We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lori Bryant. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lori below.
Lori, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?
To just be successful, I believe you need to offer something of value to the world consistently. To take that success to the next level and stand out, you need to believe in what you are doing and create a company culture that drives an outstanding customer experience.
For our construction company, HTZ Construction, we are constantly learning and improving our processes as we strive to give our clients the best experience possible. We have clearly defined our mission – to be a blessing to others – and our entire team knows, exemplifies, and uses our core values as the filter through which decisions are made. Our core values of Here to Serve, Do the Right Thing with Urgency, Continuous Growth, Family First and Be Positive aren’t just words on the wall, but values in our hearts that drive our actions. Knowing who you are and creating a strong company culture around that will set you apart from your competition and help drive results that create raving fans.
We haven’t always had defined values, and learned the hard way how important they are not just to have, but to hire and fire based on them. A couple of years ago, our business exploded with growth. We felt like we were drowning in work, so we hired a few new employees to help us handle the increased workload. In hiring we focused on skill sets and experience. We found people that looked great on paper, and they seemed nice enough. However with time, frustrations arose from our other team members, our vendors and trade partners, and our customers and they all stemmed from our new hires.
During this time, I read Traction, a book that I recommend for all small business owners. We went through the exercise of defining our core values and who we are as a company. Then we evaluated all of our employees based on our core values. What we discovered was that these employees that were a source of frustration exemplified some of our core values, but not all. Because all of our core values collectively are important to who we are and they type of service we strive to deliver, having someone be a core value fit on 3 or 4 out of 5 core values was not enough. We learned to be slow to hire and quick to fire, and we learned to evaluate on core value and culture fit first, then to consider skill sets and experience. It doesn’t matter if someone has all of the skills in the world, if they do not conduct themselves in alignment with who you are as a company, you cannot be successful.
While letting an employee go is one of the hardest things to do in business, you have a duty to yourself, the company, your team, and your clients to take action as soon as you realize you need to do so. We let go of our employees that were only partial culture and value fits, and it was a huge step forward for our company. It changed the feel of the workplace, our other team members thanked us, and we were back on track for consistently delivering an outstanding client experience.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My husband, Adam, and I founded HTZ Construction in 2018. He had worked construction back before the crash of 2008, then focused on a corporate career after that. He had always loved construction, and was fed up with how unfulfilling his corporate career left him feeling. Around that time, friends of ours were going through a nightmare with their new home build. The builder went out of business, was arrested and went to prison for fraud after he had moved them into their new home before it was finished and had an occupancy permit. They struggled to find someone to finish the work and had to deal with subcontractors filing liens on their home, because even though they had paid the builder, he never paid them. Our hearts went out to them and it showed us the need for contractors with integrity.
From the beginning, we knew that we wanted to be a different kind of company. We wanted to not only do quality work, but we wanted to make the renovation process as stress free as possible. This eventually led to us becoming a design/build company, meaning that we take the client through a two phase design process then we do the construction to bring that design to life. We made this change because we want to keep the client in charge of their budget. We found that if you work off allowances, and if you don’t do proper exploratory work on a home before signing a construction contract, then the total cost of a project can increase and get out of hand before all is said and done. Our process now allows us to make all of the design selections, have a trade day where we can open up walls or soffits if they are being removed, meet with our trades to discover unexpected costs before construction begins, and then go back to the client with those final costs. It allows us to change the project to suit their budget while we still can vs. discovering these things after a project begins when it’s too late to revise the scope of work or selections. Our entire process and even how we expect our employees to communicate with our clients is with a heart to serve, take care of the client well and to bless them.
On top of the client experience, we also wanted to be a different type of company in terms of employee satisfaction and community involvement. We hear from people all the time how much they hate their jobs, which is such a shame considering how much of our lives are spent in work! We think that everyone has the right to enjoy their work and have crafted all of our policies and processes with that in mind. We want to be the type of place where our employees love working there and where they want to stay for the rest of their working life. We believe that doing a great job for your clients and creating a workplace that employees love enables you to give and do good work in your communities, and this year are proud to have a giving calendar in place. We’ve chosen a charity, cause, or community organization to support each month and we’re also letting one employee per month select a charity of their choice to receive a check. While we believe that businesses have an obligation to do go in their communities, we also recognize that it helps with our employees loving to work here and helps our clients to feel even better about their choice to choose us over our competition. Everyone wins when you stive to do good.
As far as services we provide that people should know about – we offer full design services including selections, mood boards, and drawings and full construction services to bring the design to life. Handling all of this together in one company helps to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks or is lost in communication. While I love kitchen projects the most because kitchens are the heart of the home, we also do bathrooms, basements, additions, outdoor spaces and new home builds. These are all rewarding for both us and the client as they can all change how you function and live in your home.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
What I recommend to my children and any new entrepreneur is that you start your business on the side. Keep working your main job, slowly decreasing in hours there as your new business takes off. Don’t quit your old job until your new business is bringing in just as much if not more income. While growth may be slower than if you dive in full time to start, it takes a lot of financial pressure off of you and is less stressful. Expect it to take 5 years to really see things become profitable.
We did not do this with our construction company… we dove all in. A year in, we sold our home and we thought we were going to use the funds from the sale of our house to build a new home, but instead all of those funds went into our business and we lived in campers for a couple of years. This left us with no choice but to learn and grow and figure out how to make our business successful, which is good, but it was not an easy path to take.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
I am a huge fan of Dave Ramsey’s Entreleadership podcast and book. They created a booklist with 100 books on it and I’m working my way through them all. Traction is a must read for a small business owner to learn about defining their company, setting yourself up for success, and measuring your results. I love the work of Patrick Lencioni. His books are wonderful and we used his online Working Genius assessment to understand the strengths and weaknesses of our team members in how we each accomplish work. It helped us to shift and we use the 6 types of working genius that he outlines to define new roles in our company and look for the people who will be successful in that role.
I also recommend finding some sort of an accountability and/or mastermind group. We are a part of an organization called Remodeler’s Advantage which provides us with resources and pairs us with owners of companies in non-competing markets that have similar companies to ours. Group members share their struggles, best tips and advice, and even resources… from marketing, processes, hiring, etc., we share documents we’ve created, things that we’re trying and learning and more. We open our books and our companies to each other, take sometimes hard to hear feedback, set timebound commitments that will drive our businesses forward and hold each other accountable to complete those. While this group is specific to our industry, there are other groups out there for different industries… and if you can’t find one, look for other people that have similar drive and goals and put together a group of your own. It helps to ensure you are not just working IN the business, but working ON the business too.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://htzconstruction.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/htzconstruction/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/htzconstructionohio
Image Credits
Julia Mulheren Photography