Listener Q&A Part 3: Insights from Naples and Firing People Who Don’t Fit

Turn, bro. What exactly are you trying to prove here, man?

Sometimes it seems like you're talking to me. I know you're not, obviously.

Hey, kid, this is Dylan Lang, season one, season three, and season three has been great.

What's going on, KT? TK coming at you?

Man, it's been a long time coming. Tyler here from Minnesota.

To get kicked and involved, but you're doing it to yourself, and that makes it great.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Welcome back to the brandy empire camp.

Hey, how you start is how you finish?

Hey, you feel like nine to five, we stand on finish.

Here's the cash of you.

Okay, okay, okay, we got no limits.

Welcome back to the birdie and podcast.

Finally back at it. Finally, finally back at it.

I know you guys probably didn't notice, but I took a few days off.

Those episodes that have dropped the last few days, those were all pulled out of the vault.

I had recorded those a while back a few weeks ago.

One episode recently here was new, and that was the diabolical episode with Shelby that we recorded.

While we were in Naples, I'm going to fill you in a little bit on what's been happening in my life.

I think I've got an interesting topic today that maybe someone will get a little bit of value out of.

Hey, it's been a fun week. I am sitting here back in Indiana.

Golden as can be.

I mean, I am golden tan.

And that means mission accomplished for me.

If I can get a golden tan set in before April, I'm down for it.

You guys know I take that seriously.

We were super fortunate to spend the last, I was in Naples for the last week with my brother from another.

Mr. Thomas Han.

We go to this event every year, put on by one of the industry publications called Pit and Cory.

Do you ever walked into an office like a mine office or a plant office?

You've likely seen an issue of Pit and Cory sitting on the table, P and Q.

We've gone to this event every year.

It's an awesome event.

And we were in Naples for really for almost a week.

Our wives joined us, Thomas and Michelle, Thomas and Michelle.

Michelle and Shelby joined us the first part of the trip.

And then we kicked them, we kicked them back out of Florida.

They went back to Indiana and then Thomas and I went on to do the event.

It was awesome. Thomas spoke on a panel, did a great job as always.

One of the guys we were sitting at the table before the panel.

And we've known these guys for many years now.

I think Thomas and I've been going to this event for gosh, I think like the last seven years.

It feels like maybe more than that.

We're sitting at Thomas and I are sitting at this table with like all the guys that run the event and put the event on the Pit and Cory guy shout out Dino and Jack and Rob and Kevin and they're all awesome dudes.

I think it was Jack.

He looked at Thomas really seriously and he said, hey, I've got a question for you.

Thomas is like, oh, Jack's like, I want to know.

Do you ever have a bad day?

Like, do you ever honestly have a bad day and we laughed?

I was like, no, I answered for Thomas.

I was like, I'll answer for him. No, no, he does not.

It's one of the things, one of the many things I love about the guy.

He does not have a bad day in our worst days and Thomas was around.

He Thomas was COO, Chief Operating Officer of Turner Mining Group in the early days.

Thomas joined probably about a year after we had started the company, maybe a year and a half, two years.

And Thomas was around on some of our worst days without a doubt.

We've been through some stuff together.

He doesn't have a bad day.

He is the most likeable, personable guy.

He smiles all the time.

He's always fun loving.

He's always down for a good time.

He's the last one to go to sleep on a trip or at a party or whatever.

And he's the first one to be all in for fun.

He's just awesome.

So you want people like that in your corner.

But we had a great time.

Naples is awesome.

Naples is our place.

We love both coasts of Florida.

If I'm doing Southern Florida, it's probably either Naples on the Gulf of America.

Or it's Palm Beach, which is on the other side.

So we had a blast.

I'll tell you a few key takeaways.

And I think I'm going to do a whole episode just on the event.

But a few key takeaways was.

Hold on.

I got a text again.

These things just rattle my train of thought.

I think I'm going to do a whole episode on the event.

But a few key takeaways.

And I talk about this.

I'm not going to go in on it very hard.

Network is everything.

I've never really done a phenomenal job at this.

Thomas is always much better because he's just outgoing and he gets in a room.

And you know, he wants to meet people and people want to meet him.

But man, network is everything.

Enforcing yourself into situations in the rooms with people that you otherwise

wouldn't be forced to talk to or interact with.

It's wild how it works.

The network effect is real.

And so that event's been great for us to do that.

What other key takeaways?

We had an amazing lunch.

I got to get, I got to figure out how to get this guy on the podcast someday.

I have to.

But I'm going to tell you, we had an amazing lunch at Bicycleat Cookshop.

