Ep 68 - "Rest Is The Key To Longevity"

0:07 Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. Man, I love this industry. Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris. Starting with a good laugh. Nobody even knows what we're laughing at. Just a couple insane guys laughing before the... Happy New Year, man. Oh man, Happy New Year. Do you say that with excitement? Do you say that with relief? What are you thinking when you say Happy New Year right now? Well, when I say that to you, 2022 was an absolute banger year for us. It was so fun, dude.

0:48 I was still kind of tired from it, but it was fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty wild. So I think it's with great anticipation. That's how I'm feeling that happy new year. 2023 is going to be a lot of fun and hard work. Oh man, it's going to be hard work. It's looking busy already. Yeah. But man, some of the conversations already that we're having are like, oh gosh, dude. It's just already. We got a pretty awesome one this afternoon. The stage is already set. So hopefully we'll be... Tagging that. Okay, so Holmes, I've got an idea I wanted to talk about. I thought the timing was good. Yeah, right on. I wanted to take a little bit of a review of this whole resting that our team did. Yeah, how many days did we take off officially?

1:29 Was it 12, 13 days? Yeah, it was a little over 10 days, I think, that we took off. And you and I did it differently. I thought it would be helpful. You're saying you did more work than I did during our break? No, I don't know if I did that. I think you might have. I did wrestle a lot with some anxiety though. Me too. About it. Yeah. It didn't equal to what I anticipated, but it also gave me food for thought for next year. 100% agree. I think we should really take some time and unpack what that looks like. Because I think our industry, really a whole service industry, and it doesn't matter whether you're on operations or sales side, it's hard to shut down. Well, and half of our clients ended up... I mean, the whole United States almost felt some impact. It was in a bonkers cat situation.

2:10 Yeah, it was just gone. So let's do that. But we have some people to thank. Yes, we do. Before we get too deep in our conversation. That's right. So the first person I'd like to thank is Mr. Zach Garrett at Liftify. How many of you listening ask... for Google reviews on every single job you do? Hopefully all of you are saying yes. But how many of you actually get those Google reviews from the client? The client follows through and actually submits the Google review. Well, I know the answer to that because it's not many. Brandon and I, coming up in the industry, we obviously were chasing Google reviews like anybody else. We use formal services.

2:52 I think it's okay for us to say, we tried BirdEye for a while. We had a guild quality. We got connected to through one of the TPAs that we worked with at one point. Yep. So we've had exposure to a lot of these different platforms. And then also exposure to us just trying to manually get our people to be asking every time and really driving those reviews. And we came across Zach and I think in the first conversation, he said, Hey, we track all of our data. I can show it to you. But we averaged somewhere between 20 and 25% conversion. Yeah, huge. Whereas he said the industry data that he has available is that other competitors, other platforms, some of which we've actually tried, generally hang in that zero to 10%, you know, even amongst the good ones.

3:35 And even less if you're doing it yourself, single digits, right? On average. So 20 to 25% is extraordinary. And there's some interesting magic that they've put together in the background to make that happen. But I won't bore you with that stuff. Yeah. It works. But it works. Yeah. And it's been one of those vendor partners that we've really latched on to. And we literally recommend every single client we've gone across and everybody we talk to, we're like, hey, have you tried Liftify yet? Because it also works for our business. Absolutely. I mean, holy cow. Yep. We've gone from zero to... As a small consulting company. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're probably never going to have 500 reviews because... But... Liftify is generally what? We're almost up to 30 in a handful of months.

4:18 And of course, the volume of our clients, at any given time, most of you know this about us, we're working with 10, 12, 15 clients at max. So that's extraordinary for us. And we've already seen an uptick in people finding our website because that organic search results. So anyway, if you are currently asking for Google reviews and you don't have Liftify... you probably should just get Liftify because you're going to get better results. And it's going to drive organic traffic to your website like we've experienced and our clients have experienced. 100%. Yeah. I think that's all the sales ad we need to do for them. It's fully automated. Check out liftify.com forward slash floodlight. And you'll find out. It's a no-brainer. Cost point, no-brainer.

4:59 The results, it's a no-brainer thing, so do that right now. Yeah, do it. Okay, one other quick shout out. As many of you guys know, we really admire Michelle over at CNR. One of the oldest publications in our industry, certainly been a voice, a consistent voice in our industry for a long time. Under her leadership, it's taken on a whole new level. There's so much information there. so much access to front of the line, kind of industry-specific stuff that's happening. She's just a huge advocate for us as a restorer. She's a huge advocate of the industry. And we kind of make the joke that it feels a lot like Michelle's just a friend to the industry. Like a real proactive, engaged friend to the industry.

5:40 So CNR Magazine, you guys check it out. Obviously the magazine portion of that is just such a tiny bit of what she's actually built in terms of a media platform. We're just a huge proponent of that. And it's free resources, free access to so much. And again, between her podcast and the other media platforms that she's building... she's got great people in front of her audience all the time. And there's really just no downside to it. So if you haven't yet, go to CNR Magazine, check out the membership, get yourself signed up. Let this stuff come in and feed your team. Everything from the online media to the print media, there's just always a valid amount of information and opportunity for us to continue to learn.

