62: Craftsman, Carpenter, and Contractor

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and today I want to tell you a story. This is a story about three women. One was a craftsman, one was a carpenter, and the other a contractor. And these three women were great friends, loved to have lunch with one another, share horror stories of their different business models, and continue to brag and tell how great that they are each doing. Oftentimes, the craftsman would give the carpenter and the contractor a hard time. Because, of course, being a craftsman, she was amazing at detail. And the things she would carve were just absolutely beautiful. People paid tons of money to get the art that she would create. She just had a way with wood that very few people did. And she could carve it into different things that were meaningful to other people, and she'd be able to get a huge price for that. And as she looked at the work of the carpenter and. And the contractor, she just knew that what she did was way better quality. Oftentimes, both of the other women, the carpenter and the contractor would just sit there and listen and. And give her praise for the amazing work that they did that she did. And this went on for a long time until one day, the craftsman, she just. She just felt something that was bugging her. She noticed something that had never been brought up before, and that was that her ability to impact a large number of people was fairly limited. That sitting there and grinding out on each wood piece one after another, though it made the most beautiful art, really didn't have the ability to impact a lot of people. And as she thought about the carpenter and her ability to build homes and have a bigger impact on an entire family, rather than just an individual to protect them from the storm, to allow for multiple people to inhabit the structure that they were creating, she started to feel somewhat of a longing to have a bigger impact than what her crafts could do. Now, this was really humbling for her. Because, of course, she had constantly talked to the carpenter and the contractor about what shabby work they did and that they didn't take the time to really get in there and create something beautiful. As she looked at the frame structure that the carpenter did, and frankly, she didn't even understand what the contractor was doing. She seemed to not even be touching wood. The contractor was simply pointing to other people or leading other people. And that didn't seem nearly as complicated as the work that she was doing in creating this beautiful art. But humbly, she reached out to the carpenter. She felt that the contractor. She just really wouldn't even understand what she was looking for. And started talking to her friend, the carpenter, on why she wasn't a craftsman as much anymore and why she was doing carpentry instead. And she was shocked by the response. Her carpenter friend said exactly what she was feeling. That at one point, the carpenter had actually been a craftsman, had been in her garage doing beautiful work, but at some point wanted to have a bigger impact on people, and felt that by being a carpenter, she could build larger structures that more people could enjoy. And then she could hire people like the craftsmen to put beautiful art within the home. This was really hard for the craftsman to completely believe, because as she looked at the framing, it definitely didn't look as beautiful of the crafts she was doing. And. And she knew at times that she had to use wood that, you know, wasn't quite as good for crafts as maybe it was for framing. And so she was trying to reconcile these things in her mind. She knew that her own thoughts had led her to talk to the carpenter, to want to have a bigger impact. She felt in her gut that the carpenter was doing more than she was. But. But she couldn't reconcile the lack of detail that was required in the carpentry compared to the craft. And so she continued to mull on this. She finally realized that the only way that she would really be able to understand this is to go and work with the carpenter. And as she did, she saw things that she hadn't understood before, that is that the carpenter was working off of blueprints. And it required this huge coordination effort she had never experienced before with an architect as a craftsman. She just never needed an architect for the work that she did. But now that there was this cooperative and these synergies that needed to happen, and sometimes there was conflict, and it was much more difficult. Sometimes the carpenter wanted to do something different, but the architect needed it done a certain way. And. And so she started to see that there Was complexity in wanting to have more impact on people. She was surprised to see how much time the carpenter was spending studying these blueprints and laying out the plans, working with other carpenters to accomplish the work that she was trying to do. She had always seen it just something that this individual carpenter did and didn't really realize that there were other carpenters necessary to get her work done. In fact, the more she talked, the more collaborative she realized that this carpenter had become and how much work it took in order to get a house standing again. This was a humbling experience for her because where she had been always looking at the wood and looking at the nails, wood versus her beautiful craft, she started to realize that there was a skill set that the carpenter had in cooperation, in leadership, and in collaboration that she had never developed as a craftsman, being in this more humble place. She wondered then if the contractor maybe had skill sets as well that she had never considered clearly when she looked at the work that the contractor did. That contractor didn't even have wood in her garage. She rarely even talked about wood types and the materials being used. She seemed to give that to other people and seemed very ignorant on many of those things. But now that she had had this experience with the carpenter, the craftsman wondered if the contractor was doing something, playing maybe a different game than she had realized originally. And so, being good friends, she called her up and said, I'd love to meet with you and just ask you about your work. Well, the contractor was shocked because typically at any lunch meeting, et cetera, the craftswoman would always be talking about her work. So for her to ask about the work of the contractor was very unique. But of course, she was excited to show her. She was a little nervous. The contractor was nervous because she thought she would be opening herself up to this craftsman who's been so critical all along the way. But she thought, I'll go ahead and let her come and see what kind of questions that she asks. Well, the contractor was shocked to see that this craftsman had a different look in her eye. She. She had questions, she was more inquisitive, and she asked about what experience had brought her to this place. So the craftsman talked about her work with the carpenter and that she realized that the carpenter was doing lots more coordination than she had realized, and the impact she was having was bigger than she was having as a craftswoman, and that the carpenter wasn't opposed to the craftswoman's work and that she was including it in the homes that she was doing. Well, the contractor was thrilled with these New insights that the craftswoman had come up with. And so she opened up her doors to showing her business. And as she talked through her day and the issues that she was dealing with as a contractor, the craftswoman eyes were even more opened. Because to the extent she thought that the carpenter had developed great leadership and coordination skills with the architect, to see the skills that this contractor had to work with subcontractors and designers and the architect and so many other people, she was just shocked. These were skill sets she had never even considered. They were complex, and there was different trades that this contractor had expertise in, not just in being a great craftsperson, but also in plumbing and electrical and all these different capabilities. She was even more surprised to find out that the contractor had once, like her, been a craftswoman and had done beautiful art and had it in her home, but had one day decided that she wanted to have an even bigger impact. And she became a carpenter, and then felt even more desire to have a bigger impact on more people. The craftswoman was shocked to find out that this contractor had thousands of employees that reported to her that she had this culture that influenced them, and that she had craftswomen that was were doing work for her and putting this in their apartment complexes and commercial buildings and homes and everything that this contractor was doing. But she also realized that the path to becoming the person that she wanted to have more impact was going to be a totally different skill set than the one that she had. And she thought back on all the lunches and meetings where she was critical towards the carpenter and the contractor, and she realized now that they were playing a totally different game. They were having a totally different impact on people, and they had different skill sets that she had been blind to and hadn't even considered. Now, I can't tell you how the story ends, because there's lots of different paths that the craftswoman could take. She could have said to herself, these are new skill sets that I want to learn. She started to realize that she had maximized her capability around wood and craftsmanship. She instead wanted to learn these leadership skills, these cooperation skills, these coordination skills, these project management skills. Or maybe she went back home and decided that looking at all of that capability and knowing that that would be a rough road that she would go from being this wonderful a student, if you will, in craftsmanship, that she would have to sign up to be an F student in leadership, and she would be starting from really the ground, building her capability. Maybe she decided that that work wasn't worth doing, but either way, she now had the enlightenment to know what it would take to have more impact on more people. Now, that might not be the most interesting story or the most adventurous story you've ever heard, and you're probably not going to be telling it to your children anytime soon. But hopefully you can see the analogies that are so comparative to business and the leadership skills that we're learning every day, and definitely the interactions that we have with. With others around us. You know, when I think of building a business, I think of it like a mountain range. And each of us are at different places on that mountain range. We're all at the bottom of some mountain. And the reason I know that is because each of us love the next challenge. And so as soon as we get to the top and we see the next challenge, we run back to the bottom, and then we see that hill or mountain that we have to climb, and we work like the dickens to get to get up that mountain, only to find out that there's another mountain to climb. And at each part and each pass, we realize that sometimes the skill sets that we have to develop are all brand new. They're not ones where we're already somewhat good at something and we just need to get better sometimes. They're things that we've never even considered. As I watch clinicians who are amazing craftsmen at their skills and just continue to get better and better, and then they step out to do multiple locations, and they see all the coordination and cooperation and organization, and there's no practice management software that helps with all of that. And so they have to learn all these new tools. I think, wow, what bravery that takes and how disruptive that is for them and their life, but the challenges they're willing to take on, and then those who try to scale even farther, all the new skill sets that have to be learned. So I hope your biggest takeaway is if you're farther along in the journey, that you have a lot of respect for what you've learned and what you've been able to overcome. And no matter where you're at, that you respect that. The next steps you take will probably take you into a place where you don't have certain skill sets. That's really what the journey is. And that there's new leadership capability, there's new personal issues that you may have to face to get to that next level. But what drives us in all of this is our desire to have a greater impact. You know, when people say that, you know, other entrepreneurs are in it just for the money, let me just tell you that if that's true, that gets beat out of them very quickly because when you're in it just for the money, it doesn't. It doesn't last very long because the work is so hard and you have to find that bigger why that personal development, why that's going to take you to the next level that's going to help develop out your skill sets, mostly around leadership. If you've got a current frustration or opportunity that's sitting in front of you, maybe you can use this analogy and ask yourself, where is it? Or who is the person that I need to be talking to that maybe is at that next level? Who's maybe at the carpenter or the contractor level? Because the issue I'm dealing with and the reason it's a problem is probably because it's more complex than I'm giving credit to and it takes a different perspective, a different mindset in order to overcome. As you scale and grow, be careful at how many craftsmen you're listening to. Oftentimes people will push you around what your practice growth should be and why don't you have better margins, etc. I just see that comment made often where the craftsmen are talking about these details when the carpenters and the contractors are trying to play a much bigger game. All of those things are important on one side, but have to be taken into context on another side. Be careful of your organization skills. I have a podcast that's around dope, documenting, organizing, prioritizing, then engaging or executing. Make sure you listen to that and if you have more questions come on our Facebook site. I'm seeing that a lot of people are focused on the leadership character side, which is awesome. But there's tactical leadership capabilities in impacting and scaling a business and I think that starting with the dope concept is one of the most powerful places you can go. Well, hopefully you've pulled more out of this story than even I tried to make comparison of for you personally. I encourage you to keep pushing forward to keep looking for opportunities to have a bigger impact. Keep developing in your leadership skills, and most important, keep smiling. If you want to come and ask more questions, come over on our Facebook site at DSO Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling.

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