Pros Offer Their Strategies for Leading Under Pressure

“Never set expectations you cannot deliver on,” says Keith Kling, owner and CEO of Kling Brothers Builders in Newtown, Connecticut. He also shares three crucial lessons he has learned over many years in business. “First, avoid taking on more than you can handle,” Kling says. “Second, staff up accordingly — which is difficult these days with the shortage of qualified tradespeople. And third, make sure you have a well-trained office support team to work closely with project managers in the field.”

Eli Hariton, owner and principal at Damn Good Interiors in Denver, says, “Some years ago, with another company, I had 17 projects of mixed scopes on my plate, including whole homes over 6,000 square feet. I will never do that again because I lost a year of my life working holidays, nights and weekends.

“I learned my limit on capacity and my ability to take on a tremendous amount of work, but I also learned that my creativity is limited with that much strain on my creative process,” Hariton says. “Each project was only getting a little bit of my creativity, which wasn’t fair to them.

“Today we cap our project count at eight, but six is currently the sweet spot. After eight, we just go into grind mode and our creativity starts to tap out. As we grow our team, that number will increase accordingly.”

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