The Answer is Yes! with Paul Holah

The Answer is Yes! with Paul Holah

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development capitalbd.ca. Let's do it, welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome back to the Business Development Podcast. Today on this show, we have the president of Fluor Driver. So excited for this show today, Paul Holah. Paul has 33 years experience in engineering, construction, project management, team leadership, maintenance. He spent 30 years of his career working directly with Fluor, a world renowned engineering, procurement, and construction company, which routinely handles multi-billion dollar mega projects worldwide.

Paul has vast experience living and working across Canada, living in places such as Calgary, Kingston, St. John, Fort McMurray, Ottawa, Cold Lake, Thunder Bay, Swift Current, and Flin Flon. Paul was appointed the president of Fluor Driver in 2017 to be the leader and drive growth in a widely recognized and trusted maintenance, turnaround and construction company operating across Canada.

Paul, how are you today?

Paul Holah: I'm very well, Kelly. Thanks for asking. How are you?

Kelly Kennedy: I'm fighting a bit of a cold, but I'm doing okay . So I really appreciate you coming on the show. Me and you already have a preexisting relationship as I have had the privilege to work with Fluor Driver in your growth plan over the last year.

And let me just say it's been a privilege and I've enjoyed every minute of it.

Paul Holah: Great. Glad to have you, Kelly.

Kelly Kennedy: Awesome Paul. So I, I want you just today, you know, I really wanna talk about you because you have a very unique experience you know, with such, frankly an amazing career Paul. Like, you know, like our ex our conversations about your career have always left me kind of like, wow.

Like how has that even, how's it even possible that a man can do so much in, in his career? And, and then obviously I see you as a leader of Fluor Driver and I see that on a weekly basis and the way that you work with your teams, it's, it's exemplary. And I think that the listeners could have a lot to learn from you today, and I'm really hoping to just.

Focus, this podcast really on you, on your experience. And uh, hopefully we can impart some really, really good wisdom on new entrepreneurs, new business leaders who are kind of taking that helm that, that you have, you have basically handled so well. And yeah, let's just see where this goes. I would like to start this off just by asking you to tell us a little bit about Fluor Driver.

Paul Holah: Okay. Well, Fluor Driver is a predominantly a maintenance company. Our best our best sites are the sites where we we sign a long-term contract. We go through the gate every day with our team of, of craft and supervision, safety and quality. And we look after the, look after the people, keep 'em safe, keep productive payroll them specifically working on, you know, improving reliability in plants and in facilities, industrial facilities.

Those sites that we, we go through the gate every day with our teams and, and kind of have a steady state headcount a group of people that gets really good at knowing their way around the plant and doing good things in the, in the maintenance space. And then when the client comes along with capital work or with shutdowns, turnarounds, outages, we would ramp up the teams to do those sorts of things for them.

And then when the, when those sort of, those jobs are done, we would settle back down to our steady state team. So, so really industrial maintenance construction turnarounds cross Canada. We've got sites as far north as Northwest Territories and, and Ontario through to British Columbia. No constraints, just not not crack, but not in the Maritimes yet to, to get, get out there and do some work.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it's only a matter of time. It, it just kind of is what it is with maintenance, right? Like this was my first foray into the maintenance world as well. And the work is when it is. And unfortunately that's just, that's just the way that, that cookie crumbles. And it's an interesting one for me because I'm used to, in business development, having, I, I don't wanna say quick wins, but wins that are considerably faster than they are in the maintenance world, let's just put it that way.

And it's it's just amazing how much effort goes into building those relationships, trying to establish connections, frankly, for work that may come five years down the line. It's it's a different business model for sure. What has your experience been in that? Like, have you found it kind of challenging where, you know, I mean, you might, you might have be waiting six months, eight months, and we're still waiting to have these, these meetings or these maybe our meetings we've had already and we're waiting to get RFPs.

Like, does that ever make you nervous in that, in that like waiting period?

Paul Holah: I wouldn't say it makes me nervous. I, I, I would say it's a, it's a. An awakening, or at least an acceptance that these things take time. They, they're not quick wins. You know, capital projects go out there on the street.

There's six bidders or whatever, somebody gets awarded that piece of work. My bids not only have to be good enough to win the work, they've gotta be good enough for the client to say, I'm willing to make a change. So what you've offered me is way better, and I'm gonna go through that discomfort and that pain of making a change from my incumbent contractor.

So, you know, these things don't happen just because you say that, that you're better. They happen with relationships, they happen with time, they happen with an ongoing demonstration of where you're different and where you're gonna add value and, and some of our current clients and you, you think about, how do you know that they're happy?

Well, the, the five year contracts that we signed seven years ago that we renewed two years ago for another five years, it to me is the, is the, is the sauce that, that's the proof that, you know, those five years we're actually doing good things and, and the client decided to stay with us and not go through the discomfort of bringing a new contractor on site.

And I'll even take it a step further and, and, and, Maybe this is bragging, maybe it's just, I love this line is one of, one of my clients, and this was we started a new site about two years ago and we were having one of our early governance meetings with them and they said you know, he thinks the single biggest decision that he made in his career was hiring Fluor Driver as the maintenance contractor.

And so, you know, you get these, you get this kind of feedback and so, you know, you're producing a good product but you've gotta be able to convince new people that it's worth going through the change.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm. . Yeah, for sure. And the, and the one thing too, like with high level contracts like this, you know, for the listeners who, who may not have, have experienced this level, this level of SCM or this level of essential account management, account management, at a Fluor Driver level, at a, at a top tier maintenance company, dealing with some of the top companies in Canada.

Relationship generation is much, much harder to do. The the access to the people is much harder. They're dealing with way more companies, right? Like, you know, we can't, trying to generate those relationships ends up taking some creative thinking. So Paul, can you maybe tell us a little bit about some of the stuff that Fluor Driver does to, to work around this?

Like, I know we've done things like, you know, hockey seats, and I'm not advocating that every company on Earth needs to go out and, and buy a hockey box or, you know have a stampede or something like that to, to entertain these clients and build those relationships. But with you, you really have to get creative about how to make those connections, how to build those relationships.

Can you tell me about some of the ways that Fluor Driver has been able to do this, even despite it being an incredibly challenging atmosphere to make that happen?

Paul Holah: Well, I go back to to, to what we've already said, Kelly, and personal relationships and, and you know, you said you wanted to talk about me a little bit and, and my role in Fluor Driver, part of the reason that I was anointed, whatever you want to call it for this role was and because you, as you mentioned all the places that I've lived and work, I do know a fair lot of people across Canada and and in and outta client organizations, in and outta competitor organizations.

Industry associations, things like that. And so those relationships that I know you, I've worked with you in the past. We have an element of trust, or at least I know, I know you enough to say, I've got some confidence in what you're telling me, this, this mm-hmm. , this might actually work. It's not just a, it's not just a bragging game when you go into a bid.

It's, it's a, it's a brag from someone that you have worked with in the past and, and, and can, can look them in the eye and reminisce about projects that you've worked on together. And, and at least have that, that you're not coming in blind. You're not coming into a new, a new pitch. Well, who's this guy?

This guy is someone I know from the past. And so I think that's the, the having the relationships and for new clients, you've gotta start developing those relationships. And that's why you say that, that the time element is extended, it takes time for you to gain enough trust or gain enough credibility with your product to be able to get the client to take that leap and, and change out their incumbent.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, it's definitely like from, from the outside looking in from a business development perspective, I definitely see the challenges with that and that need, that real need to have that, that connection, that connection with either the person that you're working with directly on site. You know, someone like Keith who is, is a rockstar at client relationships and really goes out of his way to, to just say, Hey, how's it going?

