5 focus areas for construction company growth with Paul Atherton

Zach Wojtowicz:

Welcome, everybody, to “The Building Code,” where today, we have replaced Charley with Nicole in the studio. She may not say anything. Charley planned a vacation, and due to my own travel circumstances, I would have been internationally recording the episodes. Then I came back, we had to do some things. Now, Charley is literally sitting in front of the Mount Rushmore.

Charley Burtwistle:

The Mount Rushmore.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The Mount Rushmore.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, this is like …

Zach Wojtowicz:

How’s the weather, bro?

Charley Burtwistle:

It’s very hot, actually.

Zach Wojtowicz:

If you’re on YouTube, you can see Charley sweating in his new “The Building Code” swag.

Charley Burtwistle:

Right. If you’re not on YouTube, this would be a great one to tune in for a couple reasons. One, Zack and I finally got some swag. So, huge shout-out to Nicole for putting this together.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We got t-shirts.

Charley Burtwistle:

So, if you want to see us wearing our fancy quarter zips, you can tune in. Yeah, they’re very nice. Also, I am at the base of Mount Rushmore. This is not a fake background. This is not a green screen. This is live from Mount Rushmore.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And if all goes well, it’s the week of July 4th.

Charley Burtwistle:

Right. Hopefully by the time this comes out, you would have celebrated and ate some hotdogs and shot some fireworks. Now you can virtually pay a visit to Mount Rushmore and listen to “The Building Code” at the same time and learn a ton because we have a fantastic guest on today. Zach, tell our people at home who we have.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Today, we have yet another episode with Breakthrough Academy. Paul Atherton is a business coach …

Charley Burtwistle:

There we go. Number two, baby.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right. Big fans, obviously. In our recap episode a while back, my favorite episode ever of “The Building Code” that we hosted, Charley was with Benji, which he knows. I actually recently got to rekindle our relationship, my relationship with Benji. You weren’t there. Sorry if you’re jealous.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I wasn’t going to bring it up, but yeah, once again, Zach did get to travel.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Maybe you can connect with Paul.

Charley Burtwistle:

Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see, but yeah, how did that go by the way, right? You were on a round table with …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Phenomenal. It was …

Charley Burtwistle:

… a few different members of Breakthrough, a few different members of BT.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yep. Yep. We had Breakthrough hosted it, and we had two builders that use Buildertrend, Ian and Greg. Very prominent, very, very successful builders in their areas. It was awesome. We had 250 attendees, and yes.

Charley Burtwistle:

Is that out anywhere that people can check out, or is that a live, snooze or lose?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, so it’s actually we have … I believe it’s on our blog. I will ask Nicole to maybe put it in the show notes. It would be a good cross-plug for sure. It was great content. We covered a lot of the things that I think we’re going to get into with Paul. So, we’re really dragging this intro out and just feeling the patriotic spirit. I feel like I want to quiz you of like who wrote the Declaration of Independence, or name one fact about each guy standing behind you, but we’ll spare that for the outro and get Paul on.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, well, I’ll study up during the interview maybe.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, well, we could tell. All right. Let’s get Paul on here. Welcome, Paul Atherton, to “The Building Code.” We’re so excited to have you on. We’re great friends of Breakthrough Academy, and yet another member joining us today. Paul, why don’t you introduce yourself for our listeners out there.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. Yeah, likewise, I have a lot of respect for Buildertrend, so I’m excited to be here. Yeah, so, I work for a company called Breakthrough Academy, and we focus on systemizing trades-based businesses and helping owners set up their organizations to kind of pursue whatever it is they value in life. Yeah, my focus in the company is primarily on the success of all the construction businesses that we work with.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Nice. Well, something we love to ask our guests is how did you get into your current positions? How did you find Breakthrough Academy? Did you know being a business coach for construction businesses is something you always wanted to do, or what’s your backstory?

Paul Atherton:

Well, I kind of just fell into it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

A common answer, actually.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it’s …

Zach Wojtowicz:

That might be the most common. Has anyone ever not given us that answer, Charley?

Charley Burtwistle:

I don’t think so. Ask Zach and I how we became podcast hosts.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Good point.

Paul Atherton:

Well, I’m curious. I heard about this tiny little coaching company, and I was working in Salt Lake City, Utah, actually. I was doing a whole bunch of things in the construction industry, and I heard about this little coaching company six years ago. I got on the phone with their CEO, and I was like, “I love what you guys are doing.” I booked a plane ticket, flew up to Vancouver, and I sat with Igor, who’s our CEO, for three hours and basically talked myself into the company. That was back when we were coaching 20 businesses, not 500.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Have you guys grown that much in just three years?

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, we have around 500 employees in all.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Wow.

Charley Burtwistle:

Wow.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I guess I didn’t realize that you had that few. Is that about when they started was three, four years ago, or was that kind of the norm for a while where you only had maybe just a handful of companies you were really tight with for a while?

Paul Atherton:

Yeah. We started, I guess it was about six years ago when I came on, maybe six months or eight months after they started.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Got it.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah. It was just a few little companies, just kind of all based in the Vancouver area, and that grew from there.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s super interesting. That’s not honestly that different than Buildertrend’s story. We basically started as we built a website for a contractor locally, and he’s like, “Can you guys make a schedule?” The founders were like, “Yeah, let’s try.” That turned into the software it is today. So, I love that. I had no idea. I feel like I should have known that, but it’s super cool. I was just on a roundtable the other day with your company, with some of your clients and our clients, and the engagement with the audience was incredible, both people who use Breakthrough Academy and Buildertrend, but they’re also non-people, people that were kind of looking into both. It was a great opportunity for us to all work together. What is it exactly that Breakthrough Academy really does? For maybe someone who is a Buildertrend user, that’s primarily who’s listening to this, shout-out though to my mom and Charley’s mom who listen.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. My mom’s taking pictures of me right now, I’m sure.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, for the ‘gram. For the ‘gram. What is it exactly that you guys bring to maybe a builder who doesn’t know what Breakthrough Academy is really there for?

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, so are you wondering, do you want me to kind of describe how we’d take … We’d basically take businesses to the next level. Do you want me to kind of break that down a little bit?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. What is it you do? Why would someone come to Breakthrough Academy?

Paul Atherton:

Yeah. Well, generally I think businesses fall into basically two main categories that we see. There’s category one where there’s low net profit and there’s some chaos happening in the company. They come and they’re like, “I have no idea how to get myself out of this. Can you guys show me?” Or they think, “Wow, this is going to take me 10 years to figure this out myself. Can you guys show me how to get there quicker?” So, we’re really good at helping those people, but then there’s also the businesses that are already pretty good. Like they have strong systems in place. They’re making good money. They have strong networks, strong visibility in the marketplace. We also work on helping those organizations really polish everything that they do in kind of the core areas that businesses need to be strong in order to see success.

Yeah. That’s kind of what we focus on is just helping people break through to the next level, and if people want more information, usually I explain basically five levels of success or that kind of arc to growth that you tend to see in trades-based companies. Then I kind of say, “Well, which level are you?” They explain it to me. Then I’ll say, “Okay. Well, we can get you the next level …” We just kind of draw out the roadmap. Do you want me to go and kind of regurgitate what those five levels are? That’ll paint the picture as to what we do.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’ll take whatever you’re willing … Yeah, I don’t want to also give away too much. Like if we give away your trade secrets. I feel like you got to pay for the price of admission. Dangle the carrot a little bit.

Paul Atherton:

We’re a pretty open book with stuff.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’ve noticed that, which I love. Even in that roundtable, so much good advice, and then at the end of it, so much great, free material that you provided for people just for coming, like expectations on a GSR for a goal setting meeting. So, yeah, as much as you think you want to share, we’re all ears. I’d love to hear more. What’d you do for a company who’s like, “I think I’m pretty successful. I’m at $3, $4 million revenue?” What would be your advice to them for process improvement?