If you're ever in Naples, go look it up.

Bicycleat, bicycle, E-T-T-E.

Cookshop.

It's a little bit of place, like kind of in a strip mall, you know,

not far from where we stayed.

We, you know, we, we got electric bikes and we biked there.

It was a couple of miles away.

So we sit down.

And this, this beautiful olive-skinned man.

Or, you know, you could tell he's older, but it had like a, like a deep tan.

I mean, my tan's golden currently.

This guy's tan was deep.

You could tell he had been some places.

This guy had been around the beach.

And he'd been in the sun for a while.

Comes out bright shiny teeth and just smile and, and, and gives us our food after we ordered.

And, and we, you know, we kind of thought, wow, he's probably like, you know,

just, he's probably like one of the guys that helps deliver food or bus boy or whatever, you know, down here just retired.

And I said, man, you look great.

You know, I, I just kind of gave him a call.

I was like, you look great.

How old are you?

And we're sitting there drinking wine.

And he's like, well, how old do you think I am?

And I said, no, I don't know.

You know, I don't be offensive, but I'm guessing you're like in your fifties, you know, probably, probably came down and retired early and down in Florida,

living the dream and working, you know, working the bar or working the kitchen.

And he's like, man, I'm 70 years old.

70, I think he said 72.

And I was like, no way.

So my wife, Shelby, is like, what are your, this guy's tatted up, both arms.

And she's like, man, you look amazing.

What are the tattoos?

And so he opens his arm and on his, on the inside of his forearm, on his left arm, he has the golden arches, like the McDonald's logo tattooed.

And then he has a McDonald's French fry, like a large tattoo of literally a McDonald's box with French fries in it.

And he's like, oh, these, these old things.

Oh, I used to work at McDonald's.

And they're like, okay, interesting.

And my wife being know this, she goes, what'd you do?

He was like, well, I was, I started as a, as a fry cook when I was 17 years old.

And at this point, like, we're starting to get a little nosier because he's kind of being vague.

I mean, he'd be in, he's kind of joking and he's got a great smile.

You can tell he's personable, but he's kind of being a little vague.

I notice he's wearing a panor eye.

And Shelby noticed, because she knows me, I love watches.

She noticed he was wearing a panor eye.

He's got all this jewelry. He's got an Hermes link, you know, bracelet.

And, and so Shelby says, well, that's what you, you started as a French fry cook.

What was your last job?

Kind of.

And he said, well, he kind of looked around.

We were the only ones sitting outside. It was like 1130 launches pretty early.

He said, well, I, when I left, when I retired,

I was the president of McDonald's.

And we lost it.

Like, no way. Are you serious? He's like, yeah, I was president of McDonald's.

He, we, we make small talk. He goes away, right?

He goes back to the kitchen. We're, we're eating our food.

Shelby starts on a mission on the internet, looking this guy.

She's like, no way. This guy was McDonald's resident.

And now he's down here cooking food.

He literally, when we, we lost him up, you can go look him up.

He, he took McDonald's to Italy and started McDonald's in Italy.

He then did it in Canada.

He comes back out, you know, we're, we're doing all this homework on the guy.

He comes back out because again, you go to these weird places.

You just never know who you're going to run into.

He comes back out and Shelby's like, I can't believe you went to Italy.

Turns out he owns a farm in Italy.

He presses his own olive juice. He's got 10,000 acre olive tree farm.

Him and him and, you know, his neighbor and they, they make their own olive oil.

And they sell the olive oil. They use it on all the food.

He owned the restaurant we were eating at.

He owned the, the bicycle shop next door.

He owned a new restaurant that he's opening up in Naples.

The chef at the restaurant we were eating at had won the TV show Chopped on the Food Network.

He never seen that. It's an awesome show.

She's, she's probably going to win a James Beard Award this year.

Or as, you know, finalist was what we've been told.

This dude was the most interesting guy.

And, and we, and again, we would have never known if we didn't strike up conversation.

His wife and him have been married 52 years.

It was the coolest story.

So he, we're, you know, again, we're making small talk.

And, and the, you know, the, the end of the meal is coming.

And there's so many other things I can tell you guys,

but I don't want to take a whole episode to, to route it off.

And I, he's like, well, how'd you guys get over here?

I said, well, I, I drove that white Maserati sports car that's sitting out there in a parking lot.

He didn't even turn around. He goes, no, you didn't.

I was like, yeah, I drove that white Maserati sports car.

He goes, no, that's my car.

I knew it was his car because I can tell just by what he was wearing and how he looked.

