Starting Over in Your 40’s and Working in a Pandemic
With Susan Best, https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanbest63/
https://oembed.libsyn.com/embed?item_id=15821156
This week, Tim and Carolina talk with industry expert Susan Best to get her input on the building material industry today and learn about her experience in the field.
More About the Show
The Build Perspectives podcast shares insider knowledge to build connections and community in the building materials industry. Tim and Carolina are friends, colleagues and former coworkers who love the construction industry and their clients, and want to share their passion and insights to attract future talent to the industry.
In this episode, Tim and Carolina talk with Susan Best, a territory manager at H.C. Muddox, about the building material industry. Susan opens up about her experience in the field, along with offering advice to people looking to join the building material industry.
Background Information
Susan is a territory manager in the Bay Area. Responsible for locations from Monterey to Napa, Susan works with distributors that sell HC Muddox’s bricks and pavers, while also working with architects and designers around that area and nationwide. She is a great resource for education on H.C. Muddox’s products and in case something goes awry with a project.
Susan was immersed in the building industry early in life when she would walk around construction sites that her grandfather and dad worked on when she was just five years old.
40 years later, she went to design school and graduated in 2010. Although most designers or firms were either shutting down or cutting staff in 2010, Susan was determined to get a job because she was a newly single mom with kids in high school and junior high. She decided to change her capstone project to something more marketable: senior living.
She thought that because the baby boomer generation had money, they would still be building. She was one of three people in her graduating class that got a job in June 2010. She was fortunate enough to work part-time in the industry. After five years of doing senior design, she moved onto windows and did that for three years. Since 2017, she has worked with building materials and continues in the industry with a passion for building materials and the process, particularly natural building materials.
With the territory that Susan was responsible for, she was able to see beautiful locations in seven different states. From Telluride to Jacksonhold to the Sun Valley, she was able to visit all the places people get to go on vacation during some of the prettiest times of the year. Although these places were gorgeous and she was fortunate enough to see them, the traveling was a haul and it was a lot of ground to cover.
Susan had a great instructor in design school that looked out for her. She also had a ridealong with a Wilsonart representative, and after that day, Susan knew that she would probably end up being a building material representative. The job really fit in with her personality, and she liked being on the road, meeting with new people and trying different things. She has a lot of people along the way, but her inspiration came from riding along with someone actually in the industry and who had been in it for over 20 years.
Tim thinks that it is important that when people hire, they should get the people in the field with people that have lots of experience. People looking for a job should meet with people in the field and talk to them about their experiences to see what the job entails: the struggles and triumphs.
The Ups and Downs
Susan’s biggest struggle within the industry is return communication and staying on top of everything. There is so much to keep track of and follow up on if there are no responses. Her biggest pet peeve is bad customer service, and she wants to make sure her customers can count on her and know that she will contact them back. Because she is in the car most of the time traveling to different places, keeping track of everything can be difficult. Phones and computers help, but the communication piece is definitely the biggest struggle day in and day out.
From a success standpoint, Susan said they happen here and there, and they definitely stand out. One of the most memorable moments for her was when she was asked to speak at the Wyoming AIA Conference on structural windows. It was a highly technical presentation, and she hadn’t been in the window industry for more than a year. Although it was daunting, it was a great accomplishment just to get through it. It was a personal hurdle that she jumped through successfully.
Tim thinks that with having speaking opportunities, it allows for people to become more polished speakers, although some people find it very scary and difficult. He recommends getting experience with public speaking to move up in an organization.
Communicating With Covid-19
From Susan’s standpoint, she noticed that the forms of communication have pretty much stayed the same, except they are not in person. With work not being in person, she feels a little disconnected from some people she hasn’t seen yet. Because her location is a restricted area due to COVID-19, her company has had lots of stops and starts. Although they haven’t actually shut down, it isn’t the same environment, and even though she has been in touch with the people she works with, it is different and there are limits. They are all trying to figure it out, and she is looking forward to in-person contact.
She misses the socialization and getting to know people through real activities, like going to a baseball game or working as a volunteer at a golf tournament. Those activities are ways to have lots of face-to-face time with people.
According to Tim, golf tournaments may be the soonest way to connect with customers, as golf courses are opening and considered one of the safest things to do with COVID if people are wearing masks at the booth or at the hole.
Staying Optimistic
Susan believes that there is so much opportunity right now and so much building going on — she hasn’t really seen anything slow down since COVID. There will always be buildings and always a need for residential and commercial areas. She encourages people interested in building materials, installation or construction management to be optimistic.
There are many opportunities and people needed for those jobs. Particularly in her industry with brick and masonry, there is a massive shortage of workers. If it is something that you are passionate about, don’t let COVID or whatever is happening now stop you.
Susan is a great example:- She was entering the industry during 2010 when it was the biggest dip in construction in the country. She shifted her project and didn’t let what was going on stop her from being successful. She found her way in various arenas between building materials and actual design. Don’t hold back.
Untalked about Topics
Working in the clay brick industry, Susan doesn’t think there is enough attention being given to the lifecycle and lifespan of products. There is a big difference between products that will last around 10 to 20 years and products that can last forever.
When she drives through cities like Sacramento, those buildings were built with materials that were meant to last. At a certain point, probably around 30 or 40 years ago, people started using materials that did not have the longevity as the older buildings had.
She values things that will still be standing in 100 years and become a part of architecture history. She can’t imagine not having that inspiration of architecture from 100 years ago, so there needs to be a bigger discussion about what materials are being used for construction. Looking at it from a green standpoint, Susan doesn’t want something to last only 20 years, then have to be rebuilt with more materials.
People need to look at the maintenance cost and life cycle in things that they build. Some people throw out that conversation because of cost or not wanting to approach the subject.
Carolina likes Muddox because its manufacturing process is conscious, so lots of lead points can be had with Muddox. She considers them to have sustainable products, which is rare for a fired product. Tim thought that Muddox’s products were rare because of the embodied energy with fired products, but there are so many other components people consider when they look at materials and part of it is how can you make buildings look better longer with less life cycle cost along the way. That is a big way Muddox addresses that in the catalog of products.
Brick is considered a hundred-year product. When Susan does her presentation, there is a dispute about how old brick is but she liked to say they were pre-AMPM and they have been trending for about 7,000-9,000 years.
Favorite Communication Tool
Susan’s favorite tool for communicating is her phone. There is absolutely everything on a phone: texting, emails, calls and photos. The capability is amazing. She is forward-thinking about the next generations: who is taking over and how they communicate.
She supports texting and communicating in a fast fashion, whether it’s texting, Instagram, LinkedIn or whatever the platform may be. The people in the industry now need to adapt the way they think and how they run a business. It’s 2020. Susan supports whatever communication method is best for whoever she is working with.
She is helping Muddox build a new website and other marketing things, and she is trying to get the idea though that they need to have some type of capability of text marketing. Text marketing and conversation marketing are going to be big in the industry moving forward, although they aren’t big yet.
Reaching Out
Susan loves mentoring and helping people because she had so many people help her on her journey, so she wants to support people, too. She mentored and taught after graduating from the design program, and she loves to continue helping people within the industry.
She is happy to have a conversation with anyone and give advice to someone checking out the industry or looking for more information or businesses looking for products.
Susan is available on:
Join the Conversation
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this week’s episode! Shoot us an email at buildperspectives@gmail.com.