Paul Atherton:

Well, yeah, I would say, yeah, I’d want them to paint the picture for me on what their ideal, utopian future looks like. Sometimes guys are happy. They like how we do 300-400 grand a year net. I’ve got some great staff in place. I’m good. It’s like, “Cool.” I don’t know. I don’t know what to say, but if they’re like, “Yeah, I would love to have a leadership team in place, and I would love to be growing wealth for that leadership team and my family and just the company in general in other ways, and I’d love to just be doing other things probably five years from now.” I’d say, “Okay, well, if you were to come work with us, this is generally what the roadmap looks like and how we get you there.” Then we’d leave it up to the individual to decide whether or not that sounds palatable to them, and they sign on, and we go from there.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

So, what I’m curious about is, are most of the people that you’re working with, what are some warning signs that they need extra help? Because I think a lot of the people that Zach and I would talk to that use Buildertrend is they’ve been doing something one way for a really, really long time, and they’ve made it this far. So, convincing them that there’s something better, you can use a software to automate that. You can use a software to track that. Same sort of thing. You can sign up for free business coaching with Breakthrough … Not free. You can sign up for business coaching with Breakthrough Academy and take your business to the next level. What are some warning signs that, I don’t know, would indicate to you or to a business or to an owner of a construction company that they need some additional coaching?

Paul Atherton:

For sure. Well, the obvious ones are company owners working 12, 14 hours a day, and there’s just a lot of chaos and a lot of fires that are coming up, and they’re just like, “My business is controlling me. I’m not controlling it.” So that’s a warning sign. Another warning sign is they’re just not making as much money as they thought. Their net profit will be anywhere from zero to 5%. Generally we’re like, “Okay, we can usually do something quickly to help you in those areas.” For the businesses that are already doing pretty good, usually those people, they just want to learn, and it’s quite easy to gap them to say, “Okay, well, you’re good in lots of areas, but here’s how we can get you better.” So that’s like taking a high school athlete and getting them to the state championships. Then you have people there at the state championships, and you’re like, “Okay, well, let’s build a plan to get you to the nationals,” right?

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh yeah, I love that. I think that’s something that we’ve seen time and time again on this podcast is people that don’t want to settle, right? Or they want something more, they understand that things can be easier or they can make life more enjoyable for their employees, or build better for their customers, or just make work more enjoyable for themselves. So, I think that analogy of there’s always another step that you can take to break through, right? I love that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

I love the naming convention there. It’s something that you should take. So, if you’re thinking about what sets, to your analogy, the high school state champ to the college athlete, what are some things that you’ve seen that sets businesses apart where you may be like, “All right, you are level four,” or, “You are ready to go to the next one.” What kind of separates good from great?

Paul Atherton:

Well, the absolute best companies, they’ll pursue excellence. Like they have a growth mindset. They’ll pursue excellence in five core areas, and that’s in human resources and how they attract, recruit, onboard, train staff. They’ll pursue excellence in financial controls, leadership, project management, which is my favorite, and then marketing and sales. So, the thing that separates the great companies from the adequate ones are just that. They just pursue excellence in those five areas.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That makes a ton of sense.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

One thing I’ve experienced with working with my clients in my consulting time is they just don’t know what that looks like. A lot of them fall into construction. They are a family business. They may not have a network. Honestly, they feel isolated a lot, like they don’t have someone that they can talk to and lean on. So, one thing I always like to kind of explore with people like you, Paul, is what is the secret to success? If you had to identify those five core principles, what would be the one that has maybe the quickest impact or areas that maybe a builder, if I started working on this earnestly, it would lead to even more growth than what I’m seeing? For a listener out there who maybe feels like, “I feel like I’m doing the right things and I want to stand out, what is the prioritization I should take?” I know it’ll be a little different for anybody, but you said, for example, PM is your favorite. Why?

Paul Atherton:

Yeah. Quick answer, project management. For construction companies at least, that’s the one where you see accelerated gains quite quickly.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah. Good PM systems will just really increase the likelihood that staff are empowered, customers are satisfied, change order adjusted budgets and schedules are being met. What’ll happen there, and you can put systems into a company quite quickly to set up those bumpers to increase the likelihood that projects are being managed effectively. Then when that happens, right away, you see alignment with staff and more satisfied customers, higher referrals, which makes marketing and sales easier. You see better financial controls, and you see stronger overhead efficiency, which is what allows the good construction companies to just be absolutely great, like to hit the 15-20% net profit. Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s awesome. Sorry, go ahead.

