Our LAST Episode - Yes, The RUMOR IS TRUE | S1E24

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Man, since our last recording we have been all over the place. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And today is a big day. [00:00:18] Speaker A: Today's a big day. [00:00:19] Speaker B: Yes. [00:00:20] Speaker A: So why don't you want to let our adoring audience know what the exciting event that's happening today? Because this is a week. [00:00:29] Speaker B: The exciting event is we are having our first annual it's going to start being an annual thing, I think depending on how it goes. Customer appreciation party. It's also like a holiday party and we did it a little bit earlier to beat the hustle and bustle of all the Christmas and holiday parties that are going on. But huge day. We have 100 plus people coming and there's just so much planning to be done. I'm really looking forward to it. So many of these customers we've only interacted with over email. So putting faces to the name is going to be amazing. But for me, as stressful as it is, between the food and the drinks and the music and the bartender, all of it, getting the plant ready, the logistics I am trying to take a step back and I think I've been able to do this in the last few days and think about wow, seven years ago when I started the business having zero customers to now being able to invite. We invited two to 300 people of customers, the biggest GCs and subs and most credible in the area. If you would have told me seven years ago that I would have been able to do that, I wouldn't have believed you. So this is so amazing. Like super surreal to see everybody in the room together tonight be like, wow, this is just a culmination of a dream that I had seven years ago when I was sitting there unemployed, scared of shit. What was I going to do with my life? Yeah, it's a really cool day. I will be very happy once it gets started. Once all the vendors are here and it gets started. But up until that point there's going be to a lot to do today. [00:02:11] Speaker A: You know what, I love to watch about it. I love to watch our teams come together. We share a building and our teams integrate. Tommy gets going on his graphics and the TVs look awesome when people come in and then our guys in the plant, they will stop, help set up the area. We will party in our manufacturing plant, which is pretty cool. There's a pile of wood over your shoulder and a box maker over this shoulder. But I really enjoy watching how our teams come together and put on events here and that's why we built this place. I mean we built this place to do exactly this, so we could play our ass off just like we work our ass off. [00:02:46] Speaker B: I'm really excited for well, I guess there's two parts of this I'm very excited for our customers to see the facility we built and party in there and celebrate and be like, wow, this is quite a facility. The other part of it is now we're going to be showing them our facility. So we're going to see all the requests that come out of this for storing material. And don't get your hopes up, people. Don't get your hopes up. We got enough inventory of our own. [00:03:16] Speaker A: True. And then quick segue into another. So part of our travels was to go see my mother in Florida, who we know is an avid listener, and we do speak of her a lot on here. And if we're poking fun at her about gallons of milk or generally it involves my childhood in some wait, wait. [00:03:33] Speaker B: We can't just say Florida. It's this special land. It's actually a separate planet called The Villages. And if you have not been to The Villages, it's a 55 and older like you stepped out of the what was that? The Stepford wives. Everything is perfectly manicured. How many? [00:03:53] Speaker A: I mean, there's just 125,000 people growing and growing. It's a quarter of the size of. [00:04:00] Speaker B: Baltimore City, but there are little town centers and bars and restaurants and golf courses, and everybody drives around their golf cart. And I've never experienced a single thing like it. How do you describe it? [00:04:14] Speaker A: Well, I would just say the movie benjamin Button. If you went backwards, albeit 55 years and older, it's a pack of children. I mean, right there, they have no schedules. They drive around in golf carts. [00:04:29] Speaker B: They're all liquored up. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Yeah, the parties start. What time do we get going? 430. [00:04:34] Speaker B: And that was late. [00:04:35] Speaker A: And we walked into a packed restaurant at 430. So it's like adult children. It's this crescendo of life where you work your ass off and this and that, and then you come down and relax on the other side, where you go back to having no schedules but you're of age to drink, which is a different animal. And these folks, I mean, they get down. [00:04:57] Speaker B: They get down and it's the same parting, but it's also like the same drama. Did you hear what Nancy and Billy, they're bill did? It is something, man. I mean, there's a movie about it, but there needs to be another one because it is unlike anything. We get a real kick out of it. I love it. It's so much fun, but I get. [00:05:14] Speaker A: A kick out of it. It's entertainment at its finest. And the drink specials are amazing, like three drinks for one. But the first drink costs $4.10. So you're drinking a 2.5 cent drink. It is something. And then one of my other favorite parts is we get to put all the names and the faces, like you were just saying with your construction. All the names and faces together of. [00:05:40] Speaker B: My mother's friends, except they're all named Bill and Sharon. [00:05:43] Speaker A: But not this time. [00:05:44] Speaker B: Not this time. We were graced with John and Carol. [00:05:48] Speaker A: We were which brings me to my story. So we were introduced to a lovely man. Let's call him John. Oh shit. His name's john. That's for you, John. Remember Jim? Oh, no, no. It's John. So we joked the entire time about names, but John, who we met for the first time, who's been through a lot of loss, know his wife and his daughter. But despite all of that, one of the nicest humans you'd ever want to meet. We were with him for just a couple of days and his wife collected these Chinese, I think he called them hourglasses, the actual term. I didn't we were back and forth on text because I sent a picture and said, hey, this is where it belongs, in our podcast room. And so he was kind enough to give us this, which will forever grace our podcast room as we will put other things up that friends and listeners give us. But I thought that was sweet that despite what he's been through, he was kind enough and gracious enough to give us this. [00:06:49] Speaker B: And it's twelve pounds, right? [00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, my arm is getting ready to fall. My bicep is more ripped than usual over here because of the weight. Yeah, that's why I wear a black shirt, just so it doesn't pop out well. [00:07:00] Speaker B: Also, I will say as our last, this is potentially I think we're still working through that, but potentially our last episode of season one. Come season two, we definitely want to add some more meaningful things to the podcast room. Not just throwing up to get started. We kind of threw shit up. Let's go. Like our last episode, sometimes you just got to get going, you just got to get in there. [00:07:23] Speaker A: That's exactly right. [00:07:24] Speaker B: Now we're refining and we're going to put really meaningful things up. [00:07:28] Speaker A: So thank you to John. And John. Your gift is a four hour podcast today because John said that they were a little bit on the long side of an hour. So we're going to go