No Big Bang: How Small Decisions Create Big Business Shifts with Brett Snyder

In this episode, Brett Snyder of Green Bench Companies sits down with host, Christina May, to challenge the idea that every business has one dramatic breakout moment. He shares how a trusted client opened the door to school construction, creating a new line of business during a difficult market. Along the way, they discuss customer-led pivots, growth through discomfort, better meeting leadership, and why small operational shifts often matter more than big, flashy moves.

Brett Snyder: As I go back to when she first introduced me to the concept of, hey, what's your breakthrough moment? My honest answer would have been we don't have a breakout moment. Or even better yet, the way I view things, the way I think about things is we haven't hit our breakout moment yet, or we're gonna have our breakout moment of my breakout moments two weeks from now.

It could be after this conversation that we have my breakout moment, right? So I view it almost always in the, I'm a very forward-looking person. I think there's always a better moment that's going to come. I think there's an optimist at heart, and it takes that to start multiple companies. As you know, it's never an easy slog, especially the first year.

And then, it gets harder the second year, and then it gets harder the third, then harder the fourth. You just keep going.

Christina May: It does. It's a myth that it gets easier. It's an absolute myth.

BS: I don't know anyone who believes that this started companies. Now we're approaching our 11th year with GreenBench in May. We've gotten here. So I think that moment is when I look back on the things that have changed, we came out of JBG, which is now JBG Smith, and we took our whole department with us when we started. So we pretty much had a runway, we had work, we had staff, and then you just had to create a business around that to kind of do it, and then go out and get new clients and all that kind of stuff.

But at that time, we were focused on retail and residential or mixed-use of the two. We developed a lot of big mixed-use properties. We understood that market, still love that market. But if I were just doing that kind of thing today, when no residential is getting funding, we're not building apartments.

CM: It changes.

BS: It changes. As I look at that moment, we had a client who was a residential developer client. We have done a couple of jobs with them. They were a consistent client. If they were going to build something, we were going to do it all in that residential moment. They called me one day, and he said, “Brett, I'm on the board of a school, private school in DC. We're getting ready for a massive expansion. We were not doing well with our current CM, who kind of got us through precon and that kind of stuff. Would you guys come in? Because I trust you guys, and I just want you to interview and talk to the school about the process.” And I was like, “Are you sure you want us?” We don't do any school work. I don't have a staff, I had one staff member from three years ago who had done some schoolwork for where they were.

CM: I don't know what I don't know.

BS: I don't know what I don't know. “Are you sure you want us”? And he was like, “Brett, you guys know how to build,” right? You guys know. You know how to take care of people. Having to take care of clients. Which is what I am. It's different because it's now reporting to a board or reporting to people who don't know real estate. All of a sudden, you're explaining a little bit more. You're walking them through the process, and you're letting them know where the risks are because they're not a developer who's done it a hundred times, 20 times, or 30 times. And so we're like, okay, I think we could do that. But I have to tweak a few things or get the right staff person.

I had the interview, got the job. The job was fantastic. It just turned out it was in the middle of Covid; it was one of those things. It just worked. We're celebrating now, and that was five years ago. We've now done six schools since then, and kind of that education market, which I think, as far as a moment, I don't know if it's a breakthrough, but I'm glad I have those six jobs. I'm glad I still have three active ones that are going on right now. When apartment buildings aren't doing as well, some of these other markets that we were in are heavily down right now. I'm thankful for the opportunity and that we took the chance on it.

We kind of reached outside the comfort zone of our staff. You kind of pushed people to do something that they weren't used to doing. All of those things are those pressure points that exist every day. We did it at that moment. For lack of sitting here, we have nothing to talk about on a podcast, because I would say we have no breakthrough moments. It's going to happen tomorrow. I think I would say that was at least a course-defining moment. Now, do I want three new apartment buildings to start tomorrow? Sure.

CM: Sure. Right.

BS: Well, we can go back and do that. The experience is there. Everything else is there. I think that's what I would use as my example. Just because it made us stretch in ways that I think take the uncomfortableness, makes you grow.

