So I sat there and I thought to myself, wow, what an impact, not smiling had
Welcome to builder nuggets hosted by Dwayne Johns and Dave young. Hey, our mission is simple, build freedom. We are a couple of entrepreneurs turned business coaches who have dedicated ourselves to helping our builder remodeler clients create the most rewarding businesses in the industry. My co-host Dwayne has been a successful builder and remodeler for over 30 years. He's seen the highs and the lows. From the beginning though, Dwayne has been on a quest to find a better way to run a contracting business. In 2016, he found that better way. That's how I met Dave, a lifelong entrepreneur and visionary who measures his success by the success of those around him. He reached out one day with a formula on how to transform my business and the rest is history. Since then, we've teamed up to help hundreds of contractors like you build better businesses and better lives. Now we've decided to open up our network and share our secrets so we can start moving the needle with you. It's collaboration over competition. Each week, we bring together industry peers and experts who share their stories so that we can all build freedom together.
(01:12): Our guest personal experience spans over 35 years in custom home construction, beginning with his carpentry trade apprenticeship in Sydney, Australia, where he was fortunate enough to kick off his career, creating custom homes. He made his way to the mountains of Tahoe and has blazed the trail of success ever since
(01:26): In going through his own growth, our expert learned some valuable secrets about the winning mindset that it takes to create a truly exceptional business today. He is going to share his path and some of the strategies and tactics that he's using to help others add to their businesses from trucky, California. We welcome mark Neve of NSM construction Morning guys, how you doing?
(01:47): Doing great. Doing well. You CA you came from Australia to lake Tahoe. How does that happen, mark? Yeah. Good, good question. Well, I came to the Eastern Sierras first, so landed myself in mammoth lakes in, in 99, after a short stinted trial marriage in Australia, had to give it a go, but thankfully no children and and an easy exit. So found myself in mammoth coaching skiing actually, and started a program for the mountain there and met my beautiful wife, Susanna, who is the, the S in NSM Neve, Susan mark. And that was 99 in, in 2001, we decided we were gonna get married and I figured I'd better get a real career and get back into construction. So went and sat the exam and started NSM in oh one. So I guess 20 years of of custom home building since then, and plenty of failing forward and plenty of lessons to share. So there's
(02:50): A lot of folks out there listening. I know that you've got a pretty good following. You know, you're doing some great work out there, go to your website, you've got pages and pages of awards and accolades. And a lot of times we will cite some of these in our intro, but you had probably too major a dimension. Are there any of these that, that really are maybe stand out or kind of mean the most to you? I, I, I
(03:11): Think they all do it at some point. You're so vested in every project. You care about the project that at the time they all mean something. So you know, when you take that philosophy into your work day and, and surround yourself with great people, you can achieve those things. It's amazing what you can achieve when you when you have that alchemy of, of good culture and good people, which, which doesn't come easily mind. You got lots of good stories around that, but yeah, no, not one in particular. I just think I'm proud that we're able to create some, some beautiful homes for people. And I think it, you know, buildings a really noble profession, and I think that's lost in a lot of people in the industry and you know, to build someone a dwelling, regardless whether it's a, you know, a shack or a shared or a, or beautiful home you know, your housing, a family, ultimately. So, yeah,
(04:05): And I think too, one thing about awards, at least something I've always found out is that, yeah, you know, you, you enter a project and you like to get that little trophy and stick it on the shelf. And it's an award it's announced somewhere. But to me, I think one of the other real powerful things is just all the people that we're involved, you know, from the trades to the folks that work on your staff, to all the different teammates when they get to see that as well. I, I know it sticks with them. They say, Hey, you know what? I was a part of that project. That project got some recognition. It was really well done. That's really
(04:32): Important. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's takes an army and and, and that's where a lot of your failing forward come, you know, you start out, you know, I left school at 16 and, you know, did a multitude of different trades from brick, you know, ultimately landed in carpentry, which I love and still do, but you dunno what you dunno. Right? And so you end up starting a business with the of intentions and you tend to lean into the things that you're good at, rather than leaning into the things that you're not so good at. And, and sometimes you just dunno what they're, you know, sitting here today, you know, 35 years later in this industry and, and 20 years in the us, you know, I love sharing some of those lessons with anyone who's willing to listen as if I can help someone else not fail forward as, as much, or as, or as harshly. You know, they're, it's a gift, you know plenty of people help me along the way. So it's such
(05:33): A good point. We're gonna talk about collaboration and working on things that you're good at in mind at, or mindset in just a moment, but for our audience out there are, we're going to share your website link and people can go and check out the work that you're doing, but could you take a minute to describe, you know, your team? I think you have a management team or 12 defined positions on your, on your team and then a crew of carpenters as well, but it would also be great. I mean, we're looking at some amazing photos of beautiful lake Tahoe, mountain retreats. Maybe tell us about the, the, where the business is at today, before we dig into some of the things that you learned along the way.
