Winning the Recruiting Game with Matt DiBara

Hey, everybody, it is your host here with Contractor Radio, Jim Johnson, the head coach, founder of Contractor Coach Pro, where we help contractors get control of their business so they can grow their business and find personal and financial freedom. And one of the biggest things we struggle with as contractors is finding great talent to work for us. That not just look at it as a job, but maybe look at it as a career. And we have a special guest today. I am pumped about this because I've never met Matt before. We've kind of gone back and forth about being on the show and so we had a little quick, brief conversation before this guy started. He's, he wants to talk about something I'm super passionate about, but he also has something super cool. We're going to come right back with that in just one second after a word from our sponsor, Atlas Shingles.

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So if you're a roofer out there and you're not using Atlas, what is wrong with you? Well, it's a great company. Helps you separate yourself from the competition. You go hook up with your local manufacturer rep and find out about the Atlas Pro program today. I am, I'm super excited. It's not often I get to talk to somebody kind of in the same space. I think some of them are like a little bit nervous of that kind of stuff. And I encourage, I think we should do this. I think consultants should work together. We're all here to help everybody kind of raise the bar and be better at what we do. And we have one of those guys on today. His name is Matt DeBarra. He is the CEO of the Contractor Consultants and Debara Masonry, a four generation masonry company in Burbank, California and founder of Undercover Contractor, which I'm super excited to talk about. This is going to be a lot of fun. Hey, Matt, welcome to the show today. Good to have you on Board, man.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, this is going to be fun. It was like, we only got to talk for a few minutes. We're on some time limitations here, but I think we have quite a bit to talk about. But before we do that, uh, could you just bring us up to speed? Like, fourth generation. That's. That's a long ways back there. I'd be like, great, great grandfather type deal. Is that. Is that correct?

Yeah. So my. Both. My great grandfather. So my grandmother's father, grandfather's father came to America from Italy. They bought land and they built their homes literally from the ground up. And that was the. The humble roots to our. To our contracting journey.

That's super cool. Like, and so over the years, has it kind of ebbed and flowed? Because I see this when it's generational like that, like one generation, I'll take it and make it amazing out of it, then it kind of like, dwindled down a little bit. The next generation. So has it been like that kind of experience for you guys?

Yeah, you know, the big. The biggest thing with us, we never set out to be contractors. So my. My great grandfathers were artists. You know, they were really passionate about what they did. And they joked, as a family joke, that when they started working for people who spoke English, they became contractors because they only spoke Italian. And so that was like when they. When they broke out of the neighborhood and they had clients who spoke English. And at the time, my grandmother would help translate and, you know, they would, like, write the agreements and. And stuff. But it was just. It was working for neighbors. It was. People saw them build their homes and then they were like, wow, you know, can you help with the roof? Can you help with this? Can you help with that? And masonry and concrete, we ended up. So they home builders, really, but we ended up landing on masonry and concrete because that was. My grandfather felt like that was the most artistic. He enjoyed it the most. And so that's kind of what spawned the rest of the lineage.

And so goes. I'm going to assume before technology, nobody else was doing the contractor consultant thing, but now with some technology and a little bit more openness, maybe in our. In our industry, where contractors are more willing to talk to each other than they were even, like 10 years ago, everybody, like, kept everything close to the vest, right? They wouldn't share anything, like, hey, I'm going to kick this knot out of you type of feel to it. Nowadays it seems a little bit more where we're able to network. And I think that was Kind of step one and then technology's made it where, hey, we can put stuff out there and people follow us. What led to the whole contractor consultants thing?

So that, that came out of. So the business grew, right? So family business grew. We do residential, commercial, government work. A lot of hard work there to get that where it was. But the contractor consultants really came out of me. I saw my dad struggle growing up and that was really hard for me, specifically around certain areas of business because we weren't, we didn't grow up as business people. I didn't have a business background. I didn't even know what it meant. You know, like I thought, you know, if you held a briefcase, you were a business person. Right. So that was my understanding of business. And I realized what separated, you know, contractors that did really well versus ones that didn't was understanding the business side of it. Sales, marketing and the structure. I mean, you're talking about. I sat with my dad when the only marketing decision we made was once a year was the yellow Pages. We meet him at a pizza shop and we'd sit down and they'd be like, Mr. Dabara, you going for that full page ad yet? He's like, not yet. Like, that was it. And so I was so fortunate to, you know, 20 years ago, I'm nine years old, you know, or 21 years ago now, but I'm nine years old, I'm working with my dad, I'm seeing all of this. And that was part of a generation of like, my grandfather was still involved and we had, you know, Mason, who was called an old timer. He was probably in his late 60s and I'm nine. Right. So I learned the old world construction directly from my great grandfathers. And then I was able to see the digital side of things come in. And that really spawned the roots of the contractor consultants was that psychology of, wow, if you know the right way to do something and have a proven formula, you can skip a generation.

