Your biggest cash flow issues are just people problems in disguise. Mike Matalone unpacks why contractors consistently fail at hiring and retaining skilled labor.
Stop hunting for natural-born leaders. Operational growth comes from establishing non-negotiable core values and transforming average recruits into high-performers through strict accountability. We break down exact interview tactics needed to weed out uncoachable candidates. Instead of letting high turnover erode profit margins, you must define specific job KPIs before posting an ad. Aligning personal goals with company targets turns you from a babysitter into a true business owner.
For operators trapped in the daily grind of managing chaotic crews, this conversation provides a clear roadmap to build an autonomous team. Subscribe and share this episode with a fellow contractor battling high turnover. What test do you use during interviews to determine if a candidate is truly coachable?
More About this Episode
The Blueprint for Building High-Performing Blue-Collar Teams
There is a common trap that almost every contractor, tradesperson, and blue-collar business owner falls into at some point. You start out doing the work yourself. You are good at it, the demand grows, and suddenly you need to hire people to keep up. Before you know it, you are working 80 hours a week, your phone is ringing at all hours of the night, and you are constantly dealing with turnover, mistakes, and frustration. You find yourself complaining that nobody wants to work anymore, or that you simply cannot find any good people.
The harsh reality is that most of the business problems we face are actually people problems in disguise. If your company is struggling with cash flow, the root cause might not be the market. It might be that the person managing the cash flow lacks the proper training or behavioral traits for the job. If your production is slow, it might not be your equipment. It might be a lack of clear direction and leadership. The moment you realize that your business growth is entirely dependent on your people systems is the moment everything changes.
Building a scalable, profitable blue-collar business requires shifting your mindset from being just a great operator to becoming a great leader. It requires understanding the art and science of human capital. It is time to stop operating on hope and start building a real system for hiring, training, and retaining high-performing teams.
The Myth of the Natural A-Player
When we set out to hire, we are all looking for the absolute best of the best. We want those elusive A-players who will show up early, work hard, solve problems on their own, and never complain. But relying on this strategy is a recipe for endless frustration.
Statistics show that less than 20 percent of the working population falls into the category of natural A-players. To make matters worse, about half of those individuals are so driven and entrepreneurial that they are already running their own companies. That leaves a tiny fraction of the workforce for you to hopefully stumble across. Furthermore, just because someone was an A-player for your competitor down the street does not mean they will automatically be an A-player for you.
We have to face the reality that over 50 percent of the working population consists of high-potential B-players. Instead of endlessly hunting for unicorns, your goal must be to build a training and coaching organization that transforms those high-potential individuals into top performers. A-players are built, not born.
The single biggest factor that contributes to an employee becoming an A-player is the manager they work for. When you ask top performers about their best career experiences, they rarely mention the paycheck first. They talk about a boss who mentored them, provided the right tools, clearly defined expectations, and coached them through challenges. Conversely, when you ask about their worst jobs, you will hear stories of managers who offered zero communication, provided no training, and only spoke up when something went wrong. To build a high-performing team, you have to look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are the kind of leader who creates A-players.
Culture is More Than Words on a Wall
Culture has become a buzzword, but in the blue-collar space, it is the glue that holds your retention strategy together. Culture is comprised of your mission, your vision, and your core values. It is not enough to just write these down and slap them on a wall in the shop. They must be the filter through which you hire, manage, reward, and even fire your team members.
Core values should be short, memorable, and deeply authentic to how you operate. For example, one of our primary core values is Family First. This has absolutely nothing to do with laying pipe or moving dirt, but it dictates everything about how we treat our people. If it is 105 degrees outside and a foreman gets a call that his father is in the hospital, he knows he can drop what he is doing and leave. The rest of the team will step up to cover the gap because they know what we stand for. When your employees know that you genuinely care about their families above all else, their loyalty skyrockets.
Another vital core value is Accountability Drives Excellence. You can have all the systems in the world, but if you do not hold anyone accountable to them, your culture will erode. Core values remove the emotion and the guesswork from difficult conversations. When an employee is consistently failing to meet expectations, the conversation is no longer a personal attack. It is simply a discussion about how their actions are not aligning with the core values the entire team has agreed to uphold.