(06:11): Sure. So we love the word predictability. And as, as hard as finding predictability is in this world, we've found a model and a cadence that I think works with us and our personalities. And that's typically around six to eight projects running at any one time. And they're all, you know, multimillion dollar homes. And so we have a team of 22 people. We have guys site managers that are on site. We have project managers that are in the office, assisting the, the, the site managers. And, and we meet weekly as a team. We call it a pod meeting, anybody from myself through the controller, my partner, Kyle, who, who manages all the day to day operations site manager and project manager designers, architects will meet if need be, but that, that core team meets every week. And, and we focus our energy on the windshield, what needs to happen, what happened in the past so that we can put, you know, anything we need to back in the windshield.
(07:13): So that model for us works well. You know, we, we minimize our staff turnover because everybody is aligned around the common vision. They understand our vocabulary, which I think is a topic I can elaborate on further, but and they understand what showing up means to us as a team. And so it's taken a long time to forge that that team and find the cadence of, and culture that we have today. But it's something that everybody's very protective of. And so that model really works for us. And, you know, we're thankful that we can fill that queue pretty regularly. You know, we don't seem to have too many gaps. Yeah. So pretty simple. It's, it's predictable for us, I guess, you know, in an unpredictable environment, construction's tough.
(08:00): Well, that, that's a pretty rare word in our, into our industry and the Testament to you guys for getting, for getting there. And a couple of things that I wrote down is you were speaking, mark. It is that you have some repetition within your business. You're, you've implemented some systems and processes you've got in your own language that you, that you mentioned as well. You've got an aligned vision. You've got, I'd love to know what pod stands for when when you have a pod meeting, but it sounds like there's a cadence to the things that you're doing. You're setting the expectations. You have a dedicated stream of communication that you're able to, you know, just keep doing it over and over and over and, and in continuing to elevate each other and, and work on it together. And we can get into in a second, there's some, some great content on your website where you share your vision and you share some of those values and expectations. What were the key things in your journey in getting you to the point where you could have these things in your business? Were there any certain moments or any groups we know that you're part of a, a really leading part of a builder 20 group? What were the key things along the way that allowed you, or triggered you to put these into your business?
(09:10): I think it stems back to my passion for coaching. I love having a growth mentality. I knew early on that I had some good skill. I had decent communication, you know, always communi well with the clients trades and so on. But like everybody I struggled at communication I think is, is every, is number one challenge. And so I always wanted personal growth for myself. And then to articulate that to a group of people and roadmap it to them was very challenging for me. I didn't really understand how to articulate it to them. I didn't understand how to roadmap it for not only me, but for the team as well. And so I engaged a phenomenal company called partners in leadership. I dunno, maybe 10 or 12 years ago now. And they're one of the leading companies when it comes to cultural training and I shared my vision and they said, what, what is your vision?
(10:11): And I I'm, you know, I understand I get the visionary part quite easily, but my vision was personal growth elevated. And they challenged me on that for many, many years. And rightly so, but we're looking back now, 10 or 12 years later, it's come full circle to where personal growth elevated is really the underlying tone of what it is we're about. We might share it slightly differently and roadmap it as I call it to the team. And it's really just messaging what that looks like for our team. So when you join NSM as a team member, one, you have a job responsibility, but two and more importantly, it's very clear why you show up here? What are, what are the three or four things we have to do to be successful as a team? So everybody understands that those three or four things are their job responsibility as well.
(11:05): And then we just articulate how we wanna show up, be a part of a team that's that's, you know, here to solve things and create some amazing homes. And so we articul at that and message that to the team. And and then you have a vocabulary around that so that we are using common words together all the time, alignments a great word, predictability showing up. I mean, feedback, all of these things that we've learned along the way, help us stay aligned and on the right path. So that if, if let's just say I went off on a tangent, someone on the team could easily tap me on the shoulder and say, Hey, mark. You know, it doesn't look like you've been showing up the way we show up here, what's happening in your world. Is there something I can help you with rather than confronting me with a dialogue around, Hey, we need to have some critical feedback here.
(12:02): You know, you're dropping the ball over there. So it starts off from a very nonconfrontational standpoint. But if you need to, you can go, Hey, yeah, I'm just not showing up. And life's tough for me at the moment. And, you know, challenges at home, the dog's sick, you know, the wife's beat me up and so on and so forth. So you get to have real dialogue with people and, or you can just say, yeah, I've just been effing up and you know, I've gotta get my act together and, and get back on the team. And if, if someone isn't the right fit, then we find an exit strategy. We're, we're very quick at making sure that, you know, if we're not the right fit for someone that's okay too. It's just, they're on a different path, no harm, no foul, no judgment. It's just Hey, we're just not aligned and that's okay. Maybe we'll be later on in life, but right now your paths better serve somewhere else. And so is ours. So
(12:58): Isn't it cool when you've got, when you've got a good team and you've got a great culture, you can stumble and fall down and come into work that day and say, yeah, I've F up. And you know what? You've got some people around you that they're gonna, they're gonna take care of it. You know, they're gonna step up and fill in the space. And that's huge as a business owner.
(13:16): It is. And I think road mapping, the people part is probably the biggest challenge for most small businesses. There's a lot out there on, on business practices. And I'm not saying they're not valuable. You know, everybody looks at the widget, let's say, and our widget is building homes. Everybody starts off as an individual typically, and they understand their widget and they roadmap their widget and they say, okay, I can literally make some money by building a house or producing X, Y, and Z. You can have a dumb down nap, can roadmap for a widget, but where I think most people and most small business as a challenge like we were and still are every day is the people roadmap. How do you map more and more people coming into your business as it grows? And how do you make sure they're all aligned around the exact same thing when, when people are coming on at different times and the businesses over time. So you have to keep going back and messaging the roadmap for people so that everybody including yourself, is continually aligned with what growth looks like today and what challenges you face and what success you're having and so on and so forth. So I'm a big proponent when I share our journey with some other local businesses in town who are starting out and lean on each other, that the people roadmap is, is probably more important than, than the widget roadmap.
(14:45): We've heard a little bit of a trend over the past few past few guests and episodes. Haven't we? So if we, if We look back to what we just learned with Steve bark house and the, the people plan, Steve was an earlier guest and he had, you know, life plan. And in, in January, we kicked off the year with the people plan. And we, we were surprised at the time because we're like, wow, we, we, we never really thought of it this way. And now here on a following episode, it's, you know, another leader in the industry, who's saying it's all about the people plan. And it it's so great to hear this mark, because I think everybody has an idea. Like everybody recognizes how important their, their team are and, and their, their team is, and their people are, but they really struggle to vocalize it, to communicate it, to build culture around it, and then to lead around it. And what you're talking about is something that we've seen within some of the top businesses that we get to coach, and that's an elevation mindset where you're not coming in.
(15:45): It it's hugely important to elevate yourself and elevating yourself so that you can elevate others. But when you have a team of people, who's approaching each other with an elevation mindset and Hey, how can I make this person look better? How can I make sure that my interaction with this person, they're getting an elevated experience every time. And it doesn't matter where you are in the company or on the food chain, or whether you're a client or a, a trade partner that everybody is valuing each other with that elevated mindset. And I think that that's what you're talking about, that your, your team has the comfort to be able to come in and, and say, how are we gonna boost this person up if they see a crack? And that's very different from a lot of organizations or companies or mindsets where when you see a crack in somebody else, that's the opportunity to push them 'em down and lift your, push their head underwater and lift yourself up, which, which is what you see sometimes. So you've got them following your vision. And, and that's pretty cool.
(16:41): It's funny because this industry is not built around that type of culture. I mean, when I grew up as an apprentice, it was, if this, you know, it, it was everything you could do to, to embarrass the apprentice and put them down. And, and, you know, they had to walk the hard yards, you know, it was get in that whole Gump and find Charlie, you know, it was every poor job you could imagine was heaped on the apprentice. And just a lot of, I guess, ego related to communication. And that's okay. I'm happy to hang in that world too, but it doesn't provide anywhere near the results that are well thought through and well messaged communication can have. And I think that's why we find ourselves in the arena that we're playing in. Because the people that, that resonate with type of experience who wanna hire us, it
(17:37): Makes total sense. And then they wanna work for you as well. You know, that whole thing. And when you can market it and promote it to others, that becomes the magnet for everything else that comes into your business, then, you know, for the, for the times that you get it wrong, it then becomes the filter. Or when you have brought in the wrong client, cuz it, it, it could be taking on the wrong client, taking on the wrong trade partner, taking on the wrong architect. All those things can lead to that lack of predictability in your business because you've chosen the wrong person and everybody, I mean, there are so many people who go into taking a, a job. It's one of the biggest teams you could possibly lead. So there is a lot of risk there with every person that's in, in, in the process. Yeah.
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(18:42): You, it, it's interesting though, when you start communicating and having a common vocabulary, people, clients, architects, designers, trade partners, they start using a very similar dialect dial vocabulary. And so all of a sudden, just through osmosis, you start to get a harmony, even if they didn't realize, or they weren't totally aligned with your culture, just because we have ACA and we're using it in all those meetings, you start to hear the same words appearing. I hear it in my builder group from time to time. And that they'll jokingly share with me that you know, there's word isms that I've brought to the group, but at the end of the day, my goal is to somewhat be obsolete, you know, and let the team do what they do. That shows me I'm doing a, a good job, which isn't always the case. I fail just as much as anyone else. So
(19:37): Well, that's that building freedom part that we talk about all the time, you know, you've got systems, processes, people in place, you can become obsolete and it's still gonna thrive.
(19:47): Yeah, it's funny. You know, if, if you, if I think I had to change how I showed up too, when you're open to getting good feedback and you're open to good dialogue, you find out that, you know, sometimes you're as bigger person to blame as anybody else. And, and you need to show up differently yourself. You know, I had a, had a great experience with some anonymous feedback in a survey that was done by partners in leadership early on. And every employee filled out the survey. And, and one of the comments I read was mark doesn't smile enough. And I really didn't think too much of it at the time. It was probably one of the better comments and and then over the years, as we were doing reviews, the person who shared it with me, revealed themselves and said, Hey, you know, in that review a couple of years back, I was the one that said you didn't smile enough.
(20:39): And I was like, OK, what did that create for you? And all of a sudden, he was one of our laborers, phenomenal guy. He said, when you walked in the door, you know, you kind of just walked your desk, you had your head down, you were very deliberate, you were getting stuff done. And I just didn't know if you were happy with my performance. I didn't know if I was gonna be here in six months time. So I sat there and I thought to myself, wow, what an impact? Not here's a guy that was probably out looking for another job who I never wanted to lose, you know, and, and how easy for me to change that. So I had to show up differently that next day be didn't matter, whether I just had a tough conversation with a client or I got outta bed on the wrong side. When I walk through that door at the office, I know I have a responsibility to show up and just put my head down, thinking I'm leading by example, to get work done. I have a responsibility to say, Hey, ad a boy, good job. How's things today, smile doesn't take, but a few minutes, but man, it changed helped changed the way we we operated
(21:44): What a great culture that you've created. It allows that conversation to happen. That, that, that person, that you valued felt comfortable enough with you to raise it and this and this, and a way is that culture of leadership. And one of the things Dwayne and I notice a lot is that the very best leaders are able to accept leadership as well. They're not taking the whole responsibility to sailor. I, you know, everybody follow me, they're asking and saying, even the visionaries are, are getting collective vision from the group and assembling it and then putting their, their spin on it. And it's not all about just following one person. It's putting those ideals together. That that's really what that culture is. It's a, it's a collection of those mindsets and you you've done a, you know, obviously done a really good job of that even to the point where you've got your cultural beliefs on a website.
(22:36): And I'm looking at a few of them here right now, and you know, our audience can dig into them later, but it's like speak right. Teamwork. You know, we succeed together. We always do our best. I do the job right. The first time expect safety been strong, we enjoy working. And this is probably where your smile comes from. But we take pride in our work, in that of the the NSM team. There's a list of key results of things that you're doing there too. So it's clear that not only are you living by them, but you're, you're documenting them, you're sharing them with the rest of the team. You're sharing them with your clients. You're sharing them with, with everyone. And this goes back to the communication that you were talking about. So, so you got this set of beliefs, something we've heard from you a lot is showing up. Do you wanna spend a little bit of time on showing up? I mean, you, you, you touched on it there, or you touched on it earlier. You just touched on it now with like how I show up matters, you know, from that first impression standpoint. But I got a feeling showing up means something quite deeper to everybody on your team.
(23:38): Yeah. I, I think that was one of the biggest challenges for us as a company was when you have an amazing consultant and there's amazing consultants out there, there's many of them and there's, there's great lessons to learn, but they leave and they leave and you are, you're energized and invigorated to make some changes and gifts in your business, but how do you really go about doing it? And, and I find that to some degree, consultants are great at consulting, but they don't have to be at the cold face of the business day in, day out and still implement some of these changes. And these shifts yet they give you some great tools and, and a great tool that partners and leader ship shared with me was if you asked a typical business owner, Hey, you need to spend more time working on culture.
(24:33): They would turn to you and say, look, I'm working 60, 70 hours a week. How many more hours do you think I've gotten me to work on culture? And it dawned on me that if I was going make any shifts in the company, I had to do it without the help of the consultants on a day to day basis. You know, they might be great to come in and share some lessons with us and, and build team morale and, and so forth. But at the end of the day, it really boiled down to me. So, so how would I find the time to change culture? And so I went back to the lesson of not smiling and I realized that I didn't need to spend any more time on culture than I already do. I just needed to change the way I showed up. I had plenty of hours in the day to do it.
(25:20): I just needed to, to understand what showing up, looked like to me. And then in, I could start to make shifts not only in myself, but within the team. And so when you look at what we call cultural beliefs and key results, it's really the why the, how, why we show up and then how we show up. And then what I also realized is that if you're not in messaging, this, you're not going to get habitual change and it's hard to change habits and without messaging. And so, you know, for many years we've messaged it. It's, it's on our website, as you alluded to it's, it's also through our office and it was at, at everyone's desk to start with. And now it's, it's got to a point where we don't necessarily need to read the verbiage. We just know what it looks like to show up as a team because we documented it and we messaged it for so many years.
(26:21): It's now a habit for us to show up and we can joke around, Hey, bill, over, there's not showing up, right. Someone would, but have a chat with him. And, and it'll all almost be comical to a point where it gets serious. And we're like, Hey bill, you know, or get off the pot here, you know? But it, it, it opens up that type of vocabulary. So showing up really was just a, a, a, a shift of understanding that there is time to work on culture. And it's probably more important than working on the widget because most people are pretty good at the widget. You know, most people come out with a skill. It doesn't matter what it is. You're pretty good at that widget skill. So, so get your processes and procedures in place and keep those over the years, but really start to lean into the cultural piece. I guess it fills in that missing piece of the roadmap for you.
(27:11): We talk a lot as a group, you know, my team, and it's not just a business owner, it's a project manager, it's a lead carpenter. It's, you know, all these folks that, that in different parts of the project, that during different times during the day, they're, they're all in a, they're all in a leadership position to someone else. And just the way they carry themselves, the showing up part that you just said is so huge, because those around them are gonna react to the way they're acting. You know, they're swagger, how are they carrying themselves? How are they responding to a bad situation? And if you're taking, if you're showing that you've got some strong leadership through the way you, you just carry your, your, you know, your emotions, it
(27:49): Is huge. It, it is huge. And I think where this industry struggles sometimes is all of us come from, you know, not all of us, but I, I came from a, you know, lack of formal education. I, I learned my skill and, and for, but nobody taught me about leadership. Nobody taught me about communication and so forth. And so one of the things that we try to do is give our team a couple of tools to work with from a leadership standpoint. It, it's kind of like, you know, if, if a carpenter showed up without a, without a tape measure and a, and a hammer, it'd be pretty useless. So we expect these guys as they evolve in the company, and they're a great carpenter. And next minute we, we promote them to a foreman and they've got a couple of guys under them. We don't necessarily acknowledge that that's a massive shift for these people.
(28:42): In some cases, some adapt to it very easily, but it, even those that adapt to it easily don't necessarily have a tape measure and a hammer when it comes to leadership tools. And so a couple of the tools that we try to share with our guys, again, having learnt them ourselves through failing forward was just be aware of what experience you are creating for around you as a leader. Because if you are running your job site from a perspective of yelling and screaming and not being prepared and, and having trades show up, and it's a cluster and things of that nature, what experience did you just create for that guy? Because it's gonna create a belief in him. If you've created the wrong belief, you're gonna get the wrong action and the wrong results. And so just understanding that matrix is a great tool for those guys to have when they're managing a project.
(29:34): So on the flip side, Hey, if you're communicating well with your trade partners, and when they show up, you've got them lined out, you've got the materials they need there you've communicated well with them. You've communicated well with the trades around them. When they show up, you've created a different experience, they're gonna hold a different belief and more likely than not, you're gonna get a completely different action and result from them. And so when you start to operate in that mindset, as a leader, you have a, a much better chance successfully running a project because to orchestrate any build is a monumental undertaking for these guys for any of us. So you need some of those leadership tools so that you can communicate with these guys and understand the experience you're creating for people, because that's where you get a different result. If you, if you just operate in actions, creating an action and a result, you probably keep getting the same result, and that's not gonna be a very favorable
(30:38): One. Well, and it becomes very transactional as well, because it's, it's often one and done, or, you know, you're, it's not sustainable, but what you're just saying there really one way to simplify it is the more people you show up for, the more people will show up for you. And then it just becomes cumulative and it becomes an environment that you're creating, and then you do it enough, it becomes habit. You do it enough more, it becomes belief. And just now that's just the way it is for your, for your business. It becomes the new normal for you. Would you agree with that, mark?
(31:13): Yeah, a absolutely. And, and it's not, it's, I'm not saying this is a perfect recipe by no means it's, it's a challenging industry and there's a lot of unaccount and practices out there that you have to navigate on a day to day basis. But at the end of the day, if, if you can, you know, walk this walk I find that more often than not, you're getting a positive result and a, a much better experience for everybody involved from the homeowner down.
(31:42): How do you as the leader of this, and as somebody who's really passionate about elevating others, you know, it takes, you've been elevating yourself. You've been El elevating yourself through, you know, seeking out knowledge, collaborations through your builder, 20 groups, some other things, what are you doing these days to continue to elevate your game and learn, learn more and more?
(32:05): I learn every day from, from teaching, you know, took on, on a partner here three years ago. And, and I love mentoring Kyle. He brings so much more to the business than I could ever have imagined as well. So there's a, there's a learning curve there for me. He's probably 18 years younger. I am, I think he's 36 and I'm 53. So my maths probably off 17 years. But yeah, I, I guess I'm, I'm always looking for the next opportunity for growth. I want a growth mentality. I, I don't wanna stop challenging myself and it doesn't necessarily always relate just to work. I mean, it's this family too. I try to take up new skills and passions and push myself athletically, wherever I can. And, and then also giving back, I think, you know, I love sharing this. I think we spoke earlier on Dave you know, about my desire to kind of share some more of my experiences with those around me.
(33:05): And I really haven't found the format yet or something that I'm truly comfortable with. And, and maybe that's just a confidence thing that I haven't taken the leap, but I've, I've shared a lot of what I've learned with some close friends of mine who you know, are in, in sports and in other small businesses and larger companies back in Australia. So I have started sharing, but not from a, a perspective of, of trying to generate a business and an income from, again, tell us a little bit more about these pod teams. So a pod is just a small group of whale, I believe. And so, you know, I, I loved playing golf and I was watching to write a cup one year, and I think it might have been Paul Ainger was the captain of the us rider cup team.