I was like, there's one, there's one sports car in a parking lot.

It's got to be this dude.

Coolest thing ever. His name's Louis.

I think he spells it Louis. I forget his last name.

I was like, man, I got to get a picture with this guy.

Thomas and I bought a bunch of his olive oil and we wrapped it in bath robes

and put it in our golf clubs and checked it on the plane to get it back here.

He signed the bottles of olive oil for us.

It was just the coolest thing ever.

But here's how it all started.

It started the night before we were sitting at the little bitty beach bar at our,

at our hotel with our wives having a glass of wine.

And we talked to the guy next to us who was by himself, older guy.

And he was a local.

And he started telling us all these things about what the locals do and where they go.

And that place was off the beaten path.

We'd have never gone there if it weren't for a conversation with the local.

So it was awesome, huge shout out.

I mean, the guy, it was the coolest conversation when Louis retired from McDonald's.

He had 70,000 employees he was responsible for.

70,000.

And I guarantee you most people that would sit down at that restaurant and get their food

would have looked at the guy and thought, oh, dude, dude, just some frickin' bus boy.

Like that dude's just some old washed up drunk that's working in the back of the kitchen.

Cause he wasn't like, he wasn't just shouting out from the rooftops.

Hey, I was president McDonald's.

Dude, he was the most humble guy and he was living the dream.

He bikes 40 miles every day on a bicycle, which is one of the reasons why he was so golden tan.

So anyway, awesome, awesome interaction.

We had a ton.

I mean, there's, I had, we had dinner with, with Ace McCarthy and Mike Atisver,

two nights in a row and some other dudes.

We played golf with the guys, just a blast.

I'm going to talk more about it for sure.

But, but had a blast this past week.

It was a lot of fun.

What's the topic for today?

Cause I'm already 12 minutes in and I haven't even said anything of value yet.

Some of you guys, I apologize for the rambling, but I don't do this podcast for you

as much as I do it for me and just to get things out of my head that are rattling around.

And that was, that story was in my head rattling around.

I was texting my family as we were talking to the guy.

I was like, hey, guess all this guy is and they were guessing.

And I was like, hey, guess what do you, guess what he did?

It's just a coolest thing ever to meet someone that, that, that impactful in business.

And you can tell the dudes, the dude's got businesses all over the place.

The dude's killing it.

Like his wife's got her own website and she does like this Italian cooking blog.

And she's this cute thing.

I mean, it was the coolest thing ever.

So that's the stuff I live for.

That's the Anthony Bourdain quote on yesterday's episode.

Like, like, go to the local place.

Go get, go get wine.

We were drinking sunsare.

Go get some wine.

They have the, you know, they have these, one of the appetizers.

And again, I promise I'm going to move on.

One of the appetizers they serve are a bag of bugles.

Like, like literally the bugles.

Like you got them from a gas station with caviar and creme fraiche.

It was amazing.

It was a coolest thing ever.

Then they have these massive onion rings with like,

porchetta and manchango all over them.

It was, it was the coolest thing ever.

So anyway, if you're ever in Naples or around Naples,

bicyclete to workshop or cook shop.

Awesome place.

Tell Louise the dudes from Indiana sent you.

Okay.

What's the topic?

I'm going to follow up.

I did part one of the Q&A.

And I did part two of the Q&A.

I know those weren't the greatest episodes.

It's just what I had.

I felt like I needed to answer some of those questions.

I will tell you one of the questions that popped up

was from one of our own guys, Patton.

And if you guys know anything about Patton,

Patton started working with me when he was an intern back.

I think he was like 16 years old.

So he's been, we've been together for a decade,

more than a decade now.

He asked the question,

how do you know when you hire someone at Turner

if they're going to work out long term or not?

How do you know if they're going to make it?

I love this question because Patton has,

recently, but then also over the last year or two,

has had to get rid of some people on the team.

Patton's evolved in his role many times.

I mean, he, you know, in the early days,

he was doing everything.

And then as the business has matured,

we had to put, you know, leaders in different roles

and departments and we've created systems.

And so anyway, he was chief of staff for a number of years.

I think three or four years.

I just kind of had his hand in everything, right?

HR, ops, equipment, estimating sales.

He just kind of got a good inside look at all of it.

He has since more recently been devoting his time

to sales and marketing and also jumped in

when we needed him to help stand up some systems and process

and org chart around our maintenance

and equipment part of the business with rest of the team.

But throughout that process, Patton has kept a note on his phone

and it's diabolical.

I mean, it is diabolical every time he opens it up

and shows me it makes my stomach hurt.

