Story-Driven Strategy | Morgan Smith & Dave Grech

Most business owners treat their values like their soft stuff poster art, something they slap on the wall and ignore.

What if the business story, when clarified and committed to, became the operating system that ran every decision, every hire, every client they took on?

It's not easy.

It takes real work.

But when it's done right, the chaos starts to disappear.

Dan Gretsch is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who left newsrooms to help business owners find that story that actually scales.

Morgan Smith is the founder of Smith and Company, Job Tread's Implementation Partner of the Year, a builder who did the hard work of turning his story into a system where his whole team knows what to say yes to and what to walk away from.

Let's get into it.

You're listening to Beyond the Bid, the show by GO First, where we share the systems, strategies and practical AI for builders.

Keep listening to learn how to win more of the right projects, boost profitability and scale.

Beyond the Bid.

All right, guys, welcome in.

I know we've been chatting for a little while.

Welcome back to Beyond the Bid Beyond special guests.

We have a two for one special.

Dan.

How do you say your last name one more time?

Dan Gretch.

Absolutely not.

The Grinch.

This guy has so much energy.

And Morgan Smith of Smith and Company.

So welcome in, guys.

Thanks so much for being here.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So we have, quite the lineup of things that we want to talk about today.

one of which is essentially how you guys got connected.

what your origin story is, Morgan.

I mean, it seems like, you know, you guys are just hitting the ground running with job tread, Job Tread , Dan.

Really, you know, re, redesigning and just getting your messaging super strong.

would love to just learn more about that.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Messaging is just a core component of that, but you know, it's, it's like you said, it's the vision.

It's, you know, not even how you communicate, but how you present yourselves to your clients and your future clients.

Your brand.

Yeah, it's kind of everything.

Absolutely.

I love that.

Yeah, I was listening to a separate podcast yesterday, Contractor, Evolution, if you guys know that one.

and one of the, the guests was talking about how in business there's really only four things you can sell.

Products, programs, processes and people are really four things that can differentiate you.

The first three will always be commodities though, meaning that they can always be replicated, but your people can never actually be replicated.

And I think it's such an important part what you guys are talking about.

With Job Tread being such a powerful platform as it is, it still takes so much to get your team on board and to actually show them the value that the tool and the platform can provide for them.

That's right.

I think that actually resonates incredibly well with just this topic of building a business and you know, this time frame of an 80 hour workweek.

It's insane and it's, you know, it's an all too common story.

So how do you just you know, with your strategy and your methodology, how do you say no?

How do you make sure that you're working with the right people?

Wow.

It.

I'm sure they appreciate both parties.

I'm sure really appreciated that though.

And also the fact that Eric called you is such a, like, that's such a pivotal moment for describing how he runs Job Tread too.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Amazing.

Amazing.

So Dan, let's, let's dive into that.

Yeah, I would love to learn a little bit more about that though.

The, the story driven method, is that something that, you know, it, it like being a methodology?

I imagine it's, it's a FrameWork.

It's something that you know, it's not something that you just implement overnight or learn overnight.

Right.

So being able to, in Morgan, your, your, your childhood story of how you were able to overcome those incredibly, probably at time, intense situations and then take those skill sets and adapt them into your business today where you know, you've learned, you at an early age, you learned to say no to like Dan said, the flight attendants who are trying to give you, you know, pretzels or whatever it was.

and then you adapt that same situation to today where you're trying to grow this.

You Know this blossoming business.

Sure.

It's coming.

Love.

It's Oh, cool.

It.

Truly.

Wow.

Morgan, before we even started recording, you said, the reason, one of the reasons why you love working with Dan so much is he has the sauce.

After hearing that, he's got the whole like, refrigerator like that that is dialed in, man, I love that.

Absolutely.

100.

Just being able to.

I've, I've actually never, you know, associated stories as assets.

But hearing you speak Dan, it makes perfect sense.

And it makes me kind of sad that, you know, people in our space don't share those stories more frequently.

I had, I remodeled the upstairs of this house last year and you know, I made the mistake of throwing on word of mouth for Collins, who, you Fort what, remodelers do you guys like working with?

And in 48 hours I had 200 direct messages that were telling the same thing.

You know, there was barely any differentiator there.

Most of the time their differentiator was a free estimate, which mean I would have a stranger in my house, you know, so.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Wow.

Oh yeah.

Oh man.

amazing.

Yeah.

How do you just double, click on that for a second.

How do you identify when someone is a moral builder?

Because, you know, not everybody's trained by Dan to tell their story, to, to show their values.

Love it.

Yeah.

Great question.

Yeah.

100%.

So when, Morgan, just before you get into like the, the operational side or the more analytical side of that, I guess, you know, Talking about an 80 hour work week going back to that point when you are kind of, I hate to say, but like the, it's not a bottleneck.

I don't know what the right word is, but basically where, you know, you, your, your gut is the only one that you're listening to or the only one that you're, you know, that's telling you what, which way to move in.

how do you replicate that?

How do you teach someone who, who you're working with, who's on your team?

What are some of the indicators to look for?

Perfect.

Oh shoot.

I love it.

Yeah, that sounds.

He's gotten too many AI commercials on Instagram.

It.

another company, Oh, you go ahead, Dan.

No we won't.

Don't do that.

Yeah, there you go.

Morgan, I was going to ask you.

There's another company that I've kind of followed called Systemology, another contractor, Evolution Guest, I guess.

And he, Contractor, guy who, you know, who headed this company, he always talks about how important it is to have like a systems champion when you're in construction.

you might not be that person being the owner, operator, but having somebody who's leading change specifically with software.

Is that one of the indicators that you, you know, have looked at in the past?

yeah, It.

It's.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

so we talked about, we've covered a lot, so far, but one, one thing that we, we talked about is how you find the right clients.

Like, you know, how you identify moral builders.

How do you identify the people that you want to actually spend time finding moral builders with?

Oh wow.

Good job, man.

It reminds me a lot of one of my favorite companies is one called superdhara, HubSpot ecosystem partner.

and they have Supered, a core values all over the place.

but they actually have a YouTube playlist where they talk about not just their value, you know, being some arbitrary thing on a wall, but actually like how they live it and breathe it on a daily.

Like one of their values is around communication.

And so one of the tactics is bluff.

Every internal email that they write, they use a progressive bullet format that starts with a bottom line up front because they understood that nobody wants to spend time on an email.

And so if you're just, if you have that ingrained, you're, you know, and everyone knows what to look for.

It's a much better way of communicating internally and then of course getting your clients to, adopt that too.

But I love it.

I think it's super cool.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Very very clear, very clean.

I love it.

Well, Dan Morgan, this conversation, it's been phenomenal.

I loved it.

Dan, sure our, the audience is going to love it.

before I let you guys go, what, what's something personal, professional?

What's something you're looking Forward to in 20?

Wow.

Oh yeah.

Yep, that's a good.

Both of those are great answers.

well, again, thank you guys so much for being on here.

Really appreciated the conversation.

I learned a lot.

I love both the directions how you both are are operating and running your companies and I look forward to just staying in touch, keeping in touch and then you know seeing how you guys what else you you you present and post.

It's great.

Absolutely.

Good answer Morgan.

Thank you guys again for being on this was Beyond the Bid and Oh Beyond know Bid how do you how do people get a hold of you guys?

Yep.

A little bit of a different story.

Yeah.

Now we'll also drop all the links in the show notes for you guys too so anybody listening or watching be sure to click on that if you can't smell Smith and go.

But thank you guys again and happy holidays.

Bye bye.

Absolutely.

Happy holidays guys.

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