(33:53): And the us had been getting hammered by Europe for several, several seasons. And, and he came up with a philosophy that he would create pods and basically put like-minded people together. And people that loved golfing together, you know, was, was his philosophy. So he didn't necessarily pair up guys based on anything else then than friendship and camaraderie and so forth. And it worked well and they won the right. And so in an effort to minimize silos really in our industry is where we see the gaps. I figured if we can pod once a week and have the key contributors on that project meet and just document each week, where are we at? What did we say are gonna achieve last week? What did we achieve? Where's the schedule at, you know, really look at the previous week, but really try and stay in the windshield of, of what's coming up, where do we need to be, who do we need to communicate to lined around that pod?
(34:56): They walk away after a 45 minute meeting and they can go and, and execute their week. And so our philosophy is, you know, our site managers are out there with the responsibility of overseeing the quality control and the, the construction of the day to day project. The rest of the team is really there to facilitate and allow them to execute at the highest level. So our, our project managers in the office are making sure that trade partners are signed into subcontracts. You know, they're doing material takeoffs, they're, they're ordering product, they're scheduling deliveries. They're really just the backbone and, and making sure that our site managers can be on site to oversee quality day to day. And then Kyle and I are engaged from a higher level to make sure we're communicating with the clients appropriately judging any, any hiccups that may be coming down the pipe and, and trying to get ahead of those.
(35:51): So that's where the pod came from. It's it's, it's really successful and it really helps keep everybody aligned and focused on the common goal. I know a lot of people hate meetings. We we're meeting adverse as well. We we'd rather be building the meetings. So we try to keep it to that 45 minute, once a week, guys come to the office, they knock it out, we document it and off we go, it's it's a pretty simple process at the end of the day, but it really allows people to stay aligned and and focused.
(36:24): Yeah, really powerful. I mean, we're, we're big proponents of that same style meeting on a weekly basis with the key stakeholders. It's just, it, it reduces the chaos that that will just creep in if you don't have
(36:35): It. And everyone's week gets busy and the will be things that, that slip through the cracks, but at least, you know, it's only a week's gone by and you can typically jump on it because you're looking out in the windshield so far in those pods, you know, and especially in today's environment where supply chains, trade base, just labor availability is at an all time high. It, it adds a whole nother dynamic of challenges in, in maintaining a schedule. So you better be looking out as far as
(37:07): Possible. You'd love to play golf. So what other types of things do you love to do and what kind of things do you have lined up here over the next six months or a year that are exciting you
(37:18): Outside to work love, skiing, love golfing took up dirt biking when COVID hit with my 13 year old son. So we've been racing motor across for the last year and a half, which has been an amazing learning curve, trying to stay wise, I guess, and not push myself on my abilities too soon of kind of just being smart, I guess, is our motto when my son and I go riding, let's just be smart if we're feeling good, we'll go for it. If we're if we're tired, we'll back off a little bit. So yeah, just love hanging out with the family, my daughters and, and my son, big skiers. So we, we ski a lot here in Tahoe, obviously, big storm on the way next week. So kind of getting our first real dump of the year, which will be fun. But outside of that, yeah, just enjoy working, enjoy being around the team and love being active ultimately.
(38:09): Well, it's been great having you on today. I mean, we certainly appreciate it. A lot of nuggets in this episode showing up is that's a real powerful statement. Thanks for what you're doing. Congratulations to and everything. And how about maybe just real quick, if for some of the listeners out there, folks wanna learn a little bit more about what you're doing, how can they find you? We have
(38:26): A, a great website, NSM, construction.com. My number's on there and feel free to reach out. Yeah. Love sharing with with other good folks and, And learning from them as well. So always here to, to listen.
Hey, thanks for listening. Dwayne and I love hearing from you. Your stories are inspiring and your challenges can be overcome. Got a cool tip? Idea for a show? Problem that you haven't been able to solve or maybe just struggling to figure out what you need next and where to get it. We can help. Hit us up at BuilderNuggets.com and start building freedom.
