Business Innovators Radio - Episode 13: Building Connections by Breaking Down Walls With Kristina Mahler and Jennie Tanner

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Part of the Construction Executives Live Series:Kristina Mahler is a self-described mom from the ‘burbs who just happens to be obsessed with all things construction. Prior to becoming Director of Marketing at Greiner Construction, Kristina had an eclectic career spanning concert production, nonprofit work and jewelry design before landing in the construction sector. Now fifteen years deep in her industry experience, she has made a name for herself in the marketing and workforce development space. Kristina spent several years consulting small contractors across the country on growth strategy and marketing campaigns designed to recruit and retain employees. After flying solo for a long time, she was eager to find the right team to join full-time and found that in Greiner Construction.Jennie Tanner has over 25 years in the construction industry as a trade partner to local and national builders. Jennie began working with her father and brother and together, they opened Tanner Glass & Hardware in 2000. Jennie has led her team as an entrepreneur to bring new ideas and products to the company employing a staff of 70+ talented and committed team members. Tanner Glass has received several awards for excellence in customer service and philanthropy with their generosity to donate to shelters, Habitat for Humanity, HomeAid Utah and other local causes.Jennie Tanner has over 25 years in the construction industry as a trade partner to local and national builders. Jennie began working with her father and brother and together, they opened Tanner Glass & Hardware in 2000. Jennie has led her team as an entrepreneur to bring new ideas and products to the company employing a staff of 70+ talented and committed team members. Tanner Glass has received several awards for excellence in customer service and philanthropy with their generosity to donate to shelters, Habitat for Humanity, HomeAid Utah and other local causes.In The Zonehttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/in-the-zone/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/episode-13-building-connections-by-breaking-down-walls-with-kristina-mahler-and-jennie-tanner

Welcome to In the Zone, brought to you by U.S. Construction Zone, bringing you strategies for success with construction innovators and change makers, including In The Zone peer-nominated national award winners. Here are your host, Jeremy Owens. Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us. I'm Jeremy Owens. I appreciate you guys learning a new program. Eric Meets pretty cool, but I know we're all kind of learned some new things today, so I appreciate your patience. I am your host today. This is Construction Executives Live. I am owner and founder of U.S. Construction Zone and three generations improvements in sunny Fulsome, California right now, where we'll be 86 degrees and hot today. And I, you know, I'm really excited about this new platform update where our goal this year is to bring more education to our members into the construction industry. And we do that by doing member spotlights in the zone podcast, articles, and now construction executives last.

So the way this thing's going to work is the first Wednesday of every month. We're going to do a new topic and we're going to bring two new speakers and we're going to hopefully make this thing really big. So without further ado, I want to get to our first guest. The title of today's Construction Executives Live is Women in Construction, Building Connections by Breaking Down Walls. And our first speaker today is Christina Mahler. and she said she's a self-described mom from the burbs who just happens to be obsessed with all things construction. Prior to becoming director of marketing at Griner Construction, Christina had an eclectic career spanning concert production, non-profit work, and jeweler design before landing in the construction sector. Now she's 15 years in, and she's making a name for herself in the marketing and workforce development space.

She spends her several years consulting small contractors across the country on gross strategy and marketing, campaigns designed to recruit and retain employees. She's been flying solo for a while, but she was eager to find the right team to join with, and she found that in Griner construction. In addition to her role at Griner, Christina acts as founder and executive director of Crew Collaborative. Crew Collaborative is an explosive startup nonprofit with an eye to dramatically shift the way our industry recruits and retains incoming talent through social media advocacy campaigns,

leadership training and speaking directly to our potential workforce. When she isn't working, which I think is all the time, Christina is a single mom to her two children and an avid baker, gardener, and biker. Please help me welcome Christina Muller. Thank you for being here. Wow, that sounded exhausting. It was. I need to break. Time on. Now, please start with your background. I really am curious how you've got here, but also you always say that you have like this, you relate well to the labor force. Why is that?

