The Questions Leaders Ask with Dave Harrison

Hey out there, everybody, it's Jim Johnson, your host here at Contractor Radio. Contractor Radio is designed to give you that edge out there in the field. And we're going to be talking with a pretty amazing guest today. This is our first episode of 2021 and we've brought on all kinds sponsors for our show that help support our show. But it's not going to be from a aspect of, hey, look at us. It's going to be more from a. Let's provide some value. And one of the things I wanted to do with our first show this year was to really provide some impactful value for you guys as contractors. And so our guest today is what I would call a true C level executive for billion dollar organizations. And he's going to share with us today a little bit about what he's learned about the power of asking questions and a little bit of his background and story and kind of get you guys an idea of what it takes to really lead in some large organizations. But before we get there, let's have a little word from our title sponsor. It's most important to have a strategic partner. And that's the way that I look at Atlas. They're my strategic partner.

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We started with Atlas and we won't change Atlas. Our relationship will be forever. All right, awesome. Welcome back, everybody. Once again, Jim Johnson here, host of Contractor Radio. And we're going to be talking about questions today. Why questions are so important. As a leader, we always start this off with a little two minute drill. And so I want to share something with you a little bit that I've learned that has helped me in this area of asking questions. And what it was is I was introduced to a book and this book really had a pretty powerful effect on me and how I deal with my people and how my people react to me and how we connect together. That's one of our core things that we try to teach with contractors, is connecting with their people. And there's a book out there, it's called Good Leaders Ask Great Questions. Just go search that. We'll put the link in the podcast notes and that book will give you some guidance on how you might approach asking questions and really thinking about. Why do you ask questions before you give direction? It tends to be the way we lean as leaders and owners of businesses is we know everything. We know what we want, we know how things should be done, go do it this way. And so we end up directing a whole lot instead of asking people for their insight, their thought processes, and really kind of why things are happening. And when we do those type of things, we start to empower them to think on their own and grow as leaders. And that's what we're looking for, is we want them to start thinking the way we think. Like, if we're the only ones that know how to solve a problem, nobody will ever solve a problem for you. And you're always going to be in your business instead of working on your business. But if we get people to understand how to think about things and to grow through those questions, we can start to empower them to lead our businesses a little bit better. So before I bring our guests, we want to have another quick sponsor come on and share a little bit about what they do. Contractor Radio has been brought to you today by Contractor Coach Pro. If you're tired of all the chaos and you feel like you don't have a plan and you're not setting yourself apart from your competition, contact us at Contractor Coach Pro by taking a free assessment that you'll find on our website@contractorcoachpro.com once you take that free assessment, we'll set up a time for a free strategy call to give you some advice and guidance on how to grow and scale your business immediately. We look forward to hearing from you@contractorcoachpro.com all right, welcome back everybody, and thank you for taking some time out with us today here at Contractor Radio. We have an amazing guest today. This guy is a C level executive, a professor at a university. He's worked with billion dollar companies, he's coached contractors. He is literally one of the end all and be alls that I look at as a mentor in my life. We haven't known each other very long, but in that time we've really grown close. I hope there's some mutual respect, but I am probably running him a bit ragged and asking questions and trying to learn from him as much as I can. Whenever I find somebody like that in my life, I want to make sure that we have that type of connection. And in just this short amount of time since this summer, I've already learned so much. And I wanted him to share some of that with our listening audience here at Contractor Radio. And so welcome to our show today, Dave Harrison. Dave, welcome to Contractor Radio.

Thank you. It's a real privilege to be on with you, Jim.

Yeah, well, it's our honor. Seriously, we were talking about this before the show and it's like there's, there's just certain guests and I feel like it's honored. I mean, you've taken time out of your day, you're kind of a busy guy, you got a lot going, you're teaching at college. And now it's, it's holiday season. Like we're doing this recording to put it out for the first year. And so for you to take time today and share with us today is really appreciated. Before we get into too much more, why don't you give us a little bit of background on Dave Harrison? Like kind of give us maybe a little progression through your, maybe even time before contracting. Like, what kind of springboarded you towards getting into our world and some of those little highlights of your history so everybody kind of understands who you are.

Jim, I've had a pretty interesting history. I actually started out as a professional musician only because I flunked out of three high schools, but that's a whole nother story because I'm a college professor, as you know today. But in all seriousness, so after that I started working for some entrepreneurs and started between ages 20 and 24. For them, we started multiple companies. The good news on the last one, I was a partner. We did 40 million in sales in nine months, made $10 million. That was the good news. The bad news was I got a call from the bank saying my partner skipped the country with $10 million. And I went back to grad school. But. I've had a. But, but in all seriousness, that period of time has had a big effect on my entire life. Because what I learned in large companies, the key to being great in any kind of the key to being impactful are the skills you learn on the street as an entrepreneur, it's getting things done.

Yeah. That's super cool. So early on, you were involved on an entrepreneur level, did really good, made a bunch of money. It didn't come to fruition. It's the story of an entrepreneur. Right. Like, we kind of walk that path. I've been down very similar roads in my journey. And then you kind of moved on and stepped into. You went to grad school. What happened after grad school?

After grad school, I ended up with Johnson and Johnson actually very fortunate. It was Ted Nugent's brother. You know, I knew some musicians, found Ted, knew Ted and worked for his brother. And I had. I mean, it was an awesome career at Johnson Jones. I can't think of a better place for me to develop the skills I had. And I was sort of an entrepreneur inside that company. Starting new businesses or turning around sick ones. Not realizing that that was gonna actually be my life's fulfillment is helping other people through the skills I had in business. And the. Just the drive that I had as a human being that tried to make the world a better place because you were there.

That's super cool. So Johnson Johnson, helping them kind of turn around businesses, were they acquiring places and, you know, they're sick. We gotta give a diagnosis and treat that and hopefully get it resolved.

Yeah, yeah. In fact, I remember my first assignment there was starting new consumer products and extensions of brands. I helped get launched. Act Fluoride Rants helped launch Reach toothbrush. And my team helped develop that flavored flosses. We started way back when, before hardly anyone knew what it was, a home healthcare business. We represented 180 of Johnson Johnson's products that originally were sold only to hospitals and repackaged them for pharmacies because people were getting kicked out of the hospital and sent home sick. It's a great experience.

Wow. So. So Act Fluoride Rinse Flavored flosses reached. I'VE used all those things, like, and.

The one that actually ended up the biggest, I didn't get to launch it at Johnson Johnson. I helped invent it there with a team. But we developed Colgate Tartar control toothpaste. We sold that concept and formulated a Colgate. And as you know, tartar control toothpaste did really well.

Man, can I just get a little royalty, right?

Yeah, just a bit.

That's pretty cool. And so you learned you got actually this kind of really diverse background. You got this entrepreneur kind of by the seat of your pants, you know, on the ground, boots on the ground type feel. But you also got this like from a corporate feel, like structure does and how process is important and the combination of those two things. Do you think that has anything to do with kind of who you've become and then what the next step was that you took?

I didn't realize it at the time, but absolutely it's that combination and it's what's made it fun. I mean, I can speak the language of Wall street, but that's not where the fun is. I mean, probably could have made a lot more money on Wall street, but it wasn't just about making money. It was about if you've got God given skills, which people watching this podcast, the fact that you're business owners and junior leaders, you got them, they have some God given skills that you can not only make a living, but literally make the world a better place. And we're in an industry. Home improvement's a tough, tough industry. A lot of bad players in it. And frankly a lot of the employees don't make a heck of a lot of money. And the better we do, better we can enrich their lives.

Yeah, it's been awesome to see the changes. I've been in it for 20 years. You've been in it, I think a little bit longer. About the same amount of time. I don't know. Little bit longer.

When I started.

Well, so did I.

So we're right there.

So we, we're twins. I always blame that on my 22 year old daughter. Up until she was born, I had hair and then it all started going as soon as we had her.

She'll be sometime. I'll show you. My high school picture was a full beard and an afro.

I got a few.

I.

We don't share those though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm always worried about Michael Gogan. He's got access to some photos he probably shouldn't. So one of the questions I like to ask all of our Guests is what's your greatest achievement today? Not family stuff, but beyond that, it can be personal, it can be business. But to this point, what do you feel like your greatest achievement as a person on this planet?

It is probably my career at gaf, and especially early on, most people did not know this, but gaf, when I joined, was in technical bankruptcy. The employees didn't know it, customers certainly didn't know it, distributors didn't. No one knew about it. But the owner was close to literally closing it down. And at that point in my life, I had realized that I had a skill for helping save jobs, helping create better jobs, and taking GAF with a great team, but taking that company from a $600 million company with 850 million in debt. I mean, picture that, 850 million in debt to a company that's now in the billions and extraordinarily profitable. But the part that I'm most proud of, not only did it save jobs within jf, I'd like to think that GDF itself helped improve the entire industry was a raising tide because there are a lot of great manufacturers out there now, right? And doing a lot of great things. And the effect we had on so many contractors who were barely making a living and turned out with very successful careers and built some pretty incredible businesses.

So. So there's a big turnaround, right? I mean, $650 million company with 850 like that, just sweat even thinking about having that type of books and accounting in the red. And so what you guys do to turn that thing around?

Well, the first thing, by the way, which is true of a lot of things, most of the stuff that helped me in my career, I did not learn in school. All right? It's one of the reasons I love teaching now, but I did not learn in school. And the most important one is culture eats strategy for lunch. Culture eats strategy for lunch. If you've got a team that people feel like they belong to something special, if focused, they feel like everyone on the team adds value and a proud. It's no different than playing high school sports. We learned that if you played high school sports, culture eats strategy for lunch. Now, you gotta have a decent strategy. But the key to helping companies was focusing on that second, focusing on the team and their beliefs first.

So I could not agree with you more. I will always say culture trumps strategy all day long. Now, that doesn't mean we don't want to have a guiding light, something that we're chasing, but we all want to be chasing it together with Very particular goals in mind, but a feel about us and behaviors we're going to do and a reason we're doing everything. And I bet you, you and I could have an extremely long conversation about this. But today's podcast about questions.

Sure.

So GAFS is in this position. It's not going good, not looking great. What were some of those questions you guys were asking about, hey, how do we solve this problem?

That's interesting. So when I started, the first thing I did was go out and travel, right? And meet contractors and meet distributors and meet customers. And remember, GF unusually was both in residential commercial. So I went out and asked a bunch of questions. And the thing that I discovered was fascinating, especially back then, you know, no one trusted each other. Distributors didn't trust manufacturers, distributors didn't trust contractors. Contractors didn't trust distributors, contractors. Nobody trusted each other. All right, so that's the first thing I learned through the questions. Second thing I learned through questions is it seemed like there were two types of property owners. Those who said to themselves, I remember going to school with some of these guys and I don't think I trust them. And I hear so many bad stories. How do you find a contractor that you can trust? Or you had another group of people that said, you know what, this home improvement stuff, it's pretty simple. If you're sober enough to get up on my roof and not fall off, you're qualified to give me a quote. And so the key starting point we said is, well, that's what's going on in the industry today. You have half the people who don't think there's any risk, and you got another half that thinks there's ton of risk. That's a huge problem. And if we could help solve that problem, we'll end up better off. And notice the key thing in there, it wasn't focusing on how to fix us. It was focusing on your customer and your customer's customer and asking yourself what causes them pain and if you can help solve their pain. And you know this, Jim. If you can help solve your customer's pain and your customers customers pain. It's amazing how things turn around for your own business.

Yeah. And funny thing about that is we assume a lot as business owners and leaders that we assume this is the customer's problem, this is the customer's pain, this is even our people's problem and our people's pain. And we don't ask any questions, which is frustrating to me. I sit there and go, well, how do you know, you know what they say about assuming, right? And so I got some guidance in this way back when I had coaches and people helping me get a little bit better at business. And they told me, why don't you ask your people what they think of your leadership? I remember that one. That was a big one. I'm like, oh, I don't really want to ask that one. Go. I think I know the answer before I ask it. But it was so insightful, right? Like, I got all this feedback back that told me exactly what I needed to do as a leader to become a better leader. And so now I, like, encourage it. Challenge me, tell me me how I can be better, because all it's done is make me a bit of a better person. But we did the same concept with our salespeople and our manager. We got them out with not even people that were our customers. Some of the people we asked were our customers. Some of the people were not our customers that didn't go with us. Some of the people didn't know who we were from. Adam. We just knocked on their door and started asking them questions about what they're looking for in contractors, why they're looking for that thing in contractors, what's some of the biggest hurdles they have. And we came to find out that some of our assumptions were misguided. It wasn't exactly what they were looking for. But because of that, we could then take that information back and really strategically approach things with our amazing culture, probably solve a bunch of problems. So what are, what are some of the.

Go ahead, Jim. I know it's going to sound weird, but, you know, selling and marketing is so like horse racing. I mean, 50 to 1 odds horses sometimes come in. So any strategy works, Right? But the more you act like a doctor, the more money you're going to make. What does a doctor do when they wake up in the morning? Doctor wakes up in the morning and says, I'm out there looking for someone who's either at risk of a problem or has a problem. And if I can help them, I'm going to share with them how and if there's someone better for helping them, I'm going to share with them who and where to go. Because at the end of the day, a doctor knows. They build value on word of mouth and they build value on helping people avoid experiences they don't want and gaining experience they do want. The more you act like a doctor and stop trying to convince people, both employees and customers, you're better off. Just go try to help them.

Yeah. And I Almost look at that as more like not your normal, like, doctor that you might need in the hospital. I'm more the functional medical doctor. Like, I don't want to just know what your symptoms are. I want to determine why those symptoms are happening so we can treat the core issue. There's a core thing that's causing these symptoms to happen. Most of the time it comes down to two things, leadership and culture.

That doctor example, right, you walk into an exam room and I've asked people this, they always laugh. I say, could a doctor examine you without ever talking to you? And people go, no, they couldn't. I said, well, a veterinarian seems to be able to get it done pretty well. But if a doctor tried to do that, would you trust them? No, you wouldn't. And, and watch how a doctor goes about it. They bombard you with questions first. They look for questions. They don't give up. You know, a doctor doesn't go, so how you feeling? I'm feeling great. Do they stop? No. Well, have you had any of this? Have you had any? I mean, they bombard you with questions. See if you've got a problem they can solve and then if they can't find a problem, what do they do next? Well, do you have any relatives that have had this? Yeah, my great uncle. Oh, we better. A doctor knows most value is finding a problem or finding a risk of a problem and helping people avoid it. And they only get there through bombarding people with questions. You can only learn through questions. You can only help people through questions.

So we're going to get into this. We're going to talk about these questions. Let's take a second. Here we go. I give just a few moments for one of our sponsors and we'll be right back. Want more 5 star reviews from your customers? At Signpost, we make it easy for.

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You know, Jim, the funny part to that is, like, a lot of things, I learned that the hard way. All right? I started out an entrepreneur, right? As an entrepreneur, you have an idea, you want it done, you direct people what to do, and. And you build, and then you realize you can only build so far. And then I ended up at Johnson Johnson and the CEO of Johnson and Johnson. Honestly, for a while, I couldn't understand how he got to be chairman and CEO. And my friends and I, we couldn't either. And I'll share with you why. Because every time, if you had one night's notice or a month's notice or a year's notice, you knew the questions he was going to ask you. And I remember thinking, the guy only has five key questions in his repertoire. How smart could this guy be? And then I thought about it, and then I realized, this guy is a genius. The best leader I ever worked for. It was because of his questions.

All right, now, you know, you got to tell us the questions, right? Like, that's. That's where we're at. So that's why we're asking questions. As we start to get the information that we need to make really, hopefully, good decisions and grow our people would be my guess. Is that a fair assessment?

Absolutely. So. So let's go. You know, first, why does it work?

Right?

Why do questions work? Because when you ask something as a question, the other person still own it, owns it. If you tell people what to do, you own it, and they're just doing what you told them to do. So let's just think about that and what I call my why theory, which I look at everything through that prism, right? I look at things, and I say I look for three things in a business. A where and how does trust come from, or where it's lost, right? Because if you don't have trust, your most valuable asset as an individual, as a company, people don't listen closely to what you have to say, right? Two, if they will listen to what you have to say, then you can get to the phase of understanding. Understanding is the foundation of changing behavior. And then what actually changes behavior? It's the experience. It's the what's in it for you? It's the experience they think they're going to gain or not gain. So when you step back from that, let's just try this. I think trust equals care and respect. All right, you buy that? Now let's Just think about it. You Learned as a 5 year old that if your parents said, here's what I want you to do and didn't explain anything, what's the chances they followed it? When you ask through questions, you're demonstrating care and you're demonstrating respect. One of the key things to earning trust. And two, when you do it through questions, it forces people to think and therefore their understanding, their insight becomes a lot more clear and a lot more useful. So questions by definition. And Jim, you can do anything through a question. What I learned from Jim Burke, the chairman of the board of Johnson Johnson, would it be helpful if I shared what his questions were?

That'd be fantastic. Absolutely.

Okay, now picture again, early on in life I'm going, this guy's not that smart. So here are his questions. He come in and you say, okay, last time I was here. And picture, by the way, this would work for any function, any leader, any manager in Johnson Johnson. First thing is, last time I was here, you said these were your three major initiatives so that your processes were quicker, were faster, without issues. Show me the numbers. I want to see how you did and tell me about what you did, how you did it, but I want to see the numbers. And you go through that dialogue and through that dialogue, in his follow up questions of what you did and what were the numbers, he could uncover information, right? He could suggest things, but you still own it. Based on tone of voice, you could even direct things. He can certainly learn things all through questions and it'd be a robust discussion, but again, the employees would own it. Then his follow up question was, okay, between now and next time I come, what are your three major initiatives? And it was always the same two things. First it was how fast we got things done. Speed, right, because speed adds value. The second one is value itself. And the key on value is how are you helping somebody else who depends on you avoid an experience they don't want or gain experience they do want? Now, value could be employees, it could be suppliers, it could be distributors or retailers, it could be end users. It's anybody who depends on what you do that can affect their experience. And again, it was the same thing last time. These year, three initiatives. Show me the numbers, let's talk about it. A lot of questions then. What are your three initiatives between now and next time? So it's first speed, then value. Then the third one was waste. Now, we figured out pretty quickly waste could come in two types. One was time wasted and the other is money wasted. So he was sort of capturing Both, you know, but at the end of the day, eliminating waste, increased profits. The fourth was capability. You know, a lot of that was training. A lot of that was who we bringing into the teams, a lot of us, who we developing as a leader. Some of it was even equipment and technology. And the last one that he did, again, here are the three initiatives. Last time I was here. Show me the numbers. Right then what are your initiatives? The last one was culture. Because at the end of the day, Jim Burke would tell you the most important thing in Johnson Johnson's success was the culture of the organization. Everybody felt like they played a role. Everybody had pride working for that company. Everybody knew we were focused on helping others be better off. And if others are better off, Johnson Johnson would be better off. Same foundation, trust, most important asset and understanding, cause and effect. And then what drives behavior? What's in it for me? Whoever it is, whether it's employee, distributor, retailer, customer, what's in it for me is what drives behavior. And the what's in it for me is an experience you're helping them avoid or gain. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So if I understand things correctly, right, Core behind all this is trust, understanding and incentive. And so those three components are driven by why, right? Like they're driven by this idea of why am I doing all this in the first place? So if I, if I look through that lens and I ask questions in regards to that and to trust, understanding and incentive, you know, why are these things, things that are important to you at this point in time, in this particular circumstance? And then if I go to the other really kind of two questions Jim Burke asked the, the CEO, was he CEO of Johnson Johnson? So he asked these questions and chairman.

And then he went on to be, frankly, when, when he left Johnson Johnson, IBM, people forget this. IBM was in deep trouble in the late 80s, early 90s. He went on to be chairman of the board of IBM. And he taught a second key lesson I learned from this one, right? He went out and hired a CEO as chairman that came from a cigarette company. People said, what an idiot. But here was the lesson. Great leaders hire for talent versus experience. Their attitude is, it's easier to teach someone your business and your processes because you can teach that, but you can't teach talent, you can't teach curiosity, you can't teach self esteem, you can't teach that kind of pride. You can't teach the, frankly, one of the biggest assets. You can't teach resilience. And the fact is, I don't care what kind of life you've had, you're going to take some shots, you're going to. Life's not always fair.

My favorite thing is that you can't teach hunger for achievement. You just can't teach that. It's something that either somebody wants or they don't want. Now what you can do is find alignment with that hunger for achievement. You know, some. For example, I always think of business as like a vehicle you mentioned. You know, he brought him in to IBM. He was a cigarette guy, right. He just happened to sell cigarettes. He was probably really good at whatever he did. And all he had to do was translate that talent over to what he was doing with IBM. Hey, I don't sell cigarettes anymore. I sell this, and I'm going to be just as great as that. And probably had a lot of challenge there that made him hungry. There was probably a lot of questions Juneberg asked before he brought that guy on.

And the most important one there. And I think it's where you and I first bonded. Maybe this isn't fair, but I sort of look at it, you know, in the world, 90% of the world are takers and maybe 10% are givers. You find someone who's a giver wants to help other people, you'll always have a lot more fun at work. And frankly, you'll always have a more successful team. It was no different than in high school sports. Wanted the team to win more than their own glory. Those are better teams.

100% agree on that one. And so it really came down to a core emphasis of two questions. How'd you do? And what are you going to do?

Right.

Like those are really what those two questions really were. Were.

And one was numbers. Focus on numbers. Because again, another thing I learned there, if you're not measuring it, I mean, if you're not measuring it, you're not likely improving it. Because what's in view is what people do.

Yeah, they kind of came down to almost two measurables. It seemed like from the discussion you get came down to numbers and speed. Like, what are the numbers? And how fast did we. Were we able to accomplish it? Then he was focused on value, waste.

Capability, experience that other people depend on you. Then it was waste right time or expenses, materials. Then it was capability. What are you doing to get the team to be even better? Because one of the other key philosophies, one of the best parts I learned watching Johnson Johnson is you think they run like a big giant company. No, the thing he taught me, and we brought that to GF is the bigger you grow, the more you got to run scared or you're going to get trampled. And the more you run like a small business, when you're watching the nickels and dimes, the better off you are.

Always act like you're a small business. I don't care how big you get. That's for sure. And so I want to dig a little bit deeper.

Okay.

Something that really kind of grabbed my attention. We were talking about these two questions that are kind of focused on these five things, you know, speed, numbers, value, waste, capability, and culture. But you said that he could ask questions pertaining to those two questions to uncover, suggest, direct, and learn. And I was like, okay, so. And I was thinking to myself in my head, like, so how can I ask a question that might direct somebody? So. So what does that sound like? What does that look like?

Yeah, so. So I'll give you an example of some of them. There's a straight uncover stuff. Well, what happened here? What did you learn from it? What did you gain? Let's uncover it. Let's try suggest. Did you hit. Did you consider any of these three things and rule them out for any reason? No, it's now suggesting.

Right.

Direct it. You know, this reminds me of a situation I always in when I was about, you know, similar in my career. Boy, am I glad we did it. This is what we did. And here's why you're sort of directing now. Right. You can explore. Hey, let's brainstorm some options.

One of the ones I like to ask whenever it comes to directing is how do you think it would turn out if we did this? And then you kind of see the light bulbs go off and all that other good. Oh, yeah, that's actually a pretty good idea. And. And you turn it into being their idea. And that's the goal is like, this is all their idea. And they feel more empowered and they're running with it and own it.

And it's not manipulative, right? This manipulative? No, this is helping them learn people when they have insight, you know, people want to do a good job and want to be accountable if you give them a chance. We often don't let them be accountable in a chance. You know why? Because we think we know the best way. And if they're not doing the best way. Can I share one of the key thing I learned at Johnson Johnson as it relates to that?

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, so I remember Jeff Nugent, brilliant guy. After he left Johnson Johnson, he went on to be CEO of Revlon. And picture he and Ted, how the heck did they come out of the same household? But I remember something he shared with me that was real meaningful because at the time I was, I was having trouble delegating. I was having trouble really building things. But I got a ton done. He said, dave, think about it this way. You can find an employee that 75% of the time they do it somewhat similar the way you did it. And 20% of the time you look and you go, oh man, I can't believe they did it that way. But it's an acceptable outcome. And 5% of the time you're going, what? Why? If you can find a 75, 25 percenter like that delegate all day long, that's a great employee. A lot of entrepreneurs have trouble with that. And that's the difference between going beyond the entrepreneurial stage. Right. Most of these guys, how they end up in home improvement because they knew how to get things done, they knew how to build stuff. It wasn't their built their leadership skills. And then they get to that stage of, hey, this thing's now growing. How do I now lead it? Frankly, Jim, you know this. That's why Inc Magazine exists. Because it's a graveyard of companies that couldn't get beyond the entrepreneurial stage and then to the professional stage. And what's the biggest difference? One of them is documented processes and the other is accountability.

Yeah, I would say a third culture. And you nail those three things and you're usually doing pretty good. The problem I see with, with most owners where that this particular thing that you're talking about is they're scared. They're scared that somebody's not going to do it as perfect as they are. And sometimes it's pride. So fear and pride get in the way. Greed, like they think, hey, if I do all this stuff, I don't have to include this person, so I can make all this money, which is short sighted because I'd rather have a smaller percentage of a lot of something than a large percentage of a little of something. And the more that you start to get these concepts, I got some, the very same advice that you did. Hey, you got somebody that can do 80% of what you can do, delegate everything you can to that person. And so that's what we were always looking for. Somebody could do 80% of what I was expecting. And then the other 20%, you know, grow, coach. The other that there was, it was always that 5%, like, why in the world did you do that? But that's okay. That's how people learn.

And, Jim, one of the key steps to that is instead is, you know, when you're. When you're an entrepreneur, when you're young, every, you know, you can't afford anything to go wrong. This is how I want things done right. The changeover is shifting from here's how I want it done to here's the outcome I want. If you got questions, I'll. I'll share with you how I might have done it, but if you don't ask me, I'm going to assume you know how to do it, but I'm going to hold you accountable is the outcome. So it's shifting from how I want something done, the outcome I want done.

That's actually one of my favorite questions. Here's the outcome I would like to get to. Do you believe that you can achieve it? And if so, can you surpass it? And it's so cool because most people go, yeah, I can surpass it. And you go, well, okay, tell me how you're going to do it. I'd love to see that. And there's that, that measurement. How'd you do on that? Well, I did all of this, and I failed here. Okay, cool. No problem. Let's work on those pieces and keep moving forward and taking those steps. So a similar type thought process, I think is kind of the way I see things on that realm of growing these leaders is the more of them that I can have, the more capacity gives me to pursue what I'm really after, which, funny enough, I'm always after, like stepping away and handing it off to folks as I move on. And I've been fortunate, been able to do that a few times, and I'm on the same path here. At some point, I want to. Want to see that happen. Okay, so I got another question for you. Sure. We're starting to understand the power of questions. Some of these questions that you can ask, the types of questions that you can ask, how did you do? What will you do? How to ask questions like to uncover something, to suggest something, direct and learn. So to. To take from there. What's the best piece of advice when it comes to questions that you've ever gotten from a mentor? Is it. Is it Jim? Yeah, not me, Jim. Better, more powerful and more important person.

Jim Burke was the, you know, the best leader. And I've been fortunate. I've had some other good leaders and with different skills and different things. I mean, in some ways, you know, Mr. Heyman, the owner of GAF, in other ways, was a great leader. I mean, he was to the extreme. This is the outcome I want go and go. But something I learned from him that I. That I don't see as much in smaller business. So it comes to another suggestion, and it ties to something you just said. A lot of companies, when they do their numbers, it's a forecast. They set a number, they set an objective, they set a goal. Mr. Heyman always had to set the goal and then the stretch goal. And his feeling was that if you make the goal, you don't feel like a loser. If you stretch this stretch goal now, you feel absolutely awesome, but you feel pretty good. Making the goal and having those two numbers instead of one was a pretty important part of that.

That's actually really good. That is a good piece of advice. And we do talk about that with our clients. Whenever we're setting their salespeople up, right, we're talking with their salespeople, and we want to get some. Some expectations, because that's one of the problems in our industry is there are none. It's like, just go sell as much as you can and there you go. That's the expectation. Which leaves it up to human behavior at that point to do whatever it is I feel I need to do to survive, not what this company needs to do. And so that we can get into a big conversation about that. But we set up quota, like, minimum. Like, you see player, this is what it's going to take to get on the team. And maybe you get to stay, but we're looking for other people to replace you. Then we have expectation. That's B player. And so, hey, B player, you're safe, you're good. I hope you make it to the A team. But you're doing exactly what we want. And then you got the A team. Those are guys hitting goal and really doing very well. Then you got this whole other group. These are the future hall of Famers, we call it. And they're the people doing goal plus or stretch goal. We talk about that quite a bit. And funny enough, those are those people that are hungry for achievement. They're not really motivated by money in most cases, they're motivated by achievement.

They want to win.

They want to. They're very competitive. I'm one of those people. I can't stand losing. Pay me whatever, just let me know. I want.

Right?

Like, that's kind of the thing for me. And I. I think we should identify more of those people. I think there's more of them out there than people think there is. Because I think they always think of them as, like, the quarterback and the shortstop, you know, the point guard on the basketball team. They're not really. They're all the people that wanted to be those people.

Jim, do you remember the name Red Auerbach?

Oh, yeah. Boston Celtics coach for many, many years. Boy, there's. There's a trophy or something that has something to do with him. So go ahead.

He's awesome. And by the way, interesting thing with him, he never lived. His family never lived in Boston. He commuted from Washington, D.C. i always thought that was funny. But anyway, my uncle was a good friend of his. All right. My uncle did some consulting for Red Auerbach, and I remember one of the key lessons I learned about Red Auerbach's philosophy. And here's his philosophy. Look for people who hate to lose more than they like to win. You just said look. Sounds illustrated. Look for people. And think of, when you think of the Celtics, Larry Bird, I mean, he is a poster child for a guy who, yeah, he liked to win and celebrated for about three minutes. He hated to lose to the end of the game. They could be getting their butts kicked, but you knew he was going to give it everything he had to the very last minute. If you build a team that wants to be part of a team and. And Larry Bird was great on assists and Bill Russell, same thing. Both of those had that characteristic that Red Auerbach look for. Build a team around that talent. Teach them the business if you need to.

So that kind of brings me to one of my last questions. I think it's the most important question that we can ask is the question of ourselves, of who we want to be. As you're sitting here as an owner, entrepreneur, a contractor, and you're trying to figure out all of this stuff and be a good leader, the first thing you need to ask yourself is, who. Who do we want to be? And so do we want to be that uber competitive, you know, just everybody hates to lose type of feel? That may be perfect for some people like me. That was us. We were sports. And the whole bit, like, we're talking seething anger. If I got second place and I didn't sleep until I got back in the first place, like. And all of my people were like. It was just who we were. But not everybody fits in an organization like that. Not every owner can lead an organization like that. So ask yourself who you are and who you want to be. Just because an organization is built like that doesn't make it the only way to succeed. My grandfather had great saying. He said, there's a thousand ways to skin a cat, but only one of them gets it naked for you. And so it's the one you believe in. Like, I believe I'm going to skin this thing this way, and that's actually going to happen. And so this idea of asking yourself who you want to be, if you can figure out who you want to be and you believe in it, it's gonna make the biggest difference in you actually getting to success or not. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely agree. If. If you love what you do, it's. It's not work. And if you love what you do, here's the thing. If your purpose is money, you're always going to be a loser because there's always someone you know that's making more. But if your life has purpose, you get the best of both worlds. If you have purpose, you'll always make enough money, but your life will have a lot more meaning. You'll be a lot happier. I got a lot of friends who became multi, multi, multi millionaires. Sam Heyman was one of the least happy people I knew, and he owned gaf, and that was only one of four companies he owned that were frankly, just as big. But if you find yourself, you find what gets you up in the morning and helping you feel good when you go home and you happen to make a living at it, man, there's nothing better. And that makes you.

I was just gonna say amen. It's like I have. This is the longest I've ever done anything in my life. It's something that I am enjoying quite a bit. I still feel like there's challenge to it. I feel like that we're serving people and serving an industry and really impacting people beyond even the contractor, the people that work for them, the consumers that buy from them. And it's awesome to have a contractor call you and say, hey, we doubled our revenue, and because of that, we did this for our people. Like, that is so cool to me. That's the part that I don't care about the double revenue. I care about what you. You do with that revenue for your people. And getting this idea of serving and giving over taking and receiving. I'm going to preach it. I'm going to preach it. It's just the way that I've been able to find success myself. And I think it is the key. And really, there's kind of a good book about all that stuff out there, so it's something we might want to pay attention To. I got, I got a question for you.

Sure.

We all only have so much time on this planet. At some point that comes to an end. And when that does happen for Dave, what do you want your legacy to be? How do you want to be remembered?

Well, you know, there's clearly the family stuff. I mean, I think the best thing I've ever done in my life is I'm a really good grandfather and, and I love those grandkids like you can't believe. But from a legacy standpoint, I want to be known as someone who helped others succeed in ways and do degrees they didn't originally dream. Helping people achieve their dreams and affecting other people's lives. With the God given skill set that I was fortunate enough to get, I may have flunked out of three high schools, but that's not where the learning takes place. And I did learn the big corporate business skills and I did get the graduate again. And frankly, I'm a full time professor now at one school and a part time one at another school. Unfortunately, you know, professors complain like crazy how hard that is. It takes me about seven to ten hours a week to do all that. And I'm one of the highest rated professors in the school. School. It's giving back, it's helping others find themselves and achieve their dreams. And that's what I hope I'm remembered for.

So that gives me a follow up question. So you're doing that in school, you know, teaching people and that kind of thing. You're helping along the path, you've helped others along that path. How do you plan to continue to do so otherwise?

Well, that's an interesting question. You. I'm at the stage of life that, you know, I've tried retiring three times and hated it. So I failed at that. But I'm taking it easier, a little easier. But frankly, since I met you and your team, I mean it's, it's. People may not know, it is an incredible team of experts, but I feel like I found a place and with you and your team, that's the same religion, you have a lot of the same beliefs, you have a lot of the same drives. And frankly, if I'm fortunate enough, I would like to spend the rest of my life both teaching at the university, but also working with you and working with your clients and working as part of your team to help affect this home improvement industry to be a little bit better off.

We could not be more excited to facilitate that. I think you bring amazing value not only to our team, but to us as individuals, we're going to learn a lot from you. But our clients, our clients are going to learn a lot from you. And over the next months, we're going to be putting together some great content. But I've got some even better news for everybody. At the beginning of the show, I talked about how I sent off the book to you and you kind of read it and reviewed it and you came back to me with, I was kind of surprised, pretty glowing. And you're like, hey, this is actually really good. And you asked me, you said, hey, is there a way I could get it involved? I would love to be involved in that. I got some things I think you could add to this that would make this book even better. And you said, maybe a collaborator. Maybe I could write the forward or that type of thing. I said, well, why don't you wrap some content, let's see what you got, and you start putting some things together. We went back and forth, and I am excited. I think this is like a big thing. I'm excited to announce that you and I are going to co author this book together, this contractor's blueprint. And this first volume, volume one is on the foundational side. We're going to do volume two on the operational side together. And we're in the process now of melding our content together, which has become more of a challenge than I thought. Not that it's hard to do, it's just where it is exactly going to be the right thing and how the right feel for the book. And we're getting there. We're almost done. It's a bit of what's delayed it, but that's cool. We're gonna go from a great book to an excellent book and we're gonna do it together. I can't wait to do it with you. I can't wait to announce some of the other things we have planned for the future together. And with your help and guidance, I think we're going to get there in shining colors. It's going to be a lot of fun.

It's an honor for me. I think the book's going to be great. But Jim, at the end of the day, the people I've met on your team, and I know there's still some that are are coming on. I mean, it's a real privilege for me. So thank you.

Well, what we've been trying to do is to put together an executive level coaching team that you don't have to pay an executive level salary to. I mean, just go hire a CFO there's $150,000 at least. Just barely. You might get a halfway diesel, so on, but for what it costs to get some coaching from us, you get a cmo, you get a CEO, you get HR officer, you get a finance. Like all these different people that have these elite skills in various areas of our business.