He has kept a note on his phone of all the salary,

these are just salary roles.

This is not all the employees.

This is just salary people who have worked at Turner

and no longer do and the list is disgusting.

It's long.

I mean, if you gave this list to any business consultant

and showed them, hey, this was a list of salary roles

but most of them are back office but salary roles

that Turner has hired and fired

in the last nine years,

the business consultant would probably tell you we're a joke.

The business consultant probably tell you,

well, you guys are screwed up.

You guys have wasted too much money.

You guys have been too cutthroat, too diabolical.

You guys don't have the right hiring practices.

You guys don't screen people well.

And maybe all those things are true.

You know, I would kind of respond back, you know,

what have you done, Mr. Business Consultant?

Because we're doing okay for a business nine years in.

But the list is diabolical.

It's crazy.

The amount of names.

I'm going to have him count how many names are on this list

because it's like it's in the hundreds of people

that have been on our team and not made it.

And I think only a handful of them quit on their own.

I think most of them we had to chop.

So what's the indicator that someone's not going to make it?

I don't know if there is just one.

Now, you know, we've done this now enough.

And the rest of our team now gets it.

I ask Tucker every time we hire someone.

I'm like, hey, he's a week in.

And he beige flags.

You guys have heard me talk about beige flags.

We just hired a new maintenance director of maintenance.

Really cool guy.

I'm super excited about him.

But, you know, you never know when you hire a psycho.

And so I asked Patton after his first week.

I was like, hey, any beige flags?

Any red flags?

Is he, is he, is he what we thought?

And, you know, turns out he's, you know,

a couple of weeks in.

He's what we thought seems like a really solid dude.

But this one's tough.

Like, how do you recognize early, early on

that you've got the wrong person?

I have said a million times.

I'm not going to say it on this one.

Like, there's no, there's no secret to hiring someone.

But there's a lot of beauty in, in firing someone quickly.

I will tell you for me,

the people that I can clearly tell,

just, just right off the bat, aren't going to make it,

are people that struggle with our very first core value.

And that core value is a heart for people.

Stay, stay with me.

Don't lose, don't, don't let me lose you.

I know it sounds corny and coon by heart for people.

That's just one of those things that corporate people say

that it's a people company.

I can promise you right now.

I know a few dudes that would be awesome in our business,

but are not solid human beings.

They would kill it in our business.

I know they would.

I've been around them.

I've talked to them.

One guy, in particular, I've talked to for multiple years.

And I've always thought, man, we should hire him.

We should hire him.

We should hire him.

I never did.

And the only reason I didn't is because I could tell,

just through interactions, through comments made,

through off-color jokes, or whatever,

like little bitty indicators that the dude

wasn't a solid human being with the same morals I have.

Just wasn't.

Now, you don't have to have the same religious beliefs as me

or political beliefs as me.

But you have to be a good human, first and foremost.

If you're a royal bee, and I don't cuss,

I'm not going to say the rest of the word.

But if you're just a tool, or just a mean girl,

or a jerk of a guy, it's not going to work.

And maybe you fake your way through an interview with us.

But our very first core value,

and I remember we sat down and made these years and years ago,

Thomas was the key driver in that.

He's like, hey, we kind of need some core values.

What do we care about as a business?

I was like, dude, it's people.

I want to be surrounded by good people.

And so I think Patton has learned this and lived this

as much as anybody in our business.

If you're not a good human, first and foremost,

it's just not going to work.

It's just not.

And we've had some bad ones sneak in.

We've had some dude sneak in that just were slimy and sneaky

and just not solid humans.

And it just doesn't work.

Well, we like eventually will find you out eventually.

The other things I would say if I if I if I could,

the things that aren't going to,

like if you exemplify these characteristics,

you're just not going to work long for us.

You're going to get fired.

And I don't like will fire you in a loving way.

Well, you know, we won't be jerks about it most of the time.

If you're not a self starter,

it is really difficult to be successful in our organization,

especially from like a back office team, back office perspective.

But I would even say managers, field managers, project managers,

foreman, like if you need someone to tell you what to do every day,

we just don't have time for that.

You know, we've scaled so much in nine years,

like we don't have time to sit and hand hold every single day.

Now, we can do some hand holding, right?

We can bring you up to speed.

We can tell you that kind of some of some of the key functions

of the role and how to think about the system.

Like there's some training like we're getting a little better

with onboarding people and, you know,

elevating them into the business as quick as possible.

But man, if you're not a self starter,

if you can't figure it out, it's not going to work.

Because the issue we have,

our business changes too much, right?

We'll grow.

And the thing we had you doing six months ago or a year ago

might be totally different now, right?

It might be a new system.

It might be at a larger scale.

You might now have to have one or two people reporting up to you.

And so if you can't show up to work,

whether you're in the office or in the field,

and figure out what is critical that I get done today,

what are my tasks, how am I going to get creative,

how am I going to be innovative to go solve problems

for the business?

If you can't do that, generally speaking,

we replace you, generally speaking.

Now, there are people again, you know,

I gotta say it, there are people that slide through the cracks

and that stay comfy and cozy and lazy for a number of years.

And one day we look up and we're like,

why is this one part of the business not killing it?

Why do we suck over here?

Like we'll uncover a corner of the business

that's just a bunch of waste.

Never fraud or abuse, but just a bunch of waste.

And it's usually lazy people that aren't self-starters.

People that just don't wake up on fire to go get better.

Make the business better, make the function better.

The thing I hate most and I hate,

oh, it's absolutely one of the things that drives me insane.

Are people that do the same thing the same way forever?

Because that's the way we do it.

Drives me insane.

I don't know one person in any business of any skill level

that is fully optimized and can't get any better at their role.

I don't know one.

And so if that's true, that should mean

you should be getting better in your role every day.

You should be like pushing on all the things,

like where's the weak spot in our function?

If I'm a production man and I'm looking at production,

like how do we move five more tons today?

And people are going to roll their eyes.

I do, there's five more tons.

Chill out, dude.

It's like, no, we're here to innovate.

We're going to get creative.

We're here to solve problems.

We're here to make this organization run better.

And if you're not a self-starter,

if you don't wake up on fire to go get better

and make our business better,

you just are going to get replaced.

Like it might be three months,

it might be six months, it might be a year.

A lot of guys don't make it a year.

You're going to get replaced.

And so we've found the most success

and the people that are self-starter.

They obviously got to be a good human.

I already talked about that one.

But if you're a self-starter

and you're going to go,

I told you guys on a past episode.

I think it was here in season three.

I want to be surprised by someone.

That's my goal.

Like that's probably the best way to say

I think someone's going to make it.

Is they surprise us with what they do.

They surprise us with the reports.

They surprise us with the production impact.

They surprise us with their attitude

or their ability to rally their troops

and get other people excited to go get their face kicked in.

Like I like to be surprised in a good way.

I do not like to be surprised in a bad way.

I do not like to show up

and have to ask the question,

hey, why is this person never at the office?

Like I'm not at the office at all.

But I don't see him around.

Like I went on there

on a random Tuesday at two o'clock in the afternoon.

Where are they?

Or the other one.

And again, this is just me and I hate it.

I'm going to call some people out.

Like, why are you going to your car in the middle of the day?

Like if you're in an office,

if you're working at a site, whatever,

like maybe you just need to break

to get away from the people that are annoying you to death,

that's a whole different set of issues

that we can talk about on a different podcast.

But like, why are you going to your car in the middle of the day?

Maybe you need a smoke break,

maybe you need a lunch break,

maybe you just need some peace and quiet.

I get it.

But if you do it every single day,

I would ask the question,

are you pushing as hard as you can

in your role to go be innovative?

Are you, like, and this is,

I know this is rich,

you know, coming from me,

because I want to push all my people to work harder

and be more innovative and drive efficiency.

But man, like, you know,

I don't think, and maybe on my worst days,

where I think about burning the whole thing down,

but I don't think I ever just go out and sit in my truck

and like eat lunch, you know,

or like take a break

and like just, you know, turn on the radio.

Like maybe I, I don't know,

maybe they have something figured out.

Maybe I should do more of that.

So that's probably the second thing I would say,

is if you are not a self starter,

you're just not going to make it in our business,

or at least not make it very long.

I would say with that,

people that raise our bar

are the ones that go the farthest.

People that raise our bar.

I can look at several people in our organization

who have raised the bar in the expectations

of how we operate, how we perform,

how we do reporting.

If you raise our bar

by your actions and the process you're driving

and the culture you're driving,

if you're raising the bar in our business,

you will get rewarded.

Well, obviously you'll keep your job,

but you'll get promoted,

you'll make more money.

Like we see it, the bonuses will come.

We exist, our bar still,

I think is so, so, so far below

where we can and should go as an organization.

We need more people that are going to raise the bar

in every function of the business.

Hall truck drivers, production men,

foreman, doing daily lineouts,

superintendents,

project managers, directors,

like supervisors and vice presidents,

and we need people that are going to raise the bar.

Not keep the bar where it's at.