Oh, you know, I guess, like you said, I had kind of an eclectic background and my love for construction all started when I was actually a high-end jeweler, you know, like 12 or 15 years ago. And I started dating a tile installer. And, you know, you meet a guy and it always like ruins everything.

but um not all guys yeah not all guys um but in this circumstance it actually just opened my eyes to a whole new um industry that i had never been exposed to um and i started you know helping him market his company showing up a job sites doing the girlfriend thing you know showing up with jimmy johns whatever and i realized pretty quickly that i just really loved construction people and the vibe in construction much more than I liked my diamond people and that type of thing. I'm a very outspoken, kind of I curse a lot. I'm just kind of myself and it just seemed like I fit better in that space. And so that's kind of the short way that I got connected with the workforce.

Okay. Cool. And then tell me your role at Griner. I know that this is relatively new to you, right? Yeah, I'm just over a month into this job. And so I took a position as a director of. marketing and I honestly was not looking for a job. I was consulting full time for the past couple of years before that kind of on and off for a total of five years and got recruited into this

position and the more I got to know their team, the more I realized how much I missed having a team and going somewhere to work and also not traveling across the country all the time. They're just a very open, forward-thinking company, and the people that work there are just incredible. So I'm very lucky, and I have not regretted the decision at all. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And before I ask your next questions, I want to make sure the audience has a chance to ask you some Q&A.

So you'll see on the right, there's a chat function, but also there's a Q&A there. So if you think of something along the way, please put it in there. And then towards the end, Matt will help me with some of those questions. Okay, so I wanted to find out a little bit, you know, what was the moment or the reason that inspired the creation of your nonprofit crew collaborative? You know, we started talking, this group started talking in 2020, actually probably at the end of 2019, as we were all preparing to go to ConExpo. And at the time, I was working for Buildwit, which is a media company and pretty well known in our industry. getting ready to go to ConExpo, and I just really wanted to connect with some women that were in the industry as well. And so we had created sort of a group chat on Instagram, and there was, you know,

just under 20 of us that we're talking on there. And fast forward after ConExpo, we decided that we really wanted to do some hard work on the workforce. And so we started talking about a women in construction group. And we ended up having sort of a retreat, you know, mid-pandemic for some reason here in Minneapolis. And what came out of that retreat was that we didn't want to have a women in construction group. We love and respect the women in construction groups that are out there, but we felt very strongly, and I know this is something I say pretty often, but I feel very strongly about this. Like, as a group of women talking to other women in the industry, we didn't feel like we were going to be able to shift change because we're in such a male-dominated

industry. So instead we wanted to take that and shift our direction to become more of a co-ed. You know, yeah, we need to bring more women into the industry, but how do we do that more effectively? We do that by cooperating with our male counterparts, our male mentors, and creating more of a co-ed movement. So that's how it, that was our sort of aha moment. And from there, we've, we've just been kind of trucking forward. Okay, cool. And so that, it was that moment that you guys started adding men to your board and doing things a little bit differently, right? Yeah, I mean, it didn't happen like that. But what I've learned with nonprofit startups is nothing happens quickly.

And so that was in July of 2020. We formed our first board in March of 2021. And that was 18 people, 50-50 male and female. We started off at a retreat in Des Moines. So we spent that six months. just recruiting and finding the right men and the right women to pull together and coming up the plan. And so it's been quite a journey. It's funny. We're in the exact same spot where people are like, hey, why can't you do this faster? Wait a minute. This is our, this is my second

job. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. And you have two kids and I have three. So relax. We'll get there. Yeah. Nothing comes easy. That's for sure. So where did your passion, for workforce development, and I know workforce development is a key component of crew, where did that come from? And, you know, I know it's not only to help our current workforce, but to change the stigma surrounding the careers in construction in general. You know, I think it came from a few different places for me personally, specifically starting in construction and after being kind of like in more of a white-collar world, I was so surprised by. the misconceptions of the industry and the people that worked in the industry.

I had far more negative experiences in the boardroom than I ever had on a job site. And so just really feeling that sort of immediate, wanting to defend, you know, this misconception and these bad stigmas. But also, if I see a problem, I want to solve it. And I saw a lot of people talking about this problem of workforce development and our shortage and how it was going to affect things long term. But not a lot of really great movement or collaboration. There's a lot of really great workforce programs out there that are working hard.