Talk to me like he tries to create that real friendship with those clients. And that's where I see really the strength of Fluor Driver that you guys have managed to overcome and create relationships in an industry that creating relationships is designed to be hard. They make it intentionally hard to create relationships to, to, to essentially improve competitiveness.

But, but unfortunately, it takes that human element out, which is so critical in all business.

Paul Holah: So the other thing I'll add, Kelly, is that you need to be positive. You know, I've, I've , I've, I've coached and preached this for quite a while. The answer is yes, and it is much easier to say yes to something and, and explain your Yes than it is to say no and explain the no.

So anytime you've got a question, can you do that? Yes, I can. I'm gonna need to do these six things on the side. But the answer is yes, as opposed to mm-hmm , no, I can't do that because of these six things. I can do it and I need to do these other six things. So it's really about it's really about saying yes and getting, getting into their space as to what they what they're asking for and, and giving them a solution that yeah, it might have caveats and it might have, it might be hard, but you are accommodating.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, for sure. And, and I totally understand that in working with you, I know that the answer is yes and we'll, we will figure it out. There's no question . I wanna take us back, Paul, because you have an incredibly impressive career. Me and you have had plenty of vehicle rides, we've had lots of talks and obviously lots of meetings over the past year.

And I've always enjoyed you telling me about your background, about your engineering background. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about your 30 year career with

Paul Holah: Fluor? Holy smokes. That's how long do you have, Kelly?

Kelly Kennedy: You know what we got time. Let's I'm not rushing anything. You do it. If we gotta be a two-parter, we're a two-parter.

Paul Holah: So, I, I thrive on variety and I don't wanna say I get bored, but I, I, I, I would be unsatisfied in my career doing the same thing every day for 30 years. And so I started as a mechanical engineer and I did that for a few years. And, and you go from a stage of being a good engineer to being. A good engineer who has engineer, other engineers, reporting to them in your field.

And then you get to be an engineer that's reported that's responsible for different different types of engineering. So as a mechanical engineer, I then looked after as a, as a lead engineer, I would, and then as a, as an engineering manager type person. And then eventually you get to be a project manager where you're, you're not only looking after the engineering field, but you've got procurement, construction, quality, safety, all of the other elements that go into a project.

And so after doing engineering for about five years, I I, I had the opportunity to go to Kingston. We, we we engineered a project for a, a food plant in Southern Ontario. and not only did the engineering on it, but then I spent nine months at the site doing the construction and the commissioning and the turnover to the, to the client.

And it was a relatively small project, but you know, it went from from calculator to, to hard hat and steel toes, right? So, yeah. And then I said you know, I'm, I'm done in Kingston. The project's finished. I'll come back to Calgary. And they said, how'd you like to go to St. John? We've got an engineering alliance starting up in New Brunswick.

How'd you like to go out there and, and be part of that? And so that was interesting. A live refinery and a group of people that were just getting started on setting something up that eventually became a 17 year engineering alliance for, for a single client. So I did that for a few years.

And then and then the client actually got into a situation where they, they'd overspent on a big project. They said, we gotta trim the size of the engineering group. So I put my hand up, said, I'm ready to come back to Calgary. And they said, how'd you like to go to Fort McMurray?

Kelly Kennedy: You're like, yeah, I can't wait.

Paul Holah: That's, that's a bit of an awkward conversation to go home with after, after that call. So we ended up leaping in and, and, and, and the reason I'm telling you all this is because I don't regret any of these. These were all good places for me to go. They were different, they were different experiences.

They were notches in my career that that, that gave me. You know, and you don't necessarily appreciate what you're learning at the time you're learning it. It's when you look back at it and say, I learned how to do that in St. John. I learned that skill in Fort McMurray. Absolutely. So ran a small office, an engineering office in Fort McMurray for Fluor for a few years.

And then and then I put my hand up and said, I'm ready to come back to Calgary. And they said, how'd you like to go back to St. John and run the engineering alliance out there, right? So when I was there previously, I was an engineer, and now I went back as, as the alliance manager. And, and you know, when you talk about having good client relations and, and you know, looking after the people that are in front of the client every day is very much what I do today, right?

When you mention our sites that we have, our, our site teams are in front of the clients every day. So it's a great way to have a good relationship, but they also notice everything that you do wrong. So mm-hmm. being, being ahead of that, reminding them of all the good things that you're doing, and I call it a, a A bank where you, you put enough good things in the bank account that hopefully it sustains you through the times you have to make withdrawals.

Yes. And so we spent a lot of effort in St. John in our governance reviews and stewardship meetings and things like that, reminding the client of the, the 65 good things we did for them that quarter. And just keeping that front and center so that we were, we were continuously developing those client relationships and improving our position with that client.

Eventually in 2011, I I put my hand up and eventually got back to Calgary, into the, into the office there. And I worked on a couple of large billion dollar size projects as the project manager and I run our I ran our we call it the multi projects group in Calgary, which is essentially Small Capital Works an engineering team.

And then 2017, as you mentioned, I was. Anointed as the as the president Fluor Driver to, to replace my predecessor who was retiring.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, for sure. So Paul, yeah, man, there's so much, like, there's so much there. There truly is like in your ti in your time. I, I was gonna say, like, I, I definitely understand what you're saying about, there's nothing in my career that I regret.

It's like I learned a lesson from every single place that I've worked at, every single client that I've taken on, even if it was like something a little bit left field or something that I wasn't even used to. And I wanna talk, even, especially Flour Driver, I've learned a ton working with Fluor Driver at how to essentially create, create meetings from a very challenging situation in a situation where there's a lot of reluctance for people to have meetings.

Like you said, people, people have loyalty to the incumbents and then it ends up being. Well, we can't even talk to Fluor Driver because then we're, we're not being loyal to our incumbents or we're not interested. So you're fighting a lot of, a lot of nays before you're getting your yeses. Like I would say that it probably takes me five times as long to get my Yes with Fluor Driver than it does to say with any other service company because most other service companies look at it as, oh, whatever, you know, I'm gonna spend a hundred thousand dollars on a personnel, it's not a big deal.

We'll give this person a yes regardless of whether we like the people or not. In the cases like Fluor Driver where you're dealing with large scale maintenance in, in, you know, the tens of millions of dollars of contracts range, people are a lot more reluctant to even give you 30 minutes, which is just surprising.

You would think people would be more, more open to it given, given the scope that if you can do it for a little bit less money and be, and be just as effective if not more effective by utilizing different experiences. But yeah, it's a tough, it's a tough market to be in and yeah, I, I've cut my teeth.

I definitely cut my teeth with, with my business development on this particular project.

Paul Holah: Yeah, certainly in our case, Kelly, they the competition isn't necessarily the other maintenance companies. It's the maintenance companies that are embedded in the client organizations. And in some cases it's the fact that they've chosen to internalize their maintenance.

So they haven't even outsourced it. They've, they've kept it as an internal department. And, and so we've done some work on, on a business case to show that outsourcing's better than insourcing or hybrid teams might be a better answer to that. But the, the, the competition is, is, is not the other maintenance companies necessarily.

