Dee Davis (00:00)
Thank you for joining us and welcome to another episode of Management Under Construction. Today we are going to talk about when should you quit your job? When is the right time to decide whether or not you should quit your job?
Brad Wyant (00:14)
The reason that I wanted to put this episode on was I looked back on my work history and I realized I've worked for five different companies in seven years and I'm in middle of leaving a current employer for another one. The question of when to leave, what are the right reasons to leave an employer, especially because that decision can have a lot of risks, it can have lot of implication on the rest of your life. Having some kind of a framework to live by
in terms of your career, putting it down on a podcast, talking about it with Dee, who has done a lot more of this than I have, seemed like a good thing to do. Dee, tell us about your work history. How many different companies have you been with? What was your shortest tenure at a company?
Dee Davis (00:56)
had to really think about this and I had to write myself some notes here. I would say that I probably worked for 12 to 18 companies in a 35 year period, something like that. did not make a detailed list. had in my working years, I've worked multiple jobs. really my longest tenure besides self-employment, which I've been self-employed for 19 years was 12 years. And my shortest was about four months. That was a seasonal jobs.
I can't think of any other job that I was in that I didn't last at least one or two years. I don't know if that's good or bad. I'm one of those employees that has staying power. If I decide to go in, I'll stay generally for a while, but that's me.
Brad Wyant (01:39)
I've worked for five companies in seven years, but it bears saying that one of those tenures was extremely short. I worked for a company for all of six days once. So very different generationally there obviously, and the wisdom of you should stay at a company for a long time has changed. you should be there for one or two years to go if you can leave. But for better or worse, the age of working an entire career at the same company is definitely over.
The labor market is more volatile, which offers opportunities to gain salary increases more quickly. And not all companies are rewarding loyalty the way that they used to. Job switching is demonstrably profitable. LinkedIn articles and studies and everything have proven that to be true, especially for top performers in an industry. If you're somebody who's at the top of your industry and you can jump and you can get more money somewhere else, studies are showing that that's the right thing to do for your career.
That sort of intro aside, let's talk about some good reasons to quit a job. The first one that came to mind for me is to get away from a bad boss. Bad bosses, in my opinion, are career killers. To define what a bad boss is, somebody who won't advocate for you within the organization. They're not going to sing your praises when you deserve it. They're not going to say, this person is working hard. They deserve to get on a different project if they want to be on one next. Another definition is somebody who does not permit you to train or to grow.
somebody who isn't going to advocate for you to attend conferences, to take time away from the primary tasks of your role to get better at things that will help advance your career. Another sign is that somebody who makes your workday miserable. We all know people in industry, whatever industry you work in, especially construction, who for one reason or another are just miserable people or are control freaks or over communicate or under communicate and unnecessarily make the job.
more miserable than it has to be. That is the kind of person that's going to make you dread going to work. And if you dread going to work, not only is that an infuriating state of living, it's going to make you a worse employee, which is going to make it harder to get promoted because you're not performing at your best. So if you can't get away from a bad boss because the division of the company that you work for is too small, because there aren't enough opportunities in other areas, or because that boss is preventing you from leaving their domain, quitting is a good choice for you and your mental health.
as well as your career because those two things are deeply related. If you're unhappy at work, you will not perform at your best. And if you're not performing at your best, you will not be getting as much out of your career as you could. So Dee, what are your stories of working for a bad boss?
Dee Davis (04:15)
Before
we go into my first story about bad boss, I want to add to your list a boss that does nothing or encourages a toxic work environment. So I've definitely worked in places where it's been a toxic work environment and the leadership does nothing about it. Despite repeated complaints and repeated employees going, come on, are you kidding me? People start leaving and they still do nothing.
any boss that promotes by default, maybe because they're a little spineless or they don't want the confrontation with the toxic employees. That is unfortunately a little too prevalent in the workplace.
Brad Wyant (04:59)
It is. I think there've been some great thought leaders that have talked about why we have so many toxic bosses in corporate America right now. And some people say that the top performers get to stay even if they're toxic because upper management says, well, they're tough to deal with. some people have left, but look at their numbers. Especially in certain organizations, it's easy to fudge the numbers. It's easy to manipulate and wiggle your way to numbers that management wants to see.
if you're the kind of person who would do that kind of a thing, which as it so happens, aligns with the kind of person who would create a toxic work environment for their own advantage. When you're looking at different bosses you want to position yourself with in an organization, different leaders, be sure to understand whether they're a top performer and this kind of toxic would do anything to pump their numbers person, or if they're the kind of person who has great numbers and therefore has management's eye, but also is a great person to work for.
I would rather personally work for a mediocre performer who is a great person to work for, who's going to make me my best self than somebody who's awful to work for, but who is management's darling, if you will.