Paul Atherton:

No, I was just going to say there’s not as much … Project management systems are very black and white. It’s like put the system in. If you’re doing it, you’re doing well. If you’re not doing it, then you need to get there …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Why aren’t you? Yeah.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, that’s something I’m sure Zach can relate to or anybody in our customer success department that’s worked with our clients before is we’re trying to give them this offer where they can do this stuff for them, if there’s an easier way, and sometimes it could seem like leading a horse to water, but those companies don’t want to take the next step. It’s really, like you mentioned, pretty black or white. Either you’re doing it or you’re not.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, totally. Yeah, software is a great way to really ensure that project management processes are being followed and executed well.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, and I think it’s a little bit underrated the value that having a system out of the box with those tools can be. I was just talking to some people yesterday. The tool has it. It’s the people using it that leverage the effectiveness of it. So, you have to learn what the tool can do, and then you have to actually say on top of it. I want to get your perspective on the art of project management as a whole. It’s kind of a loaded term in the industry. What is project management? You kind of laid out your principles. What do you see from project managers, like a good project manager? What are the qualities that you’re looking for?

Paul Atherton:

Well, qualities like personality traits you mean?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Yeah. Like-

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, yeah. Well, you need someone who is okay sitting down and working with software. I’ve seen great carpenters out there, great leads, great form and great site supers, but generally, you can tell they don’t like … It’s not that they don’t have the aptitude, but they don’t like sitting in front of a laptop. Project management probably isn’t something that they should really be pursuing. So, you definitely need somebody that is okay with technology. That’s a really big one, someone that is okay doing a lot of admin work, because great project managers are typically not in their trucks driving around from site to site. They’re in the office managing the project in front of a computer.

In construction specifically, project managers should not be perfectionists. I could usually get a lot of pushback from people when I say that, but yeah, the best project managers I’ve seen, they are just amazing at allocating resources and energy and time very efficiently according to what the project needs. So, they don’t just get caught in the weeds on these small little things when they have a huge fire blazing. They’re just good at just managing things within the context of resources and time.

Then another thing that project managers must have is they have to have the ability to come across to other people as competent and capable because if a project manager loses their cool, the whole project can very easily go off track. Then project managers generally have to be pretty nice, calm people, like not big egos.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m out. I wouldn’t make it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Dang it, Zach beat me to the joke. That was instantly what I was going to say.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I would just scratch her up.

Charley Burtwistle:

I didn’t want to interrupt our guest, but I was going to say the same thing.

Zach Wojtowicz:

If I had any prospects in this industry, it’s over.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, that’s generally, yeah. Well, I’m laid back, don’t mind doing lots of admin. They have to have a growth mindset, like always be thinking about better ways to do things. Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Super interesting to say they can’t be perfectionists. Sorry, Charley. Attention to detail though I’d imagine though is … They aren’t necessarily the same thing. It’s okay to not have it be perfect, but you can’t miss little details, right?

Paul Atherton:

Well, see, perfection is a loaded term. Some guys, you have to have some sort of … Any respectable construction company has a QC program. The project manager manages the job within the boundaries of whatever that QC program, whatever is stated in that QC program, okay?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Paul Atherton:

That’s it. So, I don’t know how else to say it. If a project manager is doing that thing, then the job is doing well.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Paul Atherton:

Where perfectionist project managers get bogged down is just … What’s a good one? They’ll spend too long filling out administrative tracking systems. For a product status report for a customer, a good project manager can fill one out in 20, 30 minutes, but I’ve seen some of them are like, “This is taking me four hours. Why?” It’s like, God, let’s get going here. Right?

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I think differentiating the two kind of differences between perfectionists and detail-oriented is really important. It’s almost like picking your battles, right? Where do you need to be perfectionist at, and where can you understand that good enough is enough to get you to hit your goals and be above where you want to be? There’s differences in places where you need to focus. I’m curious, you obviously work with a ton of clients. You said Breakthrough as a whole has over 500. Are there any kind of specific customer stories that come to your mind of someone that you worked with that was really, really struggling, and you kind of helped them take them to the next level and get them back on track, and any kind of specific success stories you’d want to share?

Paul Atherton:

Yeah. We have lots of examples of people that come in, and they’re doing  0-4% net profit, and we inject project management principles into their organization and quite quickly see their overhead efficiency increase, and that affects their marketing and sales, and they’re able to hammer through 20% more revenue with the same amount of overhead. As a result, their net profit goes from four or 5% up to 10%. That happens quite frequently.

