The Tim Faller Show

Today on the Tim Faller Show, Chris Stebnitz joins the show to discuss building a culture in a remodeling company and the impact it has on the client experience. Chris talks about how building trust with your employees can enhance the company culture. While building a culture is important, there are also ways you can destroy your company culture including gossip or being a demanding leader. Chris says if the business owner is the only way the company succeeds, you will never build a culture.

Chris Stebnitz is the owner of Stebnitz Builders located in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. Chris is a Third-generation owner of Stebnitz Builders. He started as cheap labor for the family when he was in his teens. Chris then moved into sales in his 20s, marketing shortly thereafter and then focusing on sales management before purchasing the company in 2008 from his father and uncles.

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Candice Rania and Morgan Thomas rejoin the Tim Faller Show for a follow-up from their last episode, Design and Production: Can we really get along? In this episode, Candice Rania and Morgan Thomas join the show to discuss what happens once the job is started. They discuss challenges at the job site, whether it is unforeseen circumstances or supply chain delays. Candice and Morgan discuss how they resolve these challenges with the communication between the design and the production teams during the job.

Morgan Thomas started at Leff Design Build in Sonoma County, California 5 years ago as a project manager and was then promoted to her current role as the production department manager. She is excited and proud of her team’s input to the project’s budget, which she thinks has created an improved sense of ownership among her coworkers.  Candice Rania is the pre-production manager at Leff Design Build and works closely with Morgan.

Tim, Steve, Morgan, and Candice talk more about:

On this episode of The Tim Faller Show, Mitch Gray joins the show for the second week to talk about culture and how you can improve your company’s culture. Mitch says that many employers don’t know how to vocalize culture, and employees don’t know how to connect with it.  He defines a good culture as how we live, move, and exist within a family or company. When a company creates a good culture, the energy and synergy are palpable, thus creating a better workplace where employees are held accountable.

Mitch Gray is the owner of Mitch Gray Media in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mitch started the media company in 2015, and over the past 20 years, he has worked with and coached over 10,000 leaders and clients worldwide.

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Mitch Gray joins the show to discuss hiring and keeping great people.  He talks about the importance of understanding interpersonal relationships and getting intentional about finding people with passion, as passion feels energy.  Understanding that everyone wants to feel valued, empowered, and a part of something larger than themselves, no matter what level of employee.  This is core to the successful hiring and retention of great employees.

Mitch Gray is the founder of Mitch Gray Media, author of HOW TO HIRE AND KEEP GREAT PEOPLE, and host of The Mitch Gray Show. After spending over two decades leading teams as a business owner, manager, pastor, non-profit founder, and community organizer, Mitch developed a strong passion for leaders and employees. Mitch’s mission is to empower teams to perform and individuals to pursue their passion.

Mitch, Tim, and Steve discuss

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Today on the Tim Faller Show, Christine Miles joins the show to discuss how better listening skills lead to better communication. Christine explains why listening is so complicated and suggests some easy ways to listen better. She also highlights the importance of communication in creating trust between co-workers.

Christine is an author, professional keynote speaker, consultant, executive coach, thought leader, and entrepreneur. She is the Founder and CEO of EQuipt, a training and consulting company that helps leadership teams grow sales, develop people, and create cultures of understanding. She developed The Listening Path, a transformational workshop on listening to understand, which has been taught at various Fortune 100 corporations, universities, law firms, and privately-held companies. She is the author of What Is It Costing You Not to Listen? which will encourage you to examine how you are listening. You’ll discover that not only are many of the problems in your life due to not listening effectively, but listening helps to solve most problems.

Tim, Steve, and Christine talk more about:

Today on the Tim Faller Show, Tim and Steve go solo to discuss production system shifts and the changing world of the lead carpenter and project manager. Tim talks about the most significant challenge facing the remodeling industry: increasing sales with the lack of skilled labor. The challenge comes from controlling growth with a limited number of people to handle that growth.  This is causing many companies to reevaluate their project management systems.

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On this episode of The Tim Faller Show, Candice Rania and Morgan Thomas join the show to answer the question: Can design and production get along? While the production and design teams have the same overall goal of completing a project that will delight their clients, they do it differently. Morgan and Candice talk about their struggles with time constraints, delays, and change orders and how they developed new processes that involve team reviews with proposed estimates to ensure each department has the proper budgets and limit unexpected client costs.

Morgan Thomas started at Leff Design Build in Sonoma County, California 5 years ago as a project manager and was then promoted to her current role as the production department manager. She is excited and proud of her team’s input to the project’s budget, which she thinks has created an improved sense of ownership among her coworkers.  Candice Rania is the pre-production manager at Leff design-build and works closely with Morgan.  

Tim, Steve, Morgan, and Candice talk more about

Jordan Smith joined the show to discuss partnering with another remodeling company to complete a job two hours outside his service area.  He discusses the benefits, risks, and challenges associated with the job type and the steps he took to mitigate problems.

Jordan and his wife Veronica started the Smith House Company four years ago to create beautiful and functional spaces that harmonize with their natural surroundings.  

Join Jordan, Tim, and Steve as they discuss:

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Tim and Steve welcome Doug Horgan to the show to discuss the role of a lead carpenter. Doug talks about his responsibilities, including research, being an internal “help desk,” managing people internally and externally.  He also manages scheduling and explains the meaning behind the saying “make ready planning” and why it’s essential for a lead carpenter.

Doug Horgan is Vice President–Best Practices at BOWA, the Washington DC area’s premier custom and remodeling builder. In this training, quality, and troubleshooting role, Doug’s goal is reducing construction defects through sharing knowledge. Doug’s thirty years of tools-on carpentry, warranty troubleshooting, and instruction experience, are the foundations for visually rich presentations on how to build properly and avoid construction problems.

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Jesse DeBenedictis joins the Tim Faller show to talk about emotional intelligence. Jesse tells us his definition of emotional intelligence and how he, as a leader, uses it to better his business. He discusses how being self-aware is the most critical piece of emotional intelligence. He also talks about how having good emotional intelligence can help your clients.

Jesse DeBenedictis is the proud owner of Works by Jesse DeBenedictis located in Beverly Massachusetts. He is focused on building long-term relationships with clients and vendors, some of whom he has worked with since the company was founded in 2001. Jesse continues to drive the company to deliver a better higher quality service to their customers.

Tim, Steve, and Jesse talk more about: