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. .
(01:11): Welcome to a special edition of the builder nuggets podcast recorded live from the show floor of the 2022 international builder show in Orlando, Florida. I was fortunate enough to interview over a dozen industry leaders during the event, and we'll be releasing several of these recordings over the next few weeks. In this episode, I talk with business coach and friends, Scott BB for my business on purpose. Scott is a past guest and if you're a regular listener, you'll remember him from one of our most popular episodes. One of the early ones, episode two, you can't scale chaos. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Scott BB. All right, here we are. When is day afternoon at IBS and we have Scott Bebe from business on purpose. Scott is a past guest and somebody we love to collaborate with. So excited to have you down here. What have you seen here of the show?
(01:54): God, what can you not see? This is, it seems like the biggest merging of humanity in one place. I parked at the other end of the building, the wrong end of the building yesterday, coming in and told my wife. I said, I'll be writing right out and you can't do that here. There's 30,000 people here. And I think what I've seen is just an excitement to be back together. Yeah. And sort of a hunger to learn. We've got a bunch of clients here and been chatting with them. And what are you seeing? Like, oh my gosh, I saw this new pro I've never, not never, I've not heard the zeal recently that I'm hearing from them right now. So I think it's just good for people to be back. That's what I've found too. I've been to a lot of these shows. I've seen IBS maybe with a, a, a larger attendance, but the, the energy here is I haven't seen it in years. Maybe even it, it almost reminds me of like a, a pre 2008 kind of vibe in the, in the construction
(02:42): Freak. Some people out you give. No, I mean, I you're saying right. I think from the level and, and we're nowhere near there, you know, all the signs are pointing completely opposite of what they were pointing then. Yeah. But yeah, just glad to be here and glad to have you on. So what do you, what do you wanna chat about, Man? We I'll tell you what we've been seeing lately is is this new, what we're calling a post COVID reality. It's nothing that we could see coming. I think it is something that we all thought was going to reverse. You know, the old phrase go back, right. Well, it's not happening. This is a new reality that we're heading into. And so we've got to sort of go back to the well on some fitness level things from a business stand endpoint in order to match what's upcoming. Yeah, because it's all new. The, the boat's been burned and the ships torched and we're on a new sea with a new boat and we've gotta learn how to live with
(03:29): That. Yeah. And I mean, what, what types of things do you see when you say post COVID? I mean, obviously we've got supply chain constraints. We've got people probably just looking at things differently, especially when it comes to their homes, builders, probably having to deal with labor struggles. I mean, Even just walking around the IBS and you can see topics about breakdown, emotional fatigue. I mean, these are topics that probably weren't high and mighty a few, even, even just a few years ago. And now all of a sudden these are some of the primary topics. And really people you mentioned, there were people, the people centric of this new reality that we're going into and, and what, what we're telling people all the time is you are no longer in the business of making task decision. You are now in the business of making people decisions and those people will operate those task. And in order to make people decisions, you have to be people aware, emotionally aware, situationally, you know, all of those things. And in construction, Dwayne, you look at that and think, man, that's yeah, God construction. We're supposed to be lifting weights and doing pushups and, you know, tape measures and you know, all this stuff. And the reality is, man, we're in, we're in the, you're in the people business. Now
(04:32): We're in a people business now and it's, it's, it's difficult. And there's, you know, that pressure that people are feeling. I, I, a lot of things, even with my team, you know, project managers, it's, it's almost like we've made because we're so busy in the industry. I think we've almost made it our sanctuary that, you know what I can go to work, but work works there and it's there, but it, it can become too much of it. Yeah. You know, and we really have to manage these you know, these stress levels and emotion, and everybody's been stretched out mentally over the last few years. Yeah. So I think there's gonna be a lot of new challenges coming up. I've got a buddy his name's Chad Jeffers. He's one of those friends that's really cool to have. He's the lead Dobo player for Carrie Underwood and then periodically plays backup guitar and all this stuff. And I asked him, it was about two weeks ago and he and I met a couple years ago in a lobby of a hotel, just connecting, meeting up, talking about. And I just asked him, said, Hey, Chad, what's it like, like two, three nights a week. You're in 18 20,000 people. You're in these stadiums, you're going about? And I said, what's the preparation like to get ready for something like that? And the first thing he said, he said, it sounds really cool, but many mornings I wake up and don't know where I'm at. Not cuz I'm hung over or anything. I just, I don't know where I'm at, I on the road going from place to place.