CM: Oh, I love that.

BS: I think it enforces that.

CM: But isn't that life in general, we always say, like people won't in marketing, we won't pay for it unless it's painful. But it's the same thing when I think when it comes to growth, if there isn't a little, little pain there, you're not growing. So it really created for you like this adjacent revenue opportunity that sometimes I think what's amazing about, you talking about like schools that weren’t something you were evaluating. It came from a customer. And sometimes the best things come from your customers. For us, it was the same thing. It was for our customers coming to us. And basically frustrated with us as an executive. Just give it to me what's working and what's not. The data won't, because my data is in all these different boxes and doesn't talk.

I'm constantly playing negotiator between what this person says versus what that person says, versus what this spreadsheet says. But I know this is important, but I can't measure it. How can I actually get this to a place where I can just go, this is the source of truth, and we can just move forward because I'm exhausted. That came from our customers. We responded to that need. I think to your point with, just being this, “Yes, we are always looking forward to the next moment”. But I think we know where those pivot points are. We know where those points are where we're forced to grow.

BS: You look back on it, and then you go, and we did, and our people did, and our processes did. All of that got a little bit better that I think made us better owners reps, better construction managers, a better team because you're forced to go through those moments. The idea of we would go to meetings with clients, and it kind of goes exactly where you're at.

We go to your meeting in the morning, my partner and I, and we'd sit there, and there would be really smart people in the room because we thought we were just in meetings and stuff. Sometimes they'd be the smart people in the room to come up.

CM: If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.

BS: No, no, no. We realize everyone else in the room is smarter. They're in their silo. They're the best of the best. Some fabulous names of downtown, your DC architects, they’re top of their field. We get to the end of the meeting. And this one day, it was this double meeting that we did in the morning, and we walked out of the meeting, and kind of nothing really happened. There was no follow-up. I was not sure people were on the same page. And then we walked into a meeting on the second part of the day, a whole different group of people, smarter people, a boardroom of people that know their niche better than anyone. And again, we walked out thinking, “I'm not sure they actually…I'm not sure what they're doing?”

I'm not sure, like we left the room saying, “I'm not sure anyone is going to bring anything new back to the next table, to the next meeting”. Anything different because there were no directions. So in the following meeting, we were at the last five minutes, and we're just like, what is happening? The same way we finally just said, can we have five minutes? Do you know what he needs from you before the next meeting?

So we don't sit here and have the same conversation again? And he's like, “No, what does he need?” And then let that guy talk it. It's oh, you need that? So he would write that down, and we're like, okay, for you to get that, what do you need from them? And they're like, “Oh, I need this”.

It just became this orchestra of playing around the table of who needs what from whom to move anything forward. Or it's just going to be really smart people sitting in a room without direction and without knowing what that key stuff is. Are we really looking at the right thing?

CM: Right.

BS: Are we really focused on how we are moving forward on these projects, or how are we getting to that next step? A lot of it's asking questions.

CM: Yes.

BS: And figuring out what that person needs. And so we spend a lot of our time, especially with our young folks. Are you making sure everyone walks out of every meeting you have with that next thing, everyone has a clear direction on what they're going to do before you all sit down in a room again and just talk?

CM: I think that alone is some of the best advice that you could give somebody, no matter what their age is.

BS: Yeah!

CM: Because we have, I think, so many meetings where we're all in the meeting and then you get out of it, and you're like, no one knows…it's like Abbott and Costello in the worst way.

BS: Zoom has made it, I think, slightly worse. I think it's just because you're distracted when you didn't hear someone say something…

CM: Because you're doing something else.

BS: …maybe you just got that text at the wrong moment. You had to look at it, right? I think Zoom has made it a little bit harder to distract, especially on large Zoom calls. I think that's a little bit harder. So I think you said to pay attention and make sure you're moving forward, that each of those moments, because you can lose weeks, you can lose months…

CM: You can lose a lot of money

BS: You can lose money, because of the weeks and the months.

CM: Right!

BS: It can evaporate quicker than you ever think. Just because you're not walking out of the room knowing exactly what everyone should be doing.

CM: No.

BS: I think that's part of our job. Our job is to coordinate and make sure people are doing the right things. That's a little bit of a side note.

CM: But it is I think that's really important, though for people is to understand, it can be something large, we didn't do school work, and then suddenly we're in that business just like ours. We weren't in the revenue operations business. And then suddenly we're in the revenue operations business, or it can be something as small as this is a small shift in how we approach meetings. This is a small shift in how we train our people, making sure that they know what the next step is, because those little moments add up.

BS: Yeah.

CM: I think maybe there's this misconception that it's always got to be big. It doesn't have to be big.

BS: It's the I think it's the small incremental…

CM: Yes

BS: …changes that you just slowly improve on every day. It’s the small things that your people are doing that your client may not see at all. Kind of behind the scenes of pushing someone or corralling someone, it's all those small details that your team has to understand, what are the what are those things that just nudge it. I'm a big believer that you fail forward; we talk about a lot.

You have to get your people; you can't be the person who holds it up. I'd rather have you make a bad decision than we can talk about…

CM: Then wait on me.

BS: Than you wait. If you're waiting, in real estate and construction, you're losing. You're losing, you're falling behind.

CM: That's almost, I think, any industry sector.

BS: I think it's universal, fail forward, yes, it might be a failure. Yes. We'll have a long conversation about how you got to that decision anyway. Whether it was the right decision or, did you not have the right information. However, that worked, but I'd much rather have that conversation with you than, “I haven't done anything in two weeks because I couldn't decide”.

CM: How do you…I think a lot of times what's really hard for teams is to feel comfortable with failure. How do you bring that back to your team and make them feel comfortable with, “Yeah, I know it's going to come with a conversation, but I know I'm safe to make the decision”.

BS: I think one saying that out loud. You got it. You've got to say it out loud and say, “I'd rather have you fail”. And then we can talk about the why. I think the other thing is you have to be willing to. I just had this conversation today, and on a completely different matter, just like you have to be able to show your failures. I think you have to be able to walk through, so they understand, they might look at you and say she's the owner of a business that's been around for 13 years. She's never failed right. Are you saying enough…

CM: I fail at something every day.

BS: Right. But are you saying enough showing them? Listen, I was in this situation, and this was a complete failure. When I look at it. I was missing this piece of information I was missing. My gut was off on this. I think you have to be able to show those vulnerabilities. To your people and to your team, for them to be able to know that they can take the same risks, we talked a lot about being entrepreneurial, and we want our people to be entrepreneurial. If you have a great business idea, we want to hear it. Because if that's where your passion lies, or that's…

CM:...let's do it!

BS: I'll help you set this up. We'll help you launch, but don't have a failure to launch just because you think we might not want to hear the idea. We talk a lot about it, we talk about it when we're interviewing people.

CM: A part of your interview process.

BS: Listen, I want people to have that edge of, they're not quite settled. Right? I want them a little bit on, “hey, I could be doing more.” “Hey, you know…” It's our mentality. We drove a lot internally that I'm not sure if this is a true HR practice. We like to hire a lot of kids out of rural Pennsylvania. Because they I just want them working hard enough where they don't want to be sent back to rural Pennsylvania.

CM: That's where you're from. But I'm sure for a lot of people, they could flip that out and say, all right, well, it's not rural Pennsylvania for me, but it's everywhere, right?

BS: It’s rural Kansas.

CM: It's wherever it is.

BS: It's wherever it is, wherever you don't want to go back to.

CM: No one wants to move back in with their parents.

BS: You don't want to move back in with your parents. You don't want to move back into the basement of Grandma's.

CM: Oh, heck no.

BS: There's a long list of places you don't want to go back to. It's having that edge I think of in the, talking about it like…

CM: You're looking for that in the hiring process.