And I think that there just needs to be more action. And so I'm really big on action. I know we'll probably touch on that in a little bit. But just, you know, setting intentions, but then actually taking, you know, making something happen with them. Yeah, exactly. Not enough action, a lot, way too many. excuses these days, that's for sure.

You know, so tell me a little bit about, so some of the programming that exists currently a crew and how we can all get involved. So our two flagship initiatives are, we started something called Classroom Talks, which, and these have both launched in the last few months. So our first initiative is Classroom Talks, and what that is, in a nutshell, during the pandemic, it became really easy to talk. on, you know, virtually and have these virtual events. And so you're kind of thinking like, okay, how do we get in touch with high schoolers? Well, we decided to put together almost like a

roundtable of like anywhere from five to 10 careers across construction from like operators, engineers, marketing people, salespeople, whatever, architects, builders, whatever, put them in a virtual setting with a high school class and let each one talk for five minutes about a day in the life, what they make as far as their income, how they got there, what they like and don't like about it, and then open it up for the kids to ask some questions. Right. And the feedback that we've gotten, you know, just from our test runs of this program, like how we're changing the minds of these high schoolers is insane.

And so we're looking to expand that, you know, we're pushing into high schools right now. We're going to push into middle schools, transitioning military, people that are looking at getting into second careers. And that's actually sponsored by Toro, which is great. They've been an amazing partner. And then we also have the ambassador program, which seeks to create leaders within every level of construction. We're big on developing thought leaders, not just leaders at the top of a company, but people that are going to learn how to be good recruiters for our industry and then go out into their communities and do that work. That's actually sponsored by Caterpillar, and they've been an amazing partner as well.

and we are launching our first class. We just accepted them on Friday, and they start their training this Friday. It's a four-week program, and it's our first run at it. So they're sort of like our guinea pigs, so I've warned them all. But we're really trying to keep it simple, but valuable. And, yeah, we have all sorts of ideas, foundations, you know, all sorts of stuff.

And people get involved by going to our website, which is crewcollab.org, and signing up for anything. like and we are actively seeking sponsors right now. Awesome. That sounds like you've got a couple big ones there to start. That's a good, that's a good start. Yeah. Yeah. I want to, thinking back on your career in construction or maybe even in previous careers, what walls did you have to break down being a female in a male dominated industry? And how has connecting with other women helped you in your career? Um, you know, for me personally, I, and you know this about me, it's less for me about being a woman and more about like the problems I set up for myself or that society

is set up for us in general. I've recently gone through a lot of shifts and the things that come to mind with that question are I've become more comfortable in my capabilities. I see value in what I have to offer in my opinions, which I think is females, you know, if you want to talk about females, we're not necessarily encouraged to share our opinions on things. much as we should be. I started looking at a lot of my weaknesses as strengths. A lot of times I had a hard time being a mom and trying to balance work in life or work in personal life. Now I sort of look at that as like, I'm a master multitasker. I can do a million things and I can do that as well. I stand up for myself and I've let go of the idea of perfection. I just think

that it's such a standard that we set ourselves up to that is just not attainable. So those are my main lessons. Well, I mean, it's certainly you've become an influencer. I mean, 15 years into the construction industry, you've got to be proud of that. Like, you have made a name for yourself. And I think that there's something about you wanting to have a legacy that I see about you. And I think that just keep going because you're right. It doesn't have to be, it's not a women or man.