Dee Davis (06:11)
Absolutely. And sadly, I've even seen some really toxic workplaces where the excuses and even that they're a top performer. I don't even know what the excuses. It's just allowed to proliferate throughout the organization. And I can only attribute that to, and I don't know any nicer way to say this, spineless leadership, just absolutely spineless leadership. They do not want the confrontation of dealing with this person. So they just let it go on and,
The consequences don't seem to matter. That's terrible. I've been pretty fortunate in my, in my career. to be honest, I have had very few bad bosses. When I worked in real estate, which was my life before I did construction, I worked for a real estate agent, their sales person, but they screamed at me all the time, all the time. They berated me. This was a really large real estate office, probably 30, 40 agents and all of their assistants and administrative people and
brokers and whatever, lot of people in the office. got regularly screamed at and berated in front of everybody there. And the first time it happened, of course, I was really taken aback because who's used to being screamed at. And I'm generally a pretty gosh darn good employee. So that's not something that I had a lot of experience in. was, I was pretty young and, a couple of people came over to me after and said, don't worry. She does that to all of our assistants. It's not you.
Well, good to know that it's not me. Doesn't really excuse the behavior. And I gotta be honest, I think that after I got screamed at the first time, I probably started working a little less hard. Started being a little less conscientious about my work. I probably lasted a little over a year, maybe a year and a half there. And I finally just left. Because it was terrible. It wasn't worth it.
Brad Wyant (07:58)
just going to say, I totally agree. I've been struggling with that. When that you're not performing at your best because your relationship with your boss sucks and you just dread talking to them, you dread getting on a meeting with them and you just want to get away. After a work day, I'm like, boy, I could have done more. Maybe if I didn't have this bad relationship with this person, we'd be getting more done together. But that's how that works. That's why building a good relationship with the people around you fosters better production. That's why we go to
meetings to talk about building relationships. That's why their entire classes in the MBA program devoted to understanding other people and to building better relationships because that's human nature. You should always do your best. You should always put your best foot forward and you should always try to put the worst parts of relationship aside to be productive because you want to earn the paycheck. You want to do the right thing. But knowing that you're not performing at your best because your boss sucks is not a reason to beat yourself up either.
Don't do what I've been doing and beat yourself up because you're not at your best because you're miserable.
Dee Davis (09:01)
We've talked about this a lot. It's an emotional intelligence. When you're a leader, you have to have that emotional intelligence to listen, to work well with people. And when you have a personality conflict in the workplace, it's no fun at all. Nobody likes working with people they don't like. That's just how we're built. We're just human beings. That's how we are.
The second example I have is a boss taking credit for your work. man. I've had it happen to me a few times here and there, not terrible, but somebody that I'm close to had this happen regularly, Some project went really, really well. They did really, really good. Well, the person that actually made all that happen, that worked all the Saturdays, that did all the overtime, that did all the running around, that did all the leg work, got zero credit.
and the person immediately over them got all the credit, got the bonuses for the work, got all the credit, the recognition, the awards, the accolades, the perks, all of it. And the person that actually was doing the work got nada, nothing. And this went on for years and years.
Brad Wyant (10:06)
And
even a more passive aggressive version of that is the same kind of villainy to me, where let's say your boss says, well, we have this solution for that, but they don't really assign who came up with the solution. just say, we. And then other times they say, well, that person did this thing that was wrong. They're right in both cases. If one person, but really the team came up with a solution, then they get to say, we, because they're a member of the team.
And if another person did make a mistake, then yes, that person is the person who owns that mistake. But the job of being a leader is owning your team's mistakes and giving them the credit when they're right. That will endear you to your people and that will come around to you in their performance, which will pay off in your bonus. Taking credit even passively with that kind of we language is so frustrating for the employees to listen to who are.
engaging with you in that meeting or hear about it otherwise.
Dee Davis (11:08)
more importantly, what you just brought up was throwing people under the bus. Throwing your teammates under the bus, your direct reports. I've had so many tire marks on my back over the years. I couldn't even begin to tell you how many times I've gotten thrown under the bus in a public forum, in a meeting, in front of management. That's the worst. That's another toxic environment. That's another bad boss example.
Brad Wyant (11:34)
bad leadership. It's insecurity and it's failure to prepare. Let's say that you're in a meeting where you're going over something that you worked on with your boss and then they find something wrong with it in the middle of meeting and say, oh, that's wrong. And you're on the spot for it. That's the kind of thing that turns me off immediately. Let's talk about reason number two to quit a job. That was a lot on a bad boss. So reason number two to quit a job is if you're not learning anything. When I say learning, I know that that's maybe going to
have a reaction from some people like, well, I'm not at a career to learn. I'm here to make money. And you're right. A career's primary purpose is to provide income. Work is not school, even though I love going to school. But maximizing the return on your career means constantly learning. Traditionally, in the economy of old, on-the-job training was a key means for career advancement. But today, at least some continuous education is the minimum to stay ahead of software and AI.
If you're not learning, you will fall behind and become irrelevant. A job that does not offer enough learning opportunities, even in especially, excuse me, in today's economy is a poor use of your time. Repetitive work without growth opportunities should be shunned because somebody is going to innovate you out of a job in today's economy. So Dee, do you know anybody working quote unquote dead end jobs? Have you ever been in one yourself that wasn't like a summer job where you're just paying some bills?
