Mark: Today on PowerTips unscripted, We talk to Jason Blenker , president of Blenker Companies Inc in Amherst, Wisconsin. If you’re going to build something, anything, a building, a company, a team, whatever, you owe it to the world to build something great. Jason is here to share tips that will help identify what makes you great and empower your team to help you build a great business.

Victoria: Hi, I’m Victoria Downing and welcome to PowerTips Unscripted, where we talk about tips, tactics and techniques to help you build a strong, profitable remodeling company. And I’m here with my co-host, Mark Harari. Hello. Hey, this is going to be a fun one, you know. We’re so passionate about what we do and just got to love people and share that right.

Mark: I love it. You owe it to the world to build something great. Isn’t that awesome?

Victoria: Yeah, Because you know who wants to be ordinary? And I think that passionate, visionary leaders help make that happen in their businesses. So I’m really excited today to be able to talk to Jason. I met him at the before conference in Wisconsin about a month ago. Yeah. So I saw him speak and I said I got to have him on our show.

Victoria: That’s great. So let’s kick it off. Jason Blenker is the visionary leader behind Blank or Companies Inc, a midwest provider of housing solutions designed to make the building process easier, faster and better. With one mission to build something great. Great buildings. Great communities. Great companies. Great leaders and great team members. So that is awesome, Jason. Thank you so much for being part of PowerTips Unscripted.

Jason: Man, I’m really excited. I’m glad that. Glad to get to meet you, Victoria and Mark. It’s an honor to be here.

Victoria: Tell us a little bit about what like a company is. What do you do? What is like our companies?

Jason: Well, it’s we’ve got several different companies under one umbrella. So I’ll start a little bit left to right, if you will. And we’ve got a manufacturing company where we manufacture structural building components. So we do wall panels, roof trusses, floor panels, and we build a lot of that in our in our manufacturing facility, in our shop. Then we ship that out onto the jobsite where we have installation crews that will basically frame up a structure, whether it’s a single family house, multifamily apartment building.

Jason: We’ve done everything from additions all the way up to 250,000 square foot assisted living facilities. We do that all over all over the Midwest, really in the five surrounding six surrounding states around us. And then we’ve got a Blanquer construction, which is a full service design build general contractor. We primarily focus on higher end, mid to higher end homes in the central Wisconsin market, where we build anywhere from $500,000 homes up to multimillion dollar homes.

Jason: And we do that and design, build fashion where we don’t build any jobs. We don’t believe that that’s the right approach for most custom type projects. So we do anywhere between six and 15 new homes a year, depending on the market conditions. We do have a transportation trucking company that delivers our products to and from the job sites.

Jason: And then the last company that kind of comprised bunker companies is what we call Envision Home at Last, which is really kind of a dealer dealer based network of builders. One of the things that we’ve working with a lot of different builders throughout the Midwest, one of the things we’ve realized in the small to midsize builder is they’re spending a lot of time working on their jobs and they don’t have a lot of time for some of the ancillary things that your business needs to do.

Jason: So we provide a lot of tools, a lot of sales and marketing tools. great. And and, you know, those are really the companies that make up linker companies.

Victoria: Okay. That’s awesome. So how did you come to be so passionate about business?

Jason: You know, it’s that’s a that’s a great question. And I think it’s probably four or five years ago, I was having having dinner with my wife and, you know, just got to talking about, you know, work and and you know what what I want to do going forward in my life. And I said, you know, I really I spent the last 20 years of my or the first 20 years really of my career building buildings.

Jason: And and I grew up in the business, grew up in the industry and know construction and building pretty much inside and out, at least the residential world. And I said, you know, the next 20 or 30 years of my life, I really want to invest my time building a great business and and really building great people and trying to take our business to the next level.

Jason: So that’s really, you know, I kind of made a shift from working in my business more to working on my business. Yeah. And trying to build a leadership team around me that that hopefully this company can survive and survive a long, long time with some of the vision and the mission that we’ve got moving us forward.

Victoria: You know, you really presented your company well before conference. You really made an impact with the audience going from building buildings to building a company is a big step. How did you get the expertise? How did you learn how to do it?

Jason: I don’t know that I am an expert. I don’t know that anybody is an expert. But, you know, one of the things I reflected back on is I look at all the anybody that’s been great at anything, whether whether it’s a NASCAR driver or basketball player, you look at Michael Jordan and you look at LeBron James, you look at Aaron Rodgers, all those guys didn’t get there on their own.

Jason: Yeah, they had good raw talent, but they had coaches, they had mentors, they had people that really helped them step up their game. So about five years ago, I really started investing more in me and my leadership team and trying to, you know, take a look at what world class companies are doing and getting coaching help, you know, on a regular basis to really help me with the ideas that I might have noodling around in my head and, you know, get them on paper and how do we get them implemented into our companies.

Jason: So that’s really it’s been an investment in myself and our team to get the right people to help us along the way.

Victoria: All right. Very good. So how do you define a great organization?

Jason: You know, to me, a great organization is one that, you know, people are knocking down the doors to do business with. We’ve got a waiting list of people that want to work for us. You know, it’s it’s an organization that people aspire to be and they look up to. And really, that’s fundamentally what it is. We’re one of the things we’re big on is our community trying to give back and be part of our community so that we’re not just, you know, providing goods and services.

Jason: We’re really actively engaged in not only our corporate office location, but all these different communities that we build in and work in. We want to make sure that we’re part of that. And we you know, we’ve got good, good team members that really understand who we are and what our core values are all about.

Victoria: Okay. So if somebody said, you know, I mean, we talk to small businesses all over as you do, and there are not that many that I would consider. Great, right? Some for sure. So if somebody says, like you did, had that epiphany and said, I want to build a great company. What are some of the things they should do first?

Jason: You know, I think the first thing is to sit down with your leadership team, however big or small that might be, it might be you, an apartment partner might be, you know, a husband and a wife sitting down. And it’s really coming up with where do I want to be ten years down the road, 20 years down the road.

Jason: And it’s really developing that roadmap to get you there and trying to fill in the pieces that if this is what I want to be and how I define success or a great business in my mind, you got to put together a plan no different than building a building. You need a plan to be able to be successful.

Jason: So I think that’s where it starts.

Victoria: So what goes into that plan?

Jason: You know, I think it’s really defining who you are, what your core mission is, and who you are as a company. We spent a lot of time looking at, you know, who who are we? And we call those our core values and try to define what makes us unique in the marketplace. So we look at us as individuals and then we look at our company.

Jason: What’s what sets us apart? What is the statement that we want to make to the world that they understand who we are and what we do? So those are probably the first two things. And then looking at how how am I going to get there and the things that I need to put in place and making sure that you’ve got the right people on board within your organization.

Jason: We do a lot of evaluating to make sure we’ve got the right person in the right seat and that they’re going to help us fulfill our mission and and live that out. So we can’t do this without a lot of great people on our on our staff. And we try to invest, you know, invest in them and making sure that we’re hiring the right people to begin with.

Mark: So excuse me. So, Jason, so you just hit the nail on the head for me because it’s one thing when the owner and the leadership team all sit around and say, hey, let’s let’s be great, but it takes the whole team, right? So the million dollar question is, how do you get everyone on board?

Jason: That is that is a great question. And I would say I struggled with that early on. And it wasn’t until probably the last three or four years where it’s really communicating what our what our vision is and where we want to be. And once you can cast that vision out to people, people start getting on board and they say, Yeah, I see that.

Jason: And you need to put it in terms of how it’s going to benefit them and what their life is going to look like when we get to where, wherever, where, wherever we’re going. You know, maybe here’s our one year plan and here’s what our company is going to look like. Here’s what our customers are going to look like.

Jason: Here’s what your job might might look like. And it’s really just trying to explain to them how it’s going to benefit them, how it’s going to benefit our community, and how it’s going to benefit the company as a whole.

Victoria: So what would be an example? Say you’re talking to somebody who’s loading trusses on a truck. You know, how do you explain this to him or her in a way that shows them the benefits?

Jason: You know, what we do is we try to put it in in descriptors. So we’ve got we’ve got a one year plan, a three year plan, and kind of a ten year big carry, audacious goal that maybe we’ll get to, maybe we won’t. But and a lot of it talks about, you know, we’re going to give you opportunities to move up within the company.

Jason: If we if we’ve got a growing organization, it gives you opportunities to move up, move laterally and things like that within the organization. If we can be profitable and hit our goals, there’s you know, there’s certainly raises, there’s bonus potential. There might be more days off. There’s a training opportunities. We try to explain that in in in group setting and then certainly individually one on one where we’re trying to have you know, career path planning of where do you want to go?

Jason: Because if I can help them get where they want to go in life, they’ll help the company get where it wants to go in life.

Victoria: That’s awesome. So when you were trying to do this, when you were setting your vision and your core values and starting to communicate it to your overall team, what were some of the biggest challenges that you ran into?

Jason: I would say the fear of change. I think us as human beings get very ingrained in our patterns and, you know, people get up at the same time they get, yeah, it puts the same leg in their pants the same way, and they brush their teeth the same way. So I think it’s just it’s kind of breaking that fear of change.

Jason: And I think you have to do that by overcommunicate. And I would say that that was the biggest pushback at first was like, boy, it’s going to be different. And, you know, we’ve tried this initiative before and that didn’t work. And we tried this before and it didn’t work. And so you’ve got to kind of break down that negativity.

Jason: But I think we did that by over communicating. So we we meet, we meet weekly. Everybody in the company has a 30 to 60 minute meeting where they get together and talk about issues that they might have. We try to say you’re going to be working on the business that in the minute, in the business during these 30 to 60 minutes.

Jason: And it’s really trying to address higher level problems. Not not necessarily the day to day issues that you might face. But how can how can we make a change and get them involved in making the changes rather than dictating what the changes are going to be?

Victoria: Okay. That sounds like it could have been. Must have taken a lot of time from you and your management team. You know.

Jason: It is. And it’s continual basis of like I said, we meet every department and team meets weekly. Then we have monthly meetings where we bring everybody together and just talk about where we’re at on some of our goals or our objectives. And, you know, again, it’s trying to keep everybody on the same page so that they don’t feel like they’re in the dark of what their what the expectations are.

Victoria: Now, you talked about you and your leadership team really developed a lot of the core values or went through the exercise to lead that and the visioning and so on. How many people do you have on your leadership team.

Jason: On the leadership team. I’ve got six people that report to me, and that really comprises our leadership team.

Victoria: Okay, great. So what do you think some of the biggest opportunities for the construction industry are? Where do they exist?

Jason: man, there are a ton of opportunities. I think, you know, technology is changing a lot and it’s going to change rapidly, I think. But I think people need to be cautious about both technology and embracing it too quickly and need to remember that technology is just just a tool in the toolbox. And if you don’t have the fundamental processes in place, it can it’s not going to help you.

Jason: So it’s not it’s not a silver bullet out there. I think it’s going to advance things. It’s going to allow people to do more with less. And that’s what it’s intended to be, right? You know, I think some of the the the processes, the offsite manufacturing, there’s that seems to be a big buzz now in the industry with with some major players and major venture capital getting into that space.

Jason: I see venture capital getting into homebuilding in general. So I think you’re going to see a lot of changes in the next 3 to 5 years. You know, I can’t I don’t know if I’m ready to pick a horse yet, but.

Victoria: I so, you know, certainly.

Jason: A lot of things.

Victoria: Do you have you invested in some sort of project management software and that sort of thing for your design build company at least, or for all of your companies?

Jason: We are actually part of our company, the envision part of our company is we’ve got a software development team where we’re developing our own.

Victoria: really?

Jason: Yeah.

Victoria: So we’ve another Blenker company coming down the road.

Jason: Yes. So it’s we’ve we’ve been using it for the last two years. We’ve got we’ve got a roadmap laid out as far as what, you know, what additional feature doesn’t do everything we needed to do to do today, but it’s certainly on the map and we’ve got people working on it.

Victoria: That’s awesome. Now, I want to go back for a minute, but when we talked about what makes a great organization, you mentioned, you know, the team members, people wanting to come work for you. You mentioned giving back to the community and supporting people in that way. And here really talk about money.

Jason: What kind of money?

Victoria: Profit. Profit.

Jason: Certainly. I mean, businesses don’t exist for really any other reason than to make a profit. You know, my my view of what those profits should be used for are primarily giving back to are the people that earned it, which are our employees reinvesting that in our in our communities so that we can get, you know, support our community and then obviously return some back to the shareholders of the organization.

Jason: So it’s it’s certainly a metric on our scorecard, but it’s while it’s important, it’s not necessarily what drives us consistently. I also know that sometimes you need to make the customer happy, even if they’re not right, and we need to do good by them so that we can have repeat business. There’s so much business that’s that is generated by word of mouth that, you know, there’s houses we built 20 years ago that somebody calls up and has an issue.

Jason: We go back and we take care of it. There’s typically not a built involved in it, Right. We believe that much in our product, that we don’t have a written 20 year warranty. But people know that when they build a house with us, we’re going to take care of take care of their issues and take care of their problems.

Victoria: Okay, Very cool. Now to revisit again, a different topic. How much time do you think you invest in training or learning or on topics of leadership and driving others and motivate action and all of that sort of thing, All the working on the business types of topics.

Jason: How much time do I invest? I personally invest probably close to a day, a week and trying to either read something, work the coach. I belong to a couple of different several different organizations where where I’m trying to network with people. And it’s not necessarily for to get business really to get ideas and pick their brain what’s working and what’s not working.

Jason: You know, those are those are probably my two biggest questions I ask people is, you know, what’s working, what’s not working? And yes, tell you what works in their business and see if there’s a nugget in there that I can take back and work with our team. You know, we invest with our our leadership team and every individual in our organization as far as some some leadership training, some supervisory training, you know, overall, the average employee probably gets 24 to 36 hours of training in leadership development annually.

Victoria: Nice. So, you know, obviously, you’re into it, you’re into learning, you’re into self-improvement. What would you say to those many, many, many business owners out there who say, I couldn’t possibly take that much time?

Jason: I think you would be. I was probably one of those people at one point and and quickly realized that I don’t think other people can do things that you can’t do. So if you can invest the time in yourself to give yourself the tools to allow to enable and empower other people, you’re going to be many, many miles ahead.

Jason: I wish I would have learned this years ago the power of entrusting others to make good decisions. And it doesn’t mean that you’re letting go of the steering wheel entirely, but you do it over time and you just you know, you have to inspect what you expect, as they say. But at some point, you got to let people run.

Jason: And a lot of times they can do it better than you ever could.

Victoria: That is such a challenge for a lot of these business owners. They just can’t let go. And that holds them back in so many ways.

Jason: Absolutely. It’s probably one of the biggest things that held me back, you know, early in my career. It’s like you feel like you have to do everything because it’s not going to be done right. Well, perfection is also the enemy of done sometimes. Sometimes it’s paralysis by overanalyzing something.

Victoria: So, yes.

Mark: I don’t know. I’d like to take a minute for rebuttal.

Victoria: We have this ongoing conversation around here. Is it better to be done or is it better to be, you know, is it good enough to be done or not? Is it ever, you know, that ever existed?

Mark: Yeah. Well, because. Right.

Jason: But is it ever going to be done because you go back and forth and like I said, I don’t I don’t there is no perfection in life in my mind. And nature is not perfect. It’s never meant to be perfect.

Mark: Jason, I love this whole angle. I love you know, if you’re going to do something, do it great. If you’re going to build something, build something great. So I want to see how great you are at the Lightning Round. How about that?

Jason: All right, I’ll try my best. Okay.

Mark:

Jason: And now here’s a reminders advantage. Lightning round. It’s a trap.

Mark: All right, let’s put 60 seconds on the clock. Here we go. What’s your favorite business book and why?

Jason: I would have to say the little engine. That could be really short, sweet and simple.

Mark: great. If you weren’t the president of Blank or Companies Inc, what do you think you’d be doing?

Jason: I would probably be a consultant helping other businesses be better than what they are.

Mark: And what are you not very good at?

Jason: That’s way too long of a list to hit.

Mark: Your room, your desk or your car. Which do you clean first?

Jason: None of them. But if you had to pick a B, my room.

Mark: Would you have for breakfast this morning?

Jason: Nothing.

Mark: If you can have a sample every time you walked into a room, what would it be from?

Jason: Thunderstruck. AC DC.

Victoria: That’s a good Ah, this is awesome. Jason, thank you so much for doing this for us. You know, we didn’t. We met briefly and I just grabbed you and you were so gracious to say that you would do it and generous with your time. So thank you very much. However, before we go, I want you to share with our listening audience your five words of wisdom and why they resonate with you.

Jason: Don’t wait. Build something great.

Victoria: perfect. So why is that? Why is it? Why? Don’t wait?

Jason: Because we’re only on this third rock from the sun for a little while, So do as much as you can with the time you have because it goes fast.

Victoria: That’s great. Wonderful. Hey, if somebody want to learn more about the Blenker companies, where would they go to do that?

Jason: They can check us out online. WW w dot Blenker seo dot com.

Victoria: Okay great. Well that’s a show. Not sure.

Mark: I put that in the show.

Victoria: Notes. All right. That’s awesome. Thank you again, Jason. We appreciate it.

Jason: Thank you. It’s been an honor and a pleasure. It was great to meet you, Victoria. Thank you. All right.

Victoria: He’s stuck soon. I love the idea of building something great. You know, just just having that be your vision statement or your mission statement. You know, just it’s there in front of you all the time.

Mark: Yeah, well, you know, again, if you’re going to do something, do it right. Which is why I say good enough isn’t, you know. Yeah. Look, I guess I get it, but come on, you got to go. More than 80%.

Victoria: Yeah, you got to get it done, though. And so long as we get it done, Kobe better, it is.

Mark: It will continue to keep ourselves in check on that one.

Victoria: Yeah, Really?

Mark: You know, it’s interesting. I mean, it’s easy when it’s the owner and some key stakeholders and the leadership team. Everybody can sit in a room and just say, Hey, this is wonderful. We need to be great. We need to do this. Awesome. But the trick is getting the entire team on board. And I think that’s the biggest challenge.

Mark: And, you know, I think he had some good input. It always kind of comes back to that one thing of making it about them and not about you and what’s in it for me kind of thing. And I think that is always a message that resonates no matter what you’re doing. If you make it about the listener, the the recipient of the message, then you’re going to get the most out of them.

Victoria: You know, the thing that really sort of slapped me upside the head was the amount of time he is putting into this to become the right kind of leader for this, for these companies and for all of these all of his employees. That was impressive.

Mark: You know, I agree with him. I would if I could, I’d spend two full days just absorbing information because I love it. You know, That.

Victoria: Would be wonderful. So it sounds like one of the first things that anybody that’s thinking about building a great company has to master is that art of delegation. They have to figure that out so they can get some of that stuff off their plate and be able to take that time invested back into learning and doing that absorption.

Mark: My Chili’s here. Yeah, I’ve gotten better, though.

Victoria: Yes, you have.

Mark: I have. I’ve given up a lot, but, you know, nobody can do it as good as me, at least in my that.

Victoria: Two people can do it as good as me. I love. I’ve got no problem delegating.

Mark: Well, that was fun. That was great. I wish I was out there at that conference with you, that glow and about some of the presentations and Jason was definitely one of them. So it was interesting.

Victoria: Maybe next year. Yeah, you’re on the speaker’s board.

Mark: Well, that was fun. Yep. We want to thank Jason for taking the time out of his reading schedule to join us. Yeah, and share and share some of his insights. And as always, we want to thank you for listening to PowerTips unscripted.

Victoria: I’m Victoria Downing.

Mark: And I’m Mark Harari. See you next week.