Yeah. This is why coaches and consultants exist. What we found is that usually a contractor is good at one of two things. They're either really good at the work. And so they kind of operate off of the word of mouth type of thing. And that's how their business grows. And it can continue to grow, but it kind of gets capped a little bit. It doesn't grow real fast, you know, just a word of mouth type spreading. Then you have the other guy out there, the guy that's Mr. Sales Guy, he can sell ice to an Eskimo and he can obtain work, but Whenever it comes to actually executing and doing the work tends to fall down a little bit. And then on top of that, neither one of them really understand the business side of things when it comes to finance and hr. And like you said, marketing is a big one. Recruiting is another big one. Training your people. There's a whole business aspect behind all of this that we don't have to go to school for. I mean, we can go and get a business license and have a truck and a hammer and automatically we're a. We're a contractor. Now, California, that's where you're at, right?

Yeah.

A few more rules, I'm guessing, right? Is that, is that fair?

Oh, yeah, you nailed that one. Yeah.

Well, like Texas, there's no doubt about it. That's where we're based out of. In most of America, I would say probably 45 out of the 50 states go get a business license. You got a truck and a hammer. Figure out how to put a contract together, you're a contractor, which is crazy to me. Now, there are some states, just to be honest, like Minnesota, Florida, that do have some licensing and some others that have some minimal licensing. California is the strictest from what I've been able to see. Is that a fair assessment?

Yeah, yeah, I would, I would agree with that.

Like, guys have to like, work in the business for a while before they can actually go start a business. We have a. I have a roofing friend out there in San Diego. He had to actually put roofs on and do the work for four years before he could even take that next step. Like, he was like apprentice and then journeyman and that type of thing before he could actually even open a business, which I think is pretty, pretty wise. Make sure that the contractor actually knows how to do the work. Seems like simple to me, but most states don't really worry about that very much. Do you find that with the people that you work with, like, it's. That part of it is maybe a little bit more minimal than it should be?

Yeah, I mean, it was non negotiable for me growing up. I mean, I started nine years old picking up trash. I went to a vocational high school, so I was doing brick every other week. We did shop. So I'd have a normal week of school and then I'd have a vocational week. And so I was competing in bricklaying. I actually placed second in the country in a bricklaying competition when I was 18. So it was a non negotiable conversation for me. I had to learn the work and sell the work, but it made me better. But I think going through that journey truly makes you understand both sides of it, because that's what helped me grow in the field. I mean, I was running crews at 16 years old, but it was because I understood the frustrations, the pains. I've had my fingers split from too much mortar and lime. I knew what that was like to almost lose a batch of concrete, you know, when you're placing mud. And so I think. I think it's a very important. That was a great equalizer, in my opinion, you know, especially 10, 15 years ago, was the fact that you were even in the office side, yet you had more understanding of the field, and vice versa. Now things are much more segregated. And from what I can see, yeah.

I find the contractors that force their sales staff to go and work on the actual projects, those salespeople have a much deeper respect for what's actually going on out in the field. And that labor and those crews that do the hard work, I've got more respect for them than anybody in this business. It just. It is hard backbreaking work in a lot of way. And you doing masonry, I'm going to assume there's probably some cinder blocks involved. There's probably some bricks involved. There's probably, like, concrete and that type of stuff. Is that what all did you guys cover in masonry? Because that's a pretty wide gamut of things that can be done in masonry.

We did all sorts of stuff. I mean, we were doing residential work, commercial work, government work. So brick. You know, we're doing commercial stuff like Walgreens, CVS's, the fast food restaurants. We're doing residential work like driveways, walkways, patios, and then government historical restoration. I mean, my dad loved the industry. I mean, he was. Any, like, any creative project, if they could be more different, if on Monday you could be doing the furthest thing away from that the next day, that's what my dad wanted. He was, like, very mentally stimulated by the challenge of all the different materials. And so, yeah, we were pretty. We were very. Well, that was one of the bottlenecks in growing the business. When I really took over was we were so diversified that it was like you had to find people that knew how to do 17 things. I'm laughing because I was like, you know, I enjoyed it as well. But when it came time to really scale, it was like, okay, we have to kind of narrow the focus a.

Little bit, so give us a little bit of a journey here. So are you in charge now? You're a CEO, right? It's yours. And you started helping some other people out there in California and that had a name to it, right? Like, that's how you kind of got started. Is that fair? Like, why don't you catch me up on what the progression was to where you are today? Because there's a few different things there from the consulting and, like, informational side of things that I think is super interesting.

Well, there were two main breakthroughs for me. One was when I was young. I remember my dad would brag about the fact that a lot of his work came from word of mouth. And this was just at the time when websites were coming out and people were online. And I was like, we gotta get online. You know, this is the future. I believe this. And he's like, why do we need to do that? We have so much work, you know, from where to mo And I realized that being able to control your lead flow. So I became obsessed with marketing. So I'm 14, 15, 16, I'm a young kid and I'm obsessed with online. And I'm like, how do some companies? Because my. I love my dad, right? Fantastic guy, but he had that old school mentality. Nobody's ever going to work as hard as family. Nobody will care as much as you. Like, I was born into these things. And I would always scratch my head. I'm like, dad, XYZ company has 900 employees. Clearly there's a way to scale this thing. You know, he's like, well, employees might steal. I'm like, clearly there's a way to do it. Because when you look over the hill there, there's a few companies that have figured this out. And I realized, you know, their websites were branded different. They had the control of the market. So that was the first big trip in my journey was was studying that and figuring that out. And when I did, the business grew exponentially. And we prospered. You know, fantastic growth. But right around 2018, I hit what I thought was the pinnacle of family business success I was doing at the time. I was doing a veterans cemetery prevailing wage. We had 8,000 pieces of stone. I had a couple really big commercial projects, and I was doing three celebrity homes. People that I watched on tv, looked up to. I was doing like, custom, really nice work on their homes. And I felt like I was like, this is what my great grandfathers came on the boat for, like this moment. And I wasn't paying attention to a hiring issue we had in the company. And my team kept saying, hey, Matt, like, we're we're posting online, but we're not getting anybody. What do you mean? We always, whenever we post, we just bump it up a dollar. Like we know how to get people. And they kept saying that. And finally they brought me to room and they were like, hey, Matt, like so and so's late. And I was like, well, they're foreman. I know, but third time read the handbook. We gotta let them go. Right? Whatever the policy was. And they're like, well, let me show you what the cost of that's gonna be. So they pulled up a whiteboard and they were. And I had names. So they had names of all the clients with dollar values next to it of how much they were canceling, what the contract value was that they were canceling because we couldn't start. And then all the jobs that were cost overruns and it was nearly a million dollars. It was, you know, I probably blocked out the exact number. But I remember driving home thinking I would literally, you know, I might tank this family business. And so that really sparked the next step in my journey, which was I understood business. I learned how to, you know, the financial side of it, the sales, the marketing. But I wasn't, I hadn't adapted. It reminded me. I went home and three days later I found out I had kid on the way. My first daughter. Right. So that was really good feeling. But yeah, talk about stress.

Those are fun.

Oh, yeah. And I remember. And I was like, wow, I made the mistake my dad made. Which I was, I was, I was telling him, I'm like, digital marketing online. This is the next thing. And I wasn't paying attention to it in the hiring space. And so it bit me. And I'm the type of person when I get, when I get bit like that, I get bit once. And so I called the cpa. I said, how much cash can I spend that won't bankrupt the business? You know, I need you to understand what I had to do to work myself out of this issue. But there were leftover money and I just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. Coaches, mentors, books, flying, just. I hired, I had this true story. I had, at one point, I had a team of virtual staff members, virtual assistants. And I said, for every week we don't hire somebody, we're gonna onboard five more recruiters nationally. And they thought I was kidding. And we had 53 full time recruiters at one point, just scouring the. Like, I went on this journey to figure out hiring and that was kind of what really spawned where we're at now. With the contractor consultants and that side of the business.

Yeah, that's. It is the biggest struggle. You know, that's the number one thing people come to us for. You know, that's what they believe. Scaling is, is help me to hire and recruit and onboard great talent, and then I can scale my business. I've always got some questions before that, like, okay, what does your culture look like? Are your processes in place? Do you have a sales system? If you hired all these people, can you train them? What's the handbook look like for hr? Like, there's a lot of things we don't always think about prior to the recruiting. It's like the last one for us once we've got everything in place. Do you see it the same way?

100%. You got to optimize before you maximize. Simplest way to put it. So, you know, we want to look at. It was funny because we're building out. I had a. I had a methodology that was working. It worked for me. I ended up hiring 17 people, reorg the company and had a waiting list of people very quickly. It was like a light switch. So that was interesting. And then I helped other contractors do the same thing, and that's what spawned us putting it in the course. And then, of course, we partner with ZipRecruiter. Indeed. But, you know, I think that that was one of the biggest pieces, was looking at the company and, like, some active tips. Right. I used to hire. I laugh. I used to hire for unicorns. So I used to believe that you needed somebody, for example, like estimators. I used to believe, I'm like, if they can't estimate tile, brick, block, stone, concrete, structural work, foundations, forget it. You won't work here. I had to change that based on the marketplace. So, you know, we have this whole process that we built, which is what you're talking about, you know, auditing your culture. We have a thing called an honest employee audit. It's a technology that you can send out to get honest feedback. Auditing those processes that you mentioned, looking at culture, I mean, it works. When we finally figured it out, it's like baking a cake. And if you have one thing off, you can do every single thing right. But if you forget to spray the pan, you're done. And that's why so many contractors struggle, is because you have to have every single element in place and work in synchrony, like a beautiful orchestra.

Well, it sounds to me like you went, things are a bit of a mess right now. I'm going to go and, like, Find the resources that exist out there to help me, whether that be a mentor, a coach, a consultant. And from that research, you started to grab the pieces that worked for you in the areas that you were struggling, which marketing wasn't one of them. Did you apply any of your marketing, like savvy to the recruiting side of things?

Yeah, specifically on the. On the fine section. So we, when I went back and I was hiring people, I realized there was no one way to hire, right? So I was speaking in a panel at Roofcon and it was a hire your attention panel. And so there was one person that was very much tech, right? And so they're saying, look, the way to hire is, you know, there's online postings and keyword optimization and all these things. And then you had another guy. Really? Really. And these are both smart people, by the way. And the other guys were like, no, you got to shake hands, you got to meet people, you got to kiss babies. That's where in my head I'm like, you got to do all of them. I think we have 37 different ways to find people in the course. And so the marketing side really helped. One of the best strategies, and I'll give one away to listeners now, came from that marketing savvy. I knew that gainfully employed, like foremen working hands on foreman in the field typically have a company truck and they go to suppliers. And so I approached my suppliers and I was like, hey, I want to advertise that I'm hiring. And I went to all of them. They're like, we can't do that. That's favoritism. And so I got upset and frustrated. So I'm leaving. And there was a store across the street that had somebody spinning a sign for. It was a mattress store and they were going out of business. So it was like, clothes on, he's spinning the sign. So I pulled over and I said, hey, what are you doing? He was, Saturday tomorrow. And he's like, I'm not working. I said, great, I'm gonna have a sign for you. You want to go across the street and spin it? He said, yeah. So I literally hired the signs for. I gave him the sign that said hiring foreman, top pay and the rates. One English, one Spanish, flipping one side and then the other. That's that marketing that you're talking about. And we ended up getting calls like crazy.

That's a pretty awesome idea. I followed the same track as you multiple times whenever I'm looking for, whether it be crews or even salespeople, you know, those Guys in our world end up having to go the supply house every once in a while. Crew foreman and I use the same tactic like, okay, all my suppliers know who these guys are. Who can I tap into there? And that's a great way to start. But, man, you kind of Max, you did what we call guerrilla marketing or all star marketing to that, where you went, all right, they said, no, what's the other way to do this? And you probably got some pretty good attention. That's really. That's a good little golden nugget there for everybody. Now I'm going to go to all the supply houses are going to be some dude spinning a sign outside saying, we're hiring. That's great.

The better version of that. I just want them to take the full process. So we did that, and that did well with some suppliers, and some got upset. So we actually figured out a better way. And if you go to your supplier and you offer to sponsor coffee and donuts every morning and put a booth there, you'll get 100% of the suppliers to say yes. And you can put on that table a recruiting card that has your information there. And so we found that that's the more scalable way. I mean, you can do the sign thing. If you're real aggressive, you can do that. I mean, we did it, but we found that some people got upset. And so this was early. Early on, made the course. And so that coffee booth and donut idea, it works because, you know, they. They grab coffee donuts while they're waiting to get loaded up. They go, oh, what's this card? It's the same concept, but it's just much more fluid. You get that better relationship.

Now, you know, those are fun things to talk about. Like, one of the ones, whenever I was looking for sales guys, we did a lot of door knocking. And not just storm work like we did door knocking, retail, too. I would go and find, like, the Kirby vacuum place, the ADT security place, like, wherever their offices were. And I go there on Mondays because I figured that's the day they were going to have their sales meeting. Sure enough, parking lot's full. As soon as that parking lot emptied out, I'd be looking for the nicest vehicle they got. I follow that guy, follow him to wherever he's at, and he'd hop out and be in his neighborhood knocking. And I go up and say, hey, man, what are you doing? He's like, I am. I'm working for Kirby, or adt, whoever it was. I say, hey, I'm sure you're not interested, but maybe if there's anybody at work that doesn't really like working there or selling vacuums or whatever they do and they want to make more money, could you hand them my cards? And we're hiring. We do this roofing thing and it was funny. Well, tell me more about that. Is what I would usually get. And so yeah, we've done that. In that situation, car lots like going to find and used car sales guys. It's pretty brutal. But hey, I'm here to compete and win. That's a really good idea, man. I like that one. Now I'm going to assume like there's some one off things like, like that, but is there anything that's more process oriented when it comes to the digital side of things that you guys do.

In terms of, of recruit, like going.

Down the recruiting show? Because I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna save the best for last. I can't wait to talk about this undercover contractor thing. But when it comes to the actual recruiting thing, what are, is there there a process side to the digital aspect? Because you talk about ZipRecruiter and indeed a lot of what does that look like?

So on the digital front, the biggest thing, almost think of it like your website, right? So you need a good career video. You need a really good video that showcases your company that a candidate can watch and fall in love with. That's key because gone are the days where we read a job description and it's gonna, it's, it's as compelling as a video. So having a really good career video is a baseline that should showcase you, you know, minute to two and a half minutes. Typically your team talking about how great you are, you're showing your truck, showing your office, all those great things. In addition to that, we have a concept called leverage the gaps. And basically in this market, because it's so competitive, if you can find things that your competitors aren't doing in your area. So one way to do this is to go to the biggest city near you or if you're in a big city, find a bigger one, right? And type in the job that you're looking to hire for and see what perks and incentives are out there. We can give you some examples, like four 10 hour days. Works great. If you can do it right. Fridays off or you know, guaranteed local work. No commute bigger than, you know, 30, 45 minutes or paid commute or per diem. There's all these things you can do. We had a demolition contractor and he did professional massages once a week. Right. So when you find these things that you can put in the job description and you pair that with a career video, then you're using digital to amplify that tested messaging. But you have something to garner excitement because it's not so much getting the click online. That's the hardest part, per se. It's capturing the attention of the person reading it and having them go, wow, I think I want to work here. And those two elements help a lot.

