When Ego Paves the Wrong Road with Bryce Harem

Fresh out of college with a construction management degree, Bryce walked onto job sites telling field crews how to build based on what the book said.Fast forward to 2022 when he became a general manager and led his company to their largest financial loss ever at $1.5 million, forcing him to lay off 66 people.Instead of quitting, Bryce stood in front of the 35 remaining employees, wrote "I'm sorry" on a whiteboard, and owned the failure completely.We explore how treating people like numbers on a spreadsheet destroys companies, why chasing titles instead of impact sets you up for disaster, and how Bryce turned things around by asking field crews to teach him instead of pretending he knew everything.He shares his journey through alcohol and nicotine dependence trying to handle stress, the weekend journaling session that saved his career, and why the middleman mindset matters more than any title on your business card.Highlights:Why requesting to work with the toughest superintendents who didn't respect him became the turning point for earning trust.How treating a 100-person company like a spreadsheet with budgets and assets instead of people led to catastrophic financial loss.The moment where owning complete failure in front of his team changed everything.How to retain Gen Z talent by showing them the impact they're making instead of dangling titles and pay as the only rewards.How building personal power through relationships beats title power every time, especially when you're the middleman holding culture together.Subscribe to Blue Collar BS for practical advice on running your business better. Leading through failure requires more vulnerability than most people are willing to show - are you ready to own it?Get in touch with Bryce:LinkedInInstagramFacebookGet in touch with us:Check out the Blue Collar BS website.Steve Doyle:WebsiteLinkedInEmailBrad Herda:WebsiteLinkedInEmailThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrpOP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy