Tim Byrne Podcasts

There are few things more painful in life than being dragged into a corporate workshop. That is until you go to a Tim Byrne corporate workshop. Instead of the usual droning on about sales projections and team building you get a Tasmanian Devil whirlwind of foul-mouthed truth speak. The good folks at Curb Signs Inc. made the fateful decision to invite our hero to their office in Aurora to deliver a lecture on all things sales. “Everything you do is too expensive.” Every sales person hears that every day. But that’s bullshit, according to Tim. Well, most of the time anyways. 33% of the time you’re not too expensive compared to your competitor. You’re too expensive for their budget. It’s all about how they build their budgets. Property managers will always move numbers around to make it look like they’re saving their clients money. Often times they will take money out of the budget for your work and stick it somewhere else - leaving you with nothing. So when they tell you you’re too expensive it has nothing to do with your estimate. The other 33% of the time you lost the job because they don’t like you. It’s only that last 33% where you will actually lose a job because you were undercut by a competitor. Building relationships is by far the hardest job a sales person has to master. Sales people will do anything to avoid having to go to yet another social function where they awkwardly stand in the corner talking to people they already know. Those events are about building new relationships! The easiest thing about the job is writing the purchase order or bidding the job. Shaking hands and meeting people is fucking awful. Cold calling is the worst of the worst. But it’s the only way you’re going to be successful so you better get good at it and quick. The only thing your organization is going to need in the next few decades is people that know how to talk to people. Most of the jobs in big companies are going to be automated. Building relationships is the only thing matters.

S02E05 – The Naked Truth (On Being Too Expensive)

There are few things more painful in life than being dragged into a corporate workshop. That is until you go ...
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Tim is outnumbered in this week’s episode. He’s invited two superstar young women to join him for a conversation about the business of facilities management. Kat Byrne is a familiar voice to regular listeners of the podcast. She’s the General Manager of Byrne on Demand and has the far more difficult job of being Tim’s daughter. Kat is joined by Angelica Levesque, a former Byne employee and now a Senior Project Manager with Promain Exteriors. The conversation starts with Tim marvelling at the driving habits of both his guests. Angelica now has a company car which surprises Tim. “Haven’t both of you nearly lost your licenses?” he asks. They have and Tim starts to say that men are better drivers than women but then stops himself. “I got stopped in Quebec last weekend going 140 in an 80 zone,” he says. So that answers that. Angel has mostly worked for small companies like Byrne and Promain but she does have some limited corporate experience. A short stint pouring coffee at Tim Horton’s convinced her that there is no creativity working for a big business. Promain works with mostly with Ontario customers who often do business in Western Canada. Angelica thinks that there isn’t the same kind of urgency in the West as there is in Ontario. Managing customer expectations is a big part of her job. All three agree that working with Canadians is way better than dealing with Americans. It’s not because they are worse people. They just don’t understand Canada and treat their Northern stores as an afterthought. Tim quickly becomes bored of this conversation about business and shifts the conversation to a far more interesting topic. “Did you know that 47% of employees masterbate in the office?” he asks. The girls are astonished by that figure. It disturbing to think about in an office like BOD with 27 employees. It’s gets far more disturbing when thinking about Promain’s office which has just 3 employees. “I don’t want to think about this,” Angelica says.

S02E04 – Two Girls and a Dog of Facilities

Tim is outnumbered in this week’s episode. He’s invited two superstar young women to join him for a conversation ...
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Tim has an absolutely phenomenal guest in the studio this week. Not only because he’s a great guy but because the company he works for is absolutely trouncing the marketplace these days. William Stefancic is the commercial sales manager with 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Will moved started with the company when he was a student working in the trucks. He worked his way through the ranks and took over commercial sales when he was barely in his 30’s. The company grew quickly by focussing on the residential waste removal. Will has been tasked with putting a new emphasis on commercial customers. That’s where Tim comes in. Tim is pretty interested in all the weird stuff William has come across during his decade with the company. The list William provides definitely meets the definition of “weird”. You can only imagine the stuff you find crawling through basements, backyards and storage spaces. “You meet a pretty wide spectrum of humanity in this job,” Will says. “Hoarders, abandoned buildings and overgrown yards are a normal part of the job.” The Toronto franchise of 1-800-GOT-JUNK is by far the largest in the country. It was started by Paul Guy who after meeting founder Brian Scudamore became the company’s first franchisee. Unfortunately, he was in Vancouver at the time and had to drive a waste removal truck all the way to Toronto to start the business. Will finds that story particularly inspiring. When he was first starting with the company, spending his days bouncing around in a hot garbage truck, he made the decision to do his absolute best at a job that other might have found beneath them. That hard work and dedication has paid off. If you have an office filled with old office furniture or a project manager with storage lockers filled with people’s abandoned stuff Will is your man. He and 1-800-GOT-JUNK are aggressively courting commercial customers. Tim thinks commercial leasing guys are particularly desperate for dependable waste removal. “The property manager has a huge problem finding the right labour source for waste removal,” Tim says. For one price, William says, 1-800-GOT-JUNK will sort you out. Contact William Stefancic 416-572-0067

S02E03 – Touch my junk!

Tim has an absolutely phenomenal guest in the studio this week. Not only because he’s a great guy but because ...
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S02E02 – An architect’s nightmare on my street

The relationship between architects and tradespeople is sometimes less than congenial. Today Tim tries to fix that. He’s invited Stephen ...
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Things are about to change in the building trades. The Ontario government has decided to radically overhaul the Construction Lien Act. The first set of changes came into effect July 1st. Tim decided he needed a crash course and asked lawyer Olga Morozova to join him for a chat. Olga has worked for all levels of the construction business and knows what’s about to change. One of the biggest changes is that, for the first time, the government mandates time frames for payment. Owners must pay within 28 days of receiving an invoice. Olga says the old days of contractors blaming the owner for lack of payment are over. Getting paid your holdback is another big issue in the trades. Because you can lien the holdback Olga is telling all her owner clients to pay that money within 60 days. Tim wants to know why screwing over subcontractors has become so common. Tim thinks the big contractors and owners have systems in place to stop or slow payment. He once had someone inside an accounting department tell him that it was policy to reject 10% of all invoices. A lot of subcontractors are barely hanging on because giant firms aren’t paying their invoices on time. Olga says she sees this all too often. She says your first call should be to your lawyer. Tim has only placed about three liens in 30 years of work. He’s one of the lucky ones. For a lot of companies liens are a common part of the business. The changes to the law allow subcontractors more time to “preserve” and “perfect” the lien. Olga explains those definitions to Tim and reveals why they are so important. The changes to the act are long overdue. The last time the law was updated was over 35 years ago. Making it easier for subs to actually get paid on time will be a huge boon to the industry. Only time will tell if the law will really make those changes.Things are about to change in the building trades. The Ontario government has decided to radically overhaul the Construction Lien Act. The first set of changes came into effect July 1st. Tim decided he needed a crash course and asked lawyer Olga Morozova to join him for a chat. Olga has worked for all levels of the construction business and knows what’s about to change. One of the biggest changes is that, for the first time, the government mandates time frames for payment. Owners must pay within 28 days of receiving an invoice. Olga says the old days of contractors blaming the owner for lack of payment are over. Getting paid your holdback is another big issue in the trades. Because you can lien the holdback Olga is telling all her owner clients to pay that money within 60 days. Tim wants to know why screwing over subcontractors has become so common. Tim thinks the big contractors and owners have systems in place to stop or slow payment. He once had someone inside an accounting department tell him that it was policy to reject 10% of all invoices. A lot of subcontractors are barely hanging on because giant firms aren’t paying their invoices on time. Olga says she sees this all too often. She says your first call should be to your lawyer. Tim has only placed about three liens in 30 years of work. He’s one of the lucky ones. For a lot of companies liens are a common part of the business. The changes to the law allow subcontractors more time to “preserve” and “perfect” the lien. Olga explains those definitions to Tim and reveals why they are so important. The changes to the act are long overdue. The last time the law was updated was over 35 years ago. Making it easier for subs to actually get paid on time will be a huge boon to the industry. Only time will tell if the law will really make those changes.