And I drew this, I've told this before,

we're, you know, enough episodes in now,

230, 240, 250 episodes, whatever it is now.

A lot of these things you guys have heard me say before,

but a year and a half ago,

I drew on the board for our whole entire organization,

and it was like a, it was like a chart

that went up into the right.

I was like, that's where the business was going.

We're going up into the right.

We're going to win some big contracts.

We're going to buy new equipment.

We're going to hire some legit people.

And then I drew another line at the bottom

that was horizontal.

It was just kind of flat.

And it went up a little bit,

but it didn't go up as high as,

as the other bar that represented the organization

where we were growing.

The other bar that was a little more flat,

it was at the bottom, it was kind of horizontal,

was individual people.

And it represented the growing gap

between where the organization was

and our capabilities and the bar we have set

and where you personally are

and your capabilities and the bar you have set.

And you'll either do one of two things

as an individual.

And I don't say this to be like the crazy boss,

I say this because it's just the reality.

You will either grow with the organization

and your bar will start to look like the organization's bar.

And you're going to grow a lot.

You're going to try new things.

You're going to do homework on the weekends.

You're going to think about your job after hours

when you're not getting paid to think about your job.

You're going to get a lot better

and you're going to keep up with the organization

or the organization's going to outrun you.

And yours down here,

staying flat and the organization's way up here

up into the right.

And that leaves a big gap.

And what do we do with that gap?

We have only two options.

Two options.

We either hire your boss to fill the gap.

And now you've got a new boss.

And he takes the role that you should have tried to take for yourself.

Should have tried to get the promotion yourself.

But you didn't.

The gap's too big now.

And so we have to hire that person.

That's your boss.

Or we fire you.

And that sounds heartless.

And I hate it for a lot of employees.

And that's what most of Patton's list is.

It were people that were really good people for a year.

Like really solid people for 12 months, 18 months.

And they didn't grow.

And a lot of guys will say,

well, what would the organization do to support them?

How did you guys do?

We didn't have time to train again.

When you're scaling an organization quickly

and you're growing a lot,

you can have a massive heart for people

and still exit people out of the business

because they can't grow fast enough.

It's just a reality.

That's one of the reasons why

I keep in turn and lost so many friends.

Like I had a lot of good buddies

that year, two, three, four in the business,

they fit perfectly.

They were the best.

Our graphs matched each other.

And had I known now,

or had I known then what I know now,

I would have sat them down and showed them.

I'd say, look me in.

We're $40 million in our business right now.

You're doing great.

But I think we're going to be an $80 million

in our business in a year, two years.

You're going to have to pick it up.

You're going to have to learn some new things.

You're going to have to do a bunch of homework on the weekends

and not spend all weekend drunk on the river.

Like you're going to have to really push to get better

and I can't do that for you.

And they didn't.

They didn't do it.

And so when we went from a $40 million business

to an $80 million business,

I had to hire the replacements.

Or I had to hire their boss.

I'll never forget one day.

I hired a big time ops guy

and a bunch of my buddies quit.

They're like, dude, that should be our job.

That should be our role.

We should have been promoted to that role.

I was like, you don't freaking know what you're doing.

You can't run a $40 million business phenomenally.

Let alone one double that size.

And so it's not like, don't get mad at me.

That I grew the business.

That I'm trying to evolve as a leader.

That should be your goal as well.

You should be trying to evolve as a leader.

I can't do it for you.

I don't have the time.

I'm trying to do it for me.

I'm spending time on the weekends.

I'm listening to things.

I'm reading books.

I'm like, I'm meeting with other big time powerful CEOs.

Like, what do these guys do?

You have got to figure it out for yourself.

Because you're either,

and especially if you're in a growing business,

you're either going to get replaced by your boss

or you're going to get fired.

If the gap grows too big.

And so that's really the third one is, you know,

people that actually want to evolve.

And so many folks, especially this day and age,

where people are trained to just think one way.

So many folks just get comfy and cozy doing the same thing

the same way forever.

And they don't innovate.

They don't grow.

They don't challenge themselves and the skill sets that they have.

They don't do anything in their free time to get any smarter.

They're not reading or watching the right things.

They're not talking to the right people.

How ironic would it be for a young superintendent,

23, 24, 28-year-old guy, 30-year-old superintendent,

to go take out five, six other superintendents once a month

to dinner, take them out to dinner.

And these are guys that have been doing it their whole lives.

How interesting would it be for that young dude to go try to learn

from these guys on his own time, on his own time?

That's what it takes.

That's what I'm doing.

So if I'm doing that, why are you too good to do that?

Like, I'm spending my time and money

have just literally spent all weekend naples.

Some of it was play on the beach in the pool

with the beautiful smoke show Shelby Turner.

But some of it was learning from other dudes that have been around.

Like, I have a totally different angle now

after listening to some of these legit people for a couple days.

I'm like, man, there's another thing I want to go do.

I'm like, I'm gonna talk about it.

But there's another thing I want to go do.

It takes real investment.

And some folks, if you're in a role now and it's working fine

and you just show up and you do your job and you go home

and you don't think about work.

And you show up again, you do your job and you go home.

You're just, you can't compare my story to your story.

You can't compare patent story to your story.

Tucker story to your story.

Like, you can't.

Because that's not what these guys have done

to get into roles and opportunities and positions

in their organizations to kill it.

That's not what they do.

That's not how they didn't just show up to work.

Do their job and then go home and now think about work.

It's, it's non-stop.

If I call on Sunday morning, you better answer the phone

and we're talking business.

And I'm sorry if you got to step out of church for a second.

But like, dude, this is what it is.

And so, you know, the people that I think have really

killed it in scale with, and there's a bunch of people

have done this, by the way.

J. Kabul has grown tremendously with our business over the years.

Ashton, our, our, our gallon HR, director of HR,

like killing it.

HR manager has like, she, she came to the organization

as a, as a friend of someone else.

And I don't know, yeah, you know,

I don't know how much she knew or didn't know.

I've not been involved in HR much.

But I've watched her grow with the business.

You know, Patton's a great example of people

that have grown with the business.

Jason, you were, I mean, there's a bunch of names to do.

It's that I always hate to start naming names

because I'm going to leave a bunch of people out.

But if you're not thinking about getting a little bit better

every day in your job or making your job a little bit better

or, or pulling some more responsibility.

If you're not thinking about surprising your boss

with how legit you are or how good you are

or the impact you're making,

those people just don't stick around at Turner.

They just don't.

And it's a bummer, you know, it really is.

Like everyone wants to know, how do I make more money?

How do I get more title?

How do I, like, dude, it's up to you.

Has nothing to do with the organization?

The organization's got the opportunity.

I need next level.

I need people to step up.

Like, ironically, as I sit here today and we've grown a lot,

we have some massive opportunities on the horizon.

I need people to step up.

I don't have any choice.

They either step up and grow and do more.

And by the way, we'll pay you for it.

Or I got to go hire more legit people.

You know, it's just very matter of fact.

I got a couple guys and it's a bummer.

It really is.

I got a couple guys that I grew up in the business with.

Worked with my uncle and worked, you know, I just,

I'd worked a lot, I would done a lot of business

and moved a lot of dirt with these dudes.

There's a couple of them that should be in Tucker's role

in our company today.

If they would have grown and evolved over the last nine years.

If they would have pushed themselves and read the books

and took, you know, took dinners with people

that were further ahead in life.

If they would have done all these things,

they might be in a position

where they're still in our organization killing it.

But you know what?

They're not.

And most of them are in other organizations

doing the same thing they were doing nine years ago.

Making the same money they were making nine years ago,

adjusted for inflation, of course.

Like, you have got to think of,

and this is, this is, I think I will take this to the grave.

Every business I ever get involved with.

And me personally, like in my current role,

I'm focused on getting better.

I got to be a better CEO in five years on the day.

I got to be a better leader.

I have to know things about our business

and details and intricacies

and like leverage ratios

and all kinds of finance things that I'm not good at.

I got to know insurance.

Like, I got to get better

so that I am, I am on track with the company

because I, you know, I drew this graph

and showed the company going up into the right.

You know how it was most fearful of?

It wasn't, it wasn't all the people that stayed flat

and we have to hire their boss.

That's easy.

I can hire, I can hire your boss tomorrow.

It's no big deal.

It's a bummer for you.

But, you know, I can hire people

I was most fearful of me

not growing.

I was like most fearful that like holy crap.

I think the business is going to continue to explode in growth

and by the way, we've more than doubled in size from last year

which is hard to do.

It's hard to keep doubling every couple of years.

I was most worried about me

staying on track with the organization's growth.

I was most fearful that I would have to replace me

and find someone to do my job.

And I was super fearful.

Like what does that even look like?

I don't even know.

Do I lose confidence from our organization?

If I'm not the guy anymore and we have a new guy?

So I've been super focused on how do I continue to get better?

And I'm not there.

I think, you know, I got to keep going up into the right.

But this is like, this is how, this is the secret.

To getting all the things you want.

In my opinion, in our organization is to be a good human first.

Obviously, it's table stakes.

You've got to be a self starter.

You can't have someone hold your hand every day.

Now if you need direction or help or whatever,

obviously ask it.

Don't pretend you know it all.

But you've got to be a self starter.

And then third, man, you have got to raise the bar.

You've got to help us raise the bar for the organization.

And that comes through you raising the bar for you.

You have to raise the bar.

That means raising your bar.

Like your fun, whatever role you're in,

whatever function you're in should be better tomorrow.

And then the next day.

And then the next day.

And if you look around at the end of the year and you're like,

man, we didn't really get any better.

It's a huge red flag.

Huge.

You should be looking at your past 12 months asking the question,

did I get any better or did we and our function

of this organization get any better?

If the answer's no, you're on my radar.

I know it.

I got people watching.

I know what functions are getting better and are not.

And if we're not getting better,

we are wasting precious time.

Because our competition is getting better.

They're using technology and AI and data.

Like they're going to try to get better.

So who's going to get better faster?

The dude that's coming to take your job is trying to get better.

I mean, this is the thing.

So I don't, I mean, I could,

I could, you know, I could rant and rave on this one all day.

There's a lot of little things.

Like obviously, you know, 10-base flags stack up

to be a red flag.

How many red flags do you get before you get the flag?

I don't know, maybe two, maybe three.

Depending on the situation.

You know, but I think if you,

I think if you check those three boxes,

I think if you're a good human, first and foremost,

and you believe the same things we believe,

like from a morality perspective,

if you actually care about other people,

I think we'll get along just fine.

And then obviously being a self-starter,

it just, it drains the organization

when we got a handhold.

When Tucker has to handhold one of his guys,

it just drains him.

And he's got two other things to go focus on.

When Patton has to handhold or Jake or who, you know, Jeff,

like Thomas, like when we have to handhold people,

we don't have time.

We're growing.

We got other things to go focus on.

So we need self-starters.

And then, and then man, if you don't get excited to get better,

yeah, I just don't think you're going to fit the culture very well here.

For you personally.

Like, I don't think you're, you know,

not that, not that we're all just phenomenal,

far from it, but, but, but we're trying.

We're testing new things.

Every idea is, is discussed.

And, hey, let's, let's think about AI.

Let's think about automation.

Let's think about dashboards and data.

And how do we get a little bit better?

How do we make this safety thing a little bit better?

How do we buy this equipment a little cheaper?

How do we sell it for just a little bit more?

Like, all these little bit of things,

if you're not raising the bar and the business,

man, I got, I just, I lose interest.

I lose time.

I need someone to help me raise the bar across the board.

And so that's, that's what, that's what I'm focused on.

I'm sure if you asked some of our other leaders,

they would say something different.

They would maybe have a different perspective.

Like, well, I, you know, I need this specific thing for my function.

But when you boil it all down,

they need self-starters that raise the bar

that happen to be good human beings.

And so that's, that's what we think about as an organization.

So that's what I got.

I, um, I got to run, I got things,

I got things going on in my life.

And, uh, and I feel, I don't know.

It's too early to say,

but I, you know, I felt recharged after coming back

from the sun and the sand and, and, and the 90 degree days.

Um,

but things are getting a little busy.

And I feel maybe there is a slight pause in my future.

I don't know.

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going on intermission tomorrow.

Um,

but don't be surprised if one day

you wake up and, and, uh,

and it's a very short notice of, uh, of a slight pause.

Um, but until then, we're going to keep killing it.

I, I, I haven't opened the podium hotline really in a week

because, like I said, I was traveling and, and I, uh,

and I know I need to get back to a bunch of you guys.

Uh, but send me a message.

I would love to hear from you.

I know we, I've got some reviews, some new reviews

that I should probably read off here at some point.

Uh, I've been getting a bunch of messages from you guys

on the last several episodes.

Um, here recently.

So thank you for all those,

but hit me up on the hotline.

I'd love to hear from you.

I'd love to get a shirtless video.

If you got a question for me or a topic

that you said,

uh, I would love to do that.

Um, but I thought this one,

I thought this question from Patton was, was a solid one.

And, uh, and it's one that,

man, it's one that if I could put on a bulletin board

and post it on the wall at our office,

maybe I'd do that.

Like that's,

I think that's the thing.

Um, so,

yeah,

appreciate you tuning in.

Uh, 980,

737,

3436,

980,

3836,

98 zero per dieum.

Hit me up.

Would love to hear from you.

Uh, Until, then,

peace, love.

great for per dieum.

.

WTH