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From a One-Man Show to $12 Billion Projects · Speak In Flow

• 0:02
  Melinda Lee: Welcome, dear listeners, to the Speak and Flow podcast, to our Legacy Growth Series. In our last episode, we talked about accountability and the importance of accountability for results, especially within the leadership team.
• 0:19
  Melinda Lee: And even when that happens, most companies hit a ceiling.
• 0:23
  Melinda Lee: And when a ceiling gets hit, a lot of times, things get routed back to the CEO. And when that happens, I see that that's the signal.
• 0:35
  Melinda Lee: That the leadership team, the communication is starting to break down. And that's what we're going to discuss today, is the hidden cost of what happens when you are the only one leading the company.
• 0:49
  Melinda Lee: Joining me today is my dear friend, he's an amazing entrepreneur, Oscar Zavaleta, founder and CEO of Montez Group.
• 1:00
  Melinda Lee: His company works on construction management, quality management, all across the West Coast.
• 1:07
  Melinda Lee: And there are big, large infrastructure projects. I'm so glad he's here. I've seen him thrive, go from small to big… bigger size, projects, and we're gonna talk and dive in today. Joining me is Oscar. Welcome, Oscar!
• 1:23
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Good morning, how are you?
• 1:25
  Melinda Lee: It's so good to see you! Thank you so much. I am excited about our conversation, and I'm gonna kick it off with this first one. There is a busy leader, CEO, listening right now who has stopped to listen to this episode, but the CEO finds himself in the business, in the weeds, and it's too much sometimes. So, when the CEO takes into account
• 1:50
  Melinda Lee: count everything you're about to share. What do you hope could change in this person's life?
• 1:56
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Well, you know, that's a great question. I know I've been there many times, and, you know, I think what happens…
• 2:04
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: as the person in charge of CO, you know so much about what you're doing. You're used to… and in my case, I started as a one-person show 15 years ago, so I was doing everything. Whether it was that town, it was the proposals, whether it was attending.
• 2:22
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: pre-bits, so you wanna… well, you're so used to owning it, so that's the hardest part, to say, you know what? I don't need to own it.
• 2:29
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: I have really good people in my team that I need to empower to do. So I think, hopefully, what somebody will get out of this, a BCCO, is saying, you know, you need to step back. Can't own everything, and you need to have trust on the process, the systems that you put in place.
• 2:46
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: in the people that you have in your team. I think… I know I was… I've been incredibly surprised as I moved on from
• 2:54
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: doing everyday, hands-on thing to stepping back, and now, you know.
• 2:59
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: doing projections, doing more strategy, what are the things that we're doing, more on that process instead of the very day-to-day things. So, my hope is that when they're done, they'll listen and say, you know what, there's a few things here that I can take away that will help me.
• 3:15
  Melinda Lee: Wonderful. I think that's so important, and you truly can paint that picture for the CEO, because you, like you said, you started with the one-person team, and now you've grown. And so, tell us more for the audience. What are the projects that you're into nowadays? What excites you most about the work that you're doing? How far have you grown?
• 3:35
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Well, you know, we're… there's about 35 of us on the professional services side, so we're a construction management company, focused, largely on the quality side of megaprojects.
• 3:48
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: And some of the projects that we're working on right now, we're on the, VTA, Silicon Valley Phase 2, so that's, calculated right now to be about $12.5 billion, megaproject.
• 4:02
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: And we've had the opportunity to work under Bechdel as part of the construction management team, so that's a terribly,
• 4:09
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: challenging, complicated, but, you know, world-class project, I like to think. So we, you know, we've had the opportunity to work on this project, right? The last 15 years, we paved the way. We worked at SoFi Stadium, which was really neat, if you like sports.
• 4:27
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Right? We worked on, like I said, this VTA project. We've done a lot of work with BART.
• 4:32
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: And now we're… you know, one of the things, Billing, that we're doing is we have an office in Seattle, so we're really looking at a lot of work with Sound Transit and WSDOT, and we have an office in Long Beach, tackling a lot of work with LA Metro, with the County of LA,
• 4:48
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: And some other agencies down there. So, that's exciting on that end, but what really motivates me more on a daily basis now is really being a mentor
• 4:58
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Being the… trying to lead the company in a different way.
