Breaking Barriers in Trades with Hacia Atherton
Welcome to the Healthy, Wealthy and Wise podcast, where we share stories and strategies to help you build a thriving business, create financial freedom, and live your best life without sacrificing your health or happiness. Today's guest has an incredible story of resilience, reinvention, and leadership. Hacia Atherton grew up in a fifth generation plumbing family and eventually became the first female CEO of a major plumbing company in Australia. But her path was not without challenges. After a near fatal horse riding accident left her unable to walk, doctors told her that she might never regain mobility.
Heidi:Hacia proved them wrong, and now she is the principal consultant of All Star Consulting Services and the founder of Empowered Women in Trades, leading the charge to transform the trades industry from the inside out. She is also the author of The Billion Dollar Calling Out the Hidden Costs of Burnout and Poor Leadership, and a co author of the bestselling The Start Over Movement. In this conversation, we'll talk about overcoming diversity, building strong business systems, creating healthy workplaces, and why investing in your people is just as important investing in your bottom line. With that, I'm so excited to welcome to the show. Welcome Hacia to the show.
Hacia:Thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute privilege.
Heidi:Well, it's been so fun. We met a couple of months ago and right off the bat, as soon as I met you and heard what you do, which kind of blew me away, your background is so cool. I was like, you have to be on my podcast because I want to just share your story. I want to have a conversation about how you got here and all these amazing things. With that, let's just start at the beginning and then our listeners can kind of follow along with how you got to where you are, how it was growing up in a fifth generation plumbing family, and then becoming CEO and being a CPA and moving to The US.
Heidi:What an amazing story. Now you've got this platform. You're supporting women and encouraging women to build their own businesses and their success. I'm like, you know what? I'm so inspired and I want other women and all professionals to hear your story and hear what you're doing.
Heidi:So with that, let's start at the beginning. Tell me a little bit about your background and what led you here.
Hacia:So growing up in a fifth generation plumbing family really instilled into me the importance of the everyday hero. So trades people out there, plumbers, electricians, HVACs, they're the people that make sure we come home and our houses are a good temperature, or we've got hot water to have a shower when we get home from the gym and all of these things, but they're very much overlooked and they can make fantastic money. I went to a private girl's school. I've grown up with a lot of privilege and I'm very aware of that, but that privilege comes from coming from a trade based family. My family's not lawyers or doctors or anything like that.
Hacia:So I grew up, I guess in this naive bubble of like, well, that's just the way that is. Trades people successful. They work hard, they play hard and it's an amazing career path. But then when I was in school and I'm going to a private school, me being a female, very discouraged from going into the tools side of a trades business. Yes, go get like an accounting qualification and look at working at the finance side and working in trade based businesses, but there was no way I was encouraged to actually get on the tools, which is a bit of yeah, which we'll get later on to that I've had very senior positions in manufacturing companies and a plumbing company and things like that.
Hacia:But one of the weaknesses was I had to really upskill myself on understanding what it's like to be on-site, understanding the terminology and everything like that. And when I was 29 and I'd finished all of my accounting qualifications, my dad actually encouraged me to work on the factory floor of our family company, which manufactures medical infection control equipment. And I fell in love with welding. It was a rocky Wow. Yeah.
Heidi:It was a
Hacia:rocky journey to start with cause the first few days I was struggling and this beautiful trades person I was working alongside Johnny, he was there in this really pivotal moment that kind of was the seed of everything I'm doing now. So the welding helmet came off, the tears had come off because it'd been a rough time. I, when I go out in my Hy Vee's and my work wear to go get lunch, I was getting comments like, look at that Hy Vee's candy, yum yum. It's not hallow I know. No.
Hacia:No. It's not Halloween. Why are you dressed up as a tradesperson? Is it laundry day? Why are you wearing your boyfriend's clothes?
Hacia:So I was constantly getting not inside my workplace at my family factory, but when I was going out to get lunch or go shopping or fill my, put gas in my car at the end of the day, was getting all of these comments. So I was really doubting like, I even be wearing workwear? Like this is something that I was enjoying, but I was getting quite harassed by society and judged by society. So I was struggling to world, the welding helmet came off, the tears came and I looked at Johnny and I said, I can't do this. I'm a girl.
Hacia:And Johnny said, Hacia , the worlder doesn't know if you're a girl or a guy. You are telling yourself that. The metal doesn't know if you're a girl or a guy. You've just told yourself that you're human and you're learning a new skill and that's why you're struggling. And that was just such a powerful moment of like, wow, was I the only person going through this negative self talk telling myself that my gender dictated what my skill sets were?
Hacia:And, at the time I was a high level dressage rider and my goal was to ride for Australia. So career was always a little bit of a side sidebar. And right around this time I actually had a life threatening horse riding accident. So my young horse reared up. I fell off and all of her six hundred kilos, which I think is like thirteen hundred pounds.
Hacia:I'm working on converting my thinking from Australian to American. Came landing down on top of me. So as you can imagine, that caused a lot of damage to my body. Very lucky I was sitting up on the ground when she landed on me because if I was lying down, we wouldn't be here to have this conversation so it was that close to ending my life. I got airlifted to hospital, I had a over nine hour surgery trying to put my body back together and woke from that surgery saying like unlikely to walk without aids, I'm going to spend at least six months in hospital and have numerous, numerous surgeries.
Hacia:I've had over 30 surgeries since the accident. And so I had to, in hospital, yeah, first six months, the first three months was non weight bearing. So if I wanted to move out of my bed, a whole medical team would have to come, check some balance, transfer me onto another bed, wheel me outside or wheel me into, I called it the wash bay, which was where they could shower me because I had to lie down in a flat kind of plastic bed for them to be able to shower me. So those two things happening at once, obviously being in the hospital, I had a lot of time to reflect. I had a lot of time to reach out on social media to women in the trades, understand like their lived experience, what I was feeling was that unique to me.
Hacia:And a lot of time, obviously in a very female dominated environment to ask the nurses and the staff that were bringing me my lunch or cleaning my room, did you ever think about being a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter? And the women that weren't in the industry, it was always, I would have no idea what that looks like, how I'd get into it, what that means to be a plumber and electrician, despite us living in trades, because that's what we do in houses and buildings. It's all being built by trades. As a society, we have such a lack of knowledge and particularly women of what those career path looks like. So I started researching, finding out that unfortunately the lived experience of women in trades was very similar to mine.
Hacia:There was a lot of self doubt, there was a lot of negative self talk and a lot of bullying and harassment from society in general, which seems to be very systemic in the skilled trades industry. So that really ignited my passion in hospital to get over my own depression and anxiety that I was facing because my whole identity was taken away from me too. I identified as a dressage rider, that's everything I wanted to be. So I had to relearn like, who am I? What's the point of getting up every day, literally standing up every day, which when I was learning to stand and positive psychology really helped me not only find my authentic me and my why outside of titles or CEOs or jobs or accountants, etcetera, but like, why am I here?
Hacia:And that was really to combine my love for the skill trades industry, championing that as the human industry, as AI started to come through and championing it as an industry that can lead to create thriving workplaces for humans, not for men, not for women, and really change this diversity and inclusion conversation that has kind of got a little bit off track to like the true concept of diversity and inclusion is how do we create industries and workplaces for human beings to thrive if they've got the skillset to do so regardless of their gender.
Heidi:Yeah, that is, I mean, I don't know where to start. It's such an amazing story. Now, obviously for listeners, we connect because I am a dressage rider. So we connected on our connection with horses and riding and that story is heartbreaking. And I can't imagine, obviously I've had friends that have gone through significant injuries and have gone through struggles.
Heidi:Before we dive more into your business and what you're starting with how you're coaching women, which I think is so amazing, from mental strength side, I can't even imagine, I mean, maybe this is the wrong way to phrase it, but you look like you are empowered by your struggle. Like you like, and for listeners, if you're watching this on video or if not, you know, this is an absolutely stunning, beautiful woman that looks like a supermodel. She walks into a room and it is just like, what, what in the world? Like, who is this supermodel? What is she doing here in this business setting?
Heidi:But yeah, she is just kicking ass and like taking the world by storm and going out and wanting to make an impact. I'm so inspired by that. But talk a little bit more about that struggle that you went through in both that work environment with being in that space, but also going through your physical strength and having to overcome that. In a way, it breaks you down to nothing, but maybe it also just breaks you down to a point where you realize, you know what, I've been at the bottom. So what, what else do I have
Hacia:to lose? I definitely call it my, Phoenix moment. You know, you definitely, the accident burnt me down to my bare basics. I have nerve damage to like my bladder, to my stomach, that first kind of, especially that first month, I didn't even have control over my bodily functions. So when you are completely stripped down to almost a baby stage, it's petrifying, but what especially positive psychology taught me was to reframe it.
Hacia:Everything in your life is perspective. So I'll give you an example of where my hospital bed was. I used to get two hours of sunshine. At the start of it, I was resentful. I was bitter.
Hacia:I was like, this sun's reminding me I could be outside. This sun reminds me of when I was walking my horses along beautiful green lush laneways after a good workout in the arena. And I would sit there and I would get angry about my situation and that would make my pain worse and all of my medical conditions worse. And then working with my psych team and really starting to understand the concept of positive psychology, same situation, I flipped the narrative. I thought how beautiful is it to feel the sunshine on my skin?
Hacia:How beautiful is it to just feel my body relax in the warmth? Let's focus doing some breathing exercises to allow my pain to actually reduce while I'm having the sunshine. The vitamin D from the sunshine is actually helping my body heal. So I really focused expressing gratitude for that sunshine, really changing how I could experience that moment. And I think that was the key understanding of how to build psychological resilience.
Hacia:I took control of the one thing I had control of in that situation, which was my mind and how I was thinking, how I was talking to myself and going back to that welding moment, that was a moment that I wasn't in control of my thoughts or my emotions. I was letting my emotions run me. I was letting the negative self talk that was being perpetuated by wherever that was coming from society or whatever own me in that moment. And once I realized I could really flip the narrative, the thing that you can always a 100% control is what you say to yourself, what you think to yourself. It doesn't mean that you don't have negative emotions and that you, we need to have negative emotions to truly appreciate the positive ones, but it means that you don't operate in a state of fear from your negative emotions.
Hacia:So when I was in hospital and I was learning to stand again, it was horrifically painful. It was very scary because I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to stand again. There was a lot of uncertainty. So again, back to those micro moments of what I could control, I could control my breathing in that moment. I can control the fact that I was going to do this regardless of the pain, the pain is just a sign that I'm pushing myself to the next level, that I'm actually progressing and moving forward.
Hacia:It is my body's sign of saying like you're stepping to the next level. So instead of being fearful of my pain, see it as almost like the cheerleader inside me saying, yes, you're taking a step forward. You're progressing, you're moving, you're stretching yourself instead of going like, oh gosh, I can't do it. It's painful. It's scary.
Hacia:My body's telling me, no, I can't do it. Yes. To a point we have to also listen to medical things. There were certain times where my bones were just not strong enough and the pain was literally don't stand, you're not strong enough. So there's that balance.
Hacia:But, so that's really how I've built that, that resilience. And that happens whether you're in the boardroom or hospital room in a fight with your partner. If you can take a breath and a moment to go, what is the other side of the coin of how I'm thinking and a more positive way of thinking and bringing gratitude for the challenge? Cause the challenge is what makes us stronger. We go to the gym, we lift weights.
Hacia:It hurts our muscles when we fake psychological challenges, that's our gym to be able to strengthen our psychological resilience.
Heidi:Absolutely. I mean, couldn't agree with you more and it's such a beautiful story and perspective because it resonates on every single level of our lives, I think, in anything that we do. How does that then correlate over you've launched All Star Consulting Services, you've got Empowered Women in Trades. Let's carry that over to how that mindset and framing is applied, particularly for women in business in general, but also entrepreneurship. I think that this really links to being entrepreneurs and empowering women to trust themselves, to take a leap of faith.
Heidi:I know that in my life, the successful things that, you know, the difficult things or the biggest successes in my life have always come from the lowest of lows. It's like they've been the hardest thing, the biggest fear points, the places that made me the most uncomfortable. But those things that I made a conscientious decision to push through and challenge myself to overcome, it was on the other side of that that the biggest rewards existed. I would love to hear more about how you envision your consulting services and your empowered women with being in entrepreneurship and how mindset is so imperative to success.