6:21 And again, she's just such a huge supporter of our industry and so consistent. So we really appreciate her as well. Well, and I think within our industry as well, it's probably the best place to advertise. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, she's done such a good job of building up her list. And she's so entrepreneurial and driven. Huge. Everybody loves to back a winner. Yeah. And CNR and Michelle, they're winners. Winners, winners. Okay. So thanks to those guys. Obviously, they help us do what we do with the show and we couldn't do it without them. So we're so thankful and honored that they help in that way. Dude, rest. Yeah. So our trips, our break, looked a little different. Do you want to start just giving an overview of what you ended up doing? And then maybe I'll shout about what we did.

7:03 Yeah. So it feels like Christmas just dropped in our laps, so to speak, this year. We had actually been planning this break. Since I think last year. In fact, this is a good point because last year, we kind of just spun our wheels through the end of the year. And part of it was, we were still carrying that pressure that I think a lot of owners of restoration companies feel, which is, I just can't let my finger off the pulse. I can't let my hand off the steering wheel. Ever. Yeah. And I think we were feeling some of that. And of course, part of what we do, even though it's really just the nuts and bolts of what we do, our sessions with our clients, the phone calls and stuff like that, it was really hard for us to stop doing that stuff.

7:51 And so we ended up... Clients actually ended up basically opting out. They're like, you know what? So-and-so's out. My business partner is on a cruise. And And so our clients ended up kind of opting out of the interactions the last week and a half or so of the year. And so it let us off the hook, but we weren't intentional about it. And so both of us ended up feeling... just sort of mildly stressed out through the end of the year and went right into the new year with that. We had to really make an effort to get out of that. Yeah. There was very little transition mentally. There wasn't any rest or restoration for us at the end of the year. So anyways, we've been planning this for like six months or more since the previous year. And all of a sudden, it's upon us.

8:33 So what we did was, our last client session, I think it was the 22nd before Christmas. Yep. On the 23rd, my wife and I and our kids flew down to Phoenix where both my in-laws and my parents are retired and live down there. And so the intent was we were going to stay there through the 3rd and just try to really take advantage of that time. We were hoping we'd have like 80 degrees and sunny and get a little suntan action. Did not happen. Got some monsoons, some thunderstorms, had like some nice 65, 69 degree days. No 80s. Which doesn't get the blood pumping. Phoenix, what the hell? What the hell, Phoenix?

9:13 Yeah, what happened? But anyhow, so it was arguably the best family vacation we may have ever had. And I have a 17-year-old. Yeah, for those of you that are in that 14 to 18 range, you probably know exactly. Yeah. I'm prepared to get real honest here. So the... Shocker. One of the things was we decided not to road trip, which we typically do. We load up our rig and we drive to Phoenix from Oregon, which is basically a two-day venture. Yeah. And we flew this time. And I think that made all the difference, man. It's kind of like my wife and I have taken anniversary trips, one of which we rode a train. Anybody who's ridden a train for like a holiday or something, or a cruise ship, same deal.

9:56 Once you step on... to the train or the cruise boat, vacation starts. Oh, yeah. There's no more logistics. There's no more fussing with where are we going to eat? How's this all going to work? It's just you're there. You're in it. You can relax. And this year, we all flew. And it felt like once we got through all the airport bullshit, got the whole family through the security stuff, and we finally got on the plane, it's like, oh... there was that positive letdown. Just the shoulders relaxed as much as they can on a plane when you're six foot one. But it was just that feeling of, okay, now we're on vacation. Whereas when we've road tripped in the past, it's like two days of... And I'm driving seven hours a day.

10:41 And families are families. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Having teenagers and whatever. So we flew and that made a big difference. But my intention was to really try to lay down work. We told all of our clients, look, we're accessible. You need us? Call us, text us. We will be there for you, but no formal meetings. And my intent was unless a client called, I was going to try not to even think specifically about work until we planned to. And you and I had a planning session on the 30th where it was very strategic and ideation oriented about initiatives and milestones we're working on for this year and so forth.

11:24 And it was great. We ended up, we were thinking the whole day, but it was probably five hours, four or five hours. There was a lot of workup going into that break that was different too. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so we slept in. I don't ever allow myself to really sleep in. I know you don't either. It's kind of like... And my body's on kind of a clock. And so normally, I'm up at typically 5am. And I know you're up even earlier most days. And so is my wife. And so this trip, I wanted to prioritize, let's get up when we feel like it, which almost never happens. We got in a cadence of... we would have waken up on average at 9 o'clock.

12:05 Oh my gosh. My parents... I don't even know if I could... My parents have blackout blinds in their guest room. Yeah. That helps. Oh my gosh. I mean, we have one morning where we woke up at 10.30. And Kara's like... Because the blackout blinds were all the way up. I'm like, I feel like I'm 19 again. And I didn't have class in the morning or something, right? Yeah. But doing that, it was just so restful. It was so incredibly restful. And I did field a few calls from clients, but it didn't feel... It was great. You and I love talking with clients, but there's something about that setting down the meeting rhythm and just impromptu is okay, but being able to just tune in to vacation relaxation and then handle a couple calls here and there.

12:48 I mean, it opened up the opportunity. My wife and I had more one-on-one time together I cooked breakfast every morning for the family, which always feels good. Just kind of that leisurely morning interaction with the fam. I had a lot of moments of just sitting out front of their house in the sun, just sitting there. And that was it? The pregnant pots. And that's it? It was great. Yeah. It was just... It was great. And it was probably the most high-quality vacation with my kids. I mean, lots of snuggle time, just hanging on the couch, walks around the neighborhood.

13:29 My parents have a golf cart because they live... You know, Phoenix, right? And so rides on the golf cart with my wife to the sports center to work out. And again, all leisurely. No timeline. It was just... Man, it was so great. And as I was driving into the office this morning, I really felt refreshed. You know? Yeah. Like I felt like I'm ready to get back at it. Yeah. Yeah. Because I really did take it off. It might have been the first Christmas vacation since before I was a State Farm agent. Yeah. Where I felt like I could really turn it off. Yeah. So thank you, by the way, clients that are listening to this, listen, you're always free to call. It's not a burden. It's all the things.

14:09 But thank you. We're not so late. But it was... Relatively, I think most of our clients ended up trying to either they were busting their ass working. Yeah. Or they also tried and we encourage all of our clients, obviously, hey, try to make the most of this year end pause. And I think people had a combo of both working their face off and trying to grab family time. Alright, here's my thoughts on this. I'm going to contrast it with what my experience was, vacation was or this vacation time. And then really, because you were communicating the success of it really early on, I actually ended up doing quite a bit of proactive thinking about what I experienced, why I didn't experience it. And I'm hoping that that translates into three or four bullets that we can unpack a little bit with people.

14:53 Yeah. Because I know people ended up in this camp of it either was great and they actually had some kind of restful downtime. Or they were probably because of the storm events happening all over the US, they were probably completely inundated with work. But then there's just this average group, right? Where it's just like, I'm trying to be restful. I maybe took time off. I was intentional about not being on the clock. But did it really produce the result I was hoping for? So that's kind of where I was hoping to go. So contrast, we stayed at home. It was like staycation was the plan. We had a lot of family come and stay with us, predominantly Jana's side of the family, my wife's side, and then our kids were around quite a bit. We have adult children now and between college and...

15:34 school or I mean work and all the things, you know, it's tough to get schedules aligned. So we literally had people for out of that almost seven days straight was five, six people in the house for seven days straight. People in our house for that long. And for those of you that haven't picked up on this, I am definitely introverted. I love doing what we do. I love connecting with people and doing what we need to do. But it is work for me and I have to have downtime, alone time to recover. I've learned to spot the signs of that, by the way. Yes. You know when people get hangry? Yeah. I get social hangry. Yeah. There's a bit of a stoic veneer that settles in over you. It's like, okay, Brandon just needs some quiet time.

16:17 Whenever we road trip for onsites and stuff, man, that end of the flight home. Yeah. Brandon doesn't need another conversation right now. So anyways, it was a bit of a staycation. The family part was amazing. Now, the reality of it is, is I just kind of was wrestling with this angst almost the entire time. And it really was under my skin. But for the most part, I wasn't very conscious of it. And so I just had this slight irritation. Mm-hmm. Almost like for the first seven plus days of this, I was in this place where I was stuck in this dichotomy of, I was really enjoying the fact that we were having time with family.

16:57 I love them, we miss them, it's great to have this focused time. And I was almost just irritated the whole time. Not anybody, not anything specific, but just this agitation. And what I kept finding myself doing is wanting to fill in little incremental times of work, almost to get some release of, From this weird... Is it almost a dopamine hit that you're feeling like, I just accomplished something? I did something of value? You know what? Honestly, it's probably some more mental issue than that. And it's more like, I really give myself a lot of grief when I'm not producing. Yeah. And it carries over. In vacation times, I tend to be like, it's not until the last day kind of thing.

17:38 Well, dude, the same thing. My wife and I finally... Everybody's kind of left. We had some intermediate exchanges with different family and friends. And then finally, Jan and I decided, because the weather has sucked in the Northwest, there was this window of great weather that started on the Oregon coast. And we're like, boom, let's go. We're going to go spend the day on the coast with the dog. Just you and me. Hmm. Dude, it was literally one of the best afternoons I've had in a long time. The sun did come out. The Oregon coast when it's sunny is literally one of the most beautiful places on earth. The ocean, Jana and I have found a really neat place that the sun comes down between two big rock bluffs. Oh, yeah. And there's a lighthouse that over... It's literally like from a movie.

18:19 Amazing. And it's only like 45 minutes from your house, right? Yeah, it's like... there's no excuse for us to use it. So we went, did a lighthouse tour, kind of checked out. The whales are coming down the Oregon coast right now as they make their way to Mexico, the Baja. Anyways, just an amazing experience. My dog was great. My wife and I's conversations was fantastic. And, but here was why. I was literally relaxed all day. I was in the moment. When we were looking at the sun, I was there. When we were watching whales, I was there. When the dog was doing his adventure and kind of doing his thing, I was in that moment. I was resting. Not because we weren't doing anything.

18:59 I was mentally rested, meaning I was fully present in the moment and I wasn't distracted, being pulled or fighting this kind of underlying angst about what we could be focused on or should be doing. And so for me, it was interesting. I took all this time off. But the real moment that I can point towards as being restful was one afternoon, not much more than about five or six hours. but it was amazing. And I came out the next day. In fact, the reality of it is my excitement coming into this next year is almost 100% based on the rest that I got in a series of six hours.

19:40 Not the 10 days. So again, it's not like there's right or wrong. I just think it's interesting to kind of compare those two because many of us are looking at rest And of course, this came up with us when we, our last discussion with Jenny Vande, where she talked about this idea of transitioning from our understanding about grit to, no, it's those who get good at recovery that become the folks that can stay in the fight the longest. Yeah. Right? It's running a marathon and not a sprint, how we manage ourselves. Mm-hmm. And so I just thought it was interesting because I think there's parallels that we can find, that we can share with folks, that those common threads is really what gave us the rest. It wasn't necessarily a time commitment, a date.

20:23 It wasn't that we were in Arizona or not. It's like, what was it? What were the characteristics of the thing that made us feel rested? And if we can focus on those, people can apply that into their day-to-day rhythms, their yearly schedules, anticipation of how this year is going to flow And they don't have to buy into this idea of you have to go on two-week vacations every quarter. It's like sometimes we create an unrealistic expectation or we get really frustrated that we take two weeks off and it sucks. Right. Well, okay. So, and this isn't necessarily a counterpoint to what you're saying, but I think one of my takeaways was how important it is to build quantity time with our loved ones and our friends.

21:08 throughout the year. Because I think, while it doesn't take... I don't think you have to have a two-week vacation to feel rested and to feel restored. But what I experienced is over a period of days, we had so much quantity time together as a family that we don't normally have. It took a few days, I feel like, for us to really start to relax together and to where we're really interacting. I don't know how else to explain it. But those of you that have teenagers, maybe you understand what I'm talking about. It's just there's times when you start to get a teenager household where everybody's got different interests And everybody's a little bit angsty.

21:50 And you just end up kind of brushing past each other and sort of bumping elbows. And you have these interactions. We have family movie night almost every Sunday. And we typically argue about what movie it's going to be. And it's like somebody's always semi-unhappy about it. And you know what I mean? It's just a lot of our day-to-day interactions are so angsty. But I think it's because I haven't done a great job of really prioritizing engagement, being present on a day-to-day basis. Mm-hmm. And being away with the fam for like 10 days or so and having all of that engagement time, it just helped clue me into that, that I can very easily get into just work and family maintenance mode.

22:31 Yeah. Yep. Rather... than building the business and my relationships, like prioritizing both. Yeah. You know what I mean? Oh, I totally do. And so we also went to Disneyland during our time, which was just, it was an amazing age to take the kids because they were all old enough to kind of do their own thing. Oh, yeah. And they all enjoyed it together at kind of the same level. Yeah. So they're like running from ride to ride. It was just a wonderful experience this time. And freaking expensive. Oh, man, man. It's like I remember Disneyland years and years ago, 10, 12 years ago with my daughter. It was like a hundreds of dollars kind of thing. Oh, yeah. With just one kid. Now, of course, we had three kids. My parents came along. It was a whole family ordeal.

23:12 Thousands of dollars. Oh, yeah. So anyway, it was well worth it. It's like a black hole for your wallet. Yeah. Yeah. But there's always this age-old argument about, is it quality time versus quantity time? And I certainly, I think it's both. I think the quality part is just being present. Yeah. Not having our head in our phones. Yeah. Yeah. Mostly. Like that solves most of the quality issue by just having your phone in another room or in your pocket and not having it out. But there is something about quantity that I think we dismiss. Yeah. You know, and again, I don't mean it's like taking two weeks off every three months or anything of that sort. I just mean, like how many minutes a day am I engaged with my wife and kids when I'm not working?

23:55 Yeah. it can be pretty small. And I think what's interesting, kind of maybe some correlation between the two experiences on this item specifically that you're talking about is Like what you're talking about, it shouldn't have had to take that 10 days to get into that space. And I think what I realized with mine is out of all the time that we took off, it was in that six-hour window with my wife, the one day that I found the most rest and the most, almost benefit from taking these series of days off. What it really showed me is as a team, is there a way for us to prioritize the way that we organize the structure of our team, the way that we communicate with specific jobs, roles, and titles, the way that we create some levels of redundancy and coverage so that we can buy each other as key leaders this moment, this breath, right?

24:55 And so an example, kind of like what I'm hearing you say, and I may be reaching here, but like an example might be, most of us as business owners or key leaders, the weekend is, there's a little bit of TGIF associated with Friday. But a lot of the weekend is potentially spent ignoring or numbing versus resting. We're just like, okay, I'm just going to ignore this. Now, the reality of it is the way most of our businesses are designed, the things are going to come in that draw you and suck you in. And so you end up never really being free of the mental anxiety associated with the stress and the responsibilities that we have as entrepreneurs and business leaders.

25:41 And so I think one of the things that we saw by you and I intentionally taking a break is we were able to, in a proactive way, ask for the space, the latitude to do that with our client relationship. Well, we know most restoration companies, there's no way for them to physically say, hey, clients and prospects, we'll be back in a week and a half. Yeah. But if we're very intentional about understanding the value of rest and what it means for us in our performance as a team and our performance in health and longevity as individuals and key leaders, can we be really intentional? I wrote the word preparing. to ensure that we can actually find rest as key leaders?

26:22 Not every weekend, not every month, but is there a cadence where we say, hey, look, as my mitigation department manager, it's very important to me that at least one weekend in the quarter that you fully get away, meaning that your phone is not on you just in case. There's plenty of people in this company that can handle the just in case. We can cover for each other. We can cover. But what I see people doing is we never prioritize the rest. We don't intentionally build it into the way that we lead and manage our people. And so all of us are suffering the consequences of a very chaotic 24-7 business. But in the reality, we could create that protected space for each other.

27:03 And it doesn't have to be 10 days or 14 days of vacation. It could simply be, can I buy my leader 48 hours of rest? Yeah. Is it really that hard to do that? And vice versa. And if you're in a business, because I know some owners listening right now, they probably don't have the right hand in place that would allow them the comfort in finding that freedom. And I think that means that is probably a real neat opportunity for you to prioritize this year in your 2023 goals is... What level of person do you need on your team that you could get 48-hour break and you know the system's not going to burn down around you? And if you don't have that in place, I think it's one of the most powerful things that you could do for yourself, your family, and your business this year is try to identify that person in your ranks or be clear about what that looks like from the leaders that you have in your team.

27:59 And create this reciprocating relationship where you protect a moment of time at certain intervals throughout the year where you can get rest. Not complicated. We're not talking about paying for vacations. It's as simple as there is no reason for you to monitor your phone. I will handle the just in cases. Yeah. You know what I mean? I remember at one point, you initiated us as a leadership team. taking, I wanted to say, like a personal day per quarter for reflection. It was. Kind of on the clock. This was an initiative of our leadership team. And I remember that being really valuable. I think we implemented that towards the end of our time there. But that was valuable. And I think it was especially valuable with you as the senior leader basically mandating it.

28:44 Like, hey, we're going to do this. Because with that level of permission, it didn't carry the guilt. It's like, hey, we're doing this on purpose. This is important. This is mandatory. You have to go away and turn your phone off. Yeah. This is part of us maintaining the health of our company. That's right. I was doing this. And I remember that was really awesome and difficult. I think the first couple times we did it as a group, because we're all achievers, right? And so it was really hard. for people not to Mickey Mouse it. Yes. You know? Yes. Like plan their day, run into the beach and they're journaling and stuff. But then they ended up taking six phone calls, right? That kind of stuff. Yeah, I would say in full honesty on that, did it ever really look the way that we intended?

29:30 I don't think we ever got there. No. I really don't. But I think there is something powerful, like you said, about if we're looking at our organizations and we're saying, hey, it's not just this grit, it's the longevity. It's building a system that can perpetuate success forever, we're going to have to learn how to get these moments of rest to maintain the pace, the race, right? And so this is another thing that kind of struck me that I thought was interesting about this is how many teams did we talk to that, like us, had pinned out the idea that they were going to take a break? Like they were very intentional, like they were going to reduce working hours. They were going to do everything they could to give their entire team kind of a break.

30:13 Yeah. Well, and then a storm hit. Oh, yeah. And not only did people, most of the companies that we have any kind of connection to, not only did they not get a break, but they were working at a pace that was triple, quadruple what they were used to. I mean, it was just bonkers. Full on cat. Full on cat. And I think that kind of goes back to some of the principles that we teach some of our operational leaders is, when we try to bank on it's going to be this one big day that we're going to be in the office all day to catch up, or it's going to be this one month post whatever quarter that we're going to get caught up administratively. inevitably something happens that totally detonates that entire priority. And I think the same thing can happen with rest.

30:53 We have to be diligent about bringing in this consistent rhythm about it. Again, a few hours at a time, a weekend, a single day, and try to get that battle rhythm going so that we don't wait and put all of our eggs on this one holiday break or this extended weekend and inevitably after 12 months have that entire time decimated by a cat event or some kind of experience. And then we lose all of that. And then we just push our entire team into the next year with no collection of our thoughts, no rest, no break where we can say, Okay, deep breath. I'm going to hit reset. I'm ready to go tomorrow.

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32:15 Accelerate, job management software. Everybody needs job management software. And we have just found Accelerate, not only is their team just really great to work with, when they get ideas from customers, they throw it into the product roadmap and they implement it. They're really advocating for the contractor and trying to create a software solution that works for them. Actionable insights. We recommend actionable insights all the time. All of us as restoration operators are looking for turnkey resources and training solutions that we can take our team to the next level. And AI, when it comes to estimating and Matterport and a lot of the other essential tools we're using... They're an awesome resource and they're always coming out with new great stuff.

32:57 Yeah, super influential in the industry. Super Tech University, soft skills development training for your technicians, for your frontline personnel. Let's face it, frontline personnel are the heartbeat of our company. They are the ones that connect with our clients and create the customer experience. There's no better investment than investing in technology. the ability for those individuals to represent themselves, our clients, and our brands well. So Supertech University, Surety, they essentially are cutting down this life cycle between delivering service and then getting paid, stepping in, removing the middleman in terms of mortgage companies, refining that pipeline, making sure that there's as least friction as possible.

33:38 So we can go out and do a great job and then our businesses don't suffer while we're waiting to get paid. The money's coming and it's coming quickly. And then the last one, guys, is Liftify. It's kind of a newer entry to the industry. They're driving Google reviews. So they're a turnkey partner that we can literally go out, provide a great customer experience, hand that name off to our trusted partner in Liftify and have them go chase that Google review. 25% conversion rate, which is industry-wide. People tend to average 5% of the people you ask for review actually convert. Liftify bumps that to 25%. We were such a big believer. We were a customer and they've been generating all of our floodlight reviews. And in a matter of a week and a half, we're up to, I don't know, close to 15 reviews in just a short period of time.

34:18 And I think people just underestimate what happens organically with your SEO search activity when you're getting these new and active five-star reviews from our clients. And we just can't let the pedal up on that because of the effect on our business as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long as long deal. So check it out. Check out our partners page. Do business with them. You won't regret it. We're confident in that. floodlightgrp.com forward slash partners. Thanks, guys. Something that's worth mentioning, and we've talked about this a little bit before, is just how there's an unspoken mandate that I think we have within our industry and in a lot of businesses where it's this.

34:59 Again, it's part of this gung-ho service culture of get shit done, figure it out, make it happen, adapt and overcome, all these things, where I think there can be a lot of stigma attached to taking time off. Sure. And or checking out or turning my phone off. Yeah. There can be a ton of stigma there. So much so that I think as key leaders, we have to actually go out of our way. to either... I don't like the word mandate in this conversation, but we have to proactively tell people, I want you. I need you for the health of our business. You're so important to our business. I need you to be taking care of yourself. The team needs you to take care of yourself.

35:42 100%. And what does that mean? It means that when you're not on call... You're not on call. You leave your phone off. You don't call to check in on your crew that's on call unnecessarily just because you feel stir crazy and you feel like you should be working. you need rest. You should be resting. If you're not resting, you're not performing at the highest level that you could be for the team. Yeah, you're juiced. Yeah. You lose out, we lose out. Everybody loses when you don't take care of yourself. And I think as leaders, we make the mistake of, especially, I think all of us have identified certain people on our team. We're just like, man, they're a workhorse. Yeah. They love grinding. Dude, this comes up so often in our conversations with clients.

36:22 Like, this guy's a workhorse. This gal, she would just work 24-7 if I let her. We glorify that stuff. And I get it. I get it. We have some really powerful people on our teams. Yeah. Thankfully. But how often... are we considering the collateral damage of that? How often do we really consider and engage with our people to a level where, do we really know the health? I mean, obviously, there's a level of intimacy we have with our team that's appropriate and not, right? Yeah. But it's like, do we know about the health of that person's marriage? How good of a parent are they able to be?

37:04 on the schedule and the access that they give our company, how good of a parent and a spouse are they even able to be? What's the condition of their life outside of their work? Because we can say, oh, they're a workhorse and their marriage is crumbling. And there's alcohol abuse present, right? There's drug abuse happening. You know what I mean? Yeah. Some people definitely are able to work at a higher RPM for a longer period of time. Sure, 100%. Undoubtedly, yeah. we've been exposed to just incredibly high capacity people. And it's healthy and it's totally aligned with their wiring. It seems to be healthy. I think it's possible for those high RPM people to also have healthy family and personal relationships, all this stuff.

37:44 And yet, most of the time, most of the time, you can't do both all the time. Yeah. I think what you hit on is that we have an opportunity here, not just for ourselves. Because I think by default, we're talking about this topic and it's like, owners, can you give yourself a break? What needs to be put into place that you can actually hit? What does this look like across our business? Yeah. But it's downline. It's leading through this. So I think it's interesting because it requires kind of two big things. One is as a leader, as a business owner... you need to buy into, I guess, for lack of a better term, or have some kind of agreement around the idea that we can't go full tilt nonstop in a healthy, sustainable way.

38:29 You just can't. Yeah. Okay? So if that's the case, if we can at least agree on that, what kind of cadence, what kinds of decisions can we make to create moments of rest so that we have at least these kind of interim phases where we go, boom, okay, done, reset, let's get the tank totally full before I go out and start pulling from that fuel tank again. And I think what you just said is really important. This is how we have to do it. As leaders, we need to come to terms with what that means, what that's going to look like, how it can translate downline to our team. And then we have to be very clear about the how, the when, and the why behind getting these moments of rest.

39:10 So if we don't proactively communicate those expectations, like if we just have a comment with our key leaders and say, Hey, you're going to need to get some rest in there, man. Like it's really important that you get a day off. And that's where we leave it. I guarantee you the majority of the time, our people are going to nod their head at you. And they may not disagree with the priority, but they're rarely ever going to be in a position where they physically execute on it. Yeah. How you encourage it, how you engage in that conversation matters because don't forget about your role. Yeah. You're the owner. You're the GM. You're cutting checks. Right. I don't care how many times you say, Hey, dude, you need some rest. You need to take care of yourself.

39:52 I think the default response for most of us, if we're talking to a boss or somebody who writes our checks, it's like, oh yeah, totally boss, but don't worry, I got this on lockdown. I'm good. I'm good. Whether they verbalize it out loud or they just nod their head and like, yeah, yeah, I'll take some time. Their goal is to impress you with how much of a workhorse they are. Sure. Some of our best people, they're always going to have that default response. Oh, totally understand. But don't worry, I got it. Everything's good. I think we just have to accept the reality that all of us, no matter how much of a high performer you are, All of us need that. And I mean, look, if you look at it in the negative, right, you can look across our industry, the blue collar sector, the service trades, and there's a lot of broken marriages.

40:40 Yeah. We've talked about this before. There's a lot of alcoholism, a lot of drug abuse. Yeah. And it's because the industry is still really driven by this more is better. Yeah. Attitude about work. That's right. I think one other thing that just came up for me, it's just a little thing, but Again, I don't think most of us do this out of being sinister and wanting to wring as much production out of our people, as much profit out of every single person on our team as we possibly can. I don't think it's from that mentality. But I think sometimes it goes back to that whole idea of being in the box, out of the box. Yeah. Right? Where it's easier than I think we want to acknowledge. Yeah. To look at the team around us as...

41:25 production units. We would never say it out loud, but it can be really easy to start thinking in terms of labor cost and our P&L and our top line and our GP and to see our people through that same lens. Yep. The numbers of the business, the fundamentals. Yep. And when we do that, here's one of the things I've seen happen, and I've done it, is we tend to think when we're hiring labor, and we hire somebody, and we find out, or we know that they're a single person, they don't have a family, they're young, right? What is our calculus? Our calculus is they can work their ass off because they don't have any other responsibilities. I mean, let's be honest, right? We've said this, coming out of interviews, one-on-one conversations, like, yeah, and awesome, and he's excited to work and all this kind of stuff.

42:13 And it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. Probably, yes, there's some advantage there. You get somebody who's young and doesn't have all these other responsibilities and things. But don't you think they have a life they want to build? don't they want companionship? And don't they also want pleasure and enjoyment? And, and, and, and... Yeah. But I can't tell you how many times I've fallen into that mindset of, oh, so-and-so's my workhorse because they're not attached. They don't have all these other responsibilities and things in their life. But ultimately, are we caring for our people? Yeah. Yeah. This is one aspect of caring for our people. And if we leave it up to them, there's too much incentive for them to want to impress us and impress their teammates for them to self-regulate.

43:01 And they just may not know better. Yeah. Like the reality of it is, is I'm a long-term learner. I'm a long-term leader. I've been in high paying positions as a key leader for many, many, many years. And on my own vacation time, it took me almost the entire time to let go and actually get into vacation mode. Yeah, to actually take a rest. And it took me intentionally thinking through that and being like, why did that happen? Yeah. What's going on? So how much more realistic then is it for the average person on our team to just not even know how important that rest is? To not even know what it is that by going full tilt 24-7 for an entire year, what is the negative impact it's having?

43:48 And then what is it erode in terms of the foundation of that individual on our team and their long-term performance? when they're not doing anything to shore up that foundation and keep it healthy. So it's just, I think there's a reality that as leaders, we need to understand how important it is for us to lead. Even in topics like this, and we can do it. You can tactically create a scenario. There's no team that can't, if they're intentional and serious about it, that can't create a way to protect a day or two at a time for each of their key leaders and their people. The reason it doesn't happen is because we don't prioritize it. Yeah. We don't focus on it. We don't approach it with a proactive and intentional way.

44:31 And we don't communicate with our teams. Hey, this is why we do it. This is how we're going to do it. This is a realistic way because I know none of us can take two weeks at a time and just disconnect. Yeah. but I can get you a weekend. I can protect you a couple days every so many months. And that's how we're going to do it together this time. And as we get bigger and better at that, we'll do more to protect and create that moment of rest. But when our team members, when our key leaders, our influencers have an opportunity to hit reset, completely refuel that tank, the performance that we get from them is the reason we hired them in the first place in a lot of ways. And don't you think, because my mind is just spinning with, okay, But how do we prioritize that within a production environment?

45:15 Sure. It's like how with frontline tech staff and hourly wage-driven people, how do we do that? And the first thing that comes to my mind is it's about battle rhythms. It's about having a consistent after-hours process, a call schedule that is reliable, that everybody can rely on, that's unchanging, that is like clockwork. And a lot of companies, I think a lot of people listening here would acknowledge that they don't have that dialed in. Is it possible for you to get more deliberate and more structured with your after hours process so that the people that are on know they're on, know they're responsible for everything that's happening during that call shift?

46:00 Yep. And thereby it frees up people who aren't on call to actually be off. Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Your GM, your project manager, your ops manager, it's like when they're off, they're really off. Yeah. When your technicians are off the rotation, they're really off. There isn't always this... changing of gears. And I think that's something that a lot of companies struggle with. But that's the first place you can go because people are saying, okay, yeah, but this is just the business we're in. How do I give that to my technicians? Well, I think it starts with that. Yeah. Having a real after hours call process. Very intentional. Yeah. I think another place too is as leadership teams, and I know for some of our smaller listeners that it's just them and really some key staff.

46:46 Part of our succession planning that we promote and talk about all the time, because it's a healthy way to create engagement and identify your future leaders is, you should be finding your right hand. Even if that right hand does not mean that they're a GM level performer, a full-blown department head, Are they smart enough? Can you spend enough time downloading to them and with them some of the core perspectives and visions that you have for customer service and how we take care of our people? Could you work with them to just get a day or two at a time? It doesn't need to even be that every leader gets this great off-call type rotation because really, if you're a mid-team manager, you're going to be on when you're on, period.