ahead and grind this thing out to four today just for John. [00:07:42] Speaker B: So let's get in there. And this is a really easy one because we're just doing a part two from last week. Last week's episode being about lessons, most important lessons we have learned through growing Arnold packaging and automation, integration and supply that are transferable to life and how you can apply them to be successful in life. And we just wanted to make this really applicable to anyone watching. Whether you're interested in starting a business, entrepreneurship or not. We only got through a couple of topics last week and I assume it's probably going to be the same just because we go into such great detail. Why don't you start? Because I think we only touched on one of your main topics last week. [00:08:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think just the life component too. Yes, if you're starting your business, yes if you're entrepreneurial. But as I look back or I was writing my topics. A lot of them that I hit on were young Mcarnold taking over it at 24, 25 years old, and all of the tools and skills that I didn't have, and looking back retrospectively and saying, god, I was such a fill in the word asshole, whatever moron, neophyte, naive, whatever word you'd put in there. So a lot of these for me were looking back and going, what changes did I make or evolve into as I was learning a lot of times the hard way, doing it wrong, getting it wrong, and what could I share? And hopefully so many of these just go right into life. We talk about personal productivity, which has both. And this one, I think, is absolutely applicable every single place that you go, and it's as simple as ask more questions and make fewer statements. I feel like when I was a younger leader that I showed up making statements and which could even be experienced as demands or dictatorial and on level twelve loud. And one of my other notes was here is that volume doesn't equal urgency. And I think having grown up around a dad, that was a boomer. There was a lot of that where if you wanted something done or you want to make sure everybody knew how important it was, you screamed, right? You got to a new level of volume. And that was just something that I watched. [00:10:05] Speaker B: Can I interject just one quick thing here? Because it's making me think of something. And she's actually no longer at the company, but on email. A woman responded to an email exchange. We were on in all Caps letters, and I wrote back, despite all the caps here in the real world, it doesn't make any of us move any faster. [00:10:26] Speaker A: Hopefully she just had her Caps Lock stuck. [00:10:28] Speaker B: No, she didn't. And I knew that, and she's no longer at the company. But I was like, how am I going to address this? Because this is absurd. And it's just same thing like that, right? [00:10:37] Speaker A: If I hit the Caps Lock button and say the same thing again, maybe I could get it sooner. [00:10:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:10:43] Speaker A: So I'm all over the map today, probably because I'm physically, mentally exhausted. We talked about fatigue along the way. We also have customers that will ask the same question over and over, hoping to get a different answer. It's like, you've already asked me this six times, and what am I supposed to do? Forget the answer. I'll get so tired. [00:11:03] Speaker B: They don't like your answer. [00:11:04] Speaker A: I know. We have customers that do that. We have employees and spots that do that. We have salespeople that do that. [00:11:09] Speaker B: So relating to life, because you say this to the girls all the time. They pretend like they don't hear or ignore, and you're like, no, you just don't like the answer I gave you. You heard me. [00:11:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:22] Speaker B: You just don't like the answer. [00:11:23] Speaker A: And they're relying on my fatigue to roll over. And sometimes they're right. [00:11:28] Speaker B: Don't say that. [00:11:28] Speaker A: Sometimes they're right. Well, they don't listen. They won't listen until they don't tell you they listen. Years from now, that's bullshit. They think they're closet. But anyway, so I think I would come in at times on tilt with statements instead of questions and just, I think in general, business side, personal side, whatever relationship you're talking about, it would be about thinking and listening to I was talking to someone the other day. This is all pertinent, I promise you, despite all of my popcorn shit right now. I was talking to someone the other day, and I realized in watching our episodes back, that in the moment I'm very present. But there are things that when I watch, I don't exactly recall parts of our conversations with very intimate detail. And I think it's because while you're talking, I'm not listening to respond. I'm listening to understand and therefore crafting my response or building around. And there are times when you start talking, I honestly have no idea what the hell I'm going to say. But in listening to understand, it all becomes very clear. And after 30 seconds, 40 seconds, however long it is that you're making a point, whatever, I'm ready. I'm like, okay. But then I realize that when I watch it back, that I was like, oh, that's right, we did talk about or I did say that then after she said this. And I think if I had done a better job along the way of showing up like that to start listening to understand versus listening to respond, I would have gotten a lot further, a lot faster. Which the exact opposite of that is showing up, speaking on level twelve, on blast. So that's one of the ones that I would take every single place that I go going forward would be to show up and start with a question. And we talk about it here, and we talk about it a lot in our company that you can tell how smart someone is, not by the answers that they give, but by the questions that they ask. And I'm always watching our team. We do a lot of group presentations, especially in the automation side. The number of times I am on a team's call in a room, quote unquote, 2D room, with three or four of our teammates and could be three or four of the customer's teammates. The customer is doing a lot of the talking and then I'm listening for our team to see what our next response or input is. And it's generally a question, and I know from the quality of the question how deep of an understanding they have of what the customer just said. Now, I generally have the benefit of having spent more time with a customer, and that's because the way our process works. We're out qualifying and quantifying to invite our engineering team into the room gets wildly expensive. So I have the benefit. I generally have a lot more information. I've collected a lot more information simply by having the benefit of being exposed longer. And I'm looking to see how fast it takes them to catch up with what I've already collected. Now, I have given them a download of sorts, certainly not perfect, certainly not complete, because I just can't disseminate and pass all that information on. Nor do I want to jade them with my bias of the application. I want them to get it on their own, and I'm listening for their questions. And man, I will tell you that a lot of the times it could be a little off with question one, but by question two, and certainly by question three, I mean, I can tell they are absolutely dialed in. And that's just all part and parcel to this idea of things I have learned over the years, to asking questions first and speaking later. And when you speak, there's still even a better way to do it than the way I showed up as a young leader dictatorial. It was a dictation, not a conversation, nothing that looked collaborative, taking it another level. And I could even show up on blast at times too. [00:15:40] Speaker B: Sure. And this is very common for a lot of young leaders. Not necessarily. We're using the word young. I'm using it in the context of a newer leader. No matter what age you are, right experience. And I believe a lot of the reason is because you as in plural, anybody in this position, maybe you are as someone new to what you're doing, you're inexperienced. And maybe a lot of times we're somewhat insecure because we are experienced. So if we ask the questions, we are afraid, which is stupid, but that we are going to look inexperienced and like we don't know what we're doing. So we show up in this matter of fact dictatorial manner because we want to make sure everybody knows that we do, in fact, know what we're talking about. So I think that's definitely part of it. And then as you grow and you do become more experienced, you know what you know and you know what you don't know. You're secure at that point as you gain security, and you're like, no, I know a lot. I don't know everything. And everyone around me knows that and trusts me and knows I'm credible. You no longer worry about asking the questions because you're so secure. You are experienced. So I think that's the difference. So it's really common to be that person that you were describing yourself as. I think a lot of us go through that. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Yeah, here's what's interesting. It just hit me again. I was sitting over here listening to understand I didn't do it in the field. So that's the thing that I just remembered when I was with customers. Let's just say I was 26 or 27 years old, and I was wearing a lot of different hats. I was running the business, but I also had a sales territory too. I mean, as a much smaller company. I still work in the business, but I really worked in the business then. I mean, I was a producer. I might have also been the chief producer at that point in time, but when I was with customers, I wasn't that know. I remember any number of engineers. There was an engineer, British Petroleum used to have a solar panel division in Frederick called Beefy Solar. And one of the engineers that worked there, whose name was Dinesh Amin, was considered one of the godfathers of solar, worked for Westinghouse, actually put solar panels on the space shuttle. That's so much technology. I don't think a lot of people know came from NASA, whether it was windshield applications and different things. But there was a relationship that I had where I showed up, I mean, green, like really green, and was very comfortable to ask questions, and he was very comfortable to ask. And at no point did he ever show up with this attitude that I was a dumb kid, right? If that's the way, if you'd want to position it that way. But I was very okay to do that. But I remember now when I would get back to the office, when I was in a position of leadership, I don't know if I had this made up story that I was expected to know everything. And I had to be this all knowing being also touched on it, listening back. I was younger than everybody the vast majority of the time, and it had just recently started to be the oldest person in the room or one of the older people in the room. But that was very different. I was completely okay to do that with customers, and they were very happy to teach me. And that's one of the takeaways. Regardless of how old, there's a lot of people that just want to help you. It's okay to say, I don't know how to make a solar panel. And this particular individual, he was ecstatic to teach me about how solar panels work and photovoltaic technology versus thin films and all the things I remember about learning about solar, my job was just to get it into a box. Not to dumb it down, but my job was to get it from point A to point B. But I was completely invested and immersed in wanting to understand what they were doing at the deepest possible level. [00:19:41] Speaker B: This is so applicable to life, too, because if I think about it, if I have someone that tells me shows up and is like, listen, I do not know. You're asking me a question, I don't know. But most of like a great answer is, but I'll find out, or I'll rely on the expert, or I'll connect you with somebody that does. But then when they show up to give me an answer or something they do know, I really trust them because they've been honest in what they don't know, and thus I trust them even more in what they don't know do know. And I believe that is a great life lesson across the board in anything you're doing. You don't have to pretend and people value that honesty and transparency, and then when you show up about something you do know, it's like, oh, I'm listening, because they've been honest with me this. [00:20:28] Speaker A: Whole yeah, yeah, that's also changed too. At some point, John, our brother in Hourglass, asked us to do something on business ethics as one of our topics, which we'll delve into in season two. And as I was thinking about that and playing that through, I think there's a lot more transparency or I experience a lot more transparency in business than I remember as a younger participant in business. I'm not suggesting that it was to the point where there was ethical issues or things along those lines, but I don't know whether between the amount of information that's available real time, whether it is Google or let's just talk about price transparency. That's one. Let's just talk about price transparency. You want to know what something called? Pick up your supercomputer called your phone and you want to know what the market will bear? It'll tell you. So whether it's things along those lines have just have blown the COVID off. And I remember someone using the term to describe the boomer generation is this wizard behind the curtain mentality where there was so much information that was captured. And I promise you, I'm not going to use this word proprietary. For one time. But just the idea that all of that information wasn't available and it was closely held by a few people and it had this mantra of lack of transparency, because if you didn't know it, you didn't know it, and there wasn't really an easily accessible place to go get it. And it seems like the COVID has been blown off of the vast majority of that in a great way. I think it fosters a lot more collaborative conversations and interactions. I think the transparency is at a much higher level than it's been right in line with what you said. I think it has fostered this level of trust that's different. It just feels less adversarial to me. I remember as a young salesperson, there was definitely this us versus them feel when I was working with buyers or purchasing agents or it really wasn't this how do we get there together mentality. Meanwhile, I was selling packaging materials and you'd be hard pressed to find a product in the process that's more important than in that way, right? I mean, talk about going to market together. We're literally going to market together. You're going to put your widget in my box and the next person that's going to see it is your customer. But really our collective customer because if we're doing our job we're talking about your customer, right? Our customers customer. But even still it had this adversarial feel at times, whether price or whatever it was and it too had a dictatorial feel like it was lowly supplier, do what I say and it just doesn't feel that way anymore. It does have a much more of a we're in this together feel and I'm not sure if the Pandemic did some of that. Think about the supply chain challenges where you had really had to lean on suppliers because especially in our industry if you couldn't get a box and you couldn't ship your stuff, you couldn't generate revenue. But I really like the direction that it seems to be headed versus what I recall as an earlier participant in sales or business. And I hope we continue to go in that direction and partner up and find relationships business but really all of them where they're just so synergistic and even symbiotic where you're just partners in business. Yes, one person happens to buy something from the other but man, the ultimate goal is to make the next person in line their customer, their customer's customer as long as that supply chain is make them happier, more productive and even a little more profitable too. [00:24:24] Speaker B: Yes, I'm sure all the factors you mentioned have played into that transparency collaborative piece. I also just think there just seems to be such a cultural shift towards that just in general. Again, I think it's for a lot of different reasons but in life are we ready to start with a new topic, any lasting thing? I think that was an absolutely great one and so applicable to both business and life. [00:24:57] Speaker A: Well, just one more thought. Social media gets a bad rap in a lot of spots. What contribution or what is the good potential contribution that the word social in social media has an effect on that because we have phones as supercomputers and we're able to touch the other almost 8 billion with a B people on this big ass rock called Earth. Are we starting to get a little bit better understanding of each other through that? Not all the bullshit and all the horrible things that go on and all of the misinformation. What are the great nuggets of the word social and social media that maybe has us evolving faster than we would have without it? [00:25:41] Speaker B: Maybe that's a that's where my mind was a contributor was 100%. Absolutely. [00:25:45] Speaker A: So, yeah, I would just wrap on that. [00:25:49] Speaker B: And this is a great segue to the one I had in mind because it's all, again, all about people and relationship and connections and something really important, which I've talked to you about. And you've probably heard me tell this story a million times, but it was such a great reminder when I was starting the business and we had a project. This was when we were on the GC side of things. Our first real project, a restaurant project. We were renovating the restaurant. We gutted the whole thing. And the team we were working with suggested we just work direct with their banking team who was M T Bank, who is well, I'll get to so we I said, sure, like, we can work direct with your bank in a lot of different but they would pay us direct, so on and so forth. So I created this great rapport with the guy was named Mickey Gorman at the time, the banking agent at M T Bank. And we worked with them well at the time. This was our first project. I had no history with any banks. I had no lender. I had nothing. Right. I bootstrapped my business. I was working off the savings I had in my bank account. I knew eventually I needed a banking partner. Eventually as and very quickly. So I go through the process. I'm starting to build the business slowly. And I apply to different smaller banks mostly. One of them was focused on minority companies and just putting feelers out there, seeing who would lend to me. And I got rejection after rejection. And finally I went to M and T Bank and we had a discussion and they decided to take us on and be a banking partner. And I found out later that we were the first startup that year that they decided to partner with. And this was in 2000. I don't know if it was in 2000. I started the business in 2016. But this might not have happened to 2017. But what I came to realize was MNT decided to take a chance on us. We had basically no history as a company. It was just me. I was subcontracting work. So think about it. I had one customer, one project, no employees, very little on my bank account, no company history. Why would they say, yeah, this sounds like a good idea. We're going to loan Britt some money? And when I thought back about it, they believed in me, in my story, in my vision as I sat across that table from them. I don't think it was about my business plan, right? It was about what I had in mind and them knowing my character a little bit and working with me. [00:28:52] Speaker A: Right. [00:28:53] Speaker B: And it reminds me every time that the people, no matter how scared you are, how inexperienced, if you feel really out of place, uncomfortable, you're sitting across the table from a lawyer or a banker or someone much more experienced than you, a CEO, they're still strip it all down. Just people. And you're always looking eye to eye with a person and that is very similar to you. And people are emotional and they have feelings and your stories and you are touch people. So just anytime going up in an uncomfortable situation, I'm. Like, I'm so far out of my league right now, I don't know what I'm doing. I try to remind myself the person I'm about to sit across is so much like me. Like, no matter what they're doing, they're listening to me and my story. And we're both going to have some kind of emotional response. And I think when you can keep that in mind and make situations, whatever you're in, less scary, you just go in and you remember that because that's all it took. And now M t. Bank and we're incredible customers. We built an amazing business with them. It paid off for them. In the end, my vision came to fruition. Plus more so I think that was just a great example of and that's in life, like, you're going to be in these uncomfortable situations, but just remember, it's just a person. It's just a person sitting across the table from you that has all the same feelings and emotions. [00:30:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great one. And I remember similar stories if I just took it over, staying on the business side. And I don't want to lose track of the personal side as we talk about this, too, because all of this, anytime we talk about something that has to do with a relationship or the idea of attraction or being attractive, it's across everything, every single relationship you have. Personal, professional, whatever. And I had to remind myself of that when I was going into big customers and I was sitting across from the VP of whatever, from pick a company around here, McCormick, Becton, Dickinson. [00:31:01] Speaker B: You're like, I don't belong yeah, I. [00:31:02] Speaker A: Don'T belong here because your building's bigger than mine, and you have 7000 buildings. [00:31:08] Speaker B: 100 times bigger than mine, and your. [00:31:12] Speaker A: Workforce is 1000 times bigger than mine. That was something, but again, not early. That did not occur to me early. And I had the pleasure of listening to Kevin Planck speak early in his career, and he told a similar story. He did not yet have his shoeline. So he was going to China to pitch one of the largest manufacturers of shoes. And whatever happened that day, power outage. Some freakish event had his presentation, his PowerPoint presentation that I'm sure they had invested hundreds of man hours into because they were actually pitching a supplier to make their shoes a little bit different, right? He's like, Wait a minute, I'm the customer here. Why am I pitching you to make my shoes? Whatever happened, none of those tools were available. And his exact comment was, at that moment, I realized it was me, the guy across the table, and the three and a half feet of pine between me and that person across the table. Regardless of how big I was, how big they and that was one that stuck with me. I talked about Norman Schwarzkoff last time. There's these little nuggets that I captured along the way, that's one. And it wasn't maybe until I heard