safety Efforts

For 37 years, the International Risk Management Institute Inc. (IRMI) has hosted its national Construction Risk Conference (CRC), which brings project owners, general contractors, subcontractors, developers, insurers and insurance agents and brokers together to explore breakthrough strategies and techniques for improving insurance coverages, controlling costs and fine-tuning risk-management programs. This year, the annual CRC was held at the JW Marriott in Indianapolis, Indiana, November 6-8, and hosted nearly 1,800 attendees.