S02E01 – We finally get paid!

Things are about to change in the building trades. The Ontario government has decided to radically overhaul the Construction Lien ...
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Selling is hard. It’s exhausting physically. It’s exhausting mentally. It’s not for the faint of heart. Tim tries to drive that message home this week when he is once again joined by his sales guys Dylan and Andy. It’s all about the psychology of selling and why the hardest part of the job is dealing with what’s going on in your own head. The episode starts with a conversation about embarrassing yourself on the job. You have to be prepared to do it. Tim shares just such a story. Earlier this year he met with the head of one of Stadia’s biggest clients. The guy is a major power player in Ontario construction. He’s way too busy to be taking meetings with Tim. Yet Tim, somehow, managed to get just such a meeting. It was a hot day. Really hot. And Tim decided to where one of his nicest shirts. It was a purple shirt. Arriving early Tim sat on the patio directly facing the scorching summer sun. By the time the bigshot arrived Tim’s purple shirt was soaking wet. The pit stains stretched down to belt. The big shot was clearly weirded out and he hasn’t taken Tim’s call since. The point of that horror story is that you have to be prepared to look stupid. “If you’re not putting yourself outside of your comfort zone every day you’re not going to make it,” Tim says. It's going to take a while to get comfortable with yourself in the job.

Timology 5 – The Psychology of Selling

Selling is hard. It’s exhausting physically. It’s exhausting mentally. It’s not for the faint of heart. Tim tries to drive ...
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Timology 4 – Tim’s Tips for Sales Guys

Tim needed an audience for this week's episode so he invited Stadia sales guys Dylan and Andy into the ...
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Timology 3 – Tim’s Podcast About Podcasts

"Why are you doing this?" Tim gets asked that all the time. Other business owners were totally mystified when Tim ...
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In the first episode in this series Tim outlined the mathematical formula every great salesman needs to follow. Marketing + relationships + accounting = a sale. Today he reveals the secret to building relationships. It’s a lot like dating. Would you walk up to someone in the bar and say “Hi! I’m really good looking and I’m great in bed.”? It wouldn’t work. It’s the same in sales. You need to form actual relationships with actual people before you can expect to sell anything. Building a relationship starts by getting people to remember your name. Then it’s learning the other person’s name and using it at least three times in a conversation. You’re trying to build intimacy and that can’t happen if you don’t know the other person's name. Tim uses all sorts of tricks to get people on the phone. That isn’t easy these days. Try and avoid voicemail at all costs. But if you have to leave a message make sure your name and number are at the front of the message. Do anything you can think of to get a callback. Tim will record happy birthday on a voicemail whether it’s the person’s birthday or not. Long before you ever seal a deal you need to know your client. It’s the same as dating. Most people don’t hop into bed on the first date. And if they do it tends to be a little weird. You have to build an actual relationship before you get lucky! At minimum you’re going to need at least four interactions with your client (lunch, phone calls, a meeting on-site) before you sign any contracts.

Timology 2 – Why selling is like dating

In the first episode in this series Tim outlined the mathematical formula every great salesman needs to follow. Marketing + ...
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Timology 1 – The Secret to Being a Great Sales Guy

Tim is excited to launch a brand new series for the summer. His “Timology” series will reveal the secrets of ...
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Episode 21 – Blooper Special

Tim celebrates Season 1 with a retrospective episode featuring some of the funniest, dumbest and most offensive clips from the ...
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Tim heads back into the office and welcomes longtime colleague Jeff Amos onto the podcast this week. Jeff has worked with Stadia for 14 years or as Tim likes to say “since Jesus was a cowboy.” Jeff came on-board as a part time worker when he was in his early 20’s. Tim and Jeff went to the same high school and they start this week’s episode sharing war stories. Unsurprisingly, Tim was something of a difficult student. He politely told the principal to fuck off one day in Grade 12 and walked out the door, never to return. Ten years later that same principal invited Tim to speak to students about succeeding in business. That teacher told him that he didn’t remember many of the thousands of students he taught over the years. But he always remembered Tim Byrne. Jeff worked long enough installing glass that he ended up injuring himself on a number of occasions. The most egregious happened when he was working at the Bay Tower installing a piece of half inch glass in an office partition. The glass slipped broke and slammed into his arm. The doctors had to cut him open on multiple occasions to remove all the broken glass. That wasn’t the only injury. Once in the Stadia shop a piece of glass slid right through his hand slicing open both his palms. He was working with a Stadia hero named Ronnie who Jeff was desperate to impress. “Do you want to go to the hospital?” Ronnie asked. “Nope!” Jeff replied before taping up his hands with duct tape and finishing the work day. A lot has changed on the workplace safety front just in the last ten years. The days of never wearing gloves or safety glasses are long gone. “Have you ever been scared on the job?” Tim asks. Jeff quietly nods his head before launching into a harrowing story about installing glass on the CN Tower. They are 45 stories up and a gust of wind catches them on the swing stage. The stage was blown 15 feet straight up in the air before crashing back down. Everyone was tied in and secure and no tools were lost. But pants were definitely shit on that day. Jeff is often asked why he has worked at the same company for so long. It’s difficult to explain he says. “Everyone is fucked up,” he says. “But everyone cares about each other and that’s impossible to find anywhere else.” The culture is so strong at Stadia that employees who stop working with the company almost always eventually ask for their job back. If you are not as happy to come into work on Monday as you are when you leave on Friday you’re working at the wrong place.

Episode 20 – Hello Jeff Amos

Tim heads back into the office and welcomes longtime colleague Jeff Amos onto the podcast this week. Jeff has ...
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Tim is happy to have a guest from the construction management world on the show this week. There’s lots to be learned which Tim emphasized in his intro in which he entreats the listener to “pay attention” and learn how to price jobs so as not to “look like a fucking retard.” Tim University is now in session. Dave Angelis is Tim’s guest this week. Dave is a partner with Ivy North Corporation, a project management firm based in Etobicoke. The company has focussed on staying small and working on medium-sized projects that they can service the hell out of. Their sweet spot is on projects in the $10-30 million range. Tim is curious how construction managers are finding subs to bid on jobs. Developers often have preferred contractors that they go to on a regular basis. Dave feels strongly in bringing in as many bids as possible to find the best contractors out there. They have a list of guys they like as well and they definitely have a shit list of contractors they don’t. Dave likes to get a minimum of five bids per trade. The high bid is probably too busy. The low bid is way too desperate. It’s the guys in the middle that he likes to pick from. “Have you guys ever fucked up and taken the lowest bidder to get yourself out of a financial jam” Tim asks diplomatically. Dave admits that sometimes there will be a problem with developer. They may have made an error in their design or maybe the city is holding them up on permits. Whatever the issue is their bank account is draining and they have to make some hard decisions. The problem is when you pick the low bidder they tend to come in and try and nickel and dime a developer. They might bid lower than the cost of the job and then try to add 25% to the job before they’re done. Tim talks about many bad experiences he has had with general contractors. He was once on a job where every single trade got hit with the same $14 thousand charge for the same problem. GC’s try and make their money by bidding low on jobs and then burning their subs as hard as they can. “Why would I go to a GC when I know there all these bullshit shenanigans going on instead of hiring a construction manager?” Tim asks. You won’t find a lot of people building condos with GC’s these days, Dave answers. They are usually on large commercial spaces. There are a lot of companies that need a one-off building like a warehouse. It’s those kinds of builds that you can find yourself getting burned on. Connect https://www.ivynorthcorporation.ca

Episode 19 – Tenders with Dave Angelis from Ivy North

Tim is happy to have a guest from the construction management world on the show this week. There’s lots ...
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It wasn’t so long ago that our hero wandered into a clothes shop in Woodbridge. It’s called 4 Men United. It’s run by four brothers born in Canada to an Italian family with a long history in the fashion industry. Tim likes the place. It’s a much more comfortable place to shop than your average men’s store, usually populated by a hungry horde of ravenous salesman. It’s different at 4 Men. But Tim, being Tim, quickly wore out his welcome. You see, one of the brothers sports a rather large, dark beard. The kind of beard that any Italian man might grow. But for Tim something else came to mind. “Hey! Nice terrorist beard!” He said one day while trying on a pair of slacks. “Hey!” said the offended owner. “I have friends who are Muslim!” Unphased, Tim retorted that the owner was, in point of fact, an idiot. He was not referring to Muslims. He was referring to terrorists. Tim recounts this story at the start of this week’s episode which features, by some miracle two of the brothers who agreed, against their better judgement, to appear on the show. Alessandro and Marco are ridiculously young to be running a successful retail store. Just 23 and 28 they learned at the foot of their father who worked in Canadian retail for decades. After their dad’s retirement Ales and Marco, along with their older brothers Michael and Mario, struck out on their own. The business has been operating for four years now. They’ve been incredibly successful. Just this last year alone they they did over 400 weddings. The key to their success has been a focus on quality service. That runs contrary to the rest of the industry which seems to focus on predatory sales tactics than actually giving the customer what they want. All of this seems to completely bore Tim. “Which one of the brothers has had sex in the store?” He asks. Too professional to answer the brothers gently skirt the question. Tim is undeterred. “How many guys have you seen butt naked in the change room?” Again, being professionals, neither Ales nor Marco will admit to bearing witness to any such thing. They do, however, admit that there is a tendency among a certain kind of customer to strut around the store in their tighty whities while trying on clothes. Most of those customers are named Tim Byrne. Connect https://www.4menunited.com/

Episode 18 – Suit The Hell Up! with 4 Men United

It wasn’t so long ago that our hero wandered into a clothes shop in Woodbridge. It’s called 4 Men United ...
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Tim is really excited for this week’s guest. He somehow managed to convince the President of BOMA Toronto to join him on this edition. Susan Allen has a ton of experience in building management, including a decade at Cadillac Fairview. Tim’s been super-impressed with her work ethic for a long time and was thrilled when she agreed to appear on the show. Susan has been in the industry for a little over twenty years. She worked at TD Centre for about eight years and later was asked to move over to the retail side of the business. Her first property was at Woodbine Centre which was a faltering shopping mall in Etobicoke. She managed to turn the place around and learned a lot about retail in the process. Moving from commercial to retail was very different. The commercial world is a lot more buttoned-down and corporate. Woodbine depended on a lot of small businesses with very different expectations. Tim gets to brass tacks right away. “Who pays their rent better? Retail or commercial?” He asks point blank. Susan is very diplomatic in her answer. She says big corporate retailers are pretty easy to deal with because they are so stable. The smaller mom and pop operations are often struggling and that meant Susan had to make accomodations for them. Susan had already worked with BOMA for more than a decade before she came over to work as President. She had left her position at Cadillac Fairview to get her MBA. Shortly after the President of BOMA left and she was asked to take over. “Is BOMA an old boys club?” Tim asks. When he was more involved with the organization he found it to be a pretty insular place. Susan says they have worked very hard to change that. Every member can apply for any position now and they will all be guaranteed at least an interview. BOMA has also been working hard to open the organization to younger professionals. “Do women get paid less than men?” Tim asks. Susan says she hasn’t experienced that in her career, with the caveat that she has worked with two great companies over the years. These days top talent is in such high demand that she would be shocked if it was pervasive practice. “It just doesn't make any business sense.” She says. Tim wraps up the conversation by asking if she works more or less hours since moving to BOMA. Her husband asked the same question. She says she’s just not wired that way. She’s always working to raise the bar higher. “You’re a total powerhouse.” Tim says. Connect https://www.bomatoronto.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-allen-7a28a586

Episode 17 – Susan Allen’s 1st Podcast featuring BOMA Toronto

Tim is really excited for this week’s guest. He somehow managed to convince the President of BOMA Toronto to join ...
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