Yeah, I’ll give you a specific example though. There is one guy I met about two years ago, and he’s one of those companies that was already doing okay though. They’re already pretty good. They’re about 9% net on 8 to 10 million revenue, somewhere in there. Then he kind of said, “Okay, I really want to give myself freedom in this organization. I really want to empower the right people in this organization. I just want to crush it.” So, within a year and a half, we got that company up to 14 million at 18% net, which is almost five times the national average.

Charley Burtwistle:

Decent.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Not bad. That was pretty good.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, it was really good. Then another too that … Yeah, another thing that he did too is if you ask him, “Hey, what CRM are you using and how well are you using it?” He’ll say, “Buildertrend.” Then he says, “And if I’m not using 100% of the entire CRM, I’m using 99.99% of it.” So, that was one of the things we did is we made sure he was managing projects within the context of what your system was kind of enforcing. So, that really helped, and he has crazy overhead efficiency. He spends like 80,000 a month on a $14 million company. It’s nuts.

Charley Burtwistle:

Sheesh. Well, maybe when we get done recording here, you’re going to have to give him the name, give us the name, and we’ll reach out and get him on the podcast. It sounds like an awesome success story.

Paul Atherton:

Oh, he’s a fantastic guy. He’s a superior individual. Great speaker, too. Yeah. So, yeah, specific things that we did though, yeah, obviously got him on Buildertrend. The other CRM wasn’t really working out. Like I said, I’m a Buildertrend fan. He deployed … So, right away, do you want me to keep going on the things we did with him?

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, this is great.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, for sure. So, we set up a communication plan with his company to control communication in all meetings. So, every meeting had a rhythm and a cadence to it. This was production meetings, on-site meetings, individual meetings with project managers, individual meetings with site superintendents, project status update meetings with clients. Everything had a very clear agenda. In every meeting, all those meetings that I mentioned, they happened at a very regular time. So, it wasn’t happening just when the customer got upset and needed to meet everybody on site. It was like, “On this day at this time, we’re having this meeting,” right? Or if an inspection was happening, it was planned well in advance.

We set up plans. We set expectations up with this customer early in the lifecycle of the project. That’s very empowering, because if you set expectations with a customer on exactly what’s going to take place in the project, with respect to things that are going to cause the budget and the schedule to change or what their emotional, I guess, roller coaster ride is going to look like from the start of the project to the end, it’s much easier when issues come up later, and the job can be like, “We talked about this.” “Oh yeah, right. Okay. Yeah. You said this would happen, and now it’s happening. Thank you.”

Another thing that I love is we set up a results-based bonus system with his leadership team. So, his people, because their company’s doing so well, is people are already being paid kind of at the top of their industry, or sorry, what other people would be paid in our city. But another thing that we did is we gave them bonuses based on achieving very tangible results in the company. So, that just really motivated individuals, kind of take things to the next level and work on just continuous improvement. We instilled a points-based bonus system with all field staff. So, all those very tangible things that tend to annoy production managers, like people being late, people not showing up to work and not calling on quality issues, not cleaning up the site at the end of the day, things like that. So, we assign points to those people. We calculate what those points are, and they would get bonuses based on those points, and it really gamified people’s roles.

We found with especially the younger staff that are under the age of 40, they really like that. Then yeah, like I said, there’s the other areas, like marketing and sales and HR and financial controls. We just really polished out all the things that we were doing in those areas. When you add up all those little things that resulted in the high net profit, high revenue, high overhead efficiency, organization.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s incredible. It’s amazing how everybody’s always looking for the answer, but there’s a lot of little tweaks, setting regular meetings, holding employees accountable, using positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement, which is the typical employment standards can lead to insane results. So, that’s amazing stuff. We hear that kind of stuff all the time when it comes to builder trend. Customers will be like, “How can I get my employees to use it? How do I get the culture to change? How do I…” That’s really what they’re asking, right? Is how do we embrace these changes?

I’ve always said the biggest struggle for builders in their processes is change management. A lot of times, I’m sure Paul, they come to you when they’re successful, right? And they know it. They’re like, “I’ve built a great company. I treat my employees well.” So there’s this minutia, these nuances though that really can be taught that you start to look at it, and I’m sure you hear this all the time, that companies are like, “Why didn’t I do this before?”

Paul Atherton:

Mm-hmm.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It seems so straightforward, but running a business is hard. It’s easy to overlook how these little things can make just insane magnitudes of changes.

