Joy is Moving the Needle with Andrew Schmidt

Hey everybody, it is your host here with Contractor Radio, Jim Johnson, the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro, where we help contractors get control of their business and lead them better so that those business can grow and scale and then hopefully, if we do things right, achieve that personal and financial freedom that you were looking for when you first started your business. If that sounds like something that you want to do with your own business, you're tired of the chaos, the frustration, the turnover, the constant trying to get things done and they're just not going as smoothly as you would like. Down in the show notes, you'll find a link to our contractor assessment. Click that link, take that assessment, and we will do a true blue coaching call with you to help you with the next two or three things that you need to do in your business. If you like the coaching, become a client. That would be great. If not, that's okay too. At least we served you well. I am excited about today's show because here recently we had our 10th anniversary. August 3rd. 10 years ago we started this coaching thing and I reached out to a few companies that I had known in my previous experience, said, hey, you guys interested in maybe some help in growing that thing? And two people were crazy enough to say yes. A guy out of Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma, roofscapes, Clint. And then this guy, this guy I'm bringing in today. So we're gonna kind of see evolution over 10 years of what's happened with this company. So much is because of them. They're hard working, really have put a lot of thought and effort into their business and it's been exciting to watch them grow. Andrew is the founding partner, one of the three founding partners of Core Contractors. I got a whole list of things here, so I'm gonna just grab it real quick so I don't miss anything. 2021, small biz of the year for the Denver Chamber. 2018 small biz of the year for the Dallas for the Denver Business Journal. 2021, number 10 best place to work in Denver. 2014 torch award winner for the Better Business Bureau. This guy's all about giving back through nonprofits, incubator type stuff. It has been awesome to watch him evolve over the years and excited to bring him on. Hey, Andrew. What's going on, man? Good to see you, brother.

Hey, Jim, good to see you too.

Yeah, it's been a thing, like it's been a while. Like I knew you before that, I think from UASRC and acculinx and that stuff, right?

Yeah, I think we, we met at a best of success conference, I believe, way back in the day, maybe 2012.

Yeah. And we actually kind of liked each other. Things were cool.

Liked each other. You were like, hey, let's think about doing this coaching thing. And I'm like, I think we need some goddamn. We need some help.

And, and so, so we got started and why don't you give everybody your background? Like, how did you even get in this industry in the first place? And kind of bring us up to speed with where we are today. Reader's Digest version, because it's about 10 years.

Yeah, it's. Well, it's. It was wild. I was a very accidental business owner. My, my. My degree was in classical theater, which, you know, many consider, you know, the. The starting grounds for roofing. And, and so, so. But I'd always managed sales and marketing kind of to support my theater habit. And I ended up in Denver in 2006 and got decided I was traveling a lot for theater. And so I really wanted to stay and I needed to build some community. And so got into, you know, selling carpet and then telemarketing and really hated that. And then met my now business partners who had teamed up to start a roofing company after sort of the collapse in 08 09. They were both in the development space. And so the existing partnership that started core happened back then. And so Thomas Wolfram was a general contractor by trade. Jim Horning was a cfo, just a smart guy by trade. And so they teamed up and when they went to start their company in Denver, they needed somebody to knock on doors, and neither of them wanted to do that. And they found me and we started a partnership in 2010. And so I quit my terrible telemarketing job and started knocking doors in the spring of 2010.

And so what you're saying just out of here knocking doors is better than telemarketing?

100%.

Okay. Yeah, telemarketing is terrible. I did that in college. I was like, oh, I hate it.

Yeah, telemarketing, this is tough. This tough. Be on an auto dialer for a couple months and let me know how that works. And so it's, it's a tough deal. But. But yeah, we. We teamed up and, you know, I feel like the first couple years of. Of doing business, we were really sort of looking to the industry to inform who we were and how we were structured and how we did what we do, obviously, in Denver was a heavy storm market. And so that was kind of our first introduction was as trying to be a full turn key, full Turnkey general contractor within sort of the storm restoration industry, which I think a lot of our contractors start in that space in response to that market condition. And so we teamed together in the first couple years. I feel like we were figuring it out, but there was just a lot of heartache and a lot of pain and a lot of trying to figure out, like, hey, what is the right thing to do and what does it look like to do this differently? And I remember, you know, I joined a SBA emerging leaders program in 2012, and I saw. Or 2013 it might have been, and I saw the first Simon Sinek How Great Leaders Inspire Action video, which has obviously been. Been well loved by a lot of people in our industry. But I saw that video and it really just clicked for me. And I was like, that's what we're missing. We're selling from the outside in and not from the inside out. And so you and I met about that same time, and I was like, we need. I came back to my partners, Jim and Thomas, laugh about this. And I was like, guys, I know what we're missing. We need a purpose statement. And Jim and Thomas were like, totally, totally. But actually, what we need is $250,000 of revenue this month. And then purpose all you want, you know, And. And so that was the start to our journey, and that was our engagement when. When we met was, hey, could you help us navigate how do we. How do we figure out a purpose statement for our company to sort of be that North Star and lens that we apply to all different avenues of the business? And. And so, yeah, so then we worked with you. We landed on doing it right matters, which at first seemed so simple, but we kept coming back to this idea that we wanted to do things the right way and it mattered to do it the right way. And it wasn't perfect, but we started to implement it, and we immediately began to see areas that didn't align in our house with that idea, with that statement. And we were faced with the decision to saying, hey, do we mean it when we say it? And if so, how do we change and how do we align with this vision? And. And that really took us on, like, a wild trajectory of growth. Obviously, lots of hail out here. We were still only doing residential work. And then in 2015, we had our biggest year ever. And. But we were. We had a lot of dysfunction, you know, a lot of. Lot of. We finally started tracking our exit surveys of our client satisfaction and sort of a net promoter score in 2015. And we realized that While we were building a heavy referral based business through our referral partners here in town that we were, we were only had about 75% said that they would refer us. And, and while 75 doesn't sound terrible, you can't piss off 1/4 of your clients of your referrals and think that it's going to sustain. And so we were exposed to traction which I'm sure you've chatted with people about traction. We read that book at the end of 2015 and started self implementing traction and the entrepreneurial operating system back then. And it really helped to have partners in this and not be a sole entrepreneur in terms of the accountability of the partnership construct. And then that really led us down a couple of great paths. One, we eliminated all of our non roofing and gutter trades and then started to invest into a commercial service strategy to try to grow decreased reliance on weather while we had some good years, but also improve our systems on the residential side and continue to grow. We cut, we talked to it for years as kind of a chiropractic adjustment. We had grown strong but we were, our structure was a little out of whack and we needed that adjustment to help us have a firmer foundation that we could continue to grow on. And so, so yeah, so that led us into you know, 20, you know, basically up into the pandemic in terms of understanding, you know, how traction really helped us operationalize sort of these ideas of belief and behavior into our company. And we, and I became a student of that type of work and that's when we got to interact a little bit more and, and the roofing industry really started to acknowledge that hey, that we can create purpose driven cultures that maybe haven't looked this way in the past and, and disrupt some old mindsets around a business owner's relationship with their people and their company in terms of our responsibility as owners to the people that we lead. And so that kind of led us to the pandemic. Pandemic went crazy. Pandemic was wild. Denver as you know, Denver just stopped hailing for three years. And that was tough.

I think Denver caught Covid. It was like we can't handle it.

Denver caught Covid. It's a great way to put it. And then the supply chain caught Covid affecting commercial stuff. And so our brilliant strategy for non reliance on storm and what we already thought was a recession proof business in this market was challenged on both fronts. And so it's been a tough couple years of a valley and leaning back in to really sort of redirect re. Establish things and prepare us. And then. And then things have been. Things have gotten back to. Gotten back to busy this year. So I hope that was a succinct enough.