• 5:03
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Right? Not being, like I said earlier, not being the day-to-day guy, but being the person that's there to, you know, touch points. Yes, obviously, I review things and do that, but I have a great team supporting me. And I think that's what excites me the most, that we got to this point.
• 5:18
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: And I can step away enough to do other, more useful functions for our growth. And I think that's great. And mentoring some of this amazing talent that we have, that's really what motivates me, to get up in the morning and say, hey, let's go do this.
• 5:38
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, no, they're so, so lucky to have you, because you have both the technical capability, but then you also care so deeply about your people, and empowering your people, and… and so I know that that probably was a transition for you to let go, because…
• 5:54
  Melinda Lee: doing every little thing. You have an eye on how you prefer to do it.
• 5:59
  Melinda Lee: And… and as you got bigger, getting more, projects, bigger infrastructure projects.
• 6:07
  Melinda Lee: And you wanted to… you saw the growth, you saw it happening.
• 6:11
  Melinda Lee: tell me, like, go back to the time when you realized that they still needed you a lot, or, what is the… what is the picture that… how did you transition to them? Like, how did you start to give them the task, but then they kept on wanting you back?
• 6:27
  Melinda Lee: I'm needing you back.
• 6:29
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: It's, you know, it's… that's a kind of a give and take, right? Yeah. On that. It's not a clear, demarcation point, but I think it just, you know, through,
• 6:42
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: to the growth, right, of the company, as far as size-wise, and also, I think, getting a lot of advice from some of
• 6:49
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: you know, I have mentors myself that are in the industry that I have a lot of respect for, so I think…
• 6:55
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: I realized I needed to ask more questions myself, right? Like you said a second ago, I think, for me, the biggest challenge in my trajectory wasn't the technical side as much, it was more the business side. So, it just started realizing that I needed… there's things that I was very strong at, and things I wasn't, so I started getting…
• 7:14
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: finding…
• 7:16
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: people and putting them in place. So that, you know, and I started seeing that they were doing a great job, so… and better in some cases, because they're more experts on that particular field. So, I started gaining that confidence and realizing that I don't need to be that guy. I tell my team, look.
• 7:36
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: If you're doing something, and you're waiting for me.
• 7:39
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: okay, that's not gonna work. You gotta go at it. And somebody taught me a long time ago, said something to me when I… working for another consulting company. It's like, look, go at it. If you break something, we'll fix it. Let me know. And at first, I was like.
• 7:54
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: You know, are you sure? And they're like, yeah, I'm gonna be there for you 100%, so I think I use that and conveyed it to our team, because I wanted to
• 8:02
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Feel confident that I'm empowering them.
• 8:06
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: to go and do it. Obviously, right, we provide a lot of training, we go through what we need, it's not just a blind, here, go ahead and do the work.
• 8:14
  Melinda Lee: Hmm.
• 8:15
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: You know, we have, incredibly qualified people, but we go through training, and once we feel as a team that this person can go and run, we really empower them. And, you know, it's working amazingly. I'm able to step away now, working on projections, working on more strategic plans, strategic hires.
• 8:37
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Things that I wasn't… I just wasn't doing enough of.
• 8:40
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: So I feel like now we're in a much better place than, you know, 5-6 years ago, when I was still, like, too… too deep on the… on the day-to-day operations.
• 8:50
  Melinda Lee: And so, when… 5 or 6 years ago, when you're really deep into the operations.
• 8:56
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Because they.
• 8:57
  Melinda Lee: Key turning point, hiring the right people.
• 9:01
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: It was absolutely that, but it was also just… just a realization that there's no way we… I could keep up with the level of involvement I was doing if I wanted us to grow. So, you know, I ran into another CEO company that started, we do a tremendous amount of work for SFO as well.
• 9:21
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: And this younger guy, he started his company there a few years back, and we ran into each other at an event, and he said, you know what?
• 9:28
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: probably the best thing you did is to pull away from that project, because it really, right, it's so intensive, that if I had just been on that project, it makes it really tough to do the rest of the work that you need.
• 9:41
  Melinda Lee: Yeah. Do you have to outline things for people, or no? You just really… so there are some things.
• 9:46
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Use your alb.
• 9:47
  Melinda Lee: Outline a documented…
• 9:49
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Yeah, of course, of course. There's things that are very structured, right? But at the same time, as people understand what the structure is, and I'll give them a structure and say, here, this is how I've looked at it.
• 10:02
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: look at it, and if you have a better way, please, write it up, let's look at it. And we try to really do things as a team. Yes. New documents, things that I write, I give it to my operations guy, or somebody else, because I think that keeps them informed, and also makes them understand that, you know, look, we're a team.
• 10:20
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Right? No matter what, if I… if we do well here, it's the team. So I think having that team mentality, it's also important, because that way we're kind of… we're going the same direction. But yeah, sometimes things are, you know, we're in a very technical field, some things are very structured, but within the structure, it's like, how do we do it better?
• 10:39
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: I'm always, you know, I keep asking our young guys, and now, you know, so much tech and, you know, different way, mentality, this younger generation, it's important. We need to… I feel it's important, I need to listen to them.
• 10:52
  Melinda Lee: Yes, well then, like you said, they're a part of the team. Yeah.
• 10:55
  Melinda Lee: I've been… I've worked with different companies where they are constantly told what to do, they're berated on, they're beaten up, and so I don't know if they really feel a part of the team. They're doing the work, but I don't know if their whole heart is in it, because they're constantly scared of…
• 11:12
  Melinda Lee: getting beaten. Or not beaten physically, but you know what I mean. Getting put down.
• 11:17
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: No, I, you know, I unfortunately have rent… we've hired some people like that, that… that's one of the reasons why they left, you know, whatever they were, or folks that I've talked to. And it's not a positive environment.
• 11:29
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: to… or productive, in my opinion. At the end of the day, you know, obviously, our revenue and all this is important to us, but I… I look at it now as positive growth, organic growth, coordinated.
• 11:44
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: we're gonna do well, they're gonna do well, right? So I think… and again, trying to encapsulate that into… into a team mentality, and that's really… has helped us.
• 11:54
  Melinda Lee: And what would you say to the CEO who is having a difficult time letting go, especially when the CEO cares so much about quality, and there's true financial risk?
• 12:07
  Melinda Lee: involved.
• 12:09
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 12:09
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Yeah, no, that… you know, it's a difficult question. It's gonna be… it's gonna depend on the nature of your company, the type of work that you do, but I will say is.
• 12:19
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Trust your instinct with getting good people.
• 12:24
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: train them, right? Some things would require
• 12:28
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: some light training, some things require more exhaustive training, so put the time, prepare people, provide the tools necessary so that when they get to what they need to do, they have all the tools they need. And I think if you do that,
• 12:41
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: you're gonna be more successful more often than not. Yes, there's gonna be challenges, there's gonna be times sometimes, you know, there's issues. Don't take me wrong, right? I still get involved on some particular issues, because things happen, and you have to… you have to jump in, but…
• 12:57
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: it's not as often, and you have more time to do other things that are necessary, I think, to continue to grow instead of being… stay stagnant at that point, because we definitely went through that stagnation for a couple years, and it took.
• 13:14
  Melinda Lee: Oh, yeah?
• 13:15
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: It took a minute for us to move on from that. It was… we had to… we basically restructured a lot of the back-end stuff, because that was… we were just getting stuck there.
• 13:26
  Melinda Lee: Oh, tell me more about that, what do you mean?
• 13:28
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: So we, you know…
• 13:30
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: a great example, right, on our… let's say on our general, all our accounting on the background, we had…
• 13:37
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: somebody that was doing it part-time, and doing it here. We had a consulting company. Well, it took… took… took a couple of iterations for, at least for me, to realize, no, I need to have somebody in-house that was really bested, that was really plugged in on a day-to-day, and it's made…
• 13:55
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Night and day.
• 13:57
  Melinda Lee: Nope.
• 13:58
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: For our team, so that's one example, but there were other positions like that that, you know, it was cost, and it's a difficult balance sometimes, because you have to evaluate how, you know, do we have the revenue to support this, or that? But sometimes, you have to buy the bullet.
• 14:16
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: for… to see the results. I don't know if that makes sense, right? You have to invest, right? You have to invest, even though it costs you a little bit more, but at the end of the day, you know, it'll double, triple what you're trying to do.
• 14:28
  Melinda Lee: Yes.
• 14:29
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: You know, it's easy for somebody to tell you when you're in the middle of it, it's a little harder.
• 14:32
  Melinda Lee: It is harder, it's definitely harder, because it's real risk, and can you really, yeah, provide for all of the, you know, is this for the bigger goal, the better for the rest of the people? And, I mean, but going back to what you're saying, I love that investing in them.
• 14:51
  Melinda Lee: And, you know, investing in this accounting person, and that really paid off, in the long run, but in also training your people, training both the technical skills and hopefully some real leadership skills. When it comes to communication, when it comes to how are they communicating together as a team, do they have the skills to hold each other accountable
• 15:15
  Melinda Lee: in a respectful way for the results. Like, all those things. Does the leadership know how to translate, what the company does, both internally and also to external clients?
• 15:28
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Yeah, if I can add one thing to that, I think that, you know, being prepared and the training.
• 15:34
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: it sort of builds that leadership as well, because they feel confident on the tools they have. They're going into whatever the task or the project with the necessary tools, but if you put somebody that is completely unprepared, I think that
• 15:51
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: That spirit kind of gets… it's kind of what you said, it's gonna go a little beat down, and then it's hard to build up.
• 15:57
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 15:58
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: When we try to, you know, do the best that we can and prepare people, you can see the difference, that they're more confident.
• 16:05
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 16:05
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: You know, one other thing that made a big difference for me, and I think I shared this with you some time ago, is I went through this program with LBAN, Latino Business Action Network, that is associated with the School of Business of Stanford, and
• 16:21
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: it made… it changed my mindset in a lot of things, that I needed to step back, and some of the things that I thought I was doing very positive, it fell to me, my instinct, it wasn't necessarily so.
• 16:35
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Right? So, I think going through that program was very critical for us, and we, like I said, we made a lot of changes on the back end, and I know we're in a better place, and of course, there's gonna be more changes, and hopefully we keep improving.
• 16:49
  Melinda Lee: But I think that's key, though. You're the CEO and the leader, and you're still getting training. You're still open to developing and evolving, and that, I think, speaks volumes to you as a leader. And that's gonna help and support the company, too.
• 17:04
  Melinda Lee: So congratulations on that, and you implement it, and you cascade it down, because when you're growing and learning, then you're having a ripple effect across your employees.
• 17:15
  Melinda Lee: And the projects.
• 17:17
  Melinda Lee: So, that is… that is key, and I… you know, there's some people that I don't… some leaders that don't think they need it, don't think they have time for it, right? And… and so, could you also share with us,
• 17:31
  Melinda Lee: When did you start seeing your leadership team
• 17:35
  Melinda Lee: moving forward without you, what was that like? So, I hear that you hired the right people, you trained them, and now, like, what was that like?
• 17:44
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: It was great, right? It was fantastic in so many different ways. One, because you're seeing that
• 17:52
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: you know, the seeds that you planted and you're growing and supporting, now there's time to, you know, take… take, ownership, and really caring about… about what they're doing, really vested in it, and like I said, it's…
• 18:06
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: you know, it's got to be a measure, and it varies with people, but the responsibility they take. And I love it when I give an assignment to somebody, and they not only do the assignment, but they're like, hey.
• 18:18
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: can we… have you thought about this as well? Or, I did this other thing, which is… I'm just like… it blows my mind sometimes on the… the challenge, right? So, I'm…
• 18:29
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: more than anything, it's just really freed up a lot… a lot more time to sometimes invest. We invest some time in some nonprofits that are associated with that industry. So that's really important for us as well, whether it's workforce development, whether it's particular industry,
• 18:47
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: associations, so we're really involved with CMAA with COMTO, we built it. So that also
• 18:54
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: for me, it's really important, and I try to make sure that our team understands why it's really important to us. So, you know, I mean, such positive, things. Like, I mean, I could be gone out from the office for a week or two, and things keep moving, and that's really important. So that… it's been incredible. I wish I would have figured out a little bit earlier in my
• 19:16
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: my trajectory, but it's part of the process, right? It's a journey, and it's going to be, for some, it's gonna be a lot shorter. Some people figure out really early on, some people it takes longer.
• 19:25
  Melinda Lee: You're really fast! You built this, your company, pretty fast.
• 19:29
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: It feels like… it feels fast sometimes, sometimes it feels, like, slow, right?
• 19:35
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: on the nature of that, but no, I'm just incredibly proud of our team, of, like, you know, some of the projects, like I said, that we're working, some of the incredible owners that we deal with, right? Very sophisticated. So we keep learning, you know, I think that's the main thing, and I'm…
• 19:52
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: I… I'm looking forward, you know, to…
• 19:55
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: to, you know, I looked to this quote from a presentation a friend of mine was doing, and when I walked in in the room, it just had this thing that said, you know, the older I get, the more I realize how much I have to learn.