A man after my own heart that understands that recruiting is marketing. That's what it is. You're marketing your company, your culture, what you do, the benefits of it in a way that isn't some dry job description type situation. It's like how you affect people's lives and how working there has affected your life and your family. And it is a thing that you've got to do to get people to raise their hand and go, you know what? That actually looks pretty cool. I'm kind of interested. And that's what marketing is, just getting somebody to raise their hand. Then on the, the hiring side of things, that's the sales part. That's where you, you're going to go close the deal and why it's great to work for you. Do you see it the same way?

100%? Absolutely. I mean, the marketing. That's why that foundation I mentioned earlier of the marketing really ended up being such a big part of what made, you know, made this system so robust was because it was really a front end, it was a pipeline problem. In the beginning it was, can I put enough strategies? Because you couldn't. It was like going to a well. And that well was dry. I was like Craigslist. And indeed, I knew in 2018, if I posted on there, I offered a few dollars an hour more. I could always bring five to seven people like that. But when everyone's going to the same well and everyone's doing the same thing, now you have to strategize and get much more advanced, which is like, you know, the difference of websites. And then when everyone had a website online, now you needed SEO, you need videos on your website. You need all these things to stand out, to stand above the competition. That's where we're at with hiring right now.

The harder it is to do a thing, the better it is for those that are willing to make the investment. It's just that simple. It tends to be like, the more barriers you put in the way of actually accomplishing something, the ones that are disciplined and Consistent and put in the effort and time to gain the knowledge and do the work, tend to have the best results in the end. And kind of the others fall by the wayside, especially if they don't take it as serious, like that hiring thing, they should take just as serious as selling the next job. Do you agree?

Oh, 100%. I mean, I think I say that I was a recovering sales junkie. I was obsessed with sales. I was obsessed with like the big deal, the million dollar contract, the this, the that and I lost sight. I mean the real growth is in my team. It's in, it's like for me and for most companies that's the journey. You figure out the marketing in some capacity, you start selling work. I mean you're always worried one way or the other. But I believe that at the end of the day it always, there's processes and things that are intricate or fall underneath what we consider to be the hiring retention umbrella. That's how I view it. Right. So there's all these things that you mentioned earlier. But at the end of the day, you know, I challenge contractors. I always say I'm like, do you have a. They're like, no, no, no. Sales is the most important. I'm like, yeah, but the minute you land a big contract, let's take the biggest deal you ever made, I'll give you the contract right now. You sign it, you're excited. What's the next thought? Do I have the personnel to do it? Can I get this done? How do I get this done? So it always stems back to that team. And there's so many touch points. Like, you know, you think of a lead, it's like a lead to a job. There's seven or eight touch points in that sequence. So you've got your team is so, so, so important. But I don't think in construction we talk enough about this, we say it's a problem but solution oriented.

I was laughing because I can remember whenever I like, my biggest job up until that day had been about 100 grand was the biggest job. And I sold a 2 million dollar project. I went, hey man, that's going to take me months to get done. That's not going to be acceptable to like, I better find some, some new crews. And then it became that aspect of what I needed to do and I kind of learned the hard way. Sounds like you did too. Like man, we could market and sell and get all the business in the world but if we didn't have the processes to support it and the team to install it. We're going to really struggle. I have a question for you because we get this one all the time. Do you believe that today's up and coming workers are lazy and not willing to work and just there's not enough of them? You know, you hear all the negative stuff, right? They're millennials. They don't really want to work. Do you see that there's a labor shortage or maybe see a difference?

Well, there's definitely a labor shortage. I mean, the stats right now, American Society, General Contractors, 80% of contractors are struggling to find work. That's their stat. There's 2 million unfilled middle skilled jobs in America right. Right now. Middle skilled. So there's definitely, there's two scary lines, and one's going up, which is the number of people retiring and leaving construction. And there's another line that's even scarier, which is the number of people entering construction. It's going down. So we do have this problem. I tend to, you know, if I get to choose between the glass being half full or half empty, I'm going to choose half full. You know, I know that there might be data to support either argument, but I think at the end of the day, if you can convince yourself, right, we're always selling. But if you can convince yourself that the millennials are out there and they will work hard, then, then the next question is, well, how would I find them? And typically you don't get to that next question if you don't believe the first part of it, which is that they're out there and they want to do this and we hire millennials.

