Latest / Learnings and Missteps by Depth Builder / James Gable on Developing Soft Skills: The Power of Communication and Optimism in Leadership
Transcript
- 0:00Yeah.
- 0:00So those are kind of really two, two important things that I want the L and M family to know, as well as that part about being an optimist that is really driven me for the last four or five years.
- 0:09It probably got me to the point where I'm willing to put it out there on a podcast, because you have to do that with some optimism, uh, thinking I'm just putting this out here, you know, and if one person listens to me and that's, that's been.
- 0:24Kind of the drive of my last four or five years of my career is how can I help people?
- 0:29How can I help this next generation?
- 0:30How can I give them stuff?
- 0:32I just want to share, I wanna help people.
- 0:34So that's, that's what it comes down to.
- 0:36And if w if it's one person that I'm fine, Um, I'm good if there's one listener and it's my brother, as long as you can help one person at a time, that's the best thing that you can do in life.
- 0:47Oh, yeah.
- 0:47That's my buddy, Mr.
- 0:49James Gable, full of optimism, and really out there more into make a difference in terms of communication, you know, gotta check out his podcast.
- 0:58Uh, the uncommon communicator they're currently dissecting the book, never split the difference by Chris Voss which is a pretty darn good book.
- 1:08If you haven't checked it out yet, check it out.
- 1:11I just want to give you some insight as to how humble and awesome James is.
- 1:17He reached out to me, kind of out of the blue.
- 1:19We had met way back in the day on a teleconference and he reached out saying, Hey man, I'd like to get some time with you to talk about podcast stuff.
- 1:30And so we had a really great time talking all over again.
- 1:35And I had a last minute situation come up that I really needed some help with.
- 1:39And I reached out to James like a day later and I'm like, April, are you available?
- 1:43Because.
- 1:44I got an opening and I'd love to celebrate you.
- 1:47And, and man, he jumped right on it.
- 1:49So James, thank you, bro.
- 1:52People need to know that that James, his mission is to help the next generation gain the skills needed to navigate and facilitate any conversation to mutual understanding.
- 2:03And he came to this through decades of experience in the industry and grill.
- 2:09Uh, growing his career, does foreman general foreman now as general contractor, And in this conversation, he and I started talking about the toughest role in construction, which he and I both agree that that is the foreman role.
- 2:24I've been a foreman.
- 2:25I still run.
- 2:25I still have scars from living through all that blessed than wonderfulness, but it was an important time for me to grow and develop as an individual.
- 2:35Uh, and you know, it's woven throughout the conversation, but James really is focused on helping people understand.
- 2:42Why soft skills, like communication are important for team members in construction.
- 2:47You know, we like to call them soft skills, but they're really like power skills.
- 2:52The ability to listen with the intent to understand and the ability to communicate our thoughts and ideas in such a way that people can visualize them is a powerful skill.
- 3:07Uh, and, and maybe under-invested in.
- 3:10Also want to give y'all a heads up that we have some to quote Mr.
- 3:15Steve Turner, wicked cool ideas in the oven.
- 3:20Right now, keep an eye out the week of January 12th.
- 3:24We're going to be live streaming with some teachers at a technical school.
- 3:28I hope to see y'all there.
- 3:30Shout out to all of the, our patrons that have been supporting this podcast.
- 3:35Uh, you all have contributed heavily to the increased quality of the visuals and some of the audio stuff.
- 3:44And for the rest of y'all keep listening.
- 3:46We love y'all and here we go.
- 3:53So here we are with Mr.
- 3:55James Gable communication expert, not in the job description.
- 4:05Um, so L and M family want to introduce you to Mr.
- 4:08James.
- 4:09He just launched his podcast.
- 4:11Was it December 1st?
- 4:13December 1st?
- 4:13Yes, sir.
- 4:14The uncommon communicator.
- 4:17That's right.
- 4:17Ah, I got to listen, man.
- 4:20I've said it the other day when we talked, I'm going to say it again.
- 4:22The music selection of the intro is like the coolest, like I knew every single reference and like, okay, I dunno if I'm hip or we're just kind of from the same generation, but this is perfect.
- 4:37That's all my cohost that he is a communications major.
- 4:40He studied this stuff.
- 4:41He's into the media.
- 4:42If you, if I put my music in there, you would, we wouldn't be talking about it, but it's all him and yeah, he did a great job on that.
- 4:51Yes, angel, two of you, I'll tell you this.
- 4:54I listened to both the episodes this morning, um, 20 to 23 minutes long.
- 4:59So it's a manageable amount of time.
- 5:01Um, the, the dynamic between the two of you, there's the, you know, the, the he's referencing Pokemon and you're not talking about Pokemon it's, it's like, that's the realness of it, right?
- 5:15Like the generational difference, but still being able to communicate on a shared idea.
- 5:22Uh, I think, I think that's, that's, what's kind of standing out to me, is the band.
- 5:31Age groups that you can connect with the two of you can connect with and serve.
- 5:35Um, uh, I'm really excited to see what you do with them.
- 5:39And so how you doing Mr.
- 5:40Jameson?
- 5:41Hey, thanks for inviting me to the palatial studios of the learning and missteps.
- 5:45Uh, it's an honor to be here.
- 5:48Uh, glad we found the time to do this.
- 5:51Yeah, man, it's a, it is a crazy path.
- 5:54So you and I met, uh, as a result of a LCI cop for Denver, the Denver cop lean construction Institute.
- 6:04Um, I was, co-facilitating a conversation on gimbal walks with shout out to all day.
- 6:13I don't know if you know this James, but he was the lean manager for Dallas.
- 6:17And now he is the regional lean manager for the central region.
- 6:22Oh, let's see, Jesse is that way, way better than, than what I was.
- 6:29But yeah, he, he, back-filled the spot that I was in and he's going to take him to all new Heights, man.
- 6:34He's a, he's a solid dude.
- 6:36Well, it's fun to see just how different connections happen.
- 6:39Right?
- 6:39That was a $5, one hour gamble walk class that I went to.
- 6:43Might've been two dash five bucks.
- 6:45Like, are you guys making money off of that?
- 6:46I don't think so.
- 6:47Like you probably could have gave me five bucks.
- 6:49I would have went, but it was neat to go to that.
- 6:52And then I had a couple of my young guys, uh, project engineers.
- 6:56I paid their five bucks for them to there's too much work to put it on the company card.
- 7:00Like you guys need to come to this too.
- 7:02And we sat in that thing and that's, you know, that gets that start of our, we're definitely lean amateurs, lean apprentices, you know, we're, first-year apprentices at trying to figure out lean, but that was one thing that, you know, that was just that first connection, you know?
- 7:18Where you meet Jorge, you meet, uh, Hey, you know, me, you Jesse.
- 7:24So was just kinda funny how that stuff rolls around.
- 7:27Yeah.
- 7:27It's an amazing world.
- 7:28And the social media space, the, um, podcasting and, um, live streaming and videos and Peru, like it has a profound effect on people and, and you know, one of the things I appreciate, but appreciate about you, James is your positive message and the way you carry yourself, the way you show up, it's clear to me that you're, um, you care about people about investing in people.
- 7:58Uh, and there's, you know, we've all heard the language influencers, um, and there are a lot of influence.
- 8:06There's so many influencers out there, whether you it's almost like whether you want to or.
- 8:11You are an influencer.
- 8:13Uh, you remember Charles Barkley back in the day where there was all the media commotion that everybody was saying, he's a role model when he needs it.
- 8:22And he's like, I'm not a role model, you know?
- 8:25And I kind of felt like I feel them, but at the same tastic.
- 8:28Yeah.
- 8:28But, but you kind of are right.
- 8:30We've got to own the impact that we have on people.
- 8:33And, and I'm like, I want to say it again.
- 8:36So pleased to hear your podcasts.
- 8:38You're out there sharing, sharing your voice, your thoughts, your message.
- 8:44And you're one of the influencers that I want to be associated with.
- 8:49Um, and, and so I want to give you the uncomfortable opportunity to brag about yourself, James.
- 8:56So what should the L and M family know about you.
- 9:01Yeah.
- 9:01And I know you asked that that's, that is tough.
- 9:03And you know, when you become a general, I, and I, a part of my story and I'll share that, you know, when we want to talk about my career path, but you get into the world of, uh, I went to the dark side of general contracting and I was a industrial contractor subcontractor for most of my life.
- 9:22I'm a millwright by trade.
- 9:24No right.
- 9:24Apprenticeship.
- 9:25My dad's a mill.
- 9:25Right.
- 9:26And my grandpa was a mill Ryan at general motors.
- 9:28My three brothers are all millwrights.
- 9:30So this is, we're a construction family.
- 9:32And you know, some of us aren't all wearing blue colors anymore either, but where my brother's a regional manager of the international brotherhood of carpenters.
- 9:43So for several locals regions, that's a recent promotion for him.
- 9:48And just, this has been in our family.
- 9:50It's in our family.
- 9:51That's who we are, L and M family to know is, is several things and you brought it up optimist.
- 9:58Those are the, one of the things that I think I promote a lot.
- 10:00Now I am an optimist.
- 10:01I'm not, if I'm not just a glass half full, but if that glass is a quarter full, then there's 75% more opportunity in that glass.
- 10:12That's, that's the attitude that I take into problem solving and to just who I am and how I am.
- 10:17So that's kind of a key thing.
- 10:19I'm a family man.
- 10:19I've, I've everything I've done in my career has been for my family and I've done it in my own way, which is how we learned to do it, you know, I've and, and when I say that, I've spent a lot.
- 10:32I've worked a lot over time.
- 10:33My, my last or my first 11 years, I worked 2,600 hours a year.
- 10:41I worked in every bit of overtime that I could work because I was the sole supporter of my family.
- 10:46We found it important that my wife was home with the kids and that that's, you know, we ate a lot of Mac and cheese and I worked a ton of overtime and that's, that's what I felt like I did from a family.
- 10:56I worked out of town a couple of times again, to support the family, but not home.
- 11:00And I say that that's, uh, I am a family man, but I also, I, I think I coach people differently.
- 11:06Now when, when they are thinking about their family, uh, I, I, you can't get that time.
- 11:14You know, and that's things that I know and have learned.
- 11:17I still feel like I did it for the family, but there are things that you can never get back.
- 11:22What's one, you get one day at a time and you don't get that other day back, you know?
- 11:25And you've got one more ahead of you if you're lucky and that's how you really have to look at it.
- 11:30That's how I look at life in regards to that.
- 11:32But I did what I could for my family.
- 11:33I love my family.
- 11:34So absolutely family guy.
- 11:36I love to cook things besides that.
- 11:40I've got a, really a highly popular Instagram.
- 11:43I mean, it's huge.
- 11:44I'm big on Instagram.
- 11:45Okay.
- 11:46Sometimes I cook a lot of things.
- 11:48I'll post pictures, I get seven, eight likes, you know, I just get there's a lot of people out there that like the pictures that I share, uh, one or two, I don't even know.
- 11:59Now I do have a couple of people that like to look at the things that I love cooking, uh, and.
- 12:05Uh, yeah, so those are kind of really two, two important things that I want the element family to know, as well as that part about being an optimist that is really driven me for the last four or five years.
- 12:15It probably got me to the point where I'm willing to put it out there on a podcast, because you have to do that with some optimism, uh, thinking ham, just putting this out here, you know, and if one person listens to me and that's, that's been kind of the drive of my last four or five years of my career is how can I help people?
- 12:35How can I help this next generation?
- 12:36How can I give them stuff?
- 12:38And by giving them stuff, I want them to have it in.
- 12:43I want them to get, I just want to share, I want to help people.
- 12:47So that's, that's what it comes down to.
- 12:49And if w if it's one person that I'm fine, Um, I'm good if there's one listener and it's my brother, because I don't care that that's, as long as you can help one person at a time, that's the best thing that you can do in life.
- 13:03You got it, man.
- 13:04We can change the world one world at a time, man.
- 13:08I applaud your courage.
- 13:09Cause it, you know, you and I are fellow podcasters.
- 13:12It's really scary.
- 13:14You know, you want everybody to love you, but you know what?
- 13:17Realistic let's get it set some realistic goals.
- 13:20And if it impacts one person, it's totally worth it.
- 13:24So here, so you're out James dot Gable dot 9, 8, 4 on Instagram.
- 13:30Yeah.
- 13:31There's 980 people.
- 13:34Apparently I put no thought.
- 13:37I'm like, I'm not going to do Instagram.
- 13:38I'll never do anything in there.
- 13:39Yeah.
- 13:41I looked at it.
- 13:41It says future influencer.
- 13:44You're there already.
- 13:45So that may need an update, but I'm looking at this scrumptious.
- 13:49Oh, yeah, that's a griddle cake right there.
- 13:52What is that?
- 13:53Tell us I got a Blackstone.
- 13:56I can't tell you how many months ago that I got and that blacks, you know, it's a griddle, you know, it's like a four burner griddle and I cooked 12 days in a row on that thing.
- 14:06When I got it, put it together on Saturday, I cooked all three meals on Sunday on that thing.
- 14:11And this thing's a, it's the ultimate cooking machine, but you take a biscuit, you put a little bit of butter down and you put some, uh, rolled it in cinnamon and sugar, and then you just put it on that thing and just, it gets this carmely crispy biscuit full of, you know, diabetes and whatever you want to get.
- 14:29Well, yeah, that's a griddle cake.
- 14:31I do.
- 14:31It's funny.
- 14:32Uh, and you know, you talk, you, you always want feedback, right?
- 14:35And so I've, uh, and it's not always going to be positive.
- 14:39I did these really good looking and you can please follow me on, instead of being be number nine or 10, that likes that, put it there.
- 14:46But that, uh, I did some crispy tacos.
- 14:49I called them.
- 14:50So it's cheese and meat.
- 14:51And then I folded them over, put a little bit of oil on it, got the outside of that tortilla, really crispy make crispy tacos.
- 14:56And then I had several comments that were not tacos.
- 15:00That's a case of deer.
- 15:03Really the critics there, there's only three or four ingredients in any of those ones that you're talking about.
- 15:10So, oh man, uh, taco aficionados out there are, are bad.
- 15:15And you know what?
- 15:16You should put a poll on LinkedIn.
- 15:19It says description taco.
- 15:23Yes or no, people are going crazy for polls on LinkedIn.
- 15:27And, and I'm going to say it qualifies as a taco and I'm from San Antonio where you're the taco.
- 15:36We're the taco Kings.
- 15:37Yes.
- 15:39Austin likes to argue that, but they're just confused.
- 15:42It Santos that'd be a tough pole because if anybody says no to taco, they might unfriend me.
- 15:51You can eat them for breakfast.
- 15:53You can eat it for lunch.
- 15:54You can eat them for dinner.
- 15:55I mean, breakfast tacos.
- 15:56My daughter works at Starbucks and I'll make a burritos for them.
- 16:00Breakfast burritos, bring it into their, to their crew.
- 16:02And then once I got the griddle, I started making breakfast tacos and bringing them in.
- 16:07And that's the ultimate, it's the ultimate vehicle.
- 16:11For food, you very well said the ultimate vehicle.
- 16:16You don't need any utensils, just get the thing and put it in your face.
- 16:20Like deliciousness, easy access under percent.
- 16:25So James, you know, what stands what's kind of standing out to me is you're just very personable, super cool, low key, relaxed.
- 16:35I'm wondering, and you're, you're in the general contractor space, you have significant responsibility there and you know, I've been in the industry since 95 and people with your demeanor are like very, very few and far between.
- 16:50Uh, and so it makes me wonder, like, do you have a switch when you go to work or you got to amp it up?
- 16:57Or how do you, or do you maintain this, this type of easygoing, um, relatable.
- 17:06I, I would, I would say now I'm probably the same, but that's a great question because I, when, when raising my kids, they, I kept work at work.
- 17:19So I'd come home when it came time to come home.
- 17:21And I tell you, you're not a man.
- 17:22If you don't pay paint, your daughter's fingernails, you know, they Barbies with her.
- 17:27She had littlest pet shops.
- 17:28That's that was her thing.
- 17:29And we played when we got home, my son had Legos.
- 17:31We play Legos.
- 17:32When we got home, I didn't talk about work.
- 17:34When I got my daughter didn't know what I did.
- 17:36She knew places.
- 17:37I worked, I worked at jolly rancher.
- 17:38She thought I worked at jolly rancher scenery there.
- 17:41I worked at Coors for a long time.
- 17:43Different places.
- 17:44I've worked.
- 17:44She just associated, Hey, dad made candy.
- 17:46I mean, she had no idea.
- 17:48And that was by purpose.
- 17:49I didn't come home.
- 17:50I didn't want to bore my wife with work stuff.
- 17:52She knows what I do.
- 17:53Probably more than a lot of other wives as far as some interactions and stuff, but I don't sit.
- 17:58I don't complain about work.
- 17:59You know, this is not my place.
- 18:00This is my safe place.
- 18:01So.
- 18:03For really talked about work at home.
- 18:04And I had, when she was in high school, I had a great opportunity to get her to school before I went to chorus.
- 18:10Cause they're really close together so I could drop her off.
- 18:12She would get up early and get to a school an hour early, just so she could run.
- 18:17Dad could give her a ride, neat time.
- 18:20And sometimes as you know, time was pushing, my phone would ring.
- 18:23I'm like, I gotta take this phone call when I'm dropping her off.
- 18:26And she pointed out, that's like that's worker, dad, voice, like suddenly my voice changed.
- 18:33And so to answer your question.
- 18:34Yeah, absolutely.
- 18:35I was, I, I have that a little bit different demeanor, but I mean, who I am is who I am.
- 18:40I think that's always how it is, but I definitely have a different home.
- 18:44Uh, James and there is the work James, uh, for sure that's kinda the way you got to go, but I don't imagine it's like a Dr.
- 18:52Jekyll and Mr.
- 18:53Hyde transition.
- 18:54I am, I am who I am, and I think I am different in what you're talking about.
- 18:59As far as being, I'm a general superintendent for eight offs and a Peterson, they're a billion dollar general contractor.
- 19:05We're in several cities.
- 19:06We're the largest region here in Colorado.
- 19:09You know, we're, we're a big company now as a general soup.
- 19:12Um, I'm over our itsy-bitsy baby tiny, you know, small projects, 10 million, and under is what we shoot for, you know, just the tiny stuff, but it's the small projects team.
- 19:21And that's that in, in its own is really helped me be who I am over the last four or five years as well too.
- 19:28I've been with the company because it's, we're, we're an entrepreneur within a big gigantic company.
- 19:33We started a company with the backing of a billion dollar company and we started with, uh, I was, the second superintendent hired were the first one.
- 19:42Uh, couldn't.
- 19:45Um, we couldn't do schedules.
- 19:48Uh, I actually asked them, Hey, can you do a schedule?
- 19:50And just, of course he wrote it out on paper.
- 19:51I'm like, can you use the software stuff and could not.
- 19:54He had, he didn't have that ability, but he was a good superintendent, ended up not working out.
- 19:59So I was really the second superintendent that got hired and funny story with that.
- 20:02Uh, and I'm sure we use projects, Microsoft projects.
- 20:05When I interviewed they're like, Hey, we did a lot of it's scheduled driven, you know, how are you with schedule?
- 20:09So mom, I can, I can put a schedule together.
- 20:11Do you use projects?
- 20:12Oh yeah, absolutely.
- 20:14So I opened up my brand new computer and it's like 2016 Microsoft projects.
- 20:21My bunny had been sharing a disc since 2003 was the verse that I had used before.
- 20:27A lot of buttons got added between 2003 and 2006.
- 20:32So I YouTube, it figured it out and you know, there's this more buttons to push, but poor Fred could not, uh, get the computer stuff down.
- 20:39So he worked out.
- 20:41So we started small hanging a picture on the wall is kind of what we're, we're saying we're going to do.
- 20:46And a lot of people don't expect a GC to take those small projects on our goal was to take, uh, existing clients and support them.
- 20:55Because a lot of times, big projects, they move on and they're like, Hey, we still want AP here.
- 20:59We want you here.
- 21:00And we didn't have a vehicle for doing that.
- 21:01We're like we got to move on and go build another big building.
- 21:04Uh, it was done with that attitude, but it was.
- 21:08Uh, really a niche that we started with, and we also wanted to bring in new clients, which we have.
- 21:12So we really have had some kind of skyrocketing growth over the last four or five years.
- 21:17And that has been that entrepreneur at one point, when we're thinking, what are we going to do next?
- 21:22We talked about trash Kings.
- 21:23Like we had a job site up north to $200 million job site.
- 21:27There's going to be a lot of dumpsters up there.
- 21:29Oh yeah.
- 21:29Why couldn't we as a company, find a way to save money on the job and make money on the job.
- 21:36Right.
- 21:36So there's just a lot of that entrepreneurial type thing.
- 21:39Thoughts, patterns with my boss, he is definitely a dreamer.
- 21:42He likes to think about what's next.
- 21:45Let's not do it the same way.
- 21:46And that's why he's been a driver for lean within our company or within our group, because we're tired of doing it the same way and we have been, and that's just the thing that I've picked up on lean.
- 21:58You know, we've been, uh, lean construction has been around for like 2019.
- 22:02So I'm like, uh, prior to that, it goes back to what, 1950 something with a Toyota Toyota.
- 22:07And, and how did that apply to construction?
- 22:09But for almost 30 years, we've been doing construction.
- 22:11You look how manufacturing changed in the same timeframe.
- 22:15And we're still just now getting there, you know, and some of the other podcasts I listen, I think Philippe had a podcast that shout out to Philippe.
- 22:25He had a podcast, uh, about some innovators on prefabrication.
- 22:30You know, we, I hear about those things.
- 22:31We're, we're, we're working with some trade partners that are doing it, but we're still doing it the same way.
- 22:36I'm still putting, uh, uh, putting sheet rock and, and steel studs up the same way that we did it, you know, 15, 20 years ago.
- 22:45And it's time-consuming and it's wasteful, you know, and how do we do that in a, in a tenant improvement area?
- 22:51We're just, we're in that, uh, I think we got along.
- 22:55And the people that are innovating and doing it are building different things than what I'm building right now, which is T guys, how can we do tic?
- 23:01And so those are the things that he's, he's an innovator in, in making us think, how can we do it different?
- 23:07Because we're tired of at the same way.
- 23:09Oh, and that is that it sounds like you're in a very nurturing environment.
- 23:14Um, and you know, you spent, you described that you spent many years as a mill ride, went through the apprenticeship and worked your way into now the dark side of general contracting.
- 23:25Um, how so now you have a boss that is a leader that supports experimentation.
- 23:33Cause sometimes those experiments don't work out.
- 23:35Right.
- 23:36That's true.
- 23:36But you learn from them some.
- 23:39Yep.
- 23:39So you gotta have a bunch of them.
- 23:43If you're out there doing links though, you have a bunch of stuff that just like.
- 23:48Wow.
- 23:48Wow.
- 23:48Wow.
- 23:50And that's okay, because you learn from that.
- 23:52Right.
- 23:52Um, but through your career, how many bosses, like what's the ratio of bosses that you've had that were like nurturing and breathe life into you versus those that like suck the life out of you?
- 24:06Well, and I, that's a good question.
- 24:08I hadn't, you surprised me with that one.
- 24:13I would say Joe by far has been the most nurturing boss.
- 24:16He is allowed me.
- 24:18I came in as a superintendent, you know, coming from industrial into general construction with really no general construct.
- 24:25Uh, infer no general instruction.
- 24:27Yeah, I didn't, I didn't know how to take it back.
- 24:30I came in with a knowledge of general construction, but not to the level of commercial construction.
- 24:35Got it.
- 24:36So I was a newbie, but I had, he, I felt like I had good people skills and I I'm a quick learner.
- 24:41I can read drawings.
- 24:42You know, those were the things that, uh, and this might offend some people, but when you say.
- 24:48Precision equipment to a thousands of an inch.
- 24:52Uh, I moved some rocket equipment and that was, uh, I worked at ULA or for ULA with ULA.
- 24:58Then we relocated them from Colorado down to Decatur.
- 25:00Alabama is another that I spent out of town.
- 25:03You set precision equipment when you're mechanically minded.
- 25:07And that's why I love about the trades.
- 25:10You're a problem solver.
- 25:11And I thought this is just a different problem to solve.
- 25:13I'll take it on and I'll learn it.
- 25:15Looking back, I, you know, I've been doing this over 30 years and you, if anyone knows 30 years ago that nurturing boss, if you said that word, uh, you know, you were that you were kicked off the job, you know, and there was not so nurturing was, and this is really, and actually, this is a great question because I, how I operate, I try to be different than how I was necessarily raised.
- 25:42But with that, I have, I don't need the pats on the back.
- 25:48So for me, the best, the most, one of the most least nurturing guys that I worked for, I learned a bunch from the scan.
- 25:55This is a guy here in Colorado.
- 25:57He never said out of Boyce, if he said nothing on my job, if he walked on my superintendent and, and looked around, didn't say anything, all right, I gotta go.
- 26:04It looks like you got to cover.
- 26:05That was the attaboy.
- 26:06That was it.
- 26:07So I don't I'm, I'm getting better at giving those out, you know, recognizing people's achievement.
- 26:14Cause people want that.
- 26:15And they need that.
- 26:16I, for me, I didn't need that.
- 26:19And so I had a hard time giving that out.
- 26:20So when you say nurturing, nurturing was when they didn't, you know, berate you or say, tell everything that you did wrong, which is hard to do when you're a superintendent, then you've got a, you got to take and he taught me a lot.
- 26:32You, you go in, you have, you have to take a snapshot of the job.
- 26:35You gotta go to the next one and look at the next job that's going on.
- 26:38You've got a few minutes to make an assessment.
- 26:40So he taught me how to do that.
- 26:41I can go in, but what am I assessing if you fix that, that's going to be better.
- 26:46This is not working over here.
- 26:47You need to do this over here because you're thinking you're helping guide that guy to a better job site by giving him.
- 26:55But that's not supporting him personally in his goal.
- 26:59And so that, that's something I've really wrassled with over the course of my career, because for the most part, not to answer your question, not very many what you would call nurturing.
- 27:10I didn't even know that word.
- 27:11Uh, you know, just not getting yelled at that's nurturing.
- 27:15Right.
- 27:15And we're a different world now.
- 27:16We can't, we're not yellers.
- 27:18Uh, I think there still are some, uh, but there's some that are hard line superintendents that that's, it's their way or the highway, and guess what they're getting jobs done.
- 27:27And they, and I also found that people want some level of assertive leadership to then that's what I've really loved doing.
- 27:35They want clear direction.
- 27:36They don't want the, what do you think?
- 27:38What do you think about that?
- 27:39They don't want that.
- 27:40We want boundaries, you know, people, what do you want me to do, boss?
- 27:43You know, that's what, that's the mindset of, you know, of music, construction workers, what do you want?
- 27:48And I'll go do it.
- 27:49I'll do whatever you want.
- 27:50Yeah.
- 27:51Tell me I'm with you, man.
- 27:53I love it.
- 27:54When somebody says, Hey, let's go have dinner.
- 27:55Like, okay, good.
- 27:57And they say, meet me here at 7: 00 PM.
- 27:59And they say, meet me here at 7: Yes.
- 28:02And they say, meet me here at 7: And it's like, well, you know what?
- 28:04And they say, meet me here at 7: I got a pizza in the fridge that would save me some time.
- 28:09And they say, meet me here at 7: Oh, that's key right there.
- 28:10And they say, meet me here at 7: That has, that happens a lot.
- 28:12And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, where do you want to go?
- 28:13And they say, meet me here at 7: What do you like?
- 28:14And they say, meet me here at 7: And it's like, yeah.
- 28:15And they say, meet me here at 7: That's, that's a, I never thought of that as a key of leadership, I need to pick more places to, I have plenty of places to eat.
- 28:21And they say, meet me here at 7: If you come out here or you won't have to choose.
- 28:24And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah.
- 28:24And they say, meet me here at 7: Just be let's meet here at this time.
- 28:26And they say, meet me here at 7: Boom.
- 28:26And they say, meet me here at 7: Done.
- 28:26And they say, meet me here at 7: Let's go.
- 28:27And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, gets the ball rolling and decision making is down at, I mean, it's beautiful.
- 28:32And they say, meet me here at 7: There's two key things that you did stood out to me when you were speaking.
- 28:36And they say, meet me here at 7: One was your experience as a mill, right.
- 28:39And they say, meet me here at 7: And, and the problem solving.
- 28:43And they say, meet me here at 7: Capability that you have developed as a result of doing that work and, and how it's transcended into a major leadership role where you're kind of inventing, creating a new business within the business.
- 28:58And they say, meet me here at 7: And so I wanted to highlight that for, you know, the LNM moms and dads out there that have younger siblings in school, you know, to help them understand it, our industry, craft workers, trades, folks, industrial arts, all of the above creates this capability.
- 29:16And they say, meet me here at 7: That is pretty darn profound.
- 29:20And they say, meet me here at 7: It's not as shiny as some of the other careers out there, which is, you know, we're working on that.
- 29:26And they say, meet me here at 7: Um, but it, it provides immense value.
- 29:30And they say, meet me here at 7: I mean, there's there I've, you know, I've got personal friends that they'll need help and I'll go help them out.
- 29:35And they say, meet me here at 7: And.
- 29:36And they say, meet me here at 7: And they're like, man, how many times have you done that?
- 29:37And they say, meet me here at 7: I was like, oh, this is my first time.
- 29:39And they say, meet me here at 7: And they're like, you just kind of, and it's hard for me to like, articulate, right?
- 29:44And they say, meet me here at 7: Cause he's just like this podcasting thing.
- 29:48And they say, meet me here at 7: Shout out to Ms.
- 29:48And they say, meet me here at 7: Stephanie Brown.
- 29:50And they say, meet me here at 7: She's, she's poured a lot of positivity into me in, in, in the way that I show up on social media.
- 29:58And they say, meet me here at 7: And it's I just tinker around and click on this and look at that.
- 30:02And they say, meet me here at 7: And if I need some extra examples, I'll go to YouTube, um, and, or reach out to my contacts and say, Hey, how do you do this?
- 30:11And they say, meet me here at 7: But it really is that kind of mindset or that ability to let's just play around with it, figure things out and produce something that is, um, digestible or suit somebody else's need provides value to others.
- 30:25And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, you know, the other thing you talked about was the fact that you're the person that you're with.
- 30:33And they say, meet me here at 7: You're a boss, he's, he's a nurturing innovator.
- 30:37And they say, meet me here at 7: Um, and you leaning into that.
- 30:39And they say, meet me here at 7: It was kind of the undertone where, you know, perfectionism can be paralyzing or, or the fear of failure can be paralyzing and in order to innovate and grow and really leverage the, the brainpower and the spirit that we have in ourselves, we've got to be courageous in like, just, you're going to get dirty, like it's and it's going to be okay, you get rid of yourself up.
- 31:10And they say, meet me here at 7: It's not a big deal.
- 31:12And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, now on the other side of that is for leaders out there.
- 31:16And they say, meet me here at 7: Cause we got a bunch of leaders and we got a bunch of aspiring leaders out there.
- 31:20And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, if, if you're not, it may be valuable to go and ask your people if they feel supported.
- 31:30And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah, that's a good question.
- 31:33And they say, meet me here at 7: And that's, I would say I, I found my groove with where I'm at right now at 50 years old, I found what I wanted to do.
- 31:44And they say, meet me here at 7: I say this a lot, you know, for a lot of years I did what I had to do.
- 31:47And they say, meet me here at 7: I had a family, I did jobs that I didn't like doing.
- 31:49And they say, meet me here at 7: I w I didn't like going into work.
- 31:51And they say, meet me here at 7: Sometimes they're tough.
- 31:52And they say, meet me here at 7: And you do it because you have to do it now.
- 31:54And they say, meet me here at 7: I'm doing, because I want to do it, which is a different mindset for me.
- 31:58And they say, meet me here at 7: Cause I feel like who made me, was doing all of that stuff that I had to do.
- 32:02And they say, meet me here at 7: And now I'm saying that the 23 years old go do what you want to do well, going in and doing what you're going to do might not mean working here.
- 32:09And they say, meet me here at 7: And that's, that's tough for me to say that.
- 32:12And they say, meet me here at 7: And so let me, let me back up a little bit and talk about how I got into the trades.
- 32:17And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah.
- 32:17And they say, meet me here at 7: Because you would think, you know, I mentioned my whole family's in it.
- 32:20And they say, meet me here at 7: Right.
- 32:20And they say, meet me here at 7: You'd think it was a natural given, Hey, you're going to go be a mill.
- 32:23And they say, meet me here at 7: Right?
- 32:23And they say, meet me here at 7: Well, it wasn't.
- 32:24And they say, meet me here at 7: And I was the fourth.
- 32:25And they say, meet me here at 7: I have three older brothers and I was the smart one.
- 32:29And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh that's what, one of them calls me anyways, but they all got into the millwrights.
- 32:33And they say, meet me here at 7: They got into the trades.
- 32:34And they say, meet me here at 7: I was going to be a music major.
- 32:36And they say, meet me here at 7: I had.
- 32:37And they say, meet me here at 7: Three quarters at a community college, uh, just mired in doing nothing at a community college, wanting to be a music major.
- 32:46And they say, meet me here at 7: And my dad came to me and he said, Hey son, why don't you just take the quarter off, take the summer off from some money, then go ahead and go back to school, you know, get in work a little bit or some money.
- 32:56And they say, meet me here at 7: And it was like 34 years ago.
- 32:58And they say, meet me here at 7: So I had never felt back to college from them.
- 33:02And they say, meet me here at 7: But you know, in 88 I was making 10 bucks an hour.
- 33:06And they say, meet me here at 7: That was great.
- 33:07And they say, meet me here at 7: That's big money, big money living at home with mom and dad making 10 bucks an hour.
- 33:12And they say, meet me here at 7: I mean, that was great.
- 33:14And they say, meet me here at 7: And then from there as an assembler, I wanted the apprenticeship and then the apprenticeship, you know, it was always that, Hey, finish the apprenticeship, then go back to college.
- 33:22And they say, meet me here at 7: And then after that it was man, I'm making now.
- 33:25And they say, meet me here at 7: To support, you know, I can't go to college support a family.
- 33:28And they say, meet me here at 7: And so I never had that degree.
- 33:32And they say, meet me here at 7: Um, I never had the degree and, but my degree was that apprenticeship and that apprenticeship is as good as, as I think any better, any degree that you can get, you get out of it, what you put into it.
- 33:42And they say, meet me here at 7: Then I got a lot out of that apprenticeship, uh, time.
- 33:46And they say, meet me here at 7: And so I've been able to use that.
- 33:48And they say, meet me here at 7: And I transfer that when I came out here to Colorado, that's the best part about being in the trades too?
- 33:52And they say, meet me here at 7: You come out here.
- 33:54And they say, meet me here at 7: I had signed up with the union.
- 33:56And they say, meet me here at 7: I knew people like I didn't, but I did, you know, I had a skill set that was marketable because they had taught me how to do.
- 34:02And they say, meet me here at 7: And I came out here and I worked for, uh, one company for 18 years here in Colorado until they had went through some, uh, issues.
- 34:11And they say, meet me here at 7: And they ended up getting sold to them to a different company.
- 34:14And they say, meet me here at 7: And, but 18 years prior to that, though, I worked.
- 34:19And they say, meet me here at 7: 12 years.
- 34:19And they say, meet me here at 7: My first company, my first year in the trade, I worked 11 companies my next year in the trade.
- 34:25And they say, meet me here at 7: And then a little bit less the next couple of years as an apprentice.
- 34:28And they say, meet me here at 7: And then as a journeyman, I was working between two or three different companies.
- 34:31And they say, meet me here at 7: I've worked for a lot of companies and that's the experience.
- 34:34And they say, meet me here at 7: I think that made me who I was because I was so diverse.
- 34:39And they say, meet me here at 7: Now the issue I have is, and then I worked for 18 years for the one I would have retired there.
- 34:43And they say, meet me here at 7: If that was the case, I would have just retired there.
- 34:46And they say, meet me here at 7: Things didn't work out that way.
- 34:47And they say, meet me here at 7: Now I'm with a different company and it couldn't be better for me personally, because it's just, I've hit that groove of stuff that I love to do.
- 34:56And they say, meet me here at 7: But it's tough for me now to coach people, to, uh, to get the same experience that I got.
- 35:04And they say, meet me here at 7: Now, it was a hard road for me to be where I'm at.
- 35:06And they say, meet me here at 7: There's kids right now with their, with the.
- 35:08And they say, meet me here at 7: Construction management degree that are going to be superintendents in five, six years, seven years maybe depends.
- 35:14And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, it took me 30 years to get there or 20 years to get there because it's that experience and that, so there is value in general contracting with that degree to be a superintendent, but how many times?
- 35:26And they say, meet me here at 7: And I wonder how many times you think about, did you want to just go back to work, uh, and then leave it at work?
- 35:34And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, even being a foreman level, you just wish that you can.
- 35:38And they say, meet me here at 7: I mean, when we're, when we were in Jacksonville for that project, that was probably the, one of the toughest jobs I've ever worked.
- 35:44And they say, meet me here at 7: We, me and my boss were both like, man, I just want to work at Starbucks.
- 35:48And they say, meet me here at 7: I just want to coffee and go home at the end of the day.
- 35:52And they say, meet me here at 7: But you know, there's, there's.
- 35:56And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah, you just wish you could go back to doing that, but you don't, you know, I knew that as Prentice, you know, as part of my career development, too, as an apprentice, I knew I wanted to be the lead apprentice.
- 36:06And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, if we were, had to go talk to the boss, I wanted to make sure that I was getting the work lined up for me and my partner, which I worked for a lot of companies that were apprentices with apprentices because we're cheap.
- 36:15And they say, meet me here at 7: So if you could just do your job and follow directions, and then you could do that and then.
- 36:21And they say, meet me here at 7: From there.
- 36:22And they say, meet me here at 7: I became a foreman and being a foreman.
- 36:24And they say, meet me here at 7: So back to be an apprentice, when I was an apprentice, I wanted to be the best apprentice that I could be.
- 36:28And they say, meet me here at 7: I never had any aspirations more than that.
- 36:31And they say, meet me here at 7: I knew I wanted to eventually be a foreman.
- 36:33And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, those are just the levels at 23 years old, I'll be a foreman, the rest of my life.
- 36:38And they say, meet me here at 7: And then you see general foreman hit that general foreman.
- 36:41And they say, meet me here at 7: When I came out here to Colorado, uh, still not really thinking about superintendent.
- 36:45And they say, meet me here at 7: I had a superintendent who, uh, he was on the five-year plan.
- 36:49And they say, meet me here at 7: He's on it for 15 years now, five years, he was going to retire and hand over the keys.
- 36:54And they say, meet me here at 7: This is the last year.
- 36:57And they say, meet me here at 7: So he was kind of coaching me, training me.
- 36:59And they say, meet me here at 7: He ended up moving on and then I ended up taking over the superintendent job from him.
- 37:03And they say, meet me here at 7: He went somewhere else and gave that same speech to someone else and then went to another company.
- 37:07And they say, meet me here at 7: And now he's still, I think he's down to two or three years now, 15 years later, but I never thought, okay, well, when I hit superintendent, my first year of being evaluated by my project manager, was he goes, what's your.
- 37:21And they say, meet me here at 7: Um, to be a superintendent for, you know, five more years.
- 37:25And they say, meet me here at 7: I mean, that's, I had never even thought about that next level.
- 37:29And they say, meet me here at 7: I just wanted to be the best that I could be at that level.
- 37:32And they say, meet me here at 7: And then realize that really in construction.
- 37:36And they say, meet me here at 7: I ended up being a project manager, which in my company that was the promotion up early.
- 37:40And they say, meet me here at 7: You heard this and now with, you know, in general construction, Brits, it's just a true partnership.
- 37:44And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, the superintendent for my company is the man.
- 37:48And they say, meet me here at 7: And that's what drew me to be in, in general construction.
- 37:52And they say, meet me here at 7: In fact, I had met with a superintendent, uh, at another one of my coworkers had went to work for this company and he brought me over.
- 37:58And they say, meet me here at 7: So I'm like, how is it?
- 37:59And they say, meet me here at 7: What's it like, he's like, let me figure it out first.
- 38:01And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, I don't know.
- 38:03And they say, meet me here at 7: I'm like, it looks like you're having a great time.
- 38:05And they say, meet me here at 7: So when I, he said, come meet Brian and I met Brian on a project and he's a superintendent and I'm trying to decide, I don't want to be a PM or be a superintendent.
- 38:14And they say, meet me here at 7: And that's when I decided, you know, I really do want to be a superintendent because that superintendent runs the whole job and the PM, you know, they work on the financial side.
- 38:24And they say, meet me here at 7: So I made that decision, you know, four or five years ago, this has been my path and never thought much more than that.
- 38:30And they say, meet me here at 7: He'll be a superintendent on a general contractor.
- 38:32And they say, meet me here at 7: I didn't know at the time.
- 38:34And they say, meet me here at 7: The small projects group, you know, we had started, so I'm like, I'll go build buildings.
- 38:39And they say, meet me here at 7: That sounds great.
- 38:40And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, and from there we grew, we grew so fast that I just won was supporting the teams.
- 38:47And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, we had got a bunch of work over the summer, a bunch of summer schools as super subs.
- 38:51And they say, meet me here at 7: That's been our first market as a gigantic general contractor.
- 38:55And they say, meet me here at 7: We were working for our trade partners, doing their.
- 38:59And they say, meet me here at 7: Concrete work, doing their grid, ceilings, floor protection, stuff like that, supporting them.
- 39:04And they say, meet me here at 7: And so that in that supporting role, as a small projects group, we had, we just had a bunch of work.
- 39:11And they say, meet me here at 7: So I'm helping manage those jobs.
- 39:12And they say, meet me here at 7: I'm on, this is, I love doing this at several.
- 39:15And they say, meet me here at 7: We started hiring superintendents and as that started to grow, it helped me grow into my position as general superintendent over all of our other superintendents.
- 39:23And they say, meet me here at 7: So it's just all kind of happened naturally.
- 39:26And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, wasn't something, I didn't think when I was 23, I'm going to be a general superintendent of a gigantic company.
- 39:32And they say, meet me here at 7: I didn't think that way.
- 39:33And they say, meet me here at 7: And I think that's important to think about in your career.
- 39:36And they say, meet me here at 7: We, I think a lot of people think so far ahead that they don't focus on being great at what they're doing right now.
- 39:44And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, be the best that you can be right now.
- 39:47And they say, meet me here at 7: And from that good things are good.
- 39:51And they say, meet me here at 7: 100% and focus on serving people and building your knowledge.
- 39:56And they say, meet me here at 7: It's like perpetual energy just keeps building and building and it, the next step, the next level, the next experience, the next adventure reveals itself as you're going down that path, you know, when you mentioned foreman and we got to show love to form it, uh it's you and I have a similar path where I was like, ah, I just want to beat all my, every apprentice.
- 40:17And they say, meet me here at 7: I just want to smoke them.
- 40:21And they say, meet me here at 7: Right.
- 40:21And they say, meet me here at 7: And then when I got the journeymen, I just want to smoke all the journeymen.
- 40:24And they say, meet me here at 7: Um, and then when I got to foreman, I mean to date, I've had very different roles and very significant transition.
- 40:32And they say, meet me here at 7: To date.
- 40:33And they say, meet me here at 7: I still believe that foreman role is the toughest position on any job site.
- 40:39And they say, meet me here at 7: It, I mean, part of what happens is for me and I get, I see it a lot in informing when to get into the role is I spent the past five, maybe 10 years being recognized and rewarded for the amount of work that I would put out the visible work that I would put in place.
- 41:03And they say, meet me here at 7: And now I'm in this new stupid role that I have to fill out paperwork and I got to go to meetings and, and now I got to use an iPad or a laptop, you know, the way things are evolving.
- 41:14And they say, meet me here at 7: And I can't see my work anymore because my work is no longer, this tangible, visible thing.
- 41:22And they say, meet me here at 7: That was very, that was a big challenge.
- 41:24And they say, meet me here at 7: So there's this shift in thinking that I had to make.
- 41:28And they say, meet me here at 7: Plus the additional responsibility of doing all the company stuff.
- 41:33And they say, meet me here at 7: And then, you know what, now I'm also responsible for developing people and guiding people.
- 41:39And they say, meet me here at 7: And like you said, providing clear direction and nobody says, oh, you're a first-year foreman.
- 41:50And they say, meet me here at 7: So we're going to take it easy on.
- 41:53And they say, meet me here at 7: The expectations of a foreman is that you're 25 years seasoned freaking foreman.
- 41:58And they say, meet me here at 7: That's an expert at everything you need to know everything, right?
- 42:03And they say, meet me here at 7: That's the assumption.
- 42:04And they say, meet me here at 7: And so the pressures all the way around, right?
- 42:07And they say, meet me here at 7: The project manager, internal project manager, internal superintendent, the team that you're leading the general contractor on site, the schedule, the budget, and you're learning, it's a son of a gun.
- 42:17And they say, meet me here at 7: And so, and we want you to do that for a buck more an hour.
- 42:23And they say, meet me here at 7: Yes.
- 42:24And they say, meet me here at 7: Compensation is, is there are some organizations that I've worked with and that I know that do a fabulous job of appropriately, uh, appreciating their foreman.
- 42:36And they say, meet me here at 7: But by and large, they are an underappreciated role.
- 42:39And they say, meet me here at 7: So love to all you foreman out there and everybody.
- 42:42And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah.
- 42:43And they say, meet me here at 7: Do better do better by your foreman.
- 42:47And they say, meet me here at 7: So, man, you've got much experience, tons of experience.
- 42:54And they say, meet me here at 7: And I imagine through all those years of learning and coming up through the, as a millwright and coming into leadership, starting a new, uh, entrepreneurial, uh, business, starting a podcast, I imagine there's a bunch of learnings and missteps you've had along the way.
- 43:13And they say, meet me here at 7: So I'm wondering what is one, you know, what's a significant learning you've had as a result of like a painful, maybe even embarrassing.
- 43:25And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah.
- 43:26And they say, meet me here at 7: And you know, I know you asked this question and this, this it's tough for everybody to pick one, right?
- 43:31And they say, meet me here at 7: And we'll say this, and I have spent a good part of my career learning from other people.
- 43:35And they say, meet me here at 7: And I need to, everybody needs to know that you don't have to make the mistakes.
- 43:39And they say, meet me here at 7: And that's what I love about this aspect of your show is let's talk about them.
- 43:44And they say, meet me here at 7: So I can know that man, he goofed up big time.
- 43:47And they say, meet me here at 7: I'm not going to do that.
- 43:48And they say, meet me here at 7: And I spent a lot of my career watching foreman screw up to be a better foreman, but not saying that I haven't, and there's a couple that really stick out for me.
- 43:56And they say, meet me here at 7: And I, and one is on a, on a interpersonal level.
- 43:59And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, I had an apprentice who Yeah, it's me again, interrupting the flow of the show and I'm doing this just to motive, set the hook a little bit and motivate you to sign up and become a patron of, of our podcast.
- 44:14And they say, meet me here at 7: So you can become a contributor in keeping us commercial three.
- 44:20And they say, meet me here at 7: Y'all giving us your time and listening to this episode is extremely meaningful.
- 44:24And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, if you don't have the resources completely understand, you're giving us the most precious resource of all, which is your time and attention.
- 44:31And they say, meet me here at 7: But if you want to give a little bit more.
- 44:33And they say, meet me here at 7: He hit us up patrion.com/learnings and missteps.
- 44:36And they say, meet me here at 7: And I'm a stop talking.
- 44:40And they say, meet me here at 7: I wasn't purposeful, like I am now in mentoring and coaching people.
- 44:44And they say, meet me here at 7: So sometimes that just happens, but that kind of went full.
- 44:47And they say, meet me here at 7: So that was kind of a misstep that went full circle.
- 44:51And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah, glad that it did because, and it also, there's a lot of lessons in that too.
- 44:56And they say, meet me here at 7: Right.
- 44:56And they say, meet me here at 7: Don't hold on to that stuff.
- 44:58And they say, meet me here at 7: Really.
- 44:59And they say, meet me here at 7: I should've found them earlier and done this, but it did guide how I operate, uh, my life because of that huge, you know, gut wrenching misstep in my mind that okay.
- 45:10And they say, meet me here at 7: On a person because you can make mistakes at work.
- 45:13And they say, meet me here at 7: And I'm going to tell you about one of those, but you can make construction mistakes and those can be fixed.
- 45:19And they say, meet me here at 7: And then people talk about it, right?
- 45:21And they say, meet me here at 7: But these types of things are deeper and lasts longer and mean more than just putting in, you know, putting a wall in the wrong spot.
- 45:31And they say, meet me here at 7: So my other one, I got to tell you about this one, because I carried this name for a long time.
- 45:36And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, we were a part of this, uh, this project that we moved down to, uh, moved ULA down to Decatur, Alabama.
- 45:44And they say, meet me here at 7: We were set in this one piece of equipment.
- 45:46And they say, meet me here at 7: There's a long story behind where it ended up, but I even had it approved by their quality department.
- 45:51And they say, meet me here at 7: They get a little tiny stamp, they put it out and I mean, we followed the whole quality thing and this thing was set per the parameters that we relocated to down there, they go to hook and this was a rocket factory.
- 46:00And they say, meet me here at 7: They go and hook the rock.
- 46:01And they say, meet me here at 7: And it's, you know, this is a 75 foot long, you know, rocket section.
- 46:06And they say, meet me here at 7: Well, if you're off by that much at the beginning seventy-five feet out later, it was way off.
- 46:13And they say, meet me here at 7: Yes.
- 46:13And they say, meet me here at 7: And it ended up being, I had one of the bearings was switched on it.
- 46:18And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, the, anyways it had some brackets in there that made it to us about an inch and seven eights off.
- 46:23And they say, meet me here at 7: So my nickname became missed it by that much.
- 46:32And they say, meet me here at 7: Oh, that shake that one.
- 46:35And they say, meet me here at 7: I, I was get smart for a long time.
- 46:38And they say, meet me here at 7: Missed it that much.
- 46:40And they say, meet me here at 7: And we were, we were called precision industrial, and then it was almost precision, but I'll say this go, do you think I double-check those things now?
- 46:51And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah.
- 46:53And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah, man.
- 46:56And they say, meet me here at 7: Catch it.
- 46:56And they say, meet me here at 7: Right.
- 46:57And they say, meet me here at 7: It's how, you know, for me.
- 47:00And they say, meet me here at 7: My two best teachers is pain and failure.
- 47:05And they say, meet me here at 7: Like when, when I experienced pain from the decisions that I've made, they that's sticks with me when I fail that sticks with me.
- 47:18And they say, meet me here at 7: And I, I bet there's some that I've, I've tested out and done the same stupid thing four or five times, but there's others that really like, okay, not going to do it again.
- 47:29And they say, meet me here at 7: Um, and you were talking about, uh, the gentleman that you wrote the letter on.
- 47:36And they say, meet me here at 7: That's another thing, you know, back to when we were apprentices and I wanted to be a foreman.
- 47:40And they say, meet me here at 7: I wanted to be a superintendent.
- 47:41And they say, meet me here at 7: I want to be general superintendent.
- 47:44And they say, meet me here at 7: I always thought that it got easier as I now, one thing for sure, it got easier on my.
- 47:51And they say, meet me here at 7: But not easier on my psyche because you get to a point where you've got to make decisions that impact the livelihood of others, human beings.
- 48:01And they say, meet me here at 7: And that is a burden.
- 48:04And they say, meet me here at 7: I mean, you know, I've done my share of, of, uh, corrective actions, terminating people, laying people off.
- 48:13And they say, meet me here at 7: And even the ones that I was like, please just quit.
- 48:17And they say, meet me here at 7: Cause I'm sick of you.
- 48:19And they say, meet me here at 7: When I had to let them go, it was not easy.
- 48:23And they say, meet me here at 7: It was, it was hard.
- 48:24And they say, meet me here at 7: I didn't feel good.
- 48:25And they say, meet me here at 7: I did it.
- 48:26And they say, meet me here at 7: It it's.
- 48:28And they say, meet me here at 7: The point is there are burdens with leadership and, and the decisions that we make impact people's lives.
- 48:36And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah, th there their bottom line, can they put food on the table?
- 48:40And they say, meet me here at 7: Those are tough decisions.
- 48:42And they say, meet me here at 7: And that's, I think that's a good point on my evolution as well, too, because being in the union, we worked a lot of outages.
- 48:48And they say, meet me here at 7: So guys were, you know, I was a commodity working for my 11 is that first year you get hired.
- 48:54And they say, meet me here at 7: See on the next one, became my word.
- 48:57And they say, meet me here at 7: Hey, we'll see it.
- 48:57And they say, meet me here at 7: Cause there's always one more other job.
- 48:59And they say, meet me here at 7: So I didn't have that, uh, connection necessarily because we knew the job ended and we went somewhere else for another company.
- 49:07And they say, meet me here at 7: And then you traveled around doing that, but things change when you get more in a relationship based company, which I am in now.
- 49:14And they say, meet me here at 7: And I looked back, we've had to let some people go in it's it is tough, but, uh, I look back and some of these guys are shocked.
- 49:22And they say, meet me here at 7: Like I I've probably laid off over 300.
- 49:25And they say, meet me here at 7: Mm.
- 49:25And they say, meet me here at 7: They're like what?
- 49:27And they say, meet me here at 7: But it was back with the handshake.
- 49:28And they say, meet me here at 7: See, on the next one, but, but I've gone through that PR and I said, you know what?
- 49:32And they say, meet me here at 7: I've been laid off 30, 40 times myself.
- 49:35And they say, meet me here at 7: I mean, it's just part of that process, but you're right.
- 49:38And they say, meet me here at 7: You do get that connection when you realize, Hey, I've got to let this guy go.
- 49:41And they say, meet me here at 7: I've never, I still stand with the idea that I have never fired.
- 49:45And they say, meet me here at 7: Anyone fired themselves, that you know what, that is a healthy way to look at it, uh, provided the, for me, provided that I did everything I could to help that person meet or close the gap and meet the expectation.
- 50:04And they say, meet me here at 7: It took me a long time to learn that when I finally figured that out, it was like, okay, here we are.
- 50:09And they say, meet me here at 7: It's decision time.
- 50:11And they say, meet me here at 7: These were the things we did.
- 50:12And they say, meet me here at 7: These are the resources we connected to.
- 50:14And they say, meet me here at 7: This was the com the Frank clear communication.
- 50:18And they say, meet me here at 7: And it, you have indicated that you don't have any interest in keeping the.
- 50:24And they say, meet me here at 7: So I'm going to let you go.
- 50:25And they say, meet me here at 7: And you know, there's been several people that after the fact, we're like, bro, thank you for doing that.
- 50:30And they say, meet me here at 7: I needed that wake up call or, or one, one gentleman, actually, he was in Texas.
- 50:36And they say, meet me here at 7: He went to Dallas.
- 50:37And they say, meet me here at 7: I didn't terminate him, but we had a straight up conversation and he was just very clear.
- 50:42And they say, meet me here at 7: He's like, you know what?
- 50:43And they say, meet me here at 7: Like, I don't want to the what the organization, the direction the organization is headed, dude.
- 50:50And they say, meet me here at 7: I'm not okay with it.
- 50:51And they say, meet me here at 7: So I need to make a decision.
- 50:53And they say, meet me here at 7: And, but it was a result of having direct, clear conversation.
- 50:57And they say, meet me here at 7: These are the, these are the rules of the game.
- 50:59And they say, meet me here at 7: These are the expectations.
- 51:01And they say, meet me here at 7: And that gave him, you know, drove him to a decision and say, you know what?
- 51:06And they say, meet me here at 7: I don't want to play this game and guess what?
- 51:08And they say, meet me here at 7: That's okay, because you don't have to play the game where you're at.
- 51:11And they say, meet me here at 7: You can go find another game to play and be happier.
- 51:14And they say, meet me here at 7: And that's what he found.
- 51:15And they say, meet me here at 7: So it's not easy, but, but we have.
- 51:18And they say, meet me here at 7: Our company motto is we build people.
- 51:21And they say, meet me here at 7: We built trust communities and people.
- 51:23And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, we, as a small project group have used that.
- 51:26And they say, meet me here at 7: We built people before the company took it on and edited it there three fancy sayings, but we build people has always been our thought.
- 51:34And they say, meet me here at 7: And at one point I had those, the first guy let go now in a different environment where I'm hiring people and building their careers versus a commodity through the union.
- 51:43And they say, meet me here at 7: Right.
- 51:44And they say, meet me here at 7: And by doing that, it was, and I had to stick with this is for me to build him properly.
- 51:51And they say, meet me here at 7: He needed to go to the next contract.
- 51:55And they say, meet me here at 7: That's he couldn't, he couldn't show up to work.
- 51:58And they say, meet me here at 7: He was late and he was M there's this, all these issues that we tried to address.
- 52:01And they say, meet me here at 7: And, and, um, I'm the, you're not going to interview my boss or, you know, um, geez, he's the, you know, I am the Mister too many chances.
- 52:12And they say, meet me here at 7: I want to make sure, like, it's, like I told that guy, well, how did you tell him, you know, how did you have this conversation?
- 52:17And they say, meet me here at 7: How did you develop them?
- 52:18And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, let me have that conversation.
- 52:20And they say, meet me here at 7: And especially with, you know, our foot down, uh, you know, a couple layers and layers down or, you know, direct field guys, like how did you do it?
- 52:26And they say, meet me here at 7: What did you, I want to make sure that we did everything now that we possibly could do.
- 52:32And they say, meet me here at 7: And then he's just, and it's never, it's never crystal clear.
- 52:35And they say, meet me here at 7: Like there's no more of that.
- 52:36And they say, meet me here at 7: Just flat out, you know, you amount of here, it's just that slow burn of, you're not getting the job done and I can't pinpoint it.
- 52:45And they say, meet me here at 7: A lot of it is.
- 52:47And they say, meet me here at 7: Is soft skills are so much more important than I ever thought they would have been 20.
- 52:53And they say, meet me here at 7: They didn't teach me that.
- 52:54And they say, meet me here at 7: Didn't give me that in my tool box.
- 52:56And they say, meet me here at 7: And that's one of the reasons I'm passionate about communication is they didn't.
- 52:59And they say, meet me here at 7: Nobody gave me these tools.
- 53:01And they say, meet me here at 7: Just go figure it out, right.
- 53:02And they say, meet me here at 7: Go to work.
- 53:03And they say, meet me here at 7: So those soft skills are the ones that I find a lot of my guys are struggling with communication talking, you know, you brought up the foreman thing.
- 53:13And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh that's who do we typically make our foreman?
- 53:17And they say, meet me here at 7: The guy who communicates a little better than the other guy, or at least as we'll look you in the eyes.
- 53:23And they say, meet me here at 7: Right.
- 53:24And they say, meet me here at 7: All right.
- 53:24And they say, meet me here at 7: You're the foreman.
- 53:26And they say, meet me here at 7: I did that one time.
- 53:27And they say, meet me here at 7: I was brand new to the company out here in Colorado, 20 years ago.
- 53:31And they say, meet me here at 7: And I had two guys that they, they gave me an outage.
- 53:34And they say, meet me here at 7: I was in an outage at a glass plant and I had to set teams up.
- 53:37And they say, meet me here at 7: I mean, that's what you do, right?
- 53:38And they say, meet me here at 7: As a, as, as a general superintendent or for general foreman.
- 53:43And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, so I'm just pairing up guys based on, you know, looks, you know, my first impression, my one second impression, then I paired up these two guys and I did all my talking with this one guy.
- 53:53And they say, meet me here at 7: Well, it turns out that other guy was a general, uh, super or general foreman for the company on these other jobs.
- 54:00And they say, meet me here at 7: But I didn't recognize that in him.
- 54:02And they say, meet me here at 7: I just went to the guy that was more communicative and he ended up not working with the company that much longer, but I I'm looking, who's talking, you know, so who can I have a conversation with to know, all right, we're going to plan some workout.
- 54:14And they say, meet me here at 7: So how important are those skills at the foreman level?
- 54:19And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, and I think that's why I want to promote communication through all levels.
- 54:24And they say, meet me here at 7: It's only going to help your career.
- 54:26And they say, meet me here at 7: It's going to help you stand out.
- 54:28And they say, meet me here at 7: It's going to help you get to that next level because the ones that don't are the ones that are just going to stay behind and be happy, turning wrenches the rest of their life, or, or.
- 54:39And they say, meet me here at 7: And that's okay.
- 54:40And they say, meet me here at 7: Like we need that, right.
- 54:41And they say, meet me here at 7: I mean, you know, I have a Fernando who I interviewed way, way, he was kind of division of the, the, the, that this podcast was founded on because he, he straight Tony's like, Jessie, you always want to make me a lead man in a format.
- 54:57And they say, meet me here at 7: And I don't want that.
- 54:59And they say, meet me here at 7: And of course in my, I had my blinders on like, well, don't, you want more for yourself?
- 55:03And they say, meet me here at 7: And don't you want this?
- 55:04And they say, meet me here at 7: And, and he was like, when I finally like, shut my mouth and listened, right?
- 55:09And they say, meet me here at 7: The other might be most important.
- 55:11And they say, meet me here at 7: Part of communication is receiving messages.
- 55:16And they say, meet me here at 7: Um, I discovered that he was heavily engaged with the nonprofit organization that was doing toy drives and fan drives and food drives like all kinds of stuff for a low-income part of my community.
- 55:32And they say, meet me here at 7: I had no idea he was doing that.
- 55:34And they say, meet me here at 7: And so, of course he didn't want to deal with the baggage of.
- 55:37And they say, meet me here at 7: He had this other really meaningful thing going on in his life.
- 55:42And they say, meet me here at 7: And so I had to back off and say, okay, Fernie, like, I'm going to leave you alone because guess what?
- 55:47And they say, meet me here at 7: He is adding value to our community.
- 55:50And they say, meet me here at 7: And I think, you know, for leaders that super ambitious people that, you know, like want to do and discover and grow and all that stuff, that's important.
- 56:00And they say, meet me here at 7: Don't discard the people that don't want that because you don't know the impact that they're having in their community.
- 56:08And they say, meet me here at 7: And they probably have their priorities, hell Oscar boost a month.
- 56:11And they say, meet me here at 7: It will be one super awesome guy.
- 56:13And they say, meet me here at 7: And he's another one that I like.
- 56:15And they say, meet me here at 7: I was always pressuring and pressuring and pressuring them to take a leadership role.
- 56:19And they say, meet me here at 7: He coached his kids' baseball team.
- 56:21And they say, meet me here at 7: He coached the soccer team.
- 56:23And they say, meet me here at 7: I mean, like he did, he amazing husband.
- 56:26And they say, meet me here at 7: He has a classic Chevy pickup, like using the car show, like he had this whole other grand beautiful life.
- 56:33And they say, meet me here at 7: That leadership role would steal.
- 56:37And they say, meet me here at 7: And so not everybody places the same degree of value on leadership.
- 56:41And they say, meet me here at 7: And we got to honor that we got to respect that.
- 56:44And they say, meet me here at 7: Um, and this is a beautiful conversation, James.
- 56:47And they say, meet me here at 7: So we'll, it's, let's do the wrap-up question.
- 56:49And they say, meet me here at 7: want to know, man, what footprint do you want to leave?
- 56:52And they say, meet me here at 7: Do you intend to leave on the world?
- 56:56And they say, meet me here at 7: Yeah.
- 56:56And they say, meet me here at 7: And that's the huge, you know, am I gonna.
- 57:00And they say, meet me here at 7: You know, fund a nonprofit that feeds 8 million, 800 million people.
- 57:05And they say, meet me here at 7: Probably not, but I have, that's fine like that.
- 57:09And they say, meet me here at 7: When you asked that, I feel like I should have that, but it goes down to one person at a time for me.
- 57:15And they say, meet me here at 7: And I really found, again, my groove in helping, uh, you know, the story Storytime is what my project engineers call it on story time, share the knowledge and the information that I have one person at a time, you know, am I going to stand in front of a, of a 10,000, you know, auditorium and preach my message of communication.
- 57:38And they say, meet me here at 7: I maybe, but I'm not going say no, but that's my goal is still in that room.
- 57:43And they say, meet me here at 7: One person at a time, I want to help them help their career, help them develop themselves.
- 57:49And they say, meet me here at 7: And as I've really have discovered, do what you want to do, which is hard for me to say, because what I want you to do is work for me the best that you possibly can, but do what you want to do, because that's what I'm doing right now.
- 58:02And they say, meet me here at 7: So that's really the footprint I want to leave.
- 58:05And they say, meet me here at 7: It's probably a small footprint, but it'd be one person at a time.
- 58:08And they say, meet me here at 7: Oh my God.
- 58:09And they say, meet me here at 7: So did not disappoint.
- 58:11And they say, meet me here at 7: Here's the.
- 58:13And they say, meet me here at 7: Is w w this is my observation.
- 58:15And they say, meet me here at 7: When I hear people talk about, you know, they want to whatever, have a Lamborghini and these, these types of things, um, I think that's good.
- 58:26And they say, meet me here at 7: Like that's not bad at least unless they're stealing it.
- 58:29And they say, meet me here at 7: Right.
- 58:30And they say, meet me here at 7: Um, but what you just said is like so profound, it's not, it's one person at a time it's sharing the experience that you have as a human being on this planet with others to help them discover fulfillment and contentment in their life.
- 58:52And they say, meet me here at 7: And here's the, like, the super, super deep part here is the most important person is the person in front of us.
- 59:02And they say, meet me here at 7: And that person has a lifetime of experience and pain and not.
- 59:10And they say, meet me here at 7: Did is tremendously valuable to everybody else.
- 59:14And they say, meet me here at 7: And so to share that is the key, all the other grand things I believe happened as a result of that.
- 59:25And they say, meet me here at 7: Of sharing that you already know, as you start teaching and sharing, you start discovering more about yourself and it continues to build.
- 59:35And they say, meet me here at 7: Um, so I am looking forward to sitting in that 10,000 room audience and hearing the inspirational talk you're going to have about communication, James.
- 59:47And they say, meet me here at 7: And this is, this did not disappoint knew it was going to be awesome.
- 59:50And they say, meet me here at 7: Did you have fun?
- 59:52And they say, meet me here at 7: I had a great time, Jesse.
- 59:53And they say, meet me here at 7: I appreciate you last minute.
- 59:56And they say, meet me here at 7: It couldn't have been better if I had any more time to think about it, it probably would have been even worse.
- 1:00:02And they say, meet me here at 7: I had, I've had a great time.
- 1:00:04And they say, meet me here at 7: This has been a great conversation.
- 1:00:05And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, you know, um, you're a learner, I'm a learner.
- 1:00:09And they say, meet me here at 7: And I think those are the people that I want to partner with.
- 1:00:12And they say, meet me here at 7: And those are the people I want to talk to because if you're there is part of the part of our podcast is we're going through a book right now and never split the difference by Chris Voss.
- 1:00:24And they say, meet me here at 7: And he's got some very quotable things in there and he, he's a very good negotiator, but negotiating is listening.
- 1:00:30And they say, meet me here at 7: I heard you say that too.
- 1:00:31And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, communication is listening and this book is really a book about listening, how listening skills, asking questions, stuff like that.
- 1:00:39And they say, meet me here at 7: But one of the things he says a lot is if you're not getting better, you're getting worse.
- 1:00:45And they say, meet me here at 7: And I, I like to use that as much as I can, because if you, and that's how true is that right?
- 1:00:50And they say, meet me here at 7: Your skills of media, this is how he's and he doesn't, you know, he's an FBI, uh, former FBI negotiator.
- 1:00:55And they say, meet me here at 7: So it's like this, right?
- 1:00:56And they say, meet me here at 7: He's uh, he's Brooklyn, uh, FBI agent guy, but it's, if you're not getting better, you're getting worse.
- 1:01:02And they say, meet me here at 7: So the minute you're not getting better, your skills are depleting.
- 1:01:05And they say, meet me here at 7: So you should be working on yourself, getting better every day.
- 1:01:10And they say, meet me here at 7: And this is what, uh, these conversations helped me get better every day or boom, let's wrap with that there.
- 1:01:18And they say, meet me here at 7: Yo dropping the mic.
- 1:01:21And they say, meet me here at 7: That conversation with James was like really motivating and inspiring for me.
- 1:01:25And they say, meet me here at 7: He dropped some real wisdom and I love when people talk about.
- 1:01:29And they say, meet me here at 7: The footprint, they intend to leave on the world.
- 1:01:32And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, they usually kind of say, oh, you know, it's really not that big a deal.
- 1:01:36And they say, meet me here at 7: And then after they get to talking, it's like, man, this is the biggest deal in the world.
- 1:01:40And they say, meet me here at 7: So hit up, James, y'all need to check out his podcast, the uncommon communicator support him.
- 1:01:46And they say, meet me here at 7: There's some good stuff out there for you and your people to, to put into practice.
- 1:01:50And they say, meet me here at 7: And now it's time for the shout out.
- 1:01:54And they say, meet me here at 7: So we got a comment from demographics.
- 1:01:58And they say, meet me here at 7: That's the title in the review that that was left.
- 1:02:01And they say, meet me here at 7: So demographics, all respect my friend.
- 1:02:03And they say, meet me here at 7: And here we go.
- 1:02:05And they say, meet me here at 7: Demographics says, I just want to get to the bottom line is that lean tool process is great.
- 1:02:11And they say, meet me here at 7: And sometimes we just get trade partners, superintendents, and personnel that don't have either a great education.
- 1:02:20And they say, meet me here at 7: Or no education or never been exposed to high level mid-level or any level of pure communication, but saying that we just have dumb people out there at all.
- 1:02:31And they say, meet me here at 7: I'm saying is we have to understand the audience we're speaking to.
- 1:02:36And they say, meet me here at 7: I believe you are blessed with the gift to comprehend and communicate.
- 1:02:40And they say, meet me here at 7: And I think the biggest challenge is to communicate to others that.
- 1:02:46And they say, meet me here at 7: Demographics appreciate you taking the time to leave with that comment.
- 1:02:50And they say, meet me here at 7: And I want to share this, um, I'm going to assume that it's coming from a good place and it's your personal observation of the world.
- 1:02:57And they say, meet me here at 7: So thank you for having the courage and sharing that.
- 1:03:00And they say, meet me here at 7: One thing that I had imprinted into my mind is if the learner hasn't learned the teacher, hasn't.
- 1:03:10And they say, meet me here at 7: So, what that means is the onus on communication and getting the message across and transferring the knowledge lies upon me as the teacher.
- 1:03:20And they say, meet me here at 7: Uh, it's very easy for me to point the finger and say, other people don't have the skillset.
- 1:03:26And they say, meet me here at 7: Other people are lacking, et cetera.
- 1:03:29And they say, meet me here at 7: But the skill that you referenced on my ability to communicate came from me, really looking back at all the times that I've failed to communicate that I've failed to connect and making micro adjustments to improve that.
- 1:03:45And they say, meet me here at 7: And I did that by asking them specifically, What is it that I'm doing that is not connecting with you?
- 1:03:54And they say, meet me here at 7: And also, how can I better serve you?
- 1:03:58And they say, meet me here at 7: Those two questions have helped me tremendously.
- 1:04:01And they say, meet me here at 7: And I want to share those with you demographics so that you can, um, have a more fun time when you're communicating through all the pains and struggles that we have out there on the job site.
- 1:04:12And they say, meet me here at 7: Again, thank you for leaving the comment to rest of the L and M family out there.
- 1:04:16And they say, meet me here at 7: Love y'all and we'll talk again soon.
- 1:04:24And they say, meet me here at 7: Man you are one dedicated listener, sticking with us all the way through to the very, very, and please know that this podcast dies without you.
- 1:04:36And they say, meet me here at 7: And we invite you to share how the episodes impacting you along with your thoughts, questions, and suggestions.
- 1:04:42And they say, meet me here at 7: You have been gracious with your time.
- 1:04:44And they say, meet me here at 7: So we added social media links in the show notes to make it super easy for you to connect with.
- 1:04:50And they say, meet me here at 7: Be kind to yourself.
- 1:04:52And they say, meet me here at 7: Stay cool.
- 1:04:53And they say, meet me here at 7: And we'll talk at you next time.