• 20:07
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: And I think, for me, it's just… once I read that, it really stuck with me, and it's so true. There's so much to learn, right? But you have to trust that people bring some of that knowledge, and they're doing what they need to do.
• 20:19
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: You know, we have terribly qualified people, so why, you know, as the founder wrote for Apple said, you know, let… you know, you hire good people, let them do their work.
• 20:29
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 20:29
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, and what are…
• 20:31
  Melinda Lee: Well, I mean, it sounds like they truly, like you said, they're invested. They're not just there just to do the work, but they are there to… your team is there to really add value and think of solutions, even when you're not there. And can you speak more about the why they're there? Like, the values, like, you know, what is their drive for being there?
• 20:53
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Well, you know, I think it starts from, from, if I back up, right? For me, it's really…
• 21:01
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: you know, one of the things I… I'm glad I have more time is to evaluate talent, right? And now, when we hire somebody.
• 21:10
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: I have… you know, I obviously will talk to them and everything, but I have some of my guys. I want their opinion. Do they make… do they fit our culture?
• 21:21
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: fit our values? Do they fit,
• 21:24
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: you know, a lot of different things. I don't want somebody to just say, oh, this is all I want to do. I want somebody that's open to say, hey, I'm open to
• 21:30
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: you know, learning more, you know, we… we try to do a great job of making sure that, let's say you're working for us, Melinda, if you want to go do a training on A, B, or C that's related to what we're doing, it's like, I'd be the first one to encourage you to not only do it, but we'll pay for the training. So that's… that's… that's important on that end, but just really…
• 21:51
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: finding… you know, it takes time, you have to find the right… the right fit. Not everybody's going to be a good fit for our company. You know, I mean, that's just how it is. But when we're able to find
• 22:02
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Those… those folks, it's just, like, the secret sauce that is helping us continue to move forward.
• 22:09
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, right.
• 22:10
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: For me, it's… that's what's really motivating, right?
• 22:13
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: part of that really gets me, like, all excited. It's like, oh, we have somebody, you know, starting this, and doing this, and doing that, and then, you know, in a year, I just see them that I've just grown so much, right?
• 22:25
  Melinda Lee: Ugh. So that…
• 22:27
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: That's… that's really, I think, that's helpless.
• 22:30
  Melinda Lee: No, and I… you created this environment. It is…
• 22:34
  Melinda Lee: It is something that you've developed, something that you saw, and something that you… because people don't thrive unless there's an environment for them to thrive. I truly believe that, and so for you to, hey, look at every hire and bringing the team to say, does this person fit our culture, our values? That is so important, because one bad apple can make all the others, right, really
• 22:59
  Melinda Lee: uncomfortable, and so I just think that that's so important, to… to… to, first of all, be clear with your culture, your values, and then… and then hire to… to have that organically grow and develop even better and more. So that's so important, and like you said, that's really inspiring to see people thrive within this type of environment.
• 23:20
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 23:21
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: It's amazing, yeah.
• 23:22
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, that is so cool. And then now, they're doing things on their own, you're able to work on other things, two weeks goes by, they might call you once or twice, and you're really doing it, from their one-man team now to 35, that's awesome.
• 23:40
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Absolutely.
• 23:41
  Melinda Lee: on these really complicated projects.
• 23:44
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Yes, and you know, and that's also motivating as well, right? Because, you know, and that helps us recruit great talent.
• 23:50
  Melinda Lee: Yes.
• 23:51
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: It's like, hey, you guys are working on this type of projects, and that's what I want to work on.
• 23:55
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: or you're working with these type of clients, right? That they're, you know, for example, SFO is incredibly innovative on their sustainability, the type of delivery systems they use for their work. So there's a lot of very nuanced, very technical aspects to the way they handle certain things that
• 24:14
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: people want to… want an opportunity to work and learn and… and… and… and… and… and grow, right, within that… within that ecosystem. So that's also… that also helps us.
• 24:24
  Melinda Lee: Wonderful, wonderful. And so this is my one last question I like to ask my guests, is…
• 24:30
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Hmm.