It's, it's the incumbents and the, the, the choice or decision to insource.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. And just so my listeners understand you know, I mean, it even took me a bit to understand this when I got into Fluid Driver, but the cost to switch out an internal maintenance team is actually quite high, right? And there, there's always a fear that you will lose knowledge, you'll lose, you know, a good team or you'll lose this little team that you really liked.

And so there's just, there's a reluctance, there's just a reluctance internally to make change. And just I wanna speak to this Paul, because I think there's gonna be a lot of people listening to this who are, who may be able to use Fluor Driver in the future. And I just wanna speak that there are ways that we can, that we can alleviate the pain of this.

One of them is we can definitely onboard some of your internal teams. If, if you have an internal team already in place that you like them, you like this group. If you were to let Fluor Driver know, Fluor Driver would bend over backwards to make sure that we found a way to keep that team for you. Do you wanna speak of maybe some other ways, Paul, that we can alleviate the pain of, of a switchover.

Paul Holah: Yeah, there's, there's a few ways, Kelly. And so, so the first one, as you said, if, if they've got an in-house team and, and and you can, you can take some of those people and make them part of the new maintenance team, that, that includes Fluor Driver. That's, that's a, that's a good win. In, in places where they have they've, they've chosen to outsource, they have an incumbent contractor and we're coming in as the new guy we would, we would target 60 to 70% of the craft to try and get those crews over onto our payroll.

We'd put our own supervision in, start putting our own policies in place. We would continuously monitor the change to see how's the pulse, how's it going, any course corrections, and do that often and regularly through the first three to six to 12 months. Other things we've done on, on sites to, to give the client some comfort is come in and say a hundred percent fee at risk.

The fee is based on performance. If you're not happy, you don't pay the fee. And so we that can be an attractive proposition to drive the behaviors of not only my team, but their team to say you know, we'll do a scorecard. We'll do some sort of benchmarks or metrics and say, here's where we are after three months, need to fix these six things, or you guys are overachieving in all these categories.

You know, here's we should go ahead and pay the fee. So there's there the, that's a good way to drive the behavior, and it, it, it does, it does connect people. Anytime you've got a situation where the the alignment of objectives between the client and the contractor is, is aligned. And, and, and let me connect that a little bit further and say, you know, if we're doing a good job on maintenance and safety and what's important to the client, the client should be more than happy to pay for because it's helping them achieve what's important to them.

So you know, it's, it, it does connect these things. You know, I get paid well when the client's objectives are being met.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. So you're, you're speaking to mutually beneficial relationships, which I, I preach to right? In my mind, if you don't have a mutually beneficial relationship with your client you, you don't have, you don't have a good relationship.

Like it's, frankly, you probably shouldn't be doing business with them because if you aren't providing a good value to your client and your client is providing a good value to you, th there's always some type of unequal or, or indifference going on. And so I think that all companies should strive. And I definitely see that Fluor Driver does that as well.

And it, it's not only that, Paul, there's so many benefits that come with Fluor Driver that are completely intangible. And it's like we've, we've sat in a room and we're like, how do we, how do we explain these benefits that are sometimes immeasurable, but there are immeasurable. There are almost all companies on some level have immeasurable benefits that are sometimes incredibly hard to quantify, but you know that they're real, you know, that they exist and can definitely make it challenging.

But they're, you have to find a way to, to at least make light of them because, you know, I mean, obviously with Fluor Driver, you have to go back and, and go back to the connections with Fluor and JV Driver and realize that Fluor Driver has reach back. Right. We have reach back, we have, we have access to knowledge of, of 110 year plus company and there are benefits that come with that, even though they're not necessarily quantifiable.

Paul Holah: Yeah, we have a client that that is, is truly appreciative of that Kelly, that you know, they've hired me as their maintenance contractor and they absolutely love the fact that they don't have to sign another contract to get engineering done. That I can, I can phone a friend back and Fluor and, and get access to engineering for whatever projects they need to get done.

The client just deals with my site manager. My site manager organizes the engineering and then the construct procurement and construction gets the job done, tosses them the keys when he is, when he is got the, got the, got the plant ready for them. So it, it, it really is a value to that specific client. Another story I can tell Kelly is we were in the middle of a, of a shutdown in in Southern Ontario.

I happened to be at site that day visiting our team and visiting the client and there was a mistake. Somebody had put the wrong welding rod into a, a joint. And the question was, did we need to cut all these welds out or could we live with it? Was it, was it bad for that service? Was it bad for those joints?

And, and so I phoned a friend back in Fluor and had three or four welding engineers metallurgists, weigh in on the problem and get me an expert answer within a couple of hours. And it was, you know, there was no cost for that to the client. It was just you know, we knew who the right people to talk to were to get them a solution very, very quickly.

And, mm-hmm. , you know, those are the kinds of things that they get forgotten in the heat of the moment. And, and when I talk about my list of reminding them of the good things that we've done, things like that go on the list where, where, you know, there was no separate purchase order for this. There was no pat on the back or accolades for it, it was just something that we had access to, so we got it done.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So. I guess what I wanted to speak to in this, for, for people that are kind of listening, you know, that are, that are in a higher level role who are trying to maybe put together the benefits of your company. You have to look at not only the tangible benefits, the obvious ones, but there's a lot of non-obvious benefits to your company as well that maybe you don't even know in the moment.

Maybe it's something that you start to figure out as you operate or as you do more business, but you have to try to keep track of not only the tangible benefits, but the intangible benefits because there are definitely immeasurable benefits and if you can at least name them, it gives your client something to look at.

Paul Holah: Kelly, can I just, can I just go onto that for a minute because I think there's something there and, and it's not just the tangible or intangible benefits that you have and that you bring understand what your client wants from a tangible or intangible benefit. I'll, I'll give you an example. If, if you, if you're going in to, to try and bid for a client, try and figure out what their annual report says. What are their goals? What are their objectives? What, what are their pet projects, if you want to call it that? What are the ESG initiatives that they have going on? How do they feel about local content? How do they feel about indigenous involvement? How do they feel about charity or food banks or supporting little league teams?

Or, you know, each client is going to have a different intangible kind of bias and things that work for them. I would encourage most suppliers to try and emulate that a little bit. And, and if local content is important, then your bid should show a local content to, to, to appeal to that.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. So, so, yeah, no, that actually makes a lot of sense.

So ultimately what you're saying is try to figure out what the values are of this company. You know, do they value little league? Do they value certain certain donations, things like that. And then try to emulate it. Is, is that, are you suggesting, Paul, that that company should then, if that's a client that they want to go after, that maybe that they should be, starting to think like six months, eight months ahead and say, Hey, if, if this company is donating to the food bank, maybe we should also donate to the food bank in order to create essentially a, a joint passion.

Is that kind of what you're thinking?

Paul Holah: Sort of Kelly, I guess what I'm saying is don't ignore it and if, and if you think you've got some value in whatever category that is it needs to be a value that's important to the client.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. No, that's fair.

Paul Holah: Because me saying I support local content to a client that is in Nove Northwest Territories, that there is no local content available.

You, you're, you, you've got a mismatch there. So your, your, what you're bragging about, of something about local content doesn't appeal to something that's important to them.

Kelly Kennedy: I see, I see what you're saying.

Paul Holah: So you have to line, line up your pitch to their values that they've deemed to be important.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. No, that, that makes a lot of sense. That definitely makes a lot of sense. And so, and, and there's obviously ways too, to work with that company on their values, right? Like, you can put that upfront in your, in your initial discussions with 'em, say, Hey, I see that you have a passion for the food bank in your area, or you have a passion for local content.

How can we help you with this? And let them maybe even name some of the ways that you might be able to assist in that, to help your help. .

Paul Holah: Right. Or let, let's put a KPI around that, that we can measure ourselves against progress on it. You have to, you, you have to really appeal to what's important to them.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Which is sometimes easier said than done, but I, I feel like, like you said, you have to at least give it a try. You gotta at least give it a fair shot. I wanna take us back, Paul, to, to when you came back to Fluor Driver. We kind of chatted about this earlier and I just wanted to ask you, what is it like?

So most of the people that I've, I've chatted with so far most of the people I work with are, are new entrepreneurs. They've essentially, they came from the ground up. They had an idea. They've, they've tried to kind of build a company from nothing. What was it like being handed the keys essentially to Fluor Driver and saying like, Hey, we have this company, it needs a president.

we have goals with it, but here do, do what you can make this thing profitable. Do something with it. What was that like for you?

Paul Holah: Well, As I mentioned earlier, Kelly, I do like variety in my, in my work experience. And so this was this was gonna be different. This was gonna be unusual. I really didn't know what to expect when I, when I said yes.

Part of the job is leading people, which I'm comfortable with. I've been doing that on, on projects and, and, you know, alliances and, and offices for, for many, many, many years. I would say being aware or self-aware of blind spots and weak spots going into this role, I had not a lot of knowledge of unions.

That was a, a blind spot for me. Working as an employee in a company, I did not have a full appreciation of the, the, the financials that go into running a company. You know, the, the balance sheets and the, the, you know, the, the, the keeping a bank account so that you can fund your payroll and having enough money coming in and, you know, being more in tune with the money was something that I knew I had to, to get smarter at.

And I knew I had a, a, a weak spot on, on craft and unionized employees and, and that sort of thing. So I would say 60 to 70% of it, completely comfortable. 30% of it. There was a gaping hole in my, in my experience base to, to come into this role. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'm, I'm I'm I'm, I'm an ask questions kind of guy.

If I don't understand stop, explain it to me get some good people into those roles that, that can tell me how these things work and, and can, can lead me along until I'm fluent in the subject matter. It, I, like I say, I wasn't, I wasn't in, in any way opposed to the position. It was a, it was a, a good place for me to go.

And and, and what I liked about it is go grow the company.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of freedom. There's a lot of freedom to do it your way. And yeah. I just wanna, I just wanna speak to this because, you know what I mean, I've, I've obviously worked directly for Fluor Driver. I've worked under you, Paul, for almost a year.

We're coming up on our, our first year working together. And I just wanna say that you're an absolute pleasure to work for. I've enjoyed every minute of working with Fluor Driver and , I see the level of respect that you get around the office. And I, I don't wanna say some people are given respect, frankly, just because of the, the name of their position.

But Paul is given respect because he is, he is kind, he is caring. He genuinely cares about not only the success of the company, but the success of every single individual working with Fluor Driver. And I just wanna say, Paul, that that radiates from you. And you are a joy every time you come into our office and we appreciate having you when when you do swing by for those days.

And it is the way that you've created such an excellent team-based atmosphere, such an excellent place to work. And, and you've done that in your time. And I just wanna say that you have been incredibly successful at that, at uniting a, a good team, a team who is passionate about what they do, is passionate about the success of Fluor Driver.

And they get that because we have a president who is passionate about what he does and is passionate about the success of Fluor Driver. So, I just wanna say, you know, just from a, from an outside looking in after a year's experience, that is my observation.

Paul Holah: Well, I'm a, I'm a Kelly, if you haven't figured it out yet.

I'm a, I'm a big fan of being positive. I, I try and exude that. I would much rather surround myself with people that are positive pretty healthy pretty fun place to be. We're gonna tell a joke in some meetings. We're gonna, we're gonna we're gonna put a ping pong table in the lunchroom.

We're, we're gonna have some fun at work while we're while we're slogging through those 8, 9, 10 hour, 12 hour days that we have to put in some days. But You know, I'm not gonna micromanage people. I'm gonna trust them to do what they, what they do. I've, I've always had an approach of trusting people.

Occasionally I get disappointed and then we have a different conversation. But I, I do find that, that letting people do what they're good at and, and giving them a lot of rope to, to go out and do those things keeping things positive, using humor as a management tool. I, I do find that to be productive.

Just that's the way I roll. That's the way I, I I do business and it does seem to work.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, absolutely. And, and I, I want to kind of carry this forward because like I said, you have an incredibly motivated team. You really do. You really do. You have passionate people working for you? How have you been able to foster that passion, that motivation in the staff of Fluor Driver?

Because that is no question. To me, that is the. That is the, the, the reason that fluid Driver is so successful. It's truly the passion of the team that you have put around you, the management team, even the office team and, and on the field team as well. But everybody is passionate about what they do and motivated. How?

Paul Holah: So, so, so Kelly, this, this didn't happen. Just because we, we dealt the cards and these were the cards I got dealt. This has been you know, Fluor Driver started in 2007. I've been here since 2017. It wasn't always this way. The people that are here today are an excuse the expression. They have a strong give a shit factor.

Mm-hmm. . And that's the kind of people that I need to surround myself with. If you're not in that bucket, then you're not gonna last. And we have had some people that, you know, they put in their eight hours and went home. But the people that I've got around me today, at least the management team and the next level all of our site managers are, they're not gonna see something fail.

They will not let it fail. They will roll up their sleeves to make sure that it doesn't fail. And whether that's getting a proposal in, whether that's dealing with a, a safety incident, whether that's a client has a problem that we need to deal with, or a grievance from the union. We, we, we, the people will see to that problem until that problem is fixed. And, and I don't mean that means they work 24 hours a day. I mean, that they, they, they put smart thoughts into something to make sure that that problem goes away. We learn from it. We embedded into our practices, and we never see that problem again.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, for sure. And so for me, like I, I've talked to my program many times that I've found that my success and, you know, I mean, it's, frankly, my success has really been stubbornness because I hate losing Paul. I hate losing, and I don't know why, but I just, I, I, I work until I succeed because I hate the idea of failing, of losing anything.

You know? I mean, I guess we all have our values or our, our drives behind it, but I've been successful because I just don't quit. And how, how important do you think that that is, or how much do you think that's a factor in, in your success? Or just, just going that extra mile? Because, because you don't want to fail.

How, how often is that the case for you?

Paul Holah: Well, I think let me flip the answer around a little bit, Kelly. And, and with the mandate that I've got that's very general, which is go grow the company. If we, if we're running down a laneway and we hit a wall, we'll go down another Laneway mm-hmm. , or we'll go down three other lane ways.

And, and, and, and let me explain that. If, if, if our goal is to stay and be a maintenance contractor in the oil and gas space and we're not getting any work from that because these are long-term contracts and there's strong incumbents in them, and the bids don't come out, but every five years. And so then what about mining?

What about facilities? What about manufacturing? What about infrastructure? You know, there's a lot of maintenance work out there that's not oil and gas related. Mm-hmm. so. The, I don't wanna say we get frustrated, but we do, if one door's closed, we go down three other doors, right. So, we'll, we'll find other ways to try and grow the business, if you will outside of maybe the conventional channel.

So really it's a reflection of the mandate that I've been given, which is not very specific and, and it gives us a lot of latitude to explore other ways of being of growing the company. And, and as, as you are doing for us, Kelly, of going and knocking on doors in, in in different sectors. Like I say, whether that's manufacturing, facility work mining work food and beverage.

There's, there's a lot of different sectors out there and a lot of clients in Canada that currently don't have Fluor Driver as their maintenance contractor. And so, With a very broad, objective based mandate. It gives us a lot of places to go. If we do get frustrated or, or, you know, that the being stubborn, I, I would flip that and say we're flexible.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. No, and, and even in, I was just gonna say like, even in the time that I've been there, the, the, the change in like, okay, so initially we were targeting primarily oil and gas cuz that was our, that's our main clients, that's our bread and butter. Right. But it's like, even in that time, just that shift now that where we're hitting up manufacturing distribution centers, like for me, I'm always wondering, okay, what's next?

Where are we going next? ? Like for me, it's like, one of the questions I wanna ask you is, in five years, do you, where do you, where do you think Fluor Driver's gonna be? Because, you know, I mean for me, I think ultimately Fluor Driver could be across Canada doing all sorts of different work for manufacturing, distribution centers, oil and gas.

Like we're not capped to anything. If it's maintenance, we can do it. Do you have any ideas of where Fluor Driver could be in five years?

Paul Holah: So on my whiteboard, Kelly, I have an acronym that's TOTW that acronym stands for Takeover the World . I don't think I can do that in five years. I am gonna focus on Canada.

I have not taken over Canada yet. But I do think that there's a lot of places that we can grow in Canada. I think the, the, the oil and gas base has still got some room for us to grow. There's still clients out there that haven't seen the benefit of Fluor Driver and, and you know, the, the, some of the things that we do differently and some of the values that we have.

But what we're finding is when we knock on a door of of Some of the non oil and gas clients where our name isn't well recognized, and I'll, I'll go back to the client that told us about the, the best decision he made in his career that was not an oil and gas client, that was a new client, it was a new sector, but we, the, the, the tools, the techniques, the attitude, the culture that we brought to their site they have never seen before.

So based on that, I think there's a lot of room for us to get into some new facilities and, and, and be rock stars. Yeah. It, it is just that leap of faith to say that we are, what we're offering is, is different than what say small manufacturers or municipal operations or even some of the mining sites might have seen in the past that, that what we bring is, is different and better.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And, and you know, I mean, you're really a success story on the idea of. Hey, we do this really great thing for oil and gas to an incredibly high standard, because if you're not familiar with it, Alberta Oil and Gas or the Energy Industry in Canada really is, it's the leader in pretty much everything, in all standards is the oil and gas industry.

So if you're like Paul, and you've taken, okay, I have this, this great company, we are experienced in oil and gas, we've been working for oil and gas clients now for a decade, what can we do with this? And, and you've essentially taken the standards which are incredibly high for oil and gas. You've transferred that over to warehousing, distribution places where frankly, the standards might have been incredibly low or, or non-existent in a lot of cases, said, Nope, we're gonna show up here.

We're gonna manage a team to high efficiency. We're gonna bring your facility to high efficiency. And then the feedback is, like Paul said, these people are looking at it and saying, wow, , it's, it's almost hard for them to believe because they've never seen that. And so, in my mind, it's just a very successful pivot is, is what I would say Paul.

Paul Holah: Yeah. So the, then the trick is how do you, how do you, how do you replicate that and how do you get other clients to, to tap into it and see the benefit that that we can bring.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, for sure. So we've talked a lot about success. I wanna talk a little bit, and, you know, I mean, you can cut me off if you want here, but I wanna just ask, can you tell us about some of the challenges you've faced as, as the leader of Fluor Driver?

You know what I mean? It's like, we wanna, we wanna always say that things are great and they're just clipping along and there's never any problems. But me and you both know, running a company, there's always challenges. There's always, there's always hi hiccups. Can you speak to maybe a couple of the challenges that you've faced in your time as the leader?

Paul Holah: I'm not gonna talk about Covid or a Recession. How's that? Sure. Fair enough. Because they, they were pretty significant events through the past five years. So you know, Kelly, it is. I think the the, the biggest challenge or frustration is, is, you know, sometimes we put bids into clients and, you know, you don't have a chance.

You know, they are so glued to the incumbent, they're going through the motions of, of, of asking for a bid because corporately they say they need to go out for bid every five years, but, you know, they have no intention of, of changing. And so, you know, we, we play that, we, we put bids into it. But it's a, it's a frustrating situation when, you know, you've put in a you put a hundred percent fee at risk, you've got a volume discount.

You're gonna put in your, a team of, of players onto that job and you don't even get a question after they've opened the bid. And so, you know, there is some frustration there in the, in the, in the bidding space where, where we don't. I, I don't even know if they opened the bids, right? Mm-hmm. , but they've gone through the motions.

They've stretched us by asking us for a very complicated bid to, to be submitted with lots of, lots of questions, lots of long answers, lots of different rate schedules and things like that. And and execution strategies and things. And, and so you put a lot of, a lot of effort into that to find that it didn't go anywhere and it didn't go anywhere hard.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And that's, yeah, I've, I've experienced this in my time with Fluor Driver, right? So I, I totally understand where you're coming from with this.

Paul Holah: So there's the, the stubbornness, I guess on, on, on that side, Kelly, as you keep, keep knocking on those doors and you keep doing it, and you keep, you keep, you keep saluting and saying, yes, Mr. Client, I'm, I'm happy to put a bid in. You know, it, it, it does drag on you a little bit when, when when you don't get a lot of feedback from it, or the feedback is we had client feedback once that said we just weren't hungry enough in our bid. And, and this was a, a, a request for information package that didn't even have pricing in it.

So they, they were giving us a, a bit of a runaround answer to, to a direct question. So, so good feedback isn't always forthcoming. Not always honest. It's not all, and, and often these bids are, are a waste of time, but you don't know it at the time. It's, it's that learning from hindsight and learning from looking in the rear view mirror.

Kelly Kennedy: And so I've seen, I've seen this, right? Like I've seen the fallout of this and the fallout of this is not just you. The fallout of this is the bid team. It's JL, it's Keith, it's all the people, it's Jen, it's all the people up top who have put in all this effort to create this outstanding bid. And, and obviously stuff like this happens.

How do you deal with the frustration of this, Paul? How do you, how, how do you like, not just with you, but with the entire team who starts to feel demoralized a little bit because they put in a ton of effort. You know, maybe a week, two weeks, three weeks, who knows how long it's been to put together this amazing bid package, and then you get feedback like that.

How do you deal with that demoralization?

Paul Holah: Two, two things there. And, and the first one would be back to what I said about having a pretty positive attitude around things. You know, if, if we, we have a positive attitude bank as well, because we do need to make withdrawals in it sometimes. So, yeah, I think uh, staying positive about things.

But the other thing is as a, as a learning afterwards and saying, well, let's, let's be a little more selective. And so all of those bids that we've got rejections on I think that there are, there are almost an equal number of bids that we didn't put effort into because we thought this is a non-starter.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , there's 10 bidders. It's somebody's gonna buy this job. It's not worth our time and energy to even put a proposal in. So we're, we're. we're making people aware that we are being selective as well. And so when we do put our backs into a bid, we've, we're, we're, we're hopeful and we're thinking that we've at least got a chance on this one.