BS: Yeah, I think people have more drive that way.

CM: Oh, I agree with you. You got to have you got to know what motivates

BS: I want a little fear.

CM: We don't do anything uncomfortable. You don't move. It's just like we were talking about, the beginning was, if you're not growing, if there's just a little bit of something, there has to be a little pain, there has to be a little bit of fear.

We were talking about, as leaders showing your failures, can you share a failure that, not a bad batch beer. But, can you share a failure that you use maybe as an example, or maybe even something you're comfortable with, something recent that you share with your team?

BS: I think I say to my team…and it's funny, I had this conversation with someone, the other day, who's at risk of losing their job, and that kind of thing. And, and I and he said, there's a certain amount of fear, and fear of failure and all that kind of stuff that goes with that as and I said to him, I've said to my team, “I've been at three companies that have closed their doors” Not because of what I've done, not because of, but the economy, the 2008 real estate crash.

CM: A lot of people lost it then.

BS: A lot of people have lost their jobs, including me, multiple times. And I'm here ten years back, being a partner in a company, ten years of owning a brewery, all those things. I think the biggest one I use is listen, "This might not be here tomorrow, but only work on those things that you can control”. I view the 2008 economy as weather.

CM: Yeah!

BS: It might happen. There's nothing I should worry about because it's not. I can't control it, I can't change it. We're going to get ice. We're going to get ice. I can't do anything about that. You couldn't do anything about those things. Work on what you can control. Because at any moment you might lose your job, I tell them all the time, that's why you need to have a network of people

CM: Right.

BS: Because who are you going to call? Who is your counsel? Who do you know, who? Who are you going to when that call happens that we’re shutting down operations?

CM: Where are you going to pick up the phone?

BS: Where are you picking up the phone? So have that list. Have you had the people around, who they are, and be able to call. Because they're not going to judge you, they're not judging you because of the weather.

CM: No, absolutely not. All right. I actually had one follow-up question, though, okay, that I wanted to ask, just selfishly knowing that you've got a brewery situation. As I'm not even good call it a side hustle.

BS: No, no, no, my wife runs it. I drink a lot of beer there, though.

CM: I can't wait to try it. Yes. So my question is, what have you learned in the brewery business that you have brought back into the construction business?

BS: A little bit on the sales and marketing side, we are very comfortable. With Green Bench, most of our clients are repeat clients. We've done work with them for years and years; it's a referral business based upon that, right? Someone we work with gets a call from someone else, and they say, who should I work with? And they say, Green Bench. That's all well and good.

I think in the brewery business, you get some business that way, but you're putting the money you're putting into marketing and can design and get it on the shelf and shelf space. And then just the tweak of this color versus that color and what's getting you noticed. I think it's underappreciated a little bit in the real estate side.

CM: You are singing to the choir over here.

BS: Because I think you have to work at it. You do in a brewery situation, like marketing matters, getting it, it's tying it all together, and construction, like you could have a good business. And this is kind of the opposite thinking of what we've changed over the last couple of years is being an owner's rep, or in construction management. We're always working for other people. We have clients that they're getting the fanfare, they're getting their name.

CM: Right.

BS: Our business will be perfectly fine if it's never mentioned in the newspaper. Like, our job is to be behind the scenes and kind of off to the side and not be the headline. We're fine with that. Where it is, I think, as I think the two things coincide a little bit as we're kind of starting to develop some of our own projects as we're involved with a general contractor now, an affiliate like that has to get out there and work and put there, like, I think the brewery side of the business helps that side of the brain. Think of it like prepared me a little bit better for the “Oh, no, you do want to have a can that sits on the shelf that catches your eye, because you can now walk down any beer store aisle and have 1,200, 1,500 cans sitting there”. So what does your eye go to, and kind of how do we do that?

CM: That's perfect. So I think that's a really great way to wrap up. Just finding a different way to, to look at different moments, both the big moments and the small moments.

BS: Perfect. So yeah, thank you for having me.

CM: Thank you for being here.