It's just, you know, who can make. a difference and they're just people who are stepping up and doing the little things that you have to do to to you know make the industry go forward and and so far you know there hasn't been a lot of organizations like crew collaborative in that um you're inclusive to everybody obviously you know and and that's really our starting point and it's a long conversation we need to have with you know our kids and parents and college and the whole nine yards it's a long conversation but we got to start somewhere right Got it. Absolutely. I agree 100%. Cool. Well, we definitely had a lot of conversations about the lack of accountability piece. You know, there's always an excuse about about the labor shortage issue or even millennials that we've talked about as well. You know, how do you respond to that? Because I know this is something that fires you up a little bit. I've gotten myself in a little bit of trouble on this one. But I also, I just, I think that as an industry, we're doers. You know,

we go out there, we get the job done, we stay until it's over, whatever. And I've noticed that with this millennial issue, you know, it's like, oh, it's the millennials. They don't want to work. They don't want to do this. They don't want to do that. Well, a lot of us are the parents to the millennials, right? So a lot of it falls on our shoulders. And I keep saying, like, nobody's riding in to rescue us, right? Nobody's solving this problem for us. It is our job as an industry to just stop talking about it and start taking action on it and doing tangible things. And that's why things like our ambassador program and classroom talks, like we are starting at the beginning. We are talking to the people who actually are going to become our workforce.

And it's not going to be like an immediate change. But we're trying to create a longevity here. We're trying to change the whole industry. And it's not going to happen tomorrow, but we're starting it. And it's a huge revolution. But, yeah, I think accountability is huge. We have to be accountable to saving our workforce, not, you know, wait for somebody else to solve it for us. Oh, yes, yes.

All right. Last question. Then I'm going to get to a few questions. So what improvements in the construction industry are you most proud of? And then conversely, what do you still feel needs the most improvement? This is a hard one. I'm most proud of, I think, just that we have these large companies taking note and stepping up and saying like, yeah, we see what you're doing and we see value there and we know that it's different.

I love our large partners and I love Kat and Toro. I would love to start working with more smaller partners, like small businesses that really are going to be the future of this whole shift. You don't have to be pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars towards something in order to make a difference. Even just the time that you can put into something is huge. And so I just think I would love to see more proactive small businesses, small businesses at the heart of everything for me personally. And I just would love to see more young people understanding what an amazing opportunity lies out there for them in construction. And I'm never going to say don't go to college because there's a lot of people that work in construction with college degrees.

Sure. But I will say go to college with a plan. You know, don't go just to go. Right. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out when you're in college. Yeah, no doubt. Well, I wanted to get a couple of questions. Matt, if you don't mind bringing a couple of those questions out.

So here we got the first one that says, as a woman, how can I develop a career path in an industry that, I'm not seeing the whole thing, path in the industry and how have a family? How have you done it? So I guess they're just talking about the family piece. Yeah, you know, actually surprisingly, this is a question that I get contacted about almost on a daily from women in their 20s who have not decided yet if they want to have kids. You know, oh, I love this construction industry, but how do I make it work with kids? Right.

All I can say to people, you know, I'm 40, I'm a single mom. I have young kids. They're four and eight. And with anything in your life, if you want it, you just make it happen. You know, you find the employer who's going to support you through that and they are out there. You know, if you're working and you can't, you can't feel comfortable creating, starting a family or having that conversation with your superiors, then you are at the wrong place. And if that conversation is not happening within your business yet, you should be the one that starts it. But I would, no matter the struggles I've had with my kids, I would never go back on it. All of it's worth it to me, balancing the time. It doesn't, it's worth it. Yeah. And that's a different one for the men and women.

Like, you've gotten that question a lot. Guess how many times I've gotten that question? None. Yeah. I get that right. Zero. I mean, and that's wrong. Everyone's good.

It's, you know, there's people, we all have skills, right? And, you know, I happen to be good at work too. But, yeah, I talk a lot about work-life balance on my Instagram page, which is Christina underscore steel toe. And I talk a lot about that mom thing. So if there's anybody else that wants to learn more about that, by all means, look me out. Cool. Matt, do we have any other ones or are we on to the next? Yeah, here's our next one.

In your opinion, what is the good? growth outlook for gender diversity within construction? Oh, it's happening. I mean, I don't have like exact numbers for you, but women are being empowered and more importantly, they're needed. Yeah. You know, there's no way that we solve this problem without more women stepping up and stepping, you know, forward and these employers embracing that. And I think that I don't think, I know it's happening. So it's just a matter of how long and how fast we can make it happen. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, Christina. Like I said earlier, we've known each other for a while now, and I have deep respect for what you're doing at Crew Collaborative. And not only that, you have this desire to bring people together and bring organizations together. And I'm going to be part of that mission with you. So I appreciate you being here. And for all the everybody out there, go to CrewCollab.Croborative.org. All right.

Crewcollab.org. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, thanks again for being here and I'm sure I'll see you soon. Okay, cool. Thank you. Thanks.

All right. On to our next speaker. Jenny Tanner has over 25 years in a construction industry as a trade partner to a local and national builders. Jenny began working with her father and brother. And together they opened Tanner Glass and Hardware in 2000. Jenny has led her team as an entrepreneur to bring new ideas and products to the company employing his staff of sales.

70 plus talented and committed team members. Tandaglass has received several awards for excellence in customer service and philanthropy with their generosity to donate to shelters, habitat to for humanity, homemade Utah, and other local causes. Jenny participates in several industry groups and sits on the local board for homemade Utah, as well as Salt Lake HBA, the National Home Builders Institute. And Jenny is currently the 2022 president of Utah. professional women in building and sits on the NAHB,

PWB, Board of Directors and Board of Trustees. Jenny, I think you just need one more tongue twister in there. That's not fun. She is married and has two daughters, 17 and 22. They all love hiking and boating. And the family spends a lot of the summer months at their property in Star Valley, Wyoming. Jenny is an avid traveler, but her favorite place is still Yellowstone.

And please help me welcome, Jenny Tanner, to Construction Executive's Live. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. All right. Well, please give us a little bit of background. We were very similar and that we both started working with our families. Yeah, that's a challenge in itself, right?

Yep. Yeah. So I lived in Atlanta for 10 years. And when I came back to Utah, I started working for my father's construction company. He sold, he was a trade back then. It was called subcontractor. and he sold mirrors and shower doors and door hardware to builders in residential construction. And I became a salesman for him working in the Park City area.

So I worked on more of the custom home aspect and learned a lot about new and different products. And definitely saw the need for those high-end custom home builders and not only the need, but the demand. Right, right. And how was it working with your dad? because, I mean, we have very similar upbringings and that, you know, our dad was the one who brought us there. So how was it working with him? You know, I have a lot of respect for my dad. He's a very hard worker and he put his whole heart and soul into the business that he had prior to tannerglass and hardware with another partner.

There were a lot of sacrifices made. And he taught me a lot. He was a great mentor to me. He took me out. he showed me the ropes and I've always had such a high respect for my dad and everything that he has sacrificed for our family. And we still today have a really close relationship. He was very proud of the work that his family name has done in the Utah. Yeah, that's awesome. That's so much legacy involved there. I was the same way growing up with my dad. He took me on sales calls when I was

probably eight. You know, so that's really when I started in this industry is like, eight years old. It's a long time. So along with working with family, you also share a common business owner trait with me and that we are both control freaks. You know, how, you know, how are you able to start letting go of those certain aspects of the business? And what advice can you give the rest of us who are struggling with this same thing? So I definitely am a control freak. That is for sure. But in growing your business and learning about other people's strengths. I think it's important to allow people to fail just like your children. You, you want to come back and pick them up and help them. But in order for them to grow as a person and

as a team partner in your business, you have to give them a lot of rope. I've learned that micromanaging is not in my best interest or nor in my company's best interest. And I have other things that I want to do now later in my life. And I want to be able to give them the response. responsibility. Having 70 families to feed is the way that I look at my company. It's not that I have 70 employees. I have 70 families that I need to feed. So I take responsibility very seriously. And I try to share my concerns and those responsibilities with my team leaders so that they can, they can take the responsibility. They can take the reins from me. Yeah. And without relinquishing some of that control, then you couldn't do the second part of your phase of your career, which is your

philanthropy work and all the things you do in the community and especially professional women in buildings. So please tell us a little bit about the PWB and then what are your responsibilities as a president? Three years ago, Utah, we had the PWB chartership offered to us through the National Association of Home Builders. So we created the charter. The chartering, the chartering, we created the chartership and trying to understand what PWBs did around other cities across the country. Most of the work done is through community outreach and philanthropy and being a liaison and working in the construction industry, getting women into the construction industry, helping out in the communities, whether it's donating a local pantry or helping to build a ramp