• 24:31
  Melinda Lee: When a company
• 24:33
  Melinda Lee: treats communication as a system, with how clarity and how messages are shared, how messages are reinstated and acted on, not just a soft skill. They're communicating with intention.
• 24:46
  Melinda Lee: What is possible for companies?
• 24:50
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Well, you know, I'm gonna… I'm gonna answer that question backwards. I think what's possible is that you're able to really
• 24:57
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Have a clear… Right
• 25:00
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: direction of where your company's going. So, whether it's your social media, what it's a post or two, whether it's your statement of qualifications, right? Whether it's your swag, whatever it is, you gotta be…
• 25:15
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: it's a messaging that you're doing. But when it comes to people in general, as far as communicating is, you know, make sure that we all understand what the team is doing.
• 25:27
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Right? And yes, being able to communicate is important, but it's… it's… it becomes, you know.
• 25:34
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: you know, like, rocket fuel when that communication is as clear and concise as possible. And I know, you know, sometimes we're… a lot of things are moving fast, and sometimes training gets left behind a little, but I think doing that, and we're still continuing to work on that, to do a better job of continuing to train
• 25:54
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: our team. So, you know, somebody's working in Seattle, right, for example. Well, they should know what we're doing in LA, what we're doing in the Bay Area, so when they're talking about the company.
• 26:04
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: They should have a very clear understanding to what we're doing, so that we're conveying the same
• 26:11
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: So, informational. So I think that becomes more critical. And as we grow, we, we figure a few things out, we're still working on that, but yes, you know, you want to be pulling the same direction. As I said earlier, right, with Apple, they're… they're, just as an example.
• 26:28
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: There… there… it's clarity on…
• 26:31
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: what they're trying to do. So, it's hard as a small company, it really takes a lot of work to do that, whether it's your, like I said, whether it's your logo, whether it's your SOQ, whether it's a banner that you put together, all those things have to be coordinated so that communication becomes a true tool.
• 26:50
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: To be able to convey, because, you know, we can do a lot of great things, but if we're not able to
• 26:55
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: say and clearly state that, then… then we… there's… there's something that, you know, there's something of value there that we're not communicating.
• 27:03
  Melinda Lee: Yes, and you're missing that opportunity, because it gets diluted, even though you've done, like you said, so many great things. And so what would be possible in terms of the legacy of the company for the long haul, how it lasts, when you have clarity on your messaging to externally.
• 27:23
  Melinda Lee: And also internally. There's consistency, and clarity and consistency. What is possible for the legacy of the Montes group?
• 27:30
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Well, I think, right, you'll see… people will be able to see our logo and already automatically know.
• 27:37
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 27:38
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: or, you know, the type of philosophy that's behind of how we approach things, right? You know, my background is on the quality side, so I want… I want people, when they talk about our firm, to say, you know what, that's a truly quality
• 27:54
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: work that they do and people, so we want to continue to build on that. So, 30 years, 40 years, whatever, however long, we survive, I want that to be conveyed. And if, if I'm able to accomplish that, I think I accomplish, you know, my job.
• 28:12
  Melinda Lee: That is your job, and you got this, you got this, and so thank you so much, and remember that I know that you're… you are quality, you're a quality leader, your company is quality, and so thank you so much for your time. Oscar, really appreciate it. I had a lot of fun today. I learned so much.
• 28:31
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Well, thank you so much for the opportunity, and I hope, like you said at the beginning, that somebody that's really busy, but they get the opportunity to listen to our conversation, they can take some nuggets and say, there's some things that I might be able to do on my own, and hopefully see you on the other side when you're able to, kind of move forward on whatever it is that you may be stuck.
• 28:50
  Melinda Lee: Yes, I agree, and if there's any company or agency out there that's looking for high-quality management firm, reach out to Oscar. How could they find you?
• 29:01
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: We have a great website for the Montez Group. We're fairly present in LinkedIn as well, and we attend… our team attends a lot of,
• 29:11
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: events associated with our industry. So, look forward to meeting you. When you see me, please come and say hi, and hopefully, you know, we can have a great conversation about some of these topics.
• 29:21
  Melinda Lee: Love it. Yeah, you can't miss Oscar's smile. It shines across the room. So thank you so much, Oscar, and until next time, remember, anytime you communicate, communicate what matters so your team moves together.
• 29:36
  Melinda Lee: Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.
• 29:39
  Oscar Zavaleta - Montez: Thank you.