The ones that we know, we, we probably don't have a chance at all, or it's not worth the time and energy, or we've got something that, that might be a higher priority or higher likelihood of, of a win, then we'll put some to the wayside and and not touch them.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. So.

Paul Holah: It's about, and and I think, and I think recognizing that what, where you can win and where you don't have a chance is an important messaging to the team.

That, that, you know, we're not just chasing windmills. We're, we're actually gonna go after the ones that are real and we're gonna put our backs into it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. A, a prioritization, it's a prioritization of success, which, like you said, if, if you're, if you're prioritizing higher likelihood of success, you have a higher chance of winning, instead of demoralizing your team, you're pumping them up.

That makes a lot of sense. Paul, can you tell me a little bit about, I have an interesting question and we'll just let me know if you wanna cancel this one out. You don't have to answer it. I just wanted to ask if there was one thing that you could change about Fluor Driver with the snap of your fingers, let's, let's call it an Avengers moment.

You could just reset something. If you could just snap your fingers and change one thing at flu or Driver that you think would, would incredibly benefit the business. What, what might that be?

Paul Holah: Kelly? I'm an engineer. I don't think about esoteric stuff like this. , I, I don't have a magic eight ball. I don't have a snap my fingers and a genie and a, a magic hat that I can pull a rabbit out of.

I, if it was an easy change, I'd have made it already. Sure. Any, any fundamental changes of, of people are, are, are, right now, they're in the hard bucket because every single person is, is performing, every single person is is, is pretty good at what they do. And and strong, strong, not gonna let things fail attitude to them.

So I, I don't know if there's one thing that I would snap my fingers and change you know, systemic things that I'd like to grow and develop over the years. I, I think we'd like to get maybe better at sales. Maybe we need someone doing what you're doing out, out in the street and, and, and spending more time with clients, developing relationships.

Right now, the, the sales falls to myself and Keith and JL and you, and, and so it's a bit of a shared role. But, but maybe we need to ramp that up. And I think I think over time we probably need to, to grow. I know, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're very good at doing steady state maintenance. Maybe we need to develop other businesses.

For example, do we have a, you know, two guys in a truck model that's gonna go and be dispatched to go and fix HVAC unit or go and fix an elevator or go and fix something for someone in, in facilities or warehouses or, you know, industrial like a call out service might be something to, to grow and develop.

Yeah. Tool rental business, you know bundle pulling equipment. Mm-hmm. , you know, where do you go with the business and what, what can you add to it that, that adds value to what you're doing, but, but as is complimentary and, and something that you know how to run and manage.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. A like add-on, add-on services, but add-on services.

I've seen them done poorly too. Like you said, they need to be in your wheelhouse. I'm a huge advocate of add-on services. However, they need to be something that you understand fully and completely that there are a, a addition to your main service or a they, they make sense, right? It's gotta make sense.

Cause I've seen a lot of companies, Paul, try to do things that, you know, they're trying to pivot, they try to pivot in a challenge and they're pivoting to things that they have no understanding of. And in my mind, you can't be competitive if, if in starting especially a new service, if it's not in your wheelhouse, if it's not already like your main understanding, trying to kind of jump in and do something new, it's almost like a guaranteed failure in my book.

Paul Holah: Right. And so, you know, there's a, if you decide this is a, an area you want to grow into, yeah. I'm, I'm confident that we could grow it ourselves and we could, we could bring people in and we could, we could develop these sort of product lines, if you will.

I also think you could go out and buy it. That you could look for an acquisition of something that's complimentary to you. And you know, one plus one is three now instead of one plus one being two. And so you, you've added to your competency, you've done it quickly, and you've bought into something that already exists.

And people know how to do this. They've, they've got the work processes and the procedures and stuff. And so, you know, I'm, I'm not a fan of trying to buy a, a, a call out dispatch sort of maintenance service. I would rather buy my way into something like that and, and, and get something that's more shovel ready.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. No, absolutely. I think you have the right approach and I'm, I'm excited to see what you guys got coming up ne next, like, that's the thing with, with Fluor Driver, you never know what's coming up next. Paul's always got something up his sleeve. So I'm always kind of sitting on the edge of my seats thinking when am I having this meeting to figure out what we're doing next Paul.

Paul Holah: We're in we're in due diligence right .Now for some deal that closes on April 30th. So more to be revealed.

Kelly Kennedy: Awesome. Well see. I don't even know what that is yet, so I am excited to to get the news. Paul, can you tell me a little bit about your daily routine? Tell me what is the president's daily routine to wake up in the morning and get himself pumped and ready to ready for his day?

Paul Holah: Is it a good day Kelly? It's a great day. Okay, so on a good day just for, for everyone's information, I do live in Ontario now, so I'm, I'm two hours ahead of most of my staff who live in Alberta and, and most of our sites in Western Canada. And so my mornings are typically quiet. If I can, I'll go for a run first thing. I, I spend some time out in the Maritimes I mentioned all the time I spent in St. John. We do try and spend our summers out there, and so I've got a three hour advantage on Alberta. I can go fishing in the morning for a couple hours and then come in and, and, and load up my computer and stuff.

So I, I try and do something in the morning that, that is, that is for me, that is relaxing. Mm-hmm. . And then and then like I say, it's quiet for the first couple of hours once I get to my desk. So I'm either on the phone with other people in Ontario, whether that be clients or, or our sites in Ontario or, or further east.

You know, it gives me quiet time for reading contracts and things that I need to do with, with no interruptions. I've, I've got some time there. And then by the time Alberta gets into work you know, every, every week two or three times a week, I'm in touch with each one of my direct reports, whether that's my, my finance director, my human resources director of the site operations, or the the proposals and estimating group.

And I, I make sure I'm on the phone with them two or three times a week in person alone and not in a, not in some other agenda meeting. Most of our regular meetings end up being in my afternoon. . And then I do travel quite a bit. So visiting our sites, visiting clients to doing trade shows or conferences and things like that.

So routine could be waking up in a hotel and figuring out where, how I'm gonna get to the airport or to the train station, or when do I need to get this rental car back. So the, the routine when I'm in the office is, is, is a lot of phone calls some regular meetings, a lot of personal meetings, and you know, so normally try and shut the computer down by about six o'clock in the evening which, which is, you know, four o'clock in, in Alberta.

So trying to accommodate a lot of their day as well. And then You know, it's that's my day.

I try, I try, I, I try and leave the, the computer in the office. Yeah. And so after six o'clock or on weekends, you know, I, I'm still on my phone. I can, I can respond to anything urgent, but I'm, I'm typically not stopping into my office to do work on the weekends or, or in the evenings when I'm not sitting at my desk full-time.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Excellent. That was gonna be my next question, is that when you're in a high level, like, like yourself, sometimes it can be really hard to shut down from work and heck, I've gotten in trouble for it plenty of times because I, I'm on my computer between the podcast, you know, working full-time for Fluor Driver, Solace and, and trying to grow Capital.

I'm usually working, you know, sometimes I'll, I'll start my work, like you said, we started this morning where it's 7:00 AM We started this this meeting for this interview. And typically I'm working till about 5, 6 7 at night. And more than once , I've, I've gotten in a little bit of trouble for working a bit too late and a bit too long, but it can be really hard to shut down.

What have you found? How, how have you found, how have you been able to do it, I guess would be my, my better question. Like, because even when you shut down, like I find with myself, even when I shut my computer and I say, okay, that's it. Like, I've done enough for the day, I'm done for the night, I still find my mind creeping back to work.