Dee Davis (12:55)
Yeah, I think it's an important distinction between a job and a career, right? A job is working retail, working McDonald's, working something like that. Those are jobs. Those are not places where we expect to have a career, a lifelong thing where we're going to be growing. that there isn't some opportunity. I actually do know a couple of people who have stayed in retail. And when you get to a certain level, it actually is a career. But for most people, it's a job.
when you're in your career path, this is what I love to do, this is what I was educated to do, this is what I choose to do as my life's work, then it becomes where do I go from here? I'm the kind of person that I get bored very, very easily. And I've had this happen to me in many jobs where I'm all excited about the job when I first started. And a couple of years in, I start getting bored because there's nothing new. I've already learned everything I need to know.
There's nowhere to go. Somebody's going to have to keel over for me to get a promotion or the next level. And so it becomes a dead end job. This can happen a lot in small companies because there just is not enough growth and positions to enable people to do that. And so if you're working in a very small company, this can happen rather quickly. It can also happen in a lot of family owned companies.
because the growth opportunities are offered to the family members first, that terrible nepotism word, but honestly, there's plenty of businesses that are family businesses. They're family owned construction companies, retail businesses, production businesses, whatever. Yes, of course, they're going to be elevating, hopefully rightfully so, the family members before the non-family members. So you may find yourself a little constricted in those environments. Smaller companies also have more of a difficult time financially.
investing in employee growth. So especially if they have to pay somebody from the outside for education opportunities or anything like that, it can be, kind of expensive as a very small business owner. In large businesses, large companies, this is the frustrating part, get it with small businesses. They're struggling, they're turning away trying to get things going in their business. But when it comes to large companies, I get a little frustrated because they don't see
always see the value in investing in their people. They ask the wrong question. They ask the question, what if I invest in them and they leave? When they should be asking the question, what if I don't and they stay?
Brad Wyant (15:25)
If you invest in your people and some of them leave, I almost chalk that up to the cost of doing business. If you don't invest in your people and they stay and they do a crappy job for you, which of these outcomes is worse? I totally get what you're saying here.
Dee Davis (15:39)
your fault at that point because you had a choice and you opted to not invest. And even if you invest in somebody and they leave, it's sort of karma, right? If you're willing to invest in your people, first of all, you're going to keep better people because people are willing to stay at companies that are willing to invest in them, especially the younger generations, which come on folks, that's who we need to be investing in, right?
We need to be investing in the youth because these are going to be the people that are going to be running these companies later when you're retired. You need to play the long game. You need to find people that are going to want to learn. And it's, it's maybe not going to be the group that you have now. Maybe it's going to be the people of the future. It's a little bit of karma. This good thing that you're putting out there is going to come back to you and the people that you have now that are great.
are going to want to stay around long.
Brad Wyant (16:38)
And you can even sit down and do the math on that. Let's say you've got 10 employees, you're going to train them. The training is going to cost, what's a good number to use? Okay, 20 grand, 20 grand total for 10 employees. So $2,000 per employee. And you think over the next five years that the training is going to return not adjusted for inflation, another five grand per year over three years. So that's 150 grand you're spending 20 grand to get. Yeah, this is all conjecture. We could make these numbers up as much as we want to.
But do that math and think about, because that's what you're doing no matter what, if you're training or not, you're having to do the math on which outcome from a cashflow standpoint is the right outcome. Don't sit there and play conjecture games without putting some numbers to it, even if those numbers are themselves conjecture, because you're not going to be realistic about what things could possibly be. This is construction. We estimate costs all the time.
If you can't sit down and estimate the expected return on the investment of training and do the math on whether or not it makes sense, you don't belong in the position you're in. Try to sit down and make that math work for yourself to understand what the right choice is. And then use that when you present your business case to say, even if we lose this many people, we're still going to make this much money. And another point on that front, let's say people are leaving. Why are they leaving? Could it be because they're not getting trained? Could it be because they don't think you value them?
Maybe training people will help them stay and make that decision just to be with you. Maybe you need to look at other parts of your business if people are leaving so often that you can't afford to train them.
Dee Davis (18:13)
That's an excellent point. I think most business owners or people that are running a business, especially these days, and we've talked about this in other casts that have this fear of people leaving and experiencing unusually high turnover, especially in the last five to seven years. And as we talked about in previous casts, the turnover has been about every two years, starting to slow down to about every three and a half years. I think it's going to slow down perhaps even a little bit more and be
start getting closer to four or five years. But even if it is two years, let's just say it's two years on an average, you can do something to slow that down by looking in the mirror, by paying attention. When people are leaving, you need to ask yourself, why are they really leaving? Are they leaving because it's a toxic environment? Because they have a bad boss? Because I'm not paying them enough? Because I'm not investing in them?
We're going through all the reasons here why people leave jobs. So the management pay attention.