Charley Burtwistle:

I think it’s like everyone also always thinks that they’re the only people that have ever dealt with this problem.

Paul Atherton:

Yes.

Charley Burtwistle:

We struggle with this at Builder … We do the same thing at Buildertrend is like, “Oh, how do we solve this issue? How do we build this thing?” We’re like, “Oh, this…” Then you do a Google search, and you find 20 Medium articles, 10 blogs, and 15 podcasts talking about specifically that. So, that’s why I, for our listeners out there that are listening to this, come to Buildertrend University. Go to Breakthrough Academy, network with other builders. I think a lot of the things that Paul is talking about are things that aren’t specific to one company that he worked at. The entire network there, they see these same sort of things a lot, and they have solutions to them. There are ways to fix it.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, there’s patterns of success that you just copy. Other people have figured this out. There’s no point in beating your head against the wall for three years. Go find others are doing and just copy it. This has already been solved before.

Zach Wojtowicz:

This is maybe an odd question. Do you think it’s not an ego thing, but just a pride thing? Like, “I’ve been doing it this way for so long, and I’m just going to keep …” What do you think has been the breakthrough moment for people to be like, “I need help.”? Maybe they don’t know where help is, or is it just like, “I think this is how it’s supposed to be?” It’s interesting to just kind of explore why more people who are probably experiencing very similar things don’t look for those options. Shout out to the guy behind Charley now. Wow. We’re just getting this live audience going.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, that’s a great question. For the people who are willing to change, it’s not an issue because they’re always trying to be better in every area. For some people, they aren’t willing to change. I don’t know how else to say it. Some people, they don’t want advice. They don’t care. They just want to just go through life, and they’re happy. Other people, it’s just the way they’re wired. They can’t not pursue excellence. So, I would say for the people that aren’t willing to change, there isn’t a whole lot that you can do. But for people that are willing to change and want to pursue excellence, there’s just lots of ways that they can, like I said, see accelerated gains quite rapidly.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, it’s just like you said earlier, right? They have to have the growth mindset, and that’s kind of the first step there.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, they have to be very curious and be willing to just accept that they’re not even going to be adequate at a certain task. They just have to accept that they’re going to fail for a while and roll up their sleeves and get to work, right?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. What’s the reaction to your clients? Maybe you have someone come in and you’re recommending some of the solutions that you just had. Is there any pushback? Do clients ever say, “Eh, I don’t think that’s going to work.”?

Paul Atherton:

Back in the early days of BTA, definitely. You would experience some pushback, but yeah, we’ve seen so much success, “Can you just do this this way? Trust me.” Then yeah, we always need to polish things, but generally we just say, like I said, there’s the five levels of growth that companies tend to go through. If you find a company at level two and they want to get to a level four, say, “Well, here’s the companies that are in level four, and here are all the things that they’re doing. If you do those things, you really increase the likelihood of also getting to level four.” Then usually when you put it that way, people don’t really argue. They go, “Oh yeah, you’re right. Let’s just copy what they’re doing.” So yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, that’s sort of …

Paul Atherton:

They’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, right?

Zach Wojtowicz:

For sure.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, unfortunately, Paul, I think we’re getting close to time here, and the same thing happened when we had Benji on is we could talk for hours with you guys.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The b-roll is going to be an hour.

Charley Burtwistle:

Exactly.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’ll just be like, we’ll just keep going off of it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, there were five different things that you mentioned throughout it. We kind of focused primarily on project management, but you mentioned sales and marketing and communication and managing client expectations. This is the second time Breakthrough’s been on, right?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Charley Burtwistle:

So, we’ll have to get those numbers up to four or five before we cover it all, or people could just go out to Breakthrough Academy and sign up, right? All without having to wait for the next podcast …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Then you don’t have to listen to Charley and I. You can just get right to the good stuff.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, that’s a win-win.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, what was that? Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, if they just go straight to you, Paul, you could just skip the whole podcast and not have to listen to Charley and I banter with each other.

Paul Atherton:

You guys call any time. I really like talking to you.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, that was Charley’s way of open invitation. We’re making an executive decision. If you ever want to come back, you always have a seat here. Same goes for anybody at Breakthrough.

Paul Atherton:

Happy to. Always love to talk.