for someone, but it's all about philanthropy and community outreach and getting more women into construction. So we took the audacious opportunity to build the first home in the nation, built exclusively by women. And our goal in doing that was to earn enough profit in that that we could give scholarships to young women in our local area to help them get into construction. So now that that platform is there, now that we have the house that she built underneath us, and we have a children's book that has been written about us from Molly Elkman out of Philadelphia. And then we now recently just received our first Girl Scout patch.

And it's overwhelming. The attention is overwhelming. And I feel like we have to now set a standard for other PWBs. and really set the stage for women to understand that there is a place for them in construction. And so my job right now as president is to start giving that money away, to start getting into the school districts, giving these applications out to young women to let them know that a woman working in construction is not option B.

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, what a, it's famous now. I mean, the house that she built, I've heard probably 20 times. just from various conversations and to meet somebody that was kind of part of that. And then you were telling me a story about people traveling from all over the U.S. to come in and help you build it.

That's cool because then they all just go back out to their communities and spread the word. Tell me a little bit about that. Right. So as a matter of fact, there are only 3% of women that work out in the field in construction across the nation. And so when we started to work on this project,

I was in charge of the labor, which is just a crazy thing to volunteer for, because the labor was all volunteer work. We were not paying anyone to come out and work on the house. It was all based on volunteer. The more volunteer work we had, the more donations we had, the more money that we could give away. So I started reaching out to women on Instagram, and we created an Instagram page called the house that she built.

And I just started reaching out to all of these women. Kelly Ireland, who was a plumber in Philadelphia, we flew her out. Her handle is tiny plumber girl. She's only about four foot eight. But she was a master plumber and came out with her partner. And they worked on the house. We had two tile setters come from Bend, Oregon and Washington State. And they stayed for two weeks and worked for free on the house.

We had five trim. carpenters come out from Georgia and New York and Maine and Kansas and Indiana. And so everybody coming together and working on the house allowed them to see what was possible in their own backyard. And some of these women have gone back and really been able to grow their own businesses through social network and be able to market and network based on the work that they did with us. And it really, it made things really special for us to have women come across the country and then go back to their communities and share, and spread the word and share their experience. Yeah. It's almost like you guys all knew how important this was, which is, it's hard to have that foresight, but it seems like you guys all did.

Like, hey, this is going to be really important. And sure enough, it has been. I mean, like I said, it keeps coming up and it should. So that's awesome. I mean, tell me a little bit, you know, I know that philanthropy is huge for you, but tell me a little bit. bit about the homemade thing as well that you and your team are working on. So yeah, I said on the board of directors for homemade Utah. They started in Orange County 30 years ago and they do have locations across the country. But homemade is a liaison between the builder and the homeless community.

And our goal is to pair the two together to build structures that chronically homeless people can live in and get them off the streets. And what we're doing in Utah, actually the PWB is doing two different things. So Utah has, there's a city, West Valley, city has donated some land to Utah, to Homemade Utah, and we will be building 400 tiny homes. They are anywhere from 250 square feet to 450 square feet. The PWB, we will be building one of those homes. And it'll be a community that you have to apply for, you have to be approved for, There will be a general store and a laundromat and gardens to take care of and help these people become members of society that give back and help them to get off the street. The other project that I like to donate our time to people, I'm always volunteering the PWB.

They love that about me. I'm always raising my hand. No, we can tell. We can tell, Danny. We can. Only Utah is in charge of the Utah Diper Bank diaper drive every year. And so sitting on the board, I decided that the PWB would be in charge of collecting 500,000 diapers this year, which is only 20% of the need. And we will be building a home made of diaper boxes.

