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.
(01:05): I was lucky enough to connect with today's guest through strategic coach and my friend, Justin Breen of Breck network, who we recently had on the show.
(01:13): Well, oh boy. If that's anything like that episode, I might have to keep you guys grounded a little bit and in check. Yeah.
(01:19): I sure hope so. Because our expert in is highly is a highly successful entrepreneur who leads several companies in a variety of industries from shipping to infinite banking. He's got some great insight into how to motivate people and what makes for a great experience.
(01:37): Our guest is the founder of ascendant financial Inc. He's a true visionary and leader with 22 years experience as a highly regarded coach speaker and advisor to individuals and business owners nationwide he's written books, been featured on talk shows, won a ton of awards and is globally recognized as the leading authority and the infinite banking concept from Alberta, Canada. We welcome. Jason Lowe.
(01:57): Thank you for having me, gentlemen. It's great to be with you.
(02:00): Yeah. Great to have you here. We're excited about our conversation today because you know, a lot of times it's builders or somebody related to the building industry that we're speaking with. And today we're coming at it from a pure business standpoint and key principles that are valuable in any business. And we're excited about that. But before, before we dig into that, Jason, this is something kind of cool. When you ask what you love about your job, you have a great response. You say you tap dance into your office every day. Are, are you
(02:33): Or skate into my office this
(02:35): Time of year? Are you, are you classically trained by any chance? No,
(02:39): No, no. Not at all. But the one thing that I do share especially with my children, is that what I do, isn't a job. There's, there's a difference between building a business and having a job. And I'll, I'll never forget. I might have shared this story with you, Dave. So my firstborn, my son, he's 13 years young now. And I have, because I lost my parents prematurely. I have this, this fear of loss and, and every single time that my wife Rebecca would leave the home with our kids, I would always say, please drive careful, text me, message me when you get to where you're going. And so my son picked that up very early in life. And one day I was leaving the house and he said, Hey, dad drive safe on your way to work. And he was seven, eight years young at the time and I, I can picture it.
(03:30): So I turned around and we were in the, the foyer of our home and I knelt down. So I could look at him right in the eye. And I said, Jackson, I need to share something with you that you may not conceptualize or grasp right now. But my hope is is that you remember it and that dad's not going to work. Dad's going to build a business. And there's a big difference between the two. And you, you, you don't understand what I'm sharing today, but I promise I'll teach you and, and help you understand what that means. And he just thought up for a second little bit of a pregnant pause, and then he looks at me and he says, okay, Deb, be careful driving on your way to build the business.
(04:07): That? That's, that's pretty cool. And, and you know, what we're looking forward to today is finding out the path, you know, what was the way to building those
(04:17): Businesses? Oh, I'm happy to share out anything. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's one of the things we love to do is, you know, share the stories of entrepreneurs on builder nuggets. And especially with folks that are really passionate about what they're doing. Give us a little bit of your background, how you created some of these teams and oh, wow. Got to where you are today. Yeah. Thank you for asking. You know, I was born and raised in a, some mall mining and forestry community. Tim's Ontario, which is about seven hours north of Toronto Canada. If any of your viewers or listeners are familiar with that part of the world. And it was a great community to grow up in your listeners might know who Shanaya Twain is, country music, singing sensation, and her real name's Eileen. We actually grew up together in Tim's and I went to school with her brother mark and her brother, Chris, and growing up in that community, you had a few different tracks that you were set to go down in life with the exception of folks like Eileen folks like myself many others who have gone on to do great things.
(05:20): You were either going to play hockey, work in the mines or become a police officer or first responder. That was sort of your lot in life. And my dad growing up in Tim's, my dad worked, he was away from the home all the time. You know, I picked up that addiction from my father. My dad was a workaholic and that's a publicly accepted form of addiction. And I picked that up from him. I observed him working all the time and he really sewed the seed for my entrepreneurial drive at a very early age. And I'll never forget this story. I share this every time. I'm a guest on a show in hopes that it inspires somebody, especially if you have young children, you know, my dad, I remember one day we lived in this semi-detached duplex. It was a home that was small.
(06:11): You know, we didn't grow up with anything silver in our home. Certainly no silver spoons. And, and my parents argued all the time about money. And I grew up in that period where I was a toddler in the early 1980s, when interest rates peaked at 21.5%. And my parents were in a really, really rough spot and really on the verge of losing our home. And I'll never forget. I saw my, my friends draw arriving up and down the street middle of the summer. They're on their BMX bicycles. I don't know if you guys if I'm aging, you guys too, but if you can remember that, and I was saying to my dad, man, I really love one of these bikes. And my dad said, I want you to do me a favor, go up to the picture window. We had this big picture window in the living room of our house.
(06:57): And I looked out and he said, I want you to tell me what you see. And so I'm describing to him, I can see my friends driving around on these BMX bikes. And he said, no, I want you to describe to me how they're handling those bikes. And they would be jumping off wooden ramps and then slamming their bikes on the pavement and jumping over each other. Absolutely. And, and then he said, I'm want you to do me a favor, look up and down the street and tell me what you see, that's the color green. And I said, grass. He said, get your butt in the shed. There's a lawnmower. If you want the bike go and work for it. And I promise you, what you're gonna be doing with the bike is spit shining it every day because you actually work for it. And I'll never for get him teaching me that lesson because he said, you've got to learn to appreciate the value of a dollar and the surefire way to gain that appreciation is to work for it.
(07:48): And that was, I don't know if you've ever seen something etched in granite, but that was a real etched in granite moment for me. And you'd be surprised that how much kids pick up and what they retain, because I was just knee-high to a grasshopper then, and I can close my eyes. If, if, if you were standing right next to me, you're my invisible partner standing right next to me. If you can picture that and just how powerful a lesson that was, it stuck with me for the rest of my life. And so if I wanted something I had to build it, I had to, I had to go out and earn it. It wasn't a matter of an expectation or I felt like I deserved it when I developed that rhythm and that pattern of actually working for what I have it, it stuck with me and that's something that's transferable people catch onto that people gravitate to that P people who wanna succeed and who are ambitious.
(08:43): And it's still with me to this day. If I ever find myself in a position of want, I've got a picture in my, the world headquarters of Senate financial here, just down the hallway from where I'm sitting now in our podcast studio. And it's a framed photograph of a dollar with my father's quote in. And that was the first thing I hung on the wall. When I began my entrepreneurial journey. It's it sat literally on the wall behind my laptop computer. So when I got into my office in the morning, it's the first thing I saw before I turned my computer off. It's the last thing I looked at before I left. And so it was just a daily, daily reminder of appreciating the value of a dollar. It's not difficult to earn. It's much more difficult to keep it. And it's much more difficult to multiply it. That's a whole other skillset.
(09:33): Yeah. That's very powerful. Isn't that good? It is good. It's funny. Something popped into my mind. It's not nearly as profound as what you just said, but I think about my daughter is in her, her early twenties, my son is gonna be 18. And I, I look at times where they there's this assumption that like the internet is everywhere. Yeah. You know, and I go, you know, I had to suffer were through dial up. you know, I mean, you don't understand it.
(10:00): Remember those days you don't know how America online,
(10:03): You, you, you just assume there's internet, you know? So to the point though, that there's work behind a lot of stuff. Absolutely. And you've gotta do that work to have the appreciation. Yeah.
(10:13): You bet. And, and you've gotta have a little bit of grit and a little bit of perseverance and you have to like, you know, Dave and I were chatting earlier, before we hit the record button, you have to learn to lean into pressure. That's a privilege. Pressure is a privilege. So think about you're in the Carolinas. I'm sure there's a few football fans down there. Maybe just a few, probably a lot. There's a few,
(10:38): We try not to mention the Carolina Panthers. Right.
(10:42): But if you think of the, if you think of the national football league and you think of team that gets to the super bowl, if I'm the head coach of that team, first thing I'm saying in that dressing room before the game is that pressure's a privileged gentleman because it's, it's air everything that you've done up to today, that's prepared you for this moment. And so now you've gotta lean into that pressure or succumb to it. Take your pick. Yeah. You've done a pretty good job throughout the season, leaning into it. Why stop now? It's not something that you can just stand up and say in the moment, you've gotta have your team with you. And if you want to coach people, which is something that is like oxygen to me, I love coaching my teammates. If you really want to be an effective coach, you gotta love your players. You gotta know when to kick 'em. You gotta know when to hug them. Does that make sense?
(11:35): It does make sense. And I mean, when you say pressure is a privilege, it me think of the difference between pressure and stress.
(11:43): Yeah. Maybe expand on that.
(11:45): We talk a lot about, and this industry is it's something a lot of folks suffer with is, is stress. And I think a lot of it is self-induced stress, but I, I also look at it as what you just said. If you can spin it around to where pressure is a privilege and your abilities to, how do you deal with it? How do you react to it? How do you step up as a leader, which is something we talk about a lot on this podcast. There's a reason you got yourself into that situation. to even be feeling the press pressure.
(12:13): And if you're not on a winning team, it's a good situation, right?
(12:16): It's a good situation.
(12:17): Versus if you're on a bad team, it's a learning opportunity.
(12:20): It's a learning opportunity. And if you turn it from stress to pressure, I'm just putting it in a different lens. That's
(12:26): All. Yeah. And I appreciate that. That's actually a really good perspective to have. I mean, the bottom line is that, you know, set aside the NFL for a moment, let's get to business. If, if you're building a business and you are the type of entrepreneur who wants all the reward without doing any of the work, go find something else to do. But if you are an entrepreneur who believes in building something by actually getting your hands on and working alongside your teammates, not in front of them, not on top of them, but working alongside your team. And you have absolutely no tolerance for deviation from standards ever because whenever a team member deviates from a standard, the next deviation gets easier. The one after that gets easier, the one after that gets easier. And next thing you know, you've got an auto-control business, an auto control team.
(13:26): People you've heard this expression, you've heard this platitude out there expressed a million times. People don't leave businesses. They leave bad, bad managers, bad leaders. If you've got people leaving your organization, I got news for you. It's on you. And if you've got people attracted to your organization, I got news for you. It's on you too, because you've done a great job. Building a team that works alongside you and they're with you. And if you coach them effectively, you're not their friend. You're trying to help bring out the best potential in them that they don't even see that they have. And that's something that boy, when, when you get bit by that bug and you want to put others before yourself, and you want to be all about the teams game plan and not the individual's game plan. And you actually hold people accountable to that, and you accept the no deviation from standards, great things start to happen and your people start to get motivated.
(14:23): And when you start to see accountability happening at the individual level on the team's bench, so to speak, you know, that you got a winning team. If it always has to come from you Houston, or in this case, Carolina, Charlotte, you got a problem. And for all the business owners out there, it's also about keeping things in perspective. Something that you've probably heard before, but it's one thing to hear. It's another thing to do it. You know, if you're dealing with a problem, if you're dealing with pressure and it's in a good situation, just take a moment and appreciate and understand all the businesses that are out there that aren't making it. And they've got families, they've got employees that rely upon the business turn and income and provide for their family. So now, if you're already a successful leader, you gotta double down, you have a duty to grow your company and create opportunity for other people where companies are failing, because there's a lot of talent, a lot of great talent. And boy, if I could recruit some of 'em, I would, they brought that up on
(15:29): A, actually in a podcast we recorded earlier today, you know, around one of the single greatest responsibilities of a business owner is to continue to create opportunities
(15:38): For others. Absolutely. Yeah. And man, is it, is it a lot of fun?
(15:42): It's totally fun. Going back to pressures of privilege for a second. You, you mentioned Dwayne. I thought that was so cool. Pressure versus stress. And it's the pressure when you're winning it's stress when you're losing and then the word you used, Jason was the, was the word that I had written down here. And it may even be interchangeable with the pressure. And it's all a matter of how you wanna look at it. Is it fair to say that opportunity is the privilege? You know, pressure is a byproduct of op opportunity and you have the opportunity either grow or, you know, or get out, go do something else. But when it comes down to it, it, it seems like that the real privilege is opportunity. If you're serious about that opportunity and you're pursuing it, yeah. There's gonna be pressure. There's gonna be pressure to perform that pressure is gonna be applied by the other people on your team, by your clients, by yourself by anybody else who's on that team.
(16:44): If it's stress, you're probably putting that on yourself because you're not performing or possibly because you're frustrated with the rest of the people on the team. So what do you do about it? To me, it seems like, well, the first thing to do is recognize it, like Dan Sullivan talks about recognizing procrastination as wisdom. That it's a sign, right? So it's a good thing. It's a good thing because it's a sign, it's an opportunity to change. So when you're feeling pressure, okay, if it's exciting pressure, what's the fun that you're talking about. If it's stressful pressure, because you feel like you might fail or there's big risk there, your status is gonna be diminished or you're not gonna be valued. What is the root of that? Well, if you're feeling it, is that not a good time to pause and say, what the heck is this? And why?
(17:33): Yeah, absolutely up, I'll share a story with you that I think we'll, we'll speak directly to that. And I appreciate you, you know, sharing a different perspective on it because ascendant financial was created. So prior to the ascendant, I had spent 11 years just, just over 11 years, working with another business partner, growing a very successful firm. And that relationship came to an end. Now it didn't end the way that everyone had hoped it would. And that created a situation with our team, where we had to relocate into a different office space and get a Senate financial burst and off the ground in a real hurry. And when I talk about a real hurry, I'm talking about 72 hours. And if anybody's ever been to Canada in the middle of winter, you know, it's like minus 942 degrees outside. And when you're moving office furniture filing cabinets, and you're doing that on a Saturday night at 11 o'clock and it's minus 42 degrees outside, and you've got your teammates working alongside you, helping you make that move.
(18:46): The one thing that I decided in that moment is I said to myself, not out loud to any of my teammates, I'm gonna let my teammates develop the next eight weeks of the formation of this business. I'm not going I'm, I'm not a micromanager. I never wanna learn how to do it. I, I don't aspire to that. I, I can't stand micromanagers. So I said, I'm gonna let my team run with this. So at the eight week mark, I sat everybody down and I said, listen, I'd like to have a chat with everybody. Talk to me about how things are coming along. So our team's talking about everything they've got going on. And then at the right moment, I said, you know, when we were moving all that furniture into this building, and it was minus 42 degrees outside, I wanna share with you the moment that I had, I could have chosen because I knew exactly what steps we needed to take.
(19:40): I could have mapped out the whole game plan for the team. This is what's gonna happen next week. The week after that, the week after that, here's the who that's gonna get the, how done, et cetera. And I shared with my teammates if I would've done that, if I would've done that, I would've robbed you all of an opportunity to grow. My second choice was to lead by letting all of you take the reins tears. Actually, some of our teammates started getting really emotional about that. And I said I'd like to talk to me you to talk to me about how you grew over these past eight weeks. And that's where the whole conversation shifted. And what do you think happened to my team's level of ambition? Motivation, determination, respect for one another first and putting team before self. What do you think happened in that moment with my group glue?
(20:37): Absolutely. I had my team. And so now when you move to setting the standard and not allowing any deviation from it, it's a heck of a lot easier leading to that when you've got your team and they're the ones holding each other accountable. And so rather than Rob anybody of an opportunity to grow, which would've been incredibly selfish, it would've compressed timeframes. We would've been up and run much sooner, but my brain was already three years out. I was already baking what was happening three years out. And then COVID hit a year later, just about a year later. And I sat down with my team again and I said, listen, I, I gotta be honest with you. This is gonna be bad. Don't know how bad it's gonna be, but I promise you it's gonna be bad, but I also promise you I'm gonna be the last one at the dinner table.
(21:33): Nobody's gonna lose their job on my watch. Nobody, everybody who's here today is gonna be here today, next year. But we gotta make a choice. We can choose to advance, or we can choose to retreat. We can't do both pick one right now. We without hesitating for a nanosecond, everyone on our team. And I'm not just talking about the ascendant team. I'm talking about our group of companies, everyone, without a second of hesitation said, we choose to advance. I'll give you one. Guess what happened with the performance of our businesses? The last two and a half years in advance, they've more than doubled two times over. Awesome. And so that's not a result of, we were at the right place at the right time. We got lucky. We had the right people. We had the right process. We had the right systems. We had the right technology.
(22:26): It has everything to do with whether or not you've got your team. And once you got 'em hang on to em. No. When to kick no one to hug. Yeah, because I promise you had nothing off top performing groups, more than watching a leader, tolerate someone or some people who are not performing. I have zero tolerance for that. Zero. If you don't bring me your best, leave the Jersey on the hanger, go home. You're not welcome here. Yeah. That's the only way you're gonna get a team to perform under pressure period. Because when the pressure comes and believe me in that moment of COVID, that pressure was there. And, I met with leadership team and I said, I want you to construct a catastrophe plan for me today. I want to know that if our business revenue went off a cliff tomorrow who stays and who goes, talk about pressure. Yes. And guess what? The leadership team came back to me with. that that's not an option, bud. That's not an option. Okay. Well, let's get our team together. I wanna have a chat with everybody. Well, we brought our team together and that's when I presented the two options you can advance or you can retreat pick one now. And all I had to do was stay the hell out of their way. It's a good thing. You didn't make it as a hockey player. You might still be in
(23:47): Well, you know, I've actually you
(23:49): Know, I've had, Hey, I don't know. Maybe you got a guitar and you can sing with Eileen. So,
(23:53): Hey. Yeah. Well, Hey man we've had we've had a number of folks, you know go on to do great things and, and the folks that still live and work there, you know, blue collar community and they work heart, they provide for their families. And they, they know there's a lot of value in a hard day's work. And I, I'm not sure if anyone from Tim's you know, would be listening to the podcast, but I'm sure in the United States of America, you have many communities that are similar, similar shape, size formation, and similar people who are just down home. Wonderful hard working families. It's a,
(24:26): It's a global audience, Jason, a global audience. Awesome.
(24:29): Good. Well, shout out to anybody from Tim's. If you're listening, I appreciate you all there.
(24:34): Yeah. I think of my tree planting days being up there, it's a tough town. oh yeah,
(24:39): Yeah, yeah. Worrying about the bears. That's the one thing you gotta worry. I'm talking about the Chicago bears either. We're talking about airs, like big, big bears and they're hungry. Yeah.
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(25:13): One of the things that's resonating here is, and Gwen and I have discussed this before. It's a hallmark of a good leader, is someone who can accept leadership and, and is able to step back and take direct and from the others. And you've got, you've just given a few examples thereof, of how you've done that. But accountability is another thing tied to leadership and comes with pressure. So how does your team keep you accountable? And what is some of the pressure that they apply to you?
(25:45): Oh, that's a really good question. Well, you know, I, I try to, I try my best to stay in front of it. I keep my sword sharp because I fall on it. , you know, whenever, whenever I make a mistake and a dull, blade's gonna do a lot more damage than a sharp one. So, you know, I try and stay in front of that, but I let my teammates know. I'm very crystal clear that no one, no one is exempt from accountability, including yours truly. And so when I need to be held accountable, if I'm not in front of it, step up and say something, do
(26:17): They? Who, who holds
(26:18): You accountable? Absolutely. Yeah. I, anyone on the team. And so when I screw up, you know, like for example, so you would know Dan solvent talks about, sometimes you multiply through subtraction mm-hmm . And so we, you know, there were a couple of teammates in our businesses that had to be moved along. And I delayed the decision and I, I listened, I thought effectively to one of my team members who told me something was up with one of the team members that was let go. And I sat down with him, he visited with family overseas and he came back and we had our first leadership meeting on January 3rd. And I sat down with him and I said, listen, I think I owe you an apology and said, what, what are you apologizing for? And I said, I'll let you down. I thought that I listened to what you shared with me. And as it related to your instinct and that something was going on with this person, and I didn't confront it soon enough, I didn't practice what I teach and you know what, that's on me. It's all on me. I failed you and I'll do my best to not let that happen again.
(27:23): Yeah. It sounds like there's a great degree of trust that your team has in you to be able to come and share these things with you as well. Cause it's, it's hard to talk about another teammate. Some, if you got the right culture, it becomes very hard to talk about another teammate, but then again, yeah. How you approach it is what defines whether that conversation is valuable or, you know, is drama.
(27:43): How am I gonna know really, truly that I have potential leadership in other people? If I don't give them an opportunity to lead without the title, how am I really truly gonna know? Well, if you create an atmosphere where accountability is expected and know one's exempt from it if everyone's holding each other accountable, purposefully catching each other, doing things right. And people aren't holding me accountable, then that's a mirror test for me. I gotta sit down and say, listen, what am I doing? Why is this not occurring with me? There's a lot of certificates hanging on the walls in these offices. Not one of them says, I'm perfect. Not one of them. I want to grow too. And I don't just want growth from people on my leadership team. I want growth opportunities pointed out to me from the receptionist, like help me grow.
(28:40): If I'm expecting everyone else to buy into, there's no such thing as having a arrived in growth, there's always opportunity to grow. Then I'd better be demonstrating that myself or what business do I have sitting in this chair leading a company. And so I try to prep people as best I can. Hey, leadership, it's far more than a responsibility. You're on display 24 7. You just don't know it. It's just as important what you do when nobody's around watching you, because people know whether or not you're showing up from a place of authenticity and integrity. And so for all the leaders out there don't ever, ever, ever contract arrival syndrome, it's a nasty virus, far worse in COVID, it's fatal in a leadership role. There's no such thing as having arrived in knowledge or growth, there's always something new to learn. You can always grow. You'll never, ever, ever, ever be on a train and hear the conductor go. We've arrived at your destination of potential. Go ahead and hop off here. We'll throw your bags on under the tarmac. There doesn't work that way.