Hacia:It is. And the mindset of the entrepreneur is often very different to the mindset that's needed for the operational team. As entrepreneurs, we're very out there, fast paced, innovative, we're thinking of the next move, we're often eight moves ahead, but to actually get to those eight moves, we need the operational team. And in very entrepreneurial based businesses, this can create a lot of conflict and a
Heidi:lot of
Hacia:psychological distress leading to, we're seeing at the moment a lot of what's called presenteeism. So people are showing up to work physically, but they're not showing up mentally. And the latest research that's costing about over $150,000,000,000 a year to The US economy, which is crazy, crazy dollars. And again, when employees are distressed, psychologically distressed, they're 60% more likely to make an error. And when we're looking at trade businesses, I know we touched base on this a little bit in the pre talk, when you're making errors in trade businesses, they're very expensive errors because you've got to go re dig up the pipe or pull down the wall and redo the wiring behind the wall.
Hacia:In accounting, it's an oopsie, we'll do a journal entry, we'll fix it. We put it to the wrong chart of accounts or different things like that. Or we can resubmit a tax return if we forgot something or did things like that. So when we're coming to looking at the mindset scaling and growing businesses, need one mindset of that entrepreneur that's very courageous, that's out there, that has the courage to take risks, that cannot doubt themselves. Those people have to remove that doubt.
Hacia:You know, they have to be curious and really out there exploring, educating, becoming 1% better every single day. But the operational team needs to be a little bit slower, needs to check some balance. Is this going to be the right thing? Is executing this in thirty days actually really stick? Or is that going to create a whole bunch of other problems and really stress out the team?
Hacia:If you do not have psychological safety and that's not coddling and creating safe spaces and all of that kind of stuff, true psychological safety is when someone can speak up with a concept, that's challenging the status quo or challenging the founder or the leader's concept, and you can have respectful, healthy conversations around challenging the direction of the decision of the business. Now to scale trade businesses, this is essential because trade businesses have to evolve. We need to bring better technology into them, better systems. We need to take a lot of trade businesses that kind of operate like pirates and then turn them into the Navy. We can't do that without psychological safety.
Heidi:That's so interesting. So, like what I heard there and what totally resonates with me is the communication between an entrepreneur who I very much find as kind of the brain maker versus operations and QC, you know, quality control and assurance and accuracy and bridging that gap between these two types of individuals or personalities. How are you supporting women and what you're doing with your companies? What is your biggest focus and what you're assisting women with?
Hacia:So our biggest focus is again, that two sided coin. So we very much assist women to understand their value, their purpose, how they can really thrive, particularly in the skilled trades industry to find the courage to speak up and bring their concepts. Because again, the trades has been male dominated since the industrial revolution, really the small change when we had the war and women came in and then had to leave. But the industry has always done the same thing because if it isn't broke, don't fix it. But what's interesting about bringing women into the industry, because we are physically different to men, there has been cases where women are laying bricks differently to men or laying electrical conduit slightly different to men to compensate for their physical differences.
Hacia:And they've actually found a quicker, more efficient way to do it. So I always really encourage women understand how being authentically you in a male dominated industry looks like. Don't try and be like one of the guys. Don't feel like you have to masculize yourself or tone down your femininity to thrive in a male dominated industry. And then what we do on the flip side of the coin, because we're teaching women to be empowered, but we've really let down the male demographic because we haven't taught them how to work alongside empowered women.
Hacia:We haven't taught them to also understand what happens to them psychologically when all of a sudden a woman's doing a man's job that can be psychologically distressing for a man and that's okay. We see that men are therefore anchoring their masculine identity to being a plumber, which is not very easy for them. They should be anchoring it to other characteristics that they're strong, they're a provider, they're a protector and different things like that. So we really work on how do we get that beautiful balance of the yin and yang of the masculine and feminine, understanding both of them bring unique strengths. Men don't have to be like women.
Hacia:Women don't have to be like men to have a thriving workplace that has gender balance.
Heidi:Yeah. That's so interesting because you, in your book, The Billion Dollar Blind Spot, I think you also highlight burnout but toxic leadership and how leaders need to focus on this. My husband's actually a retired steel worker, and he worked in the steel industry in one of the largest steel rolling mills in The United States. In his role as a leader, there were very In fact, I don't know there were any women in the entire mill. They had 500 workers there.
Heidi:There were a couple of women in the cafeteria. There was not another woman in the entire mill. It's not to say that they couldn't have done that job, because I think we've all seen and understand that that is completely there's a full capability of doing that. But to your point, it goes both ways for women to feel empowered and to feel like if they want to try something like that, that they don't have to be defined by the fact that they are female versus someone is male. But on the flip side, that environment of having a completely male environment changes the whole landscape of how these workers communicate, how they communicate amongst themselves.
Heidi:Husband would talk about how these guys talk to each other and how they talk in the space and what they say over the radios and what happens in the locker rooms. It's pretty wild and definitely not conducive to being inclusive of females in that environment. So how do you see that shifting and are you seeing a shift in that type of, I think mentality?
Hacia:Very much so. And the shift isn't needed just for women. If we look at the trades industry and we look at the mental health of the men in the trades industry, we can clearly see the culture is not being supportive of men. It's the industry that has the highest rate of mental health challenges for the men. This, this kind of overly masculine environment and as some of the things that your, your husband's probably mentioned, spoke about, did what was on the walls or things like that, that's not actually creating a very healthy work environment for the men.
Hacia:So bringing more women in again shifts the dynamics, does shift the conversation, often encourages men to be a little bit more respectful in how they are communicating to people, which is beneficial to their psychological well-being because no human being likes to come to work every single day and get teased or bullied or have to put up with foul language or different things like that. It comes back to just having respectful behaviour towards each other. And I've seen cases where on construction sites they knew it was going to be a very high conflict conversation and they've gone and found two or three women that they could bring into the room, even though they weren't necessarily involved in the situation because they knew it was going to de escalate the situation, that it was going to take some of that over escalation of aggression out of the conversation because again of that balance. Now we see it as well in overly female environments. I think it's very important to mention when we're talking about this and what's kind of historically happened is everyone's focused on toxic masculinity and the patriarchy and it's all men's fault.
Hacia:If you look at the data and you look at the research of highly female dominated industries, there's also high levels of bullying and harassment, low productivity, disengagement, etc, etc. It just presents very differently because women do it more by asking three people out for drinks and leaving one person uninvited, where men will do it more in a very verbal, in the moment, in your face way of bullying and harassment. So women bully and harass just as much as men. And that's where I'm very passionate around that, that balance and bringing the balance to the environment and how we do that is again, I very much encourage the women that are coming into these male dominated environments to show up and be the mentors and the leaders for the men. Create that safe space for men to come and ask questions.
Hacia:Should I offer to carry a ladder for you? Or if that tool bag looks very, very heavy and you're a petite female, is it okay to offer to carry the tool bag? And women not to think that they're somehow trying to belittle you or be like, oh, you're this little woman. It's a genuine question because men want to protect and provide. And when they see a female struggling, their natural biological instinct is to step in there and help her.
Hacia:So I really educate women to say, this is not necessarily them trying to dominate you in any way. Ask, know, be honest, have your voice and say, look, I I'm actually okay carrying the bag. It makes me feel good that I'm carrying the bag or yeah, it is a little bit heavy for me today. Can you help me? So women need to be really honest what support looks like for them in male dominated environments and not come at men with any kind of defensiveness.
Hacia:Yes, there is cases. And again, I'll say this male and female I've seen in even male dominated environments, appalling behavior from women towards other women as well.
Heidi:Appalling behavior. That's a whole nother discussion because I've seen that as well, where we look at differences between male and females and workplace inequalities, but it is really fascinating. I actually think I have experienced more with other females, which there tends to be more competitive type competitiveness that exists. That is really interesting. Can you share a success story where you've helped a business or a woman really transform her situation and move into a space that's I think healthier?
Hacia:Yes. It's a really important conversation. I love this success story. So it was a female plumbing apprentice and they did a lot of stuff on roofs and everything like that. When she menstruated on her first day, she would get very light headed and very dizzy.
Hacia:So she was thinking about quitting her apprenticeship and her employer was very, very angry because she was consistently taking sick leave. Cause she'd just take that day off because she didn't want to be in a harness up on a ladder heights when she's feeling dizzy. Fair enough. So that relationship was about to go very, very south. She reached out to me saying like, I love the trade.
Hacia:I don't know what to do. It's just like, I can't do anything about it. So I said, are you happy for me to facilitate a conversation with you and your employer? So I sat the employer down. She didn't want to be there.
