Leadership

Get Your Employees To Care As Much As You Do With Dane Sanders

Ryan Englin · August 9, 2022 ·

We all know that not every job will be our dream job. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to love our current jobs. But how can leaders help employees love theirs? That is what Dane Sanders, Co-Founder and CEO of Tell Me Your Dreams, speaks about today. Dane helps business owners build cultures their teams love. At Tell Me Your Dreams, Dane interrupts the burnout cycle by helping employees achieve their dreams and promoting self-discovery, personal responsibility, and meaning at work. In this episode, Dane talks about how leaders can become strong and awake and get employees to care as much as they do.

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Get Your Employees To Care As Much As You Do With Dane Sanders

I am super excited about our guest. In fact, I already know we are in for a real treat. He’s the CEO of Tell Me Your Dreams, and he focuses on working with companies and leaders to make sure that the employees are engaged and that they love their job. He has what he calls a culture design firm. Seth Godin called his writing a precious gift, and he even serves on Donald Miller’s StoryBrand facilitator team.

If you’ve heard us talk about StoryBrand before, it’s come up a few times. A great process for helping you communicate your message to the right people. Dane and I have something in common. We both love pouring into people and helping people become engaged. Dane has taught leadership and character development at Westmont College. He’s led development efforts for Academic Centers at Biola University. He goes on and on. The resume for this guy is incredible but do you know what? I want to jump right into the episode and hear from Dane how he got to where he’s at. I want everyone to welcome to the show, Dane Sanders, CEO of Tell Me Your Dreams.

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Dane, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Ryan. Great to be here.

I am so excited about this. We’ve met a couple of times. We’ve chatted a couple of times. Our conversations need to get in front of our readers because I feel like I learned so much in spending a few minutes with you. I know this is going to be an amazing episode.

The feeling is mutual. My sense is that if we could somehow wonder twin powers activate and form something powerful, we would do some damage, so let’s get into it.

I asked the same question to everybody on the show because, for many business owners, there are a lot of things that we start to believe that aren’t true. Rules that we create for ourselves. Rules that others have created for us. In the work that you do, what do you think is the biggest myth?

It's normal for people to wake up and see themselves as heroes of their own stories. Click To Tweet

When I think about the human condition and out of the box of how people are wired, it’s normal for people to wake up and see themselves as the hero of their own stories. We all wake up and go, “What’s going on for me?” It’s natural. When those people who wake up and like that, and they go and they lead their organizations, they are tempted to think that because they are passionate about their work, their people should be as passionate as they are.

It’s not a conscious belief. Sometimes people expect it because they are paying them a lot of money but there’s the sense of like, “I am so excited about what I’m doing. Why are these people not as excited?” the reason is that those people woke up that morning and thought they were the hero of the story. Now we have two heroes in the story. That’s a problem. It’s not a very interesting story narrative, and we are competing.

When people can figure out some alternative roles in the story, the story gets way more interesting. What’s unique about the business owner, the leader, is the leader has a role available to them that their employees don’t have. When they can tap into that, when they can decide to be the guide in the relationship, everything changes.

There’s some Donald Miller stuff in there. I heard that. It’s interesting. I hear a lot of people tell me, “I can’t get my people to care.” I’m sure you’ve got some ways to help solve that and get them excited. The easiest thing to forget is that we hire people. They’ve got hopes, goals, dreams, frustrations, problems, and drama. They’ve got all of it they’re dealing with. If you forget that they’ve got a personal life to go home to that may not be perfect, and you don’t care about that stuff, how can you ever expect them to care about your business?

I’m glad you mentioned Don. He is a good friend, and we’ve done a lot of work together over the years. His contribution to my own take on life is amazing. Let me back up. I will give you a quick snapshot of what got me to now. When I was an undergrad in college, I studied Marketing. At the end of my Marketing degree, I felt like I had learned how to manipulate people to buy things they didn’t want or need.

BCC 79 | Employees — Employees: The leader has a role that their employees don’t have. When they can tap into that and decide to be the guide in the relationship, everything changes.

I thought, “That’s gross. I don’t like that now. What am I going to do?” I went to grad school and studied philosophy. I study philosophy and virtue ethics. How do you be a good person? Can you have a good life? Is that even possible? I was running away from marketing. That’s what I was doing. If you know anybody who’s graduated from grad school of philosophy, you know they are unemployed or their teachers.

I decided to become a teacher. I was lucky enough to do that. I’m teaching leadership and character development at this Liberal Arts college up in Santa Barbara, California. I read this book by Donald Miller called Blue Like Jazz. This is a million years ago. This is a New York Times Bestselling memoir. It was incredible. I made a movie about it. Don wrote a little chapter about this guy named Greg Spencer. Greg was a colleague of mine at Westmont. I basically worked my magic to try to get Don to come to campus to talk to my students. That’s how I met Don years ago.

Since then, Don has introduced me to the profound nature of the story. His story is so deeply built into our guts, into our DNA. It’s the human language. It’s how we make sense of the world. That can be for good, and it can be for not. Those ideas, I’m thinking, “What story are you living into? What story are your people living into?” They are in a story. If you can help them upgrade their stories, everything transforms.

Even me with my marketing thing. The other guy that I met around that time was a guy named Seth Godin, who you and I both know. Seth, first professionally and more personally, enrolled me in the idea that you could do marketing different. I’m a fan of marketing. I love marketing now. It’s amazing but it wouldn’t have happened if someone didn’t choose volitionally to be a guide in my life to invite me into a bigger story than I was living.

I was looking for hacks and shortcuts to everything. Seth came along and said, “Slow this train down. You can get where you want to go way faster, doing things 1 day at a time, 1 foot in front of the other but do the right things and the right way at the right timing for the right reason. You will see something change in your people.” Like Seth did in me. What we are talking about is how we upgrade people’s lives because of the position we hold as leaders but we do it in a way that is going to serve you and your company. That’s not the first benefactor. The first benefactor of the humans was called to steward and lead well in these seasons.

Leading is not having a transactional relationship with your people but a human relationship with them. Click To Tweet

There’s so much to unpack and your story of how you got to where you are at. I love how you started with the marketing route, which at the end of the day, this is what I believe. Everything we do is marketing. One of the big shifts in the way we recruit is we help people understand that recruiting is a marketing activity. They forget that. They think, “I write a job ad. I give it to HR, and they take care of it.” It’s very sterile and cold. It’s okay if we hurt people we don’t know.

That’s the way it is. It’s not that that’s the right way to do it or there’s a law that says, “That’s how it has to be done.” It’s the way it has been done because most people don’t like to recruit. They don’t like to grow their companies on the people’s side. They do it because they have other goals in mind. You had so much in there but what do you think is holding people back? It sounds like you had a lot to learn. You went on your own journey. I’m sure a lot of our readers are like, “I don’t have many years to figure it all out.” What’s holding them back and keeping them from getting their people engaged and having these conversations with their people?

First is what you said. It’s not having a transactional relationship with your people but a human relationship with your people. If you look at them as human beings like you described with real life, real challenges, the universal is everybody struggles and suffers. If you think about like, “Why do people quit their job?” Nobody quits their job because they didn’t like the company. They quit their job because they didn’t like their supervisor. They didn’t like the person they were working with. If you can be where you treat them like human beings, it’s amazing how much they will respond.

Leading with, “I wonder what these people are up against?” Getting curious about their real lives. Having a coffee. Let’s say you have 50 employees. Have one coffee a week for a year, and everyone will feel like a million bucks because the boss cared enough to say, “What are you doing?” The company we run is called Tell Me Your Dreams. The reason we call it that, it’s a horrible name for a company probably, is because what we do is we say, “If you are going to do one thing, even if you don’t hire us, sit with your people and say, ‘Tell me your dreams. What do you want in life? What do you want?’”

The reason we talk about dreams and not about, “What do you want” directly is because they will say, “I want a raise.” Let’s get the big picture here. If you had the raise, things going your way, if you could wave a magic wand in your life, what would happen? What is your dream?” People can internalize the woman or man who’s leading this place cares enough about little of me, my dreams, and that they think about me more than how I can serve them; everything transforms. A motivation arrives. The way we say it is if you invite dreams, you discover drive, and a whole new world opens up in terms of people’s outlook at work.

I can see a bumper sticker that says, “Invite dreams. Discovered drives.” A little plaque when you walk into the office or something.

It’s true. Again, it’s human. Everyone wants to get after it with their lives. If someone is working in a job that they didn’t have when they were kids. They want to be a fireman, a cop, an astronaut or be whatever, then they grow up. Let’s say they are in a role, a job, or even an industry that they never would’ve thought about. It happens all the time. That’s most of the world.

If you don’t invite meaning into those roles, this is how you do it. You talk about their aspirations. You talk about what they care about, at least as much as you want them to be thinking about your company’s mission statement. Care about their dream statement, what they want, and things open up. It’s natural. It’s human. It doesn’t require heavy lifting. There’s no brain damage required except you got to care. You got to care about these people. Care like give a rip. If that’s all that shifted for most people like you said, “I’m going to choose to care for one employee a day differently than they are expecting,” a whole new world will open up.

I agree with everything you said but I know there are people reading this now going, “Dane, I’ve sat down and talked to my people about what they want out of life, and they give me a, ‘Oh,’ answer or they give me something that doesn’t feel like a thought through. My people don’t care.” I can see people reading this and thinking, “They don’t care that I would care about their dreams.” Help me overcome that objection.

First of all, if that happens, you are in good luck because what that means is it’s not that your people don’t care. Your people have never been asked the question. This is their first rep in answering what they should do. In fact, most people, if you ask them what their dreams are, they are like, “Lose weight.” They don’t know. They are dream deprived. They have been in survival mode their whole lives. It’s going to take a couple of reps for them to figure out what they want. If you can be the one that helped them figure it out. Now, you are like Yoda. You are the person that opened up a vision for their future. What if they don’t have an answer? Assume that they do. They just don’t know it yet.

If you invite dreams, you discover drive. Click To Tweet

They are going to credit you as a person who helped them figure it out. You get curious about them. This is what I do with my kids all the time. I will say, “What’s the answer to some question?” The answer that every teenager says is, “I don’t know.” I say, “If you did know, what would you know?” They always have an answer. That’s the first line of defense. Do you care when you ask this question? If you can get through that line of defense, now you are entering into the space of real connection with your people. Don’t get thrown off by that easy distraction. It’s an invitation to go deeper and take your time. There’s no rush in these conversations.

That’s something I’ve learned as I’ve grown up professionally. As a child, I had lots of big dreams. I wanted to be an astronaut, wanted to do this, wanted to do that, and somewhere along the line, that was probably a school guidance counselor that said, “Stop it. You need to get a job. You got bills to pay. Be realistic.” I look back now and don’t know who it was that would have done that but I promise you. There were people that said, “No, dreaming big doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t put food on the table. It doesn’t do these things.” I think part of it too might be that people were told to stop dreaming.

There’s no doubt. It’s a tragedy. Bless the guidance counselors’ hearts. They were trying to help. They are not evil people but they were answering a different question. The question about dreaming isn’t real. Like if I’m dreaming about being an astronaut, I’m not thinking about how I’m going to eat dinner tonight. Those are two different conversations. One is a 20 or 30-year conversation, and one is a 20 or 30-minute conversation. I got to get the right wavelength for the conversation I’m in.

It wouldn’t have been great if your guidance counselor had said, “Here’s the deal. There are two things you need to care about in life. One is today, and one is tomorrow. Tomorrow is the dream question. Today is, ‘How are you going to get that girl to go out with you on Friday night or what job do you want in life? How are you going to take your next step?’” If all we do is serve the short-term and we never get to the long-term to our future self, we are robbing ourselves.

We wake up 20 or 30 years later and go, “How did I get here? I dreamt of something bigger, and I forgot.” Some people, when they are reading this, are remembering. That’s amazing because there’s still so much time. It’s not too late. Even if you are the leader and you park your dreams back in twelfth grade. Get back to it because there’s gold in those hills. What’s tragic is people blow it off. They have time left but they don’t take advantage of that time. It’s amazing how quickly things can turn once you get clear and committed.

That was incredibly impactful for me personally. I’m sure there are people reading having the same thing going, “If I don’t dream, it’s probably tough for me to help others figure out their dreams.” That’s what I heard you say. I know you didn’t say that but like, “Wow.” At some point, maybe I’m not dreaming big enough, so it’s hard for me to lead others toward their dreams.

This happens all the time. We will come and work with organizations, and the organizational leader is excited to bring us in to help work with their employees. They want to help their employees love their job. If they love their job, they are going to stick around longer. They are going to engage more. You are going to become famous, become a talent magnet for other people to come work there. All those things are great but somewhere along the line, the leader, if they are tuning in and usually what happens is they will be there for the intro.

Let’s say I’m giving a series of talks or something. They will come for the first one to introduce me. They are getting credit for bringing this in. It’s awesome. Good for him or her. Ten minutes in, they are still in the room. “They got a meeting but will get to it in a second,” and that’s good news. That means they are not there now because they are serving their people. They are there for themselves, which is good news. It’s an invitation for people to treat themselves like humans too while they are taking responsibility for the leadership roles they hold.

I feel like there’s so much information you shared. I feel like we have already been on the show for an hour. It’s all many thoughts, so many directions. I love this because what I heard you say was if we want to get our people dreaming, get them engaged, and care about the business, we have to do the same thing ourselves as leaders. Whether that means that we need to have a mentor that’s saying, “What are your dreams?” we need to learn how to hold ourselves accountable to make that happen, which I’m sure you know. I’ve heard many times that the hardest person to hold accountable is yourself. There’s so much opportunity.

This is an unpopular belief. I don’t think we can even hold each other accountable. What we need is more of a sense of space to account. Let me explain what I mean. Accounting for me, and this happens all the time. You and I, off the air, are talking about this fun project I run called Men and Women Of Discomfort. We get together and do wacky things for 90 days. People work out six days a week, and they intermittent fast.

What's tragic is people have time left but don't take advantage of that time. Click To Tweet

They basically do everything we tell them. They make one choice to opt out of their choices, and we choose everything for them for 90 days, when to eat, when to sleep, what to eat, what to drink, when to get in cold water, cold showers, to hold their breath, when to do anonymous good deeds for others and to meditate. We do all these fun things. It’s super fun.

Our tagline is, “It’s probably not for you.” It’s for a reason because it’s the thing where people say they are so happy they’ve done these things but it’s very difficult to volitionally say, “I’m going to put myself on the hook like this.” Those who do have this radical transformation. It’s super cool. Inevitably, people come in, especially at the beginning and they say, “I’m so excited. You guys are going to keep me accountable.”

I’m like, “We got to stop this cancer right out of the gate. No one is going to hold you accountable because, do you know what? If we are the ones holding you accountable, who’s responsible? If you fail in this program, who’s responsible? Are you going to make me responsible? We are not responsible. You are responsible. Do you know what else? If you succeed in this program, it’s not because we did anything. It’s because you did something. You showed up for you and your life.” This is where it is the hardest thing to take into account for ourselves.

It’s the only thing that makes the difference. If I don’t have someone in my life that I’m willing to say out loud, “I said I was going to do this and broke my commitment or I said I was going to do this and made it. I’m accounting.” That’s the way where people start living more authentically. They are more real and showing up differently in their lives. As a result, they get the benefits. They look like superheroes, their capacity to do things because they can do hard things. When everyone else around them, they crumble when it gets difficult. We don’t need that in leaders now. We need leaders who can stand up when we need them to.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in the last decade or so, being an entrepreneur. Number one is that we are capable of much more than we give ourselves credit for. I’m not talking about, “I can go make more money or get a better job.” It’s amazing what the human being, the human body, can do when the rules are gone. We talked a little bit about that in the beginning. We talked a little bit unfair too. All these rules we apply for ourselves, “We can’t say that. We can’t do that.” We have all these rules that society has “created for us” that we believe to be true. Those rules are the number one thing that holds many of us back.

Even what you spoke about earlier with the guidance counselor could be a rule. It almost may be an agreement. The metaphorical guidance counselor, whoever he or she is, said that to you. You could make an agreement with like, “That’s the limit.” I remember when I was a kid. I was working on something, and my legal name was Dana. My mom would say, “Dana, you are not very mechanical.”

I made an agreement with my mom that I didn’t know how to put things together until I turned 25 or 30 and went, “What if that wasn’t true? What if there was more available?” I started making crap, and it started working. All of a sudden, I could tell myself a new story. This is what I mean when I say tell yourself bigger stories. It’s interrupting those agreements, those rules, and limiting beliefs in our lives so that we can get after things that we thought were impossible but they weren’t tried yet with any effort. You might fail but if you don’t run that risk, if everything is a sure thing, talk about a boring existence. We are not going anywhere new. We are stuck in a rut.

We started with the stories that others were telling. The stories that we are creating, but now, we are talking about the stories we tell ourselves. A lot of story going on here, and I agree with you. If we go back to before there was writing, how did human beings communicate? Through story. It’s the oldest way of communicating with people, and it still is relevant now. That’s why marketing is so popular now. Everybody’s got a story to tell, and we got to figure out how to tell the right story to the right people at the right time.

It’s so empowering when you hear a story that calls us up to life. There are conversations. I’m in a lot of times where people are getting called out. I don’t think we need quite as many call-outs. What we need are call-ups. There are invitations to occupy the space in our lives in a fuller way. I know there are readers who are reading these words. There’s something tingling in their guts about, “What if me? What if I took a bigger risk on me? What if I was willing to put myself on the hook to get after that?” It could be an old practice you had or you’ve got a little out of shape. You haven’t gone on a date with your wife in a while.

If you decided, “This is as good as it gets, so let’s ride this one home.” What if there was more? In particular categories, the ones that you are scared to go to. Even as I’m saying this word, some of you who are reading are sweating a little. If that’s you, that’s what I’m talking to you because if you are not sweating just a little and a little bit uncomfortable, you are probably missing out on a lot of gold.

I don't think we can even hold each other accountable. What we need is more of a sense of space to account. Click To Tweet

The brave ones, the courageous ones who are noticing that and go, “I want to barf but I’m going to go forward anyways. I’m going to take a risk. I’m going to make that call. I’m going to set that appointment. I’m going to call Ryan. Let’s finally pull the trigger.” If that’s you, you have a little window of time to take action. If you don’t do it soon, the window will close, and you know it. If you have any vision about what I’m saying, your opportunity is to do it now.

We go back to those analogies. We talk about these analogies and metaphors to help people understand where we are going. I think about the concept of growing pains. I’ve got little kids at home. My legs hurt because they are growing. Growth doesn’t always have to be bending over painful but it does hurt a little bit at times.

When you have a strong workout or you go on a big long hike, and your muscles are sore. It’s because they are growing. Not that it has to be that painful but a lot of times, we know that there is pain associated with growth, and because of that, that fear kicks in of, “What if?” We start telling ourselves all these stories that aren’t true. As we wrap up the show, Dane, I want to think about those people that are on the fence that are thinking, “I know what I need to do but I’m scared to do it because it might hurt a little bit.” What do we tell them?

Let me offer three things. Not just for the individual but also for the people that they are leading. The first thing to go full circle to our conversation, it might hurt a little bit to ask a junior entry-level employee for coffee and them say no. It might be a little awkward. It might feel like you are not quite as relevant as they think they are or whatever it is.

If you sit beside systematically to have leadership coffees where you know your role is to be the guide, virtual or otherwise, with every team member in this next season and ask them, “What are your dreams?” that’s going to be uncomfortable but I promise you that you will gain fruit. That’s the first thing I would say for the others that you are serving. Second, I understand that it might feel vulnerable but you want to get to a place where you are being honest with your own dreams too.

Where even though you have a lot on your shoulders, you are carrying a lot of weight with the organization or families you are leading to find space for you to stop to retreat. Maybe it’s one day a week, a Sunday. In the old days, it was called a Sabbath. Take a break, stop, think, and breathe. Have an app first, maybe. Go for a walk.

Talk to a buddy about your own dream conversation but not with those you are leading but with somebody that’s your peer or someone who’s a guide to you, and get real in those conversations. If you do that, both in directions, both in who you are leading, calling up, and calling yourself up where you are going to do is, you are going to find some freedom, some new vision for where you want to go. Some people need that.

The third thing I say is as you begin to identify for the people that you are leading and for yourself what your dreams might be. Can you get back to now and say, “Is there one single next step that I can make?” Don’t make a conceptual. Don’t make it in their head. Like when your employee says their dream is to get out of student debt or their dream is to buy their first house or whatever. Get them to make a single first step but that’s not true for them. It’s true for you, too.

What’s the single next step that you need to make? If it’s not the thing that you came up with, what is it? If it’s not like you, who’s going to do it, who will? If it’s not now, when? The time is now. Life is too short. One of my best friends, earlier this year, January 1st, 2022, he’s the guy that I started this Men and Women Of Discomfort with. His name is Tim Krueger, a 42 years old, Ironman, stud, and athlete. The best blue-collar curmudgeon you could ever imagine. The guy you want to hang out with.

He finished a year of suffering with stomach cancer, and he died. Two young boys, his wife, Jess, his birthday is coming up on August 14th. I miss the guy so much but I will tell you this about Timmy Krueger. That boy lived. He understood what was at stake. He was more alive in his last year of life than he was in the previous 41. You want to be like Tim Krueger. None of us are guaranteed another day, another breath, and if we are not taking advantage of the things that are in front of us now, we are fools. Wouldn’t it be nice if the stakes were too high? That’s my encouragement. Care about your people. Care about yourself. Do one right next thing and do it quickly because we are all on the clock.

It might feel vulnerable, but you need to get to a place where you are honest with your dreams. Click To Tweet

I don’t know where to go from there, Dane. That was amazing. I have to say, it’s probably one of my favorite interviews. It’s incredible. It got me thinking about a lot of things, too. I know there are people going, “Dane sounds like he knows his stuff. He’s probably got other nuggets out there, other tips, other ways I can learn or even connect with you.” How do people do that?

First of all, thank you for saying that and encouraging me, and thanks for leading, Ryan. What you were doing in this space is so profound. It’s one of the reasons I was so excited to be in this conversation with you. You are the real deal. The way you are leading, I know there are people at home nodding their heads now as they are reading like, “Ryan delivers over and over again.” Thank you for leading.

To answer your question. I created a website. Forgive the name. It’s a silly name but it’s called AskDane.com. It’s pretty simple. It’s basically a video walkie-talkie. You go there, press a button and say, “I’m Sally. I’m Fred. Whatever.” If you want to process or talk, it’s all private. It’s a one-to-one conversation. It’s asynchronous, so no meetings are required for you or me. It allows me to have a lot of conversations with a lot of people. If any of your readers would love to debrief, chat or ask a question about Tell Me Your Dreams or Men and Women of Discomfort or any of the things we chatted about. That’s probably the easiest place to go do it.

My last question is usually, do you have any offer or giveaway for our readers but you answered them both at the same time? That’s an amazing offer to be able to get some time to share with you, what they are going through, and what’s going on with them because of a quick little video chat. You can get them unstuck and help them take that next right step. Maybe even they can learn a little bit more about the work you do at Tell Me Your Dreams or even the Men and Women of Discomfort, both of those sounds like amazing things. Not only for our readers but probably for a lot of their employees as well, to help them with their dreams.

Thanks, Ryan. Thanks again for having me on.

Thanks for being here. I enjoyed it.

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Grow Your Business With This One Change With Joshua Gillow And Duane Draughon

Ryan Englin · December 29, 2021 ·

What if the secret to growing your business relies on you making one small change? Today’s guests are Joshua Gillow, Founder of YES Express, and Duane Draughon, Co-Founder and Lead Designer of VizX Design Studios. The duo also hosts the Outerspaces Podcast, sharing tips, strategies, and contractor success stories. Joshua and Duane join Ryan Englin to talk about how they built their own successful businesses in the outdoor living space and what you can do to achieve the same results. All it takes is one little shift. Tune in and gain incredible insight on how to take your business to the next level.

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Grow Your Business With This One Change With Joshua Gillow And Duane Draughon

I’ve got a couple of guests here that I’m excited to talk about because I often meet people coaching other people, how to get this done, get out of their business, and create success, and they’ve never done it themselves. Not these two guys. They’ve built some amazing least successful businesses in the outdoor living space. We’re going to talk about what they’ve learned and what things you can do in your business to help you achieve some of the same incredible results they have. I’d love to welcome to the show Duane Draughon and Joshua Gillow. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having us.

I always start out with this first question. What is the biggest myth in your industry? I don’t want you to limit it to outdoor living spaces. Let’s talk about the trades in general, anybody that’s in that construction space.

The biggest myth in our industries is that if you work in your business for most of your life, you’re going to retire rich one day.

Break that down for me. You talk about working in the business. What are you talking about?

Showing up every day as your best employee owning the company and thinking that you’re going to work, maybe like your grandparents did on the farm. You’re going to work and one day you’re going to open up your bank account and there’s going to be tons of money in there. That’s not the reality of life and owning your job is like working in your business. Once you flip and strip and start working on your business, that all changes.

I love what you said there, “It’s a job.” If you wake up and go to work for yourself every day versus creating an asset, creating this value and leveraging other people to make it happen. How did you guys take that concept in versus on your business and create the incredible businesses that you guys have?

When I was much younger, I grew up in a garden center. At five years old, I started in a family business and grew through that, selling things and getting used to helping people and all that good stuff. I worked in the family business. My brother, father and I started a landscaping company. I worked in that business as well and I was not aware of it at the time, but working a little bit on it and mostly in it. Fast forward that fifteen years, we kept hitting this glass ceiling. I couldn’t get through it. I couldn’t break that million-dollar line. Eventually, I realized in order to do that, I had to start working on the business, not in the business.

That started to change. It worked out well. I started another company where we focused more on the design and the management portion of the industry. I shattered right through that in no time. It’s because I started working on the business, not in it as much. As soon as I started that, I started hiring people to do the things that I was doing so that I could focus on the growth and the trajectory to be the captain of the ship, not the one running around, throwing the coal in the engine. It’s constantly changing your roles to get to a point where you’re managing a company, an actual entity, and not working in the business doing the day-to-day task and trusting. The big thing is to trust that other people can do it, and not just do it, but do it a hell of a lot better than you.

Trust that other people can do it, and not just do it, but do it a hell of a lot better than you. Click To Tweet

The change came from educating yourself and educating your mind. We all talked about this in our podcast. The trades were such a powerful thing back then and we were also looked down upon and you look down upon yourself. When we were working our businesses, we did not feel right unless we were the ones working. We were the physical wheelbarrow pusher. Before I met my wife, I bragged that I worked 67 days straight, and that was like a hurrah brag, like, “I’m working hard.”

Educating yourself and understanding that Who Not How types of books. Proximity is power hanging around the right people, and then you start educating yourself and you realize that, “Maybe I need to start doing this another way. Maybe I need to start bringing people in who can do this better than me. Educate or motivate them and you can pull away from the business,” and that’s what I did. When I look back in the terms of years, this is why I’m so passionate about teaching. I have more years of that physical work than I do have of the years now that I have the management work. I want to help change this for people.

What is the thing that’s holding most people back from this? I get we could go down the hiring path. You can’t leverage and find people you can trust if hiring is so hard. That’s probably a different conversation, but there’s something that comes before people. We were talking about this briefly before we started this show. Talk to me a little bit about what you think is the number one thing holding businesses back.

I want to start on mindset in general. The more I’ve understood this study, 80% of what we think in our minds is what we become. We’re never thinking, “Let’s hire people. Let’s bring them in.” We’re always thinking, “I got to pay that next bill. I can do the job. Nobody can do it and talk to the client better than me.” Until we release that out of our minds, a lot of the businesses are always going to say the same way.

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. If you keep that mindset that you’re the only one or you’re going to go broke if you bring somebody in, you’re going to get stuck in that rhythm and that pattern, and it’s going to stay that same way. What needs to change first is to change the mindset then start working everywhere else.

You only got so many hours in a day or a week. Even if you’re billing an insane amount at the top of the market, you’re going to put a limit on what you can make and what your business can do if you don’t figure out how to get out of that stuff.

At the end of the day, that’s a good point. Most business owners out there, a lot of them start out as actual workers. They got a hobby, and all of a sudden it becomes their business. What happens is they get stuck in that role. They have a hard time changing what they do because they’ve always promoted their way of doing things to their clients, and then all of a sudden, if they put somebody else in place, they would do it differently. They don’t have systems and processes in place. They do it the way they do. How can you trust somebody to go out and do you? It’s not going to happen. That doesn’t work. Oftentimes, that’s too big of a mountain to climb and they stay away from it.

They’ll say, “I’ll bring somebody in and I’ll have them do the stuff behind me. I always have to be the front of the company,” but the problem is you can only go so far. If you want a vacation, the company stops growing and moving. It doesn’t work that way. A big thing for business owners after they’ve been doing it a while is trust issues. That’s a huge one. You are trusting that others are going to do it the same or better. That’s isn’t the case. Believe it or not, we have to put our egos which is the second piece here. Put those that aside because as for the mindset, it’s so much, especially the males out there. They’re driven by ego like, “I want to be the face of a company. I want to be sitting in that truck. I want people to be looking at me. I’m the one that’s building this empire,” but they didn’t step back a little bit.

BCC 63 | Grow Your Business — Grow Your Business: The biggest myth in our industry, or industries in general, is that if you work in your business for most of your life, you’re going to retire rich one day.

Step back and realize that the bigger goal is to empower that team because as a business owner working on your business, it’d be great to be able to do that from a beach, while running five other companies, or being at your kid’s soccer game. That’s the cool part. That’s the success. It’s not having 50 guys looking at you saying, “Boss, what’s next,” or 85 trucks in a row with your name on it where you can point to your friends, “I own that.” It’s lame. The team behind it drives the engine of the business.

The best leaders create that team and empower and equip them with what they need to make it happen. I’m so passionate about process and systems, but most of the stuff that a business owner I see happening is they’re stretched in 100 different directions. When you hire somebody and you say 100% of your focus is on this doing the work and taking care of the customer. One hundred percent of your focus is on managing my finances. They can do it so much better because they’re not constantly putting on different hats, taking them off, switching gears and going from dealing with an upset customer to a sales meeting to designing the next project. They don’t have to keep shifting those gears. They can focus, stay in their lane and it can be so much more productive.

Some of our marketing is story-based. With the new staff we’re bringing in, I gave some work to one of the staff members. It was amazing how fast they were able to knock it out, focus on it and get it done that way. I would do it, but it’d take me 3, 4 or 5 days to get it right and I have to have it proofread and it was done in about an hour and a half because I gave it to him. Now it was full focus on them to do that. It was amazing how much faster that was. It’s almost like you can’t afford to hire people.

You guys make it sound so easy to stop working in the business, but sometimes in practice, it’s not that easy to get owners out. I worked 70 hours a week as a badge of honor. I used to have this job working for someone else for 40 or 45, but now I go work for myself, I work 60, and they’re excited about it. What’s the thing that maybe you guys went through it or maybe you coach some of your clients through it? What’s one of the first steps people can make to start down that path of shifting that mindset so they can start working on the businesses instead of in it?

Let me make this as simple as possible and not make it a technical answer. This is what I did do. The first position that I brought in was an assistant. It was a tough job for the assistant because the assistant was working for somebody who didn’t know how to hell to show the assistant what to do. The assistant’s job was to learn how to pick up, take over, figure out things to do to make it easier, and then we slowly got into a rhythm. After the rhythm was created, a lot of stuff was taken off my plates.

I’m a guy who’s living a life right now where I don’t even check my junk emails anymore. That’s something my assistant does, goes through it and deletes all that stuff first, and then I take the meat of the emails. I may not be an expert on this, but it’s worked for me, bring that assistant in, start taking that little stuff off my plate, start freeing me up, give me some other stuff to do and then I can focus and start bringing in some of the big guns. At least that’s what I think.

It got me thinking that one of the things you said was it didn’t work out super easy in the beginning. It took you a while because you didn’t know how to have an assistant. I see that happen often where somebody will hire one of their first employees and it doesn’t work out on the first day. They’re like, “I knew it wasn’t going to work.” They give up, they throw it out and they say, “I’m not going to do this again,” but it sounded like it took you some patience and trial and error to figure that out. How long should people be patient for this to figure out how to bring someone in and help them with the business, especially if they’ve never done it before?

To be honest, my experience was I often like to have things planned out. I’m a systems-in guy. I want to lay everything out and plan things out, but it was on faith when it comes to hiring the first person. I’m like, “Help. I don’t have all the answers right now. I know that I can’t keep going the way I’m going now.” I started writing out things that I did every day. I started running lists. Here’s what I do every day. I track what I would do for 1,2 or 3 weeks. I don’t even remember but it was a pretty useful amount of time, and I started seeing some similarities, things I was doing over and over again. I’m like, “I don’t need to be doing this. I don’t need to be answering the phone, this email and scheduling projects.”

Certain things started becoming more evident that I didn’t need to be doing, and then once that was the case, I’m like, “Here you go. We’re going to have to figure it out.” I’ve never had somebody in the office the first time around to help that with that. We went together on faith and said, ”We’re going to figure this out together.” I told her when she came on, “If you’re looking to get on a train, punch in a ticket, fall asleep for a while and head down the tracks because everything’s lined up for you, that’s exactly what we’re going to do every single day. It was probably not the right job for you.”

What needs to change first is the mindset, then start working everywhere else. Click To Tweet

I said, “If you’re ready to sit down in this dune buggy, put on your seatbelt and go across the dunes with me and back and forth, up and down, day and night, if that’s something you’re in for, let’s do this thing because I don’t have the answer. I am not the leader yet that has all the answers. I’m getting there.” My mindset is always ready, fire, aim. I’m like, “I need this. We know this has to be done. Let’s figure it out together.”

If not, you get stuck in analysis paralysis. I see this with a lot of our students where they don’t know what to do first. “What should I do first?” I don’t have any help and assistance. Start writing a list of the things you do on a daily basis and put in a list of, “This lights me up. I can’t wait to get up and start this in a day.” This other side is, “I’d be happy if I never had to do that stuff again,” and then find somebody that lights them up, the stuff you don’t want to do. The next thing you know, everybody’s happy.

It takes a certain amount of humility to be able to do that, to be able to say, “We’re going through the dune buggy together. If we roll the dune buggy when I ask you to get out, then help me flip it back over because we’re so focused on this together.” It reminds me of when you talked about the systems and processes, which is probably more for the readers that are a little bit more technical in nature.

I remember Mike Michalowicz describing in his book Clockwork, one of the easiest ways to document your systems. He’s like, “Take your phone, set it up, point it at your screen or at the work you’re doing. Wear a GoPro and whatever it is, and think out loud while you’re doing the work.” Record it, and then take that recording and say, “Here’s your training. Watch me do it while I think out loud what I’m going through.” It’s almost something that people can do intuitively because they have to remember to think out loud and then they can document all their processes.

We had our assistant start making the processes for us based upon how they see it. We’ll take it and tweak it, and then based upon how they see it and saw it. We have a lot of different processes that were created by the assistant. I know the word process. I guarantee it. Some of your readers are like, “I can feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up.” I hate that idea. It feels like I’m constrained in a box. Where does the creativity come in? I feel like it’s the mundane task every day of doing this and doing that.

The crazy part is it’s a hell of a lot easier when you create systems and processes and you manage the system and processes versus the people doing them. Once you come up with a standard, even if it’s a very basic, certain thing you do each and every day, you hand that off to somebody, then you’re managing the process. You’re not blaming them for doing it wrong because the process is at fault, unless they screw it up.

It’s a process. The process didn’t work. Maybe we need to take step nine and put it before step eight. Try that and see if that works. Eventually, when you’re hiring 5 or 6 people that do the same process, they’re all filing the same thing. It’s like McDonald’s. It’s a production line. That’s the beautiful part of it, but they can add their own creativity to those things as well. Having that, starting out and spending a little bit of time writing down what you do on a day-to-day basis and then starting to systemize it or standardize it as your standard, that’ll start your entire process then deals through your mind go like, “If I can do that, what else could I give up?”

You’re not talking about the step-by-step. If they got to enter something into our CRM or their jobs management platform, it’s not like click this box and then type this and click this box. You’re saying, “What’s the 20% of the work that gets us 80% of the results?” It’s, “Put them into our management platform.” That’s one step of the process. How do you do that? That might be a different training, but it’s, “Just do that or call the customer back within 24 hours.” I’m not going to tell you how to call them back or what time to call them back, but we don’t get that detailed. It’s call them back and we make these processes simple.

We have some specifics. The way things are loaded into the CRM system, it has to be loaded in exactly the same way every single time, but they’re easier processes. It doesn’t take rocket scientists. We have it all spelled out and we have our CRM. We created it to where it’s like a flow. You got to go from one spot to the next spot, then certain things are required. It has to work that way. It is very specific but it works, and maybe because that’s that little word in me. You mean like, “I can’t have the last name, not with the capital letter.” I will lose my brain. There are some things that’s got to be right.

To that point, those are preference things sometimes. I’m sure we all have it.

There must.

If you’re working for Duane, you got to capitalize the last name. That’s it.

The home address is not the work address. It’s the home address.

Take notes. If you’re applying for a job to work with Duane, there are some rules, but for the most part, what happens is people get hung up and they think process, “I got to have this manual.” That’s like 30 pages long to tell him how to do this. I’m not even that detailed. They get hung up, but I love what you said, Joshua. We coach this a lot because human beings make mistakes.

If you’re struggling to hire, it’s usually because we set a standard for human beings above what they are capable of, which is perfection. “I got to be able to trust them right out the gate. I got to like them. My customers got to like them.” If we build great processes and we know the processes work and the people follow the processes and something breaks, we get to turn to the process. If the people aren’t following the process, that’s a different issue, but the majority of the time when someone fails at their job, it’s because of a broken process, not because of a broken person.

Think about from the employee or the team member’s standpoint. They then have a standard to go by. Oftentimes, they want to succeed. Most of them do. Let’s keep that as a standard. They all want to succeed. When you give them a set of rules to follow and go through, it’s like you’re playing a game like a football game or a baseball. There are certain rules in order to consider the winner. You got to do certain things in order to win. With systems and processes, you can lay that out as well. They know they did a great job when they got this result and they follow the process to get there, and it’s the same process everybody else follows so that they can all have a conversation around that. I’m going to throw another angle at you here, which I found very powerful for our business.

I remember hearing or reading a book or something where McDonald’s said, “I want to be able to hire a $7 an hour person and be able to give them a task that anybody can do. Run a gigantic company like that. They’re doing a small part of it, but then it’s process and system-driven that anybody could do it. Is there a point? You could come in drunk and high and you could figure it out because it’s that simple. It’s a 1, 2 or 3-step.” My memory is not fantastic. When it comes to our more complicated projects, we’re doing outdoor living projects where we have hundreds of different moving parts throughout this entire project. We might spend six months to a year in a client’s home.

It all depends on where your mindset is. Even when you start, it depends on what you know and don’t know. Click To Tweet

With that being the case, I had to constantly go through the entire project, building it in my head, thinking of everything that could happen, making sure all of my RFPs out to my partners and subcontractors were coming back fully loaded with everything I needed in them. It took a ton of brain space to do that. Every time, that shut the world down and focus on building a project that we haven’t even started yet.

Instead of doing it that way and I did that for years, it was too much. I said, “What if I spun it around back the process and wrote down every possible thing that could happen during that or I could need?” A question I would have or something might come up during, say, construction of a deck, a patio, a roof, a pool, landscaping or whatever it might be outside. Instead of remembering everything, I could take the things off that weren’t pertinent to this project. I don’t have to think anymore. I go down through it like, “I do need one electrical outlet to over by the grill. Thank goodness I had that there because my mind is in three other projects.”

By having a list of everything, and it’s always being added to, possibly be asked, I could then forfeit some of those that don’t pertain to this project, as opposed to trying to remember those small details. By doing that through all of our processes, and that’s how we have all of our RFPs set up now, when a team goes through them like “No, yes,” they don’t have to think anymore.

I had a mentor real early on in my career tell me that the brain is meant for processing, not for storage. It took me a while to comprehend that because I’m like, “I’ve got to store some of the stuff I’m processing,” but the more that I write down and create systems and processes, the easier things became because then I could take my brain and use it for that creative side of the job and work.

We could probably take this to a whole other episode. I agree with both of you guys on that, but I’m still amazed at what the brain is being loaded up with. I cannot believe the amount of information that I’m loading up my brain and it’s taking it, storing it and remembering it. I hear what you guys are saying, but this brain is loaded up right now.

One of the things that we deal with is that my hiring process is so focused on marketing and how you promote and do that. The biggest thing we were talking about a little bit before was, “How do you cut through all the noise?” It’s so noisy right now and this is the problem with the brain. It’s not designed for handling the volume of noise that we get. A study said the average Gen Z receives more advertisements in a 30-day period from everything. The greatest generation. Their great grandparents’ great-grandparents got their whole lifetime. The brain is a lot of volume of information, and not everything is going to stick.

Remember every single ad you saw on social media or every single spam email that came through. A lot of that stuff, we’ve had to teach our brains to let that stuff go because if we don’t, we’re never going to be able to hold on to all the volume. How do you cut through all that noise, and how do you help your employees cut through all that noise? How do you, as the owner, cut through all that noise? A lot of it is to get a lot of that stuff out of your brain to retain and process the good stuff, the stuff you need to grow the business.

I’m going to add to that. Since there’s so much clutter and so much, “Look at me,” sparkly things, looking around, instead of thinking about how do they see you, focus on having them feel you through your words and your delivery. How do you have your future team members, your clients and your customers feel you? That changes the game.

We talked a lot about mindset and creating these systems and processes. How do people get started in this? I hear this and I’m thinking back to when I’m getting started in my business. I’d be like, “Awesome stuff, guys.” What’s that step I have to take? Do I need training, a mentor or a coach? How do I consume some of this information that can help me with building this?

It’s real simple. Start to surround yourself with people.

We’re going to try to answer this, but that’s going to be a tricky question because it all depends on where your mindset is even when you start this. It didn’t depend on what you know and don’t know. I remember when I first started this whole business thing and I would see all these extra things that I need to add.

I would get stressed out and I’m like, “Maybe I’m not even a business owner.” I would lose my mind when I go to that class, and it was talking about how to set up workman’s comp and all that other stuff. I remember reading that and I’m like, “I don’t want to own a business. This is not for me. This is BS.” What happened is you’re in it and you start building your work and you realize, “I can do this. I can do that,” but one thing I want to say is one of the best things to do is you got to get outside the business and hit some immersive training.

Tony Robbins’ UPW, Unleash the Power Within, will shake you to your soul. Landmark Forum to understand how to say to your mind, get your mindset down to zero and start becoming one with the universe. This is the Super Bowl of my life. I have lived my entire life to be on this show right now. This is the most important thing in my life. Whoever’s reading this at the moment they’re reading this, that’s the most important time in their lives. Understanding those mindsets, you can start building upon there and going from that spot when you get into that.

There are experts and organizations out there that this is all they do. You mentioned Landmark and Tony Robbins. They help you get clear on that mindset and be present to focus on the things that are the most important. Taking advantage of those opportunities and those experiences that are out there.

I have to back that up as well. That was one of the biggest shifts. A catalyst in my life was to start working on the inner game. It’s the scariest frontier you’ll ever get into. Most times as business owners, we keep ourselves busy because we truly don’t want to dive deep inside of our souls. We want to keep ourselves busy with tons of stuff. That’s why we don’t hire people because if we don’t hire people, then we are doing everything and we can stay in the focus of the fact that I have to do this. If I don’t, then the whole business fails. Once you hire people, you put on a different hat. You now have to be a leader, and that requires work. The sad part is that most, especially men, are scared to death to look inside of themselves at six inches of real estate between their ears, which scares the crap out of them.

They stay busy so they never have to face that, but once you look that old mindset, whatever you want to call it, look yourself in the eye and realize that you got to work on you first, and that’s where these immersive events impact people around the world. Once you’ve done that work and you go inside and you realize you don’t know anything about who you are, why you exist, what you’re here to do and how you’re going to serve and why anyone out there would give any of their precious lifetime to you under your business as a team member, why anybody would ever give that time to you is? You can’t answer that quickly. Why would they come work for you? It’s that simple.

If you’re not offering that at the tip of your tongue, and you don’t know that within your being of what you’re here to do and why you’re here, no one else is going to see it either. If you’re playing with that head trash constantly in your head, and you don’t know when you’re faking it until you make it and all that crap, you’re always going to hit a plateau, stop and blame the world for it. The reality is you got to look in the mirror and you got to say, “I got to work on you first. Once I get you figured out or at least in the right direction, now I can finally empower other people to live their best lives.”

It’s only in that time when you realize that vulnerability is a superpower that you actually start showing up for yourself. Click To Tweet

I coach a lot of clients around. You’d mentioned make your marketing, make them feel. It’s got to creating this connection and the sense of belonging, especially when you’re building a team. I have people tell me all the time, “This is way too touchy-feely.” I’m sure there are people right now like, “Joshua, I get it. It’s way too touchy-feely for me. I’m a rough, tough construction guy.” I’m like, “No. It’s called emotion.”

It’s called getting in touch with our emotions and understanding that human beings are emotional creatures. I’ve heard the argument for, “They’re not my guys. My guys aren’t emotional creatures.” I always ask them, “When’s the last time one of your guys, customers or GCs cursed you out?” Not even days, minutes ago. This is called emotion. We’re channeling the wrong ones.

Let’s get clear on what’s important to people and how we can do this. I love what you said about looking in the mirror and saying, “I got to work on you first.” The mindset is so critical in all this and, Duane, what you said, we probably couldn’t even do it as a series of shows on mindset and how important this is and dive deep into it.

For those people that are out there that are reading, “This sounds good. What’s the next step?” I heard you guys mentioned Tony Robbins and Landmark Forum. There are other groups out there. There are local ones and national ones. You can even find mentors that are good at this stuff, but this is something that you guys work on, too. You guys have students in a program that can go through this and can get exposed to this. Tell me a little bit about your program and then let the readers know how they can get in touch with you.

I appreciate that. I did it the hard way. I know Duane did in the beginning, too. Our goal was we own businesses. That was a big patch on our shirt. It was a cool part. As a business owner, I stand out. I get the identity and all that stuff. The problem is that oftentimes that identity starts running your life. You forget who you are and you have to be whatever the business needs, but at the end of the day, what I found and it took me years to realize is this, “Why the hell should I try to figure everything out?” We talked about processes and systems over this show. For years, I thought I had to make my own.

Reinvent the wheel every time. “Mine is better. You guys don’t understand how I work.” The reality that I found eventually was that if I would hire a coach and a mentor, I could get their help a lot faster. They’d be like, “No, Josh. Don’t do it this way. Do it this way. I know because I did it that way for five years and it didn’t work.” You saved me five years of my precious life, thank you.

Hiring mentors, getting around people, coaches and things like that, you do that for sports. Why the hell wouldn’t you do it for your business? Is it that simple? Our program, we came together after all these years in the business. We have a similar business model and we came together and said, “We see our industry struggling, trying to figure these things out. How to communicate with clients and design cool spaces.”

We’re getting sick and tired of going out and talking to clients that are only looking to do something simple like a paver patio. It’s not that it’s a bad thing, but who the hell wants to go out on a sunny day and sit in the sun, baking on a paver patio? Nobody does. What they want is an extension of their living space. They want a space they can be comfortable in, share memories and create those special moments with their family. Let’s have that conversation with our clients.

We’ve done that over the years, and we found that so many in the industry aren’t. We said, “What if we try to help them have that conversation?” We train people in our industry how to have a conversation with our clients, not just to sell them shit, but to better understand what gets them excited.

What’s the bigger why for doing the project? How can we make sure as the guide in the conversation, not the hero here, that we can guide them to the best solutions and tell them when they’re getting close to something that doesn’t make sense for them and guide them away from that? Let’s face it. The work that we do, you might do once or twice in a lifetime.

A client is not looking for someone to say, “Build me a patio.” What they want is someone to help them through this process. That’s what we’ve come down to doing in our own practices now. We’re teaching people in our industry across the country how to do that and how to have that conversation. How to get budget, how to tell a client, “No, we’re not a good fit,” not just take everything that comes in the door because they called you. It’s having a conversation by the end to create a win-win environment for those clients so they don’t have to keep going through the phone book.

How did you find out about this program that you guys have?

We have a couple of different ways to do that. One is that we have a podcast as well. It’s called Outerspaces. You can check us out on any of the platforms. You can go online OuterspacesPodcast.com. We have a conversation like this weekly, Duane and I, with all kinds of cool people like Ryan, that’s how we met you. We also have a website Yes.Express, you’ll find us there.

For the readers here, we have a free bootcamp. You can get a little taste of what we do and who we are as people. If you find value in there and you’re like, “This would be great. I could see this being a real launch for my company,” then reach out to us. We’d love to have you onboard, talk and make sure we’re a good fit and then help you take your business to the next level.

Any closing thoughts? Anything else you guys want to add before we wrap up?

This is a little bit outside. I wanted to say in the beginning, we were going to talk about it. One of the biggest takeaways about our industry. One of the biggest hangups I have to say that’s going in my head is like, “People think what we do is landscaping.” There’s this mindset about it behind it as if it doesn’t add value to the home.

I was speaking at an event. I was speaking upon getting more interior decorators to start working with the exterior contractors and building some synchronization between the two. That’s one of the takeaways. In the beginning, we were talking about it and we flipped from that straight into processes.

I didn’t get to say this and it was burning me up for a while. Outdoor living does have a lot of value. It is the place that has the feeling. It can help you feel because the space changes every day and every hour. The temperature changes, the wind blows, the birds chirping and the cars driving by. It’s one of the best places in the house. It’s the place that’s going to give you more value. If you’re swamped out in home remodel with a kitchen, a bedroom, and an install done, the outdoor living space is the best place to have it done, but it has to be designed and done correctly.

The closer you are connected to your emotions, the stronger leader you become. Click To Tweet

I love what you said there. It’s something that we work with our clients on when we develop their core story. Nobody is buying the actual service that you sell. Nobody is buying the pavers and the swimming pool. They’re buying the memories that they can create around it, that extension of living space, and those other things that are emotionally tied to that. It’s important, especially from my perspective when you’re building a team that the people on your team buy into that same emotional purchase that your customers have. There’s so much to that. Duane, we could go to other shows on this

This is going to go out to the gentlemen in the group that are reading. We talked about this throughout this show so far about being open with emotion. Most guys don’t want to touch that with a 300-foot pole. You’re a coward if you lean into your emotions, or if you cry, you show weakness. Your fear of someone judging you, it’s only in that time when you realize that vulnerability is a superpower that you start showing up for yourself and you start putting on those clothes or that armor of masculinity. It’s like, “I have to be strong. I have to do this.” Let me break it down for you. Your wife, your children and your team, they want a leader that they can connect with. That’s someone who tells them what to do. They need to feel you as well. They feel you when you share that you don’t have all the answers.

Men, we’re programmed to be strong, don’t cry. That’s crap. The closer you are and connected to your emotion, the stronger leader you become. Everybody that I look up to as mentors and all that have figured this out. It’s something that took most of my life to figure out. Once you finally embrace that and realize emotion is power and not something to be feared or put under the rug, that’s when you can truly grow and that’s when a team will collect behind you and say, “Leader, where are we going?” It’s a huge piece of this.

That’s a huge shift. That’s a shift that I’ve seen when our clients make that shift, that it transforms not just their business but their personal life too. They get everything. They get their cake and they get to eat it too, but the one thing I do know is that for many people, this doesn’t matter. This is business owners in general. This is our baby. We built this business, blood, sweat and tears from the ground up. I struggle with other people taking care of my baby. That’s an emotional decision. It’s an emotional hangup that’s keeping us from moving forward. There are people out there that can support you. You guys have great programs. You’d mentioned some programs.

Our program is all about how do you become a company that attracts great talent. People want to work with you. We have one client that says, “We are at a point now where people have to work with us. This is not like I have to be a part of that team.” Not I want to, but I have to. That mindset shift is so critical.

Guys, thank you so much for being here. I’ve enjoyed this conversation. I’m sure we’ll do it again here in the future. Duane is taking notes. He’s probably going to have a whole bunch of ideas for other ways we can take this. I’m looking forward to that. Thank you so much for your candid, honest feedback and thoughts on this matter.

Ryan, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having us on and we’d come back on any time. If we can shift one person’s thinking to have them live a more happy and joyful life with their family and their business and fall back in love with their business, I’d be here every day for you.

Same here. I’m game.

Important Links:

About Joshua Gillow

Meet Joshua Gillow: A Man With a Plan

Award-winning landscape designer Joshua Gillow’s passions – natural beauty and timeless design – are evident in every project he undertakes. Just ask his happy clients, who rave about his work.

After 15 years as a partner in a family-owned landscape design firm, Joshua realized his clients were craving “The Big Picture.” Joshua launched MasterPLAN Landscape Design & Installation in 2011 to combine his love of natural beauty with cutting-edge design tools. With MasterPLAN, Joshua is able to create a realistic 3-D vision of what the finished project will look like.

Joshua’s passion for his work is contagious. “I love the excitement in my clients’ eyes when I present the plan for their new backyard,” Joshua says.

The seed of Joshua’s great love for plants, creative design and the great outdoors were planted in him as a child growing up at his parents’ garden center. He realized he could combine his love of nature and design when he earned his degree in architectural design and engineering in 1999.

Josh excels at combining his knowledge of nature with the skills needed to create a well designed and beautiful outdoor space.

While Joshua has received many honors for his design work, the award he cherishes most is the recommendation of a happy client.

About Duane Draughon

Living in the present moment creating new possibilities for my life and others, is becoming my most exceptional quality. I’ve learned that you can do anything or be anything you want by focus, education, and massive action. There is no glass ceiling.

As for my objectives: Treat everyone fairly and learn as you go. Every day is a new class; some days, you take notes, and some days you create the notes.

Specialties: Business Branding, Spread Sheet Design, Marketing Plan & Design, Small Engine Repair, Disc Jockey, IT Trouble Shoot, 3D Rendering Design, CAD Designer, Project Management, Customer Relations

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Make A Wish To Change Blue Collar

Ryan Englin · December 3, 2020 ·

Growing up, we are pushed towards pursuing certain professions in college that often stigmatizes the very idea of working with your hands, of being a blue-collar worker. Helping change that mindset, Ken Rusk, a blue-collar construction entrepreneur, takes us to his mission of changing that mindset, discussing the lucrative business found in America’s supply and demand environment and how he is helping others change their lives through his company. He then talks about his leadership style, hiring process, and book, Blue Collar Cash. Join Ken in this episode where he empowers those in the industry as he follows his journey to make a change to blue-collar.

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Make A Wish To Change Blue Collar

It’s not every day that we get to have a conversation about getting started in the trades or what it takes to run a successful business. We’ve had a lot of amazing guests on the show that have talked about their story and their journey. Our guest has a bit of a different approach to what it takes to get out there and be successful in the trades. He went to college for a few months and decided it wasn’t for him. He came back out and now he owns multiple construction companies. He’s got a tremendous wealth of knowledge in this area. I want to welcome our guest, Ken Rusk. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

You’ve been on a journey here that’s been solid over your professional career. As you’ve grown these construction companies, as you’ve worked with other construction company owners, what would you say is the biggest myth about the industry?

It’s the stigma of working with your hands. In this day and age of this almost forced-college path where all the high schools have suddenly turned into college prep schools, there almost became this, if you weren’t going that path, you were doing something less. I can tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. Working with your hands is not only honorable but it’s lucrative, especially in this environment of supply and demand, and the problems that we face with supplies of American blue-collar workers.

It is a push there through the high school growing up. I don’t think it quite starts in high school. I think it starts in kindergarten that they started talking about the college push and showing that college has to be in that destiny if it’s going to be anything close to it. You’ve not found that to be the case, is that correct?

That’s true. I don’t know if it was intentional or unintentional, but it seems somewhere in the ‘70s and ‘80s they decided to get rid of shop class and they filled those rooms with computers. I’ve always said that we need to learn computers. That was important, but I never thought it was a binary choice, meaning one had to substitute for the other. We eliminated the potential discovery of the trades by millions of kids, because they went right into these classes after these shop classes were eliminated. That has paired up with the fact that technology gives us these cell phones and iPads that instead of building a tree fort in our backyard, we build it on Minecraft on our screens. We don’t get to discover those types of things. I agree with you 100%. We’re in a position where we could use a lot more education as to the lucrative careers that these paths can take you.

I know you’re on a mission to change the mindset around blue-collar, working with your hands and working in the trades, whether it’s at this executive level of owning your own small business or it’s just working in that. Tell us a bit about what you’re doing there to help change that mindset.

Working with your hands is not only honorable, but it's lucrative, especially in this environment of supply and demand. Click To Tweet

In addition to writing the book and putting it out there, what we’re doing is we’re trying to get the word out to the kids before they get into that almost corral of no return, which is their 9th, 10th, 11th grade, and they’re thinking, “I’ve got to prepare myself for college.” We’re trying to catch them in the early stages and talk about the benefits of blue-collar work, the honor in that, the control of that, and the money that you can make doing that. We’re talking to people in as early as 6th and 7th grade about what the benefits are in these fields. Anybody can understand supply and demand. It’s a powerful force. If everybody’s going one way, then the contrary thinker would go the other way, because as we overproduce college graduates with nondescript business degrees, we’re underproducing people who can do things with their two hands. If the supply is there and the demand is high on the blue-collar side, then the money is naturally going to follow that path.

I love that you say we should go the other way. It was something that we all see. Unfortunately, the herds don’t see that in any situation. I’m thinking of Warren Buffett. He was asked how he always knew what to invest in. He said, “When everybody was running one way, I always ran the other way.” That was an investment strategy. It’s proven fairly well. When you’re saying this about going in the path that not everybody is going, “Everybody is going to college, let’s go the other way. Let’s look at how do we do it with our hands when everybody is doing it virtually.” You’ve been on this journey and I know that you’ve seen some amazing results and changes. Tell us about 1 or 2 of those that you’ve seen that have inspired you and your work, and inspired you to communicate that to the rest of the world.

I’ve had to hire a lot of people. We started with six people, and now we have 200. That caused us to have to hire a lot of people. I almost became an involuntary life coach during that period of time. I enjoyed it because I saw that a lot of these kids weren’t prepared out of high school to deal with the real world. What would happen to them is they would get out of school and the parents, the teachers, the society in general would hand them a hatchet and say, “There’s the forest, start chopping.” After five minutes, they would turn around and say, “Where am I going?” The best answer they got was, “I don’t know, keep chopping.” As if they were going to stumble across their success path. It’s a lot different than that. I believe in some of the age-old theories that you’ve got to begin with the end in mind. You’ve got to believe that you have a path to getting there.

I used a lot of real simple techniques where people can visualize what they want their life to look like, and we get them down on paper doing it. We get them with poster boards and crayons or markers or whatever they want to use. We have designed what they want their life to look like, what their version of comfort, peace and freedom might look like. That can be anything from how you want to live, what type of house, an apartment, a condo, in the city, in the suburbs, in the country. What vehicle they would see themselves driving, a car, truck, minivan. What their hobbies are, what their pets look, what the names of those pets might be, what their giveback moment is, what charity they would support. We try to get them detailed into those drawings so that they understand that they’re in control of making that happen. What I love about that is the more clearly they have that picture, the more they look back at me and say, “Ken, thank you for the training. Get out of my way and let me go get it.”

Isn’t that a little foolproof for blue-collar?

It’s not, because when you ask somebody, “What are your next six months going to look like?” they have no idea how to look back at you and answer that question other than, “I’m living for Friday.” We like to take a good long-term interest. If you’re looking to cut down on turnover, and everybody knows that turnover stinks. It’s expensive. It takes a lot of time. You train these people, and they don’t come back. I’ve always believed, and I’ve said this hundreds of times, I can’t get what I want, nor can my company get what it wants until all of you get what you want first. We better have a clear idea of what it is that you want for yourself, because I want you to believe you can build your life with and through my company. I work a lot on retention and building corporate culture. That’s one of the first exercises that we talk about. Believe me, it is effective. I don’t care what walk of life you come from. You should give us a shot.

I threw you that question. I don’t believe it’s foolproof, though but it sounds like it is. They think, “The construction guy, they will never take this.” In my own businesses and getting to understand, “Why are you doing all this? Where do you want to be six months from now and not 300 years? What’s your dent in the universe?” We’re not there, although those are important. I’m talking about six months from now. What does that stuff look like? One of the support team has said this, one of my clerical people at the body shop, when I dug into what she was wanting, why she was working. She wanted to own her own home.

BCC 2 | Blue Collar — Blue Collar: One of the biggest myths about the industry is surrounding the stigma of working with your hands.

“How much do you have to make to own your own home?” We worked it out, figured it out, thought it through, and it was going to be a lot more than what she was making. I said, “Let’s figure out a path to get there.” She started working on learning stuff and getting better. There was a purpose to her job. It wasn’t putting invoices. It was getting a home. She owns a home now and has a great life. That’s because we get real with that stuff. By no means is that soft. We’re all going out there and striving for something. Getting that real is important. Too often as leaders, we’re not getting there. In all of these great successes that you’ve done, all these cool things that you’ve gotten to see, what’s the best mistake you’ve ever made?

The best mistake I ever made was realizing that I didn’t have to know it all. I didn’t have to have all of the answers. I didn’t have to be the Shell Answer Man. For me, letting go of this title of President or CEO or boss or owner, I don’t like any of those terms. I always say that if you put me in the parking lot with all 200 of the people that work on our team, I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to pick me out of the group as, “There’s the boss, that’s the owner, that’s the guy.” When we build our buildings, we do them campus style. We don’t do them 3, 4, 5-floor style, because I believe that that tradition is out the window.

The best thing that I had done was I let go of me thinking I had to drive these companies. I got a lot of feedback from the people within the companies and said, “What do you guys want to do? How far can we go? If we get there, what do you want for doing it?” They look back like I was from Mars because no one had ever talked to them like that before. We had this huge collective effort that was driven by not only what they thought they could gain from the company at the end of the year, at the holiday season, but they each had to have a powerful map of what they wanted for themselves. That took me a lot further than I could have taken it myself. There is power in letting go of that and allowing people to do what they want to do in a big collective way.

How did you come to that discovery? That is not the age-old way that has been broken down. How did you come to realize that?

I wore a lot of hats and I know a lot of business owners out there wear a lot of hats. I said to myself, “What am I good at? What do I like to do? What needs to be done, but may not be my best skillset?” I thought, “If I could find people to help me with those skillsets, would the results be better than if I did it myself or attempted to do it myself?” The answer was yes. In every case, when I shed something that I knew was important, but maybe wasn’t in my wheelhouse. First off, you have to let go, and that’s important, and that’s okay because your ego doesn’t want you to do that. You let go, you get people in place to do these things, and I guarantee you your company will go further than if you try to do all those things yourself. I don’t know whether I got tired of doing a mediocre job at some of these things, or I gravitated too much towards where I knew I was good at. Building a support team is the best thing you’re ever going to do.

When you’re saying that about letting go of things, I had some body shops at one point. The painter position inside of a collision center is like the unspoken leader of the body shop. In every body shop that I’ve ever been around or worked, the painter has the upper level in a lot of areas. Picking a painter for your shop is critical. I remember I was on the journey of discovering letting go of all these things and letting others do it. I’m not fully there, but I was in the discovery path. We got down to two phenomenal painter choices, top notch. There was one. I thought this guy is it. He’s got energy. He’s going to bring some drive and momentum to the company. The other one is qualified and it seems he’s going to do good work, but he’s not the same as this first one.

I had begun to work with the team on these kinds of things. I let the actual team that was going to be working with him in that shop to make the final call. They picked the one that I didn’t want, and unfortunately, they told that guy that too, which he continued to rub in my face for years. It turned out they had picked up on him and how great he was. You don’t always get to know that you made the right choice, but on this one, I got to see the end of both decisions. We got a painter that was a solid, steady, driving force of our company and did amazing stuff.

You’ve got to begin with the end in mind. You’ve got to believe that you have a path to getting there. Click To Tweet

The other one got us on his email. We got connected to his emails at 3:00 in the morning. Let’s just say we shouldn’t have been connected. We got some emails and like, “We would not have made the right choice with that one.” That was letting the employees who get to see a little bit more of the real. You said you don’t want to be that boss or that owner when it’s all 200 of you there. Even when you are trying not to be that, they’re putting a bit more of a show on for you than they are for their coworkers. Letting them go to that spot where they’re there with their people. Those are the ones making a decision, it’s a better team.

At some point, I realized that I have to have the knowledge that I and the company need to run all the different facets of it. In my experience, it seems like it’s never been that important what I know, as much as it has been important what they know and how they execute that. I didn’t want to have to plug myself into any one particular position. I wanted to be able to touch every position in the way of motivating and helping create life plans and long-term vision plans for the people doing those things without having to perform any one of those things individually myself. You always hear about the word empower. It made it so much better to give them the keys of operating these certain parts of the business. Tom Golisano in his book, he’s the Founder of Paychex, calls them entrepreneurial employees. What he was talking about, which is important is people feel they own and run their little departments or divisions, even though they don’t own the company. Those divisions are directly connected to their financial well-being. If you can get that mindset going, your company is going to go a lot further than you’re ever going to take it on your own.

Every human being wants to make a difference and wants to be a part of a team. By being a leader, our job is to supply those to them and the direction for that. That’s where we went when we give them those. I know you’ve written the book, Blue-Collar Cash, and you’ve gotten to work with lots of different business owners and employees. What is the biggest thing holding back a business from breaking free? They’re right there and they keep almost making it, but you see it and you’re like, “If you just did this.” What is it?

It’s getting people together, asking their opinion, what they’re capable of, and then putting a plan together to do that, and then rewarding them at the end. It comes back to how we see ourselves. Do we get to go home at night and when our wives or our girlfriends ask us, “How was your day?” Are you going to come from ego where you say, “I answered all these questions. I solved all these problems?”

I talked to a lot of business owners in the blue-collar space that struggled with letting go. A lot of it stems from their holding onto some of the past hurt of hiring someone they thought was amazing, giving them the keys to the castle, and then watching them burn it down. They’re skeptical of people going forward. Trust is something that they don’t use openly with their team. In a lot of the work that we do in building the core fit hiring system for these companies is to help them overcome that and put objective tools in place so that they can take the emotion out of it.

It sounds to me, you put a lot of your success on the team that you’ve built. You started with six employees, now you’ve got 200. That doesn’t happen overnight and it wasn’t easy. What are some tips or maybe the number one thing you’ve learned when it comes to finding these people? What’s the one thing that you would tell our readers, “Here’s how you find the person that you want to delegate this stuff to. Here’s the way you find the person that you’re willing to trust and you’re willing to step back and let them take it over?” What’s 1 or 2 things that you could share?

I’m glad you asked it because this one came to me while I was realizing the whole letting go thing. It seems that in this day and age especially with technology, there’s so much demand out there. If you drive from my office a couple of miles to the freeway, there are twenty signs that say, “Hiring.” They have the ability to job shop you six ways from Sunday. When you’re in the interview, it used to be the boss man would sit behind the desk and say, “Why should I hire you?” That’s flipped a bit. Now, the people on the other side of the desk are looking back and saying, “What’s in it for me to work here?” That might be off putting for some potential bosses who are used to things the way they were. If somebody says to me, “What’s in it for me to work here?” I’m intrigued by that.

That’s a positive for me because my question is going to be, “What are you looking to accomplish with this job? Tell me about what you want your life to look like. Tell me about your six months, your one year, your five years. Tell me something beyond next Friday’s paycheck. What does that look like to you?” If I get a good answer there, I’ve got a good prospect. I would rather have somebody that’s working for themselves through your company and with your company, than you having to micromanage every move that they make. If I got a guy or gal that’s strongly driven as to where they’re going, I’m taking a chance on that person for sure.

People are better at motivating themselves than letting someone else drive or hold a carrot in front of them so that it motivates them. When you were talking about that, “What’s in it for me?” I call that with them. It’s a marketing term. We realize the roles have flipped. I talk to employers all the time. They’re like, “I can’t find good people.” The question I always ask is, “You can’t find people or you can find people, they’re just no good?” It’s always the latter. They always can’t find good people. When I ask them what good means, they want people that give a damn. That’s how I sum it up. They care. That’s been lost on the industry, “This person is a cog in my machine. I’m going to treat them like it. If they don’t work out, I’ll put a new cog in the machine.” The modern workforce is not having that. They don’t want to be treated that way. When they’re looking for good people, they’re looking for people that give a damn, that have goals and dreams, that are willing to wake up and trade their paycheck for a purpose. They’ve got something that they’re aligned to.

There’s an important point to add to that. In the book, I talk about the difference between the somedayers club and the todayers club. Those are two different clubs that you can belong to. One of them where you live in perpetuity of, “Someday I’m going to make that happen. It’s going to be great. I’m going to get there and it’s going to be awesome.” The other club is, “I’ve done this. This is how I’m doing it. I’m repeating that successful path. I’m going to create steps and make this happen. I’m going to show you my results.” The difference for me is, when I’m interviewing somebody or I want to know about their future, I’m going to ask them what they’ve already accomplished. I’m going to also ask them of the things that they’re looking to accomplish.

What are the steps involved in that? “Do you have a path? Do you have steps? Do you have it broken down?” We have this big black glass board in our office. It’s probably a 10×10. We have these multicolored, bright markers, like you’d see almost out in front of a bar where they have the drink of the day, and they draw the pictures of the drink. We have them put those things on that board with a start date and end date and a mechanism that shows certainty, “I’m saving $2,500 and it’s going to take me a year. It’s $48 a week. It’s coming out of my paycheck. It’s into an account that I can’t touch. There we go, I’m on the path.”

It has to be crystal clear. It has to have a lot of clarity there. That’s something that anybody reading can start tomorrow. Once you have somebody that’s done that once or twice, and they go from a somedayer to a todayer, you’re going to have a person that’s going, “I like the way that feels. All I had to do is breathe and that goal is going to happen. I’m going to do that again and again.” That’s what we’ve experienced with people here. They’ve maybe paid off a Visa card, then they got their first car. They saved for a down payment on the house and they’re living in that house and they’re taking vacations. They try to give me credit for that. I’m like, “No, all we did was designed a path. You walked it. We had the vehicle.” It’s something that any business owner out there could use starting today.

We’ve challenged you. We’ve asked a lot of questions here as we’ve dug into this. I’m going to ask you to challenge our readers. What is something that they should do today? Not someday, but today. What is that one thing that they should do to take action from what they’ve read?

If they’re an individual, they need to find a quiet place. They need to sit down, and they need to draw out what they want their life to look like. That has to happen. Here’s a statistic that you might be interested in. If you take 100 people, 80 people in the United States claim they have no real goals, so that leaves 20. Of the 20, 16 people have goals, but they’re hopes, dreams, wishes and somedays. That leaves four. Of the four out of those 100 people, they write their goals down, draw them out, have them crystal clear, cut out pictures from magazines, make a puzzle, and yet 3 of those 4, take those goals and shove them in a drawer somewhere, maybe never to be seen again.

The Law of Attraction is powerful. What you see, you tend to attract yourself to. Click To Tweet

Only one of those people is willing to take those goals, write them out, post them on the wall, in their bathroom, in the dashboard of their car, maybe in their kitchen, where they look at them every single day. Those people on average earn eight times more money than the other 99 in their lifetime. That was a study done by the University of Virginia. I would implore anybody that’s reading to sit down, draw your life as specifically as you can. Keep that in front of you. Look at it every day, because what happens is the Law of Attraction is powerful. What you see, you tend to attract yourself to. Keep that in front of you and you will see your life change quickly.

I would only imagine that someone that has never drawn their life before, has never written down their goals. They’re going to go away. They’re going to sit down and do what they can with this. If they get stuck, do you have any resources or anything to help them to get unstuck? Where can they go to get clear on what they need to be doing during this time?

Two brief stories. The easy one is to read the book. I talk about that particular issue because it happens a lot.

The book is?

Blue-Collar Cash.

Blue-Collar Cash by Ken Rusk. We get it on Amazon or anywhere?

They can get it on Amazon, IndieBound, Apple Books, anywhere books are sold. The other answer is this. This is a brief story. Do you remember when you were younger and the first time ever that you wanted to jump off the high dive and you were scared to death? You talk yourself out of it a half a dozen times, and then finally your buddies were all sitting there next to you and they said, “You’ve got this, you can do this.” You climb the ladder and looked over at them. You climbed up, got to the top and looked over at them. You walked down that handrail towards the water and then the board started giving underneath your weight. You’re scared to death then you look over at them and finally, they look at you and they say, “You’ve got this.” What do you do? You launch yourself off the high dive.

It’s the same exact thing when you’re trying to do these goals in your lifetime. You need to find one person that you can trust. That maybe a family member or it may not be a family member. It maybe a mentor. Find someone that you can trust and share these goals with in crystal clear detail and say, “I want to get this done. Of all the people in my life, I’ve picked you to help me.” Once you’re walking a path that you can’t turn around on, you may hesitate and stumble, but that person will be there with their hand on your shoulder. They are invaluable to taking you down your first goal path. Once you’ve done it successfully on your own, you may not need them anymore other than to say, “I have gratitude. I give thanks for you for being in my life.” To have someone there with their hand on your shoulder, it’s an invaluable force to keep you on that path.

For all of you out there, Ken is pointing to a couple of different things here. One, get the book, Blue-Collar Cash by Ken Rusk, anywhere that you can find that. It’s a great read. The other thing is when he’s talking about being specific. You all know and we talk about it a lot, the clearer that we are with this stuff, the more concrete that we are with it. That’s what I love that you’re pushing for us, Ken. Be specific about it because that allows us to see it and allows that partner that we selected to hold us accountable to it. We don’t want to be like, “Did I get that?” We want to know for sure. Ken, this has been an amazing segment. I’m glad that we’ve been able to spend this time with you. You do have a special offer with the book, and I want to make sure that we highlight that for our readers. I’ll let you share that, share where to go, and share your website with them so they can have any way to get ahold of you if they have any more questions with it.

First off, thank you for having me. It’s been fun. I always love these discussions. If you go to KenRusk.com, you’ll see what we’re up to there. You can get the book there as well. It has all the buy buttons on it. We also have @KenRuskOfficial on our Facebook page and Instagram. We have a blog on Facebook and we have a constant content to support the blue-collar industry because I’m fond of that. At the end of this thing, I always believe that giving back, it was the last chapter I wrote in the book about the power of giving back and how you don’t do it for any specific reason, but it seems to enrich your life. Believe me, it does.

I’ve sponsored Make-A-Wish for several years. I’ve done Kids Wish every single year. This 2020 is no exception. We’ve made a long-term commitment. One of the things I want to do is, anyone who buys a book, I want you to know that my author revenue from the book is going to go towards sponsoring Make-A-Wish. I’m trying to do multiple wishes this 2020 and into the spring. I would encourage anyone to buy it as a gift for someone else, maybe a young person that’s in their life that they need some direction, or maybe you’re in your midlife and you want to get out of the cubicle and go back to working with your hands because you feel passionate about woodworking or a craft or a skill. Pick this book up and know that you’re not only getting yourself some good information, but you’re also going to help some child in need to realize a wish to Make-A-Wish this 2020.

Thank you, Ken, for joining and thank you all for all out there that are reading. Go to KenRusk.com. He’s got all kinds of great content. Get the book, Blue-Collar Cash, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks, Ken.

Thank you.

Important Links:

Ken Rusk
Blue-Collar Cash
Amazon – Blue-Collar Cash
IndieBound – Blue-Collar Cash
Apple Books – Blue-Collar Cash
@KenRuskOfficial – Facebook
Instagram – Ken Rusk Official

Who Is Ken Rusk?

MEET THE AUTHOR

Ken spent his younger years digging ditches and working in construction. He never went to college. Instead, he made goals, planned, and worked hard for thirty years. Now, Ken is a very successful entrepreneur with multiple businesses and revenue streams.

Ken Rusk specializes in mentoring and has coached hundreds of young people in areas such as short-, mid-, and long-term goal setting, life visualization, career paths, and sound financial planning. He is passionate about helping people achieve their dreams regardless of their educational background or past.