(29:54): So you, you got this accountability, you know, it's almost a hierarchy of accountability and it's not a of role. It's like, this is the way we do it. But the one thing that I would ask or that I I'd like you to talk about is accountable to what, because accountability is one of the things that is most lacking in our industry. There's so many moving parts for, a custom home building team. So many people, so many different ways to do it. And you can have an owner, a business owner say, Hey, this is the way that I want it done. And it is communicated by the time it gets to, you know, the myriad of people who need to do things a, a certain way, it's complete something different happens, and you need to have a system and a plan and everything in place before you can expect accountability. How did that work in your office? How did you, how did you set the systems and the standards and the processes so that people knew what to be accountable to and for?
(31:01): Is it okay if, if I share another story around that? Yeah,
(31:04): Please do.
(31:05): So in one of our businesses, because I'm here at the ascendant financial headquarters here. When we moved into this new space, I had asked my team. I said, Hey, w would you mind all just bringing a notepad and a pen with you? And they said, sure. And so we, we met outside the building and I said, look from the moment that we pull up into the parking lot to the moment that we get into the space. I just want you to capture any observations that you have, because I want you to think about something when you, when you go to Disney world and you're walking around Disney world with your family and you see these Videotron, or, you know, these, these screens up, do you think those Videotron are gonna be playing CNN or CNBC or Fox news or anything like that?
(31:59): Any signage that's around the park, you think it's gonna be anything other than Disney related from the moment you get outta your car, to the moment you get back in your car, you're immersed in the Disney experience. So what I want to do is immerse our clients and our prospective clients in the ascendant experience. And if we walk into a building and the carpet's dirty, there's mail all hanging out of the box, that's the builder's responsibility, or is it, so if we just say, look, we're just gonna transfer the responsibility away. Well, if you see things that aren't perfect in cleanliness and standard in appearance and how we wanna show up, you are responsible for that. Yeah. And so we, we went through this amazing exercise and that’s rudimentary in the sense of, you're just describing what it's like for someone to show up at your building. Well, for,
(32:56): We went through for this business, what Dwayne and I, I are thinking about right now, what you just described is for most construction companies, the job site is really your showroom. The job site is the reflection of give a. How are you treating this, this property? And that's an experience in itself. And a lot of people, what the point you're making is, is great. A lot of people don't do not put enough stock in the fact that every building inspector, every neighbor that walks by every home, you build is a showroom and is a reflection of yourself and, and many builders get it. But yet it’s something difficult to do. And they're trying to appoint, you know, one person to go in and clean that up or, or fix it. And what you're talking about is from the get, go, creating a an experience culture where it's like, Hey, we want everybody who touches our universe here to have a, an experience that we have predesigned for them. And all day long, the notebooks that's weigh in. That's how you get buy-in their notebooks or how you got them to custom design, the experience that this team delivers. So that it's not you dictating, this is the experience we're gonna provide. You gave your definitely you gave your team the freedom and the respect to say, this is what we're gonna create for anybody that experiences us. So that's pretty cool. Absolutely, totally see where you're going.
(34:26): And then you reinforce the standard. So once you've established it, you reinforce it and you never allow any deviation from it. When I come into the office, if I walk into the foyer of our office, and I see that there's maybe a, a stain on the floor that, you know, the I'm super OCD like, and you know, the, the logos on the cups, aren't all perfect and everything isn't in its place. All the cleaners were here last night. I don't give a crap. If Santa Claus was here last night, who's responsible because if every once responsible nobody's responsible. So in this part of the building who owns it, don't ever let that happen again. And if a cleaner leaves something that way, hold them accountable, you should be on the phone at 8:59 AM going, listen, bud, you were here last night. I just texted you a picture of what it looked like.
(35:23): And then I fixed it, delete the picture of what it looked like and how you left it, keep the one of how it needs to be and make sure it's done that way. And from a home building standpoint, I'll share with you guys, my wife, Rebecca and I, we built a home three oh gosh, be about three and a half years ago now. And a beautiful home, 8,000 square foot home dream home. It was up here in my head bone for nine years before a shovel went into the ground. And the home builder presented us with the contract long before the shovel went in the ground. And I had a bun of additional items added to the contract, including one that permitted me to be on the job site, 24 7, no exceptions at any stage of the build. And every single day that I was in town, I visited the job site and you know what I did, this is gonna sound probably really corny, but maybe your builders can relate to the, this in a, in a great way.
(36:18): I would just, when I first met the crew, that was framing. I said, Hey, I'm just, I'm curious. You know, we got, we got McDonald's. We got Tim Horton's. We got Starbucks. We got you. You guys like coffee? Is that something you drink coffee? Oh yeah. We love coffee. Oh, McDonald's coffee. My God. The best thing before sliced bread. Oh, it’s minus 20 degrees outside. I show up with a couple of cases of McDonald's coffee and I got the warm cookies. They smell great. You bring 'em in the house. They're framing away. I'm shaking hands. Thank you so much for your hard work. I know how hard you guys work. I couldn't swing a hammer if you paid me a million dollars to do it. So I'm developing relationships. You think they took a little bit of extra care in the house. The first few days when I was there, they said, listen, I showed up last night.
(37:05): There saw dust everywhere. There's garbage bins with nothing in them. Everything's on the floor. That should be in the bins. I'm not going to accept that. I don't care. I'm not your employer. I'm the one writing a check that's building place. And then, I kid you not from that day forward. Any day that I showed up, the place was left immaculate and I would leave little thank you notes. Really appreciate you leaving it so clean. And I would bring a case of beer on a Friday and know how hard you guys are working. You probably want some cold suds. Get your weekend started. You build relationships. I'm not their employer, but I communicate what I expected. And if you can do that with people who don't report to you and you don't sign their paycheck you got a skillset. You should transfer it to other, other things in your life.
(37:53): Well, it's a mindset too, right? You can call it appreciation or gratitude, but what it really boils down to is letting somebody know that you value them. If you lead with letting them know that they're valued, you can then follow with expectations. It makes the expectations a lot easier to set. If you set the expectation without showing what you value or that you value you, what they're bringing to the table, you can't expect them to meet your expectation.
(38:26): Imagine for a second. Now, I haven't been in the home building business for three seconds. If I show up at a job site and I see that my team members are stressed, right? Going back to pressure is a privilege. And I see they're stressed out. The lumber got delivered late. It was the wrong grade of lumber. They had to wait three extra hours. The lumber showed up. I'm not fully aware of the situation, but everybody's really off, off. I got a few choices in that moment, right? You can be the type of leader that throws the gauntlet down. And you wanna, you wanna be the one that's yelling the loudest and you're gonna be the one that's gonna fix everything. Or you likely became a leader in the industry. Cuz you got a little bit of experience. You get outta your truck, you throw your tool belt on and you say, boys put me to work.
(39:15): What can I do to help you out? I know it's been a stressful day. Let me swing the hammer with you. I gotta clear my mind too. Cause I'm off too. I'm right there with you. And then at the end of the day, say, look everybody hungry. Let's go have dinner. It's my treat. And guys, I really appreciate, you know, what? You were stressed and you were and you were off because you care. If you didn't care, you wouldn't have been upset about it or you coulda handled it much differently. It's all about how you show up. And if you know when to kick and you know when to hug your team members, they're gonna be there right there alongside you. And they're gonna do the great work and they'll know, they'll know when they, when they need to, you know, celebrate a win and they'll know when they need a good kick and they expect you to deliver on both fronts.
(40:06): You've got a good story about kind of related to this showing up and, and getting on the floor of another business and the rules around that and, and the shirt.
(40:15): Yeah. Oh, I share. Okay. I can share that. DJ's probably going God, is this guy gonna stop talking? He's sucking all the oxygen. Yeah, no, no.
(40:23): It's great. We sit back. We, we relax. We just pull the string and, and let, let the toys have all the fun. Yeah, no problem.
(40:30): Well, no, I'll share with you that. So one of our companies Canada prep and ship, and really easy to find Canada prep and ship.com. And so we provide three PL fulfillment services for Amazon resellers, for e-commerce resellers who need to pack and prep and ship products and get them over the border as per Amazon's standards of packing and preparation. And we, we have a, a metric in the business called peace count and there's a certain amount of pieces that need to flow through the fulfillment center every week in order for us to achieve the objective that we all agreed would get done as a team. And so our team was succumbing to some pressure because vendors weren't delivering our F forecast was one thing. But what was actually showing up after what was ordered was something altogether different. So they had to go into response mode and try to bridge the gap, et cetera.