Hacia:I talked to him and explained what was happening and he was genuinely mortified. He's like, I had no idea that this was something that women go through. I know that it happened to you, but I didn't know that you actually had physical symptoms of dizziness and nausea and pain and all of that kind of stuff. How can I support? What does it look like?
Hacia:And I said, well, on those days, is there things that she can do, whether that's take stock back or do a stock take or go get the utes and the trucks cleaned or in trade businesses there's always something that can be done that's not necessarily on the tools. So he said a 100% we can support that. So what they came up with is the days affected by her menstruation cycle, she texts him a red wine glass emoji. And so then he knows, okay, right. We need to step up, pivot, rearrange, rearrange the jobs or do what needs to be done to support her in that moment.
Hacia:So that's a great example around how there was psychological safety to have the conversation. We brought the male employer into that conversation of this is the situation, how do we co design a solution so the female employee feels supported? And he even went to the next level. He put sanitary items, tabs, pads and tampons into the first aid kit as well. So if she ever got her period when she wasn't expecting it, she could just go to the first aid box in the ute and get what she needed to be able to do that.
Hacia:I think that's a very simple example of how having conversations that can be uncomfortable, that's not exactly a comfortable conversation for the males or the females, but having that conversation, he retained a fantastic apprentice apprentice that's now qualified for him. She's an amazing worker and cause she sees, feels seen and valued. She goes above and beyond and, you know, she promotes the business. She she's like a real team player.
Heidi:My gosh. That's amazing. How interesting. I mean, yeah, that, what an awkward conversation. And I could see how that would be mortifying and I could completely see a woman being like, you know what?
Heidi:I'm just going to quit and go find another job, which to some listeners might seem real extreme, but that's the reality of that situation. That's a great example. What is your vision for the future of the trades industry and for women in that space?
Hacia:My vision is definitely to get the representation on the tools up to 30%. Australia's at about 3% and America's three to 5%. There's some conflicting data out there, but still extremely, extremely low. So I very much see addressing the skill shortage that we're seeing, is leading into the housing crisis that we're also seeing in The US and the desire to expand the manufacturing industry, that's going to need a lot of humans. Yes, there's AI, there's technology that will help the scaling, but at the end of the day, it's still necessary to have human beings in the trades industry and we're not going to be able to grow the industry the way that we're seeing the data project the growth of the trades industry from construction, manufacturing, energy infrastructure without encouraging more human beings into that industry and also have them at that high level of productivity.
Hacia:So we're not getting that 60% increased error rate and everything. So that's the twofold of improving the workplace culture and the psychological well-being of the humans in the trades industry, which will very much come from increasing diversity of thought, diversity of way of doing things, diversity on the way that we co design workplace culture, like that example that I just gave you before. So that's very much my vision that trades becomes the industry where human beings can thrive, will get to a 30% female representation in the industry. I think it I wanna see it become an industry that actually leads the world, leads America, leads the world on how we create that psychological well-being. And we see a decline in the mental health challenges we see in the industry.
Hacia:We see increase in productivity. We see a decrease in turnover rate and increase in apprenticeship completion rates because that's quite low as well. So there's so much data that's going to show that we're really shifting the tradespace industry to one where human beings can thrive, both physically, but financially there's so much opportunity. Like if you look at a lot of the conversations in the private equity space, that's where they're focusing on scaling trade businesses. And that's where our next millionaires are going to be coming from is the trade space.
Heidi:Oh, absolutely. We're seeing such an influx of private equity moving into the trades businesses and to buying mom and pop, blue collar jobs, service oriented businesses all over the country, rolling those up into larger businesses, just seeing the sheer number of retirees and so many that don't know what to do with their businesses. They don't know how to sell. Maybe they don't have family that wants to take over the business. So a lot of them just simply close their doors and they just walk away.
Heidi:But it's a great company with wonderful clients and a lot of opportunity for scaling. Do you deal at all in that space with that sector? And do you ever deal with women that are looking to scale through acquisition or scale by actually acquiring a business like that and being able to scale their business?
Hacia:Very much so. So this is where I absolutely love getting involved, in that kind of almost pre private equity space. So getting the businesses ready for private equity to make sure that that owner, particularly if there's a female owner is getting the most value for their business. Cause often they're not set up technically in the best structure, whether that's a legal structure. So when they sell, they get whacked with a whole bunch of tax that they didn't realise that they were doing because the business wasn't really in the best structure for that style of sale or that style of exit.
Hacia:A lot of people again think that they a 100% just sell, whereas they actually held some of the equity, then they could get a second bite of the apple when the private equity sells up the private equity chain or that private equity exits out of that business. If the original founder can hold on some of their equity in that deal, they'll get a bigger payday, maybe five, six, seven years down the track as well. And then really working with those leaders to particularly get their team ready. Cause that's where a lot of these deals fall over. If the team is already burnt out already high levels of psychologically distress, if you're seeing on your P and L high sick leave, high turnover, voluntary turnover can cost from 50% to 200% off the salary of that employee.
Hacia:It's very, very expensive to replace. So private equity, coming in flush with cash, the scale is very quickly at the beginning. If you're a platform company, they're going and getting a whole bunch of little companies and pushing them into the platform company. So there's so many new people, there's changes that again, transitioning you from that pirate to the Navy. They're putting a lot more compliance in structure, quality insurance, so much change is happening around the team very, very quickly as well.
Hacia:So where I see a lot of these deals fall over is because it literally just blows up the team. So you've got to be able to scale your business while scaling your team and that's scaling their education, that's scaling their leadership skills for your executive team. That's scaling the communication skills from your first year apprentice all the way up to the CEO of that company. And that's putting in learning and development to help the team shift to the new direction as well. Cause sometimes private equity will come in and then all of sudden there's all of these like fancy corporate words and fancy corporate processes flying around because they're transitioning it to the Navy and the team on the tools are like, you get real disconnected because they're like, what's all these corporate BS and these fancy slogans and now we have corporate values and we have all these fancy marketing brochures and a new logo, Like what does this mean?
Hacia:And if you don't use storytelling particularly to bring the team along on the journey, you just fragment the whole business and it can become very, very difficult to scale.
Heidi:Yeah, that's a great point because so many of these businesses are mom and pop businesses that have operated for a long time and they can have some staff or some employees that have operated, sometimes on a shoestring budget. They operate a bit as a small business. It's very mom and pop in terms of communication and style. It's like you show up, you do the job, you text or you call your boss, and there's a lot of relationship there that is extremely difficult to carry over a transition into an acquisition or a growth or scaling process because I think there's so much conversation about culture in our businesses. And sometimes I feel like it's overstated.
Heidi:I'm like, Ugh, culture of smolcher. Let's talk about it forever. Whatever. Let's create a vision statement, and this is who we are, and all this stuff. But the reality is it comes down to human beings and seeing people for who they are and recognizing individuals those, talking about your psychological health, really allowing people to have a voice and to be an integral part of a business regardless of how small or large or what the growth or scaling opportunities are of understanding what staff wants to do, how involved they want to be, helping them see the opportunity of what's coming with an option like that.
Heidi:That's really cool.
Hacia:What you touched on is so important. And what I always advise my clients is, especially if you're wanting to go to that, that scale and exit into private equity is you really need to set up what I call a continuous improvement committee. So this doesn't necessarily have the CEO or the leadership. I set this up when I'm the CEO of any company, and that is the voice of your employees. So you have a first year apprentice all the way up to the contract managers or a diverse voice around this continuous improvement committee.
Hacia:And that's a space for them to voice. Okay, these are the challenges that we're seeing. This is what the staff want. Yes, more important than a brand new logo, we really don't feel we understand what our target market is or the clients that we're serving. So before we go and put all of this money into a brand new rebranding of logo, can we actually spend some time understanding who us as the employees are serving as our target clients?
Hacia:How should we be speaking to them? Is it still that mom and pop casual vibe or do we now need to be a little bit more professional? Are you expecting us to upsell other services or do we just go out there, do our job and leave the site? And so all of those conversations need to be had at that continuous improvement committee kind of employee level, then summarised and given up to the business owners and the higher leaders of like, here's the, I call it the pebble in the shoe that the employees are talking about. Cause if you keep running with a pebble in your shoe, eventually it's going to create a lot of issues.
Hacia:But as the CEO or the founder, you're not boots on ground. You're not hearing the everyday locker room talk or cooler talk. You don't know what those pebbles in the shoes are. So if you've really got to set up mechanisms to empower your team, to be able to find that information, find potential solutions, then communicate that to you as well. And then you bolt on a private equity scale and you have that committee in there, they're going to put up a red flag of like, this is going too quick.
Hacia:We need to slow down. We're starting to fragment. They're starting to be mixed messages. People are using old systems, not the new system because they don't, didn't get the memo or they haven't been educated on the new system and different things like that. Here's the group of people that are really struggling with a new technology.
Hacia:Can we invest in doing some lunch and learns to really get them up to scale? Because not everyone learns the same way, especially in trades. They are physical people. They're not necessarily sit there, watch a PowerPoint about the new technology and I understand how to do it.
Heidi:Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, as we wrap up, will you share a little bit with our listeners about how specifically you can help and what your ideal situation is in terms of where you can jump in and really become a partner with them in their success?
Hacia:Yes. So for particularly trade businesses that are wanting to scale and grow, whether that's for an exit or just, they want to get more market share, maybe diversify their services, etcetera, etcetera, or just improve what they already have. Not necessarily want to scale in adding more to the top line, but they want to get more out of their bottom line for what they have. What I do is kind of come in first and do a little bit of an audit, understand where is their weak spots? Is it their marketing messaging in market?
Hacia:Is it their branding? Is it that operation system and it's like, no one knows what they're doing? Is it disengaged, unsatisfied employees and you've got a great product, you've got a great marketing, but your employees aren't buying into the vision and they're showing up, but they're not actually mentally showing up. So I love to come in, understand the vision of what that business wants, where is their direction, where is that goal? And then kind of do a bit of an audit to understand across the pillars of people, process and profit, where are their roadblocks?
Hacia:What's holding them back? And then how do we improve their people, their processes and their profit to reach their goal? And then from there we bring in the experts in that space. So if it is a change of entity structure we bring in the experts that understand that, the tax experts that will understand everything like that. If it is again, a mom and pop that wants to sell to equity, bring in those CPAs that can go through their P and L and their balance sheet and take out a lot of what I call those mom and pop expenses that they've put in there to maybe legally reduce their tax bill, but that's reducing their EBITA, which means that they're not going to get as much money as they deserve to get when they sell to private equity.
Hacia:Or again, like come in and go, if we just tidy up some of your processes, procedures, put a little bit more technology in before you go to private equity, you're going to get so much bang for your buck. So let's just do a little bit more work to tidy up the shit before we actually have those conversations, just to make sure you've got a valuable asset. You want to get the most out of that asset Where I know on the private equity side and a lot of people I work with in private equity, they're like, Hey Sia, stop doing this. We're buying these bargains and making a lot of money because we can see all the issues that you're seeing. Can you stop fixing the issues before we buy them?
Hacia:Can you come and work with us to fix the issues after we buy them? So so so we I work with both. I love working with private equity too of going great. Now we've got this platform company. And with the private equity, it's a lot more on that culture.
Hacia:How do I work with them and their team, mentor their executive team to really keep their leadership skill sets with the rapid growth that happens once private equity is involved.
Heidi:Now that is amazing. So what is the best way for listeners to get in touch with you?
Hacia:So through All Star Consulting, I give you the website as well. So that's a great way to get on our website or through LinkedIn, just tastieracetin on LinkedIn. I'm very active there and you can see some of my content and direct message me through LinkedIn as well.
Heidi:Okay. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being a guest. I love the conversation. You truly are inspiring.
Heidi:I love what you're doing in a very specific market. I think the timing is beautiful for you to just continue to see such tremendous success here in The US with handling this particular industry and looking at just creating better balance. Thank you so much for sharing your insights, and we'll talk to you soon.
Hacia:Thank you very much. Hacia,
Heidi:thank you for joining me and sharing such powerful insights on resilience, leadership, and the importance of building healthy, people focused businesses. Your journey is really inspiring, and it's a reminder that with the right mindset and systems, we can overcome challenges and create really extraordinary results. For our listeners, if you'd like to connect with Hacia, learn more about All Star Consulting Services or Empowered Women in Trades, or you can grab her book, The Billion Dollar Blind Spot. All of the links are in our show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the Healthy, Wealthy and Wise podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use some inspiration today.
Heidi:I'm Heidi Henderson, and here's to building your wealth, protecting your health, and living a truly wise life.
