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As a leader it can be hard to relate to your team at times. Whether it be because of interests, age gaps, maturity levels, or personality, it is something we need to learn to overcome. A team is only as good as their leader and if the leader is unable to find a way to connect, motivate, encourage, and build up their team, there isn’t going to much of a team for very long.

Alison Mullins is the author of “The Art of Selling: We Make Order Makers, Not Order Takers” & the founder of Rep Methods Sales Training. With over 20 years of experience in sales, merchandising, marketing, and content creation, she has built her business on the principles of selling. Alison has extensive knowledge and experience in stone, textiles, fashion, and luxury wholesale manufacturing. Pulling from the book Primal Leadership, Alison has been able to apply limbic resonance to her training methods to allow leaders to have a higher emotional IQ and better connect with their teams.

Listen in to this weeks episode of the Floor Academy podcast as we discuss what limbic resonance is, how to apply it to yourself, and what it can do for you, your company and your team.

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Do you have competition locally or do you have trusted partners? What about nationally? Internationally? Are you utilizing your relationship building skills to get to know your product reps? Distributor employees? How are you growing your network to better empower your business?

Join Daniel and Jose Gonzalez of Preferred Flooring and Paul Stuart of Go Careera and myself as The Huddle and Floor Academy collide in this team up episode. We discuss the power of networking, how it has built our businesses and helped our lives, as well as, where we see the industry headed because of it.

You won't want to miss this week's episode of the Floor Academy Podcast. Listen Now!

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With over 3 billion dollars of failures annually in the flooring industry alone, the flooring tile and stone industry could stand a face lift. From the image of contractors and the level of respect they get, to the technical skills they display, and how their companies are run. The bar is easily stepped over these days by just showing up on time and doing what you say you will do, when you say you will do it. This doesn’t even yet include doing it right, sadly. Not a good look or great summary. We have to do better.

Paul Stuart is a cofounder of Go Carrera and owner of Stuart and Associates Commercial Flooring. With a vast experience from hand skills to business skills, Paul has been able to turn Stuart and Associates into a premier commercial contractor in the midwest. In order to continue competing at a top level and to help other businesses in the industry he created Go Carrera to assist in companies finding quality help that has the skills to pay the bills without you coming out of pocket for a failure.

Listen in as we discuss the state of the industry from our vantage points and where we think the needle can really get moved for companies looking to stand out and make a name for themselves.

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Taking yourself to the next level on social media is no easy task. There are any number of ways to grow your audience from paying for followers to interacting with those around you, or even just putting your posts up and letting it grow organically. The views really come when people that want to see your content interact with it more often.

Shawna Bouchard is a Sr. Marketing Specialist for GoBoard at JohnsManville, we will be discussing the challenge growing your audience and keeping them engaged and sticking to your niche of clientele.

Listen in to this week's episode of the Floor Academy podcast to grow your mind and your business.

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I can’t find reliable help. How do I write a job description to attract people? How are you all finding employees? Everyone keeps quitting on me. What kind of SOPs do you all have in place? These questions and statements are some that I consistently see week after week in online flooring groups. One of the biggest issues small companies face are exactly these. Attracting and retaining good team members is a constant struggle even for the largest businesses, but there are ways to make it easier.

Sam Bruce is the current President of Visalia Ceramic tile and a 3rd generation partner. Started by his grandma and grandpa Martino in 1985, the company has grown to employee over 30 certified tile installers, be a 5 star contractor under the NTCA, and be locally and nationally recognized for their brand and projects. A key part to their success and being able to have so many CTI’s is that there is not only a clear hiring process but also a consistent training program that all tile finisher employees must complete. It wasn’t built overnight and it didn’t come easy but Visalia Ceramic tile also knew they did not need to reinvent the wheel.

Listen in to this week’s episode of the Floor Academy podcast as Sam and I discuss how they recruit new team members, successfully train them for everyone’s long term success, and then retain them through clear advancement goals.

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It's one of the largest hurdles in small business. How do you build past yourself? How do you get that second crew up and running and trust them when you can't be there? Where do you find them? What needs to be in place to hold them accountable?

Kara Allen is part owner of Spiegel's Flooring in Sandy Lake, PA since 2020, alongside her husband, Jason, who is the lead installer.  While Kara runs the showroom, is the designer and project manager, Jason is out doing the consults and measurements and doing the installations. They have reached capacity of what the two of them can handle and need to find a way to expand the business to continue to grow it beyond what they are capable of.

Listen in as Kara and I discuss how they can ready their business for more growth. How they can look to hire qualified individuals that will fit their values, what types of systems and paperwork they need in place to manage additional crews and figuring out the best way to pay the crews. Should they be subcontractors or employees?

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The internet will have you believe that if you hustle hard enough that you can accomplish anything. You can build a great business, you can have multiple successful side hustles, and plenty of time for your family as well. This attitude is super toxic and leads to a mindset that stops you from actually growing. If you work 16 hours a day or even 20 hours a day, then you can get 80 to 100 hours in a five day week. I'll even give you 7 days because you are a hustler, so that gets you 112 to 140 hours a week. If I can work my 10 hours 5 days a week and hire 4 people to each work 8 hours a day 5 days a week, then I am sitting at 50 hours for myself and 150 hours for the employees for a total of 200 hours per week. I may have made slightly less because I am paying out salaries but I would even dispute that. I've leveraged the time I have available to do higher per dollar transactions and multiplied my time by delegating.

Cody Cox is stepping up at Cox Tile which was founded by his father. After going to college to be a physical therapist he rethought what he wanted to do before grad school and jumped into the family business. This has led to him learning all of the tasks in the business and spending time in each department so that he earned the respect of everyone around him and wasn't just another SOB (Son Of A Boss). He's made a lot of changes within in the company and how it gets handled but he has also had to trust the team that was in place to execute those changes. It was always easy to do and even his own father was hesitant.

Listen in to this week's episode of the Floor Academy Podcast to learn why Cody will not out work you but that he will out delegate you to get where he wants to go.

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Going from owner operator to employer is a tough transition. It’s not easy to learn how to lead a team or to be able to communicate well with them. Most of us came from a system where we were not trained very well by our “leaders” and thus did not get the experience to manage a team properly. This leads to micromanagement and trust issues when you delegate out tasks. Even worse it leads us to believe that it’s not worth it to hire anyone and that we are better off just remaining as a one man show or possibly just having a helper that we never plan to fully train. There is a better way though and you can escape the grind of having to be a part of your business everyday.

Dennis DiCarlo is the owner of Kronus Software and Carpet To Go Flooring. Having started a flooring retail store, it wasn’t long before Dennis realized he couldn’t be in all places at the same time or even be capable of handling the workflow that he was developing. Bringing on staff was inevitable, however it didn’t go how he planned at first and was left doubling back constantly to button up tasks or to make sure it was done right the first time. This was not letting him or his team meet their full potential. Dennis learned that he needed to become a better leader and started investing in himself as well as technology to get him where he wanted go.

This week on Floor Academy Podcast Dennis and I will discuss what the standard shortcomings are when you are new to management, some simple changes you can make to how you delegate out tasks and communicate, and lastly how technology can provide you a system of accountability.

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A common excuse to not having a bookkeeper for a business is that there is worry about their access to your accounts. There is for sure a legitimate concern here but they can be mitigated by how you set the employee or outside contractor up. What are the ways you can control access? How do you need to monitor what they are doing? What do you need to understand about bookkeeping to hold them accountable?

Erin Albrecht of J&R Tile returns to the show to discuss how she had over 100k embezzled from her company. What happened? How did they get away with it? The employee was vetted and trained by her expert accountant mother. Erin’s and many others worst fear came true when it never should have happened.

Listen in to this week’s episode of the Floor Academy Podcast as we discuss what happened, how to prevent it, and why you can’t let a setback keep you trapped in a perpetual state of worry.

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401K’s. Medical benefits. Paid time off. Sometimes the corporate world seems better than this self employed life. All of these things are accessible as small business owners though. You can do an IRA, get benefits and build in paid time off to your rates. There are other things we can do as well to build generational wealth and set ourselves for retirement. Whether it be growing our business to have systems to run without us, investing in properties, or fining other creative ways to use your profits, there are paths to help you live more comfortably.

Anthony Oliver of Oliver’s Tile in Woodland, CA has been at it since he graduated high school and his uncle’s brought him on board in ’99. Now he has brought his son in to his company to build something special that is not only for him but for his son’s future as well. Beyond building a tile company Anthony has used the money he has made in the trade to work in other areas of his live as well, mostly with property investments.

Join Anthony and I on this week’s episode of the Floor Academy Podcast as we discuss how you can use our lucrative trade to not only set yourself up but generations to come in your family.

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