(41:29): So I could, I just knew that they were stressing out. So I just showed up unexpectedly. If you're a business owner, you need to do that. You just need to show up on job sites in this case, if you're the, which I'm sure your business owners are doing probably regularly, but in my case, I just showed up unannounced and I had my Canada prep and ship golf shirt on my jeans, my shoes. And, and I said, boys put me to work. I'm here to help. And they said, what do you want to help with? I said, whatever you think I could be the most helpful with like, just put me to work. I'm here to get going. Let's go, let's get the date going. So, boom, I go back in the warehouse and I'm starting to pack and prep things. And it gave me an opportunity to, with everybody in the warehouse that day. How are things coming along? If I'm hearing that the sun is shining, the sky's blue, the roses smell great. That would've been a result of everybody expecting me to show up there. But because I showed up unexpectedly, caught them off guard in a great way. They opened up and I spent the whole day working there, applying labels, poly wrapping things, master, packing things, creating pallets, all that stuff. I couldn't walk for four days after leaving that center. It's like an
(42:43): Episode of, and I'll tell of undercover boss is, is what? Oh, is what it's reminding me of except without the disguise. Right.
(42:50): But I was asking for things like, Hey, what, what else, what other support do you need? Like, what else can we do to make your job easier? And the things that they were asking for weren't astronomical and we made it happen. So they felt heard. I showed up there and likely had everybody laughing. because I'm not a very good pack and prepper, but the, these folks were doing a great job. And you know, I got to laugh at myself and they saw me being okay with laughing at myself a little bit, going my God, I can't imagine how you all do this every single day, because I'm really doing a horrible job at keeping up. But I promise you one thing, I'm gonna be pacing you by the end of the day, you got my word. Awesome, man. And I did that's and so they're like, Hey, listen, if this guy's gonna show up and he's actually gonna get his hands dirty and do the work, he might actually be listening to what we say. He might actually be hearing us.
(43:49): Oh yeah. Those are some amazing stories. I can't wait to have you back. Good fortune talking between episodes here. I love the time that I, I get what you've built an amazing team. I think it's a really cool concept. That pressure is a privilege. It's really an opportunity how you look at pressure. If it's stress, what do you do about it? How do you perform? How do you, how do you create a culture of leadership? It's largely by being able to accept leadership yourself, you need to have systems and processes in place. You need to value people first before you expect something from them. Those are my, my takeaways from the things that we've, we've got through here and the experience that you deliver. So thanks man. You've delivered us an ascendant experience today and our, and our audience as well. And I guess I only have one question left and that's how long did it take you to get your bike? And by the time you got it, did you still want it? Was it still a BMX?
(44:51): Yeah, it was still a BMX and I actually got the you know, the neon cuz you could get the neon grips and you could kind of, you know, jazz it up a bit. And I bought it from this retailer called Canadian type. Yeah. Heard of them. They've been in, they've been in business since Jesus was a cowboy, like amazing retailer and man, I didn't get it that summer. And when I got the bike, the next summer, I was a few dollars short and my dad chipped in. Cool. And, and my dad said, you came, you came far, you came far enough son. Good job.
(45:27): Yeah. So the bike was 250 bucks and Dway Gretsky rookie card that you close pins into. Your spokes is probably now where it's like 1500 bucks. And I think of what we used to do with our BMX bikes and hockey cards and close pins to make it sound like a motorbike. Do you remember that?
(45:45): Oh yeah. Yeah. You take the close pin. You put a few cards in there and you get about halfway down the block and then the sound is gone.
(45:52): You got a whole burn
(45:54): Through 20 packs
(45:55): Of cards a day and you're eating a lot of gum. So what's the best way for somebody who wants another business owner who wants to learn more about you or connect. Oh,
(46:04): Wow. Thank you for asking. I'd love to hear from you. I can be reached on Facebook, LinkedIn all over social media. So J a Y S O N L O w E. That's Jason Lowe and reach out to me. Facebook message me, shoot me a message on LinkedIn. Connect with me. I'm posting content all the time. I'm all over the YouTubes and the talkers and the, you know, the Facebookers and all that stuff. So please feel free to reach out to me. I'd love to hear from you.
(46:30): All right, man. That's cool. Can't wait to catch up. Jason man. Catch up with these more. Thanks. You taking some time, man. This was fun. This was really good stuff. Love the pressure is a privileged thing and hope to have you back
(46:40): Soon. I'd love to and I'm grateful. Thank you both.
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.