It's still creeping back, right? Like, what did I miss? Is there something that I forgot to do? Is there something that I need to do or something that I should do because it's a priority and I need to make sure it's done for tomorrow? Are, you know, mean? I don't know. You might not have the answer to this, Paul, but I haven't found the answer to this yet.

So do you have any advice?

Paul Holah: Well, I can't say my mind shuts down even though I'm not at my desk. Kelly, I, I do think about stuff sometimes. I wake up at night thinking about things and that's, I don't think that's abnormal when you care. I, couple things I have learned that. issues, problems often can take care of themselves without my intervention.

Right. So you may see something, I'll watch it, I'll watch it carefully, but I don't necessarily intervene on it unless it's absolutely necessary. Right. I, we've got smart people working for us. We pay them to do these sorts of things. It's, it's you know, we don't need the whole management team deflected to go and deal with a problem unless it's required mm-hmm.

But most problems can be taken care of by the people that are responsible for those things. And it doesn't need my intervention. I'll read the reports, I'll read whatever's going on on it, but I will watch and I will not in intentionally not intervene. Right. I've got stuff to do. Right. Not paying people to do these things.

And so I'm, I'm hopeful that most of this stuff doesn't need to come to me as to, to get involved. Sometimes it does, but I'm, I'm able to, to leave that at the next level down and, and, and let people take care of business, which is, which is what they're supposed to be doing.

Kelly Kennedy: So what you're saying is rely on your team, have faith.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is hard. That's hard. You know, I mean, it's hard for any business owner, I think.

Paul Holah: No, it's not, well let, let me flip it around the other way. And so every problem that I hear about, I need to get involved in, I won't get my work done. Sure, sure.

Right. You, you've gotta count on your people to do things and be involved when you need to be. But if you don't need to be, let 'em do it.

Yeah,

Kelly Kennedy: it's great advice, Paul. It's great advice. I, I'm totally on board. I totally believe you. I just also know that from like, the standpoint of the clients that I've worked with and even myself, the idea, sometimes it's something we all have to get better at.

Everybody sucks at delegating, I think until, until you take an active approach to it, until you decide, okay, I, I am sucking at delegating. I need to do better at this. That's when we get better at delegating. But I know for like, you know, even myself, it's like I'm trying to train Cole right now, which is my first employee and working with Cole is like, I want to give him things, but I also don't want to overwhelm him or do poorly for my clients.

So it's like I'm trying to do things with him, but also monitor the level of work so that I can make sure that we are getting what I, what I consider is the acceptable standard. But you're right, at some point, I'm gonna have to take a step back and I know it's like working with, I know Deanna at Solace, working with some of my previous clients, like Engrity and IPEC.

Sometimes it can be really hard to take a step back and say, okay, I'm just going to trust my team with this. I think that that takes practice skill and a while to get right.

Paul Holah: Well, that it, it is a learning Kelly of, of, of years and just, and a recognition that, you know, if you don't jump on it, if you don't jump on it right away, 90% of the time somebody is gonna fix that and, and the problem's gonna go away.

Your people are gonna deal with it. You don't need to get involved and so let that happen.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. Well, there we go. That's my piece of learning from this Paul, and I really appreciate that. I'm, I'm gonna try to be better at delegating and having Faith . All right. Well, I wanna take us in. This is the business development podcast.

I do wanna take us into the marketing strategy a little bit, Paul. , can you tell me a little bit about, not just, obviously I know that you're working with Capital, you're working with me and I appreciate it greatly, but can you tell me a little bit about your marketing strategy before me? What did Fluor Driver do, like I know you guys do trade shows, but can you tell us a little bit about how you used to market Fluor Driver maybe before you brought on Capital Business Development?

Paul Holah: There wasn't much Kelly. There was I think there was a lot of relying on the phone to ring and someone to send us a package. And I think you know, since I've, I've been given this mandate and given this this infinite flexibility essentially we're, we're not only doing trade shows, we're doing very specific trade shows.

Mm-hmm. to get the Fluor Driver brand out there and recognized. So we've probably. We've probably done two or three trade shows in the mining sector. We've got two or three more this year to go out. And, you know, the first one you might get a, a nibble, you might get a bite. The second one, you might get a couple.

I'm hoping on the third or the fourth, we start to get some name recognition from that. So targeted trade shows in areas where our name isn't well recognized is one of our tactics. The, the second thing is, and, and I spent a lot of time actually this week working on this, is is we have two big shareholders.

One of them is Fluor and one of 'em is JV Driver. And to be blunt, as shareholders, they've not sent us a whole lot of packages. They've got work in our space and, and you know, we could be a viable bidder on some of these projects. So I spent a lot of time this week working on you know, relationships with people that I've known for many years to say, Hey, this is the kind of thing that Fluor Driver does.

You're working with clients let's find a way to get the Fluor Driver Maintenance in front of this client. And in, in some ways, whether that's doing equipment preservation, whether that's doing something on a big project, sitewide services, maybe it's doing consulting when they have a, a spare parts review or or a model review that has a maintenance spin to it.

Those are the sorts of things where we can bring Fluor Driver in. We can wave the flag a little bit to those project teams who will eventually have a plant that will need maintaining. And so I'm trying to get a little bit further upstream with certainly with Fluor, but also with JV Driver on who are the people that they're talking to and how can I be a part of those conversations to to to, you know, float the Fluor Driver brand and, and get some recognition, name recognition out of that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah, and that's a great example actually, Paul, because I talk a lot on my program about. Just brand recognition in general and that like a lot of companies start and they, like you said, they sit and they wait for the phone to ring, cuz they put out a few Google ads or a few Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads or whatever.

They got a, they got a full digital strategy. They're waiting, they're just waiting for the phone to ring because they put out all these ads and they're thinking, oh, well Mr. Klein's gonna come, he's gonna click this ad and he's gonna call us and he'll say, Hey, I need mechanical services or I need maintenance.

But like, you're, you're a perfect example of this. literally within, like he is part of, you know, their shareholders in our organization, Fluor and JV Driver are shareholders in the organization. And there's still people in those companies who need to be educated. There needs to be somebody out there waving the Fluor Driver flag saying, Hey, we're, we're here.

We can do this work. And not only that we're part, we're part of your group. Like you should use us, right? So I talk all the time about how act you need to be active in your marketing strategy. You need to go out and educate your customers. You need to be reaching out to them, whether that be through phone calls, emails, but you need to be making direct contact to educate your customer on your product.

Because even within organizations, there can be a lack of awareness about certain branches of the company. And Paul, you're speaking to a perfect example of one.

Paul Holah: The other thing that that we're trying to do, Kelly, is, is recognize that many of our, our current clients are, our relationships are, are at a supply chain level and at a plant maintenance manager level, that we have no relationships higher up in the, in the client organizations, right?

And so who do we, who do we nudge when we've got something else to add? Or who do we who do we address a, a problem with or a fairness with? When, when our, when our our key contacts are probably maybe even part of the problem. So we're trying to navigate. Additional relationships in the client's organizations and, and, and, you know, if we're working at one plant for a big client, well, why aren't we working at the other three plants that they own?

Mm-hmm. . So what's, what's holding us back from doing that? And, and, and is, is the client executives aware of those good things that we've done over the past seven years? Are they aware of the value? Are they aware of the, the different things in the Fluor Driver toolkit that we're bringing to bear to the benefit of that client?

