139 - Scaling Business Through Building Infrastructure and Franchisees with AtWork Group's Jason Leverant

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Jason Leverant, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the Chief Operating Officer and President of @work, which can be found at atwork.com. Thanks for joining me today.

Yeah, Doug, excited to, uh, to be a part and, uh, share some stories with you.

So you've— you have a really interesting background. Why don't— um, I know about you because I interview you on Authority Magazine, but I would like you to tell us a little bit about your backstory for those that are listening and have never met you before.

Yeah, it was a— it's an interesting background because when I look, uh, in the mirror and who I am today in the staffing industry and the franchising industry It's not really where I came from. I didn't intend to be here, but kind of landed it like, like most people kind of found that niche in that sweet spot. You know, I started my professional career in the golf industry and actually worked for a golf products manufacturer and, you know, spent some time, you know, hanging out with PGA pros and marketing, you know, clubs and balls to the, you know, the mass audiences through big box chains. And opportunities arose that allowed me to start looking for my next adventure in a career. And I kind of fell into the temporary staffing space. Found some roots there and really established myself with Atwork as a sales, you know, VP of sales, and really just took the exciting ride to get me to where I am today. It's been a fun story though. I mean, going from golf to temporary staffing, looking at golf products and moving to kind of, you know, human capital and focusing on human, you know, really workforce efficiencies and things of that sort, whole different animal.

So I was gonna say, I, I was just thinking, what are, what did, what did you learn that the differences were between selling a product, like a recreational product, like golf equipment, and, and then basically working with people?

What, well, I'll tell you, working in an industry that's typically a recreation, it is what it's cracked up to be. It's, it's very much what people think. It's a, it's definitely a fun industry to be in. Mm-hmm. Uh, and great opportunity to make good connections. Um, but, but you're making it really a surface value on something like, like golf, like entertainment. In the staffing industry, we're making real impact in people's lives and in companies' lives. I mean, we're helping— I mean, no joke, literally helping people find their next opportunity that helps put food on the table for their families. And so the impact that you can make in your community through what we do on a daily basis is just absolutely phenomenal. And you can feel the difference there.

So you're Your company, AtWork, is— you're in the staffing business, but you're really a franchisor. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, it's kind of layered in the sense of, you know, yes, boots on the ground and in our branches throughout the country, we are, you know, helping clients find great employees, helping, you know, employees find great job opportunities. But kind of pulling back one layer, we're also helping entrepreneurial-minded individuals enter the staffing space. And so we're helping them, you know, get their businesses open. We're helping them find efficiencies through the resources that we provide as a franchisor. And, uh, and, and through those efforts, it helps us position and helps our owners get really, really successful, grow their businesses more rapidly, more successfully, more effectively. So yeah, we're a couple different hats on that front, but ultimately it's similar kind of outcomes. We're helping people kind of achieve their, you know, their goals, their personal goals, their financial goals.

How many franchisees does Atwork have now?

So, so we've got about 60 franchise owners over about 115 or so locations. If I were to look at Sprinkler and Pin Drops on the maps, we've got a lot of multi-unit owners, we've got some single-unit owners, but, uh, we're rapidly growing. We've got, um, some aspirations for growth over the next 5 to 10 years where we're adding anywhere from 12 to 20 new franchise owners a year over those— that time period. So we look to double our owner count and hopefully triple or quadruple our branch location count in that short period of time.

Does your company have a niche that it fills? I mean, I know a lot of staffing companies will sometimes specialize or have a narrow focus. What about you? Yeah, yeah.

So we, I guess the best way to describe our model is a commercial staffing branch or commercial staffing organization. So we're effectively generalists that when people look at staffing and they think about staffing, you know, many people go to that, you know, kind of day labor services or they go the other end of the spectrum where it's like IT staffing, healthcare staffing, things of that sort. We're kind of in the middle. So when we look in the mirror, we help, you know, kind of your, uh, early skill kind of entry point career opportunities within manufacturing facilities, warehouse distribution, things of that sort, and within call centers, uh, and clerical type, uh, opportunities. So, you know, direct competitors in the space are kind of some, some household names— Kelly Services, Manpower, things of that sort. Those are our day-to-day kind of competitors.

So, so you've been doing this for quite a while, I think since I was going to say in the early '90s.

Yeah. 2000s. 2000s. Yeah. I'm not that old yet. I don't have any hair. I've lost it fast. Yeah. I think it was—

wasn't it 2007 that you joined the firm? I think I read.