It'll be August 19th at Rio Tinto Stadium. And it'll be a rendering of the house that she built. that is so cool I mean I have to I have to bring up this question now that Kimberly just said she said love the house that she built need to pitch as a TV show

like for sure you guys should get a videographer out there and make sure you guys are capturing this because you could make a little documentary that can I mean talk about going viral make a little documentary about the event that you guys did

but also the diaper thing as well I mean this could keep going on and on and I'm with Kimberly. You need to think big on this thing. Well, you know, what we want to do is, and thank you, Kimberly, for the question and in the comment. You're absolutely right. We had a lot of video taken while building the home. And so I think it's a terrific idea to put that all together and make a documentary.

And I call it the good, the bad, and the ugly what to do and what not to do when doing this project. But we have had other PWBs reach out to us and ask us to help them. do the same thing so that they can give back to their community and earn funds through charitable donations. Yeah. I mean, Christina just said small world crew collaborative came out to visit the house that she built during construction. So she was there too.

Like, I'm telling you, this thing is, I mean, I'm a guy in construction and I've heard this 10 times. Okay. So this needs to, yeah, keep going. Let's give it some legs and however you need to promote. vote this thing further, let me know, because I want to be a part of that. And, you know, I'd love to, I'd love to learn more about the diaper drive as well to see how we can really rally behind it. And the only thing in California is we're going to need 100,000 of those little

tiny homes. So can you help me with that? I will. I'll absolutely help you with that. Raise your hand. Well, I mean, I wanted to, thinking back on your career in construction, and I asked the same question to Christina, you know, what was that you have to break through and and how has connecting with women really helped? So I thought quite a bit about that question. I think that I really struggled for a long time getting people to take me seriously when someone would call,

they wanted to speak to my dad, they wanted to speak to my brother. And I kept telling them that, you know, this is where it ends. I'm the person. There's nobody else that you can speak to. And it took a long time for people to understand that, oh, wow, this woman does own this construction company.

and she is the person that we need to deal with. One of the strongest traits I think I have is my relationship with my customers and the customer service that I give them. My tenure with my employees and my customers goes back to the day we started business 22 years ago. We brought customers with us from my father's previous company. And so getting to know them and them knowing me has helped in the relationship of respect. but I know I remember so many terrible stories through the recession where I was calling trying to collect money and they just, the respect just wasn't there.

And I need to talk to your dad again. You know, I need to let me talk to Jeff. It just, it was a real struggle for me to gain the respect and going out on job sites when I was in sales. I was always assumed to be the homeowner or the interior designer rather than somebody out there actually filled men. measuring. And I remember not seeing any women on the job site and thinking, that's weird. But I always dismissed it and I never really thought about it until I got involved with professional women in building and realized that so many of the women in our group have the same story to tell. And we all joke about how we found our tribe. This is a group of women that can share the stories of men.

putting baby in a corner and not and not taking us seriously. But like Christina said, we are making huge gains. I think social media has helped. But I know that the conversation and the vibe is absolutely out there with women working in construction. When we were building the house, we had steel sent a lot of tools to us. Cat has a line of footwear and they sent us all boots. And so it's really interesting how a lot of these big manufacturers are wanting to get more women involved. In fact, I saw an advertisement last night on television for steel. And I thought, why don't you have any women in this commercial? You've got men driving all of this equipment. You've got men weed eating the yard. Why do you not have women out there using this equipment?

It was an immediate, I was very aware at that moment that, wow, why do you? you not have women in these commercials? Yeah, it's still not everywhere, right? I mean, this is a long game, and the people in those spaces in the advertising space, they still are not getting this message yet. And we have a long ways to go, but just like Christine was saying earlier, like it starts with a conversation with an individual person, you know, or a family or a classroom.