it articulated that way that I thought, okay, yes, of course that makes sense. And I will say there is the confidence that comes from doing some things and that confidence is what allows you to get there and get past whatever those insecurities would be. So I don't know that it's exactly as easy as saying, yeah, that's right, I deserve a seat at the table. There is some internal workings and some insecurities that you can get past with repetition, which builds confidence, which builds credibility and all of those words ultimately jive. And then what I think happens is you show up differently whether you know it or not. If the idea that you have 7 seconds to make that impression, those 7 seconds would really matter. And whatever you had accumulated in knowledge and experience, if it made those 7 seconds better than they were when you were younger, then you've got a much better chance of success. So I believe it all goes together as you're building that war chest of tools that you have to go to work, whatever that means. And that could also be a personal event too. I don't mean work work, I mean whatever it is that you're trying to communicate. [00:33:42] Speaker B: And confidence was the other piece I was definitely going to touch on today, which you did. And I think for me, at least personally, to be able to think the way I did allowed me to get to the table. Otherwise I would have run the other way. So I think reminding myself that's just a person allowed me to get to the table and every experience I had across the table from somebody allowed me to build the confidence slowly. And so like you said, it's all about practice. It's all about repetition. The more you do, the more comfortable you get, the more confident. And showing up with confidence is half the battle. You know that as a young entrepreneur, you've got to show up confident. If you don't, people are going to read right through it. And why am I going to invest in somebody that doesn't even, or at least on the surface isn't even confident enough to believe in themselves or their vision? [00:34:37] Speaker A: Right. [00:34:37] Speaker B: And that's hard when you have very little. [00:34:41] Speaker A: Yeah. The word that was racing through my head when you were telling the story about the bank to open this topic was collateral. Right. So the pure business banking term collateral, you didn't have any collateral to speak of. So the collateral that you were trading on was your entire life. Whether it was how you grew up, how you attacked sports, your level of commitment. So where you didn't have this bucket of collateral over here called a house that you can sign away through an IDOT, an indemnified deed of trust. Some of our favorite we say you haven't made it until you've made payroll and signed an IDOT. Right. Meaning if you fail, they take your house and your kids are homeless. You were trading on this collateral, which was your life story, how you approach sports and the level of commitment, and that you had bootstrapped it so far, and whatever you had, you had willed it as such, and they decided to invest in you based on life collateral, not the technical banking term, collateral. [00:35:42] Speaker B: That's a really good point. And part of probably them taking that risk was looking at the risk I was taking. Like, if she's willing to do this, maybe we should take a again, I know there's an underwriting process and it's much more analytical, but a big piece of it is our engagement and the interaction from human to human. And that's something to be said for the 3D world versus 2D that you just can't get. The other point I do want to hone in on quickly is you mentioned the sports piece of it, and I've talked about this before, but just as a young female, even adult female, playing soccer so competitively, it definitely allowed me it was so transferable. I built so much confidence during that process of building myself to an elite athlete, and it was so transferable in the business space. And that is why I'm such a proponent of young girls getting involved in really sports specifically. But there's a lot of other things and building skill sets and improving and putting yourself outside of your comfort zone, that builds confidence and that is transferable into your adulthood and your career. And that really set such a great foundation of confidence that I was able to stand on once I started business. [00:37:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Can I just segue into an add on to this? Yeah, because that was a great one. And it just hit me as something that I learned along the way is being very intentional and being very aware about building brand you, I would call it. There's never been a bigger war chest of tools to do that with than at this point in history. And I remember when I was a young, a lot of young leader stories coming out of me for these two episodes, for sure. But I remember as a young leader, someone along the way, I don't recall who, said get published. That was something that really resonated me. I don't care what you do, I don't care how you do it. Get published. Well, it was long enough ago. We're talking about 1996, seven, eight. It was going to be on paper. There weren't these elect where anybody I can get published in 10 seconds if I go to my LinkedIn account. Different, harder. So I thought, okay, I'm going to do that. I'm going to get published. I like to write anyway, and I have some ideas that I want to share. And I did, and I started submitting essays. There was a contest that I won where I got a scholarship to the University of Industrial Distribution. [00:38:23] Speaker B: Oh, of course. [00:38:24] Speaker A: Yeah. You know the University of Industrial Distribution. Doesn't everybody attend? But it was about, tell us what you see for the future, simply. And whatever I put together was good enough that I was able to do it. But it didn't occur to me at that point that I was actually starting to build brand me or brand you. And that's something that everybody should start working on as fast as humanly possible. Yes, you work for a this we absolutely practice what we preach. I was on myself last week about not demonstrating my interest in singing by doing nothing about it. This is something that we really do walk the talk. And yes, you work for Arnold Packaging, but I want everyone here to have an incredible brand underneath of is who is the John Smith under Arnold Packaging? And why are you important and why are you a subject matter expert? And it's a lot easier now than it's ever been to create brand you. And no matter what your contribution is to an organization, it has a very sales or front person feel to it. That's absolutely not the case. You could be in the back of the building. And what I mean is your role has you working in an area. You're in ops, you're in R and D, things that wouldn't have that front person feel to them. It doesn't matter where you are personally, professionally. You have to build brand you and continue to tell the story as you evolve, because brand you is going to change over the years just like any other brand is going to change. Brand you is going to change and get better, stronger, faster, more credible, more confident, and more engaging, right? And more engageable, if that's a word. So the idea that you would start working on brand you and never, ever stop and you'd figure out the tools like, listen, this podcast is a huge builder of brand us, right? I mean, I'm building brand me. You're building brand you. We're building brand us. And that wasn't something that ever occurred to me. Obviously, go get published. And that was really along the lines of establish yourself as a subject matter expert. But subject matter expertise is just one little part of brand you. So I would really be leaning into, regardless of what your role is or what you're doing, and this is uncomfortable for a lot of people because there is an advertising feel to it. There's a put yourself out there. Like, I think of Brooke, right, our oldest daughter. That would be something that would be very uncomfortable for her if it had a very public feel to know what she does as relates to veterinary medicine. And her contribution, her story is incredible. Imagine if she would lean into building Brand you, called Brooke Arnold. They would be an amazing story and so attractive. So that would be one takeaway that just occurred to me as you were talking about being really diligent and intentional about building brand new. [00:41:34] Speaker B: That wasn't specifically on my list, but that's such a good one. But you know what? Again, when you strip it all down, take all the layers off the onion, all that saying is that the most important thing that we have is your personal relationships to other people. People are not personally invested with Arnold Packaging, they are personally invested with Mcarnold, or the salesperson they're working with, or the Marching Tommy and Mark. Whoever their contact is, that is it. And that is actually how I was able to build my business, Tagler Construction and Supply, because I had so many relationships from the former companies I worked with, and not intentionally. Sometimes it was pulling their business from those other places I've formally worked with and staying with me. And the one that I always remember, which I've referenced before, is Mike McDevitt, who we were working on projects with him at my former employer. And then he said to me, well, I don't care about ex employer, and it could have been any employer. It wasn't because that employer did anything. It was just my relationship's with you. So I'm going to do the project with wherever you are. And that's such a great example of it. And I think you and I have unintentionally, at least none of this was intentional when I started putting my story on LinkedIn, but the ROI on that, when I get into a LinkedIn story, I can look at the engagement. So on a great post, I could get 200,000 views. But it's always a very personal, intimate story. If I'm simply putting something on LinkedIn about my business or we sell lumber or something, it's not even close. And it just goes to show you, people want that personal connection. And I've been able to build that through LinkedIn. And because of that, the ROI for Taylor in Construction and Supply has been incredible. You can't necessarily measure in metrics what you're doing on LinkedIn and what kind of return it has on your business. But in some situations, I can tell you. I can, because this person found me and was attracted to my story and introduced themselves, and then we did a million dollar contract together, which would have never happened. So I think that is so important. But the one thing I have to mention, and this is hard to do, really hard to do, is not putting on a facade or a story and really just telling it authentically, which really is so hard. And I'm not even sure I have a lot of improvement to do there, because we all want to interject these parts, whether it's to make us look better or the story look better. But you've really got to be so honest in that story, because if you're not, you're not going to get what you want out of it or what you need out of it. [00:44:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the magic for what you've done is that your motivation or your intention behind it was very pure. It was to just tell a story, right? I know what you're doing when you're writing, you're generally releasing something therapeutic. And I know that it came up on this podcast where you said, damn the rest of all of it. Until I get this out, I'm not going to be able to function properly. And I think nothing about what you ever did was tied to a marketing message or return on investment or any of it. Right? You just had to get it out. [00:45:24] Speaker B: And still not. [00:45:25] Speaker A: But look at this. I mean, this exact platform. Now, we struggle mightily to understand at times the level of engagement. And none of this is about ROI. Yes, of course we're building brand us. Brand you, me. But we struggle really mightily to understand engagement, but really care, but don't care. It's not about that, right? I mean, this is not about driving anything to any bottom line of any kind. We just love talking to each other and sharing whatever we've gotten wrong openly and honestly. And if that resonates or attracts great, it's not going to do it for everybody. It's not going to do it for everybody all the time. But we love it, right? And for those people that are aligned with it and are attracted to it that want to tune in, we're ecstatic to have them. But I promise you, we don't break this meeting with Tommy and try to tie nickels and dimes and quarters to this as an event. Nothing of the sort. So if there is something about exactly the opposite, yeah, if you want to talk about opportunity costs or something we're not doing right now, but that authenticity piece and building brand you and back to the bank story was they were investing in brand you. The collateral that was built up through the story of Britt and what she had done for the first 30 years, I think, right, the first 30 years of your life is what the investment was in. It was in really in brand you, regardless of not having any technical collateral. [00:46:55] Speaker B: And to tie this up with a bow, a really great example of this, which you can measure, is if you look at even ours, like a LinkedIn page or an Instagram page, that's for a podcast, which we have. And I see one, let's talk about a podcast that's massive, the number one, two, three in the world. If I went onto Instagram and I looked at their podcast page versus their personal page, they will have millions and millions of follows on their personal page, on their podcast page, maybe 100,200. It's not even close, because people are not connected to the podcast. Honestly. They really don't give a shit. They're so interested in that person, and they listen to the podcast because they love that person. And those instagram personal pages. And that's what when we were meeting with agencies because we were trying to get some consulting help and how do we do this thing? Like, are we doing that? We always want to learn, we always pursue our curiosities. We're lifelong learners. And one of the things they said was, you've got to build your personal brands because people don't care about your podcast Instagram page. They really want to lean into you. And when they do, that's going to drive viewership and audience to your collective podcast. Which is so true. [00:48:14] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I completely agree. So that's a good one. Brand new. I think it's getting better. I don't know. I'm not sure if there's this mandatory feel because there is now a tool called LinkedIn where you can and listen. [00:48:26] Speaker B: God, some of it's so fake. That's the one thing that is disseminating between what's I think what's really important is you can get caught up in following these fake lives and it can be really disheartening and discouraging. It's like you've got to follow the people that are very inspiring and vulnerable and honest and finding that because there are two opposite ends of the spectrum with ability on social media and we use LinkedIn, but most of this is people TikTok and Instagram, facebook, depending on your age. [00:49:03] Speaker A: Right. Your demo. [00:49:04] Speaker B: Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you. [00:49:06] Speaker A: No, very important. You want to tackle one more? [00:49:10] Speaker B: Yes, I do. Absolutely. [00:49:12] Speaker A: Do you want me to say it? Yeah, one last one. I think we'll see how deep we go. Not for me to decide, but hire, work with and surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. And I'll keep going so you can listen to understand, like I always do. I remember as a younger leader, for some reason, having to feel like that I would not be capable of leading or being an effective leader if I wasn't the smartest person in the room. Right. I had to be leading. And for whatever reason, in my mind, leading meant having thought supremacy or whatever those things were. And I realized that when I started to surround myself and bring people into my life, organization that were smarter, more experienced, whatever that means, right. The collective component of that, that I was able to get a lot further, a lot faster. There were situations on the work side where I might have been delegating things. I was literally freeing up bandwidth and time because I had people of equal or even better skill sets than I had, that I could offload some of my work and be able to pursue things that I was better at, that were more in line with what my superpowers would look like and then everywhere else too. We talk about our war rooms, but I don't know that that's as easily done until you know what you don't know. I mean, that's something that I absolutely figured out along the way is now I believe I'm a lot more effective at identifying things that I don't know and not even attempting not to be lazy or not to expand. My horizons on knowledge or capabilities. But to understand that with limited bandwidth and time resources being finite that there's a better way than me tackling it. That just for me went into my personal life, too and always saying, man, I'm the complete opposite. Right. I'm so happy to be the dumbest person in the room because it means that I can learn, I can experience things that I wouldn't have otherwise, that I can listen. If you think you are or you are legitimately the smartest person in the room, you probably spend more time talking than listening. And when you really realize and you're comfortable with and secure with being the dumbest person in the room, then you spend a hell of a lot of time listening. And if you are going to speak, it's after careful consideration and thought and you have listened to, understand and you're going to engage when appropriate. So that's been something that I've learned and gotten better at, significantly better at along the way. [00:52:07] Speaker B: And this is one at least when you listen to podcasts, you hear this one all the time. Put yourself, be the dumbest in the room, surround yourself by the smartest people. And I agree. But there's also situations where I would really push back on that. I don't think that applies always. I think there are going to be times where you should be the smartest person in the room. I think there are going to be many a time where you're going to want to mentor somebody and you're going to want to teach that's part of what you do. And in those situations you should be the smartest person in the room on a particular topic. [00:52:42] Speaker A: How's that? On a particular topic in a lane? [00:52:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. I understand the concept of that and agree for the most part. But there are going to be situations where it's appropriate to be the smartest in the room. [00:52:57] Speaker A: And you should be well, it's hard to be a subject matter expert if you're not an expert. Right. And when it does come into that realm of subject matter expertise, then yeah, you better show up that way. But gosh, there's so many things that I don't know. I mean, there's so many things and I am so thirsty to get more well rounded. And not because I need to be the best at every single thing, but because I'd like to be able to take those learnings into the things where I am a subject matter expert and make them better. Because no one has looked at them through that lens yet, because they didn't have exposure to all of those other different elements. [00:53:38] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. And going back to my point about at times we should be the smartest in the room. It's a responsibility. I feel like I have or even going to have much more so in 10, 15, 20 years to give back and share. It's almost selfish not to. To your point, there are so many situations and this almost goes into you could push this into the route of delegation almost, for instance, which we're doing right now, which is why I bring it up. If you're looking at doing some work on your house design, we are so happy to defer to the experts. We will tell them we know what we don't know and please teach us everything and speak to us like a fifth grader. We say that all the time. We want to learn on things that are outside of our realm. I am now the first to look for somebody else, and typically who I can find that's in reach. That is the best at what they do. That is my first initial reaction when I was starting my business. That was never my first. My first was, let me work through this. Let me figure it out myself. Do you know how much easier it makes your life when something gets thrown at you and you're like instead of spending hours trying to figure it out and you still won't even be at step one of where these other people are at step 100, just reach out to somebody that's already there. It expedites your learning curve, all of it. But that wasn't my initial reaction. Not even close. The opposite. So I see it as part of that delegation piece or reaching out to things you don't know about, whether it's in your business, whatever it is. And that is a great lesson. And you learn faster. Your life gets easier. You create rapports. I don't finish my words a lot because I get so excited to move on to the next one. [00:55:40] Speaker A: It's not actually true. You do finish your words. [00:55:42] Speaker B: You know, you don't think you there's, like a handful. I don't every podcast you might throw. [00:55:46] Speaker A: A lyric away occasionally as John, if. [00:55:48] Speaker B: I say, does everybody understand what I'm saying? Because in my head, they do. [00:55:53] Speaker A: I'm the worst person for that. Because of course I know what you're saying. Duh, right? Yeah. So I'm not the one to answer that question. For sure. Kicking the heck out of me down here this morning. [00:56:02] Speaker B: You change your leg position. [00:56:03] Speaker A: I don't know, but you are like a bean today. [00:56:05] Speaker B: You change your leg position. [00:56:06] Speaker A: Let me hit you with a tranquilizer dart. Calm down over there. [00:56:09] Speaker B: I got a lot of energy. I know you do, but anyway, so that's such a good point and such a great life lesson. And, man, if you want to just make your life so much better in every regard, put your ego aside and reach out to somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about immediately. [00:56:29] Speaker A: Yeah. My first thought now is, who do I know that knows this better than I do? [00:56:32] Speaker B: Right. And the one thing I will say, a lot of times, it does take financial resources to be able to do that. [00:56:40] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:56:40] Speaker B: So when you're starting a business, while that sounds great, I can't pay this lawyer for his expertise. Now, you do have YouTube and other resources, but I could very much so get I don't want to forget what it was like seven years ago and why I might not have or I might have hesitated to reach out. And that's real. [00:57:02] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's very fair. If you don't have the cash, you don't have the cash, right? So, yeah, you have to figure it out in that moment. And you're right, the tools are getting better. I've spent quite a bit of time with Chat GPT 4.0 recently and gosh, if I had that tool, I often wonder, though, would I have been smart enough to use it? I don't mean clinically intelligent enough to ask it the questions. I was such a blockhead. I don't know, I hope I would have been able to evolve at a speed where I would have said, well, why wouldn't I just use this is this is not suggesting I would park my brain ever, but, God, man, if there's a better way to do it, case in mean my CNBC addiction. But Andrew Ross Sorkin was messing around yesterday morning because they had Nikki Haley coming in and he said, I don't know, let's see what Chat GPT would do. So he said, what questions would you ask? And Joe's across the room, he's freaking out, right, because he's, hmm, is this going to replace me at some point? But there were some great responses in there. And I'll give you another case in point. Just staying on this line of the only option when I was a younger business person was to pay for that information, right? Because it was so closely held, like we talked about, to start the episode, there weren't all of these other options to start. Brooke, who has applied to veterinary school, got her first invitation to interview and I know nothing about it. So what did I do? I took it to Chat GPT and asked it some questions because I want to be able to counsel her better. I don't have to sit in the interview, but I want to have a better, more meaningful conversation with her and asked Chat GPT in three different passes, because if you do it again, it'll show up a little differently. You get, let's just say, 20 responses and then you go ahead and regenerate it again. It'll shift it and you might get three new nuggets and then you do it again and you probably get three or four. So you end up with 27 thoughts or questions or things. Just imagine the time it would take you historically, to just get started, right? I mean, here's the start. I was like, okay, I'm 80% of the way there and I have enough. Knowledge or intelligence about some of these, where I can get it to the 95 ish percent mark. It's not going to be perfect, but all of these tools that you have now is just amazing. It's going to be incredibly disruptive to all of the things we just talked about. But man, the tools that are available if you'll just lean into them and I think this generation coming through. Now we've talked about this is how it's just an extension of who they are. It's the very first thing and not in a lazy way, in an efficient way, in an investigative research way. It's really going to have things moving quickly. [00:59:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. I think that's a good wrap. Again, as I said, last one, last episode, which this was a part two, I feel like we could do a whole miniseries on these. I mean, there are just so many lessons that are so applicable to life, but I think we got through a handful of the ones that stick out the most to us as the most important. And hopefully there's some great insights that people can take away and apply to their own life. So I think this is potentially I think we've decided our last episode for season one. It has been an incredible learning experience for us just in every way. And we've gotten so much amazing feedback, both great feedback, keep up what you're doing and some critical. And here's good critical, here's what you can change. So we're going to be taking all of those analytics and the feedback and refining the podcast for season two. Think the idea and the timeline is going to be very short. Maybe take a couple to a few weeks to change a couple of things up to make it better for our audience and our viewers. And a couple of the things that we've been talking about is getting some guests on and we'd like to stay in our niche and in our lane. And that means talking to potentially other couples that are in business together and doing something similar. So we definitely are planning to bring some guests on and changing up some of the viewing capability. The way you view this, the way it looks, whether it's better lighting or better angles on how we're talking, just making it an overall better experience for people that are watching. And we're also going to have some surprises that we're going to throw into season two. So while we love this format of you and I sitting across the table for an hour and discussing a topic in depth that's not going away, we are going to interject a lot of other things into season two. [01:02:10] Speaker A: Well, I'm excited. I don't know any of those. Like usual, I don't know much about what we're doing, but I will show up and be ready to contribute. [01:02:17] Speaker B: Let this mind go to work. [01:02:18] Speaker A: I do. [01:02:19] Speaker B: I have so many oh my gosh, I have so many ideas. [01:02:23] Speaker A: I know you're going to be a beauty today. So it's only 09:00 in the morning, so you've already shot out of a cannon. And I will just say, just to put it the time, we started this on June 10 of 2023. So that's how long we've been at it for our very first season, which went really fast, just like these episodes that we shoot go really fast. It's been fun. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. This is not a farewell or anything of this word, but just a mental wrap for me because I do need to close loops and spots. And we will listen, learn, get better, deliver more, deliver better. That's just how we strive. [01:03:06] Speaker B: Absolutely. And the one thing that you and I are always going to be is committed. And when we say we're going to start something, we're going to see it through. And we did. And that's why we made it into the top 1% of podcasters, which is when you get to episode 21 by just the sheer number of getting to 21, only 1% of podcasters get to episode 21. They fail before, they stop before because it's hard. [01:03:29] Speaker A: Oh, wait, I thought we were in 1% of podcasts in the world. Does that sound what that meant? [01:03:33] Speaker B: Hey, there's a little clickbait for everybody. [01:03:36] Speaker A: You don't even share for me. That's why I clicked, because I thought we were the top 1% stop. Damn, I thought we were staring down Rogan. [01:03:42] Speaker B: But I think that's part of just we're very committed and consistent. It's all about consistency here. Lastly, and most importantly, thank you so much for everybody that has been following along. And again, we'll start up in a couple of weeks and we'll make this even better to give you even a greater experience, hopefully, than you've already had. [01:04:04] Speaker A: And one of the biggest Tommy we got. Tommy. [01:04:07] Speaker B: Yes. Thank you. [01:04:08] Speaker A: Thank you so much for all the commitment. And we've had some guest recorders along the way. [01:04:13] Speaker B: Tommy's been the core of much of this. [01:04:17] Speaker A: Absolutely. And a lot of great internal support. The people that we break out of here, they're like what those two nuts were doing for the last hour. We'll just give it two weeks. [01:04:24] Speaker B: And our Insulated room, give it a. [01:04:26] Speaker A: Couple of weeks, you'll get to see what we've been working on. [01:04:28] Speaker B: So please stay tuned and stay tuned because we've got some awesome stuff coming for season two and we'll be right back at it and we expect you guys to be right back at it with us. [01:04:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Rest up. You're going to need it, suckers. Yeah. [01:04:42] Speaker B: Let's do this. [01:04:43] Speaker A: Cheers. [01:04:44] Speaker B: Cheers. Season one, baby. [01:04:45] Speaker A: Thank you, Tommy.