I started at Atwork in '07. Yeah. Good memory. And I was actually with a larger firm prior and cut my teeth in the industry, a company called Ronstadt. So started down the pathway there and then obviously joined the Atwork Group and haven't looked back since. It's been a wild ride.

The other thing I remember is, and I smiled, is that you were kind of a young buck then, and it didn't take you long, what, a year or two before the owner of the company tapped you to become the COO?

Yeah, it was pretty, you know, again, it was a pretty wild ride. And, you know, I joined Atwork in '07, and I'm sure as many of your listeners experienced the '07-'08 kind of, you know, wipe us all out. Yeah, yeah, the ride that is the Great Recession there. Right. It impacted us as well, impacted workforce, unemployment rates were high. We experienced some significant change internally. You know, I think I just was in the right, I hate to say right place, right time, but I also put the right energy. I really took the bull by the horns. I grabbed the reins and ran with it when the owner needed somebody to really do that. And, you know, again, I continue to do that. And so it's been a really exciting opportunity to be able to really drive an organization of Atwork size and scale, bringing kind of you know, new ideas, new concepts to the staffing industry, trying to innovate. You know, unfortunately, the industry tends to be kind of, uh, you know, uh, innovation is really not as, as present in our space as other industries, and we're trying to change that. I know me and some of the my peers in the space that are really trying to push the envelope forward. Um, unfortunately, temporary staffing gets sometimes a negative, uh, a little bit of a negative rap, and so we're really trying to change that through very, very high levels of service, uh, attention to detail on that front. So Yeah.

What have you learned in the last, let's see, this is, it's almost 20 years.

Yeah. So I will tell you one of the things I am since I was a kid, like a perfectionist, I'm like very, very, I like control. I like it to be just so. And if I had to point one thing that I've learned, it's that it's okay to relinquish some of that control. Find people you trust, build a team that you trust. Give them the tools and resources to be successful and let them do their thing. And, uh, and to me, that's the only— that's the way to scale. I mean, one person can't do it all. And I had to keep telling myself that if I really want to take this organization to, uh, you know, a top 10 staffing firm in the US, the only way I'm going to be able to do that is to, uh, to really identify a just killer team to get out there and make it happen, uh, again. And that's what I'm doing. That's what we've done. So if I had learned any one thing, that's— if I could go back in time and tell young Jason, what, what did change more rapidly would be that.

So a lot of people have that problem. I mean, they feel like they've got to, especially entrepreneurs, they feel like they've got to control everything. How do you, how do you overcome the anxiety of letting go?

You know, again, it's, it's hard. It's not easy. I mean, I still have the anxiety at times, but, but know that, you know, it's all about identifying a team that has similar values, who has similar desires to achieve goals that we're all aligned towards. And it helps because I know that their intentions are there. And while they may do things slightly different than the way I do things, the outcomes still result in mutually desired outcomes. And so it goes back to one, building the team, coaching and developing your team, getting them to where they need to be and where you're comfortable, and then letting them do their thing and giving them the trust. Let them make— let people make mistakes. It's okay. Mistakes can be fixed and rectified. You know, and those, those mistakes help them learn and become better leaders within each of their departments.

So, uh, you know, you just said something that I'm hearing over and over again on my podcast with leaders, and that is, I hire people that have similar values to mine and share the same values that I have, and that's one of the, that's one of the major criteria I use in my hiring decision. Tell me about that a little bit more about that.

Yeah, I mean, when you look at how we differentiate, I mean, one of the big things with Atwork as a franchisor, we look at our customer base. If I'm going to just put on the franchise hat for a minute, our customer base is our franchise owners, and Atwork differentiates through our high level of service. I mean, it goes back to the sign behind me says Atwork for you, maybe reversed camera, Atwork for you. And that really, uh, we, we embrace that, um, that tagline. So so greatly that we rewrote our mission around that focus to be at work for you, our franchise owners, and they then downstream that to their clients and talent in the field. But that service-focused approach to how we engage with our owners really lends itself to me in that, in my mindset of how we are able to effectively differentiate against our competition in the franchise staffing space. And then again, finding people that, that understand that we can differentiate through our service and our levels of service to our clients and to our franchisees, but then indirectly our clients and talent. That really helps. If you get somebody who's kind of a lone wolf or very, uh, it doesn't fit within our organization. Culture is really everything, and we're really a kind of that servant leadership type mentality where we're engaging with our franchise owners from a, from the position of how can we help you achieve your goals, which ultimately helps us achieve our goals. So we're all kind of driving and, you know, rowing in the same direction, whatever expression you want to use there. We're just going towards the same outcomes that we're all looking to go towards.

So does the same principle apply to your, to your potential franchisees, that when you're, you're interviewing people and they're interviewing you and everybody's doing their due diligence on each other, that one of the things you're looking at is what is this person's fundamental values? Are they in?

Yeah, absolutely. That's Yeah, in the franchise space. And that's very interesting. Great question. I mean, when we're evaluating prospective owners and it's a two-way evaluation, right? A lot of people think, oh, well, I'm buying a franchise, you're just going to give it to me. That's not really how this works. It's less transactional than what most people think. It's not like we have a franchise territory on a shelf and somebody can just— anybody can just pick it up and buy it. We are looking for that stronger fit. So we're looking for people that, one, would bear the Atwork name well and be a good steward and ombudsman of the brand. In their local communities. So that is a huge, huge component of it. We're also looking for somebody who's got the drive, the motivation, the interest and willingness to put the effort into to be successful because the staffing industry is not easy. It's very lucrative. There's lots of upside to it. There's lots of scale opportunity. But at the end of the day, to get there, it takes a lot of hard work.

So what's it take usually for a new franchisee to get start becoming profitable? And, you know, it varies from person to person, of course.

Yeah, it's really, it depends on the circumstance, depends on the market they're in. I'll tell you the one universal is it takes a lot of hard work, resilience, tenacity. I mean, and again, I know those, but again, varying based on what clients, because customers are different, pay rates and bill rates are different. You know, there's some consistencies, but at the end of the day, we have benchmark targets that we, you know, kind of lay down on pretty universally over our branches. You know, we look to help them grow and scale. I mean, we've got those, the anomalies, the mega branch, the ones, you know, one or two of our 100+ locations that are doing, you know, $40 million, $50 million a year. And then on average, we were doing $4.2 million a year, $5 million a year on average on the branch. But all in all, though, you know, when you compare it to, you know, other franchise opportunities out there, you know, you can't get that level. Even there's no hope of ever hitting those type of levels in most concepts outside of the staffing industry.

What, um, you've been doing this for a long time now. What is it that gets you excited in the morning? You get out of bed and say, yeah, time to go to work.

I, you know, I like making an impact at scale. I really love that we're able to differentiate through the levels of service. We're able to make a change. And as we grow, as we get bigger, our voice and our impact gets larger. You know, I hate the fact that, again, at times our industry gets mislabeled and, you know, is kind of vilified in some, some instances. And you see it across, uh, And maybe I'm using extremes in that statement, but at the end of the day, the perception could be— is typically negative when people think about temporary staffing. We're here to change that. You know, we're highly focused, hyper-focused on service. You know, our Net Promoter Scores— I'm not sure if you or your listeners are familiar with Net Promoter Score methodology. It's primarily customer service, customer satisfaction scoring systems that are really proven to show companies with higher Net Promoter Scores generate longer-term customers, better profit margins, things of that sort. You know, we've got quite literally world-class industry-leading net promoter scores on both our client talent side. We've got unbelievable net promoter scores on our franchise owner side. So not only do we say we service better, do we say that we do these things, we're proving it through our actions. And then our customers, our clients, our talent, our franchise owners are confirming that through their responses to our ongoing surveying, ongoing questioning because we're in this consistent persistent state of improvement. That's one thing continuous improvement for me is always looking in the mirror saying, okay, what can I do different? What can I do better? I don't want to be okay with just being okay at things.

So how do you, how do you scale a business like yours? You say you want to, you know, obviously grow almost exponentially.

How do you do that? Yeah, it's easier said than done. I mean, a lot of, you know, obviously we have to build the infrastructure that supports the scale and that's, that's one of the benefits that we have is We've built this really, this machine here, this franchise to be able to give us effectively limitless scale. We can add staff to support new owners onboarding. But when it comes to software, financial, you know, banking, technology, all those different pieces, it's primed and ready. We just need to again get willing participants, our franchisees, to join the system and start building and growing their business. So we've got that component of it. Then it's, you know, really the challenge, the hardest part is finding owners to join us. And so we're actively working hard. We've quintupled our franchise development team. For years, for 30 years in this industry, we've had 1 or 2 franchise development folks. We've now got 5. And so we're out there really spreading the word and trying to identify great, you know, entrepreneurial-minded individuals to see them see the opportunity and, uh, and, and really join us on this fun ride. So what kind of—

what, as you look across your operations now, what kind of people are attracted to becoming franchisees?

You know, uh, what we found is logically you might think, okay, people from our industry, because I mean, you've got thousands and thousands of Temporary Staffing branches across the country, a lot of mom-and-pops, a lot of company-owned stores, people who find success in the industry who you know, say, you know what, I've done this for somebody else for a long time, I can do this for myself. So we have some of that, but at the end of the day, a lot— many times people who approach us, you know, are people who have been successful in business, successful in life, who have some taste of our industry indirectly through their employer. Maybe their employers has used staffing firms before, and/or they were the direct decision maker who's actively participated and were intrigued by the business model. If I had to kind of label one industry, I don't really have any one specific place or industry or type of people that have joined us. We've helped people really of all backgrounds, all walks of life. There are people that, that get it a little bit faster, a little bit easier than others. At the end of the day, our industry is very sales and business development focused. We're a B2B-based service concept. So we're selling to the clients to, hey, use our services, but we're also selling candidates, hey, you should come to work for us as well. So it's very, very sales-centric, very sales-focused. And being in an industry that deals with, with people, you have to be very, you know, cognizant of that, be very effectively people-friendly. If you don't like dealing with people, this is the wrong industry for you.

So, well, that gets me to my next question. This, this show is called Listening with Leaders because I'm— I train people how to listen, to do this listening. And how important is listening in your business?

Oh, it's, it's absolutely critical. I mean, when you're dealing with people, I mean, everyone has different feelings, emotions, perceptions, and you've got to be able to understand that and adapt accordingly based on you know, the circumstances, the situation, whatever the case may be. And sometimes what people are saying and what you think you hear may not be what they're actually saying or trying to convey. So it's really important that you do take the time to, to listen, but also put yourself in their shoes and try to identify, kind of see where they're coming from and what's got them where they are. And we try, you know, obviously try to adapt and meet them where they are if at all possible, um, you know, whether it be in a sales process, because that's just best practice when it comes to sales and overcoming objections and things of that sort, trying to understand the pain points and overcome those. But when dealing with your internal teams and staff and trying to motivate teams, you know, when they have a certain perception on something and trying to convey that perception, trying to, you know, listen to hear them, to help them feel heard, but then also on the same token, help influence their actions to more positive outcomes for them.

Yeah, what I— in the same vein, what I teach my graduate students I teach down at Pepperdine University at the law school in the Strauss Institute of Dispute Resolution. I teach them to listen, then problem solve. And we divide the process up so that until somebody feels deeply heard, they're not going to be open to solving whatever problem is in front of them. And the beauty of it is You can listen to somebody and get them open, make them feel, get them validated and heard in less than a couple of minutes. People don't need the, this street stuff and hours of—

yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

They don't need it. If you know what you're doing, if you know what to listen for and how to validate people, you can get them calmed down and then they're open and receptive to figuring out, okay, what do we need to do to fix this problem? Or where do we go from here? Or in the case of conflict, how do we make things right? What do we, how do we, you know, whatever it might be. And to your point, when leaders engage in this kind of listening process, they become the leaders that everyone wants to follow because they care and they're showing up.

They get me, they get me.

Exactly correct. And that's the reaction that everybody gets when they're feeling deeply listened to. Oh, you really get me. And in the sales process, I do a lot of sales training. And, uh, the— in the sales process, the first thing I teach salespeople is for the first 5 minutes of your sales call, don't say a word. You can ask a couple open-ended questions, but all you're going to do is listen and reflect. And you really— what you're going to do is listen and reflect emotions, not words. That's—

I've actually seen it. It's funny, Doug, because I've seen salespeople talk their way out of a sale.

And it's like, just stop talking. Selling is not telling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's really hard for Bill. So it's interesting that you, you've had all those same experiences, especially in a business that's just totally involved around people.

Yeah. Well, I mean, and we, we deal with similar, you know, at times we look at our industry and feel that the industry has been commoditized. It's very price driven, you know, hey, what's, you know, the first questions we get, what's your rate, which rate at the end of the day. Rate differences result in pennies per hour on rates, right? That's not really typically the issue. It's a lot of times it goes back to what are the, you know, the client or prospective client that you're working with, real issue that they're trying to solve. And if you don't know what that is, you know, matching a rate or focusing on a few pennies on a rate is not going to solve that underlying issue.

And so, yeah, people come in with a staffing problem, they come to one of your stores, they've got a, they've got a serious problem they've gotta solve. They wouldn't go to, they wouldn't go to short-term staffing unless they had something really serious in front of them. So they've got anxiety and worry and concern, and they're also maybe a little skeptical that they haven't used staffing before, or they're worried the personnel they're gonna get are not gonna be competent. You know, there are a lot of barriers that are emotional barriers. It just strikes me that when you address those barriers and get people calmed down, then you can have the discussion about, okay, how do we serve you? And price doesn't become an issue at that point.

Yeah. I mean, because you're delivering real solutions and usually people are willing to pay for an actual solution if they perceive it to be a true solution.

So, yeah, I mean, people talk all the time about how, you know, it's too expensive, right?

But in relation to what, you know, in relation to what?

If you solve the problem, then price is no object.

We have an interesting approach to that. And it's something that it's challenging because every industry is slightly different. But you start evaluating our world. If we're dealing with a large manufacturer and they're, you know, down talent and they have production facilities that are down, their outputs are down at the facility level. And you go back to, okay, you know, our rate is X, you're looking for Y. But at the end of the day, with those lines that are down, we know we can provide real impact and solutions. Those lines are down, your income is zero. You know, your efficiencies are gone. And so we look at, you know, the delta on rate versus the production deficiencies. I mean, There's some extensive, you know, there's, there's spreadsheets and calculators and all that good stuff. At the end of the day, the logic is if you find great talent and most, most organizations, when you ask leaders, what's your most valuable asset? What do they say?

People.

People, right? So why are they looking to nickel and dime then the people experience and the recruiting experience for the people? It's kind of a hard, it's a weird dichotomy that we live in in our world. But it's a reality that we, you know, deal with and try to overcome through effective sales strategies and listening to our clients, trying to identify where the pain points are and attack those pain points with effective recruiting strategies or suggestions on how to improve their operations.

Right, exactly. And I would imagine then that that means that, that at the franchisee level, when, when they're an owner, a franchise owner is putting together a staffing, a cadre of people that, that can be outsourced out, that training those people, hiring the right people, supporting them, all become, all become critical issues to success.

Yeah.

And there must be a process you use for training, training your owners, how to, how to do that. How do you attract the right kind of talent? How do you train them? How do you motivate them? How do you, how do you imbue in them the values so that works? So that at the very lowest level, the furthest downstream, They want—

and that's where, yeah, you go back to alignment with who you're bringing in. So there's some innate inherent aspects of kind of servant leadership culture, that willingness to serve, that, uh, you know, kind of, uh, personal reputation that they want to promote. That's kind of baked in. We, we train, you know, really on all facets of successful operations, including, you know, what it means to differentiate through service, what it means to deliver, you know, a great impact to the community through screening and identifying the best talent, overcoming objections and really impacting clients where their pain points are and where their demand really is. You know, we've got phenomenal learning and development. As a franchisor, it makes sense, right? For us, we're selling a great brand and obviously helping people enter this space and trying to get them up to speed as rapidly as possible. And so our learning and development department is absolutely robust. We've got a 30-year veteran in the industry that's really led very, very large training efforts in, you know, multinational organizations. Very, very privileged to have some strong talents we do on our team really helping drive that forward.

So do you, you bring your franchisee back to Tennessee or some other nice place a year, once a year or so for—

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's the deal. We do an annual conference every year. We do some regional stuff as well, like from a training perspective. But, you know, at the end of the day, when somebody joins the franchise, we've got a tremendous training pathway, a learning pathway for owners, for their teams. That involves coming here, going through our training center. It's in my office here and going through that process. But then we bring everybody back together and, you know, yes, there is some learning opportunities when we bring everybody back together. That's more about the camaraderie, building that Atwork family. And that's what we talk about quite a bit is the Atwork family and how we really bolster and foster that culture as an organization. Because, you know, yes, everybody is in their own branches and sometimes they get feeling like they're on their own little island and nobody is really there. To remind them that, hey, you're part of a bigger organization. We're here for you and we're together. And those, those events are literally some of the best times spent because of that fact, because we have to reenergize and reinvigorate one another, rekindle those relationships that we've kind of, kind of have— time has kind of stretched them apart. So we do that every year. We're actually in the process of planning for our 2024 event right now. Actually, I got off a call leading up to this. In regards to that.

So I'm wondering, do you have— do you set up mentor-mentee relationships between your franchisees?

You know, we are not there yet just because of the size of where we're at with the amount of owners, but we are— we've talked about that at length. And so that is coming very, very soon, uh, to structure kind of a mentor-mentee relationship between new owners, tenured owners, large owners, small owners, trying to help pair them up accordingly and create this really nice, uh, dialogue within the organization.

Because I would imagine that the owners see the same problems over and over again, and the more experienced people have figured out solutions and they can share their experience with the newer people.

Absolutely. And that's it. And that's where we're at. I mean, you know, there's this, you know, great, you know, just amassing of knowledge that has come together with so many great owners that we have. We have legacy owners that, you know, the franchise is 32 years old. 32 years young this, this, this coming year. And so we've got owners, we've got our very first franchise owner who just retired this past year. We actually symbolically kind of acquired her office from her. We have a company-owned pocket in East Tennessee, a company-owned location that we keep our toes in the water. This owner was in Decatur, Alabama, right down the road from us, right near Huntsville, Alabama. And she ended up retiring after 3 iterations of her franchise contract. She piloted in 1988 before we actually started franchising. She was one of the first kind of franchise locations off the record, and we learned a lot from her. Phenomenal lady. And again, you know, we had to come in and a very— I guess there was a lot of emotional attachment to that first kind of franchise office that we had in Alabama there, and, you know, now have it in-house. And so But it is something we look at these partnerships with our owners as, as really long-term endeavors. We're not looking for kind of a one-and-done or somebody to join and kind of exit. We want those long-term family members that are going to be here for 10, 20, 30 years.

That's pretty cool to see a life cycle.

Oh, it's awesome. It's awesome.

That's got to be—

literally, she started and she was 20 years old, and now she's retired and doing quite well, her husband. And it's just been a fun ride. And we've got a few other owners that were with us since '92 and '93. Who are still a part of the system today and happy to be part of the system.

So it sounds a lot better than flipping burgers.

Oh, it is. Oh, trust me, it is. You help somebody find that job and they pick up the phone and call you and say, I, you know, I can't thank you enough. You've changed my life. You know, you've impacted, you know, we've captured some of their stories on our YouTube channel. If you jump on there and there's a few really, really nice, you know, stories not only of talent that we've helped, but also franchise owners and telling their stories. How their lives were changed through owning this staffing business. So really, really phenomenal to be able to make, again, impact at scale. So absolutely.

Well, one more question. I'll let you get back to your busy day. What's one thing, Jason, about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Oh man. Oh, well, your listeners wouldn't know this. I actually did another podcast. They might have listened to it, but I have, I've got a family, I've got 3 kids, and I'm, I'm very, very dedicated to my family. I, I, I've achieved a lot of great things in my career so far, and I've still got a long runway to go. I feel like, I hope to have a long runway to go. But I put priority where it needs to happen. So I go, I go, I'm home for dinner every night by 5:30. I have dinner with the family. I spend dedicated time with the kids. I think that's absolutely mission critical to have a positive and strong work-life balance. Put priorities in their place, put family first if you've got family. You know, they grow up too fast. And so we, I really put focus there. It didn't hold me back in my, in my career and my ability to excel in my career. You know, again, doesn't mean that, you know, once the kids go to bed, I have to check email and respond to some things and things come up. It is what it is. But when I'm there, I'm present. When I'm here, I'm here at the office, I'm present. And I think that's a, you know, kind of a life pro tip. I think you can do it. There's lots of time management and scheduling recommendations out there. Discipline yourself, do it, and you can find success.

I, I absolutely agree with that. I mean, I think that a lot of people complain about like work-life balance because they're using work as a distraction from having to deal with life.

Yeah, it's, it's all about prioritization, and sometimes you have to force it. Sometimes it's not easy and you have to, but you have to force it. And you can discipline yourself and you can discipline those around you to understand, hey, this is my schedule. And I'm not gonna waver. I'm not, I adhere to this strictly and it is what it is. And so you gotta have discipline just like in working out, just like in diet and exercise, every, all these things. If you don't have discipline, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. And so it's all about discipline and, and, and really help helping others see that you're serious about it.

So that's right. Discipline, patience, and persistence. Yep. Well, Jason, this has been a great conversation. So much, thank you so much for your time today. It's been wonderful.

Truly enjoyed it, Doug. Thank you for having me.

You're welcome. Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.