Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Eric Tilghman, the CEO of Tilghman Builders, and I'm here with J.P. Mel, our operations manager. How are you doing, JP?

I'm good, I'm good. I'm tired. The holidays make me tired.

You get tired too. But other than that, I'm pretty great.

Good. I'm pretty great. Good. So you've been with the company for, I want to say, six years.

Seven years. It'll be seven years in July, so like six and a half years.

Okay. Yeah. And how long ago was it that you took my job as operations manager?

Two and a half years.

Okay. Two and a half years ago, I think. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Because it was two years in the field as a carpenter, like two years going from kind of laborer to lead carpenter. Then it was two years as a lead carpenter. And yeah, so it'll be three years right around the same, like beginning of summer-ish.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Good. So when you came into that position, one, I knew you'd be good at the job, and you are. But there was something that I thought I was very good at, and I was nervous that you were not going to be good at it.

Okay.

And that was maintaining the company culture. Now, here we are years later. It's better than ever.

It's better than ever.

Yeah. You're welcome.

Yeah. Thank you. I was really concerned, you know.

Yeah. No, I would be too.

Yeah. You spun it. You know what I was good at? I kind of got a whole bunch of guys on the bus and excited to move forward. But I sugarcoated things for a while, which I think I needed to do maybe to get everybody moving in a direction together. But then you brought accountability into the culture, I feel.

I mean, I think I started having some very real conversations with everybody about what we needed them to do for us to move forward and for them to move forward.

Yeah, I think it fit where we were at. And I think ultimately, if you have the right people in the company, they're appreciative.

Yeah. And if they're not appreciative, they might not be the right people.

Appreciative of the feedback.

Yeah. Exactly. We want people who want to grow, and you can't grow comfortably.

That's true. You can't grow comfortably, and it can be hard to grow on your own. I think everybody needs feedback and needs someone else's perspective to see their blind spots and to let them know what they're doing great and to let them know what we need them to change or do better or whatever.

Then they make more money. Then they get better opportunities. Then their life gets better. I think all of our lives get better if we get feedback from other people.

I made sure that you were comfortable being very, very honest with me because I wanted to know what was needed from me as clearly as possible from the get-go. And I wanted to make sure that we instilled that across the whole field crew and that it was just normal and that people were comfortable with it, or comfortable with the discomfort because discomfort can come with it.

That was really important to me as I stepped into the job.

It's funny, you got me thinking about kind of... Yeah. So what is it that you do differently than what I did? It was almost like I got the whole team comfortable with showering each other with praise.

Right.

Two rough dudes at 25 years old, they both make the same amount of money, and I got everybody to feel comfortable saying, “I love you, man,” and “We’re going to be nice to each other. We’re going to be kind to each other.”

Yeah, yeah.

And then you got everybody comfortable with the next thing, which was feedback and accountability.

“I love you, man, but stop doing that.”

Yeah. And we needed that. We really needed that.

And it has to be both.

It absolutely has to be both.

Yeah, I agree. What does culture mean to you personally? What does that even mean? We say it all the time, but what is it?

That’s a good question. That’s a hard question. I think it’s a set of expectations for how we act and how we treat each other, how we treat our customers. It’s our core values applied to all the different choices and actions that we have to make throughout our days and throughout a construction project and throughout all the work that we do.

I mean, it’s our brand. It’s part of our brand. And I’m not someone that really likes branding or social media or anything that puts a shine that’s not really there. I like that our brand is actually aligned with who we are, and that allows me to talk about it comfortably.

We were just at final photos, and the customer gave testimonials, and it’s going out on Instagram and Facebook. I don’t particularly like Facebook or Instagram, but we’re not saying anything that’s not true. And I think we’re contributing to bringing authenticity to branding.

I think our culture is reflected in that. And then I think it’s reflected in all of our employees. A lot of happy people. Driven, happy people all moving in the same direction.

I don’t know. That wasn’t the most clear answer, but I don’t think there is one.

Yeah. I think I might plan on asking everybody this question, and maybe we’ll find the answer eventually. But there’s a whole lot to it. What do I deem a happy company? Well, what’s culture? I don’t know. A happy company.

Okay, well, what makes a happy company? Having fun all the time? No. Having fun some of the time? Definitely. Being laser-focused and goal-oriented all of the time? No, but a lot of the time.

It’s like a mixture of a bunch of things. I don’t know what makes a healthy person. Well, it’s not one thing. It’s like five buckets. Family, faith, finance, fitness. There’s like five to seven important things. Maybe we’ll figure out what those things are.

When you first joined our company, what was the culture then?

Not as good. It sucked a lot of the time.

When I started, I stayed because I wanted to learn carpentry, and I saw an opportunity to learn well from you and from J. I didn’t stay because I loved everyone that I worked with.

Right.

That came in time as we started adding better people and as you started focusing on culture in hiring and decision-making. We had a string of nine lead carpenters come through. Not all bad guys, but all bad culture fits, and all of them would be bad culture fits now.

And we had a lot of carpenters who didn’t care or only cared every other day or only showed up every other day. Not bad, but not nearly as good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you were here from kind of not the beginning. Bob started the company many years ago, but you saw it at a different stage. It was just a different company.

Yeah. I tell people when we hire them that Bob started the company 40 years ago, but this form really emerged over the last five years or so.

Yeah. So culture, man.

Yeah. It’s all culture. And culture is not everything, but I just think without it, I don’t know how to run a business without it. How do you get somebody to do something to help you if they don’t like you? Or how do you get someone to follow a new process if they don’t respect the company’s values or if they’re not established at all?

Yeah. I mean, it’s why construction sucks. Because it’s hard to begin with. It’s very hard to begin with. And then there are so many companies that don’t understand even the basics of just being nice to people and doing the things you say you’re going to do. And if you’re not going to do them, say you’re not going to do them.