Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, good day everyone and welcome to the Cutting Edge Install podcast brought to you by Omni Cubed, where innovation meets installation and like I always say, could possibly be everything in between. Who knows what today will bring forth? But I'm your host, Merv Campbell and it's an absolute pleasure to have you with us. What's this podcast all about? Well, it's celebrating. It's 2026. It's a time to celebrate pros, it's a time to celebrate experts and game changers. And we've got a game changer going to dive into stories, we're going to hopefully make it as light hearted as we possibly can and we're going to have fun.
And as an Irishman, I know how to have fun and I hope Greg will come along with me for this experience. We shall see anyways. We shall see. So whether you're on the road, whether you're on the job or you're just looking to stay sharp, you are in the right place. So let's get cracking. Greg, pleasure to have you on the show.
And before we delve into anything sort of big industry, you know all that's going on, everything else, tell us a bit about yourself.
If someone was to meet you outside of work, how would you introduce yourself and what drives you day to day?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah, like pretty simple guy, family guy, married a long time, two adult kids.
I'm a dog guy. I've got two Australian shepherds and so I like to get out with them and they keep me active and you know, if it's not vacuum up the hair, it's just running around outside and having a good time with them.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: And I'm a bit of a handyman around the house. I'm always doing something.
My wife has got a bit of an interior design flair so she'll have an idea and I'll get put to work to, to do that and I really enjoy that.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: So that's cool.
Good man.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: So what, what is your sort of origin story?
How did some chance encounter in the 90s kind of shape where you are today and tell us a little bit about that?
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I started off as working as a general contractor, working, you know, with that, doing hockey arenas and pre inch buildings and stuff. And I was asked to go visit another GC who was a bigger customer and explain some of the subcontract work we were looking at doing with them. And in that conversation myself and that gentleman had a really good back and forth and he said to me, if I'm ever looking for A new opportunity to let him know.
And a couple of years later, I wasn't just looking, but I needed a new opportunity.
Yep. And I. I rang him up and. And I was able to, with good timing, get a job as a site superintendent for him on retirement home.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: And from there, worked through that job. And when it started to get near the end, I started asking about other opportunities. And I was told that there was a company here in Toronto that was looking for a project manager for a glass job at the Toronto airport.
Wow. And to me, that glass, like, that was it. I didn't know anything about glass. I was 28, 29.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: And was given the title of project manager for $14 million interior install at the airport.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: And it was 6,000ft of balustrade, 4,000ft of smoke baffle.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Glass bridges, interior airside corridor partitions, the whole gamut.
Digitally printed glass, curved glass, like, just everything.
And I was hooked. Like, I was immersed so quickly in all the different things that you can do in glass.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: And, you know, now, well over 25 years later, I'm still.
Still geeking out about the new things you can do in class. So. Cool. And. And, you know, the opportunities that I've had since then have been, you know, big jobs, small jobs, residential jobs, like glass staircases.
I was fortunate enough to be involved in the SOFI stadium, the structural glass walls at the SOFI stadium.
And so it's taken me to different companies and different opportunities, but it's just glass is one of the coolest products out there.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: It is. It. So is it really. It's impressive when you take a step back, and it's ironic that it comes up again in other podcasts we've talked about, you know, take a step back and just admire the beauty. And one guy said, you know, we're trying to make something visible, yet make it invisible, but it takes a keen eye to see it and appreciate it. And it's so true. But you kind of talk a little bit there about.
You still geek out about it, and it's still like, you know, it's inspiring and it's exciting, but there's a dearth that's happening at the minute with the decline of numbers coming into, like, skill trades with sort of that disconnect around, like, working hard and having value in what you do. And in your opinion, why do you think there's fewer people entering the trades today?
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Well, I guess from my personal experience, I think there was kind of a general lack of encouragement from families and from educators about not aspiring to go to university or college and anything less than that was not good enough.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Like, like I can remember as something that sticks out when I was graduated high school and I went back to the school to pick my sister up and I ran into a grade 12 geography teacher and I told him I was going to college for construction and he kind of cynically looked at me and said, well, there's not much work in that, is there?
And so it was that kind of, you know, repeated, you know, kind of stigma that I think, you know, personally affected me and then I think personally affected a lot of people.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: You know, because it's that kind of like when you talk about that origin story when you're in your formative years and you're looking ahead at what you want to do and you hear these negative perceptions about people on the trades and how, you know, they're, they're not home, they can't do this, they have a bad, you know, you know, bad work environment and all that kind of thing. There's truth to that. But you know, nowadays there's truth to that in any industry that you get into. Correct. Any vacation you take.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: So I think that kind of, to summarize it would just be kind of that there's not enough encouragement, there's not enough understanding of what it is.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: And there's not enough understanding of the good life that you can get out of it.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: That's the thing, people and the opportunities.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: That it can bring you.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
They have this mentality of, you know, you need to go to college, you need to do, you know, all these different degrees and yada, yada, yada. And yeah, that's for some, that's great. But I have a 14 year old son and I'm pushing him, not forcefully, but you know, tell reminders to encourage that I've made a living out of it and provided well for his mother and his siblings and he can too. And there's like, there's, I think there's a mindset and a connotation and that's like my next question where sadly in our day people don't want to get their hands dirty, they don't want to work hard, they don't like if there's a bead of sweat coming down their brow, they're like, this is not the job for me. This is too much.
How do we shift that mindset? And you're slightly older than I am. Is there any words of encouragement you could give me that I could give to my son in Regards to getting that stigma out of there.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: I don't know.
I think that one of the things is just simply make it okay.
Make getting your hands dirty okay.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: And like, the one thing that I saw, and I'll probably get the time right, but it was about a year ago was there was something on social media and the news about a coal miner who went to a basketball game with his son and he had just come. Come from. From the mine and he was covered in black and he was at the basketball game. A college or NBA basketball game.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: And the nice thing about the article was they made it positive. They talked about how this man had worked a whole day shift and rushed home and grabbed his son and they went to a game so they can enjoy that as a father and son. And he.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: You know, he was so quickly doing that that he didn't even have time to properly clean up. And the fact that that was okay. You know, he came from his job and so I think that's the biggest thing is just. It's okay.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: You know, totally. Like, I can remember when I was very young in. In grade five or six, and they had that kind of career day kind of conversation, and I don't know why it sticks with me, but I remember that there was one of my classmates and she said, what. What do you. The teacher said to him, what do you want to do? And he said, yep, I just don't want to get my hands dirty.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: And she said, proverbial answer, but what do you.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: What do you mean by that? And his. His dad was a mechanic and his dad would come home every night and he'd have dirty, greasy hands.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: And that became a negative connotation. Instead of respecting and understand the work that his dad did, just looked at the fact that his dad came home a little bit banged up.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
And that's okay.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Exactly.
That put clothes.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Exactly. We are. We are called to work. Exactly. Yeah. That's kind of crazy. But so how do you think, like, influencers like Mike Rowe have impacted the public perception of blue collar worker and like, in your opinion, is it enough?
[00:10:31] Speaker B: I don't think it's ever enough, But I think what he's done is really interesting because he's used a platform that he has to reach a really large audience.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: He's used his humor and charisma to kind of get it across. And you can watch his shows. The Dirty Job shows.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: And you'll laugh and be entertained and you'll learn something. You'll see what they're doing. Exactly. Yeah.
But I think there's more recognition of the value and rewards of the blue collar jobs are needed. Like there's, I don't know, I guess an apparel company out there and they have the dirty hands, clean money.
You know, you can get a baseball hat that says yep, you know, and that kind of thing. I just think that, you know, and right now Mike Rowe is spending a lot of time giving speeches and talking to levels of government and trying to get everything. And so that needs to be accepted and appreciated more.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: We don't have that many voices like him.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: No.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: And so, you know, we need to really applaud him and, and help support his cause because it's for everybody, right?
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Yep.
Well, we've mentioned sort of generational differences and how we look at things and how, you know, how one, one, like my guys, I grew up with grafters. Hard workers, young people growing up now, all they want to do is play Nintendo Switch 2 and Mario Kart and, you know, be experts at it. And you're like, well, that doesn't put bread on the table.
But there are differences in how we learn and how we communicate. I totally understand that. But what have you found to be the most effective way when it comes to like sort of mentoring, you know, young employees or young people coming in?
[00:12:23] Speaker B: You have to, I think you have to get them involved and not allow them to be bystanders.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: And you have to kind of go through the process of telling them what to do, showing them what to do and, and then having them do it and kind of touch all those different steps. Because it goes back, in my opinion, to how people learn, you know, because a lot of people are visual learners versus auditory learners. And so you kind of touch all that off.
And so you have to do that tell, show and do.
And then you have to repeat it. Yeah. And you have to have patience that you go through all that and kind of understand it. And some of the younger employees are going to be scared. And so you have to be a little bit paternal and kind of break that away without being condescending.
But it's patience and get them involved is really a big thing.
We've noticed that the old school pick up the phone and call the person is something that the younger generation has struggled with a little bit because they're used to being behind a phone keyboard and stuff like that.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: But the quickest way to get to the result is a phone call or even better, a face to face.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: So I encourage that quite a bit. But the way I encourage that is say, well, let's get on the phone together.
Let's do it together. And we'll stick handle this.
You be the technical aspect of the call because you're dealing with the situation, and I'll handle kind of the back and forth.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: And repeat, repeat, repeat. And then all of a sudden, they'll do it themselves, and then they'll.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: They'll feel.
It's. It's funny when you train them and they do it.
There's a sense of accomplishment when they do it.
And then there's that fear factor, you know, very quickly diminishes, and then suddenly they're very proficient on the phone. I have one person in our work right now who, you know, was scared of the phone, didn't want to call people, didn't want to answer the phone when people called, and we basically said, sorry, sink or swim. And now we actually have to tell them, okay, you know, end the conversation, buddy. You've got like 20 other things to do. You're not just shooting the breeze on the phone with customers. But it took time. It took patience, but it also took a little bit of, no, you actually can do it. It's the fact that you don't really want to do it, and it's okay. You'll get there. Because all we see is, like, you know, hunched over top of their heads. They're behind the phone, they're behind the keyboard, and they're afraid. They won't admit it, but they actually are. And so you just have to be like, listen, you'll be okay. Everything will be grand. We'll figure it out. So that's funny, but we're teaching them, we're pouring into them. But do you feel there's anything that, like us. I hate to say the word older, I'm going to say the word more mature. Mature folk could learn from them and maybe take on ourselves.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Well, I think that they're obviously embracing technology a lot more than we are. That. That.
That's. That's a pretty easy statement to say. And most people would agreement, but I think just in general, embracing technology and how it works. I remember I was on a job site, and we were doing a huge excavation, and the site superintendent had rented a total station.
And so from a surveying point of view, when you set up a total station on a big job site like that, you can pinpoint the center line of columns very easily. Right. Because you square off a grid, and the surveyor will give you an Excel sheet that you can reference it from. And So I was down in the trenches with the foreman and the site super is up on a hill 150ft away from us, 50ft elevated, and he's matching us out at 8 meter increments.
And the old school foreman was just like, there's no way this is right. Blah, blah, blah, once.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Four letter words.
And so we string lined it and it was dead straight over about 100ft. And then we measured it out and they were bang, bang on.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: And so it was, you know, Brian who was the, the foreman, he wanted to go back to the batter boards where you straight line and drop a plump off.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: But based on the size of the site and all these other, other reasons, it was going to be really difficult. And so this, the smile, the smirk that he had actually after we checked all that. And I could see the toothy grin from the site superintendent up on the hill after he realized what we were doing.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: So I think that's just kind of everything is just kind of embrace the technology for us older people because it does save time. It does, it does make more accuracy.
And sometimes you need that younger, the younger generation or most of the times to kind of explain it to you.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: But once you embrace that and then apply some old school work ethic, you have a really good combination.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. You really do. You really do. Yeah. It's. Don't be afraid. Either way, both parties embrace and teach.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: So cool.
So there's an old phrase, jack of all trades, master of none, though often better than master of one.
It's a good philosophy.
I don't know if I'm jack of all trades, but I'm a bit like you. I like to do handiwork around my home. I wouldn't say it's to, you know, professional standards, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than professional standards. But how does that sort of philosophy show up in your work or in your leadership?
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Well, for me, what was interesting about that was I only understood the first part of the sentence. Like when I was a kid and I was growing up, it was just master or none. And it almost has a bit of a negative connotation when you just have that first part of the sentence, actually understand it, listen to the whole thing and you know, better than a master one. It kind of talks about the multifaceted, you know, and how if you can do a whole bunch of different things, you know, certainly now it makes you more versatile for the company.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: And but for me, for, for how I incorporate that now is When I see that happening, when I see people getting outside of that not my job philosophy, I just make huge positive examples of it. With the guys, you know, we have in our fabrication shop, we have guys that, you know, are essentially going to be working at the polishing machines. But when they have a breakdown or when they have downtime, or when they have, you know, extra staff, when they go out and do something else, you know, it makes a huge difference. And so I learn how to do anything that's in front of you because the reward come.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: When I was, when I was young, I had my truck driving license, I could drive excavators, I could do all these different things.
And it was just because someone said, hey, do you want to do this?
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Yep.
Do you want to have a go at it? For sure, absolutely.
Yeah. Don't, don't ever say no. And that's, that's so hard when things are busy and booming. But when there is slow time and downtime, we always say, like around here, every day should be a school day.
Like learn something, grow into something. We, we have quite a small workforce here, but we can all wear multiple hats, which is cool. So, like, if the person who normally does the shipping and receiving decides to go on vacation, well, one of us just fairly quickly just streamlines into that and there's no hiccups, there's no issues.
Customers aren't going, I didn't take a vacation. Where's my stuff?
[00:20:40] Speaker B: So exactly.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Like young people, I would encourage you think outside the box, get outside the box and learn outside the box. Your job title that you're given is.
It's just a title. Just learn everything you possibly can and it makes you an important piece of a very big cog.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Well, exactly. We were talking about cross training a little while ago and we had a little bit of downtime in one area and they were talking about cross training. Said to the guys, I said, the way I look at cross training is it makes that individual more versatile for the full company.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: 100%.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: But it's at the same time not a make work project.
Right. And so you have opportunities throughout the busy times to cross train and do more things.
Yes, advantage of it. Then when things do get slow and tighter, makes you more valuable than the people, stay in their lane.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. No, that's so true.
Kind of a little bit about that versatility.
A lot of people nowadays want to be like a specialist in something.
In your opinion, do you think that people need to be more versatile or.
We kind of already answered it, but you know, when people go for a job, it's like, oh, it's something specialist.
But in your opinion, should there be a wider look for that person as they're like looking for work or even in a job?
[00:22:14] Speaker B: I think that being versatile is important. I understand the specialty, especially if that has a lot of training along behind it. And so you could say, well, I have this much training, this much schooling, etc. And so in order to benefit from that I have to specialize.
But you know, if you kind of broaden that kind of conversation up to companies, you know, at a time like this, when the economy is, is tighter. Yeah. Specialized companies are, in my opinion, the ones that are going to be more constrained because if your specialty is something that is more of a soft cost than a hard cost and or more of a, a high end product versus a medium middle of the road product, it's going to be harder for you. And so it's very hard to pivot or be more diversified when things are. Things are slow. Yeah, right. So like I use the example, sorry of like a structural glass, the high span cable walls, those type of things.
When the economy gets tight, those are one of the things that get value engineered out because they're looking for getting the most out of that square foot cost. Correct. And built. So I think that being versatile is important.
I do think it's important. And even if it's within the specialty, you can still be versatile within the specialty.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: That's the key part.
A lot of people will sit behind one desk and be quite content.
If you're listening to this, I would encourage you to push yourself as much as you can, learn as much as you can.
And we've also learned that diversifying and kind of looking at things in different areas, like for instance, we've been in stone for 20 plus years and we're just getting into the glass section. But guess what? The two are very similar. It's heavy, it's awkward, it can break very easily and so it needs to be transported, installed, everything more or less the same, a few tweaks.
But diversifying into glass means that now me and a few others have to learn a whole different language.
Which has been, I'll admit, has been quite challenging because it's like you gotta turn one part of your brain off and turn one part on and various conversations. But it's actually been awesome to realize that in the two spheres, like glass and stone, the overlapping is a lot there.
Even the camaraderie that we see between glazers and installers in stone, same type of thing.
And so even that diversifying has helped us and pushed us and made us grow as a company where five years ago we didn't think of glass, we didn't even look at it. We were like, yep, we're just nose to the grindstone and stone, what do we do? And then now, okay, there's glass, there's stone. Well, aren't these large format tiles that they're coming out with very similar again? So there's another avenue that you've got to. It's just, it's constantly looking for ways to improve, do better.
And like, for us, it's how do we keep installers, fabricators, tilers safe and kind of have some pretty cool tools to do it, to be quite honest.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: It's pretty awesome. So it is cool to see.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Well, and from an installation point of view, your labor is your biggest one denominator, in some cases your most uncontrollable one.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: So it's so important to give the tools for efficiency and safety.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: So that productivity and job completion is.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: Can keep moving. Yeah. Awesome.
Obviously, the days that we live in, they're obviously, you know, trust is a big word in the industry at the minute, trying to build that and maintain it and everything else.
What are some, in your opinion, some sort of key traits that have helped you, like, build that trust, maintain that trust, and just have that credibility over what's been a pretty lengthy time in the industry?
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Well, I think it's pretty simple. And I've said this a bunch of times when I'm kind of passing this kind of information on is say what you're going to do and then do what you say you're going to do.
And when you can't do that, communicate what the changes are going to be.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: Because really, everything that we're doing is some form of customer service.
And individually, all we have is our integrity.
So if we can't.
If we can't tell somebody we're going to do something and then follow through with it, we're going to lose that trust and back and forth, and then that's going to follow down with them. And, you know, there's several companies out there that use some sort of a tagline of we're just a company that does this, but we're really a customer service company or we're a customer service company that provides this.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: And it sometimes it sounds a little bit hokey, but it's not wrong.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: You know, it's not wrong because, you know we produce glass here, but at the end of the day, what's important to our customer is not how we did the glass, but did it. They get it on time. Correct and correct.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: And that. That's just that level of customer service. And as the technology changes, some of the companies have been around for quite a while, have a lot of learning and changing to do.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Just as far as how keep customers informed on what's going on.
How do we input stuff? Because, you know, sometimes when people say, well, I'd like to do it how we did it in the old days, and. But it's not that simple. No, it's, you know, we, you know, fax machines and the telegraph and all those kind of things, it's not there anymore. And so you need, you know, a lot of stuff requires instant gratification.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: You know, people will send an email and call you before you've had a chance to see the email, even read the darn thing.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Yep, totally.
I always joke with people about your Internet, and they're constantly like, oh, you could gain so many megabits per second. And you're going, I've already had 100. Like, how fast can this darn thing be? Like, when I press the button, it's instant. Like, how quicker does it get? And yet people have that mentality of, you know, you've placed the order, well, where is it?
Well, that was, like, two minutes ago. Geez, give me a second to breathe here. And that's the world we live in. It's instant gratification. And if it's not instant, then we're not doing a good job. And it's like trying to pee for people to learn that we're not Amazon. Okay.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Well, exactly. And I think that we have to also remember how quickly everything has evolved, because I'm 52 and we had fax machines when I first started. Cell phones were not really a thing when I first started.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: And then they were the briefcase that you carried on and. Or if you were lucky enough, you had your Hornwood honk on your truck when the phone rang so you could get down off the ladder and get the.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: You would hear it. Yep.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: And you'd go to download 50 megabytes of a file, and it would take two hours.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: Yeah. You'd be like, okay, here we go.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: This morning, I downloaded 600 megabytes, and it took two minutes.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: There you go. See?
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Right. And so things have changed very, very quickly over the last 25 years.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: They have.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Some of that we just need to appreciate.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: Totally. Good stuff.
So if you could get in a DeLorean and you could kind of go back in time and you could speak to yourself many years ago, is there a lesson that you've learned kind of throughout your career that you wished you hadn't known kind of early on when you began?
[00:30:47] Speaker B: It's kind of an easy answer because I still say it to this day, and it's not. Take stuff personally.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: And. And I mean that in. In as much as if I received criticism and I thought it was unfair, I'd be upset because I thought it was unfair, not actually kind of dissecting. What was the criticism? Where did it come from? And if I think it's unfair, how do we kind of have a respectful conversation about that?
[00:31:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: And one of the things that I used to get feedback on that would. What I would take personally would be the.
You're not calling the customer back.
And I would get frustrated because I'm like, I have called them back, but then I would start to realize that I have called the customer back, but I haven't told them what they want to hear.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: And so they would tell my. My. My supervisor or whoever I was working for.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: Oh, Greg's not getting back to me.
But then once I was able to kind of put the passion and the personal aside and ask more questions, I could find out, well, they were asking me about a delivery, and I didn't have. I wasn't provided the information.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: And so their feedback to. To. To my boss would be, Greg's not getting back to me. And so then I started to dissect it. And a lot of the times it was. It was as simple as that. And.
But by not taking it personally and taking a breath and kind of asking questions and walking through continues to allow me to get to the root of the question or the problem or the challenge.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: And.
And, you know, I heard. I've heard a couple times, and I use it in a. In a joking manner.
We don't have a problem. We have an opportunity to make something right for a customer and that kind of. That kind of thing. It's. It's. It's only a problem if we let it be a problem, but we can take this.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: And. And make it right for the customer. So.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: You know, but, yeah. Definitely not taking stuff personally. And. And I, On a lot of that, wear my heart on my sleeve. And so it was always really a struggle for me to.
To not just get bent. Bent out of shape.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: So it. But it also it took asking questions to kind of find out what was going on. Yep. And I had one, one manager say to me once, I know you can take it. So I just like to shake the branches once in a while all over the tree. Oh man. But, you know, that's, you know, that's kind of some of the management styles that, you know.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Yeah, totally, absolutely.
Kind of today, you know, it's 2026. The glazing industry's changed a lot over the years. But is there anything that you think that the tree, it needs more of right now? Whether that's help, encouragement, you know, fill in the blank.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: I think that it's just skill, like skilled workers on the tools and in the office. Right. Like we're, we're faced with like a, like a lot of young people not wanting to get into the trades. And like my son's 26 and my daughter's 22 and they have some of their friends in the group that are getting into the trades. One of them a bricklayer, one of them's a carpenter. And, and I'm so excited. I actually want to just call them up and talk to them, tell them about how, how exciting the, the opportunities are and stuff like that. Yeah. But I think that is, is really what's hurting us. And it goes right back from 30 years ago when, you know, someone was looking to do it being apprentice for a smaller glazer or a smaller carpenter.
They were faced with the cost constraints and say, I'd like to hire you as an apprentice, but I can't afford to pay you as an apprentice. I can pay you as a general laborer.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: And so then you had the option to say, well, I got to be his general laborer. I'm going to keep my eyes open and my ears open and I'm going to ask questions and pull what I can from him whether he likes it or not.
And so it kind of goes through that and it goes to even right now where, you know, the, the 50 somethings or 60 somethings, me, us, we're like, well, if I explain how to, everything, how to do everything to this 30 year old, this 25 year old, am I going to affect my job security?
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: Right. And so I've seen that in different instances as well.
And so, you know, kind of on that note, we just all got to get over ourselves.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: If we're doing a good job, we're going to have a place in the industry.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: And if, if we're developing ourselves as a good coach and mentor, we're going to make ourselves more important and open another opportunity for us.
But I think certainly what we see is, is just more skill and more training.
Correct. We have estimators calling us and they don't really understand what they're looking at.
And, you know, and so.
But a lot of that is baptism by fire, like you talked about for your sink or swim.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: Sink or swim. Yeah. My boss, I'll never forget.
We were in a meeting one day and I was apprehensive about taking a vacation because I was like, how's things going to go? And yada, yada, yada. And his note to me was that this place Omni Cubed should run better when you're on vacation than when you're here. And I was like, what the heck does that mean, huh? And I was like, what? And he could kind of tell in my puzzled look, and he says, like, for him, he's able to tell how good of a job I'm doing when I'm not here.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: Yeah, well said. Well said.
[00:37:03] Speaker A: That was revolutionary to me where it was like, oh, actually it makes sense because if I'm gone, they have to make decisions themselves. They have to step up to the plate. Someone has to move and shake. And you talk about just liberating and being just a breath of fresh air to be like, okay, this is cool. You can actually go on vacation and not worry, like, is everything okay? What's happening?
And it means the rest of the year, you're pouring into your team and you're training and you're equipping and you're helping and it's building them up.
And I think people have this fear of, well, if I tell Jimmy down the hall how to do my job, am I going to be let go?
Well, if you do a stinky job, maybe. But if you're also versatile and can do multiple jobs. No, it goes back to what we said at the start. It's like, learn and grow. It's so important. So, yeah, no, that was one for me that has always stuck with me the last sort of 10 years of my life, where when I leave this place on vacation, it's going to run better than when I'm here.
And then you come back and you go, wait, am I the problem?
Oh, dear. So you gotta not take it personal and just get on with stuff. Oh, hilarious.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Good. Well, it's really interesting because a lot of things I say quite often is we need to process for that. Right? Because if we're going through a manufacturing item and, you know, we're having. We're struggling with it.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: We, we have to kind of eliminate things. And so we properly trained the staff.
Do we have the right equipment? Is there equipment in good repair, etc. Etc. And then you put a process together for that. So if you still have a failure, you're not blaming the individual item, you're blaming the process because we've done everything else.
And when I was that first job that I had, where I went and met that gentleman and he gave me the job as a site superintendent, he said to me, just so you understand our relationship, my job is to give you everything that you need.
The, the labor that you need, the material that you need, the, the computers, the truck, the equipment, the etc. Etc. All the drawings, all the information, everything that you need and literally everything you ask for. My job is to give it to you. Yeah. So that if you make a mistake, it's your fault.
Yep. And I was like, wow, you know, when he said that to me, but he put it together and, and he was, you know, a little bit of a smirk on his face, but he was deadly serious. He was like, totally. This is what I have to do. And then if it, if, if you still have a, an issue, it's not on me.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: You can't come back to me and say, I didn't this, didn't that, I.
[00:40:00] Speaker A: Didn'T this, that or the other. Yep.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: You know, which puts the onus on both parties, which is it's ownership for both, where it's like, hey, I have to step up to the mark. Yeah, same thing.
We're obviously learning and growing and times are changing. But for you yourself, what's something you're learning in these days?
[00:40:27] Speaker B: I think that I'm always going to be learning patience.
And I was told a while ago, like, quite a while ago, in a joking manner is.
And she said, I've realized something about you.
And it was a client of mine and we'd worked together for back and forth. And I said, well, what's that? And she said, you have a problem with stupid?
And she gave me this bumper sticker and it said, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were an idiot.
And she gave it to me as a joke and she said it was an endearing quality of mine because she, she would under. She could see on my face when something happened that was, you know, so sideways that, you know, you'd be struggling with, with relating it. And so it was the patience out of that conversation, the patience, you know, of, of you Know, demands that are unfair from customers, the, the patient to understand the employee needs and the equipment needs and kind of just taking a breath and kind of not reacting. And I've actually had people say to me that I wish you'd react more. And I said, you don't want me to do that because I need to process and be patient and calmly think about it. Because if the hockey coach in me comes out, there's going to be a lot of yelling and screaming. Right. So I think that I'll always be working on patience. And you know, I have some colleagues here who, you know, have kids that are five and six, you know, and I say now, I say, oh my goodness, I can't believe what a parent has to go through with a six year old. Yeah. You know, now that my kids are older and I'm like, I don't know where I had the time to do that with hot.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: And all the different things.
But it's patience.
[00:42:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so true. So true. Yeah. In a day and age when there's zero patience in most people, heaven forbid.
It just happened to me a couple of days ago. You're at a stop sign or a red light and it turns green. And if you're not, you know, Michael Schumacher flooring it, take the horn. And I'm like, excuse me, it's not even one second yet. Give me a chance. You're like, how did you even hit the horn that quick?
[00:42:57] Speaker B: But they had the hand on it, right? They're waiting for it. They. So did.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: They so did. Oh, hilarious. But we're kind of coming near the end here, but just the horizon, like, what do you see coming?
Is there anything that excites you?
How do you think 20, 26 might look out or how pan out for us all?
[00:43:21] Speaker B: I actually, I think that's, it's. I got to use the word scary. I think that's a scary question right now because, you know, a lot of people are just trying to get through the day and the week, know, with, with, you know, certainly I'm up in Canada here, so we have, we rely a lot on the US for our sales and, and with, with the tariffs and, and it's actually not the tariffs themselves.
I'm going to say that objectively, it's the, the uncertainty that's associated with it.
[00:43:52] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: That is, is, is contracting a lot of things and then, you know, everything that associated with that. And so I'm certainly nervous for the next little while.
I think that, you know, on the horizon I see the Exciting part is I see the young people and the skill and the skill trades and everybody getting together. And I do think five years from now, we're going to hit that curb and we're going to. We're going to be.
And we're going to have to be working with these, the younger people and upskilling them and figuring out how to do it. Because the aging of the skilled population, it creeps up every year. Every year everybody gets older. And we've been forecasting it for quite a while, but I think it's going to be one of those things that instead of forecasting it, we're going to be forcing it. And I think we're going to be stepping back and training people and understanding. And like, I was on a call today with the junior estimator, but in the back there was a senior guy who was coaching him and going back and forth, and then he would step in and have a conversation with me. And there's going to have to be more and more of that. That's what's exciting. You know, my. Like I say, my kids at 22 and 26 now getting into the workforce and what they want to do.
And that transition is really started because we're going to be very soon having no boomers in the workforce just by age.
Totally. I think that's really exciting. I think that there's a lot of positives coming out of technology and companies. And now, using my Total station example from 15 years ago, you can go in and measure a balustrade digitally and translate that into templates and give them to your class application.
So that kind of stuff is really interesting and exciting.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so cool to see that. So we're talking like five years from now, really pushing people in.
If you could give sort of one bit of advice for maybe some teenager that's like listening to this in regards to stepping into this industry, stepping into the trade.
What's one solid piece of advice that you would give them to either encourage them or say run for the hill?
[00:46:34] Speaker B: Well, I think it's that literally every opportunity just to watch and listen and when it makes sense to ask questions. Yeah, because that's how I got into this. Like that story about the trim carpenter not hiring apprentice. Yeah, that was me. Yeah, like, that was. You know what? I. I have a history of carpenters in my family. My grandfather, my uncles, and like, you know, I stepped on a nail when my. My uncle was building my grandmother's house when I was seven and maybe that little bit of rust that got in there kind of. Yep. You know, but, you know, and then. And then talk to people. Because like, I talked about my. My origin of how I got into this is talking to people leaves impressions. Leaving impressions leaves opportunities.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: You know, and then remember the gray area. Like I always say that my world is not black and white. I live in the gray area. And you have to see other people's point of view, and you have to try and emphasize with what. What they've got going on.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: And whether that's your boss or your colleague or your subordinate, you know, kind of live in that gray area. Because when you say something that's black and white, you can't take it back. It's very hard to take it back.
[00:47:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: If you put something out there and you massage it in the gray area, it gives you the opportunity to let the. The person you're talking to, to the group you're talking to, digest it and respond to you. And then you can pivot, and then you can defend a position that you have more confidence in. But if you come out with a black and white statement or a black and white opinion.
[00:48:17] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: You know, I think you can challenge yourself unnecessarily.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Totally. 100%. Yeah. My father always gave me the advice of the toothpaste.
Once you squeeze a toothpaste, you can't put it back in.
And it's the same with our words.
And so you do not know who you're like as a young person, who you're talking to. I can give a prime example. Me, I came here one time to visit.
My wife's from here. Obviously, I'm from Ireland.
We came to visit and we got invited to a barbecue with people.
And little did I know, in that group of people was my current boss, who was sitting there with his wife.
I didn't know who they were. Didn't know them from Adam. I was like, hey, nice to see you. Nice to see you moving on. Yada, yada, yada.
[00:49:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: Came back and met up with him and talked with him, and six months later, he offered me a job here. And I've been here over 10 years, so you never know who you're talking to or what planting that little bit of seed can do. Not right then, but could be in the future. And so, yeah, watching your words, who you're talking to. Remember the toothpaste tube.
[00:49:41] Speaker B: Exactly. And I remember, I think literally the first and last time I ever was kind of black and white in the statement is I was.
I was kind of at a job interview. I was talking to three individuals and we were kind of feeling each other back out.
And, and I kind of made a bit of a disparaging comment about engineers working on the job site because they're, they're book smart but they don't know anything about the tools.
And one of the gentlemen I was talking to was an engineer.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: Oh brother.
[00:50:12] Speaker B: And he kind of laughed it off and he says, well, I'm an engineer, but I know what you mean. And so we took it. Well, yeah, but I was pretty close to completely putting my foot in my mouth.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: Oh, it happened so much and we don't even realize.
[00:50:25] Speaker B: It was really black and white. I should have softened it and gone from there.
[00:50:30] Speaker A: That's funny. That is funny. Well, thank you so much, my friend, for being on this podcast. I've really enjoyed it, getting to know you more, hearing more of your story.
It's been a pleasure.
[00:50:42] Speaker B: I really appreciate it. Thank you for the offer.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: Thank you. Well, that's a wrap on this episode of the Cutting Edge Installs. If you've enjoyed it, be sure to follow subscribe, go back and listen to previous ones. Also get caught up. If you like it, leave a quick review, share it with your crew. Keep an eye out. We launch these every second week on the Thursday 8am Pacific State Time. For more about us Omnicubed, go on our website, it's omnicubed.com you can see all the tools for for glazers, for stone guys, for Tylers.
Wide variety of tools there to keep you safe and to do your job well and efficient.
And until I see you all or hear you all or you hear my dulcet tones, stay safe, be strong and cheerio. Take care. Bye bye.
[00:51:30] Speaker B: Thanks again.