And it does start small, but that's really the only way we got it. And instead of making all the excuses about, hey, the government or this, that or the other, we have to actually go do it ourselves. And it doesn't matter if you're a small business or a big business, we all have a responsibility in this if we want our industry to be sustainable. Or do we want a homeowner to call for a plumber and it be a month? Like, that's where we're headed if we don't make some corrections. So it's really imperative that we, yeah, like you said, change the advertising,

change everything. So we had a book written about our experience and it's of course called the house that she built. And we're taking that book to elementary schools around our community and reading to these second, third grader kids. And one of my experiences, the first question I asked was raise your hand if you have a parent that works in construction. And a lot of the kids in the classroom raised their hands. And so as I was calling on them, I kept getting, well, my dad is. roofer and my dad does this and my dad does that and I put my hands on my hips and I said all right is there anybody that has a mom that works in construction and the world just went silent and I and so it was a really good learning opportunity for these kids because this book talks about 18 different trades and

shows pictures and all of them are girls yeah and you touched on a little bit the power of of social media and you know the house that she built and all these things that you guys have have done. But what what women typically are better at the men is creating that tribe. And yeah, partly you guys, you guys need the community right now. But you guys are good at social media. You're good at telling stories. You're good at being personable, you know, vulnerable, all the things that you can basically check off for a guy and be like, not usually very good. Not usually very good. And that has really helped the movement as well because, you know, they can actually show their work. I mean, we were talking the other day, like, you can go on Etsy and see all sorts of

woodworking things. And that very well, most of the time, is a woman. So it is helping the movement, right? Yeah. A lot of social media platforms are allowing people to get what in whatever your business is, whether it's construction or not, but allowing people to get their talents out there in a way that they don't have to start a brick and mortar and have all of those initial expenses in. They can build something. They can put it out there on social media. They can sell it and they can ship it.

And I think it is definitely, I have to have a brick and mortar because what I do is I install everything that I sell. And we do have a lot of customers that want to come in and touch and feel the product and look at the different finishes. But for somebody that does build furniture or do metal artwork or something,

it's really easy to post those pictures. And I think that that's definitely going to continue and become even stronger than it is today. Yeah, awesome. All right. The last question for you is the same one. I ask, Christina, what improvements in the construction industry? Are you most proud of?

And then conversely, what do you think we need the most help with? You know, one of the things that I've noticed and paid attention to, when I started working for my dad, trades were called subcontractors. And I always hated the word sub because I felt like it was subpar. It was second. It wasn't as good as. And today, that, that name has changed to a trade partner. And I think we now have a little bit of the upper hand, especially right now with supply and demand

and pricing. Right. And technology has helped you. You don't pick up the phone anymore and say, hey, I'm ready. We, as a trade partner, I go on a website, and I see that this is when cultured marble or tile is going in,

and I know when I can go measure my showers or I know when I can go measure hardware and install. So I think technology has really helped a lot. But I do think that the partnership between general contractor slash builder and the trade partner has the respect, is better and the relationship is a lot better. Yeah, no doubt.

It does seem to be changing. And you're right, the sub or the labor force, the workforce, you know, is changing now. Obviously, they have a lot more power. They have all the power currently. And they really, you know, back 20 years ago, think of how they were treated. You know, they didn't have lean rights. They didn't have all sorts of things to protect themselves. It was basically like, let's just continue to mistreat.

then. And no wonder why they didn't come into the industry and be workers. I mean, they're not going home and talking to all their buddies about joining them on the workforce. They're talking about how much it sucked. So that now that they're able to make a living wage and do better that, I mean, that, that is a huge, a huge help to the industry. And I think that needed to happen. I agree. I agree. It's totally changed the perspective and the relationship. cool awesome well i wanted to see matt if if you have that poll ready we wanted to do one last poll here and basically like i said it's going to be uh the first uh wednesday of every month we're going to have a different topic and we wanted to kind of ask your guys his feedback on on what

are some potential um you know next topics for us there is a poll section on that upper right i'm not sure if you could see it yet or not but jenny i appreciate you being here and i appreciate all you guys for being here and kicking the tires with this new program. I know it was a little clunky and a little hard to get used to, but hopefully we'll see you next time and hopefully I didn't screw it up. It was great. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much, Jenny.

And thank you guys all. Bye. You've been listening to In the Zone with Jeremy and Valerie Owens. Be sure to subscribe to In The Zone and stay in the know with the best minds in the construction industry. To nominate an innovator or change maker in the construction industry, connect with your management peers, and stay up to date with construction industry news, be sure to visit usconstructionzone.com.