Yeah. So it was driving me crazy too, because I see that same thing. You see the older experience. They know the job, know the work. Those guys are starting to retire and move out of it and moving out at a higher clip than people coming in. And up until two years ago, it was divergent in both directions. In other words, more people retiring and moving out and less people interested and not even looking for the jobs and looking for other opportunities. The encouraging piece of news is the last two years coming into the trades. Two years ago it was a 4.2% increase, which was cool. I'm like, hey, all right, we went the other direction finally. And then this last year, 7.1%. So what that tells me is that the money's probably pretty good. Somebody's learning how to market better for what we do. And I think our industry is doing a better job maybe of portraying what it is that we do, because I Don't think kids are sitting in high school going, man, I can't wait to lay some concrete and bricks. It doesn't sound like fun, but I think something's shifted. Have you seen any of that?

Yeah, I think that I've always said it. There's, there's. If we, we need to become more competitive, we need to just. It's the same thing with customers, right? If you're in your local market and you're trying to sell a service and people aren't buying, it's like you have to ask yourself, you have to take responsibility, say, what are we doing? What could we be doing better or differently? And I mean, or surrender, right? And just say, well, this is how it is and my company will never grow. And if somebody leaves, you know, I'm stuck. So if you're not going to do that, which, you know, we're not. Right. Contractors as a whole, we're very much grit and persevere and grow, then, you know, it's. It's a matter of. It's a matter of just becoming more. It's a matter of becoming more attracted to the things that they want. So you got to know who you're competing with. TaskRabbit, UberEats. Like, there's so many. The level playing field is not the contractor down the street that's trying to take the millennial worker. It's the social media marketing job. Right. That's behind the desk. It's Uber, because I can make X amount of dollars on my terms. It's tax rabbit. So when you align yourself with, hey, these are the other choices they have, and you become creative or as I mentioned earlier, like leverage the gaps. You can actually pull them in and you can do it. I mean, they're, they're entering the workforce. Somebody's doing it.

Yeah, I would agree. You mentioned earlier, well, those guys over there have 900 guys. How are they able to have 900 guys? There is a way to do it. Might be a little harder today, but it can still be done. That was some really good stuff on recruiting. Now, where at in the equation did this whole undercover contractor thing come into play? Like, that was super interesting to me.

Yeah. So that, that happened before, year wise? I don't remember exactly. I think around 2017, 2016 was when it started. It was just a natural progression. So I ended up helping a lot of my clients with construction issues. My contractor left. There's a problem with something, there's a defect. You know, they laid 3,000 square feet of tile and now they're coming up. It's a month old. Like, what do I do? Just crazy stuff. I mean, and. And so I. My biggest struggle was because my brand was so. So out there. I was like, look, I don't want people knowing who I am. So it was like, they kind of joked. It became a coin term. It was like, well, you're kind of like the undercover contractor. Because I would go to these meetings, and I would be like, the friend, the neighbor, the nephew, and I would just listen. And then when I was done, I'd be like, hey, check your inbox. I'll send you an email. You forward it to them. This will be resolved in a week. And they would do it.

So it's not your. Your face isn't all over your business out there. The name is, but your face isn't.

Yeah, correct. Yeah, I'm pretty.

I was wondering, like, did you dress up like some of them?

Some of them? I did. I did one where I had to pretend, like, I was like, I had a. Like a. A baseball bat. And I was like, you know, I was looking for baseballs in her shed. This woman, she had, you know, 20,000 square feet of painting on her house, and they were using the wrong paint. She was convinced client of ours, really, really nice person, and she's like, matt, can you check? I'm like, I can't go there and just audit what these guys are doing and what. They were taking the paint with them, so they didn't leave it at night. So I had no way of. And she couldn't zoom in enough on the security cameras. I tried everything not to have to do this. I'm like, you have the security cameras. Let's zoom in. Didn't work. I'm like, they leave it there. She's like, no, they take all the paint with them every day. I'm like, that's a little odd. They don't want to leave anything behind. So I literally had to go there and with, like, you know, in sports clothes and just talk to them. And I was like, yeah, what are you guys doing? And I saw it, and I sent her photos. I'm like, yeah, what they said they're doing and what they're doing are very different. So you got a problem here. Here's the photos.

That sounds like fun. And, like, I think there's some opportunity for me here in Texas, especially with our contractor licensing. So you're doing this. How did you get, like, get into it? They just call you and say, hey, I've got this other contractor Working on my property. Did they always do something different than you or were they doing the same thing as you?

It was all different. So I ended up, you know, we, we. It just grew through network. So it was like, I did work, you know, I do work for structural engineers, their homes. I do work all the pickier clients that typical contractors. Like, I never work for lawyers, I don't work for engineers. We do all that, you know, so. So I have no issue with that. I have a great team. I'm fully confident what we do. So I started working with these litigation lawyers at their homes and they just loved how knowledgeable we were. I helped some really big issues. I resolved them very easily without going to court. You know, we documented things in a, in a technical way where you couldn't argue it. Right? It was the technical expertise they needed to be able to say industry standard is this. You use this. You know, this is why this is happening. And there you are. And so it just grew through network. And then it just kind of became like, anytime people had issues, which seemed to be all the time, they would call me. I'd get a text at 9 o', clock, hey, you know, my roof's leaking. And this person said, it's not my fault. And I got, you know, $250,000 insurance claim. What do I do? I'm like, let me go there tomorrow. I'll figure it out. We'll help you. So that was just a word of mouth thing.

