Episode 51: Former National SkillsUSA Masonry Champ on Combatting Labor Shortages

Matt DiBara was born into the masonry industry. His family has been doing masonry and construction for four generations—102 years—and it all started when his great grandparents came to the states from Italy. Dibara serves as the owner of DiBara Masonry, Founder of the Undercover Contractor, Co-Founder of Contractor Consultants, and host of the Confident Homeowner podcast. Associate Editor Hannah Belloli sat down with DiBara to learn more about career opportunities within the industry and how DiBara hopes to help advance the industry further. “We help contractors grow their business and utilize a lot of the things I’ve been fortunate enough to learn test and see firsthand over the last 15-20 years,” DiBara said. DiBara started to study his dad’s company as they expanded and did great business, yet the problem was always that the business could never run itself, it was too hard to find good workers they could count on and cared as much as they did. And now, he thinks he has something that can really help combat the labor shortage. “I thought to myself, ‘It can’t be impossible, there are companies with hundreds if not thousands of employees in all different industries including construction.’ So the last three years I became obsessed with this question: ‘Who is running your business if you’re the owner and you’re not there?’” For contractors who want to take a vacation, or spend time with their family, or even go to bed a little earlier one night, this is a fundamental question.Three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, DiBara and his coworkers have tested every recruiting method, every outreach method you can think of, and they found a system that is predictable, and can absolutely give you the best shot at finding talented workers that care.