Outside In

Remodeling is a highly technical art. It requires a grasp of the principles and practice of electricity, plumbing, engineering, geometry, and architecture. It requires a high level of craftsmanship as well as an ability to manage homeowners' expectations during a very emotional process. All of this while turning a profit.

For these and myriad other reasons, it is the common perception that the only people who can succeed at it are those who have worked their way up through the ranks.

But many remodelers who have taken the leap of faith and hired people from outside the industry say it's not as scary as it sounds and, indeed, that newbies can do an even better job than grizzled industry veterans who are already set in their ways. Bob Fleming, president of Classic Remodeling & Construction in Charleston, S.C., says that he almost prefers to hire people who are new to the industry because they don't bring the “head trash” that more experienced people tend to. “[Veterans] think they know it all, and want to do it the way they do it,” he says. “They might not want to adjust to the way our company runs.” Someone new to the industry, however, is more likely to ask how something is done, and therefore is more trainable. “Their attitude is more likely to be, ‘We did it in our business, why can't we do it here?'” says Ty Melton, president of Melton Construction in Boulder, Colo.

Matt Plaskoff, president of Plaskoff Construction in Tarzana, Calif., says that, generally speaking, remodeling is an “I can't” industry, meaning that many lack creativity in problem-solving. “People from outside the industry don't have preconceived notions that certain things aren't possible,” Plaskoff says. “They tend to be able to just get it done.”

Multitalented as they are, remodelers as a group are weak in certain areas. “Personnel and management training is something that almost nobody in our industry has,” says Halsey Platt, president of Platt Builders in Groton, Mass. Plaskoff — who, like Platt, has had positive experiences hiring people with no remodeling background — agrees: “I find that true management skills are lacking in the industry in general.”

Luckily, these and other areas where remodelers fall short are strengths for many in other walks of life. Plaskoff says that organizational and management skills are what he's found to be the most useful attributes his employees have brought from their previous jobs. “Not only do you get a different perspective,” he continues, “you also get a different skill set than you would normally find in the construction industry.”

Melton would certainly agree. Five years ago, he hired Rick Johnson, a quality control engineer in the tech industry, to be his general manager. Johnson is now in charge of managing all the staff (“including me as a salesperson,” Melton says), as well as implementing systems. “I come up with ideas of how to do things,” Melton says, “and then leave it to him to figure out how to make it work.”

Nina Marinkovich, co-owner of MAK Design+Build in Davis, Calif., recently hired a project and administrative coordinator who responded to a job posting by saying “I have none of the skills you're looking for.” However, the woman, Juliana Tadano, did send a resume, and while it was clear that she wasn't the experienced designer Marinkovich was looking for, she did have many attributes that would be valuable to MAK. “This person has skills,” Marinkovich recalls saying, “and we need somebody who has skills.”

Those skills included the ability to relate to people (from a previous job in retail), as well as strong writing ability and an understanding of how to approach a project from an analytic perspective, which came from Tadano's most recent job as an environmental consultant. Marinkovich, who started her company less than three years ago after a career in affordable housing finance and development, also felt that Tadano's comfort with a computer would benefit MAK. “It's nice to have somebody who can type as fast as I can,” Marinkovich says with a laugh.

The scarcity of computer-savvy individuals within the remodeling industry makes people like Sonia Swain, office manager for Talmadge Construction in Aptos, Calif., valuable commodities. Company owner Jeff Talmadge hired Swain because of her technical literacy (along with her organizational skills). Swain's hands are all over a number of recent innovations and developments within Talmadge's company, including a spreadsheet that tracks the company's leads. Talmadge got the idea from another remodeler several years back, but it wasn't until Swain was on board that he had the personnel to produce it.

Karen Dowd, owner of Potomac Builders in Alexandria, Va., has two key employees who came to her company without experience in remodeling. Margaret Haberman, Potomac's controller, is an accountant who formerly worked for an agricultural trade association. Her experience in setting up the same systems in offices all over the world makes standardizing everything at Potomac a piece of cake. Potomac's production coordinator, John Wyman, has an extensive background in the food and beverage industry and still works part-time at a trendy Washington, D.C. nightspot. “If he can withstand pressure behind the bar on a weekend night,” Dowd says, “he should be able to withstand the pressure in the field.”

Indeed, there are certain positions within a remodeling company that require skills that translate directly from other professions. Sales is an obvious example, but there are others that, although not quite as apparent, are nonetheless accurate. Ben DePrenger, general manager at John Kiernan Construction in Bradenton, Fla., said the company recently hired a project coordinator, Kelly Merino, whose previous work had been with Pepsi. “We were initially looking for an experienced production manager,” De-Prenger says, but he and owner John Kiernan were uninspired by the candidates — until they interviewed Merino. “She said the right things as far as understanding project management systems,” DePrenger says. “Project management is an art, and that experience is a big part of why we hired her.”

John Kiernan Construction is hardly the only company that has realized that certain skills are universal. Jim Stephens, owner of both Stronghold Remodeling and a consulting company called Crossroads Business Development in Boise, Idaho, had as a client a construction company that hired a production manager from the information technology industry. “This person had clear knowledge of the production process,” Stephens says, “and made a great production manager.” In other words, process is process, no matter the finished product. A person who understands the essential steps to getting from point A to point E (stopping at points B, C, and D along the way) will be effective overseeing any production, provided that they are properly trained in the details.

That doesn't mean you can pick successful people up off the street, drop them into your company, and expect them to thrive. It's still important to follow basic business principles to get the new employee up to speed.

First and foremost, you need to follow sound hiring practices. Just because a person has an impressive resume and a skill set that would translate well to remodeling doesn't mean they'll be a good fit for your company.

A Minnesota remodeler who requested anonymity in exchange for his candor hired a general manager from outside the industry to help his company grow. The employees were onboard with the idea, excited about the company moving forward. But from day one, there were problems. “The cultural piece is the most important,” the remodeler says. The GM came and tried to make everything more strict and rigid, “because that's what he knew.” He also tried to implement an incentive-based compensation program. “It sounds perfectly legitimate and sensible,” the remodeler says, “but a lot of our people aren't working here just for the money.” The general manager wasn't flexible enough to adapt his corporate viewpoint to the remodeling business. Three employees left the company during his tenure, and the day he left the company, “it was like a breath of fresh air,” according to the remodeler. “We hire for attitude and train for aptitude,” says Erik Jackson, of Jackson Remodeling in Seattle, echoing the old saw. Jackson's experiences with hiring people from outside the industry have been overwhelmingly positive; his success stories involve field employees. Trusting people who have no experience with the craftsmanship aspect of remodeling is something most remodelers are hesitant, if not unwilling, to do. (After sharing a story about a field employee who didn't work out, Marinkovich says she'd “never again hire somebody out in the field who didn't have any experience in construction.”)

But Jackson has made it work. He convinced an acquaintance, who was working as a baker at the time, to come to Jackson Remodeling as an apprentice carpenter. “He had a great work ethic and was wonderful with people,” Jackson says. Once on the job, it became clear that he was destined for stardom. “He had the drive to learn, he was just a sponge,” Jackson says. Four years later, “he's our stud lead carpenter.” Jackson now has another employee — a woman with a background in writing — in that apprentice carpenter slot. “She's going to be a wonderful lead carpenter,” Jackson says, adding that the apprentice carpenter position works something like a baseball farm team, grooming talent for the company.

Once you have hired the right person, you need to train them properly. When DePrenger joined John Kiernan Construction from his corporate finance job, he “shadowed” Kiernan for two or three months before taking the reins on a couple of jobs. Now, three years later, he's in charge of operations as well as finance at the company.

Kiernan's patience and accessibility were crucial to DePrenger's development and ultimate success with the company. Bill Connor, owner of Connor & Co. in Indianapolis, made himself similarly available to the utility worker he hired as a project manager four years ago. “I spent a lot of time with him up front, and made sure my door was open at all times,” he says. Connor also suggests breaking everything into manageable chunks. “I'd send him out with tasks and information, and then tell him ‘When you reach this point, let's get back together.'” The employee now runs all of the company's production.

Generally speaking, you want all of your employees to be accountable and able to perform their duties without getting approval from you first. Instilling that confidence is an ongoing process with all employees, but it's especially important with people new to the industry. Marinkovich says that she often finds herself reminding Tadano that she knows more than she thinks she does.

At Classic, helping all new employees, especially those from outside the industry, assimilate to their jobs is a team effort. “Everybody in the office interviews them,” Fleming says of potential hires, “and everyone has to have a good feeling about them. If we bring them on, we're all there working to make them a success.”

That's not the only role that employees play in hiring someone from outside the industry. Like all management decisions, a new hire isn't made in a vacuum, and the incoming employee — particularly if they're in a management position — must be accepted by your current employees for the transition to be as smooth as possible.

Tim and Janeen Welsh, owners of Welsh Construction, Lexington, Va., hired Brian Kave, a former corporate employee with McDonald's, to be the company's general manager. In addition to his being an “outsider,” he was also the first person ever to hold such a position at the company. “Tim and I were excited about the move,” Janeen says. “We talked with our employees about it, and no one said anything [negative].”

Once Kave started, however, employees quit at an alarming rate. Janeen Welsh said the company lost 100% of its 10-person field staff, along with their designer and estimator. “We totally misread their feelings,” she says. “They were resentful.” She says that if she had it to do over again, she'd make more effort to ask employees specific instead of general questions about how they felt — a technique she learned, incidentally, from Kave. (She does not regret hiring him, however. Quite the contrary; Kave put together the new team of employees. Janeen says the company is “more professional than ever. He handles situations in a way that Tim and I never would have thought of.”)

Undoubtedly, some remodelers have dismissed the notion of hiring people from the corporate world because they don't think they can pay the going rate. The Welshes got lucky; they recruited Kave from his position as the director of the special education department at a local school (he had retired from the corporate world), and could comfortably give him the compensation he sought. But if that's not the case, and you think the person is right for your company, the advice is unanimous: pay up. “If you're recruiting top talent, then you need to pay for it,” Platt says.

Stephens says that he's had to change the mindsets of many of the companies he has consulted for. “There's this feeling that you can't make $120,000 a year as a production manager,” he says. But that's not going to be a good enough reason for an employee who thinks he's worth that much. Stephens suggests setting a “target compensation,” making the base salary an amount that is proportionate to the industry standard, and then tacking the rest on as performance-based incentives. Melton used this strategy to convince Johnson to sign on with his company. In addition to paying him a base salary, Melton also set up a profit-sharing plan. “Now my key man is splitting any profits over 5% [net] with me,” he says, “whereas before I hired him, I struggled to get my profits even that high.”

Once you make the decision to hire someone with a corporate or a business background for a management position at your remodeling company, it's important to let them do their thing. Discuss ideas with them, keep tabs on how they're affecting your bottom line, and monitor employee morale, but cramping their style will lessen — if not destroy — the positive effect they can have on your company. “If you hire that level of talent and don't let them run with it, there will be problems,” says Platt, who hired three of his five senior staff members from outside the industry. “You have to be willing to let them make the decisions you hired them to make.”

Owning From Outside

If hearing about the positive experiences that remodelers have had hiring people from outside the industry isn't enough to convince you that it's a risk you should at least consider taking, maybe hearing from remodeling company owners who have other backgrounds will.

Nina Marinkovich started MAK Design+Build with her business partner, Ken Kirsch, less than three years ago. Kirsch is an industry veteran, but Marinkovich's professional background is in housing finance and development. She cites the “many skills that fall under communication,” including writing and giving presentations, as valuable to her in her new career. Her previous work also had a customer service aspect, a real boon to remodeling.

Karen Dowd, who due to a pending divorce now finds herself sole owner of Potomac Builders, has an extensive background in event planning; she was vice president at a large firm before planning events for associations. She has some recent experience in the industry, but as she takes on all management responsibilities, she says she's “approaching each remodeling project like it's a big event.” The two jobs are not dissimilar, actually, and the detail-oriented nature that makes someone a successful event planner should translate well to remodeling.

Ben DePrenger isn't the owner of John Kiernan Construction, but as general manager, he plays an owner's role. John and Nancy Kiernan took a gamble hiring DePrenger — who they knew through one of their sons — from his job in corporate finance, and it has paid off big-time. The company has once again taken on someone new to the industry: Kelly Merino, a project manager who formerly worked for Pepsi. Says DePrenger, “My hire [and subsequent success] was probably a catalyst toward being open to bringing on another newbie.”

Help!

Employees share their biggest challenges.

Remodelers have a tendency to forget that most people don't know nearly as much about home renovation as they do. While it should always be a goal to communicate with clients on a level they can understand, it's absolutely vital that you communicate so that employees who are new to the industry fully understand. Listen to what some newbies had to say about their biggest obstacles along the learning curve:

“Deciding which problems can be fixed with a better system, and which just need to be worked around. Learning to be realistic about the systems I've implemented.”
Sabrina Blowers, business manager, Fisher Group

“Absorbing the tremendous amount of information and planning that goes into a successful remodeling project. There's an enormous amount to learn about construction and the design/build process.”
Andy Shealy, designer, Classic Remodeling & Construction

“Customer service. There's so much of it. It's like I'm their personal secretary.”
Sonia Swain, office manager, Talmadge Construction

“Learning how we do things here. At Pepsi, everyone did certain things a certain way. Here, not everything is set.”
Kelly Merino, project coordinator, John Kiernan Construction

“The multitasking. There are many different things that need to happen at once. It's taken a while to develop a system that keeps me organized and gives me time to get everything done.”
Cava Riley, project manager, Classic Remodeling & Construction

“Learning the jargon. Not just technical terms, but what expressions and words are used on jobsites and by trade contractors.”
Juliana Tadano, project and administrative coordinator, MAK Design+Build