That's pretty wild. So it gains a little momentum. It sounds like somebody heard about it that was the right person to hear about it. Is that like.

Yeah. So we ended up. I ended up doing work for somebody that, that was in the TV world. And at the time I was writing a book. I still have the book. We haven't fully released the newer vers of it yet, but I was writing a book for homeowners because the process of, like, what to do and how to do it took so long to explain. I was like, I'm just gonna write this book. And so I was helping somebody in the film world that had been screwed by a contractor, so all this concrete had cracked. He had framing issues. It was just. He probably had. I mean, it was a lot of, a lot of damage and issues. And so he asked me, he said, you ever thought about tv? And I was like, not really. He's like, you should talk to so and so. And so I did. And we ended up, you know, now we're. Now we're hopefully. I mean, my goal is to Have a TV show. I mean, that's the ultimate goal for this and spread awareness around to lift good contractors and open the conversation up about what's really happening.

If the consumer's perception is accurate, you're never going to run out of shows to do. That's the thing. Right. I think the perception of most consumers is that contractors are somewhere between, like, ditch digger and conman. Like, that seems to be what most people think. You think that's fair?

I don't know. I want to elevate that. I think that's. That's my mission in this is. I'm not. I'm not here to point a finger at every contractor. I am one. I currently own and operate the business. I grew up in one. All my friends are contractors. You can't take me anywhere else because I don't know how to talk to normal people. Right. So this is my entire world, if you will. So, you know, I think it's about elevating the perception of good contractors out there and making it clear that, look, your work doesn't have to be like this. There are. Because you know what they always say? They say, matt, you know, I'm so glad I met you. There are good contractors out there. And that's the happiest moment for me when a client says that. And I know that I shifted the perception in their mind.

Yeah, I always liked it that I could walk into a grocery store in a neighborhood that we were doing work on and not like, hide my head or anything like that. We did good work. That was. That was our thing. And I've seen that change over the last about 10 years, that the bar keeps rising on the quality of work, what a homeowner expects. They expect more than just satisfaction. They expect exceptionalism. And more and more contractors are starting to deliver it. And it's really the kind of loud minority that screws it up for the vast majority. Because as you walk around these conferences and events and things like that, you see amazing contractors, guys that do amazing work. They run a good business, they're professional. They're not what most homeowners, I think, perceive a contractor to be. But it takes a long time to make up for all that stuff back in the day. Is that something that you've noticed as well, this, like, change of the guard almost?

Well, I. The stats are staggering. I mean, the line is directly, I think, correlated with the graph, rather is very much correlated with the transient factor of construction, meaning less people getting into it overall relative to the amount of people retiring. And it's it's. I mean, you know, one in three homeowners have been part of a scam, according to the, according to the New York Post. That was, that was in 2019. I believe their stat. But it's, it's the number of contractors that say, or clients that say, I'm happy with my contractor is, is far too low. And I think, you know, it's, it comes down a lot to communication and expectation, too, because there's times where, you know us as contractors when we do a good job explaining we can lower and temper those expectations, which we need to do because a lot of consumers are educated based on TV shows, which is like, you know, you stuff your fingers. It's like the whole kitchen's done and there's no issues and no mold and no change orders and no dry rot. You know, it's like. So I think there's a bigger. I just want to be part of a contributing voice to, like, what this conversation could be.

Yeah, Thanks a lot, Chip and Joanne. Right. Like, hey, pull the thing back in this amazing new home, right? There wasn't anything too major to go along with it. I can remember telling homers like, hey, I would just honest with you, this is construction. There's going to be shingles flying off, siding coming off. It's going to be loud. It's going to be like, best thing for you to do for the day. Maybe go to the zoo, take the kids out, do something else other than be here. Because it is construction. And whenever you would do that, you set expectations correctly, everything went okay. Because you now set the expectation. Like, if you try to make it sound better than what it is and you don't live up to that, that's where they get that bad taste in their mouth. It's kind of like, it's kind of like them sitting as, hey, we're a five star restaurant. You show up and you get a two star meal. That's. That's not a lot of fun.

Yeah, my, my grandfather used to say, you can't put a shine on a sneaker. Matt. And told me to be honest. He's like, look, just be honest with him. If it's loud, it's gonna be loud. If it's long, it's gonna be long. If they can't drive on the driveway for like, he's like, you don't try and shine the sneaker. That was the thing I heard as a kid growing up all the time, you know, just be very open and transparent.

Yeah, I might have to borrow that One that's a good one. Can't shine a sneaker. Okay, so we're getting towards the end of the show, but I got, I have to ask you, you're in Burbank, California and maybe you can't tell me, I don't know. But. But what's like the most famous celebrity that you've ever done some work for?

Oh, man, we've done, we've done some really great stuff. I mean, we've done some, some really big names in the music space, in the acting space. I mean, top. We've done one home. I can't name it, but they're in probably everybody's top five. I mean, it was. We got. I remember them walking down the steps and I was, it takes a lot for me to get starstruck. And I was like, oh man. I was like, this is. I might have to ask for their autograph. I was like, oh, wow, this is crazy.

Yeah. Hey, that would have been my expectation. Hey, when we do good work and we're done, can I get an autograph, Maybe a picture with you, that type of thing. Now that's my next question because I've had the honor to do a few fairly well known people in Minnesota, Houston and out in the D.C. area. And I actually spoke with them and said, hey, would, would it be okay if I used you in my marketing to help build my business? Well, I'll pay you. I'm not going to just ask you for free, but is that something that we could actually do? And a couple actually said yes. And one of them actually became like almost a spokesperson for us and he said, it's for free. You did such an amazing job. Have you had any of those type of opportunities come up? I have.

I mean, my brand and this was unintentional. But along with the undercover, one of the things about me and what we did that was so good was that I was very much like, I was kind of their best kept secret. And that works for me. So I didn't, you know, I wasn't the person to put them on the website and there's no right or wrong, but I'm in. I'm also in the land of the stars. Right. Hollywood, L.A. so a lot. That's a big thing out here. And so the fact that I was different. Right. Marketing strategy. Right. Differentiate yourself. I was the one who did the really great work and was like, great. And I found that I got invited to the barbecue, I got invited to the opening when they opened the pool or the backyard. And so it created more. So my thing was the relationship and the network. But I think, you know, if I were still in Boston, where my family started, I would have a different strategy. I'd be doing exactly what you said because it's not as prevalent out there. So it would be way more impactful, I think.

Yeah, you got David Ortiz's house out there. Like, hey, David, quick video with me. That's all we need to do real quick. And I'll never bother you again as soon as. Super cool. Matt. This has been a lot of fun. Now, if somebody wanted to get a hold, like, you have a recruiting course that you sell, is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah. So we have the contractor hiring course. Yep.

Contractor hiring course. How. How would they find that?

Yeah, online. The contractor consultants, they can head to the website or they can. They can shoot us an email. My email is pretty easy. Maryland. Thecontractor consultants. Plural.com. pretty easy going.

Awesome. We will make sure to get that in the show notes on our way out the door here. What would be the top one or two or three max things that a contractor should maybe focus on to up their recruiting game? I mean, we've talked about a lot of them, but just real quick, hit those three maybe key things that they would want to focus on.

I mean, the simplest one is to emphasize more time. You have to allocate more time to it. You got to literally time blocks, more time for hiring conversations, retention conversations. The other thing I would do is I'd focus on an honest employee audit. You can do a simplified version of what we do, which is basically a 1 to 10 scale. And you ask certain questions, right? You can ask like, you know, do I feel, you know, do I feel like my hard work has appreciated a scale of 1 to 10? Do I feel like I'm compensated fairly for getting those numbers back? I can't tell you the amount of clients we've done this for. And they see it and they go, oh, my gosh, I thought I needed three people. I might need six or seven. Like, this is not what I wanted. And that's good to know because then you can fix it. They haven't left yet. And then I would say really focusing on finding. Focusing on different ways to build your candidate pipeline. If you have. If the simplest question I would ask is, if I had to hire depends on the size of your company. One, three or ten people. And that thought stressed me out. Well, then you're like, I was in 2018, and you have to build that pipeline and address that problem. Because putting it to the back of your mind was what I did, and that's what bit me.

That's pretty awesome, Matt. Hey, thanks for being on the show today. It was awesome. I enjoyed the conversation. I tried to pull out a celebrity or two to didn't get them, but that's cool. It would be a lot of fun work. Maybe next time I'm out in California, I connect with you and say, hey, man, show me around a little bit. I do get out there. Actually, I'm going to be in Napa, which isn't really close to you, but I'll be in Napa here in about a month. My. My wife is like, you need to take a vacation. So we're gonna take some time off. Thank you very much for being here today. We will get all your contact information in the show notes and awesome job, man.

Yeah, thank you.

All right, everybody, that was Matt Dabara with the Contractor Consultants, also with Dabara Masonry and the Undercover. That part right there was fascinating to me. I was would love to have that opportunity to go and do some of that, and I wish him the best on his opportunity to maybe get that into a TV show. And I think that would just be awesomely interesting. Make sure you guys comment at the end of this. Any questions you may have. Matt and I will pay attention. Also, don't forget, if you need help with your contracting business, it's super simple. Go to our website, contractorcoachpro.com click on the button that says Contractor Assessments, and take that assessment. It'll take you 15, 20 minutes. It's not a. It's not a fake assessment. It's real. Like, we're going to find out what it is about your business, where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are, and then we'll actually do a free coaching call with you with one of our coaches. They will hop online with you and they're there to coach you that day, not to sell you that day. If you like coaching, great. We'd love to have you as a client. If not, we hope to give you two or three things that will help you level up your business quickly and get you a little bit closer to your dreams. Thanks for hanging out with us here on Contractor Radio and we'll catch you on our next episode.