Right. And, and my guess is no, because I, I don't think that is getting, getting channeled up the organization. So I think that the, all the good that we do is, is kept at a plant level and my goal would be to get additional relationships with with E-TEAMS and C-SUITES to, to to, to. To be that contractor that is, that is well known and is valued.

The, the people that control the money should appreciate what we bring to the table as a, not only a, a, a lower rate, but a, a more productive workforce and, and, you know, driving reliability into the plant so the plant has more throughput, those sorts of things that, that really do appeal to the people that control the money.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, and I, I definitely see the challenge I in that because it's not, it's just simply not as easy to find the right people. There's a lot of detective work involved, there's a lot of questions to be asked to get to the right people in those organizations with what you do. And so it's like we are even developing our strategy.

It's like as we go, we're developing our strategy on how do we, okay, how do we educate that next plant? How, and, and I know in a lot of our meetings, the way that we do that is we ask, is there somebody else that we should talk to? Is there somebody else in this organization? that might find this, this conversation interesting and can you give us an introduction? And I think we have to just continue to chase the next lead there. There needs to be detective work involved in all of our conversations with our clients because, like you said, it, these larger organizations, they're compartmentalized. They may or may not share information.

And in my experience, most of the time it's, there may not, right? They, they're probably not sharing information to the next site. And so unfortunately what that means for you is that if you are working with a large organization with multiple locations, you may need to reach out to every single one of those locations and come in cold, come in new.

Because even if you're working at one of them, there's no guarantee they're talking.

Paul Holah: I, I'd almost guarantee they're not talking Kelly. So a plan for that, I guess is, is the message. If you don't, don't, don't think that just because you've got a relationship with one, one branch of a client's organization that you're in any way connected to any other branch, they're not.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, Paul, we're getting to the end of our interview. I I just wanna have one more question for you and I, I think it's gonna be a little bit of a, of an, of an open-ended one. What has been the best growth strategy that you have utilized with Fluor Driver? To you what has been the most effective thing that any company can do to grow their business?

Paul Holah: So, Kelly, I think I think that all of the growth strategies and stuff are great, and all of them take effort. All of them require heavy lifting. I think the, the, the, the best thing that we've done is essentially unshackle our employees and say, there's no rules. There's no constraints. Let's get busy.

What is it that we can do? What are the relationships that we could pull on today that might get us more work? What are the trade shows we should attend that might get us more recognition? What are the conferences we should attend and present at? And what subjects should we present at? Who can we call?

Who do we know? What's, who do we partner with that might know someone? And, and if you, if you take three steps back and you say, there's actually no constraints here. We want to grow our business. And you let people be creative and you let people come up with those good ideas and we follow through with them and say, let's try it.

Yeah. And I think, you know, that to me, the, the, the, the taking people and letting them go outside of their box or their normal work and, and, and let them think and let them be creative and let them try some stuff on that are, that is consistent with the company's direction. I think I think that's the best thing that you can do is, is, is harness your people, give them the ability to independently come up with ideas and then run with some of those.

I think the, the, what the people bring to the table is, is as good as any, as any master plan or any, any consultant sort of growth strategy. I think that, you know, tap the people, they all know people, they all have ideas and, and I think some of those ideas are actually quite good and, and we'll do them often.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, that's great advice, Paul. So, so there you go. There you have it. Paul Holah. If you need to grow, if you're looking at a good growth strategy, don't forget to ask your people. Ask your employees, you know, they have great ideas. They come from different backgrounds, they've seen different things than you.

Don't be afraid to ask for help because no one of us have the answer. And you know, it's like, I've been doing this a long time, Paul. I don't have all the answers. I know that for sure. There's people who have different experiences than me that come from a different industry than me that have done things differently.

That all bring a different experience to the table. And so utilizing our team, and I've seen this done to effect in multiple companies, can make you more effective in your growth strategy. All right. So just in closing, this has been an interview with Paul Holah. Paul is the President of Fluor Driver.

Paul, you're amazing. I appreciate you taking the time to have this interview and, and educate my listeners today. And I hope that we brought a lot of value, actually. I know we brought a lot of value because you have just so much experience in not only managing teams, managing projects, but you do such a great job, at Fluor Driver, and at motivating your team at Fluor Driver.

And I just wanna say that it, it has been an honor and a privilege to work with you and for you at Fluor Driver. I just wanna ask, before we close off today, is there any question that I could answer for you? Is there anything that you would like to ask me? While we're on the show?

Paul Holah: I do Kelly, and I'm gonna flip it back to you.

You said what would, I think one of your questions on the pre-read was, what, what would you have done differently if you could go back five years? And I'm gonna say, Kelly, you've been working for us for a year. What would you do differently if you could go back and tell your, your 19 year old self what to do?

Kelly Kennedy: Oh gosh. Okay. Yes, thank you. Be open to new ideas, Paul. That is it. I, I'm a kind of person who, I get into a routine of something that I find effective and I carry it over and over and over again. So, before I worked at Fluor Driver, I worked very much on a marketing strategy that was a physical strategy.

I liked actually going to locations, dropping physical brochures, getting cards, meeting with people, which I still think is incredibly effective. And I still 100% love that approach. And, and if you are a smaller business and you're trying to grow locally, I still think that that's probably one of the best approaches you can take.

I had to change the way that I did business, Paul, to work for you, because I used to do that pretty regularly. But when I came in to work with Fluor Driver, suddenly the script got flipped and you said, Kelly, our clients are across Canada. How, how are we gonna figure this one out? And so I change, I had to change the way that I went around my approach.

And now I speak very highly of LinkedIn. You know that I've taken a very, very heavy LinkedIn approach to the way that we do business with Fluor Driver. And that has changed the approach now that I would do business everywhere because we have found so much success in doing what I like to call a soft introduction, which is a very brief introduction on LinkedIn, attaching our marketing material before I make that initial cold contact, whether that be phone or email, that in, in my mind has made us 10 times more effective just because I can reach 10 times more people than I was able to reach before.

And so if I could go back and tell 19 year old Kelly what to do or like what you could change, it's be open to change. Be open to the way that you do things, is going to evolve in time and allow, you know, allow experts or people to come in and say, Hey, you know, you've been doing it this way, but I think there might be a better way.

Don't just kibosh it because there's a time, Paul, when I would've just kiboshed it and said, the way that I'm doing this is the right way. It's the only way I should do it this way. But times change and we have to change with them to be effective. So that's my advice. All right. Well that that closes off our show.

This has been the Business Development Podcast. You're listening to episode 14. This has been an interview with Paul Holah at Fluor Driver and Paul. Can you maybe plug some of your details in case people wanna reach out to you?

Paul Holah: Sure. What do you want, Kelly? You want my cell number? You want I'm on LinkedIn.

You can look me up on LinkedIn.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Why don't you give, why don't you why don't you give them your LinkedIn? I think that tends to be the best way that people are contacting us these days.

Paul Holah: Well, you can find me at Paul Holah that's h o l a h. Just look up Paul Holah at Fluor Driver.

Kelly Kennedy: Awesome. And you can if you guys wanna check out Fluid Driver, you can come over and find us@www.fdindustrial.com.

That is www.fdindustrial.com. Fluor Driver does full scope facility maintenance, turnaround and capital projects. They have access to all trade and craft you may need, they have the ability to work, union or non-union. And like Paul says, the answer is yes. So give us a shout. All right. Thank you so much. You've been listening to the Business Development Podcast.

We'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.