Latest / The Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast / 009 - TJ Crosby
Transcript
- Paul: And welcome in to the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast on our way to being the world's number one concrete podcast, and we are brought to you by XBE title sponsor for the month of August. So happy to have them along for the ride. And if you're a customer of theirs, you're probably also happy. If you're not a customer of XBE, please go check them out at their website, x-b E.com. Learn about how they'll plug into every aspect of your ReadyMix operations. It's not just ReadyMix, they do as ball aggregates, heavy building industry is their specialty. But ReadyMix is what we love the most here on the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. And they are ready to plug you in once they get connected to all the systems. They you're allowed to just run your company, not just manage it and react to things as they happen. You get real-time insights, drive things forward. They got agent XBE. He's freaking cool. His logo is awesome. Whoever designed the logo needs a raise, in my opinion. Freaking awesome. And if you want to learn more about who they are as people, feel free to check out our past episode where we had Chris on. Chris Wirtz was here is the president of ReadyMix over there at XBE. Fantastic guy, corn husker fan. So, you know, nothing wrong with that, I guess. But as far as human beings, seems like a wonderful guy. Our conversation was fantastic. So happy to have XBE here. If you are interested in learning what they can do for you, please visit their website WW dot x dashb dash e dot com. boy, it's still August. It feels August feels like it's just dragged on forever. But then at the same time, the kids are going back to school. It's fun to see them. We had our our first cool breeze here in the Philadelphia area where I am located. every morning, the the baby wakes up smiling and happy at 6 a.m. or earlier. And I just don't have the heart to make him go back to bed. He's ready to get up. He's all smiles. I pick him up. I take him downstairs with me, make a cup of coffee. And we take a walk around the neighborhood. Why do we do that? He loves being outside. This kid, if you would just leave him outside all day, he's in his happy place. He wants to be outside. So I just I'm like, all right, let's go do that. Let's just be outside. And we take our walks around the neighborhood. Two days ago before recording this, it was the first cold morning we've had in a long time. It was fifty-nine degrees, but the air had that crisp, you know what I'm talking about? Had that That bite to it that lets you know summer is dead and gone and winter is coming. Now, I hate winter. I think it's terrible. If I could live in a place that only had spring and summer and maybe fall, I would do that. I'd be okay with just spring and summer. But we live in a place here that has all four seasons and winter is indeed coming. The only good thing about that snap cold is you know football's around the corner. College football is what we love here. If you're new to the Slump Monkeys show, I I would believe it. We got hundreds of subscribers pouring in across all the domains. Thank you so much for being here. We're happy to have you. If it's your first time, just understand this is a concrete podcast, but it is sometime veers into like college football podcast territory. That's what we love to do around here. speaking of college football, we have created a Pick'em League. Please go to ESPN.com, search for actually, it's actually easier if you just go to Google and type in ESPN Pick'em League, P-I-C-K space pick'em league, for college football. You jump in there, search our group. We're the slunk monkeys, jump jump in, come on, sign up. We're gonna recap this every week on. We're how people are doing. We got a couple dozen people in there already. Five hundred dollar first place prize. There will be a trophy. Five hundred dollar first place prize to the Pick'em League. Sign up today. we will have a sponsor for that. They've already agreed. we're just putting a couple things in writing just to make it all formal and official, but really, really excited to announce that. $500 first place prize with a trophy. ESPN College Football Pick'em League Slump Monkeys. Check it out. You gotta get signed up quick. Season's coming. And it's gonna close. So the sign up closes. So once the season starts, sign up closes. Those first games hit, that's out. You're out of it. Five hundred dollar first place prize. I there's only like three people right now that I don't want to win because I don't want them to shove it in my face that they have the trophy that we're gonna create. But so I need your help that we can go and defeat them. As far as current events out in the world today, there are some concrete stories that really caught my eye and I wasn't sure if you guys had seen this or not. There's a story out there reporting that the Kiwitt executives see a billion dollar opportunity in nuclear construction. So if you followed along at all with the whole data center thing, it really highlighted how much more energy we need to create in this country. I think a lot of us that are in the construction industry, we knew that like the energy production in this company, in this country, sorry, was like decent. And when you have to like max out the grids, sometimes they can fall off. So you're talking about Texas when they have ice storms, talking about California, when they have heat waves. There are moments where our grid seems to falter just slightly, but they're just moments. They're just moments when peak demand for a short amount of time just really taxes the grid. But otherwise, our grid's actually pretty resilient. There's a lot of doomers out there that want to tell you otherwise, but I'm telling you right now, it's pretty resilient. We've got capacity, but then you start bringing on data centers. You start re installing factories all over the country. And we just gonna not just data centers, but other factories too. And you're gonna need the electricity. You want to build more houses, you're gonna need more electricity. And that's where a lot of us see nuclear as a great option. There's been companies that are talking about building small nuclear reactors instead of like the big giant ones like Three Mile Island. But Regardless, whether it's small reactors, medium, large, these are very complex projects and very complex installations. Now, if you're sitting there thinking, like, geez, we don't want Chernobyl here in unit in the United States, Fukushima, we don't want these things to happen here. Three Mile Island already did. How do we prevent that from happening in the future? And if you haven't looked at nuclear technology lately, the systems that are being designed in 2026 are nothing like the systems. They were designed in the nineteen seventies. They're much safer. The regulations on these things are absolutely insane, but that's not stopping Kiwitt from being bullish on the reactors, nuclear reactors. So they think it's gonna be a billion dollar business. In fact, they've already doubled their revenue on nuclear based construction since twenty twenty two. They think that's just gonna go to the moon. You know, right now the US government's making a bet on that too. So the DOE is d offering up loans directly from the Department of Energy for they're they're willing to loan out up to seventeen point five billion dollars for people to develop just ten nuclear reactors across five sites. So that was announced back in June. Seventeen and a half billion dollars for ten reactors. That's incredible. also earlier this year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NRC, who is the ones that put a lot of roadblocks in front of you to not be able to build any of these reactors, they actually gave out their first commercial nuclear reactor permit in over 10 years. So that that went to Terapower. That's a Bill Gates-backed nuclear reactor design and development company. First one in 10 years. So QIT is trying to seize on that momentum. You know, the The data the data center thing is what's really driving this, right? There's a huge growth interest in that. also the ability to to be carbon free. So nuclear is low carb really almost no almost no carbon when it comes to actually producing the energy itself. And so it can be grouped into that renewables category and Kiwitz, they said, Yep, let's do it. I mean, we gotta we gotta jump on this. so What what are you gonna though? Are you gonna do are you gonna do these large jobs with the DOE that where you're, you know, revamping Three Mile Island? You're gonna do the small nuclear reactors and these things are modular and you can put on different sites and power different size projects. You know, the Kiwick guy says building a nuclear reactor is kinda like building an automobile. That not all all automobiles are created the same. Got large semi trucks and They serve a purpose. You have sports cars and race cars and they serve a very different purpose. And you could kind of say the same thing about nuclear technologies right now. Very large reactors that have a place in powering half the country and SMRs that have their place that would be, you know, maybe a single data center would take a single SMR. But there's a lot of challenges on these projects. Right now, nobody's developed like a real playbook. Like if you want to go build a reactor. All right, what are the steps you need to take to get through the regulatory process, the design build process, project completion? What's that playbook look like? So nobody's really designed it. So Kiwitz out there, they're tr they think they've got an idea of of what that playbook looks like. And if they can develop it, then they'll be ahead of everybody else. And that's why they think they can actually get this full billion dollar market, not to themselves, but as a leg up on the competition. You know, a lot of people look at this and they say, it's too complicated, too complex, regulatory environment's insane. You have to deal with the NRC. But you know, Kewitt says though these people are just making excuses and they just don't want to do complex projects. And you know what? We're gonna do it. I like that attitude. I love the attitude. Someone saying, you're just scared to do it, bro. You just you just you just don't have what it takes, bro. And they're just gonna go out there and do it. You know, one one of the other concerns I had I I just don't know where it's coming from. Like the labor, the skilled labor. I I think we feel like we're in a labor shortage all the time, but then new projects pop up, mega projects pop up, and they just keep finding guys. Where? Where's all these skilled trade people coming from? It's very, very interesting to me that the people just keep showing up. but they're not just gonna have a people problem with these reactors, they're gonna have materials problem. So the data centers are sucking up all the steel and copper. But what about the stuff that has to be like nuclear regulatory approved from an engineering constructability standpoint? You can't just go to Best Buy and just pull stuff off the shelf. Can't just go to Home Depot, get what you need. Can't just call an HVAC supply warehouse and get like, yeah, you what? I think your role still works for what we're doing. Let's just bring it on. No. It has to be like super highly engineered. And there's not a lot of far firms that are doing that. So when I'm looking around and my first thought is like, my gosh, there's a massive bottleneck. We should all go make a company and And d and do these nuclear specified products. So we can make a ton of money off of it. but Kiwitz, like, well, I guess we're just gonna have to support those people too. So it's gonna have to be support private and public to just beef up the supply chain so that you can even build these things. And I think that is super fascinating. Do we know for sure that nuclear's coming? we don't know. But Kewit's making a Billion dollar bet. I absolutely am here for it. But you know, if Kewitt had a culture problem, they could call our friends at Rocket Start. You've heard about him here since the podcast launch, and they've got one more month with us after August. And we're so, so thankful for Manny Tejano and the folks at Rocket Start. He is a culture wizard, a company culture wizard. If you are a company who's seeking to reward And recognize your folks that are not just doing the basics. You can recognize them for that. You're showing up to work every day this month. Fantastic. Let's recognize that too. But the guys that are going above and beyond, the girls that are going above and beyond, and you see them do something that's positively impacting your company. For example, what if you're ready McStriver and you were done for the day, but one more load came through and they need somebody to take it. You said, Do you know what? I was already washed out and I was done. I'll take that load. Somebody's got to do it. Or someone had to leave because they had take get their kid from school. And they said, man, somebody needs to take his load. He had to leave because he had to go pick up his kid. I got it, boss. No worry. I got his load. Those are the types of things that you can now recognize and then reward an employee for. And you can find out more about that at gorocketstart.com. Tell Manny Tejano that we sent you the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast, sent you there. If you see Manny at a trade show, stop him. Say, Paul said, I have to tell you that I heard about you on the Slump Monkeys Concrete podcast. Let him know that we love him. We love Manny Tejano. Go Rocketstart.com. Next story, I don't know if you guys saw or not. It was a bill that got passed in the state of Missouri. Now, you guys know the rule here. We don't talk politics. Sometimes we talk policies. There's a policy. Got passed in Missouri. it also has been passed in a few other states. I believe California, Virginia, and New York also passed this. And then Missouri is the fourth state to do it. And we'll talk about it right here. They passed a bill that allows the public offices, not just the state, but also local public offices, to enter into what's called a progressive design build contract. Now, if you're listening to this and you say, Well, I know what a design build process is, what is progressive design build? So I'm going define it for you. They both put the designer and contractor onto one integrated team, but the difference is when the project scope, design, and price are finalized. And I read this, and my corruption bells just start going off. So I'm going to go a little bit deeper here for you. Normally, when you're running design build, you have one firm. So let me start. You have an owner. That says, I have a project I want to build. Let's pretend it's the city. City says we want to do a wastewater treatment plant. They've scoped it out. They put all the specs in place and they put the project out for bid. If you're a design build contractor, you and maybe four other people come in and read the project scope, say, All right, I think I can do that. And then you place a bit a design and a bid on it. You say, All right, it's gonna cost this much. To do every step of this work. Here's the design. Here's the build. And we'll just wrap all that up. We'll be the designer and the builder all in one spot. And we'll do this project at this price. The government looks at it, typically takes the low bid, and you're off to the races. You talk with the government, you get into the nitty-gritty, and and then get the project started shortly thereafter. The progressive design build. Is where the local government's going to come out and say, Hey, we want to build a wastewater treatment plant, but we don't know what we're doing. Would you come help us? And then you get four guys that say, Yeah, we can help you. And then the government just picks one. And you work together with the government to say, This is how you should design it. This is how you should build it. This is what it should cost. And I hear that. I'm like, you're awarding projects. Before you have looked at there's no submittal. They're just saying they can do it. And you're it just it's very, very strange. So you're rewarding the project when the scope and design are way less mature. The owner hasn't developed like project like substantial project requirements or anything, like the price is developed later. So you You you don't even know that you're getting the guy that would have the low bid if that's what's important for the public. It's really, really strange that it's really, really strange that you would award a project like that without knowing for sure that it's gonna it's gonna cost what you think it should cost. What they're trying to say is that in the progressive design build, you know. The city might have uncertainty around site conditions. Let's let's go back to the water treatment example. Might have uncertainty around site conditions, utility conflicts, permitting, or the exact budget. They don't even know what we should spend on this. And so they would six they would select a qualified design builder first and then work together to refine the design, you know, do whatever investigations need to do and then work on the price. But once the city accepts the scope and the price, then they all move together into construction. So what I had a problem with is that, you know, you're you're picking the contractor before you know what it's gonna cost, right? And the preferred design builder is usually the incumbent. How is a new person gonna break into that? Wouldn't you just say, we'll just pick the guy that did it last time because they know what they're doing? That It that that's very strange. Once the design builders actually helped create the project and the the city doesn't like how much it's gonna cost, who how are you gonna negotiate with them? You just walk walked through it, they walked you through their prices and you get to the end and you just have I don't know I don't know how you negotiate that. That doesn't that doesn't necessarily and when it comes to like the incumbent advantage, like the guy just that did it last time, well but it'd also be like, these are my friends. How are you supposed to, as the taxpayer, co be confident that the procurement wasn't done just because it was a good old boys club? It's really, really, really strange to me. Also, from a risk standpoint, if you would think that, we're doing this together during the design phase before we begin the div the build phase during this progressive design build thing. You think, okay, well, we'll be able to mitigate some of those risks about unknown site conditions, permitting utilities, and that kind of but really you collaborate together and then a costly surprise arises. Well, all right, well, who's on the foot? Who's on you know who who owes that? Is it the contractor, which it normally would be, or would it be the city because they were involved every step of the way? Now, us as taxpayers are paying for that too. It additionally. The now that the city's not the one building the the package and building the specs and saying what's gonna get built and where and how. Now they're now the city is going to pay substantial design and pre-construction costs to these firms. And then at the end they might see the number and say, Nah, that's too high. We we can't do that. And the project just never happens. Cost transparency to the public, I just still Still not sure how that really how that really plays out. It doesn't it just doesn't seem good. And then have you ever known the government to not be complex and overburdensome? So now before you can even get into the to sub what you would normally say is the submittal phase, you have to do all that with the government too? Yikes. man, I just I just don't I I don't get it. It's like the Fox Guard in the hen house type of thing that you know, whatever team you select's gonna influence the project definition, the design choices, the schedule assumptions, the cost estimate. And and then what's the what's the government gonna do? I just don't know how they they push back on that. It just I don't know. Just it just smells. So there's an article out there about this and they're they're trying to hype it up. It's a good thing. The Missouri legislature passes HR 2474. Expands access to progressive design build for contractors working with government agencies. So how do they expand access? They said, hey, if you're doing a smaller job, you can also have access to this rather than it being just really, really large jobs. And they they they're trying to tout that this is becoming more more more common that it's it's picking up steam and there's just you know there's just some differences you know some I just it's just it's interesting right so then they tried to cite a project in which it worked. They said one example that the progressive design build practice worked is the 1.5 billion dollar Kansas City airport terminal and garage project, which opened a couple years ago. I was like, okay. Well, maybe, maybe my fears are unfounded. Maybe I'm a negative, pessimistic guy because we've just been in construction forever and I should be more open-minded. So I decided, okay, let's go check out this project. So this project, you're looking at A redesign of a lot of Kansas City's airport. you're talking about 39 gates that were redone. You could actually expand them up to another another eleven on top of that. you're looking at massive facility upgrades for travelers, you know, the the the fun stuff, family plays play zones and shops and restaurants, like 50 of them, new parking structure. they've got Different things for anxious travelers, sensory rooms. So, you know, it's a nice upgrade. I'm not saying it's not a nice upgrade. It is. It really is a nice upgrade. however, there are criticisms about the project. So after voters approved the plan in 2017. The build expanded in scope and it ended up costing five hundred million dollars more than anticipated. Guys, that's a fifty percent overrun. I just told you it was a $1.5 billion project, but it was supposed to be a $1 billion project with a $500 million overrun. What did I tell you just a minute ago? One of my initial fears of the progressive design build is that you Don't have a handle on the cost. These guys are just riding you in, and then you have no leverage. You have to just do what they say. And then who's accountable? Who's accountable? Nope. We just pay it as taxpayers. Now, not me, because I don't live there, but if this progressive design build comes over and it's hard to be accountable to who's spending what, and the the project you're touting to me. Had a 50% overrun, $500 million in extra expenses. I'm starting to start to, you know, my gosh, I don't know about that. Well, guess what? It doesn't stop there. There was also a scandal around the process by which the developer was selected. Well, what do you know? Paul's number two fear come to life. This wasn't unfounded. In fact, It resulted in a $62 million legal settlement. That reporting's from the Kansas City Star, by the way. So not a lot of transparency on the cost leads to a 50% overrun. And by the way, it was the way everything was procured was not handled, let's say, ethically. And they had to pay sixty two million dollars to company called Burns and McDonald that would have received that much if it had won the airport contract. So just crazy that the two massive fears that I had going into this. Progressive design build thing, we're literally involved in the project that they're touting as a success. They're saying, it worked here. did it? Did it work? I mean, the project got done. 50% overrun. God almighty. That's it's crazy. So, what are you gonna do? What are they gonna do about it? Well, they held a round table. And they said, All right, if we're gonna move in this direction of these progressive design builds, then we gotta, you know, gotta figure out what we're gonna do. Cause there's five hundred billion dollars worth of jobs in the US for mega projects alone. Five hundred billion dollars at least. I mean, I'd say it's probably more than that now. it we're recording this in August of twenty six, and I think the last estimate I had is it from the end of twenty five. And so it could be more than five hundred billion. That's still an insane amount of projects, mega projects alone, that are that are headed here to the United States. And if you're gonna go to this new way of doing it, what are you gonna do? Like what how are you gonna fix it? They say, we just have to have better communication. That's it. Just better com if we just had better communication from the start, then everything will be fine. It'll be fine. Nothing to see here. We just gotta have better communication. Better communication. That'll prevent fifty percent cost overruns. Better communication. That's all we need to not you know illegally hire people without submitting things correctly. Jeez. just the the design, the whole design build thing's weird