47:30 But Does that mean that once a month or once every couple months, the owner, the GM, maybe a fellow department head, can't say, look, I got you. Two days. I'll handle it. Now, what does that mean? Well, your recon department manager needs to have enough of an understanding about that other team that they can adequately fill in. We're not asking them to be an expert, but can they fill in? Can they handle relationship? Can they navigate issues? Can we create a redundancy in that timeline? Meaning the GM knows that my recon team manager's overseeing MIT operations that weekend so my MIT manager can get a break. Yeah. And I know if shit really hits the fan, that person knows they can get ahold of me.

48:12 Yeah. Because I'm, as a leader, I am living out that I want that person off. I want them protected, but I want my business to be successful. Yeah. So she and I will cover the team. We've got you. Sure. Go rest. Yeah. I think you're right. I think it's, how do we do it with technicians? Well, we start with some of the basic battle rhythms. Like, how formal is our on-call? Do we have a backup team? Do we have like third in the drawer kind of thing where third is off, right? Because talking about a lot of scenarios that unfold, stabilization. Like, do you need 100 people to stabilize a big loss Not most of the time. So even in big scenarios, big what-ifs, we can still get some downtime.

48:53 So anyways, I don't want to get too caught up. So I think you're right. I think it's in how we manage on-call schedules. I think it's just proactively how we manage dispatch and how we're going to engage our client But then I think it's this other thing. It's teaching each of your leaders and key influencers of, if this is important to us as a team, we will create scenarios where we've got you covered. It's going to be okay. Yeah. And we can certainly do that. And it doesn't have to be every month. It doesn't have to be every week, but find something. Work quarterly at least. But it probably does need to be more often than we feel comfortable with. That's probably very accurate. Right? Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, I could do that once a quarter for my team.

49:37 Yeah, it'd probably be better if it was a little more often than that. But right. But it starts just getting comfortable with this is important. And I think as you do it, you see the return. We described how this made us feel, how you and I are coming into the new year because of the pause. That's right. I think it's summary too. The other thing I would just say is that workforce thing. I think one of the practical steps that if you're listening to this and you're like, yeah, this is something I need to zero in on for this year, I think looking at the people that you would classify as your workhorses on the team and saying, okay, am I really truly caring for this person? Or am I...

50:18 kind of happy to take advantage of their work ethic. Yeah. Because those people are inherently, they're the archetypal winners on your team that everybody's pacing off of. Mm-hmm. So if you're not taking care of them in the ways we just described, you're not proactively thinking about their wellness, then everybody downline, downstream from those workhorses is under the assumption, this is the standard I have to always be on as well. Yeah. Or I'm never going to make it in this company. I'm not going to rise to the level of the workhorse I'm admiring. That's right. Yeah. And what happens to succession opportunities when you look upstream, it's not very attractive.

51:00 Yeah. Because you're going, I'm already feeling pretty close to 24-7. That role looks absolutely 24-7. Yeah. Is it worth... Is 10 grand a year worth that more? You know, or whatever the number is. I mean, that's a real calculus people do. We see this in the business fairly regularly. You got people that are in their position players. Yeah. Because they look at leadership and the frenetic, like hair on fire kind of lifestyle they have. And they're like, eh. I think I'll stick with my 80K a year. I don't need to get up into that. It's not worth it. Yeah. You get a fair amount of people in our industry that could be capable leaders, but the culture we've created is not attractive.

51:43 It's not attractive. Yeah. There's very little upside. Yeah. And a lot of downside. Yeah, totally. No. Okay, man. So let's land the plane. Yeah. Again, what were we doing here? I think the opportunity with this is just to remind each other, right? That... We need to take a break from time to time. We need to be intentional about getting rest. And we have to create a rhythm that's realistic that people can actually follow through on. Because when we do that, it gives our key leaders, it gives ourselves an opportunity to hit complete reset, to get fuel all the way back up to full in the tank. And then attack those initiatives, those pushes, those things in front of us that are so important about the future success of our business with an adequate amount of energy and creativity because we've rested.

52:33 We just need to remember it doesn't have to be two weeks at a time. It doesn't need to be overly complicated. And we can't, we just cannot leave it up to chance. It's got to be something that we're proactive, that we build into our cadence. that we communicate and we lead our people in to ensure that we can take a break and be in this thing for the entire marathon. Right? It's true. All right. So listen, if you enjoy this conversation, please share it. We share out our new episodes on LinkedIn every single week, Tuesday mornings. And if you see it, would you just click share and just share it to your newsfeed? Right? Yeah. That's one of the best ways that you can thank us is helping us grow our listenership.

53:14 It's a great way for people to get to know us. We do one-on-one consulting. And more and more these days, people are like, Oh yeah, I've been listening to all your podcasts and I already know about you. Yeah. So it certainly helps our business from that standpoint. But this is a passion project for us in a lot of ways. 100%. And so that's the best way you can thank us. We do one-on-one consulting. We are continuing to grow and expand Floodlight. So if you need that kind of help, go to floodlightgrp.com. Also, another thank you to our sponsors. CNR, go subscribe if you're not a subscriber yet. If you're somebody that might benefit from advertising in our industry, you absolutely should talk to Michelle. Very affordable from an advertising standpoint. Yeah. And then Liftify. Get it. Yeah.

53:54 If you're asking for Google reviews, great. That's good. But if you're not on Liftify yet, that's the force multiplier. So check out liftify.com. And we will see you next week. See you, gang. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.