Yeah, when you cover 10 years, it takes a minute. And funny enough, you know, it's been a bit of that trajectory for us too. You know, as I first started coaching contractors, I'm like, hey, I do have a wealth of knowledge that I can share and some important things that I believe in. This idea of having a strong foundation with a vision and purpose and core values and mission. I don't think people give that enough credit for the value that it is, because it is the guiding light for what you're gonna do in your business. And I always use you guys actually like that. Do it right matters. You guys got really behind that and it really helped you grow your business. And everybody that came in, while they may not have been 100% there, it did make a difference in how you looked at things. And everything was kind of looked at through that lens. And I always held you up as, like this shining, like that's what culture looks like. And we walk through a lot of things together. You know, the trimming down of, like, it was one of the first things I can remember sitting in your offices with you, I'm like, why in the world are we doing all these trades? It's a lot of trades. It's hard to manage. Right. And it took a little while, but you guys kind of came back around to it. I can remember that phone call, like, hey, we decided we're just going to do roofing. Like, all right, good, Sweet. But it was. It was an awesome journey to see you guys on. And we were on kind of a similar journey of making what we do coaching operational. How do you make that operational so that you can continue it on? And so we created this thing called a mission meeting, which is very similar to a level 10 meeting. I want to give credit where credit is due to traction, but if there's an entrepreneur operating system, I would say ours is a contractor operating system. Like speaking the language of a contractor and adding some nuance in there for some other resources that, while combining with some of the traction things, makes it all that much more powerful. And we've been installing that for the last about six years with our contractors. And it's been really wild to see the results of that and have them come back to us and say, hey, it's nice to have this accountability system in there that really forces us to Hit that guiding light that we're after through all this time, like, you know, it was kind of a big rise and then we're like, hey, we're going to do commercial, get a little bit more recession proof type of thing. How did that evolve for you guys, like going from residential to commercial?

Yeah, you know, we had, it helped that, you know, Thomas, my partner, is a great construction mind. He had a construction management degree from Syracuse and had spent many years with bags on, you know, doing framing and all sorts of different things. So that, that was always been, I think one of our, our biggest advantages to broaching into whether it's new material or we're installing or new verticals of business has always been really helpful to have him there because his mind is able to really assess risk from a construction standpoint. And it was tricky. You know, we were, we were really trying to figure out, you know, could we expand our referral network, which we get a lot of our business from insurance agents out here and could we expand that into commercial? And we felt like we needed to do that by investing first into a service model that could build relationships through service and then sort of be in a pole position or at least a last look position when larger opportunities came through. And you know, the first, first couple of years were, were awesome. It was I think 17, 17, 18, 19, 16. We were kind of building the service and then 17, 18, 19 were a 1, 2, 3 million dollar year on the commercial side. And so we felt like that was trending in a really positive direction until the pandemic hit. And so, but we, but boy, you know, I will say that the service building and running and operating service departments is a long game and it takes a lot of commitments and just finding the right people and the right system to follow on that. And so, you know, it was, it was trending in a really, really positive way until, until the pandemic hit. And then that was where, you know.

We were where all those commercial properties said, hey, I want to hold on to my money. All the distribution went, hey, we don't have any ISO board.

Yeah, yeah, they generally just that whole year, I'm sure we saw a lot across the board. We don't do new construction. So new construction I think was still moving but still struggling with some of the same issues. But for us it was all reroof and adaptive reuse and all of a sudden we had a huge queue of retail work in line and it just all went away. It turned into very, very minimal service kind of through the first Part of the pandemic. And then the supply chain caught up where we were. Everybody was waiting, you know, six to 10 months for, you know, poly ISO or plates and screws and, you know, random, random material things. And so, so yeah, so it was a. It's been bumpy and it's been up and down, but it's. We do like the diversity that it brings in terms of being able to, to, to capitalize and execute with knowledge sort of within the same system that we try to create in terms of a customer experience at core.

I really hate interrupting these videos, but I've got some important information for you. If you haven't tried out Atlas shingles, you should, because they put you first as a contractor. They want to give you a competitive advantage out in the field so that you can win more sales and be more profitable. Check out Atlas in your local area, find your local rep, get hooked up with them today and start making more money tomorrow. Yeah, so it was like a two year storm like this. All these things that could happen, did happen that make things difficult. How would you say you guys weathered that storm? What were some of the key components? Because a lot of people went out of business, especially if they were in the commercial world, they just took them out. How did you guys weather that? Was there something that you had done in advance that planning for it? Did James have a lot to do with it from the financial aspect of things? Yeah. What did you guys do?

Yeah, I basically should probably just spend most of this hour talking about how lucky I am to have my two partners.

You have two amazing. It was a great team.

They're like, could you tell us what you do here? And I'm like, I'm jazz hands and whiskey, my man.

You gotta have that guy, though. You gotta have that guy.

So it. We always joke when we'd go to the roofing conference and things like I just tell Thomas, I'm like, hey, I'm like, I'm just going to drop a line out the back of my boat. Just ride the wake, buddy.

That's awesome.

So it's. But no, a couple things. The pandemic, sort of unknown pandemic preparation, if you'll call it really, I think started, you're correct with Jim. Jim has always approached our business with a sound financial mind and, and just a long history of financial acumen that, that he's had. And so, so we were always just really conservative. We were conservative with distributions, we're conservative with our. You know, when we came into the pandemic, we had A protected back sort of rainy day fund, or lack of hail fund, if you will, of eight months in reserve to cover eight months of payroll when the pandemic hit. And then, so, yeah, so I think that there was a lot of conservative financial mindset, a conservative financial mindset that Jim brought to our business and our partnership. And, you know, the, the business was not our personal bank account and we were filled, filling up areas of need before, you know, at the end of the day, when we wanted to distribute something, it was after all the needs were met. And so we also, I feel like it really helped in terms of we had a very kind of transparent culture with our team going into the pandemic. And so we had started doing annual meetings at the end of the year that Jim referred to as shareholder meetings. And that all of us in this company are shareholders in this idea that we're building together. And these shareholders as a shareholder, this exists to improve the quality of life for you and your family first in terms of your engagement. And so we began having these meetings that really talked about all of our financial numbers and what was going into it and how we did each year and sort of really inviting everyone to say that we're all shareholders in this idea. And then that I would say the third part was sort of the culture that we had invested into and created and the team that we had when the pandemic hit. Because I, I, the analogy I've always used for what it felt like when that pandemic hit was like the scene in the movie when all the guys in the sub, you know, smoking cigarettes and playing cards and eating weird food. And then all of a sudden, like the, the lights start blinking red and everybody just runs to battle stations and it's sort of in a ready position, even when they were drinking and playing cards and smoking, you know, and that was what it felt like when the pandemic hit. We felt like we had a team at the time. We had 47 employees building into 2020. We were really investing into changing our sales strategy and really looking for a growth year. But the caliber of the people, the clarity of role and responsibility. You know, I know we're all fans of Jocko Willink, but Jocko Willink has a leadership phrase that I've always stuck onto ever since I met him at the, one of the platinum conferences. And he talked about in his extreme ownership is, oh, gosh, now I'm forgetting the, I'm saying, I always talk about it.

I can't remember it.

Decentralized command. So he Talks about. Sorry, that's funny. I'm like, I always talk about it and I'm forgetting it now.

You're a visionary. That's what you do.

He's like, yeah, give me a break and I'm drunk. And so they. No, but decentralized command he talks about. The idea is that when the mission and the vision is totally clear, right, Your Navy SEAL guy is going to maybe see information that you can't see, and he's going to make a call that changes the operational plan. And you have to trust that he has such clarity of what the mission objective is that you get to trust him to make a decision that changes the plan. And so that's been something that I think that was so helpful, was that who we were and how we showed up and how we behaved was so ingrained in us in that moment that everybody was clear about what their function was. They were clear about what their responsibilities and roles were. And so when shit hit the fan and things went kind of crazy, everybody went to battle ready stations. And we started just figuring out what to do. And I think that that methodology or sort of philosophy of transparency informed how we communicated with the team in those first three months, which was, here's what we know, here's what we don't know, right? Let's. Let's focus on what we know. And these are the things. If you see any toilet paper or Clorox wipes or hand sanitizer, buy as much as you can and distribute it.

We'll reimburse you.

You know, and so, you know, we were, we just had that rhythm. And I think that it created peace of mind for everyone that when we were able to say, hey guys, we, we didn't know it'd look like this. But we've been prudent with our finances. We've been conservative with what we've had. We've been building our backlog. Here's. We could not do any business and we can survive for almost another year. And, and, and so going through that process, I think as a team only incurred more and more sort of buy in into that. We're gonna. No one's, no one's gonna show up to work and the door is going to be locked.

Yeah. When that pandemic hit, it was. People took one of two routes. They either like went into this confusion mode and were almost at a place they couldn't do anything because they didn't know what to do. And then there was the, like you said, the battle ready. You're like all Right. So that wasn't in our plan, but we know what our mission is. Our mission is to empower people to believe here at Contractor Coach Pro. So let's go do that. Let's, let's execute that. My team was, was absolutely amazing and sounds like yours was too, to, to get through that thing.

Yeah. And the second thing I'd say is just the, you know, obviously the, you know the federal government is, is not known to be expeditious or quick in terms of money but you know, they, they sent out a lot of things that really helped our company and thankful to have a financial mind like Jim on our team navigating that and understanding sort of the PPP loans and all of those things which we were able to use to really help, you know, steady the ship and keep people employed and leverage those dollars in the way that they were intended to. And so that was definitely a huge part of it. You know, we didn't have enough backlog to make everything work without some of that, that funding and that helped us do it. And then we kind of had to get to a place where we had to do, you know, a bit of a painful restructure in, in the fall of 22 to sort of right the ship lean back in. Jim and Thomas and I had started to step out of the company in 21 from a full time operational perspective. And, and then it was kind of like, you know, it's, you know, it's not all, it's not all mountaintops and sometimes you go through a valley and you got to decide are you going to get back in and figure it out. And I think now we're reaping the benefits of still maintaining as much of the core qualified, much of the core team, if you will, who we put up against anybody as I think the best team in roofing. And we were able to keep those and still lose money and manage, get us back to a place of figuring out a new Strategy. This last Q1 and Q2 which was going to say, hey, we're going to get back to profitability without storms, period. And then of course we spent two months restructuring all of that. And then it hailed like a.

Well, nice plan.

Yeah, yeah. And so it's hailed more in the last like couple months than it has in the last five years combined. So, so we're trying to not, not lose some of the quality of sort of what we did from a strategic perspective in terms of this reliance on hail. But at the same time we're dealing with a, with, with quite the storm here and, and the team has come back. I think I joked with you. We've had six or seven of our old employees come back in the first month after the storm and some key, key pieces, esa and that we are scheduler field managers, coordinator, sales reps and I think we're going to have two of the highest performing residential only reps, managers, coordinator, sales reps. And, and, and I think we're, I think we're going to have two of the highest performing residential only reps in the history of anybody I've ever heard this year. It's pretty awesome.

Yeah, there's, there's some big numbers out there right now.

I should, I should touch base with you and see what those numbers are.

Yeah, I had a guy on the show, 18.3 million residential.

Like I've, that's like residential only. Oh, I should shut my mouth. No multifamily in that.

No mind blowing. Like he had a team around him. He's been doing it for 23 years. So yeah, he has a team. Don't mistake that he was able to do by themselves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways. But yeah, so yeah, so that was, that's where we are now.

For the listeners, I want to point out something like your leadership team now you guys are all partners but this isn't quite a requirement. It's really looking at it from like the leadership perspective. You got Mr. Finance over there in Jim, like he really, like you said, he's conservative about it. He keeps everybody honest. You don't spend money. It's not your own personal bank account. That's such a big thing in this business because so many people do. It's like, oh man, there's a whole bunch of money in the bank. I'm going to go buy a new truck or do something not so wise with that money and having that kind of check on somebody that is a visionary, that's kind of wild. And all that good stuff is good for us. We don't always like it, but it's good for us. Right. Like this thing that is going to help propel us forward into the future. And you have these three leadership styles that we talk about. Actually you'll hear Gino Wickman talk about it too. In traction. You got visionary, integrator and he doesn't talk about this third one, but specialist or what we call champion. And that's how I always saw you guys from the beginning. You're the charisma guy. Your guys got. Hey man, we're going to. This is going to be amazing is wonderful. And, and you bring, you bring the energy to the equation.

Yeah.

Jim over there and Tomas, both of them, they're, they're both integrator style, folks. But Thomas is really like, champion too. Like, hey, I got this building thing. You don't have to worry about it. You guys go do your thing.

I like the moniker of specialist. I mean, that's, that's. He's a generalist, but a specialist, I think in terms of construction and yeah, he's just unbelievable.

I was talking to him whenever we first met. This guy knows way more than I do about production and building things, for sure. I wish I would have had a guy like that. And so I think that's key for people listening to go, okay, which one am I? Which one am I in this thing? How do I find the other two? Because it's really important to have that mix. They don't have to be partners. They can be other leaders in your business, but somebody that puts a check and balance on you. Yeah. I can remember when I first started, I was the only one as a contractor and like, hey, I got all this money. It's wonderful. It's amazing.

Yeah.

Then I, then I got like a finance person. I was like, oh, that's really all the money I have. Okay, now I understand it. That's a bit different.

Yeah.

And then I had a production guy that actually did become my partner that was much like Thomas. Like, absolute rock star. That was his thing. And so knowing that about this industry and having those three, I think is just super important. Have you got found that to be true?

Yeah. I would say, boy, you know, you know, sometimes, you know, you say you don't want to be like, you know, not think you're lucky and think, you know, born on, boy, what does I say? Born on third base and think you hit a triple. And. And so, you know, we, we really lucked out in terms of how this gelled, but the takeaways from it have just been so incredible. I think our industry is plagued with horror stories of partnerships. And it's not just our industry, it's the world. Partnerships are hard.

Because before you go any further, I don't mean to interrupt you, but what do you think made it actually work? Because you'll, you'll say it yourself.

Yeah.

That those guys are like, hey, what do you do here? Like, what's your job again? Like, yeah.

And.

But that's okay with you guys. I can remember talking about that with you up front, like getting these roles and they were Both, like. No, that's his job. Just be.

Yeah.

Like, go be Andrew, because Andrew is what's going to draw the attention. Yeah.

Yeah.

And we'll do our thing.

I think that, you know, there's. There's a. You know, I think friction, like healthy friction, is. Is really what creates relationship. Right. I'm. You're married. I'm married. And it's like that. That friction in terms of a commitment is. Is what produces good life. Right. If there's no friction, then there's no repair, and then there's no growth. Right. And so I think sometimes we're afraid of friction, and I think we need to lean into it and recognize that it's not personal when it happens. I think the thing that is, I've. When I've reflected on what has made our partnership so successful, and we've started other businesses and we have real estate together, and so it's been deference. And I think that there's an element of. We've all been owner operator involved for a lot of years until we together stepped back a little bit to create some more paths of upward mobility for our. Our team members here. But, you know, I think it helps. I think there's resentment sometimes that can grow from a money guy that's sort of silent and the guy that's doing all the hard work. And then when, you know, when he. When he needed the money, he sure loved him. And then when he was making the money, he sure hated cutting those checks. And there is inherent attention to those formats. But. So I think it was helpful that we were all in it. But then I think it was really helpful that there was such complementary skill sets. Like you mentioned, like, when you think about as a leader, whether it's a partnership or whether it's on your leadership team, we all have a tendency to like the people that are like us, and that's a major problem in hiring. And, you know, Thomas was an expert in construction, Jim was an expert in finance, and I was an expert in doing whatever it is I do, you know, making people like me. And so we. When we teamed, it's like, you know, I think friction, like healthy friction, is. Is really what creates up. And we really got to know each other. We realized that lots of decisions probably had a greater percentage of where it lied in one of our three camps, Right. Was this more sales and marketing and culture? Was this more managing a relationship in a complex situation? Was this more of a construction problem or a. I don't want to do this or I want to do this and you don't want to do it, you know, or was it more of a financial problem? And so I think it's important to note, for the first seven years of business, we were not equally. The ownership percentage was not equal. So. But from the day that we really, really got into this, we've treated it as thirds, even though it wasn't thirds. And there was deference based on where the decision lied. And so if it lived a little bit more in one of those camps, it didn't mean that that person carte blanche had the say, but there was respect to the value of their opinion, having more weight. And I think that's something that sometimes gets in the way because of egos and trying to be right and different things like that. It's saying, let's have deference for where this decision lives within our camp and then recognize that when we leave a room, one power of three is nice for all sorts of reasons. But we can. We can leave a room with a decision no matter what. And sometimes it was me and Thomas ganging up on Jim, and sometimes it was Jim and Thomas telling me to stop spending so damn so much damn money. And. And. And so. But we could leave a room. And then when we left that room, it's like, you know, having collaborative discourse, right? With. When tackling wicked problems and saying, like, let's all. How do we solve issues at a team? Everybody's heard. You're repeating yourself. You're politicking. Let's get it all out there. Let's have a discussion. Let's salt. Let's settle on a path. And then once we settled on that path, everybody's behind it. Everybody's behind it. You may not have won this one. You'll win the next one, but what you're responsible for now is to get. Get behind it, get your team behind it and be a part of the solution and not allow that sort of nagging discomfort or pain or annoyance of not winning this one and being like, we're gonna win if we're on the same page, right?

Dude, that. That is so much wisdom right there. Realizing whose wheelhouse it's in, deferring to them when it's in their wheelhouse and not having an ego about winning an argument, right? Like, that's call a spade a spade. That's what it is sometimes, right? It's this argument and going, you know what? That's a financial matter. Um, okay, Jim, that's cool. I'll stop spending so much, right?

Yeah, well, we joke, Jim. We Say that, you know, Jim's I'm the engine and Jim's the brakes.

Well, that's the thing. I don't want to sell your. Like, you tend to be pretty humble and self deprecating and stuff like that whenever it. Like they're. They're so awesome at what they do. But like, you guys wouldn't be core without you. Like that part. And they know that. I think that's really valuable that they know that and you know that they. That you wouldn't be core without them. That's just such a great dynamic between the three of you. I think the people listening today really should, like, hone in on that part. The wisdom of that. And that was really good. Thank you for sharing that, by the way, because that's sometimes some things that we don't want to talk about. Right?

Yeah. Well, it's been fun. So I'm a big fan of. I'm a big fan of being in it together with someone. I think the individuals that grow and build businesses by themselves are some of the most impressive people that I know that they've learned to do it all because we're not good at all of it. And so raising sort of those skills that maybe don't come easy to us. Like, I still don't know how to run a payroll and I never will, you know.

No, you're not allowed to touch that.

Yeah, I'm like, don't. Don't touch that. Like it was a few years ago. They're like, everyone follows these communication rules in the system. Andrew's just not going to be in the system. And so that was a good move. It brought a lot of clarity to everybody.

Oh, here I am interrupting you again. But this is an important message you do not want to miss because it's about AI AI and sales. Could you imagine having every sales call recorded, analyzed, tell you what's winning, share it with everybody else so they can start winning. Everybody's closing percentages go through the roof. If you haven't heard of Rilla voice, you need to go check out Rilla today in the comments below. Okay, so let's switch gears a little bit. Back in the day, we went through the whole core values mission purpose, and you mentioned it earlier, this purpose of doing it right matters, and that served you well for quite some time. But like all businesses, they evolve over time. Ours evolved. We were coaching contractors to win, and we're. We're now evolved into this thing that's empowering people to believe because that's really what we do. And it took some people around me and some time to kind of evolve into that from this thing that we were. Now you guys have followed a similar path. You want to share a little bit of that story? Because I want to get to what this vehicle has become for you in particular.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, the model that traction follows that that helped us. I think the reason. I think there's a lot of books that have a lot of great things to say about business, but where we found a home there was that we felt like it was the first book that we read that had a little bit of a workbook approach to it that was kind of like, this is what you do for the two days with your leadership team at an annual off site. You have to do it out of your office. You have to go. Go rent a. Rent. We would go rent a big mountain house, you know, and go up as a whole leadership team and if. And stay there together and do meals to get, you know, and like, just get away. And so the book really gave us a lot of that type of structure to help us figure out how to do this. And I think that was the first. The first thing that we needed was just. We just didn't know how to do it. I'm sure you, like many of our listeners in the business world, like, read good to great. Love Jim Collins, right? Who doesn't? Amazing book. But you read the book and you're like, that's awesome. I have no idea what to do next, you know, and so that was where we settled into that. So that structure was really helpful for us. And I think that that structure helped us understand how to operationalize sort of this vision and this belief system, right? Because the culture is defined as a community of people that are surrounding a similar set of beliefs, right? That's what defines commute culture and community. And. And so it helped us operationalize that and then the core values as well. Sort of getting us away from sort of our management of performance as sort of whether you fit or not as a focus and really a management of behavior as whether or not you fit or not. And then really focusing on a behavior as saying, hey, you may be the best. So we've all had the great sales guy that's a total dick, right? And out for himself. And we're like, what do we do with this high performance, low culture individual? Well, we suffer with that person for a decade before we finally decide we're going to move on and change our culture, right? Because it's all about Behavior. And so, yeah, so we had the doing it right matters, I think for six or seven years, it was really resonating. And then the rhythm of holding these things with an open hand on an annual basis, I think is so critical because we. We look at both of where we were at 10 years ago, right? We're in very different positions in life. We have different experiences. We're wiser in some areas, probably dumber in others. And it's like different people around you now, people, different experiences, all of this stuff. And so I think that the rhythm of. Of there being no sort of sacred cow in terms of the things that maybe you feel you and the company have done, have worked really hard to manage or, you know, it's a lot of times you'll get these core values and then they just stay forever. And checking in and saying, is this still relevant? Right? Does this mission still resonate with us? And I think it was after about seven years, we came in and I think what we were learning was that as the company grew, I became more and more interested in however long someone was with our company. I was interested in moving the needle in their life. That whether it was three months, God forbid, for whatever reason, a year, two years, five years, 10 years. What I became most interested in is where are you now and where are you when you leave, right? And maybe you never leave and you're running our company in 10 years, even better. But people are going to evolve and grow, and some leave and some stay and some grow with you, some grow with you for a time, and then they move on to the next thing that they're going to do. And it's our privilege to be a part of that growth, whatever that time is. And so we started, you know, we just started celebrating. You know, people were buying homes for the first time. You know, we were seeing destructive behaviors that had been long held by some of our people decrease and positive. 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. What I became most interested in is where are you now and where are you when you leave, right? And maybe you never leave and you're running our company in 10 years, even better. But people are going to evolve and grow. And some leave and some stay and some grow with it if ones replace them. We were seeing engagements and children and marriages and homes and first new cars and, you know, and all of a sudden it just kind of kept coming back in this feed to us that I was like, boy, it just. It seems like what I'm most interested in, what we're most interested in, what we're celebrating the most. The most is these accomplishments, these neat things that are happening in people's lives and. And. And just moving that needle in someone's life. And so as we were wrestling with that one year, it just. We just kept coming back to this idea. We're like, boy, doing it right Matters was the vision view. Some grow with you for a time, and then they move on to the next thing that they're going to do. And it's our privilege to be a part of that growth, whatever that time is. And so we started, you know, we just started celebrating. You know, people were buying homes for the first time. You know, we were seeing destructive behaviors that had been long held by some of our people decrease in positive. We needed to build a roofing company. But now to actually, like, live in this company, like, really what we're all about is improving people's lives and how we do that, you know, by providing a great roofing experience for both our clients and our employees. That's how we do it right. And. And so, so much of that goes into understanding how to create that experience. Just like, for me, I was a train wreck when my partners first met me. And for me, learning how to create a company that was profitable was hard, you know, And. And. But it. It leached good things into my life because I've once replaced them. We were seeing engagements and children and marriages and homes and first new cars and, you know, and. And all of a sudden, it just kind of kept coming back in this feed to us that I was like, boy, it just. It seems like what I'm most interested in, what we're most interested and what we're celebrating the most, the most is. Was accountable to something else. Where for a long time, I really wasn't accountable to anyone. And I. I had a lot of talent, natural talent that I was squandering because I just wasn't accountable to anyone. And so I was. So that led towards sort of the. The evolution of the power of business to transform our lives personally and then use that leverage that. To transform the lives of those around us. That's really at the heartbeat of our culture and our growth and things like that.

Man, that's so good. The fact that the business changed your life and recognizing that and saying it needs to.

These accomplishments, these neat things that are happening in people's lives and just moving that needle in someone's life. And so as we were wrestling with that one year, we just kept coming back to this idea. We're like, boy, doing it right matters. Was the vision we needed to build a roofing company. But now to actually, like, live in.

Do that for everybody that works for us. Yeah, dude, that's. That's so cool.

Thanks. Yeah.

Well, that's what this is. That's what this is all about. And I, And I try to preach it with. With our. With our clients. Like, hey, KPIs are important. They. They do, you know, give you some kind of idea of how somebody's performing or not performing. But that's not what this is about. Because if people aren't being challenged, if they're not growing, they're dying. If they're dying in your business, they'll be leaving your business. So how do you. How do you provide these opportunities?

Company? Like, really what we're all about is improving people's lives and these.

For people to continue to grow and thrive and. And have opportunity.

And how we do that, you know, by providing a great roofing experience for both our clients and our employees. That's how we do it. Right. And so, so much of that goes into understanding how to create that experience.

Just like I love the idea of celebrating those. What may not seem like a big thing to you anymore might seem like a big thing to them if you just put yourself in their shoes. I remember buying my first new car, man. That was a big deal. That was like crazy. That was a huge thing. Now I just bought one on Friday. I was like, I bought a car. Okay, on with next thing, right?

I remember my first car got repoed.

Been there, been there. That man. A long time ago.

But, well, you know, it's. You remind me of one thing that. That might be a fun nugget, I think, for folks listening and that is. I read a book a few years. For me, I was a train wreck when my partners first met me. And for me, learning how to go by a tech entrepreneur named Vishen created a company that was profitable. Was hard, you know, And. And. But it. It leached good things into my life because I was accountable to something else where for a long time I really wasn't accountable to anyone. And Akiani, I think is his name. It's a book called Buddha and the Badass. And he. I think I read it in 20 sometime around the pandemic. I think it came out in 20.

A little Buddha in your life.

You need a little Buddha. And I read it and you know, there's. It's a totally different world, right? But he's. He's definitely really keen in. And I think one of the. At least When I read it, one of the more progressive understanding, sort of the shift of, like, culture and what that building culture means. I had a lot of talent, natural talent that I was squandering. And one thing that he had that he, that we implemented, and so I want to give him credit for it, was because I just wasn't accountable to anyone. And so I was. So that led towards sort of the evolution of the power of business to transform our lives personally and then use that, leverage that to transform the lives of those around us. In the hiring process, after someone's hired, I would always sit down with every new hire after, sometimes before the hiring, sometimes I wouldn't if I didn't need to or my management team was taking care of that. But every new hire, when they would come in, sit down with them and have just a culture talk, I'd call it. That's really at the heartbeat of our culture and our growth and things like that.

Man, that's so good. The fact that the business changed your life and recognizing that and saying it needs to do that for everybody that works for us. Dude, that's so cool.

I would send out a note to them and say, hey, this is a test. You can't fail. You don't need to bring anything to it. I just want to connect. I started with these three questions, but then when I was doing it, he had these three most important questions. M IQs, they call them. And I started doing that. But what I realized would be a fun thing to start that with is the first 30 minutes, I would just have the employee tell me their story. I'd be like, hey, tell me. Go back as far as you want, as far as you remember. You can start elementary, middle, high school, family. Why don't you just tell me your story? Like, how'd you get here? Thanks, man.

That's what this is. That's what this is all about. And I, and I try to preach it with, with our, with our clients. Like, hey, KPIs are important. They, they do, you know, give you some kind of idea of how somebody's performing or not performing, but that's not what this is about.

And, and then just let them talk for 30 minutes. And, you know, you'd be sitting there with a service tech, you know, that had worked for, you know, a number of other companies and had spent his whole life working in roofing. And, and you sit there and you just, I want to know your story. Right? And, and it was incredible to get to know your people by just letting them tell their Story. And I think story is such a powerful thing. And so integrating that in. And then the second half telling the story of Core, but then leaning back into a conversation about them. And this is where the Buddha and the badass reference comes in, and he talks about his three most.

Because if people aren't being challenged, if they're not growing, they're dying. If they're dying in your business, they'll be leaving your business. So how do you provide these opportunities for people to continue to grow and thrive and. And have opportunity? I. I love the idea of celebrating those. Those what may not seem like a big thing to you anymore might seem like a big thing to them if you just put yourself in their shoe. I remember buying my first new car. Man, that was a big deal. That was like, crazy. That was a huge thing. Now I just bought one on Friday. I was like, I bought a car. Okay, on with next thing, right?

I remember my first car got repoed. Been there, that many important questions. And they. They circle around sort of experience, growth and contribution. And so the first one is to give them an assignment and say, I want you to take this home. I want you to go sit out on a park bench somewhere. Don't do it in your house. Go sit in your backyard. Just get outside and ask these three questions of yourself. What are the experiences that I want to have in my life? And just start making a list like, what are the experiences like, I want to get married. I want to have kids. I want to. I want to make pasta in Florence. You know, I want to swim with a great whale shark off the coast of Africa.

That looks cool, by the way. I saw a guy doing that.

Yeah, I love eating. And so. But they. It was like, what are these experiences you want to have? And don't put a box on it, right? And then the second list is, what is the growth that needs to happen inside of me to be able to.

Have a long time ago?

But. Well, you know, it's. You remind me of one thing that. That might be a fun nugget, I think, for folks listening, and that is, I read a book a few years ago by a tech entrepreneur named Vishen, have some of these experiences, right? So what are the experiences that I want to have in my life? What are the areas that I want to grow if I want to swim with whale sharks? And I'm 150 pounds overweight, probably not going to work, right? What does my body need to look like for some of these experiences? What education is not there in my mind that I need to pursue to elevate myself. What's the growth? What's Makiani, I think is his name? It's a book called Buddha and the badass and missing. Where am I weak, right? Taking that moment to say, like, hey, what do I. What do I need to do to be able to get those experiences? And then lastly, like, how do I want to contribute? I think that, you know, the reference of moving the needle was given to me by a coach I worked with back in 2015. And he said true joy is found in moving the needle in other people's lives. And he. I think I read it in 20, sometime around the pandemic. I think it came out in 20.

A little Buddha in your life, you.

Need a little Buddha. And I read it and, you know, there's. It's a totally different world, right? But he's. He's definitely really keen. That has stuck with me and implanted itself sort of in the soul of my being in. And I think one of the. At least when I read it, one of the more progressive understanding and how I really began to see that was my greatest area of fertile soil for me to do that was with my team because, like, it really started to resonate to say and inform sort of our new purpose statement was how do I move the needle? And true joy is found in moving the needle in other people's lives. And so circling back to that third question around contribution, you know, we. We have really tried hard to create and I think we see a lot of great giving back within the roofing industry from, you know, I could list a hundred different things that I think that the roofing industry has really sort of the shift of like, culture and what, what that building culture means. And one thing that he had that he. That we implemented, and so I want to give him credit for it was in those. In the. In the hiring process, in people's lives. And I think that we can take it one step further and say, how do. After someone's hired, I would always sit down with every new hire, how do we integrate and show up in our team's lives to help encourage and foster more active participation in terms of what we want to contribute? And so that third question in the 3M IQs was saying, if you could move the needle on one issue, if you could contribute in any way, what would it look like? And I think it's a really neat thing when you have a new employee that answers that question, you'll find out things that you would have never known about them. Right. They're like, I want to be a speaker someday. You're like, cool. Or I want to. I want to. I want to start a nonprofit that helps inner city kids play baseball. You're like, after sometimes before the hiring, sometimes I wouldn't if it. If I didn't need to or my management team was taking care of that. But every new hire, when they would come in, sit down with them and have just a culture talk, I'd call it and awesome.

How can I help?

How can I help? Right? Like, let's do that. Like, let's do that. You want to start a. Not. Let's start a nonprofit and remove any of this stuff that says if we invest into the growth and the development of our people, that they're going to magically steal all our ideas and start a company and steal all our clients. It's like. And I would send out a note to them and say, hey, this is a test. You can't fail. You don't need to stop him. It's like an inspired employee does inspired work. And our job is to inspire them, is to cultivate the things and ask them the questions that other people are not asking them and a lot of people are not asking them. What do you want to have in life? What's missing? How do you want to grow? And when you have the capacity and the time to give back, what does it look like? And how do we start doing it now? Because you think you can't now, but maybe you can a little bit and then maybe that little bit can grow. And then the more that you invest into them, the more that they invest into themselves, invest into their family and their surroundings. And slowly, bit by bit by bit, you build loyalty. Love the family environment that a lot of companies say they have, but they don't. It's become kind of a taboo word now that companies use to say that, oh, we have a family, family run company and everybody rolls their eyes sitting in the back of the room. And so that's how you avoid it.

Yeah. Most families are dysfunctional.

Yeah.

I don't know if I want to be a part of that.

I don't want to be in my family's company. Yeah, that's.

That's so good, Andrew. I, like, I wrote some things down because some of these practices I actually do. It's one of the very first things whenever I bring on a new co, Like I was going to say, hey, man, whenever you're ready to start coaching, it looks like you're. You're ready to go with us. So you just let me know, like, you ready to move on? New career? Got a place in home for you here, Andrew, you can come and coach some contractors. I think you'd be great at it. Because that's what I'm after more than anything else. Whenever I'm working with somebody or even with our own employees and coaches, like, what is it that you want to get out of this? What are you aiming for and what can we do to help facilitate you getting there? Because if you don't grow while you're here, I failed you, man. It's so good. Every owner should be writing that down and going and doing that tomorrow.

It's something that can be selling all.

The jobs you need to sell tomorrow.

But you reminded me of, I think, one of the most impactful moments I had. I remember having this conversation with a. With a new field manager that we had who had a young family. And I was like, I was kind of talking about. And I was playing with a little bit too, at the early. I was like, oh, do I give them homework? Do I try to do it in the meeting? So it's, you know, it was all like kind of a learning curve. But I remember, I think him coming back with his list that we set a follow up after he went and did it. And I was like, you know, his one experience, you know, his first experience is like, that he wanted to have with his two kids. He's like, you know, I want to take a vacation with my family and gets me still, you know, you're like.

You don't do that well.

You're just like, you know, it sometimes, you know, sometimes lower to moderate income families, you know, just like, you know, can barely scrape it together. And, you know, he, he was just like, yeah, I want to take my family on a vacation. I was like, if we're gonna, you know, do that here, buddy, you know, no kidding.

Yeah, let's get that done.

Yeah. And so, so I just think it's. It exposes and intersects you with the humanity of what's really happening. We get so focused on, are you going to be a good field manager and you better answer your phone and these are your responsibilities and don't be late and all of this stuff. And yes, you need all that. Right? But we also, I think sometimes have lost a little bit of what actually keeps it all together. And that is really investing into the development of your people and not being afraid to invest into their leadership, invest into their growth, push them to do things they wouldn't normally do. And create experiences they wouldn't normally have so that you're pulling them until they start to feel the momentum, and then they carry themselves and then they start pulling other people behind them. Right. And so it's. It's just a beautiful thing.

It is, man. The last 15 minutes here, absolute. I like, I want to. You got time? You got a minute?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So all this has led to something for you. Like you have. You started to get like this has become a thing for you, changing people's lives and not just inside of your own company. You got involved in some nonprofit stuff. You raised like $5 million to get this thing off of the ground. It's called the Other side Academy. And you also do this leadership exchange program. Yeah, Just real quick, what, like, first off, what are those two things? Secondly, like, why. Why those. Is that just part of living out this purpose?

Yeah, you know, it was. It's so, it's so funny how, how life, you know, sometimes takes wild turns. Right. And I think that, you know, it's the, you know, what do they say? Like, good luck is the intersection of preparedness and, and opportunity. Opportunity, you know, So I feel like all of these things, and I think that's what's. That's what's beautiful about this process. I think for business owners. I think a lot of times we look at it and we check the box because we feel like, you know, we're, we're. I'm cutting, you know, 40,000 checks this year for sponsorships for charities and, you know, or whatever that number is. Maybe it's 5,000 when you're little, maybe it's a million when you're huge, you know, who knows? And I think the amount's not important, but I think a lot of times we kind of feel like that checks the boxes in terms of what that looks like. And I feel like this work of understanding a purpose driven culture and how it changes you, and I think how it changes your people is that the effect doesn't stop at the doors of your business. The effect continues and changes sort of how you interface with the environments that you're brought up against. And in 2016, I went on a trip. Our city does trips to go visit other cities, which, by the way, has been an incredible business development deal.

Yeah, that's really cool.

You know, guess who's not represented on all those trips? The roofing industry. Really, a lot of it. I mean, the GCs are there, the big GCs, you know, Hansel, Phelps, PCL, Mortensen, all the big GCs are there, but at least in Colorado the roofing companies were, were just not a. Not represented. And turns out everybody has a roof.

And so funny enough, or at least most people do that.

These. Most people, yeah. And so. So anyways, long story short, I went on a trip in 2016. We saw a nonprofit there that really touched me. I lived a pretty ruckus couple of years in my 20s and by the grace of God and luck and all sorts of things, I didn't end up in jail. And and so we saw this program in 2016 in Salt Lake City and it was a two and a half year residential program for adults trying to disrupt this cycle of drug addiction, incarceration and homelessness. And the cool part was is that it was like a therapeutic community that was all led by peers. So it was non clinical but an evidence based sort of therapeutic community. And all these felons lived in a house together, peer led and they ran a couple small businesses and the small businesses provide for all the operational needs of the nonprofit. So for all of us that serve on non profit boards and are asked to raise money every year for their budget because they don't have it, this was something where the students were running businesses, the businesses were paying for the two year program and it was a full self sustaining social enterprise, non profit. And our. It was really cool, man. They run a moving company, they had thrift stores and they're the highest rated moving company in Salt Lake City. And now they're the highest rated moving company in Denver. Have done thousands of moves here. And so, so yeah, we, we saw it there. We were with the, the mayor and the governor and, and the rotunda at the end of the thing. And they were like, hey, everybody kept talking about this nonprofit and talk about those moments, right? Those moments where if you put yourself out there, these moments will happen. And they were like I was kind of a relative newcomer. I was like, I don't even know how I got into this trip because it was all the very important people.

And yeah, just a roofer.

Yeah. And they're like, what do you do? I'm like, I do roofs, you know, and I pretend conversation. Yeah. And, and so. But yeah, they were like, we should do this. And the mayor was like, do you want to do this? You want to bring this to Denver? And the whole is 120 leaders from Denver, the public, private, nonprofit space. And everybody stood up and clapped and the mayor was like that's great, but who's going to do it? We need one person who's gonna do it. And I just feel like I blacked out and stood up.

I was like, didn't know what you're getting yourself into.

About like, you know, putting on the Braveheart makeup and like throwing a broadsword out. But I mean, I just, I was moved. And I had no damn idea how I was gonna do it. I'd never raised money before. I didn't know what that was like, but I felt moved. And I was like, I don't know, I think I can figure it out. And so I stood up and that started this massive pivot in my life. And so what's funny, everybody else looked.

At each other, went, see why we bring the new guy?

Everyone's like, sucker.

Dummy.

And then I came home and told my wife that I just stood up and volunteered to start a nonprofit in front of the entire city of Denver. And so, needless to say, we have a new rule between my wife and I, which is I do not volunteer to start nonprofits in front of the city without talking to her first.

I got a new rule like that. My life too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we had a six month old baby. I mean, it was, you know, business was, you know, we were just starting to take off. This is 2016. I mean, it was, you know, it was not like I wasn't busy and. But yeah, so we, long story short, put advisory team together, didn't know what to do, how to do it. But, you know, sometimes if you just keep moving and I feel like there's a. There's been a. Been a principle that's been embedded in my life since then about persistence. For me, it's positivity and persistence is the magic combo. But if you just keep walking and just moving and just don't let the slings and arrows get you down, like, just get back up, keep moving, and choose to have a positive attitude. And so we did that. We raised, yeah, just over $5 million. We launched in 2019. We just built a new property. We've bought a second. We have 65 residents now on average. These guys and Girls have had 25 plus arrests. 99% have been on average, on average.

Get arrested that many times.

Yep. And half of the population is there on deferred or modified sentencing, which means that instead of sending, you know, sort of serving the 10 years in prison, if they graduate from this two year program, then the sentence is wiped clean. And so, yeah, so I started working with them. And, and, and then just this year, actually, we just received a. Was able to receive a Massive grant from the state to buy a third property. So we're hopefully within 18 months, we'll have a campus of about 120 residents. Changing that.

That is so cool. That is so cool. I love these stories because we joke about it, right? Like we're just a roofer.

Yeah.

This. This industry is a vehicle to do some pretty amazing things if we just put our minds to it.

Yeah.

And you've done a lot of those. I mean, you really have. You and your team have really done some cool things. Is honored to be involved early on to see where you've come to still be friends, to even miss a golf outing. Because I was probably not real smart.

Oh, my gosh, you mentioned that before. I forgot.

Yeah, yeah. Let's not talk. Let's give that. That was a rough moment. Early still in the coaching career.

Well, I've had a few. I've missed a few conferences, conference meetings, buddy. I saw my. Tell my partners. I'm like, hey, my conference work starts at dinner time till 4am.

Yeah, I can't do that anymore. I'm past that. Like, all right, I'm the ghost at 10 o'. Clock.

That was. That was pre pandemic for sure. I was. Now I'm 43 and now I'm like, after. After a night or two, I'm like, I need a spa day.

Hey, Andrew, man, it has been an awesome show.

And so I started with these three questions, but then when I was doing it, he had these three most important questions. M IQs, they called them. And I started doing that. But what I realized would be a fun thing to start that with is the first 30 minutes, I would just have the employee tell me their story. I'd be like, hey, tell me.

I know we went a little bit longer than we were planning, but there's just so much to get to go.

Back as far as you want, as far as you remember. You can start elementary, middle, high school, family. Why don't you just tell me your story? Like, how'd you get here? And then just let them talk for 30 minutes. And, you know, you'd be sitting there with a service tech, you know, that had worked for, you know, a number of other companies.

So much good that you, your team, core contractors has done over this last decade. Just great to have you on the show. I hope everybody listens to this and goes, hey, that persistency pays off. That one step that keep moving forward can really do some pretty magical things. Not just in our businesses, not just in our own personal lives, but in our Communities. I mean, that's just.

God, man.

That's really cool. Glad we were able to catch up.

Well, it was great to see you, bud. And as always, you know, thanks again for.

Hey, I'm gonna be there in a couple weeks.

Taking a chance on us. When you. When you were first getting that out, it was.

Right. You took a chance on me. I appreciate it. Yeah.

And it spent his whole life working in roofing, and you sit there and you just. I want to know your story. Right. And it was incredible to get to know your people by just letting them tell their story. And I think story is such a powerful thing. And so integrating that in. And then the second half, telling the story of core, but then leaning back into a conversation about them. And this is where the Buddha and the badass reference comes in, and he talks about his three most important, important questions, and they. They circle around sort of experience, growth, and contribution. And so the first one is to give them an assignment and say, I want you to take this home. I want you to go sit out on a park bench somewhere. Don't do it in your house. Go sit in your backyard.

Pretty cool.

But, no, it's been great to see, to watch what you've. You've built. And I just think you're. You're. You're moving the needle on a lot of people's lives. You're helping people realize their potential. And. And it's been fun to watch from the. From the stands a little bit over the last decade or so, so congratulations.

Appreciate that. Yeah, it's been kind of wild. Like, I. It was really like, hey, I'm going to coach a couple of companies. I'm going to go golf and fish in the afternoon. That's about all I'm going to do.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, thing, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hey, appreciate you being on. I want to get you back on in the future and maybe with the team, like, if we get Jim on. On the mic, that would be pretty cool.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Just Thomas.

We'll talk about mountain biking, but yeah, let's. Let's get a show.

Yeah, a comedy episode. And just watch Jim and Thomas and I make fun of each other.

That's be a comedy episode here.

If you're not kind of being made fun of, something's wrong, you know, over here.

All right, man. I'll let you get back to your family. Thank you.

Just get outside and ask these three questions of yourself. What are the experiences that I want to have in my life? And just start making a list, like, what Are the experiences like I want to get married, I want to have kids. I want to, I want to make pasta in Florence. You know, I want to swim with a great whale shark off the coast of Africa.

That looks cool by the way. I saw a guy doing that. Thank you very much.

Take care. Once again, appreciate the time.

All right. Wow. Didn't really know that was where everything was going with that. I kind of had some insight. But man, what an amazing story. What great points throughout. Like the, the type of leadership group that you have, the expectations, being clear with each other, leaning into each other' capabilities. The, the evolution of a company over time, withstanding tough times, being prepared for it. The joy is moving the needle in others lives. I wrote that down like, because that is, that's for me, like that's a thing.

I love eating. And so but they, it was like, what are these experiences you want to have? And don't put a box on it. Right. And then the second list is what is the growth that needs to happen inside of me to be able to have some of these experiences? Right. So what are the experiences that I want to have in my life?

It is what I believe in. I took a lot from that. I hope you took a lot from it. If you're looking to build a company that you could use as a vehicle to do the powerful things in your community, check us out. Go to contractorcoachpro.com and click on the assessment button. Or, or go down to the show notes below this and click on that assessment button. Take an assessment about your business. It's going to take you 15 to 20 minutes. If you can't take 15 to 20 minutes to do it and assess the.

Areas that I want to grow. If I want to swim with my whale sharks and I'm 150 pounds overweight, probably not going to work. Right? What does my body need to look like for some of these experiences? What education on your business?

We actually do the work that you need to, to grow a business. So get that done. We'll do a free coaching call with you. And it is a coaching call. We're going to go off of that.

It's not there in my mind that I need to pursue to elevate myself. What's the growth? What's missing? Where am I weak? Right? Taking that moment to say like, hey, what do I, what do I need to do to be able to get assessment.

Point out the two or three biggest things that you could do to move the needle right away in your life and if you like Coaching and work with us, great. If you don't, that's okay. At least we helped you take one step forward because that's what we want to help you do, is keep moving forward. Thanks for hanging out with us here on Contractor radio. I'm Jim Johnson and we'll see you on our next episode.

Those experiences. And then lastly, like, how do I want to contribute? I think that, you know, the reference of moving the needle was given to me by a coach I worked with back in 2015 and he said, true joy is found in moving the needle in other people's lives. And that has stuck with me and implanted itself sort of in the soul of my being. And how I really began to see that was my greatest area of fertile soil for me to do that was with my team. So I was like, it really started to resonate to say and inform sort of our new purpose statement was how do I move the needle? And true joy is found in moving the needle in other people's lives. And so circling back to that third question around contribution, you know, we have really tried hard to create and I think we see a lot of great giving back within the roofing industry. From, you know, I could list a hundred different things that I think that the roofing industry has really shown up in people's lives. And I think that we can take it one step further and say, how do we integrate and show up in our team's lives to help encourage and foster more active participation in terms of what we want to contribute? And so that third question in the 3M IQs was saying, if you could move the needle on one issue, if you could contribute in any way, what would it look like? And I think it's a really neat thing when you have a new employee that answers that question, you'll find out things that you would have never known about them. They're like, I want to be a speaker someday. You're like, cool. Or, I want to start a non profit that helps inner city kids play baseball. You're like, awesome.

How can I help?

How can I help? Right? Like, let's do that. Like, let's do that. You want to start a. Not, let's start a non profit and remove any of this stuff that says if we invest into the growth and the development of our people, that they're going to magically steal all our ideas and start a company and steal all our clients. It's like, that's so. It's like an inspired employee does inspired work and our job is to inspire them is to cultivate the things and ask them the questions that other people are not asking them and a lot of people are not asking them. What do you want to have in life? What's missing? How do you want to grow? And when you have the capacity and the time to give back, what does it look like and how do we start doing it now? Because you think you can't now, but maybe you can a little bit and then maybe that little bit can grow. And then the more that you invest into them, the more that they invest into themselves, invest into their family and their surroundings and slowly, bit by bit, you build loyalty. Love the family environment that a lot of companies say they have, but they don't. It's become kind of a taboo word now that companies use to say that, oh, we have a family, family run company and everybody rolls their eyes sitting in the back of the room. And so that's how you avoid it.

Yeah, most families are dysfunctional.

Yeah.

I don't know if I want to be a part of that.

I don't want to be in my family's company.

Yeah, man, that, that's so good, Andrew. I like, I wrote some things down because some of these practices I actually do. It's one of the very first things whenever I bring on a new co. Like I was going to say, hey, man, whenever you're ready to start coaching, it looks like you're, you're ready to go with us. So you just let me know, like, you ready to move on? New career? Got a place in home for you here, Andrew. You can come and coach some contractors. I think you'd be great at it. Because that's what I'm after more than anything else. Whenever I'm working with somebody or even with our own employees and coaches, like, what is it that you want to get out of this? What are you aiming for and what can we do to help facilitate you getting there? Because if you don't grow while you're here, I failed you, man. That's so good. Every owner should be writing that down and going and doing that tomorrow.

It's something that can be selling all.

The jobs you need to sell tomorrow.

But you reminded me of, I think one of the most impactful moments I had. I remember having this conversation with a, with a new field manager that we had who had a young family and I was like, I was kind of talking about. And I was playing with a little bit too at the early. I was like, oh, do I give them homework? Do I try to do it in the Meeting. So it's, you know, it was all like kind of a learning curve. But I remember, I think him coming back with his list that we set a follow up after he went and did it. And I was like, you know, his one experience, you know, his first experience is like, that he wanted to have with his two kids. He's like, you know, I want to take a vacation with my family and gets me still, you know, you're like.

You don't do that well.

You're just like, you know, it sometimes, you know, sometimes lower to moderate income families, you know, just like, you know, can barely scrape it together. And, you know, he. He was just like, yeah, I want to take my family on a vacation. I was like, if we're going to, you know, fucking do that here, buddy, you know?

Yeah, let's get that done.

Yeah. And so I just think it. It exposes and intersects you with the humanity of what's really happening. We get so focused on, you know, are you going to be a good field manager and you better answer your phone and these are your responsibilities and don't be late and all of this stuff. And yes, you need all that. Right. But we also, I think sometimes have lost a little bit of what actually keeps it all together, and that is really investing into the development of your people and not being afraid to invest into their leadership, invest into their growth, push them to do things they wouldn't normally do and create experiences they wouldn't normally have so that you're pulling them until they start to feel the momentum, and then they carry themselves and then they start pulling other people behind them. Right. And so it's just a beautiful thing.

It is, man. The last 15 minutes here, absolute. I, like, I want to. You got time? You got a minute?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So all this has led to something for you. Like, you have. You started to get. Like this has become a thing for you, changing people's lives and not just inside of your own company. You got involved in some nonprofit stuff. You raised like $5 million to get this thing off of the ground. It's called the Other side Academy. And you also do this leadership exchange program.

Yeah.

Just real quick, what, like, first off, what are those two things? Secondly, like, why. Why those. Is that just part of living out this purpose?

Yeah, you know, it was. It's so. It's so funny how. How life, you know, sometimes takes wild turns. Right? And I think that, you know, it's the, you know, what do they say, like, good luck is the intersection of preparedness and, And Opportunity. Opportunity, you know, So I feel like all of these things and I think that's what's, that's what's beautiful about this process. I think for business owners. I think a lot of times we look at it and we check the box because we feel like, you know, we're, we're, I'm cutting, you know, 40,000 checks this year for sponsorships, for charities and you know, or whatever that number is. Maybe it's 5,000 when you're little, maybe it's a million when you're huge, you know, who knows? And I think the amount's not important, but I think a lot of times we kind of feel like that checks the boxes in terms of what that looks like. And I feel like this work of understanding a purpose driven culture and how it changes you and I think how it changes your people is that the effect doesn't stop at the doors of your business. The effect continues and changes sort of how you interface with the environments that you're brought up against. And in 2016 I went on a trip, our city does trips to go visit other cities, which by the way has been an incredible business development deal.

Yeah, that's really cool.

You know, guess who's not represented on all those trips? The roofing industry. Really a lot of, I mean the GCs are there, the big GCs, you know, Hansel Phelps, PCL, Mortensen, all the big GCs are there. But at least in Colorado, the roofing companies were just not, not represented. And turns out everybody has a roof.

And so funny enough, or at least most people do.

At least most people, yeah. And so, so anyways, long story short, I went on a trip in 2016. We saw a non profit there. That really touched me. I, I lived a pretty ruckus couple years in my 20s and, and by the grace of God and, and luck and all sorts of things, I didn't end up in jail. And so we saw this program in 2016 in Salt Lake City and it was a two and a half year residential program for adults trying to disrupt this cycle of drug addiction, incarceration and homelessness. And the cool part was is that it was like a therapeutic community that was all led by peers. So it was non clinical but an evidence based sort of therapeutic community. And all these felons lived in a house together, peer led and they ran a couple of small businesses and the small businesses provide for all the operational needs of the nonprofit. So.