Brad Wyant (19:13)
And I think on the other side of that coin, if you're an employee who chooses to leave an organization, unless they ask you to club baby seals, you owe it to them to tell them why you're leaving. If it's all about the money for you, be honest, even if that feels awkward because they deserve the feedback. They paid you a lot of that money to be there while you were. I'm in the process of leaving my current role and I'm doing some heavy thought about why I really want to leave and what
of it I'm responsible for. And I think that that's going to hopefully carry me in good stead. The last thing you want to do is burn a bridge that you didn't have to burn. And even if you're burning a bridge and you know that you're never going to cross that river again, you never are going to try to rebuild there. Being honest, being your true self is something that you will never regret. Let's go on to reason number three. Another great reason to leave is for a lot more money, a little more money like...
$5,000 $10,000, five for somebody who's just starting out in their career, 10 for somebody who's a little bit further on, is not enough money to leave your job for another all other things equal in my opinion. The value of your relationships at your current company, even if they aren't perfect, is greater than that $5,000 to $10,000 salary difference, depending on how far you are into your career. Your relationships defend you from layoffs if the economy turns down. They enhance your productivity within a complicated organization.
and they make you more marketable within your current role. Now, a hot tip here is to use those relationships that you're building during your quarterly or monthly or yearly check-ins with your boss as a feature of your value to the company. Dee, you have a note here about wanting to talk more about this quarterly check-in.
Dee Davis (20:53)
Yeah, I did want to talk about that because I've worked in way too many organizations that have nothing like that. In fact, you're lucky if you have an annual check-in. I've worked at many large companies, no annual review, no nothing. I've worked in other large companies that only have an annual review. Even when I was responsible for supervising a multitude of employees, I got zero input into their
annual reviews into their raises, stuff like that. To me, that is just mind blowing. And I love the fact that you're talking about quarterly check-ins, because as we talked about offline before we started the cast, you've worked at a lot of companies that have that. I think that's amazing. And I think that everybody should be doing that. And if you are working at an organization that isn't doing that, at least quarterly with your direct boss, you should hopefully be talking to them more often than that.
You asked for it. Just, just request a meeting to sit down and talk to them because these are the people that are going to be deciding what your raises are. They're going to be deciding what your promotions are. They're going to be doing your annual reviews. I remember one time I got an annual review that told me to go take Excel training and I'm like, what is this based on? And they said, everybody needs to have some training, but I am like an Excel power user.
And if you knew me at all, you would know that. And why in the world would you put this training down for me? That just tells me you don't know anything about me. And that's a little alarming considering you're deciding what my raises bonuses and everything else is it. It it just blew my mind. So don't, don't let that happen to you. Demand those quarterly check-ins in a nice way. You can do it in a nice way. Just request a meeting for no apparent reason to just check in. think it's a great idea.
Brad Wyant (22:48)
politely but forcefully. can do it in a polite way. And the kind of check-in that Dee is describing here, the kind where everybody gets assigned to some training, that's HR covering their ass. HR wants to have their reports on quarterly check-ins, on annual check-ins, performance evaluations, say, look at all the work we're doing to enhance our employees.
it's too bad that they left. They just want to be able to say that they did something. For you to take the initiative to say, I want to meet this often because these are the things I want to talk about. Your boss can be like, there's some horsepower here. Okay, let's put a rain on that and let's carry it where can go. Because employees that work for you that are outperforming are good news for you, as it turns out. Now let's talk about how much money you should leave for. A lot of money, 15 to 20 grand more per year, let's say. That starts to be worth the risk, I think.
but you should take your total compensation into account. How much are you making on your bonuses and how much are you hearing from this next employer that you should expect on their bonuses? Of course, everyone wants to say, well, our bonuses are competitive. Make people put a number to stuff. Don't fold on compensation conversations during onboarding, during recruiting, because you'll be sorry you did later on.
Dee Davis (23:59)
on the bonus conversation. This has happened to me before, so I want to bring this up. I've worked for a company that, and I'm going to use air quotes, had a bonus program that was not in writing. And what they did was they told me what it was, and I was young and I didn't know any better. And I just said, okay, that sounds great. That sounds fair, reasonable, great. In this case, it was a project-based bonus. So I'm just going to throw out some numbers here.
If your project had a 10 % margin on the original estimate and you got 12 % at the end of the day, you got a piece of that extra 2%. Right? That's kind of how it worked and different percentages for different positions and whatever. So I took the method word and when it got to the point of paying the bonus, I never got a bonus. And I went to management and I said, I've had.
this project and it did very well and I never got anything. Where, where's my bonus? And they said, well, we changed the bonus program. You guys don't get bonuses anymore. That's insane. Yeah. To say that I was angry would be putting it absolutely mildly.
Brad Wyant (25:04)
pretty vicious. is insane.
To say that you got screwed would be putting it mildly. That sucks.
