Discover how construction business owner Taylor White navigates the unique mental health challenges of the industry. From financial stress to the loneliness of leadership, he shares personal strategies for resilience and maintaining well-being in a blue-collar world.
Business ownership in construction means constant challenges, with many owners working through extreme stress. The "tough it out" culture often makes it impossible for owners to discuss their struggles which can lead to isolation and severe mental health risks. Understanding and implementing personal strategies for mental well-being is vital for sustainable success and preventing burnout.
Learn how to address the unspoken burdens of leadership as Taylor reveals his private battles with mental health.
Topics:
- Mental health pressures in construction
- Leadership, loneliness, self-worth, and generational pressure
- Personal resilience: exercise and support
- The power of family partnership
May is Mental Health Awareness Month! Learn how CONEXPO-CON/AGG is Taking Mental Health to the Next Level: https://www.conexpoconagg.com/mental-health
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Episode transcript:
Taylor White: Welcome back to the CONEXPO-CON/AGG podcast. I am the host, your host, hostess with the mostest, Taylor White. I am super pumped to be able to talk to you guys here today. I know that last time we had you guys just watch a podcast with Ryan from Rock Structures. If you have not gone and checked that one out, go listen to it. He said a really cool thing that I take away. It is ‘only grow as fast as your customers will allow you to’. Maybe I butchered that, but it is something along the lines of that. And we structured the conversation around machinery growth, knowing your identity within business.
One thing that we really, I wanted to touch on because it being Men's Mental Health Month, I really wanted to touch and talk about, have a podcast sharing my own experiences with mental health and just the industry in general. I did not want it trying to be like every other podcast where they talk about men's mental health and no one talks about it. I just want to talk about my own personal self. I will start with a fact, complete opposite of a fun fact actually. The suicide rate in construction is actually one of the highest in any industry. That is a crazy thing to say. I think that comes from the tough it out mentality. You know, hey, just suck it up. Be a man. I am to blame for that culture as well because I definitely have that mentality and that is something that I need to work on.
A lot of things come into mind when people think blue collar. You know, a lot of guys go home, maybe they are drinking, maybe they are smoking. I do not think any of those things are good. I am not saying I do not do any of those things, but I do not think that helps at all either. With my life, I definitely want to talk to you guys about strategies I use to try to be better.
But first for me, what are the biggest triggers for mental health? I want to talk about business, financial, cash flow, stress as an owner. It is like the weight of making payroll, loneliness of being a boss. I cannot vent to my crew and I cannot always vent to my wife. That is difficult.
In the past three weeks, I have been having a pretty stressful time, just budgeting with clients and having some real tough conversations. These make us stronger as business owners, but they are not fun conversations. Telling somebody that, you know, hey, I know we budgeted this and it is going to be this, that is business. You need to be able to take those tough conversations if you want this all.
The stress of playing with other people's money is a huge stress. That is what I am learning with this building company. In construction, I have this sick, twisted ability to take a lot of risk with my own money. I love risking my own money, meaning buying machinery with it, cash flowing. If we have cash flow issues into the business, like betting on myself and betting on our guys, I will do that any day of the week. With the building company, what I find hard is playing with other people's money. You got to pay trades. You tell them it is going to be X amount of dollars, but the city tells you you need this. Now it is $600,000 more. You have to talk to your client and say, hey, tough conversation here. That stuff is not always easy to do.
So, in the past three weeks, I have been having these conversations with basically every single one of our clients about tariffs and the market. Every time I go back to our trades right now, there are always price increases. I feel like it is just this crazy thing right now with tariffs. I am like, hey, there have not been new tariffs, so why are you raising the price of my plumbing pipe by $8,000 from the last time? I just finalized my final budget with my client. Now my plumber is telling me, oh, it is going to be $8,000 more because the insulated pipe is going to go up $8,000 because of tariffs. What tariffs? What new tariffs are there?
Having these conversations made me think about loneliness. Driving home the other night, I just wanted to talk to somebody. I do not want that person to be my wife. I am not coming home. She has been dealing with three kids all day, making dinner, cleaning up, and doing all this stuff. The last thing I am going to do is come home and say, hang on, let me talk to you about the stresses of budgeting and how it feels lonely. I cannot talk to anybody about this. I cannot call a client and vent to them about how it feels lonely that I cannot talk about. As a business owner, you feel secluded.
I think it is important. I am fortunate enough that I do have a friend I can call and talk to about anything. It is important when you feel loneliness to reach out to a friend you can talk to. I have had that thought where I am like, I just want to talk to somebody right now, but I do not know who to talk to. Being able to have a person, whoever it is in your life, man, woman, family, friend, foe, whoever, I think that is important to talk to them.
Another thing is seasonal work anxiety. Winter slowdowns and the weather are killing our schedule. This winter, I thought, oh, we got so much work this winter, it is not going to be stressful. No, it was super stressful because you bid work. Then winter conditions eat every single amount of profit you are trying to accomplish. You have to go back to the client and ask for change orders, ask for more money because we got to break through frost. They say, well, you planned to do it in the wintertime, so you do it. It is like, we did not initially plan to do it in the wintertime, but I guess that is what we can do.
One of the biggest anxieties, even for the guys out there, and when I worked other places, it is like, especially in construction specifically, it is the winter layoff. Not knowing if we have enough work to carry us through the winter. Will the boss call and say, hey, we do not have enough for you and you got to go in? That is tough. My advice for that is to have a conversation with your employer and plan that out. That is key.
Another thing is dealing with difficult clients. The customer is always right, and being a yes man to your clients. I am fortunate enough in my position that I do not have to be a yes man to my clients. I am also not an ass. I am also not in there like, you are lucky to have me. With everybody we work with, I am so fortunate that we just have a really good working relationship. If they are saying something that does not make sense, I can bring it up. If I am saying something that does not make sense, they definitely bring it up and say, no, that does not work for our business.
What I have learned is understanding your client's business and how it works is as important as understanding how your business works. If I am talking to somebody about building an auto body shop, I need to understand what the ROI on an auto body shop is. I do not need to know their specific finances or numbers. I need to know how you make money out of an auto body shop. What makes you more money? That way, we could plan and utilize space differently within the building. We can say, they mentioned this sort of thing makes them quite a bit of dollars. So if we move this storage room over here, we could add another one of these things that makes them a lot. That is important. It alleviates stress of being unprepared. Going into a meeting unprepared or going into a project unprepared. Knowing your client and what they need is super important.
Being on call mentally is hard in our industry. Even when you are home, you are always on, especially as a business owner. I told my wife a couple weeks ago, I really need to. It would be nice to take three or four days and turn my phone off. I have not been away from my phone for longer than probably two hours in the past 10 years, other than when I am sleeping. But it is right beside me, and if it goes off, I answer it. I wake up in the morning and check my emails first thing. I start to fire off emails. If I had the ultimate dream for mental health, it would be to take a phone break.
I want to prefix all this by saying I am fortunate to do what I do and I love it. I am highlighting mental health and talking about what goes on in my brain because this is the podcast subject. In no way am I like, oh, poor me. I am fortunate. I am blessed. I love what I do. I get to do what I do. I do not have to do it. I get to do this. I get to have tough conversations with clients and learn from them and their success. We get to have success together.
These types of podcasts are hard for me to talk about. As I said at the beginning, I have a tough it out culture. That is me. I do not like airing out what is going on in my head. I am sure 90% of everyone listening can relate and say, yep. I am not going home to my wife and telling her I am upset or I have had a problem with this and it is really bugging me. I am not going to cry in front of my family or my wife. I will never do that. If I was going to, I would do it on my own. I am just talking about how I am. That is why when I talk about these podcasts and have an episode like this, it is hard for me to open up and talk about it. I definitely need to work on that, but it is hard because I feel like I am just playing the little fiddle of, poor me, poor me.
I live a great life. I get to go on cool vacations. I get to do what I want to do every single day, which is work. I meet people, make better relationships, hire people, put food on the table for other employees, donate to communities, donate to funds, help people in need, help my family get to the next level. All those things are why I love doing what I do.
To get a little more personal, I basically tie my whole self-worth into my business. If the business is not doing well, my whole self-worth goes down because I think, well, I am not doing good in business so I am obviously not good enough to do what I am doing. That is my mentality. I am like, no, chest up, chin up. You can do this. You got to get through this. I am my biggest critique.
I get a lot of criticism online. Third generation, silver spoon. That comes with generational pressure, which is personal for me. Basically being a third-gen owner carrying the family name. It does not bother me one bit. I would be honest. There is a weight on the shoulders. I do not care if somebody comes up and says, oh, you are your dad. I still get that even at almost 31 years old, with three kids and growing the business with our team. So it does not bug me because it would bug me if it was true. I know it is not true, but it is the weight of the shoulders. If something comes crashing down or I make the wrong decision, it is a reflection of my family. It is a reflection of my grandfather's last name.
That is why I try to do a lot of good. We created the Ken White Construction Fund, which is $10,000 a year at our local high school that goes towards a student pursuing the trades in blue collar. It is one student who gets $10,000. It can help them buy a vehicle to get to school, help with gas, buy tools for their trade. It is always somebody who could use that help, but also is a good, well-rounded student. Doing that in my grandfather's name helps me take that weight off my shoulder. I ask myself, am I doing the right thing? Would my grandfather be proud? Would my dad be proud? I know my dad is proud. That is how I personally combat generational pressure. I make sure and ask myself if I am doing enough to help and give back. I probably actually do too much dollar-wise. An accountant has told me that.
I love giving. I love helping out when somebody needs help. We are a major sponsor in our local community fair. We do a lot of dollars there. We spend a lot of money at the auction every year. We have raised over $60,000 at our golf tournament in two or three years. Maybe it is more than 60. A lot of dollars there. That stuff helps and makes me feel good. If I were to give advice, I would say go out there and do something that makes you feel good. It does not have to be giving dollars. Dedicate your time.
Something that costs me no monetary value, but just my time, is I joined two local groups. One BIA, and I am on the antiques club for our local fair. I help set up the fair. We have meetings all year long where we help set up other events in the community. It is not a paid gig. It is volunteer. I like doing it because I am interested in antiques or business associations. I also do them because it fills up my cup. I feel like I am doing good. In business, you have a lot of tough conversations. Sometimes you are like, huh, kind of being a dick today. Doing those things helps my mind. I think back and go, okay, karma will come around. I am doing good things as well. Maybe cancel out some of the other things where I had to tell this person to get off site and they cannot be there. That was a tough conversation, and maybe that is not what they wanted to hear. I do that stuff so it is in the back of my brain.
Something that ties into that is the provider identity. What happens is you cannot separate work from worth. Tying your whole self-worth into business, like the provider identity, is 100% how I think. I am an A-type guy. I supply for my family. We are a team with my wife. She does the kids, she does all that home stuff that I cannot do or do not do. Without each other, we would not work. We are a team, and we have to acknowledge that. But I have a hard time separating work from worth. That is tough. I do not have an answer for that one actually. That is something I think about. It is like the weight on your shoulders.
A lot of people do not talk about that, especially in generational families. That is an even more niche problem. I am fortunate that I get to do this and that I had an opportunity to grow the family business. I had an opportunity to work in the family business. Thank you to my grandfather and my dad. That stuff is always in my mind. That is why I hate talking out loud about this stuff or talking about this stuff. It makes me feel silly. It makes me feel like I am complaining when I am not. I am saying this because I know other people can relate. That is what I want you guys to take away from this.
Practical stuff that has worked for me. Exercise. I have tried therapy. I did not give it an honest try. I have a stigma against it. But exercise for me is huge. Talking to other owners. Talking to other owners is hard. I cannot talk to anybody in the city of Ottawa. Other business owners maybe, but not guys in your industry because everybody is in competition with each other. It is like, oh, you are not doing good? Oh, you are not busy? There is judgment. You got to talk to somebody who has no judgment.
Exercise is huge. Right now, I am training for Hyrox, which has me doing high-intensity workouts. Heart rate of 160 to 185 for extended periods, like an hour, an hour and 10, an hour and 15 minutes. I like that because if I am having anxiety during the day, I go there and I work out. All that goes away, and I am like, oh, wait, I am fine. I am good. The only thing you are focusing on when you are doing those workouts is what is the next thing I have to do. How exhausted am I? How much more can I push from where my limit is at? When you are just thinking about that, it is like a survival instinct. You are focusing on your breathing, your heart rate. You are listening to your body, how it feels, and your muscles. I think that is why it works so well for me. I am not thinking about business at that time. If I am going for a slow, methodical run, it is a great time to think about business. But when I am training high intensity, I like it. I think I like it because that is my identity. I am a high-intensity guy. With business, I am all in. In relationships, I am all in. Anything I do, I am like, boom, yeah, let us do it and let us do it 100%, and let us go hard at it. That is why I suck so much with moderating diet or stuff. There is no moderation for me. I am either all in on being healthy or all in on being a piece of shit. It is tough. I struggle with moderation. But that is why I like that type of exercise. I think that is why my brain likes that type of exercise because it is intense and it is a lot of fun.
Talking to other people, I have mentioned that. One thing I am working on is setting boundaries with my phone, putting it on do not disturb. I have never used the do not disturb feature until about two months ago.
I started using it when I was working out. Because life is busy with businesses, I am guaranteed to get a call within that hour of my workout. I am guaranteed to get a call that is going to piss me off and be an issue. Not a major issue, but something that is like, oh, okay, that is going to bug me if I do not solve this right now because that is the type of guy I am. I cannot just say, okay, I will deal with that in an hour when I am done. No, if I get a call about something like, hey, your guys are on site, they are saying this and blah, blah, blah, I am dealing with it right then. So do not disturb. The only people who can call me and get through would be family, my wife, my mom, my dad, my in-laws, so that if something was going on, they could get through to me. But do not disturb while working out is huge.
At night, I have not been good at this. Try to, at the dinner table with the kids, put your phone down. But still, my wife would say, hey, Taylor. Hey, Carol is trying to talk to you right now. I am like, oh, sorry, honey. She is trying to show me a project she did at school. I am disassociated because I am wrapped up in emails. If I am out on site, this is the worst because normally my afternoons I will be out on site or at client meetings. Today, I was at a client meeting. After this, it is Friday. Maybe I will try to get home and do some stuff at home. What happens when I am not at my computer for four or five hours? In those four or five hours, I probably get between 30 to 45 emails I need to respond to. There are probably 70 emails that get sent, but I only really need to respond to 30 to 35 of them. When I get home, I sit at the table. That is my time where I am sitting there trying to catch up. I am going through. I am typing out emails because it is stuff that needs to be answered for the next day. If I do not answer, I feel like I am not going to be getting further ahead than the next guy that would.
So I am trying to work on not being on my phone as much as I should. Everybody needs to work on that, whether you are a business owner or not. We are in such a phone culture. It is bad. We are dependent on our phones. We cannot go anywhere without them. My wallet is on my phone. My car keys are on my phone. So, I am going to travel without my phone or leave my phone behind. My insurance is on there, my driver's license, my health card. Everything is digital. If I could eliminate being able to check emails, which I am sure there is an app that can let you do that.
I am not at that point in my life where I can do that yet. I am still involved with my businesses on a day-to-day as well as outward growth. I am both inward and outward right now, especially with PriTech, not so much Ken White. We have a solid team at Ken White, but with PriTech, I still do not have an office team yet. We are hiring people, but I still do not have it where I can leave for two days and everything would keep flowing how it should flow. No, there is stuff that Taylor has to answer or Taylor has to talk to that person and figure that out because we do not know what he has planned for that. That is the sense of real reliability on my phone. Why I feel like I cannot put it down is because I truly can, or else my business is not going to succeed. That is not true freedom yet, and I know that. PriTech is a new business to me. I am still in the growth phase of it. It has only been year two, and we are fortunate where we have gotten in year two. To find success at the projects we are in right now, it is grind time. I have told myself that. I am 30. I am still young and full of piss and vinegar. That is exciting about it.
Another important thing to talk about today that I wanted to touch on was the role of your partner or your family in keeping grounded. For me, my wife. My wife keeps me grounded 100%. My wife is understanding. If I come home and talk about the day, she kind of knows within the first 10 seconds of me walking in what kind of day I had.
I generally, 99% of the time, I am always like, hey, kids. I am not the type of guy who comes home and, if I had a bad day, shows that on my face. I am not going to let my whole family know and my kids see that I come home every day and say, this sucks, or be negative. I do not think that is good for your kids. I do not think that is how you should raise your kids. I do not think you should lie to your kids. I do not think you should lie to them and tell them every day is awesome and everything is great. I tell them, hey, Daddy has some bad days, but Daddy does not have to go. I get to go to work. I explain to them the position we are in as a family. I think that is important. You see other parents who come home and talk in front of their kids about how much they hate their jobs. You do not think your kids at four or five years old are listening to that, but they are. If you are listening to this and you are going, yeah, I say that in front of my kids. See what happens when you do not mention that in front of your kids. I get it. There are still days where I wake up and say, it would be sick to sleep in today and not have to deal with any bullshit. That is life. That is being human. Anybody who says, every day is awesome and I love everything, they are full of shit. It is like the people who say they never argue with their spouse. You are full of shit.
I try to be cognitive of how I come home, but my wife is that rock. She can help me with that. I am fortunate that I come home and there is a meal cooked. I get to kiss my kids and wife every day when I get home. I am lucky to do that.
We are clear with roles. It was never said. She knew that when we first started dating 10 years ago, I was on site. I was running a backhoe. We had three employees. My life was up, gone by 5:30, working, come home around 6, 6:30, dirty from moving sand, gravel, being in the bulldozer, being on the ground. She knew my goal from day one. I think that is why she wanted to be with me. I was driven. I always told her I wanted to grow the family business. I want to get more employees. I want to do more revenue. I want to do more dollars. I want to grow the family name. It was clear from day one what I want to do. She said, I want to be an amazing mother. I want to have a big family. I want to have a bunch of kids. That is exactly what I was looking for. I would recommend people to find what you are looking for.
The roles could be reversed. I am not saying that because I think that is the way it should be. I am saying that because that is what works for us. That is how I grew up. That is how I think I should be. But there are people who have the opposite roles. That is awesome. If that works for you guys, that is what works for you guys. That is amazing.
Having a solid wife or husband who can ground you. You guys understand you are a team. It is important for me to let our kids know that mom and dad are a team. It is not just dad. Dad makes the money and dad does this. No, dad would not be able to do what he does without mom. That is important for them to hear.
Another big thing is sleep, food, movement. They are the boring basics. Nobody wants to hear it, but it works. Get good sleep. Do not overdrink. Now at 30 years old, we are talking about this. My worst nightmare is overdrinking past that limit. Then I am waking up. My heart is pounding out of my chest because alcohol does not react well with my body. I am sitting there in bed sweating at 2:00 AM. Heartburn, bad sleep. I feel like garbage the next day. Get good sleep, put good food in your body, and move. It is simple, but it is hard to do.
I struggle with this. I am not a guy of moderation. I am either, yeah, sure, I am down for some pints. Yeah, sure, I will have a bourbon with you. Then you have a sleep because you drank. Or, yeah, I have been good lately. Pizza tonight? Oh, yeah, I will bring home burgers. The kids would like burgers. No, I would like a burger. Then you slip into this thing. Or it is like, yeah, I am eating steak and avocado and eggs tonight. That is my meal. Then you feel like a rockstar in the morning. You feel so good. You get eight hours. Go to bed at a good time. You feel good. You work out. You feel awesome. It is crazy because I know exactly how my body feels when I am doing all the right things. It feels good. But it is easy to slip into like, oh, yeah, I will go for beers after work. Yeah, for sure. Everyone is going there around 3:00. Oh, yeah, I will stop in. Or, yeah, sure, I am okay with having pasta again tonight. It is moderation. Everything in moderation is key.
I think some takeaways that are important for me. Some takeaways from my talk today. I know it is a little short, but I do not want to fill time by talking about stuff I do not know about. I just wanted to. I had stuff laid out. These are items I deal with myself that I want to talk about. There are a couple calls to action I want to do. Canada does have a Construction Industry Rehabilitation plan, plus Talk Suicide Canada. The number is 1-833-456-4566. I also challenge the listeners to text one person in the trades that they have not checked in on. It does not have to be like, hey, like, you know, because again, it could be that. I am not judging that. I am just saying me. If I was listening, I would be like, yeah, just be like, hey, dude, are things going? Everything is good? You know? It does not have to be like, hey, I know it is this. Guys have this weird stigma.
Let us normalize not having the tough it out culture. I need to work on that as well. That is why I always say I am not the best person. We have Catherine in the office. She is on maternity leave, but she is good at handling people and talking with employees. That is why I always say I am not the good guy for employees and talking because I am like, well, why is it bugging you? Just suck it up. Do not do it. That is not what I want our culture to be at Ken White. I know that is not what our culture is. That is just me. I have no problem with guys being able to talk to each other about like, hey, I got this going on at home, guys, so I need somebody to pick up the slack for me today because my head might not be in at 100%. If somebody told me, hey man, so and so is not really working the best today because they got stuff at home, but they are here, I would say, hey, if they are here because they want to, and it is keeping their mind off of it, I am okay with them not getting 100% production as long as they are not a safety risk to themselves or anybody else. Other people can pick up where is needed. I think that is amazing. I think we need more business owners who think like that and talk about that stuff. So, I hope there was some stuff in today's podcast that you guys could pull out.
I am not somebody who talks about this stuff often. I understand that is the problem. I understand that we need to fix that. So please, I challenge you guys, do those three things I said at the end. We will catch you guys on the next podcast of the CONEXPO-CON/AGG show. Thank you for watching. We will catch you guys on the next one. Take care.