You must integrate these values into everything you do. Bring them up in the hiring process. Discuss them on day one of onboarding. Dedicate time in your monthly meetings to recognize employees who have demonstrated a specific core value in the field. When an employee who barely speaks English is nominated by his peers for demonstrating company values, you know you have built a culture that transcends language barriers and job descriptions.
Revolutionizing the Hiring and Interview Process
The traditional blue-collar hiring process is severely broken. For years, my own strategy consisted of seeing if a guy could breathe and then handing him a shovel until he either quit or got fired. That complete lack of a system led to a chaotic revolving door of employees.
To fix your hiring, you have to stop interviewing purely for technical skills. Yes, you need to know if an operator can run an excavator, but you also need to uncover their behavioral attributes and cultural fit. Always ask open-ended questions. Instead of asking if a candidate values integrity, ask them to give you a specific example of a time they had to display integrity on a job site. Let them talk. Listen to how they process situations and interact with others.
Perhaps the most critical trait you need to look for is coachability. You can teach a smart person how to execute a task, but if they are a know-it-all, you will never be able to manage them effectively. A brilliant tactic to test this is giving the candidate a specific assignment at the end of the interview. Tell them to go home, sleep on the conversation, and send you an email at exactly 8:00 AM the following morning explaining why they want to join your team. Make it incredibly clear that they should not send it immediately. If they send it an hour later, or if they forget completely, you have instantly learned that they cannot follow simple, direct instructions. If they execute it perfectly, you know you have someone who is coachable and pays attention to details.
Defining Success and Unlocking Discretionary Effort
One of the greatest failures in leadership is asking your employees to win a race without ever showing them where the finish line is. If you cannot clearly define what success looks like for a specific role in the first 30, 60, and 90 days, your employee has absolutely no chance of succeeding. Every single position in your company needs defined Key Performance Indicators. Give your people the exact metrics they need to hit to earn their next raise or promotion. When you provide total transparency about their career path, you eliminate the paralyzing uncertainty that causes good people to look for work elsewhere.
When you combine clear expectations with a strong culture, you tap into the holy grail of human capital management, which is discretionary effort. Extensive behavioral research shows that the average employee only gives about 40 to 60 percent of their full potential on a daily basis. The remaining percentage is discretionary effort, and it cannot be forced or demanded. It can only be inspired.
Employees willingly offer that extra effort when they have a deep psychological connection to both the organization and the actual work they are doing. This is where behavioral science becomes a game changer. Utilizing personality assessments for your team can completely revolutionize how you communicate. You might have a project manager who is highly skilled but incredibly frustrated because his natural behavioral style clashes with the deep analytical detail required for the job. You can teach someone how to manage details, but you cannot teach them to enjoy it. Testing your leadership and administrative teams will uncover these hidden roadblocks and allow you to communicate in a way that respects their natural wiring.
The Triangle of Success: People, Tools, and Systems
Building a successful business ultimately comes down to three elements. You need the right people, the right tools, and the right systems. If you overcomplicate the systems but ignore the human element, your crew will stop showing up. If you buy the most expensive tools but lack the systems to maintain them, your production will halt. The secret is that if you focus heavily on supporting and developing your people, they will naturally help you build and refine the systems you need to scale.
If you are currently feeling burnt out and overwhelmed, you must realize that you do not have to do this alone. The reality you are living in is a reality you created, which means you are currently the roadblock in your own company. You have to get out of your own way. Stop trying to hire every single person yourself once you pass a certain size. Stop keeping the company goals locked inside your own head.
Seek out peer advisory groups, join industry-driven networks, and start having conversations with other business owners who have navigated these exact same struggles. When you implement a comprehensive people system, you stop building a really busy, stressful job for yourself, and you finally start building a self-sustaining company. Develop your team, protect your culture fiercely, and watch your business transform.
Member discussion: