SideQuest 03: Relationship Maintenance & Building a Crew That Lasts
Welcome to Side Quest #3!
In our main episodes, we teach you how to fix your house. In our Side Quests, we talk about how to fix... well, everything else. Specifically, how to build relationships that work.
If you have ever followed My Handyman online, you might wonder: "How do you guys keep everyone happy? Is your team just magically perfect?"
Spoiler alert: No. We aren't perfect. We are human. But we have built a culture that feels like magic because we work really hard at it.
In this mini-episode, Samantha, Emily, and Arly break down the "secret sauce" to building a healthy team (whether that’s a work crew, a family, or a friend group).
1. Care Fiercely (You Can't Fake It)
The foundation of any good team is genuine care. As Samantha says, "You have to sometimes be more concerned and protective of them than they are of themselves."
This doesn't mean just saying "we're a family" in an email. It means:
Helping someone unload their car in the freezing rain.
Driving soup to a sick coworker.
Being the one to clean the toilet because it needs to be done.
Sharing in the joy and the daily indignities.
2. Conflict is Necessary (But Wrap it in Grace)
Here is the hard truth: You have to have the hard conversations. Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away; it just lets it fester in the dark.
Samantha shared a lesson from the book Crucial Conversations: Go into every conflict knowing what you want the outcome to be. If your goal is to preserve the relationship, you will approach the conversation with grace rather than anger.
"I'm telling this person this thing because I want a resolution that preserves the relationship for the long term."
3. Find Your Mission (Even if You Hate Your Job)
You don't have to work in a "mission-driven" field to have a purpose. Emily reminded us that even when she worked at a movie theater, her mission was helping families have a fun night out.
Happiness often comes from deciding that your life—and your work—has meaning. If your current environment is toxic or lonely, you can decide today: "It's going to be different. It has to start with me, but it's going to be different."
The Bottom Line
What makes our crew special isn't that we are perfect people. It’s that we show up for each other. And the good news? You can do that, too.
Links & Resources Mentioned
Community: Join the How to Handyma’am Facebook Group to ask questions and post your project pics!
Products We Love: Find the tools mentioned in this episode at our storefront:
Connect with Us!
Socials: @howtohandymaam
Credits
Host -Samantha Pearl
Host- Arly Streed
Host - Emily Pearl Reist
Music- Thomas Streed
Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker: Hi, friends. Welcome to sidequest number three. Three. Number three. Number three I'm Arley, I'm Emily. Oh you're Samantha. Oh I was like wait no you're not Samantha I'm Emily. Okay there we go. Lord, my mother take my identity. Send help. Okay. And this is how a handyman and I am gonna be asking you guys a good villager question today. And my good villager question is about how do we magically keep all of our village together and everybody happy and perfect all together? I'm assuming it's just because everybody is just perfectly amazing and nobody has any faults. Um, but that's right. Oh, you mean how how is it? How does it happen with our crew? Is your question? Yeah. How do you guys keep things happening? Beautifully. We're magical. Beautiful, perfect. Unbelievably intelligent. No, I'm just kidding. It's hard to go back and forth, but I will say the foundational principle for building a team that is healthy and functional is you have to care about your people. You can't fake it. You have to want the best for your people. You have to be concerned about their welfare. You have to sometimes be more concerned and protective of them than they are of themselves. That's the foundation. Yeah, and you gotta. Confrontation sucks so bad, but you gotta. You gotta go for it. Gotta resolve things before it blows up. One of the most impactful books I ever read is called Crucial Conversations. And basically the guiding principle in the book had loads of good stuff, but the thing that really stuck with me is you need to go into every conversation knowing what you want to get out of it, because that will change your behavior. And I can give you a great example. Maybe, like, I don't know, twelve years ago now, when I was running a free clinic, we were working with another community organization, and someone that we worked with was challenging to work with. Like if a relationship is like made up of one hundred percent of effort, like we had to do eighty five percent of the effort in order for the relationship to continue. Ninety nine percent, which is fine, like when you are on when you have a mission, if you have to do eighty five percent of the work in order for the relationship to continue, that's what you do. But this was I had to have a hard conversation with this person, and I went into it thinking us terminating our relationship is not an option because that's harmful to our customers. So she got very angry and very upset, like physically like stood up and she was like, like accusatory. And I just looked at her and I said, I really feel like we want the same things for our clients, and we just need to talk a little longer to figure out how to solve that. In that moment, what I really wanted to do was just like, hightail it out of there. Yeah. So I think one thing about Samantha Pearl, she hates conflict. Yeah. I do not like conflict. I like harmony, but Emily's right. I think that's key things. No crew or team is without problems. You have problems. You have to deal with them. You have to bring them into the light. If you refuse to have a conversation, it doesn't mean the problem goes away. So yeah, being willing to have those hard conversations, but that has to be wrapped neatly in grace. Yes, yes, you have to go into it like I'm telling this person this thing because I want a resolution that preserves the relationship. That has to be it going in all the time, knowing, like, I don't want to have this hard conversation. It feels like disharmony, but it's what will preserve the relationship for the long term. I have an anti example to us and I don't want to talk super negatively, but I think this is a great example. I've seen this a lot in corporate spaces, and I worked for a corporate boutique chain, and they were all about word team. And like, we had like magical names, like I was a manager, which meant I was called, um, a butterfly on duty and like, things like that, like whimsical things. And our emails said like, hey, family, those kinds of things. And we those things have to be paired with real action. And the key to any relationship is real action, whether that action is listening, conflicts, resolution, any of those kinds of things. You can't just speak these relationships into existence. You can't just say hourly, you and I have a good relationship and that's it. Or say our culture is that we support one another. Yeah, but you have to, especially as leaders, which I feel like everyone who identifies with being a handyman has great capabilities as a leader that you lead by example. You fiercely care about your people and you have grace when necessary. And it doesn't mean you let people get away with everything, which sometimes we struggle with honestly. Because it's hard. Because when you really care about people, you don't want to be like, hey, you kind of messed up. You don't want to bum people out or discourage them. I'll tell you what, some examples are. What it looks like to build a team that's healthy. It's Sylvia helping you unload your car when it's already six o'clock at night and you've had a long, cold and wet and rainy. And so it's like, well, we're gonna get it. As you've mentioned, driving soup to a coworker on her own time who's sick. It's Alison just anticipating something that you need and picking it up and doing it. It's Jace being willing to do the gross stuff or carry the super, super heavy things with you repeatedly. Log after log after log after log. It's the small. It's never the big things. It's always the small things. It's being willing to be the one that cleans the toilet because it needs it. It's sharing. It's sharing in obviously sharing in the joy. But sharing in the joy is the reward you get for sharing in life's daily indignities. Yeah. And one thing I think that is so beautiful and lucky about the culture that we is we're mission driven. Yeah. And I think sometimes when you're in different spaces, it's hard to see the mission like, especially if you work in retail or you work at a gas station or a movie theater or those kinds of things, but you can find mission in everything. I was just listening to this podcast this week that was talking about what makes people happy, and the Nordic countries have the happiest rate. Unfortunately, the US dropped from eleven in twenty eleven eleventh place to twenty fourth place, which means that out of the whole world. But like it's the main thing is people have lost purpose. And it doesn't mean that you have to go, which you can change your career. Samantha can say that, but it does mean that you choose that this life is beautiful and it has meaning, and you're gonna share that with other people. And I know that sounds hippie. I am a hippie, but you can choose that. It has meaning. When I worked at a movie theater, I loved that job. I loved taking care of people by getting them their popcorn. My mission was getting to see them do something fun and go to the movies with their family. So even if your work is sucky and the corporate environment you're in is sucky, just find a bit of mission today and share that with your crew. Sometimes you just decide we're going. It's going to be different. It's going to be different. It has to start with me, but it's going to be different. That is a really good tip. If we're talking about like community and making sure that people feel included. Sometimes when somebody doesn't feel included, there's kind of like this, like anger that happens and it's not always known. And it's, you know, you don't always you're not always self-aware of it, but, you know, it's always worth a try to just do a little, you know, reach your hand out, ask somebody to be a part of your community, or at least be on good terms. And if they're still not interested, you tried. Yeah, but sometimes it just takes that. And then the human nature kind of that weird like reflex of getting almost defensive or something with somebody who might be intimidating or seem too good to be true or whatever that might be. Yeah. Um, well, I would just summarize the question you asked was about our particular work environment at my handyman and what makes it special, and I would just summarize that to wrap up our side quest by saying, we show up for each other and you can do that too. Listener. You got it. Yeah. All right, well, thank you for tuning in for our site. Thanks for joining us for this little extra bonus. Yeah. And we'll see you this Friday. Yeah. Bye bye. Hey, this is Emily to do a little outro. Because we did not tell you where to find us if you would like to find us. So if you want to follow us on social media, we're on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all the things you can search at How-To handyman. And then you can also to get more in your feed, you can subscribe on the platform you are listening to this podcast on right now, and you can also leave us a review. Five stars would be beautiful, and we just love doing these side quests and sharing a little bit about our culture and how we got to where we are and what it means to be a handyman to us. Thanks for tuning in.