Dee Davis (25:15)
was
very, very angry. And I said, really, when did you change this program? And when were you going to tell those of us that are supposed to be getting bonuses that you decided to change the program to essentially delete it? So the only people that got bonuses anymore at that point were upper management and nobody that was doing the work got the bonuses anymore, which is not standard in the construction industry.
first of all, and second of all, certainly not in line with what I was promised when I started the job. Would that have made the difference between me taking the job and not taking the job? Honestly, probably not, but making someone a promise and then not following through on it, that's ethic.
Brad Wyant (26:00)
That's not just ethics. think you probably could have had a lawsuit there, that's unbelievable to me. That's just terrible. it.
Dee Davis (26:07)
in writing, I guess is what I'm saying. So the next job I took, I made sure that I got the bonus program in writing.
Brad Wyant (26:13)
Well, anybody who works with any kind of dignity is going to be like, yeah, sure, of course. That's fair. Yeah. No, no one's going to think less of you during the recruiting process. If you say, I'd like that in writing, please. Like, okay. No one's going to be like, you don't trust us? No, I don't trust you because we don't have a relationship yet. We're just here talking, being upfront about that and being comfortable with that. Prepare yourself for that kind of conversation when you're doing the recruiting. Okay. So more money, 15 to 20 grand starts to be worth the risk.
But you got to take into account the bonus, whether the structures are different from one company to another, whether your company's stock at one company might perform better somewhere else than where you're at now. What about healthcare? It's time consuming to sit down and do the math on what your total compensation could be at another company and what it is at your current company. But it's worth it because if you make a decision emotionally to recruit to go somewhere else and then end up not having done that.
for the wrong reasons and it turns out the way you didn't think it would. You're not making as much money as you thought you would. Net-net, you're going to be frustrated with yourself. Better to take that time early on to make sure that you're making the right choice from a financial decision and then move forward from there, at least to know the ramifications of the decisions you're making.
Dee Davis (27:30)
Someone just recently shared a story with me that one of their direct reports left the lure of a little bit more money with another company. And I don't think it was anything like 15 to $20,000 more, but it was more money. And they said, oh, I'm going to go over there. They're going to pay me more. What they didn't realize was that their current company had zero out of pocket for healthcare, which is unheard of in this marketplace.
Nobody does that anymore. This particular company has fantastic benefits. Not only do they have zero out of pocket for healthcare for their employees, but they have an amazing F matching program. Really good benefits for their employees. Well, this other company didn't. And so the person jumped ship, went over there, made more per hour, but actually ended up making less money.
Brad Wyant (28:20)
careful
with these kinds of things. I know I certainly have left one job for another where it was a big difference. It was a big difference in salary, but the bonuses weren't the same. The company stock wasn't the same. even though the total net comp was still pretty darn high at this new firm, it was a lot more stress and a lot more hours. knew that going into it and I was okay with that trade off because I was young, still single, still am single, if anybody listening.
It was the right choice for me at the time. It was still the right thing to do, but I'm glad I sat down and did the math and said, look, this is what I'm signing up for. Another reason to quit a job is to get to another city. We've talked about this before on the podcast, but housing prices in America's most popular urban areas, LA, New York, San Francisco, DC, Miami, Austin, Chicago, and Denver, Seattle, are increasing quicker than average salaries. It is becoming more and more unaffordable.
to live in these places, even though they're where some of the most profitable jobs in the world tend to be. So moving from one of these areas to somewhere more affordable, especially within the same company where you stand to make a similar amount of money, can vastly increase your quality of life, both financially and socially. Remote work, we all know, is becoming a very popular option. Some firms may allow you to work remotely and fly in a couple of times a month for a few days. So explore that openly with your superiors if you think that would be a good option. Nobody wants their employees to be unhappy.
And if they can solve a problem for you, if some people work remotely and some people don't, and you want to become one of the people who works more remotely than others, and it's going to make you happier, your boss might be amenable to that. Don't cancel that option out in your head before you have the conversation. I know a good buddy of mine who I went to college with who is transferring from one division of his company that's here in the Bay Area to another that's in Alabama. And his quality of life, his buying power for real estate is going to
quintuple the moment he leaves the Bay Area because the Bay Area is an insanely expensive place to live that also doesn't have outstanding school districts for how expensive California state taxes are. The place he's moving in Alabama has some of the best school districts in all of Alabama. That's no brainer for him and he's gonna be, he's thrilled to move there. He's got a great house picked out for himself, big yard to have that when you could not have that in the place you are and you're only staying there for the career. Don't
Be miserable just to stay where your job is. Try and find a solution for yourself there. This is my advice.
Dee Davis (30:46)
Yeah. Different things are important to different people. I have a friend right now, his daughter just got accepted to one of the colleges in New York city. I don't remember which one. And she couldn't be more excited to be going to live in, New York city. For me, that would be torture, different strokes for different folks. You need to decide what is important to you and then figure out how to make that work for you.
I actually had this LinkedIn conversation with somebody the other day that just blew my mind. was somebody in a high ranking position in a major company who was so staunch against remote work and so in favor of return to office that they basically said, anybody who doesn't like it can just get out. We don't care. There are still companies out there that unfortunately have that.
point of view and it's really unfortunate. I feel bad for the people that work for these companies because I think some of them are quite unhappy. But I also feel bad because for the company in a little bit, I'm trying to explain this is a very short-sighted point of view and your company may not exist in another five years if you continue to have this outlook because this is not how people want to work anymore. if.
Working remote is important to you and I know it is to an awful lot of people these days, or at least some kind of hybrid situation where they don't have to be in the office all the time. Look for that, talk to your boss, talk to your company. Some of them just, they're not quite there yet. And I think some of them are gonna adapt over time. Maybe they're not for it today, maybe in another year or two, they're gonna realize that that's where they need to be. And those who don't change their stripes, I don't think are gonna be here very long.
Brad Wyant (32:28)
I completely agree. And throughout my career, had to rely on relationships I build over the phone with people, not even in person, not even video conferencing, just cold calling people, trying to get them to bid for our work and developing relationships with them that way. You can build a relationship over any medium, letter writing even. I mean, come on, let's go back to the 1700s and think about John Adams' love letters to his wife. Wasn't a great president maybe, but he was a wonderful writer. The important thing is not
the medium through which you build your relationships. It's the quality of the relationships that you build, both externally at your organization with the people you do business with outside and within your organization. And one of the reasons that I'm leaving my current company is because they quoted me an in-office policy of three days a week, Tuesday through Thursday, and they asked me to move to California to take the job because there were going to be in-person meetings. I hey, all things
equal, I'd rather be somewhere else. But if you are going to have in-person meetings and we're going to get business done in person and me being here is a big part of our business, I had no problem with being in person. In fact, I favor in person. think it's the best way I build relationships is in person. And they said, yep, that's the way it's going to be. We're going to meet in person all the time. Great. And the fact of the matter is that hasn't been true. Every meeting I've had save a few internally, one-on-one 15 minutes at somebody's desk.
which I can count on one hand. Every meeting has been over teams and every meeting has had cameras off. Like I said earlier, building relationships on the phone with no camera, I've done it. It's been a huge part of my career. But for everybody in the organization to not even show their faces on camera in the interpersonal, hey, we're just a team here talking about our problems. Let's catch up. How are you? It just speaks volumes to me about the character of the organization and everyone's attitudes about the work. And A, it's not the bill of goods that was sold. And B,
it's not the kind of environment I want to be in. So that's why I'm leading. I think it would be hard for anybody within the organization to make an argument against my decision on that basis.
Dee Davis (34:33)
And to be forced to move to a place that you didn't necessarily want to live, to just be on teams meetings all day, that is ridiculous. That's the epitome of ridiculousness. And this is unfortunately one of the things that I'm seeing with these companies that are forcing return to office policies is they're either doing what you just described, which is saying, no, we're going to have this hybrid thing that isn't really hybrid because you're not really getting to work from home ever.
or hardly ever, everybody goes to the office and sits at their desk and is on teams meetings all day long with people sitting right next to them or across the office from them. You're not even in a conference room together in a meeting for the people who are in office. Everybody's just at their desk with their headphones on ignoring each other. Where's the value in being at that address? If you're still not forming relationships with the people that you're working with.
Brad Wyant (35:28)
Yeah, everything's a choice. If you choose to turn your camera off all the time, that speaks to what you're doing. Obviously, there's a reason that we can have camera on and camera off if you're having a bad hair day, if you're traveling, if you're in a situation where you can't or you don't want to, fine. But if it's your MO to always have your camera off, to go on a tangent for a minute. Studies have shown that the amount of time that we were separate from each other, that we were wearing masks to hide our faces from each other, the loss
in the subtext that we communicate through facial expressions that we observed during that time has had a huge detriment on our young people in school, on our relationships at work, and a lot of value has been lost. Never undervalue how meaningful it is to sit in a room with somebody and be with them emotionally, physically. It's a powerful thing, especially if you spend all your time on Teams calls with everybody else, but somebody takes the time to sit in person with you and talk.
It's like, oh, wow, that made me feel like they were listening to me. That made me feel like a person. Imagine.
Dee Davis (36:31)
I'm feeling really guilty for leaving my camera off all the time in meetings now. I generally do not turn my camera on in meetings and 99 % of the people that I meet with are doing the same. granted, these are people that I've worked with for long periods of time. There's already established relationships here, but I'm thinking of a specific project in particular that is, it's remote for me.
I'm not there most of the time. In fact, I'm on the opposite side of the country most of the time. I go occasionally to the job site and I spend a few days and meet with people in person and sit and talk and all the things you're talking about. When we meet, we are generally cameras off and we started that way. I mean, in the very initial meetings, when we were first meeting and greeting and the very first time I meet somebody, I always have my camera on. I want you to see what I look like. I want you to see my facial expressions. I want to start.
developing that connection. I think it also depends on the context of the meeting. If I'm in a coaching call, if it's a coaching client, my camera's on, 100%. It doesn't matter where I am. But if I'm in a design meeting for a construction project, my camera's probably off. Good, bad, I don't know.