Charley Burtwistle:

Sweet. Well, appreciate it, Paul.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We just had Paul Atherton on here talking about a lot of great stuff. Always amazing content. I love that we … We could have gone a lot of ways. I love that we focused on project management.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh my god.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Because it is such a core principle. As he laid out. Interested always for your perspective, Charley.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. The only thing I didn’t like about that podcast episode was the fact that we had to stop, because we were diving … I mentioned it. I don’t want to repeat myself, but there’s just so many different areas that we could have gone down, and I wasn’t just hyping him up on the end there. I would love to have Breakthrough Academy on more. Let’s do a marketing episode. Let’s do a sales episode. Let’s do a client communication episode. We could do a whole series. They’re fantastic. Huge friends of Buildertrend, and likewise. So, anytime we get someone from there on, always fun. If our listeners haven’t checked out the first one with Benji Carlson, they should definitely look that one up. He has a fantastic mustache. It’s something I’ll always remember.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Plugging the ‘stache on the outro. I love it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, and he talks about some great things.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, it’s not about the content.

Charley Burtwistle:

What do you think, Zach?

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s about the style, let’s be honest.

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Substance, that doesn’t matter. It’s all about flash. Well …

Charley Burtwistle:

Did he get into everything? In the intro, we were talking about the roundtable you were just on. We didn’t want to give away too much, but was that a lot of the same?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Actually, there was a lot of overlap. Yeah, it was really fresh, which was good. The webinar was live, so it’s kind of like now when we’re shooting this, it’s funny, because when it airs, it’ll have been a couple weeks ago. So, if you do look for it, if we put it in the show notes, check it out. A lot of great questions, things about how much should I be paying my project manager? What does a project manager really get into? That’s the kind of stuff that Breakthrough really dives deep on. There’s not one way to define these PMs or even any aspect of the business. It’s really about what works for you, but there’s a lot of strategies that are tried and true, which we got into.

This is going to really be … It always validates me when I talk to them because this is the stuff that we do teach at Buildertrend as well, and we’re on the right track with the type of consulting that we give to our clients. So, it’s just great to have two industry leaders really on the same page supporting each other. It’s pretty rare. So, it always just gives me warm and fuzzy feelings, as cheesy as that sounds. It’s pretty cool.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. As much as I tease about it, and you and your consulting friends, and not being able to relate on the podcast, yeah, you hit the nail right on the head.

Zach Wojtowicz:

As I always do.

Charley Burtwistle:

As you always do. It validates a lot of assumptions of like, “Okay, the things that we’re struggling with are the things that we’re trying to teach, are things that exist in the industry and things that should be being taught that way.” So, yeah, fantastic guest, and look forward to more and hearing from them. I’m sure we’ll have a link to Breakthrough Academy in the shownotes. We’ll have a link to Zach’s little roundtable that I wasn’t invited to in the shownotes. So, if there’s ever a time, I’ll say it one more time, to check out the shownotes, this would be the one.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Can I start bringing you just like I get invited, but then I’m like, “Oh, Charley …”

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

… you’re just with me? Yeah, okay.

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’ll make it happen. Really the last most important thing I got to ask behind you, of the four men on Mount Rushmore, who’s your favorite?

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, honest Abe for sure.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Not a bad thing.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I lived in DC for a summer, and I went through a real big Abraham Lincoln phase in my life.

Zach Wojtowicz:

What does that mean?

Charley Burtwistle:

We can get into that later.

Zach Wojtowicz:

A Lincoln phase? Oh, that’s a whole podcast episode in and of itself.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, so people that don’t know, Zach used to be a history teacher.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Some say it never left me.

Charley Burtwistle:

Do you have any fun Abraham Lincoln facts for the fans before we sign off?

Zach Wojtowicz:

This is a little morbid, but you should look up the fact that his body got stolen after he was laid to rest, and they eventually had to put him in a more permanent grave, which is now in under several feet of concrete. So, it’s a wild story.

Charley Burtwistle:

I think the fact of all the facts that pop up about Abraham Lincoln, the fact that that’s the one that comes to the top of your mind says a ton about you, Zach. I think it’s a perfect way to sign off for “The Building Code.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

You never know what you’re going to get here on “The Building Code.”

Charley Burtwistle:

You never know, but regardless, make sure you like, comment, subscribe, join The Building Code Crew on Facebook, and make sure to tune in to our next episode. I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

We’ll see you next time.