anyway. Cause you give it to a guy who says I'm a design build contractor, but then they sub out the design. And then maybe they do the build. Maybe they sub that out too. And they just manage the project for you, is essentially what they end up doing. It's a it's a really strange, it's just all Very strange. When you get Jason Wimberly back on here later this year, we'll go through all this design build stuff. He's an expert. I'm I'm just I'm just angry. I we'll we'll have him on here. We'll go through it. But I just want you all to know that the the world's a weird place. People do weird things. And you know who's not weird? Command Alcon. That's right. Our friends at Command Alcon are sponsoring us again here this month. We appreciate them helping us get this show Off the ground out to the wonderful audience. Command Dalcon is celebrating 50 years in the software business. Think about that. 50 years. Can you think of what software companies existed in 1976? And how many of those are still around today? Apple, Dell, and they all went into hardware. Command, software only, baby. And they've ridden all the waves from the on-site. On prem server, you know, craze to now everything going into the cloud and now everything being agentic, you know, they're they're navigating it each step of the way. And you know that if you want to talk to the greatest IT guy in concrete, you can call Billy Ripple over at Command Alcon. He is available on LinkedIn. You tell him the slump monkeys sent you. All right. Billy Ripple. Greatest IT guy in concrete. Command Alcon, they have a special place in our heart here and we appreciate them. Please visit them at commandalcon.com. That's A-L-K-O-N. Commando.com. If you're interested in being a sponsor on the show, we would love to have you. Please reach out directly to me, admin at slumpmonkeys.com. That's M-O-N-K-E-Y-S. Slumpmonkeys. Admo admin at slumpmonkeys.com. We are sold out of ads until February of 27. But if you would like to reserve your space in February of 27, we'd love to have you. I'm concerned that we're sold out so far into the future that people are going to forget. And we're gonna get to February and we're gonna be looking around like no, there are no sponsors because everybody just forgot because I'm like, Jesus Christ, that's a long way away. but I what I can tell you is the things that are coming in October of this starting in October this year, things are gonna get wild. And 2027 is gonna be a special, special year for this podcast. I'm so happy that all of you are along for the ride. I am so pleased to introduce The interview for today. This is TJ Crosby. He went in and took over concrete careers. You might think, what has that got to do with me? my gosh. I have now the way I've got Billy Ripple is the greatest IT guy in concrete. I TJ Crosby is now the greatest HR person in all of concrete. I never thought I would like an HR person ever. And then I don't look if if Miss Barbara or Miss Sue are listening to this, I don't I don't mean you guys like I I like y'all personally when we were at the Christmas functions. It was wonderful. you you were so nice to my family. Like you're great. Great, great people. Love you to death. But when it comes to like work, I never came to your office. I never got called in your office for a good reason. It was somebody was yelling about somebody on the my team doing something or me doing something that it was just ridiculous. And you know, I I think TJ's like outlook on this. was really interesting. And his idea of where the incentives lie are really interesting. And now what he's doing at Concrete Careers, they're doing something nobody's ever done before. And when you hear about the idea, you're gonna go, you're like, my gosh, how did we not think of this? How did nobody think of this? This this is crazy. But his team thought of it and we're happy to have them here. Please welcome him into the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. TJ Crosby Interview: And welcome into the interview portion of the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. We have a fantastic guest today. He might be the concrete world's greatest HR man. We have TJ Crosby, CEO of Concrete Careers. What's going on, man? T.J. Crosby: Yeah, doing well. Doing well. Glad to be on. Excited to to be part of the show. TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I've got in in my life, I have the person I consider to be the greatest IT person in all of concrete. That would be Billy Ripple over at command. And now I I humbly believe that you are the greatest HR person. And I'll get into why in a minute, but maybe you could maybe you could explain to people a bit of your background. T.J. Crosby: Yeah, happy to. I feel validated in in in creating my Instagram. handled the other day of the at you know concrete HR guy. So I felt felt validated in creating that that the other day on Instagram. But I am an HR guy through and through, been in HR for about 20 years and have enjoyed a lot. I've worked in private equity for quite a while and struck out of my own about three years ago, three and a half years ago at this point, and actually invested in concrete careers, which some some may know, some May not have heard of us yet, but we've been around for 50 years. But really excited about jumping into this industry. It's been a phenomenal industry to be a part of. And you know, got my my wife put a lot of faith in me in making that transition. She she was a stay-at-home mom at the time. And so we came in concrete careers, we've grown a lot, so search firm, and then you know, also invested in an HR consulting firm about two years ago. because couldn't get too far away from the HR roots. And so Yeah. I mean we so we I live down here in Atlanta. We we serve the whole country and great team. You get to meet some of my team members the other day and we just have a lot of fun in what we do TJ Crosby Interview: Great. T.J. Crosby: and try not to take ourselves too seriously. And so yeah, but got a thirteen year old, seven year old, she just she just started playing lacrosse and so figuring that out and he's he plays soccer a little bit. So we we try to split the seasons one spring, one fall to not not be too busy because busy TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. Yeah. T.J. Crosby: enough, you know, as you know. Working full time, having a podcast, running businesses. TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah, it's not well the po the podcast is is the one thing that doesn't feel like work, man. and T.J. Crosby: Or that's fair. TJ Crosby Interview: you think the podcast is happening now. we've got some things coming in twenty twenty-seven you're not even gonna believe. Like this this thing T.J. Crosby: Love it. TJ Crosby Interview: is gonna take off like a rocket ship. There are things happening in the background I cannot wait to tell everyone about. And I I mean T.J. Crosby: So that's exciting. TJ Crosby Interview: I'm just fired up. This is the only thing that does literally doesn't feel like work. Like when I sit down It's nine o'clock at night, the kids are asleep, and I have to do something for the podcast. It's not like, I have to go in there and T.J. Crosby: Right, right. TJ Crosby Interview: edit a clip. I gotta schedule it. No, I'm like, sweet, let's do it. Let's let's have T.J. Crosby: Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. TJ Crosby Interview: some fun. And I love what you said about how like you guys don't take yourselves too seriously. And that's why y'all are can I can I tell everyone now you're gonna you're gonna be a sponsor in September? Okay, great, T.J. Crosby: yeah, yeah, absolutely. TJ Crosby Interview: great. they're sponsoring Conquer Careers coming on. In September, we're actually gonna do something with them that we've not done with anybody else as well as like a part of like this in addition to just being a a live ad read here on the show. So I'm very thankful that you guys are coming. Very good. And one of the reasons I think you're one of the perfect partners to come along this journey and be a part of this community is I like to think that the people in this community we take concrete seriously, but we don't always take ourselves that seriously. T.J. Crosby: That's right. Yeah. And really thankful about that because, you know, it's tough. I mean, especially coming out of private equity in the in the private equity space, sometimes people can get really caught up in who who's wearing the bespoke suit and and you know, I'm I flew down from New York and that sort of thing. And I'm just very kind of Main Street America vibes. I mean, one of the last companies I worked with as an HR leader, I made a point to start wearing. jeans every day. At one point I got us to approve shorts in the summertime. That TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. T.J. Crosby: was I felt that was a big win, you know. but it wasn't 'cause I mean, you know, it's not because I particularly care to wear shorts on a regular basis. If you know, I'm happy to wear whatever, but it's really to build a culture for the team at the time that it was that was there that was more relaxed, more comfortable 'cause the competition for talent is real. So having a place where people feel like they could be a little more themselves and maybe they could be across the street. TJ Crosby Interview: Mm-hmm. T.J. Crosby: helpful. So but private equity y you really had to push hard against TJ Crosby Interview: So T.J. Crosby: that norm, you know. TJ Crosby Interview: the last company I was with, we were owned by two during my time there, I was there fourteen years. And during that time we had two different PE firms that owned T.J. Crosby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. TJ Crosby Interview: us, one of them for like eight of the years that I was there, and the other one for the remaining six. So so I I am I am familiar with the PE guys. none of none of my experience was negative. Like you get PE gets a bad rap of being like negative. Yeah, T.J. Crosby: That's good. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: yeah. But When you were there, were you doing HR stuff for the PE firm or were you actually so I don't know. I'm I'm just trying to fill figure T.J. Crosby: Yeah, no, it's a good question. TJ Crosby Interview: out like how you how you fit in there. T.J. Crosby: So I I kind of I was sort of loosely affiliated with the private equity firm. TJ Crosby Interview: Mm-hmm T.J. Crosby: I actually had two different ones that I worked with ultimately, but but I my main focus was in the what they call a portfolio company. So they would the companies that actually they owned, they would run as kind of their own operating entity. I was the HR leader for those entities, basically. And yeah, TJ Crosby Interview: gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. T.J. Crosby: so the private equity piece would would show up. I kind of would joke if we We were running well, you kind of earn earn your freedom a little bit where you get they kind of leave you alone to do your thing, you know. It's when things aren't going well. That's when you have more of the the other folks that had to show up because they have to protect the investment. I mean, the honestly they're they have an obligation to the people that have invested in the funds that they need to provide proper returns, much like a publicly traded company. And so anyway, so I had really good experiences with those those organizations, for sure. And yeah, if you have a really good private equity partner. It can be a lot of fun. That's why we had really high growth for a while because that we you know, we had we had had sort of like daddy's money to play with a little bit, you know, to TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. Yeah. T.J. Crosby: to grow and and do some cool things and it was neat to be part of that. TJ Crosby Interview: It was yeah, it was fun. I I I saw when I you see read things about like P came in chopped, dice, sliced, you know, whatever T.J. Crosby: Mm-hmm. Right, right. TJ Crosby Interview: and and ever and now they're everybody's watching expenses like a hawk and you know, they're cutting things, they don't trimming the fat and all these negative horror stories. That was not my experience. The first P firm that had us, they were investors and they were invested. And when they saw good ideas, they let run and they put money behind them. And it was they did they didn't bring in a bunch of outside folks. They just said, build your team, keep going. Things were going pretty well. The second one that came in, they installed a new management team. But you know, the previous management team, when they sold that, you know, a lot of them retired. They made their money, they worked really, really hard for a long time and they earned what they got and and they got out of there. The new folks that came in though, that was that was an eye-opening experience because it was a different type of people. It was the private equity installing their folks. that they've known for years from the consulting firms that you know, the the big ones, sorry, the big four like firms and they they stall those guys and you're like, Whoa, like this is another level of brain power, another level of and a different way of looking at things. So it's a lot of a lot of fun to learn from two different like styles, I would say. T.J. Crosby: Yeah, and I would say if anybody's thinking about, you know, if they're thinking about going to work for a company that's that's backed by private equity or private equity's coming into the mix, one thing I would say is it's a phenomenal way to be able to grow in your career oftentimes because of the the to your point, the brain power, the level of excellence that people expect sometimes. It can be, you know, the way I would relate it to like if you play tennis, you know, tennis is very kind of a one versus one sport, right? way to get better at tennis oftentimes is to play someone who's better than you 'cause you learn how to, TJ Crosby Interview: I mean. T.J. Crosby: you know, compete at that level. I think working within private equity is a lot of that way where you you learn how to operate oftentimes at a different echelon than you would in a more traditional setting. and it's gonna be I mean, I I feel personally it equipped me very well to do this. step out of my own and make investments and make decisions. I don't think I would have been prepared as well if I had worked in a more traditional setting for my career. But TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. You know, it's funny, like w two two stories quickly. the the introduction to the different level of people and way of thinking about things were made me realize how much I didn't know about business and it made it it forced T.J. Crosby: Ha ha ha. TJ Crosby Interview: me through insecurity to finally go back and get my MBA. So it it was like I just didn't want to T.J. Crosby: There you go. Yeah. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: feel that ignorant again. And I was like, okay, so I'm I'm not never T.J. Crosby: Right. Right. TJ Crosby Interview: gonna feel that way again. So I went and did that. The s the second thing was you just met a different like diff there were different like it's like different types of humans. Like it was really interesting. Like and now I talk to people sometimes on the phone and I just had this phone call the other day with a guy who's a you know VP of strategy at an aluminum comp aluminum company and I'm listening to him talking. I'm like, whoa, I I know like T.J. Crosby: Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: do you know, do you know what's your background? Do you know this guy and this other guy? Like T.J. Crosby: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: Turns out they had like the exact same background. I was like, my gosh, like you sound like this other person. So it was interesting. It's like, okay, there's a there's a type of person that fits these molds and they're just high level go getters and it was it's fun to be around them. I actually wished I'd have been like better at my job and better more capable at the time when I knew these people. Maybe I could have impressed them more. I really I mean, I I look back and like, gosh, T.J. Crosby: Yeah. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: wish I'd have taken advantage, but I I just didn't know what I didn't know and still still learning every day. T.J. Crosby: Yeah, it's I mean that's the thing. Like you I'm a big proponent of you you take what you know now and move forward. Yeah, I'm not one big on like looking back, people say, you should have done this this this differently. It's like I it was what it was. You know, I I mean I I'm here now, right? TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. No yeah. No it was what it was, but yeah. T.J. Crosby: it's interesting. The the one thing I'll say too about the private equity idea, there's a kind of this notion oftentimes but people look at people that have accumulated some level of wealth. There seems to be an assumption that it was inherited in some sense. But oftentimes, especially in in America, the the norm is most people are first generation that have have built some kind of business or some kind of whatever and to get to where the level they are now, oftentimes if it is generational wealth, you'll actually hear the words family office show up. family office comes in when it's the family has accumulated wealth and they're deploying the funds. And there are businesses in our industry that are family office backed, but they tend to be still like kind of family held and we're put underneath the family office. But so that's one thing you talk about the the type of people that they're if you listen to what they have to say, like they they they done it. They knew how to build that success. A lot of times it's through a lot of hard work though. Late late nights and long weekends. TJ Crosby Interview: It's yeah, it's a twenty year overnight success. Yeah. T.J. Crosby: Right. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. When they become visible is when TJ Crosby Interview: Speaking of first generation wealth, we actually mentioned it on a previous previous episode. It's ninety three percent of millionaires in the United States are first time they're self made. They didn't inherit any money to make them millionaires. They may I mean they may have inherited like fifty grand or a hundred grand or something like that, but they didn't inherit a million dollars. They made a million T.J. Crosby: Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: dollars and became millionaires on their own. T.J. Crosby: Yeah. That's true. I mean, it's interesting, a couple of things around that. People people's perception of millionaires, for one, is there tends to be this idea that millionaires are just like super elite group and very small, but like in the US there's millions of millionaires. So like it's it's a bit nuts, but yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: Well I w well no not not for long. We're gonna eat the rich. We're gonna eat them. They're gonna take all their money. You know, what do you need a million though? T.J. Crosby: Yeah, but that's the other thing too, is like because the reason it's it's possible to do that is because money is it's it's not a finite resource, it it builds on itself. Like the whole idea, I mean the whole come back to the private equity thing. Private equity can come in, can leverage 40, 50 percent, and then increase the activity of the business. All of a sudden the business is producing double the revenue it was. That revenue didn't come from somebody like. Like it didn't necessarily even affect somebody else negatively. It just maybe more businesses are choosing to use your services. It's so interesting. But the it you can get it for free. It's like a PDF download out there on the internet. There's a book called Millionaire Next Door. it's a phenomenal read if you haven't read it. TJ Crosby Interview: Mm-hmm. Great book. T.J. Crosby: And it kind of puts that that idea in play. It it talks about they they were doing the research for the book and they had these guys that all came together and ladies and guys that came together. And the first time they met with them, they had like caviar and wine and champagne. Or whatever. And nobody touched it. And they left. They're like, nobody ate. And the next time, I can't remember the exact food they had, but let's say the next time they had like beers, like like Coors Light or something, and some burgers and hot dogs. And like they ate they ate it no problem. So there's there's also this idea that like a lot of times people that are have produced that first generation wealth, there's this spectrum, but a lot of times it's just a guy that is is driving the the old Ford F one fifty next door to you that it's just saved his money and worked hard or it's the person that had a good idea and ran with it, took the risk. Anyway, there's any num there's all kind of ways to to become that level. But it's just interesting that people's people's idea of it oftentimes is very different than the reality of who actually is. That's why the whole purpose of that book. So TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah, well and th there was a follow-up study after that book. So that study, that book I think tracked it wasn't even like a thousand people that they tracked. T.J. Crosby: Mm-hmm. TJ Crosby Interview: And there was a there was another study done later. It was like more than ten thousand millionaires. We're saying that's so that's where I got my statistic. And it it it found the exact same thing that the average millionaire was not on a yacht somewhere, eating caviar flying private jets. The people who are millionaires in the United States, they have like you know, almost half of their net worth is in their home. You know, the other half of of it forty percent of it is in their four one K's and then they T.J. Crosby: Mm-hmm. TJ Crosby Interview: got some cash to round it out. And that was kinda like the breakdown give or take. And and sometimes it could be like a third, a third, a third where, you know, as asset physical assets like your home, then your four one K and then and then cash. So it was it was kinda in that range. And I thought that was really Really interesting that when we think when we think of millionaires, sometimes we're thinking of people that make a million dollars of income every year. And that's a that that's that's a precious now. That's a precious few. That's a heck of a club to be inside to be inside of. T.J. Crosby: Mm. Right. Right. That's a different thing. That's yeah. Yeah. That's much smaller. TJ Crosby Interview: So when when you were involved with private equity on the HR side, this is fascinating to me because I don't remember we I remember the the second private equity. People they did, I think they brought in, I know they hired a new like head of HR. I don't know if she was brought in because she was one of them or one of their, like you said, you were one of their people that they would install where they needed them and you would help the different portfolio companies. But I don't know if she was that. she she was good, but I don't know if she was that. So I'm I'm curious, and and I want to couch this in my experience real quick, so you can respond. in the exact way that I want you to respond 'cause now I'm just fine. The T.J. Crosby: Just just chat me separately. We I make sure I know what the answer's supposed to be. TJ Crosby Interview: No, I but it's it's funny because a lot of the times when I'm asking questions on the podcast, it's it's because I think the audience would have the same question. Like that's how I think about the show. T.J. Crosby: Right. Right. TJ Crosby Interview: I think about the show that I think I know who the audience is. I think I have a good feel for that. And so I'm asking the questions that they would be asking. And so in this case, this is question that I want to know the answer to that. But they might not even care about. And T.J. Crosby: But I care. Right. Well as soon as they saw me, to be clear, the viewership just dropped. TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah, yeah, they heard HR and everybody turned it off. But I'm I'm curious because what what I would see a lot of times is they would bring somebody in and the goal of the PE firm was to beef something up. So when I in my experience, the P PE firm instead of flipping houses, they were flipping businesses. And T.J. Crosby: Mm-hmm. Right. TJ Crosby Interview: instead of trying to do it in five months, they were sometimes looking at maybe five years. I mean it less would be great too, but It was often on a five year time scale. And they'd come in and they say, this house needs a new kitchen. We're gonna re you know, renovate the kitchen, it's gonna sell for more. You come and say, this this business needs a new R D facility, we're gonna renovate that, it's gonna sell for more. You know, whatever whatever it was, it