Brad Wyant (37:33)
Sure.
That's a very important point. If you're having meetings about an eye chart of a spreadsheet or some very nuanced piece of design, and everyone's doing this at their camera for those on audio, I'm like pulling my face closer and closer to the camera. Nobody wants to see that. That's like zooming with your grandparents who are like, is this thing on? Certainly context is important, but if you're always camera off, I don't know. Lastly, reason number five, to start your own business. That's a great reason to leave the job that you're in. If you're an entrepreneurial person, if you are risk seeking,
I was having a conversation about this with somebody else. They wanted to come up with a better term than risk seeking to define somebody who is able to take on a greater than average amount of risk. We're going to side tangent here. Welcome to the Management of Construction podcast. It's all side tangents. Economics terms three different kinds of risk people. There are risk avoidant people who will, all other things equal, avoid risk more than the average.
There are risk neutral people who take on as much or as little risk as anybody, and there are risk seeking people. And risk seeking people take on more risk because they have an appetite for it, because they can handle the risk. So if you're a risk seeking person, you're entrepreneurial, if you're sick of managing up within whatever structure you're in, because you know what the right thing to be done is, but your boss won't listen to you and you need to manage up to them to get them to get on your page. And if you can find the financing to...
pay your bills while you work on this project, do it. I think this is the decade of entrepreneurship because the top seven companies in the market have been responsible for the majority of the S &P 500's returns over the last couple of years. That concentration of success, in my opinion, is a sign that the pendulum is about to swing in the opposite direction. Look at what's going on in the economy. Tariffs, interest rates are lowering. It's about to get a lot better to be a small business owner in this country, regardless of where your political leanings lie.
Too many organizations are caught up in politics that hold the organization back. Just imagine how much more productive your company would be if people within it got along better. If you think you can foster a more productive environment, hire better people, pay them more, and do a better job leading, go for it. Other organizations are stuck grinding out the work that makes them money now and has made the money in the past, but may be ignoring the future of their industry at their peril. If you think you can see the future of your work, the business that you're in,
And you can realize that future more adeptly than your current employer leave and take the best people with you while you're at it. If you find that there are people who want to come with you. I've seen this happen before. I went to work for a company that was here in the Bay area. That was a spinoff of another big construction company. And the story around the office was two guys who sat down one of their houses, kitchen table, and said, why are we still trying to get these people to understand what we know to be true?
Forget it, let's go tell all our clients that we're going out for ourselves and we want them to give us work and let's bid on it, let's get some insurance, let's hire some people and go. And they did at the time 25 years later, now it's 34 years. They're still kicking and they have great relationships throughout this area and they have done a great job for themselves and they've created personal wealth that has defined their personal lives, that has put their kids through college and more, has led them to leave.
lead fantastic lives. Everyone likes to talk about, but what if it doesn't happen? What if it goes wrong? What if it goes to zero? Yes, starting a business is a risky thing and it could go to zero. You could start a business in 2019 and 2020, we're all drawn to pandemic kits and you just get slaughtered by something that was out of your control. But what if you succeed? This is a great question that another mentor of mine has asked me often, but what if you succeed? What if it goes as well as it could? The sky's the limit. That's such an exciting thing to go after. And this is the reason
risk seeking personality coming out here. Dee, what are your thoughts on entrepreneurship, on getting out there for yourself?
Dee Davis (41:36)
Being an entrepreneur myself, of course, I love the idea of starting businesses. I've started a number of businesses in my lifetime. They've all been relatively successful. I've had some be more successful than others. I think even within that risk seeking bracket, there's levels of risk seeking. I consider myself more of a conservative risk seeker or conservative entrepreneur because here's what I'm never going to do. I'm never going to go out and borrow millions of dollars to start a business. I'm never going to do that.
Because I don't do debt period. The only debt I have in my life is my real estate and that's being very rapidly paid off. I'm not a debt type of person. What that does is it limits me. It's self-limiting because all my businesses have been started with cash. I save up cash. I start a business. go on a venture and
continue to put my own cash in that business and perpetuate that business as it goes. I don't pay interest to anyone. There's pluses and minuses there, right? Can I go open 50 branches of my business, 10 branches of my business? No, because I don't have the cash to do it. But then again, I'm also not going to lose my house and everything I own because I'm mortgaging the farm to finance the business. So within that risk bracket, there's definitely different levels of risk that people are.
Comfortable with so many people are completely uncomfortable with the idea of not having a paycheck every two weeks Unbelievable amount of people I've talked to they're like, I love the idea, know Tell me all about how you're you started business and they go. that's really scary Even at my level of doing it of not even going into a bunch of debt Super super scary for a lot of people of not having that constant paycheck coming and somebody else feeding that machine right is it we always joke and
the entrepreneurial world. Anybody who thinks business owners are out there sailing on their yachts or even have yachts while their businesses just pour money in, you're diluting yourself. Okay. That's not even a thing. It's mostly on TV. On TV that happens, but TV's not real. Most business owners work harder than they ever worked for an employer. They're working 60, 70, 80 hours a week to make their business go. If you want to quit your 40 hour a week payroll job so that you can work 70 hours a week for yourself.
be an entrepreneur, because that's what's going to happen. I'm just telling you right now. It's like a joke, but not a joke. It really is that way. There's always going to be some risk involved in starting a business. In the last episode, we talked about business failure rates. 50 % of businesses do not make it to the five-year mark. I see that happen in consulting all the time. And I think it's mostly that they don't save the money so that they can weather the slow times.
They just spend it as fast as the money's coming in because when it's coming in, it's going great. And it's really fun to make a lot of money, but you have to save some of that money because you're not always going to be making a lot of money. Lots and lots of different things can happen. I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a retail business last week and she was saying, I don't know if I'm going to make it through the year. After, after this year, I'm just not sure if things don't turn around. I'm not sure if I'm going to make it because people are not spending.
like they were spending before. And this may not have anything to do with you as a business owner, how smart you are, how driven you are. It just might be the economy. It can happen. So there's risk for sure. Taking on partners is a huge risk. I have heard some absolute horror stories about other entrepreneurs that I know that have had business partners in the past that it's almost destroyed them.
I've certainly toyed with the idea of bringing on a partner for years. I've toyed with those ideas. Finding just the right person. You don't need someone with the same skills you already have. need someone with opposite skills and who has the same risk profile that you have, who has the same plan that you have and wants to drive the business the same way you do is hard. And I've seen it, seen it tear businesses apart. So it can be a little tough out there as an entrepreneur.
Brad Wyant (45:39)
Let's try and bring this full circle. think the purpose of trying to put on this podcast for people was A, to put together a list of things to think about if you're thinking about leaving your job, but also to help people realize that if you're miserable at work, that is harming you significantly more than the pain of leaving a bad job to go find a better one. There's this great lecturer from the Naval War College named Sarah Payne who talks a lot about the economics of different...
countries as they have chosen to go to war, how that's impacted them, sanctions that have been imposed. And one of the points that she makes about post-Cold War Russia versus post-Cold War America is that Russia has been sanctioned economically to within an inch of its life compared to the States world for the things that Russia does, doping in the Olympics all the way to manipulating currency and fraud and all the stuff that Russia does. get sanctioned like crazy. Iran, another country that has been
punished significantly in the world economy by sanctions. Countries that don't get punished by sanctions experience exponential geometric economic growth. And just even one year of suffering sanctions alters their 25 years later outcome significantly. If you take your career in the same way as something that's growing exponentially because you're getting smarter and smarter every year, because you're developing deeper and more meaningful, more powerful, more impactful relationships every year, just one year,
of you not at your best in your career is going to hinder you significantly for the rest of your career. It's going to put you a long way behind where you would have been if you were at your best, if you were happy, if you were humming along in your job and wondering where the time went at the end of the day when five o'clock rolled around. A very close friend of mine, who I see a lot while I'm here in San Francisco, worked at the post office as a postal inspector for his career and other parts of the federal government as a special agent.
He told me over the weekend, I would come home from work at the end of the day and be like, my gosh, I can't believe the day flew by like that. And I was like, I can't relate that at all. I'm just slogging it out at this job right now. That's a sign you need to leave. If you're miserable, you're not your best self. Go find something that makes you at least not miserable. It's all work folks. We're not going to be clipping daisies and smelling roses every day. But if you're miserable, you're only doing yourself
and the rest of the people around you and your clients at a service. And that's everybody, if you hadn't realized. So go figure out something that doesn't make you miserable.
Dee Davis (48:12)
dad used to always say, life's too short to hate your job. And it is because we spend so much of our time and our energy doing our jobs. And my little saying is, if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong. And I say that because it's a reminder that even though our jobs can be hard and they can be challenging, you're still should be having some fun doing your job. And if you're not having any fun doing your job and you hate your job and all you can do is think about.
the day that you can be done with your job and retire and five o'clock hits and whatever. And I know people like this. know one of my very good friends right now today hates her job. My sister hated her job, despised it, wanted to retire as soon as possible. That will kill you. I'm not even kidding. Like that will take a toll on your health, your life, your marriage, your relationships. Life is way too short.
to hate your job. if you hate your job, go figure it out. Go find out what it is that makes you happy and go do that. Cause it's not worth
Brad Wyant (49:21)
it. Don't live to work, to live, but don't let your work impact the way you live.
Dee Davis (49:26)
Absolutely. This was a great episode, Brad. Thank you so much for putting this together. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you all next time.
Watch us on YouTube at YellowstoneProfessionalEd.co. Don't forget to like, share, and follow us. Apple, Spotify, everywhere you listen to your podcasts. You can email us with questions, comments, and suggestions at heyd at managementunderconstruction.com. That's H-E-Y-D-E-E to get me or Brad at managementunderconstruction.com.