(05:40): And so if you're not careful become very monotonous. And he said, but the thing we have to remember is Carrie Underwood just played a Las Vegas residency. And I, I asked him, what was your preparation for that? He said, the band prepared for two months, seven days a week, nine to 14 hours a day before the band started preparing, I prepared personally for another month to month and a half before that. And so you think about the grind that Chad went through, just so that as he's on stage to be able to perform, he's not spending all of his emotional energy thinking about where his fingers go. He's spending his time on the people. And I think it's a great metaphor from a business standpoint, that business owners really need to rock back. You know, the old Vince Lombardi thing, this is a football, right? It's the blocking, the tackling, the throwing, the catching and in the industry, what we would call working on the business and allowing and equipping other people to work in the business. Yeah,
(06:34): For sure. So you know, eager to hear more about this, what you think a post COVID world looks like in our industry. Cuz I, I, I do, I can assume that most folks are maybe sensing a little bit of relief. Like, okay, you know what? We're, we're starting to come out of this thing. We're near the end, but they could be faced with a whole new set of challenges. Yeah. Yeah. The end of this thing is now the new beginning of something else. And so this idea of lifelong learning has, we've got to recapture that if you're gonna want to grow in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, lifelong learning is not an option. Now it is an it's a must I think for about 10, 20 years, lifelong learning is kind of a cool buzzword. Hey, let's really dive into personal self-help and all that. It's not optional Now it's not optional. Because the task ask are now must now be driven to the team that is operating. And your focus as a leader in the construction industry has got to be people. It doesn't mean you're a counselor all day, but sometimes you are. It doesn't mean that you're an HR person all day, but sometimes you are. And so understanding that what I invest in my people is what comes out. It's basically the fruit principle, right? Whatever I put in the ground, that's what's gonna come out out of the tree and if you're not investing in what goes into the ground, then you're gonna get trash, come out the tree.
(07:46): Yeah. Wanna level up, connect with us to share your stories, ideas, challenges, and successes. The builder nuggets community is built on your experiences. It takes less in a minute to connect with us@buildingnuggets.com, Facebook or Instagram, Want access to the resources that can take you and your team to the next level. One call could change everything. And, and I think Dwayne, the difference now versus five years ago, 10 years ago, is you could get by with that. Then people need jobs. They, you know, they, now they have a options. Week. Number 1st of January, 2022 front page of the New York times, the headline was 4.5, 3 million people leave their jobs in November of 2021. That's crazy. And so now people have options. Yeah. And, and if, I mean, they really wanting to get out, they just go, man, I'll go, I'll go do a DoorDash, Uber, whatever, just to be on my own to make my own thing. We have got to create cultures that are not Laz or passive. That's not what I'm saying. We've got to create cultures that are incredibly intentional and highly communicative, which means we've gotta be proactive in our communication.
(08:53): We gotta be really proactive. And we've had, I mean, I'm just looking at the board at a few guests. We've had Steve Barkow. His people plan was out a few weeks ago, con lo car up there talked about that was with ITR economics and really talk about the challenge of people. Yeah. Over the next, the companies, no matter what industry and the companies that win the talent race. Yeah. Talent game are the ones that are gonna succeed because that is gonna be the single biggest challenge for all of us. How do you find new talent? You know, how do you attract it? How do you keep it? But also to your point, you know, you, there's a whole new host of skills that all of us have to learn and be trained on. Yeah. It's not just run an ad, bring somebody in and plug 'em in a space. Well, and I think there's skills that are actually historic skills. I don't know that they're necessarily new skills. I they're old skills that need to be recaptured recapture.
(09:37): Yeah. Because we tried to outsource our leadership skill to automation for so long robotics, whatever it was. We tried to outsource that and said, Hey, if we can just put people on this platform and hit play, and then, you know, they'll connect and whatever. And the reality is what, what putting people on digital platforms has done. Although Ben mass valuable in so many areas has also been massively dysfunctional in many others. Yeah. And it has created this level of anxiety and all that stuff that we've just never had at levels that we've seen before. And so we go back Sherry tur, she got a great book on reclaiming conversations. And in the book she said, the one thing that we have got to go back and reclaim is face to face conversation face to face. Doesn't mean we diss, you know, all the social media, but that's all good, but if we're not willing to reclaim. And so the most innovative tool that we have seen brought into the business world in the last 12 months, this is great. I can't even believe I'm saying this. The most innovative tool in the last 12 months is for an owner to sit down every week or other week with a proactive check-in five prescribed questions week after week after week for 15 minutes. Yeah. It's not, it's Not rocket science. It's fundamentals. Yeah. You know, and it's, and it's, it's all about communication as well. I think to a certain degree, we have to all hone our skills on communication because there was a lot of dependency on remote communication and zoom meetings and this and that. And, and I totally agree with you that people have reached a little bit of sense of exhaustion with that. And they want to get back to the face to face. There was a, it was almost a little bit of a, a cushion there with some of the remote meetings that, oh, we'll just check in or it needs to be a, a higher level conversation on a regular basis with your team and with your clients. Yeah.
(11:20): Yeah. Well, sniffles now sort of give you an all out free pass. Not saying it's not, COVID not saying it's not anything, but the sniffles alone sort of breed this free pass. Yeah. And there is a certain level of grit we've gotta go through proper te you know, the whole thing. I mean, I'm not get off on that, but the reality is, is we've got to redevelop some grit in what we're doing, redevelop some endurance in what we're doing. And I wish I had a cooler silver bullet, but at the end of the day, it's the basics like check-ins agenda driven leader, led team meetings, like the old fashion, sit down team meetings around an agenda with a leader with defined outcomes. And we follow up on it next week. And we do that every single week. Whether, whether Dwayne's there or not, we're gonna continue to meet man that little thing. It's, it's almost like test me in this. If you just installed that little mechanism for the next 52 weeks, you'll see massive improvement from a people relationship
(12:12): Standpoint, massive improvement. Yeah. Is there anything else that you're seeing you know, from that is, I mean, that, that is the big trend right now. I mean, obviously in our work, once we see somebody devote themselves over a year, two years, three years, four years to actually committing to the backend systems and things. Yeah. It, it, you know, it's kind of a takeaway and I have to be careful how I say this systems really can facilitate real relationships. We're living proof of that right now, the, the NIH B put together a system called the international business show. This is a system, it's all, this is, it's a bunch of processes collected together in a big old system. And it facilitated relationships. You and I are sitting here having a conversation because somebody built a system. And so when we build systems, we Ashley and I do it in our marriage. We have all on our calendar that we go on date night, once a week, that's a system. And so somebody could say, well, Scott, man, isn't your marriage robotic. I I'd rather have it teetering on the edge of robotic than teetering on the edge of not being
(13:06): Together. Yeah. Not being. And So I would rather prescribe that time to be together. So I'm all in, and Ashley's all in on me at that point rather than, yeah. We'll get together sometime. But we say this in business all the time. D I'll I'll go to sit down and you'll say, but we talk all the time. You know, me and my team, we talk all day long, text email. Well, my wife and I talk all day long, too on text phone calls. I'm not building my marriage on that. I'm building my marriage on. She and I sitting down over a table over a, a dinner, whatever. And having intentional conversation. Well, that's an intentional, I think is the big word, cuz I see it a lot too. And I'll, I'll see folks that'll say, well, I'm not sure if I need to do that because we talk all the time. Yeah. We're talking all, I'm talking to the homeowner all the time. Yeah. Well it doesn't mean they're actually listening to you, you know the intention of right. Of having structured, this is the agenda. These are the things that we're gonna do. And that all, so what that also does is it shows the value of time. Yeah. You're getting in, you're getting out. Yeah. And I think that's important, especially, you know, nobody wants meetings for the sake of meetings. Yeah. So if the team feels like, Hey, you know what? This is, we are getting stuff outta this. We're sitting down, covering the facts, getting it out. Yeah. That you're gonna stand a much higher chance of maintaining that. Oh,
(14:14): It's it. Well, that's why they have to be leader led. You have to have somebody that is saying, all right guys, we're still meeting, meeting nine o'clock Tuesday. We're still meeting. And then showing up for that because you know what happens when nobody's in charge, everybody says, we're meeting at nine and everybody's sitting at their desk going. I wonder if anybody's gonna stand up, wonder if anybody's gonna stand up. And they don't. Yeah. But the what, what I would love to courage those in the contractor space to do is go, Hey, let's not get overly novel. With this new reality, at the end of the day, metaphorically, you built a boat, that's gonna go offshore. And eventually it's gonna run into rough seas so you can build a cool swag boat, all that stuff. But the boats built three, 400 years ago were pretty good too. And so we can go back to some of that engineering. They don't have to look like that. They can look cool and hip, but structurally let's build good boats. Yeah. Because the waves are coming. You're not gonna bypass chaos. No, it's coming your way. But man, I'd rather go through chaos on the back of a well built boat that I've spent time and energy on than going to chaos in a canoe that's made out of
(15:16): Paper. Oh for sure. House of cards. So sure. The listeners are getting some tidbits outta this. Some nuggets. Tell us quick, what do you, what have you got going on? I know you, you know, you do some your coaching sessions. Yeah. Are you traveling around at all? You got any events coming up. What's Yeah's 2022. I for me person was I decided about six months ago that I was gonna sort of cut my coaching schedule and have for me person, we've got a team of four other coaches and I'm going to start doing a lot more speaking. And so that's why I'm here at the international builder show, speaking at the 20 club lounge for the NHB and got some other builder exposing some other things coming, super excited to be speaking for. And and so yeah, any anywhere where there's an opportunity to speak to owners with two to 50 employees and they're really working hard to try to liberate themselves from the chaos that they feel that we were talking about, man, that's our world. And we, we help build their backend systems, process and purpose using our, our, our roadmap. And we we've been doing that a lot with the clients we've gotten. It's just been a lot of fun. Yeah. To see them really locked down, take it serious and see the fruit of that.
(16:19): Yeah. And when you say owners, I mean, you're working with builders, remodelers, trades, People, home builders, remodelers contractors, anybody in the subs and we've got spray foam people, electricians, plumbers, landscapers. Yeah. All of that. Cuz there's a lot of similarity. We same lingo across the board, job costing and estimating and all that kind of stuff. And so we're having those conversations, but we're, we're pushing them and it's exciting. And it's funny, you know, no matter what the, the discipline or the business or, or the, the trade problems are the same, the problems are the, I heard Nick Saban speak a couple weeks ago. We were at an event and he was speaking there and I was like, I might as well be listening to a contract. Right. It now, same stuff. Yeah. Brought some great recruits on, had an opportunity to play, did not take their opportunity. They were forced into playing in the last game of the season. And coach Saban said they never took care of their opportunity. Three players that were playing on the national championship hopefuls of the Alabama for this year. And they didn't take advantage of their opportunity. We don't want that to
(17:11): Happen. We're in too good of a position right now in this industry with what's ahead of us. I mean, housing demand has never been stronger. Can you imagine Duane, if somebody showed up on your doorstep 10 years ago and said, Hey, in 10 years, you're not gonna have to worry about leads in sales. Yeah. You'd be falling all over yourself. Right. You know, the reality is today, you really don't have to worry about leads in sales. And this is probably the biggest takeaway is we, we say this all the time, your product, the home, 'em the remodel job, whatever your product is, a commodity, that's a commodity. And I hope that didn't fit anybody. But the Is a commodity. When I drive down the street, I don't know who built that house. It's a beautiful house, but there's 20 different people that could have built that house. Your process is your product. It processes.
(17:49): Your process is your product. Your product is commodity. Yeah. It's good stuff, man. Well, thanks again as always. It's great having you on and gonna get you, we already got, you signed up to get you back on yeah. For a full episode and later on this year. Well, thanks for doing this. This is, this is great. You're you're, you're serving a great element of the industry and especially being here on the floor, it's just fun being on the floor. It's fun. You've these last two days have been great. The engagement here, people come by and what you just said, a commodity, they're looking at this board going, they just love it. They love seeing the faces and the people. Cause that's what it's about. It's not the product. Yeah. You know it's thanks man. That's good. All right, bro. Cool. Good to see you.
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@buildernuggets.com and start building freedom.
