**VIDEO TRANSCRIPT**

Good Friday Afternoon!

Backyard Brian here.

I’m really excited. I’m not by myself today because I’ve got my lovely wife, Victoria, with me to talk about some things that we’ve been doing here at Bear Creek. One of our main priorities is building community and relationship. One of the ways we do that is we build people.

Last week I talked a bit about how we build as a community. Today I want to talk more about how we build as a team. Maybe this resonates with you. This might be something that you’d want to be a part of or incorporate into your own team at your workplace. Hopefully, this can help you build a community right where you’re placed as well.

Victoria, why don’t you to take a minute and share with us what you’ve been working on.

[Victoria] Like Brian said, we’re about building a community out in the community and helping our clients do that for themselves as well. We also talk a lot about building community with our team, while helping them grow personally and professionally.

Two sayings that we have up on our wall are,

“We build things, but more importantly, we strive to build people.”

and  

“We choose to intentionally grow to make room for others.”

We want our team members to grow individually together as a team because, when they grow and move to greater levels of responsibility, it makes room for more people to come join our team. We’re really excited about that.

However, the reality is that we have to be very intentional about implementing this. We can say it all day long, but if we don’t put framework around it, it’s hard to be intentional. Therefore, one of the things that I’m building out for our company is called BearCreekU. It is basically a framework that gives new, incoming employees a track to run on when they begin. That’s everything from their paperwork, to learning about our mission and vision, to our culture, and some skill training. So, if they come into their position here lacking a particular skill-set, they are taken into the shop to be trained and then transferred out on the field ready to go. It’s a great way for them to continue learning and growing.

I’m excited to be working with a guy named Jeff McMannis. He is the landscape director at Ole Miss University, and he wrote a book called Growing Weeders into Leaders.

[Brian] Great title. I stole this book. She got it and devoured it on the way back from the beach last summer. Then I was like, does this guy help people? Does this guy help businesses? Because, he’s working in the same kind of industry as us. So, I’m really excited.

[Victoria] We love that what he does in his landscaping industry is very similar to our industry. It resonated with us, and it was simple concepts; things that took some work but were easy to implement. So, that’s what we’ve been working on in these last couple of weeks with Jeff, our team, and our leadership team. We’ve been writing out all the things that our guys need to know when they’re coming in and that sort of thing. It’s on my plate to record that content down and get those classes done.  

We’re excited about what this will mean for our team, because we want to see them grow personally and professionally. For when they do, it helps them to excel to new levels, which is what we want. We want to grow people.

[Brian] One of the things we are really excited about is that there’s a lot of need in our industry for construction services. If you’ve ever tried to get something done around the house, you know that it can be difficult since there’s a shortage of skilled tradespeople to do the work. We also know that there are many people out there who need those good jobs.

What we’re trying to do through Victoria and the Team’s work, is create a way to bridge the gap between services that people need and a lack of skills that someone may have. If we can teach those skills, it can be life transforming for them and their families since they can earn more income. They’ve got the skill that’s valuable for them and are able to serve our community and clients by creating amazing spaces that bring families together. A year prior, they didn’t even know how to read a tape measure, and now they’re helping build-out someone’s amazing backyard spaces. So we’re really excited about it. We’re in the beginning stages of it and will give you updates along the way.

We certainly do not have all this figured out, but we’re excited that Jeff has helped us, and we’re working along the way. Hopefully this inspires you and your Friday afternoon for the work that you’re called to do in the community.