10 to 70 Employees! Jake HeebVice, VP of Operations, WishingUWell, Inc. (Podcast 288)

I can call it meditation or whatever you want, but I make it a point to spend at least 15 minutes quietly with myself every morning and that's how I start my day. I want to make sure that I'm okay with myself first and foremost, and it has had dramatic effects on my mental state to where I'm not coming into the office every morning and stressed out and I'm like, oh my God, I've got X, Y and Z to do on my calendar and I don't have any time to do it. I come in with a smile on my face every day and the first questions I ask are you? How are you doing today? And I genuinely care about the response.

Join us on today's Second in Command podcast episode as we welcome Jake he, the dynamic VP of Operations at Wishing you well. Jake's journey from imposter syndrome to self care advocate and culture champion is one you won't want to miss. Jake will share his experiences on shedding imposter syndrome and embracing self care as crucial elements of effective leadership. Discover how he's harnessed these insights to drive personal and professional growth. At Wishing you well, Jake emphasizes the importance of hiring for culture fit above all else. Learn how this approach has contributed to the company's success and created a harmonious work environment. Discover the power of Employee Driven Clubs at Wishing you well. Where teams collaborate on shared interests and hobbies. These clubs promote camaraderie and productivity, adding an exciting dimension to the workplace. As Wishing youg well has grown from 10 to 70 employees, Jake will highlight the transformative changes in their company culture and gain valuable insights on navigating growth while preserving core values. Jake believes in the power of listening to employees for continuous improvement. Explore how Wishing you well maintains open lines of communication and leverages employee feedback to drive positive change. And finally, we'll delve into Jake's integration efforts as he shares his experiences of successfully merging an acquired company into Wishing you well operations. Uncover his strategies for seamless integration and strengthening the overall organization. You won't want to miss out on this wisdom and inspiration that Jake he, the VP of Operations at Wishing you well brings to our Second in Command podcast. Tune in to discover the transformative power of shedding imposter syndrome, prioritizing self care, and fostering a thriving company culture. So, Jake, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.

Thank you so much Cameron. I'm really excited to be here.

Yeah, looking forward to chatting with you today. It was great actually meeting you for the first time in person. We met a couple of weeks ago at our COO alliance, the CO Connect event in Scottsdale. So it's cool to be able to hang out with you and get to meet you a little bit there. Why don't we start a little bit about kind of what your growth has been with the CEO alliance, because you're just kind of coming into your second year now. That was your first in person event that you came to talk to me a little bit about some of the growth that you've had from, from being a member and what it was like being at that event. And then we'll dive into what wishing you well does.

Sure. So when I actually got into this position, it was a year ago this month. My CEO has been been coached by you for a couple of years prior to that and able to take part in some of those coaching sessions. And we both knew immediately when I, when I took this position that the COO alliance was for me and that was going to be my next step of growth and development, both personally and professionally for myself. What I've learned, and you've, you've said it before, that you kind of see this as a three year program and as I'm just renewing year two, I'm really starting to understand that and get the feeling of that year one there was a level of imposter syndrome when you first kind of get into the mix of these groups and meetings. And where I'm at today is I know that I'm no longer an imposter and I'm actually excited to join these group conversations and not be afraid or timid to speak my mind and to share areas of strength with other people or experiences that. And so it's really, it broke through that barrier for me, which has been wonderful and it's kind of created that next level of excitement for me.

I love that it's really interesting to see how many CEOs, how many people that are in the second in command role have that imposter syndrome. I mean, I've certainly had it my whole career. It's kind of like every day, every month, every year. Whatever we're building is now the biggest thing we've ever done. Everything just keeps getting bigger and it always feels like, oh crap, I probably don't have the skills to even be doing this, but nobody has the skills to be doing what we're doing. Like, we're all just figuring this shit out together. Right. So awesome that you were able to shed some of that. Now you said that coming to the CEO alliance, the CEO Connect event that we just had in April that you said, and you said, I don't want to come off this wrong the wrong way, but it was, it was really life changing. How. What do you think it did for you? What was it that opened up? What one of the things that we said was the cracks are where the light comes in. I'm curious where some of the light came in for you.

It was huge. So it was the one thing that I needed that I didn't realize that I needed and came down to self care. I realized that, you know, the type of person that I am and the type of position that I'm in, I am geared to helping others all the time. I want to go up to everyone else and take the burden off of their shoulders and put it onto mine and carry that up the mountain and just make things easier. But what happens is you get so wrapped up in helping other people, you forget that the most important person is yourself. And the more that you're able to focus in on yourself and help yourself, the better you're actually able to help other people, the more that you can help other people. And that was probably the most eye opening experience for me in that event, was really slowing down and focusing on myself first and foremost. And that is going to be the ticket and the golden key to helping everyone else.

Yep. It's huge. And, and it goes. There's a saying in Latin, I think it's Mensano Incorporated, which means a healthy mind and a healthy body. And we have to be able to, as leaders, take care of ourselves so that we show up with the right energy. We have to take care of ourselves so that we show up with the right mindset. We have to take care of ourselves so that we show up and we can respond to situations instead of reacting to them. And then we also have to remember that we also need to be role models in our roles as COOs or as VP Ops, where we need other people in the company to look at the way we're acting as leaders, the way that we're showing up as leaders and be inspired by that. And the only way we can be inspiring is to be showing up as our best selves. And if we don't practice that self care, then, you know, that's tough to do.

Absolutely. And I've seen that firsthand, literally in the last two weeks since, since coming home from that event. I can call it meditation or whatever you want, but I make it a point to spend at least 15 minutes quietly with myself every morning. And that's how I Start my day. I want to make sure that I'm okay with myself first and foremost. And it has had dramatic effects on my mental state to where I'm not coming into the office every morning and stressed out and I'm like, oh my God, I've got X, Y and Z to do on my calendar and I don't have any time to do it. I come in with a smile on my face every day and the first questions I ask are, how are you doing today? And I genuinely care about the response.

That's, that's the ticket right there. I genuinely care about the response because I've seen so many leaders in the past and I experienced one 30 years ago. My old VP, and I'm not going to say his name. We had our one on one, like our weekly coaching meeting or weekly one on one where he was coaching me. And he started off the meeting by saying, how was your weekend? And I stopped and I'm like, stop. You don't give a, like you actually don't give a how my weekend was. You've asked me the same question for 15 weeks in a row. Let's just. Cause you know, stop on the, like, if you actually cared, then I'm going to answer. But you don't. And it frustrated me because he didn't really care. And I think when we start showing up and really caring about our people, they're going to go through brick walls for us. But you, you've built that kind of a culture at wishing you well. Talk about the culture that you guys have developed and, and you've been there for seven plus years. So talk to us about the culture, what it's like today and, and kind of how you built that kind of a company culture that you've got.

Oh, absolutely. Thank you for that question. It's probably what excites me the most about wishing you well and probably where I feel I've had the most impact on the company and other employees in the company. Starting out when I was warehouse manager, I started out with five people in the warehouse and was directly responsible for building that team as we were scaling and growing at the time. Over the course of about five years. Five years when I was in that position, we were, we were needing to double our workforce in the warehouse every year like clockwork. And so it went from five people where it was really easy to manage five people and know what five people are doing. Still handle my day to day.

Yeah.

But as that team kept growing, I really had to understand there's, there's A point. And Tyler actually helped me, my CEO, by teaching me the pizza method. I remember him coaching me on that at first. First when I had about 14 people under me, and I'm like, man, this is just getting a little bit intense. I don't know how, how I'm gonna. How I'm gonna break through this and keep managing everyone on the same level. And he was like, jake, you can only manage enough people that you can share a pizza with. So now is the time to start breaking things up and having supervisor level positions and those kinds of things. And so really developing all of those positions. And then in developing those positions and hiring those particular types of people, one of the most important and insightful things I've learned, and you learn very quickly when you're dealing with those people on a day to day basis how to hire the correct people. That was probably the number one thing that I learned, was hiring for personality and attitude over just hiring strictly because of the skill set. Especially, you know, for a warehouse associate position. We can teach you what needs to happen in the warehouse that's, that's easy to do. We can't teach you and mold your attitude. We can't really teach your personality. Those are traits that are already with you. So that's what we really started focusing on and hiring for. And as we started changing that and really having that dramatic shift in how we hire, we found that the culture was. It just kind of started building upon itself and kind of started, you know, and it was, and it was an ideology that Tyler had from the inception. And so part of that was as we're growing and developing these people, you know, Tyler's like, this is exactly what I want. And, yeah, how can we do more of this? And how can we really make these people happy? He had a really unique understanding of, you know, everyone has to come to work. This is not a glorified position. You have to stand on your feet. You're working on monotonous, boring things all day long. How can we make this fun and make people get excited to wake up and come to work every day? And, you know, as we develop those teams and as our teams grew, we then started really like surveying people and understanding, like, okay, what do you want to see at work? What are the things you want to be doing? And today we're at the point now where our culture has driven all of our people to create clubs. We have a garden club, we have a hiking club. We do volunteer time off. We do an angel tree program. And it's. It's really unique because every. Everyone in the company starts developing all of these friendships, and you find that there's all of these groups of friends that are doing things inside of work, outside of work. They're hanging out on their break, they're going golfing after work together. And it just really builds an amazing camaraderie and team.

And this is going across different functional areas too, right? Like, you've got people in the gardening club from the warehouse and marketing and operations, or is it pretty much just in, you know, one. One division that they're all getting together?

It's across the board. So that was one of the things we really try and do as well as every one of these clubs. Everyone has the ability to join, to participate, to be a part of it. And that's broken down some barriers as well between the office and the warehouse, where it's different levels of work, there's different kind of mindsets around that work. So there was almost like an invisible barrier between the warehouse workers and the office workers and these developments of these clubs and some, like, after. After work activities, Friday fun days where, you know, we get together and we had. We celebrated Cinco de Mayo a couple weeks ago and had, like, a margarita party and did pinatas. It's really about, like, finding those events and those things that people are interested in from all over the business so that they can really get together and get to know each other.

I love it. Was there any kind of stirring the pot that had to happen to make those clubs get started, or was that an organic thing?

There was a little bit of stirring the pot, so to speak. I actually created the first club. It was a garden club. I had always been interested in gardening and found a couple of people that were interested in the same thing. One of the things I feel you almost have to encourage people and. And show them, like, hey, this is actually. It's, you know, it's here at work, but it's not a work function. It's not something that you have to, like. There's not, I don't know, a piece to it that you're, like, responsible for, required to do. This is just a fun thing where we get together and we. We learn more about how to plant, you know, vegetables. And at the end of the summer, we're able to, like, eat all of those vegetables together and bring them into the office and, you know, we even share them with the community sometimes. I think last year we. We had like, three or four hundred cucumbers that came out of our garden. But. But yeah, it's. It's a lot of fun.

That's really cool. And I like the fact that you identified that, like all of the people inside of your company, when you start hiring the right culture people, they almost become fire starters and sparks of the culture. Right? That's where the culture starts from, is the right people. You know Herb Kelleher from Southwest Airlines, when they asked him, how do you get all your employees to smile like they do? He said, we hire smiley people. Right? It's not. You can't teach someone to be happy, so you just hire happy people, and those people will show up at work happy. Have you. Have you had to change the way that you've approached culture as the company is scaled? I mean, you're now 70 plus employees. When you started, I think there were only 10. How has the company had to change and adapt from a culture perspective with scale?

Great question. And it's actually had to change a lot. So starting out, and I believe you've said this before, and I can actually attest to this as being true. Starting out as a really small company, the CEO and the leaders are really the ones that are responsible for kind of creating that culture and embedding the culture into the. And kind of developing that. We're. We're learning that we're at the point right now, with our size, where we need to start making some shifts so that the employees are more calling the shots on what's the next. What's the next thing that we're going to do to improve our culture? And. And instead of having it come from the leadership down towards the people, it's actually the people that are feeding us with all of that information. And once we started figuring out, oh, we've got a group of people here and this is what they're interested in. And, you know, before we would just guess, I think it's maybe these two or three things. Let's get a food truck. I think they like tacos, you know, and they come up to us and they're like, no, we want to do something, you know, totally outside of the box. We want to get a dunk tank. Like, what in the world? Okay, let's get a dunk tank if that's what you guys want. And then you get more participation in those sort of things, because people don't see that as, oh, management or leadership is kind of like pushing this on me or forcing me to do something. It turns into, oh, management or leadership is allowing us this opportunity.

Yeah, that's cool. It's very Similar in many ways to kind of the way that we. We teach kids how to ask Santa for gifts. Right. If the kids write the letter to Santa Claus and then the parents read the letter and just buy what the kids said they wanted, the kids are all like, oh, my gosh, Santa read the letter. It's like, no, your mom read the letter. And. But if we try to figure out what kids want, we always guess wrong. So you just ask the kids, what do you want? They tell us, we do that, they're happy. In the same thing with culture, if you ask your employees, it sounds like that's what you're saying. If you just ask the employees what they want, they're telling you and you do those things. It's easy to make a great culture because you're just listening to them. Is that. Is that kind of your approach?

Absolutely, and we're in the process of doing that right now. So one of the. One of, I guess, the struggles with that is because we're just starting that off. People aren't as motivated to speak up just yet. You know, we'll ask a group of 20 people, hey, we want some exciting ideas. What do you guys want to do for the next Friday fun day? And you'll get crickets for a little while. And I'm like, what, do you guys just want me to pick something? Like, seriously, like, what do you want? And then, okay, yeah, I think this would be a quiet. Yeah, I think this would be a good idea. And then it starts to gain traction once everyone else sees that idea come to fruition, then the next time they're like, okay, the next time Jake's asked me for this idea, I am going to speak up, because he proved to me that he's going to do this if I ask for it.

Love it. All right. So when Covid hit, your company had to adapt, as all companies did, but a good portion of your company's employees had to come to work every day during COVID because you ran warehouses, is that right?

That's correct.

So how did you operate that way when some people had to start coming to work and then another part of the company, you know, were working from home? How did you navigate that in terms of, you know, employees? I mean, it's obvious, like, you have to do your job. You're in an office or you're in a warehouse. Was there any lasting effects from that? And. And did you guys culturally go back to all employees being in the office afterwards, or now are you more of a hybrid organization, or where are you.

With respect to that, sure, great question. So Covid obviously changed the world for everyone. For us, we had a kind of like you're saying this, this unique opportunity where we have warehouse people, we, they literally can't work from home. We have to have them there producing. What we did was for a month we had our office staff work from home, and then we were considered an emergency company that was allowed to stay in operation. So myself and the entire warehouse staff would still come into the office every day. Since we had the entire building, we were able to spread everyone out, do all of the PPE that needed to be done so everyone was safe. But then after those 30 days, what we saw was culture started shifting and started changing in a direction we didn't want it to go in. We started seeing people starting to grow apart from each other. And especially with that barrier of like, it's this invisible barrier between the warehouse and the office that started getting really, really thick and, you know, started getting kind of opaque instead of clear. And so we immediately started bringing people back to the office and started requiring that they come back to the office. And we were like, we'll set you up with, you know, all the ppe. We're going to make sure that you're safe and, you know, but you're going to be in the office with us. Because our culture is built around being together. We've got an amazing facility, an amazing visit or an amazing building. And when no one is here to use that facility, it, you know, that's a level of the culture that's just not effective anymore.

Right. So if I, if I put a gun to your head and said, Jake, like, other than the warehouse, your company has to go remote for 24 months. Everybody's going to be remote. Nobody comes into the office except warehouse. What would you have to do or change or adapt or what do you think your strengths would be, culture wise, that would survive that?

I think what we would have to change is we'd really have to get into the digital side of getting people together for group events and things like that. Doing those, like jam sessions and things where we're, we're. We're still able to get everyone together and have fun. We're still able to meet, we're still able to have huddles and understand where our goals and objectives are. But I think really the main thing that I would foresee happening is still being able to get people together digitally to still have fun. And that's kind of the bread and butter of our culture is we want to have fun.

Yeah, it makes sense. All right, let's talk about your growth in the organization. So, you know, again, you started in the company quite, quite early. You started managing and leading the warehouse team. Now you're running as VP of operations. How have you had to adapt and grow as a leader over the seven years that you've been there? Have you had any specific areas that you really focused on?

Absolutely. So in starting as that warehouse manager, I had been a warehouse manager prior to that back home in Indiana, but I managed facilities. I wasn't managing people. And so this was my first position where I was directly responsible for managing people. And, you know, I've always kind of had a knack for management and leadership. I've always been the captain of every sporting team that I've been a part of. And I just. I get excited to get other people excited about something, and I really understood that I have that knack, and so I really took that and ran with it. And what I. What I mean is really understanding people on a personal level is, I think, the most important thing that I learned that the more that you can really get into the weeds of understanding what makes your employees tick is going to be the most important and impactful thing that you can do. But it's not. It's not just their work ethic, but it's what are they worried about, what are they afraid of, what are they excited about, what are their goals outside of work? And the more you know about those individuals, the better you can coach and develop them to be a better person both inside of work and outside of work. And in learning that, I've actually, that's what's got me excited in my personal development is kind of driving my professional development now, where I have learned. And I get so excited to develop, to develop people and to really get into the weeds of what makes them tick so that I can be that coach to get them to the next level, if it's personally or professionally. So I go back and I read books and I look at webinars and do those things so that I know how to best coach people. Another unique thing is, you know, starting out with a really small team, I was coaching at the associate level. I was coaching the people that were actually doing the work. And then as that progressed, it turned into now I have to learn how to coach other managers and other supervisors on how to coach the people doing the work. And that's a totally different level of coaching and leadership that you have to do when these people aren't the ones doing the work anymore. They're the ones that have to coach the next level of people. And I found that really, really, really interesting. And one of the things that I actually enjoy most is it's almost like coaching a coach.

That makes sense. It is, it is very much like coaching a coach as well. Were there, were there specific things that you started to do differently to then coach those, those more mid level managers? Was there a specific approach? Did you kind of walk us through the specific things you did differently?

Sure. So one of, I'd say two of the main things that I've done were sitting down and having meetings with people. At the time I didn't know that they were called skip level meetings, but sit down and like meeting with people, going to lunch with people that are outside of the office and really diving into. You know, it's funny, when I first started doing it, people were like, oh my God, Jake is asking me to lunch. What is this about? And you know, I'm like this, I just want to know more about you. I just want to learn more about you. And I have a really unique example actually of a person I was able to do that with and found out that they were struggling personally without telling anyone in the company that they had just lost their, their mother had moved away, their wife had just gotten divorced, they don't have any friends there, they go home and they sit and they sulk. And this, this was somebody with, you know, a really bad attitude but had the, was the first person in the warehouse every day, was the last person to leave, was the go getter all the time. And I sat down with him like, why are you so, you're just angry all the time. And then he shared that information with me and him and I worked together on developing a plan for him on his personal life to how can we get you into some groups of like minded individuals so that you know what you like? And one of the things that he said, and this is so cool, he was like, I love going to the dog park. It's one of my favorite things to do is just sit on the bench at the dog park. And I was like, tyler, my wife loves going to the dog park. I don't necessarily care to go, but she, she loves to go. You and my wife should get together and go to the dog park together. And they do that now almost every single weekend. And that, that literally just that little bit of change in his personal life dramatically affected his attitude inside our work facility.

It's cool that you actually cared about people to that Level. I mean, that's something we've been trying to get people to see alliance to do, but you've been doing it for years, which is amazing. You guys went through an interesting period in the last 12 months where you just acquired a company in Cincinnati. Can you walk us through what that acquisition was like and what it was like, you know, in the. In the months post acquisition and starting to integrate them into the organization? Love to be able to learn from you there.

Sure, absolutely. So we did acquire. It was actually like a piece of another company. Their, their warehouse operations and their fulfillment operations in Cincinnati, Ohio. In doing so, one of the main things we wanted to do was we. We really wanted to look at the team that they had established first and foremost and understand how they hired those people and how that differed from how we hired people. What we found out was most of their staff, about 75% of it was. Was temps. And we have been through the run the muck with temps in and out of our warehouse, and we have found out that that is not the way that we want to do things. That does not. That does not improve our culture. And that's not a positive way to do things. We want to hire people and hire the correct people to come in and do the job. So we went through and we interviewed every single one of those candidates in, in those positions and found that There was only three people out of about 14 that we decided we wanted to keep. Those three people stayed on board with us, and then we immediately depressed the accelerator and had to start filling those additional positions. Luckily, I'm not responsible for hiring people anymore. We have a VP of people and Heather that has really taken our culture to the next level and has been a rock star in that position for us. She's been able to hire people very, very quickly for us so that we didn't. We didn't lose out on a massive amount of lack of work being done out there because we just decided to cut ties with everyone. I will say, in cutting those ties, it was easy to do because it was temps. So it was a matter of contacting the temp agency and being like, we're done. We don't need you anymore. And then we start hiring for that. One of the unique things that we're still actively working on six months later is still really embedding the culture as it is here in Colorado. It is only a warehouse out in Cincinnati, Ohio. We haven't had the time yet to develop that facility in the same way we've developed our Colorado facility with A coffee bar and an in house gym and, you know, all of these frills and exciting things. So really, when are you doing that?

When, when are you going to be layering those things in then? Because it's been, how long has it been now? Has it been nine months?

It was November that we took it over, so it's been about six months.

Okay, when are you going to start, when are you going to start layering in those parts of the business then? The gyms and the coffee bars and that kind of stuff. Is that coming?

It is. And what, what we've actually learned is that we're going to let the people decide what they want in that building. That's going to be the most important thing.

Cool.

So we've started a little bit of that process. They've got full, a, got a pool table and a ping pong table in there right now. They've started doing their, you know, Friday fun days and getting a food truck or doing some barbecues and things like that. So we're starting to kind of develop that culture when. And what we're doing is we're letting them start to call the shots. What is it that you want to do? We just asked them about that, I think yesterday or the day before, because we've got summer party coming up and we're like, Tom, we're not going to be able to fly, you know, everyone from Cincinnati to Colorado or vice versa. So we're going to have two separate parties. What do you guys want to do in Ohio? Here's the budget. Tell us what you want to do. You know, we're going to play volleyball, but that doesn't mean that you guys, you guys can go golfing, go mini go putt putting, you know, go do whatever it is that makes you happy.

The. You've been out there how many times since the acquisition?

I want to say like seven. Seven times.

So seven times in seven months you've been to Cincinnati from this acquisition. Was that anticipated? Was that just decided? And what were you doing in most of those visits? Was it culture? Was it observing? Can you walk us through what it was like?

Sure. So initially we did know that I needed to be out there to visit a lot to really to set the up for success and to make sure that, that we turned that into a profitable function very quickly. The other piece of it was we knew we didn't want temps, so we knew we needed some people out there to help with the work that was actively happening. So what we started doing was myself, our warehouse manager, in Colorado. And then we'd bring a team of three to four associates with us and we'd go to Ohio on about a two week cadence with additional helpers. And the three to four associates would go into the Ohio warehouse. They'd be kind of teaching and coaching the staff in there. On, hey, this is how we do things with wishing well now. This is, this is how things are different. And they kind of became the trainers for us. While myself and the warehouse manager really were on the observational level and we were observing, okay, how is everything set up in the warehouse? How is inventory flowing through here? How are you reviewing employees and, and how are you talking to employees and putting them on a pip and all of those kinds of things? And we found that like, it needed a lot of work. And so after the first one to two visits, we were like, yep, we need to keep coming back until we feel confident. And it wasn't until about a month, month half ago that we started feeling that confidence. We've got the team built up to where we don't need to bring in additional help anymore. And now it's to the point where, you know, Heather can go out there and can really start showcasing our benefits and, and really start highlighting our culture more and getting people excited to be a part of wishing you well.

I love it. You know, in your role in the VP Ops role, I'm sure there have been some failures and some stressful, tough times. Can you walk us through, you know, a couple things that you've done that were hard or that you struggled at or failed at and what the lessons were from those?

Absolutely, initially, and I talked about it before, but I was learning how to hire the right people. I learned very quickly how to hire the right people based on attitude and personality. The pitfalls there were when you have to deal with people with bad attitudes and a shitty personality and every day they're coming in and causing more drama or more problems. You just learn, you learn really fast. Some of the other areas that I've learned, a good example is like, I've learned that I'm weak at financials. I've never learned about financials other than an accounting class. One time in college, I don't really know how to budget correctly, but what I do in those times is I see that as a learning opportunity and I'm like, okay, I am weak at financials. This is something I want to get better at. So I start setting myself up for success by learning more about that, both from our accounting team and then also going and Falling back into the COO alliance in all those areas of weaknesses that I have, I'm able to lean on this, this group of like minded, wickedly smart people that have all been through similar situations before. Another thing is, you know, I've, I've been new in this role. My, my, my degree is an outdoor recreation and Resource management. I thought I wanted to be a park ranger for the rest of my life and kind of stumbled into this role and then really learned that. I actually love getting to know people and developing and coaching people. But I don't know what's around the next corner. I don't know what to expect next week or next month. The best thing that I can do is set myself up for success by surrounding myself with those like minded people and making sure that I'm always learning as much as I possibly can.

I love it. All right, let's go back to the 22 year old Jakey. What advice would you give the 21 or 22 year old Jake that maybe you know to be true today but you wish you'd known back then?

Take care of yourself. Take care of yourself first and foremost and that's going to be the best way that you can take care of everyone else around you. I've always known that I wanted to help other people, but most recently I've learned that the best way to do that is to start by looking within.

I love it. It's the golden thread. It's how we started off at the beginning and how we're wrapping up at the end. I'm glad that it's still top of mind for you. Jay Keeb, the VP of Operations for wishing you well. Thanks very much for sharing with us on the Second In Command podcast.

Thank you so much Cameron. It was awesome. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Appreciate it. For everybody listening, make sure you check us out on the YouTube channel as well as everywhere that you listen to podcasts and devour the episodes and share them with some friends. Hire the smartest people and get out of their way, enable their creativity and support them as needed. Like I'm not a very top down leader but more of I'm a big believer that show people the North Star, hire great people and just support them.