The Question That Changed My Business

Words: Damian Lang

Back when I was running one crew, I remember driving home one day with my bricklayer and good friend while admitting I was at the end of my rope. Between lying awake, worrying about payroll, laying block all day, and spending half my night bidding on jobs, I was barely keeping my head above water.

I was just blowing off steam, not actually looking for an answer, when he came back with a question that made me stop and think:

“Damian, are you running this business, or is it running you into the ground? What are you going to do to change the direction you are heading, so you don’t crash and burn?”

That hit hard because it came strictly from common sense and concern for a buddy. He had no background in business management, yet he exposed the flaw in my whole operation. Up until that day, my answer to every obstacle was simply to push harder. When jobs fell behind, I worked longer hours. When costs climbed, I tried to physically outwork the deficit. His words shattered my belief that working myself to death was the same thing as building a company.

His question transformed how I approached each day. I realized that brute-force effort will only get you so far. If an operation relies entirely on an owner working until exhaustion, it isn't a business; it's just a trap. I began asking myself, “Did I do anything today that will make tomorrow easier, cleaner, safer, or more profitable?” If the answer was no, then I knew I had only survived the day. I was running the business, but I was not improving it.

Holding myself to that standard gave me a fresh perspective on the job site. One day I stood back and watched our crews fight a process that was inefficient and hard on their bodies. They did it every day. None of them complained because everyone just considered it part of the job. But it dawned on me that just because they didn’t complain didn’t mean the process was good. That was when I realized I could build a better operation by fixing the friction we had been conditioned to accept as normal.

So, we tried something different. We built a piece of equipment that no one asked for, to fix a problem that no one knew we had. We were motivated by a simple thought: there has to be a better way.

Once the crew put it to work, the value was obvious. It saved hours each workday and significantly reduced wear and tear on the crew. The resistance to changing our routine vanished the moment they saw how much easier the job became. It took having the solution on the site for anyone to realize how bad the old way actually was.

The success we were having on our job sites made us eager to bring it to market. When customers saw it working, they understood it right away. We didn't need a fancy sales pitch or a long explanation. The results spoke for themselves.

That experience taught me a lesson I have never forgotten: customers do not always know exactly what they need until you show them a solution. We saw a problem, found a better way to solve it, and then showed them what was possible.

Solving one problem doesn’t mean you stop pushing. In any business, the moment you fix one bottleneck, another one shows up. A growing business is never "finished"; it's an endless series of operational puzzles waiting to be solved. If someone on your crew finds a safer way to stage material, or another company develops a smarter process, use it. Credit cannot matter more than progress. If you're too proud to learn from others, you lose out. When you listen and adapt, the whole business wins. The goal is not to prove you have all the answers. It’s to build a business strong enough to keep improving.

The problem is that what worked yesterday isn't guaranteed to work tomorrow. The market changes. Customers change. Technology changes. If you're unwilling to change with them, your competitors will, and the thing that once made you successful can become the thing that holds you back.

That is why you have to keep asking the question every single morning: What am I doing today that will change the way we do business tomorrow? It doesn't have to be a massive overhaul. It might be a better checklist, a cleaner handoff, a safer setup, a smarter tool, or one honest conversation with someone on your crew. Small improvements, made consistently, are the difference between a business that just survives and one that grows.

More than 40 years later, I still think back to that ride home when I was tired, worried, and unsure how long I could keep going. My friend didn't give me a speech or an off-the-cuff solution to my problem. He just posed a question, and that question changed the way I looked at the work. I was not meant to be run into the ground by the company I was building. I was meant to build it into something better, one day and one improvement at a time.
___

Damian Lang is CEO of Lang Masonry Contractors, Wolf Creek Construction, 3 Promise Labor Services, FlexCrew, and EZG Manufacturing. To view the products and equipment his companies created to make job sites safer and more efficient, visit his website at ezgmfg.com. To receive his free e-newsletters or to speak with Damian about his management systems or products, email dlang@watertownenterprises.com or call 740-749-3512.

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