was kind of like that. Was kind of the frame. So, how does HR fit into that dynamic, or was that not the dynamic that you were a part of? T.J. Crosby: No, it's I mean it definitely is part of it. So HR done well really in any company, you should be super focused on retention because the retention of the people, you know, Henry Ford figured it out years and years ago. If you can just retain people, they get better at their job. That they get more effective in their role. So the same thing exists within private equity, but it's even more critical than private equity because because of the nature of private equity investment, it can cause some disruption because People have assumptions about it. Sometimes the leadership does change. And you're trying to as HR, you're trying make sure it doesn't waterfall down to have, you know, other rippled effects of people leaving at the frontline levels. Cause it shouldn't really affect their day-to-day life, ideally, when leadership changes like that. So that's one thing, trying to make sure you keep the people in place. But also you are trying to help maximize the value of the talent that you have. And so let's say maybe, maybe when you're operating at a certain level. You might be fine with a lot of layers of leadership and really narrow spans that may not really be needed at the point you are now. or if you can, you know, a role comes open and you can hire a really top-tier talent to come into that role, they might be able to manage that department with less layers and a broader span because you're just a more capable leader. So oftentimes you get that happening. That makes the team end up being more effective because they have better processes, better ways of working, higher standards. I mean, there was there's a perfect example. We had a really strong leader come in in one of the companies I was with. she's a very, very kind leader. But she had she came in and saw kind of what the current operating model was. It's like, hey, I think we can take the same people and and like on the sales side, I think we could double output. If when you first hear it, you're like, that sounds crazy. TJ Crosby Interview: Mm-hmm. T.J. Crosby: A year later, sure enough. And people were happier because they were making bigger bonuses and stuff. And it was the same people. It wasn't like we'd had to like turn everybody over. It was just like, Hey, I your standard has been this. I expect your standard to be that. And people are like, okay, cool. TJ Crosby Interview: Okay. Okay. Wow, that's a good reaction. T.J. Crosby: And then as we grew the platform, we didn't have to grow the team because they just yeah, and they liked it because they're like, I get to earn more money and you know I mean because there's this idea that people do tend to if you give somebody 40 hours to complete a job, they'll take 40 hours. If you give them 20 hours to complete a job, they'll typically complete it in 20 hours. There's obviously a natural limit to but I think private equity is really good oftentimes and as HR, you need to support this focus of helping to maximize that time usage. Because you're looking at you're not looking at year over year results. You're looking at quarter over quarter, right? because you do have that five year time horizon to make things happen. And so you have to have a faster kind of pace and making changes and and things like that. The other thing, but HR done well, especially in a private equity environment, but really anywhere, is to understand how your talent initiatives align with the overall business goals to make sure that the things you are taking on. helping that to happen. So what HR can can tend to do sometimes is to put just policies into place or rules and regulations or whatever to kind of slow the business down. And you have to have extra check boxes to check to get something approved or whatever. The best thing you can do as HR is is choose like the bare minimum policies and stuff that are required that are helping to reduce how many conversations have to happen to make decisions. but then from there kind of get out of the way and say, hey, let's let's let's make things let's make things move. If we're doing like a talent review, is it actually to help determine who's going to be the next leader in the in the roles where you can not not miss a beat if somebody gets promoted and the next guy's or lady is ready to step up? If you're doing a talent review just for the sake of saying you did a talent review and in a fast-paced environment, private equity or otherwise, it can be a waste of time. And so you have to know like, is it actually helping to tr deliver the overall financial results that we're all should be striving for? In a for profit business, we should always be traveling for that. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: Bro. Cause in my experience, the incentives for HR for them to be judged as having done a good job, like how do you evaluate their contribution to the firm. As a sales guy, it's easy. there's revenue. Like look, T.J. Crosby: Right. TJ Crosby Interview: there's profit margin. It's very easy to show the value that I add to an organization. But for an HR person, how do they do that? And a lot of times it was I put in three new policies this year and they pat themselves on the back and they give themselves a four out of five. Everybody's happy we and we and we move on. And you do that across a handful of HR people. For a handful of years and next thing you know, you can't do anything. And all my guys are getting called in DHR for violating policies left and T.J. Crosby: It's like, we have this, we have new this new system we're putting into place, this new policy, this new process. Yeah. Yeah. There's I would say less effective HR. So your your strongest HR people, in my opinion, are business professionals who happen to be in HR. So they understand TJ Crosby Interview: Mm. T.J. Crosby: similar to like this the CFO should understand how the financial planning impacts the businesses success long term, the chief marketing officer. chief revenue officer, all of those that they should understand how they affect the business. HR should be the same way. So what oftentimes happens is HR leadership doesn't know how to tell the CEO the value of HR. They get worried about that. But the but on some level I'll tell you if you're you have to be comfortable in your own skin as HR and be willing to say, look, a lot of our value is saving on economic costs, not Like opportunity cost, not reality, like actual financial cost. And what I mean by that is the cost that could have happened if we had not done this thing well. Like it's very like good HR should be sort of invisible almost. because management should be working well with their teams. But oftentimes they want to have like some kind of metric to show that shows how busy we are. Look at all we're doing. We need more people on our team and all that. But so that's when the the busyness comes in. And I've had I've had leaders I've had to push back on in the past that HR leaders who were like, hey, we want to put into place like a we want you to track TJ how many employee relations requests came in, how much discipline, disciplinary documents we put into place. And I was like, absolutely not. One, it's gonna waste my time. Like the business needs to be to be alongside them giving by advice and guidance and helping to look around the corner and see problems before they become problems. Like that's what they need to me to be doing. so really good HR. Focuses on probably three key metrics and that's it. You know, your turnover, you know, is a big is a big one. Your talent acquisition results, like how well you're attracting talent, how long roles stay open. And then are you, you know, the goals that the business has, like the same goals for the everybody else, are yours. The revenue and the EBIT. All right. Like that's the profitability. That should be your focus as HR also. Oftentimes HR doesn't even talk about those. I'm like, no. TJ Crosby Interview: I've never heard an H I've never heard an H R person say Ibadah before. So that was great. T.J. Crosby: Right. Well, it but it's so important because that that's how you can make a decision on whether it's time to go hire more people. The perfect example I give once I give people this example, a light bulb kind of turns on and it's like, that that's why. Think about overtime. If I said, Hey, hey Paul, like a lot of your team had overtime last month, is that a good thing or a bad thing in your mind? Off the top. Not to put you on the spot, but you know. TJ Crosby Interview: No, well I mean my immediate question, well, what was our output? Like what T.J. Crosby: There you go. See, right. That's what that's what HR people should be. But a lot of times HR, like, my gosh, we had this this cost and we need to, you know, and not just pick on the CFOs, but CFOs TJ Crosby Interview: yeah, yeah, yeah. It can it can be immediately yeah. T.J. Crosby: of the world oftentimes are like, hey, we spent this much money. Really good HR would connect with the operations leader, and I did maybe work with like the data team, if there is a data team, and connect the overtime to the production. And if we get overtime, but we, you know, is which is time and a half, but if our production doubled, our net, our net revenue. was better. Right. And so now the human element, the the what HR should watch out for is eventually overtime is a is a tap that runs out. Like you had to eventually hire more people because people burn out. But so there's a natural tension there. But good HR should help understand how the overtime contributed to the bottom line and whether it was a good investment or not a good investment. That's so once that kind of gives people that example they're like, like that's you know, it's like right. How how do the people's effort and what you're doing turn into results at the end of the day. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: Yes. Well and and then connect with the sales as well and say we did this, did we do it to solve problems? Or did we do it because T.J. Crosby: Right. Right. TJ Crosby Interview: we were behind? Or, you know, what where's T.J. Crosby: Yeah, yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: the communication with the customer? Are we not getting orders in on time? Like why did we need to have guys working sixty hour weeks? in my experience, guys would like to have like a little overtime. So they would they T.J. Crosby: Right. Yeah, yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: want to be at like forty five hours and they get they get comfortable, they like that extra that extra T.J. Crosby: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Nice a little extra kick, right? TJ Crosby Interview: I like that little extra kick, so you gotta watch out you gotta watch out for that too. T.J. Crosby: Right, right. It does happen, but that's where again, but also monitoring the numbers, right? 'Cause there's this tendency and I'm kind of really geeking out about the HR s sort of science of things, but there's a tendency in HR to be like, no, no, this is our data. And I'm not gonna share with you what our data says because like that's that's like confidential, like some employees stuff. TJ Crosby Interview: Wait, hold on. Whoa, HR HR wouldn't want to s share that with the C suite? What? No. T.J. Crosby: No, like I on some level, but how do you how do you get it to the C suite from a reporting standpoint? Because if it's standalone data TJ Crosby Interview: Mm. T.J. Crosby: over time or turnover or whatever, like so what? Right? But I've I've TJ Crosby Interview: yeah, it's not connected and it's not connected to any T.J. Crosby: got to connect with the IT, which let's be honest, IT because they control the provisioning of the computers, they can get into the data anyway if they want it, really wanted to. But if I connect with IT or whoever's responsible for the data or the ops team or whatever and start tying the data together around TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. Yeah. T.J. Crosby: what ops is doing. what the revenue results were, what the t it's like now if I'm a CEO or on the board, now I can actually make decisions of like, we should obviously go hire more people to do this work because look what it pr it's producing for us. Right. That's where the value of HR starts to come in, where people don't even question like HR being like they say HR is a cost function. I'm like, done well. HR should be viewed as almost like supporting revenue generation if you're doing it right. anyway, it's like my soapbox. TJ Crosby Interview: No, this is great. This is why T.J. Crosby: Even on a sub light phone. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: this is why I can refer to you as the greatest HR guy in all of concrete. TJ Crosby. The one and only. So the one's enough. One's enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So T.J. Crosby: I appreciate that. Yeah. The one and all these. One's enough, you said, right? Yeah. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: I'm so thank you so much. I that was a great conversation. It's it's just funny, man, my whole life. Like HR has been a four-letter word. T.J. Crosby: Yeah, right. It's it's common. It's normal. And we kind of earned it. We've earned that reputation to be honest. TJ Crosby Interview: Well, and even the HR reps that I had were like them that like the people were fine. They were great actually. I go to T.J. Crosby: Mm-hmm. TJ Crosby Interview: the the Christmas function, I'd sit right next to them. It'd be great. They knew my all about my family. They were always asking about my daughter. Like they were wonderful. I don't like outside of that, but it was just the whole I like we have three new policies now. It's like, brother, come on. T.J. Crosby: Yeah. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: I did have actually sorry, before we transition, I had one more question. T.J. Crosby: You're good, yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: It seemed to me like another big responsibility of the HR function at the company I was at was they were always managing benefits. It was a it actually at some points of the year would be a massive time suck on them to review the benefits. How are people using the benefits? What benefits are we missing? It does does that you mentioned three things, but you didn't mention Anything about benefits, would that just sort of be folded under talent acquisition, like you need that stuff in place or talent retention? Like, where does that fit in T.J. Crosby: Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: in your mind? T.J. Crosby: I mean it's it's part of the I mean, as as far as metrics like the the C suite would really care about the ones I've mentioned are like that's the ownership or the C suite. As an HR leader, that's part of your overall compensation package for your team. And so that's part of attracting the talent. the but the benefits piece, it's so it's just there's a lot. Like benefits have a lot of different oftentimes there's a lot of different vendors that are involved. You have different insurance companies, you have a oftentimes an outside broker. you're dealing with to help you go to market to shop the benefits, the benefits programs themselves, like, you know, yeah, United or Blue Cross or Anthem or whoever, like they're only gonna like your current platform is only going to give you your renewal rates within a certain window of your time you have to renew. So you have like this like like dead sprint to go figure out what your plan's gonna be to change. So that's where there's a lot of time suck because of that. Cause it's just like kind of this like narrow window of time. but again, HR should be largely invisible, is what I mean, right? So if you're doing the benefits piece well, you're doing the compensation programs well, then everybody's kind of content with there's always gonna be people that wish they had more pay, better benefits, whatever. That's a good norm. But there's a certain level where it's okay, good enough. We're at we're at kind of a good at market or a little bit above market. But once you have kind of swapped around and put everything back into place, then you kind of go back here into the background again because people just are getting paid reliably. People are getting their benefits TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. T.J. Crosby: reliably. That's the TJ Crosby Interview: So so I let me ask another question about it. How how do you measure the impact of a benefits program to say that like yes or no, we have the right amount of benefits or we have the right programs in place to attract the talent, retain the talent? T.J. Crosby: Yeah, that's a great question. So I think it this this practice tends to come up more in HR if you're doing it well than I think it might in other disciplines. I think marketing is one that it comes up too, but it really is about benchmarking. so the only way to really do it is to kind of look over the fence at what your neighbor's doing and what are they offering. Cause it's it's I think it's probably a lot like like concrete production, to be honest. Like you you want to use the right amount of cement. To have it be the strength that it needs, but not too much, where it costs too much to produce on a per cubic yard basis, right? So that's where the admixes come in to help reduce how much cement is needed. So it's very much that way. Benefits and compensation and HR. You want to do it well enough that people want to be with your company versus somewhere else, but not so well that you can't afford to hire people because you're paying too much. And so that's that's that's the tension. So benchmarking is really how you do it. And you have a you have a strategy as a company. if you're really focused on brand pride, you're really focused on having top talent versus developmental talent, and it's a you know, every company needs to make its own decision, then that plays into how you're gonna set up your compensation package, your benefits package. You kind of have to decide where you wanna be in the market. And that's that's really what determines what you're gonna go do. TJ Crosby Interview: Okay. No, that makes that makes sense. Yeah, benchmarking's huge for a lot of lottery. It was not just HR. I mean, even in sales and business operations, you'd kinda want to peek over the fence and be like, what are their margins? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, where where are they at? T.J. Crosby: Right. Yeah. Yeah. What are you charging? What yeah, can we got get a little under there? Or a little bit better, but where we can show why it's a little higher, you know. Right. TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You always want you always want to peek over the fence and and look at it. So that's cool, man. What a what a great insight for our audience to hear that there are HR HR people out there that are business minded and business focused and bring that attitude and want to march a business forward and understand like, hey, we can't get mired down in policy making. So it's not that you have to be anti policy or policy absent, but we need to be policy conscious. And be thinking about what actually drives the business forward. So now now that you have that background in your life, you then decide you can you can walk me through this journey that you decide to to go out of PE and start your own thing and you've invested in con can you describe that transition and what those conversations were like with your wife? T.J. Crosby: Great question. So in any person who's working in an executive role in general, you're you work a lot of hours. It's just part of part of life, right? and so I was I was that. I was doing that. I was, you know, having I had a successful career and was overall happy with where I was. I had become a chief HR officer, which is kind of a somewhat of a goal of mine. and At a relatively young age, I guess, you know, I wasn't quite 40 yet. And but honestly, had always had this desire to do more. always had this desire to really kind of create and build a business that reflected the type of environment that I personally would want to work within and would be really proud of. And I landed on this idea that the only way I could truly do that was to unapologetically make decisions that set up. The operational model, the culture, all that. So the conversation with my with my wife was like, Hey, we prayed about it. I think this is something we can afford to do for a couple of years. And if we need to, you know, change course, I can go back to work for somebody else or whatever. so began looking for opportunities out there. I used biz by sell, ownership through acquisitions, kind of a new like hip thing to do, but it wasn't quite hip yet whenever I was doing it. And TJ Crosby Interview: Wait, when did when did you take over concrete what was here? Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think I heard T.J. Crosby: About three and a half years ago. Yeah. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: JT Lonsdale talking about this exact model recently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. T.J. Crosby: and the really cool ones we call it OTA, you know, ownership. but I'm not cool enough to do that. But but so was researching and came across a few different different opportunities and realized that that like headhunting and search was where I wanted to focus. I thought about maybe a you know, commercial landscaping company or H V A C or whatever. 'cause my dad and his dad were home builders and stuff. But But I landed on search. It felt like something I could really connect with. And I also knew that I could come in and I was confident we could do a better job than a lot of other companies out there do because I'd been a I'd been a recipient of the services and I knew what worked and what didn't work. And yeah, so you know, sought out the opportunity, saw concrete careers. It was at a very reasonable price point. Gene, the founder, was ready to make a transition out of being the day-to-day owner and his business partner as well, and came in, you know. Bought it for a decent price. It was overvalued, like technically compared to what the, you know, cold hard cash kind of numbers would tell you. But the goodwill in the brand, the brand equity, like 50 years of being in a business almost of the time, it's I was like, it's where I'll take the risk, you know. And I feel like I felt really confident we could really make this into something. And so yeah, we had two team members that worked for me at the time. we've got 13 or 14, I think now we're open, we've opened up for a couple more roles. And so we'll see what happens there. And then with EBS, we're pushing 20 at this point. But but yeah, that's why that's what brought me in. And so I really fell in love with the industry though pretty quickly. the type of people that are in this industry. I thought I knew, but man, it's been so true. how collegial they are and how family centric this industry is, and privately held businesses, even with some of the private equity, the private equity moves. little differently than kind of the typical like bank side type private equity. It's just it's just been a breath of fresh air to come in and be part of like Main Street America, to be honest. and so and we just we have really focused on relationships. That's what I wanted to bring in was relationships as a focus. And because that was the firms that I had worked with really well, were focused more on the relationship they had with me than they were on how many search fees we were paying them. And so we tried to bring that same mindset. You gotta be patient because revenue doesn't grow quite as quickly, in TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. T.J. Crosby: the beginning, but it starts to accelerate later on. And that's kind of where we are now. kind of a long answer to the question, I guess, but it's what brought me into is like, Hey, what I wanna go on my own my own business, simple as that. And like what what is that gonna be? And so research came across this, yeah. So TJ Crosby Interview: No. Yeah. Yeah, what is that gonna be? Well, that's cool that well, it's cool that you gave yourself like a blue sky mindset of like, what is it gonna be? and then you said, All right, well w what am I actually good at? What do I know? What do I really know? And there was a a business available that was right in that wheelhouse that has a good name, that has that goodwill. I think that I think I think you you can't do any better than that. And you know, the three team members that I've met so far were fantastic. Well, beside yourself, were fantastic. T.J. Crosby: He's like, You're d you don't count, you're not on that list. Right now. I get you. TJ Crosby Interview: No, no, I mean I know four of you. T.J. Crosby: But the yeah, the other three I met, they're great, you know. But I got I gotcha. TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah, I know. man, that's good. No, the whole everybody so far has been phenomenal. It was hilarious, like signed on to the first call, and they're already like yelling at each other. And it was like I was like, what did I T.J. Crosby: Right, right. TJ Crosby Interview: just walk into? And they're and they're dying laughing. They're like, No, no, no, I swear it was friendly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. it was so funny. T.J. Crosby: Right. We love each other, promise. You know, it's yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: It was so funny. They were so the the sense of humor on that team was so good, but like they were so organized. And at the end of the call, it was like, here are all the action items. And it was it was really well done to have that type of collegiality and and humor, but still getting work done. I mean, that's that's an interesting culture you're building over there. What where did you is that like that was that already there? Like is that something that you're instilling on purpose? That's something they're bringing in. You're looking for it when you're bringing people in. As culture built culture building is kind of an ephemeral thing. Like, how do you think about T.J. Crosby: Yeah. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: it? How are you doing it? T.J. Crosby: Well, I will say on some level, people think, they can drive culture. And I'm like, no, culture is a result of the people you bring together straight up. Like you can influence it a little bit. You can make people feel more psycholog have psychological safety, kind of one of the buzzwords, or can, you know, provide more space for feedback or whatever. Open door policy, you know, that sort of thing. You can influence it a little bit, but culture really is a result of the pieces you've brought together. And I say a lot to a lot of people that the the sum of the parts are greater than the whole. and if you bring the right people in, and especially if you bring them in and realize that they are stronger in another area of the business, you allow them space to step into that other area, you know, assuming you have the the opportunity to do that, or you kind of look for that opportunity, you let them know you're looking for that opportunity. So putting so bringing in great people in the first place, putting them where their strengths are. And then one thing I I Braden will say sometimes I might be too trusty, but I like to put people In a place where I trust them to do their work and to do it well. And people people respond very favorably to that level of autonomy and respect. so great people, they're smart. You actually trust them and respect them and let them go do their job. And ta-da. Look it. It TJ Crosby Interview: Right. T.J. Crosby: makes you look like you're a genius, right? But it's but it's because they're collectively geniuses. That's the big brain. Like the results is TJ Crosby Interview: He did. Yeah. Yeah. T.J. Crosby: you never you could never try to replicate that just having it all be kind of marionette style. I'm pushing down everything. That's exactly what we're doing. Just TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. T.J. Crosby: doesn't work. Top tier people, what I kind of say is oftentimes I like to have people that work for for me, work with me, that could go be self-employed TJ Crosby Interview: Mm-hmm. T.J. Crosby: if they wanted to. They're that self-motivated, that passionate, but they're like, I don't want to deal with all that, the burden of having to make sure payroll gets met or whatever. Like I'm gonna let you handle that burden, but I'm gonna for the most part feel like I'm part of that kind of business owner type environment. Man. That is like the exact type of team that success succeeds in an environment like ours, you know, for sure. TJ Crosby Interview: I I just love talking to small business owners because you if you haven't experienced it, there is no stress like having to make payroll. T.J. Crosby: I mean, that's where this gray and this gray and this gray That's where it's come from. TJ Crosby Interview: There's there's nothing like it. I'm I'm happy that you're growing, man. I mean, so T.J. Crosby: Yeah, appreciate that. TJ Crosby Interview: the the concrete careers as a company, you know, I think we talked about it privately, but we'll say it here on air that it is it was prior was primarily a a search firm. You're matching people you with companies. I I wanna talk quickly about what What is concrete careers? What is like your standard workflow? And then we got to let everybody know like what's coming next because that's where this it's a gigantic game changer. And we can't believe nobody's ever done it before. And it's it's it's one of those things like hitch you in the head, like what nobody else has done T.J. Crosby: Yeah. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: this? Like, what are we? So I but I want to start it. I want to start first with like standard operating procedure for T.J. Crosby: Mm-hmm. TJ Crosby Interview: how you would work with a client. T.J. Crosby: That's a great question. So at our core, we are truly a headhunting firm. I think some people have think of headhunting as like this like negative thing these days. They're like, I TJ Crosby Interview: What? T.J. Crosby: don't mean to like you're a headhunter. Like, I don't mean anything by that. I'm like, no, no, we are headhunters. That's what we do. TJ Crosby Interview: I thought that was I actually thought that was a I thought that was a positive term. T.J. Crosby: Yeah, I mean, I in in my mind, we're kind of we're kind of bringing it back into the to into the lexicon of like the language we want to use is headhunting because headhunting denotes that you are proactively going to find people to come work in this role for the client. That's TJ Crosby Interview: Yes. Yes. T.J. Crosby: what we do. We are finding people that are not currently considering the next opportunity and kind of waving our hands to get their attention to have the conversation to hopefully they consider the opportunity. Right. A lot of people we reach out to are like, no, I'm good. Thanks. Right. And that's that's a a lot of work. But our the role the reason we do that is because our clients, for the most part, if they have a good brand, good name recognition, they don't need help for most of the roles that they could post the role and get applicants that want to come work there. Great. Most of the time they've got it handled, but it's the ones that are challenging for whatever reason. They pull us into and we have to go do the headhunting thing. If we just do the same post and pray, I call it, that they would do, well, that doesn't do you a whole lot of good to be confident to get results. But also the reason we talk about being headhunters is our model is to to strongly partner and closely partner with the client where they're still in charge of the search and we effectively work alongside them. We are an extension of their team. So that's our that's our core business, is that. And then recently we started offering HR, like fractional HR, HR consulting support as well. That's kind of a new thing. That's kind of those two are kind of been in core to what we've done the last year or so, I would say. TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. And before we get to like the new and exciting thing that if it hasn't lost yet, it'll be launching soon. question on headhunting. It sounds fun. I've gotten calls from recruiters in the past that you know, ask out of nowhere, like, hey, would you want go work for this company for this thing? And so it's always flattering when you get those calls. But what does that process look like? As as a headhunter at concrete careers, there's some fancy software that nobody knows about. Like what's what's the secret sauce to hunting all these heads? T.J. Crosby: Honestly, a lot of times recruiters, you know, that's part of what I wanted to make sure I was clear on whenever I came into this business. A lot of times recruiters will be like, Paul, we have a super special Rolodex that nobody else has. Like TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah, you know. I do, yes. T.J. Crosby: in the age of AI and LinkedIn and Indeed and Facebook, like, no, you don't. Sorry. Like, there might be a handful of people, especially in our industry, that are not visible online at all. And we've got a lot of those are in our database. Yes, that's true. But it's more about The persistence, honestly, to be reaching out to people. The technology does help us to get contact information that we might otherwise have. So that's helpful that we invest in the technology. But the biggest thing is is making our clients, because we trust our clients to see the same candidate data we have, we share it with them. We're like, hey, here are the people we're reaching out to. And the clients are like, okay, that's cool. I really am interested in that guy. And so that awareness of who we're reaching out to when it comes time to make a decision, it It helps get the managers to not be on the fence about making a call, right? Imagine you have a couple of candidates you've interviewed and you're trying to decide which one to hire and you don't really know. TJ, were these the first two you found? The TJ Crosby Interview: I mean T.J. Crosby: first two people that like returned your phone call? Or were they like the best two? And so we commit to try to provide the best two. That's our goal. but the only way you can really be confident about that is to actually see the work. It's like I joke with our teams like when do your math homework or your math, you know, math tests, you gotta show your work. Same idea for us. but it's the persistence. So it's not super special people are in the mix. We do have our database, obviously. but it's that we are relentless in providing a really strong pool of candidates to consider. The other thing I I commit to our clients too, I'm kind of I'm real passionate about this too, Paul, sorry. But you know, there's a tendency to be like, I know a guy. You should interview this guy and see if you want to hire him. We'll we'll still know a guy, but We'll have the other handful of people that we feel like are also qualified and interested to evaluate at the same time. So you're not just only it's not a binary one-to-one, like this guy or nobody. TJ Crosby Interview: Mm-hmm. T.J. Crosby: You better hire right? It's like, no, TJ Crosby Interview: Okay. T.J. Crosby: like, do you like him as well as these others? you like this one better? Okay, cool. Like then hire that guy. It's you know, given the the choice and the confidence of making decisions is really what we are doing as headhunters, not finding super special people. TJ Crosby Interview: No. No, no, no, no, no. That's good. Cause when T.J. Crosby: No disrespect to our candidates either. We love you all. But it's but you know, no. TJ Crosby Interview: I thought when I think of headhunting personally, and again, I don't know anything. So just that's but that's what I do on this podcast. We just speculate and throw out ideas that may not be grounded in reality. I think of headhunting T.J. Crosby: Yeah. That's great. TJ Crosby Interview: like a sales job. And and not not like so for you, the way, you know. I don't know your exact revenue model, but you're not I don't I don't think you're gonna not getting paid by the guy who you're actually recruiting. You get paid by the company where that person's getting T.J. Crosby: Good that's a good question. I will say I'd love to share a little bit. So yeah, so if you're a candidate out there and you have a firm that wants you to pay them or they want you to sign a letter saying that you are exclusively represented by them, run, run away. Because reputable firms are not going to ask you to do anything on the candidate side that commits you in any way, shape, or form. You should have full autonomy, full freedom as a candidate. Yes, we get paid by our clients. and I don't mind saying our average fee on the search side is around thirty grand. Because people are paying us to fill the role that is mission critical, does is gonna provide a return on investment when it gets filled, but it's been challenging to get filled, or they know it will be challenging to get filled, so they call us up. yeah. That's who pays us. That's the client. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah, that's well, that's why you hire experts. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you hire an expert to go get it done. And so when when when they're going so when I think of it as a sales job's interesting, because I don't think of because you're you've got two different sales you have to make. You have to sell the client that they should hire you to do the search, and then you have to sell the person you're searching that they have there's other opportunities for them out there, and they should be considering those opportunities. But that's that's a very unique like sales fun like proposition to have to tell someone that they should change their life. T.J. Crosby: Right. Yeah. Up in your life, make a move over here, right? I hey, trust me that of all the people out there, this person is the one that you should hire and make an impact to your company in a positive way. TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. Yeah. T.J. Crosby: Right. Like I joke that we're our businesses is humans dealing with humans to help place them to work with other humans. Like it's we TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. T.J. Crosby: like we have the human element in our business is so complex because of all the different personalities and stuff. I will say done well. We try not to sell too much. candidates or clients on any one piece because they have to they have to want it. They have to ultimately at the end of the day, they have to want to be connected to each other. So there's a level of TJ Crosby Interview: Hmm. that's interesting. T.J. Crosby: convincing somebody, hey, consider the opportunity and consider the candidate. But at the end of the day, they need to be comfortable to make that call that choice and that decision. TJ Crosby Interview: Okay, that so that's super interesting. That's some really next level human psychology because I mean you were you're laughing, but like I'm I'm for real. So it it's it's next level because the the big word you use there was change. And you can't force somebody to change. They have to be they have and it doesn't matter what it is in life, it could be addiction, it could be health, fitness. you cannot convince someone to change. They have to want it for themselves. T.J. Crosby: Right, a hundred percent. It yeah, you have to again make on the on the client client side we provide the information, on the candidate side, we try to provide as much information as possible. At the end of the day, it's kinda like, here you go. And they have to be the one to choose to pick it up, right? TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah, no, that's super interesting. Are you able to tell me? Gosh, because this is fascinating from like a sales mindset. So I love having people on this program that have a completely different perspective on this industry that we love. So this is really fascinating to me because I'm I'm just imagining your recruiters, your headhunters, on the phones, T.J. Crosby: Mm-hmm. TJ Crosby Interview: banging the phones all day long, trying to find the right people and get like to get them on the phone and and like let them know not just in writing like here's a JD like you know just because the job description says one thing what's the actual like when I get there, what's it really going to look like? What's this company gonna feel like? And you can really express that over the phone a lot better. How many contacts T.J. Crosby: Yeah. That's right. TJ Crosby Interview: are they trying? Is there a number of contacts they need to make in a day to be a high level recruiter? Is that is it is it a volume game? Is it I just curious. T.J. Crosby: there there tends to be a volume aspect to it, but for us, because we are kind of a more boutique search firm, our focus more is on identifying and doing deep research on finding the right candidates to be reaching out to in the first place. There is a tendency in a lot of firms, just, you know, let me find five hundred people that I could be reaching out to, blast out LinkedIn messages, send text messages, whatever, and hope for the best, you know. TJ Crosby Interview: Yeah. Yeah. T.J. Crosby: in early days we had an element of that in a mix with our business, but we've gotten further away from that as I've gotten be able to further clarify how we work. And now it's we find 100 to 150 that really seem to fit the parameters. And we're reaching out to them. It's much more targeted. But yes, you do have a certain number of calls and emails and stuff you're making, but it's much more a kind of a targeted way. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: It's much more targeted. Okay. Lot lot less scatter shot these days. Now that you got your feet underneath you, you're really entrenched a little your processes are a little bit better. T.J. Crosby: And if you I think it's similar to like the short list concept, like the book, the short list, like TJ Crosby Interview: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. T.J. Crosby: if you're having really strong activ or even how to be a rainmaker, you're having really strong activity toward the people you would really want to be considered for the role, and TJ Crosby Interview: Mm-hmm. T.J. Crosby: you spend more time pursuing those particular people, you're gonna have better results. You'll have less candidates at the top of the funnel, probably. Maybe have a similar result still at the bottom of the funnel, but but for us, we'd rather spend a little bit more time thinking about how to reach out to that person in a way they will respond than just reaching out to six people that may not really fit the bill, you know? TJ Crosby Interview: Fascinating. Yeah. So I've well I've got the same thing. The short list concept runs in my life selling supplementary T.J. Crosby: Right, right. TJ Crosby Interview: semen tissue materials, which is a it's a new company with a material people are familiar with, but it's a new it's essentially it's a new product because it's a coming from a new plant with a new company. And but so yes, shortlist. I got a hand literally a handful of companies that I'm like, all right, these guys pretty sure they're gonna gonna convert. They put a lot of effort into it. and they're gonna help me get these first sales done into the market. It's taken a lot of work and it's a lot of work on their side too. So I I want to reward that and not cannibalize anything that that they're doing. But that doesn't mean I'm not constantly having to add more people to that short list, maybe in different regions or different areas or different markets and and keep building that and just but really try to concentrate on those guys that I know are gonna help me break through right here at the beginning. I I wanna I want to transition now to what's coming. This is this is the thing T.J. Crosby: Mm-hmm. TJ Crosby Interview: we teased earlier that nobody's nobody's thought of this. How has nobody thought of this? I I don't want to even step on this. I want you to take the floor and tell people what's coming next from concrete careers. T.J. Crosby: I appreciate that so much and be excited to share. So we have heard a lot of folks talk about they wish there was a place they could go and make candidates in general aware of the sheer number of opportunities that exist within our industry as concrete. Concrete is the second most consumed product in the world. It should be an incredibly well-known space, but it's like one of the best kept secrets. We have stepped in and established the Concrete Careers Industry Job Board. provide a place for companies to be able to come and share their roles with the marketplace that are available. And the idea is that we are heavily focused on targeting concrete professionals to make them aware of the job board so they come in and create profiles and have a chance to look at these opportunities and to be able to help to provide a level of access to talent and a level of access to opportunities that just not existed until now. We did start start it up at technically the beginning this month is when we had sort of like the go live officially We've had a lot of positive traction so far. But yeah, I'm like you. I was shocked that it didn't exist already. There's been iterations that have been attempted, but we're kind of the first effort industry wide, concrete industry broadly, that's put this together and really excited to see where it goes from here. TJ Crosby Interview: It's it's crazy. Like, so if somebody went today was like, Man, I'm not really happy where I'm at. I wanna look for something else. They might go to Indeed and start typing things in. But good luck if you've ever done that, trying to find something concrete specific, because all the search words get mixed up with everything else that's out there. And you would think, like, T.J. Crosby: Yeah. Right. TJ Crosby Interview: there's gotta be a place that aggregates all these jobs that are out there in one spot, and I can I can search. And it just hasn't existed. So now it exists. Where can people find this concrete specific job board? T.J. Crosby: Thanks for asking. Concrete careers.com slash jobs. Try to keep it simple. So or you can just go to concrete careers.com and click job word and it'll take you there too. So concrete careers.com slash jobs. TJ Crosby Interview: You're you're listening to an HR guy that knows marketing. Simple URLs, SEOs, T.J. Crosby: Right. TJ Crosby Interview: he's he's got it he's got it dialed. That or that or he hired somebody that knows knows this stuff and T.J. Crosby: Both. Smart people tell they'll tell you what to TJ Crosby Interview: You also have another thing that I want people to know about. And so the audience knows that he didn't ask me to promote any of this stuff. I just think it's great. And I wanted to bring it up. And I also want to bring up your podcast. You have your own podcast. So the people might be listening, you go, Man, this guy's pretty good for a a guest. Like, no, he's he does this also, and he has a podcast. Let people know what's your podcast. T.J. Crosby: Yep. so the podcast is the blueprint podcast. It's so blueprintpodcast dot com. where you go to find it. It's yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: Yep. And they're focused a lot. Yeah, a lot of their previous guests are guys who've been in the industry or girls that have been in the industry a while and they're telling you like what's what's the blueprint for success? How did you get where you're at in life? And it's sort of expanded T.J. Crosby: That's right. That's right. TJ Crosby Interview: recently to more conversations. But I think if you dig into the meat of it, that's it's very fascinating to hear some of those conversations. T.J. Crosby: Yeah. Yeah, the kind of the thread that goes throughout is is, you know, what what themes help make somebody be successful? What did they have to kind of persevere through? What was the blueprint to their success and whatever way, shape, or form? Yeah. And then while we're at it, you know, repertou brand today, Merc shop. You know, also if you go to concrete careers.com and you check out the shop. Callie Wells has done lot of great stuff or some exciting things out there that are meant to make the industry a a little cooler. so check it out. Love to love to have people wearing it around the different trade shows. So yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: You while you while you may be the greatest HR guy ever in concrete, Callie might be the coolest hairstyle in concrete. Can we give her that can we T.J. Crosby: Right, right. TJ Crosby Interview: give her that title? T.J. Crosby: Absolutely. Yeah, she she she is she's like I can never change my hair now because people know me as Callie. I'm like, you're right, you can't. Like this is what it is now. Sorry. TJ Crosby Interview: no. no. That's like it's like, my gosh. Did you ever watch that show back in the day, NCIS? Did you ever see and see and they had the girl that worked in the lab T.J. Crosby: Uh-huh. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: that was like the goth dress? They could never change her costume. T.J. Crosby: Right, right. Yeah. TJ Crosby Interview: She was like sixty years old and she was still wearing wearing goth. I was like, my gosh, what we doing? Well T.J. Crosby: Right, right. Exactly, exactly. So TJ Crosby Interview: Hey, I appreciate appreciate your time here, TJ. And audience, thank you so much for sticking with us. This has been another edition of the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. If you would like to reach out to TJ, TJ Crosby is available on LinkedIn. He's very active on there. he will reply. Him and his team, they're wonderful folks. And we will see you on the next episode.