Joe Prim's Blueprint for Career Success and Personal Happiness

Ever wondered how to create your own conditions for success? Join us as we chat with the multifaceted Joe Prim—podcaster, author, and chief carpenter at Retro Craft Woodworks—who shares his journey of leveraging knowledge, relationships, and experience to achieve his dreams. From the emotional investment in content creation to the impact of audience feedback, Joe provides a transparent look into his transition from writing a book to launching a successful company. This episode promises valuable insights on supporting content creators and understanding the profound effect that even small acknowledgments can have.

Discover how passion projects can provide fulfillment beyond the daily grind, especially in repetitive and demanding industries like construction. Joe discusses the importance of creative outlets, such as writing or podcasting, to mitigate the monotony of work life and enhance personal growth. We’ll explore strategies to identify and manage the elements that drain joy and energy—whether from work, habits, or relationships—and underscore the value of time management in discovering one’s purpose.

For those aspiring to craft their own career paths, Joe shares invaluable advice on setting clear goals, gaining varied experiences, and advocating for oneself in the trades. Listen to personal anecdotes and practical tips on avoiding stagnation and embracing the industry’s challenges and potentials. The conversation also delves into the importance of building strong teams and creating a positive work environment. Plus, get a sneak peek into Joe’s upcoming podcast, "Now That's Money," aimed at inspiring young professionals in the trades. Tune in to learn how to leverage your experience for long-term success.

Connect with Joe:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeprim/
https://retrocrafttx.com/

Let Primo know youre listening:
https://depthbuilder.bio.link/

Get on the path to Becoming the Promise You are Intended to Be
https://www.depthbuilder.com/books

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You bring in a chair, you bring in a picnic table, you bring in the microwave, you bring in a radio right, you make your own conditions. If you want to live in a dusty, messy dump and that's where you want to work and where you want to spend your days, then go ahead. If you don't want to, if you want to keep things cleaned up and you want to have a chair to sit in, you bring a folding chair. You get to make your own conditions. So you're constantly need to have that mindset of I'm going to make my own conditions here. We're going to make things work for us. I'm going to make this leverage my knowledge, leverage my relationships, leverage my experience to do what I want to do.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Yeah, man, okay, big question this idea of leverage, like making your own conditions, having a long-term target, staying focused on the prize how much of that is in your book? What is going on? L&m family Welcome back. And if you're new here, we're about to uncover the cheat codes, the tips and tricks, the truth, the real story from Mr Joe Prim on how he does life and how he's walked the pathway to success.

Speaker 2: 1:17

Mr Joe, an experienced podcaster, he's also an author. Experienced podcaster, he's also an author. He is the chief carpenter at Retro Craft Woodworks, which I need to ask you, joe, about that spelling, and we'll get into that. All about leadership coaching If you haven't connected with him on the LinkedIn, you should, because he puts out some pretty thought-provoking content and also inspiring content that, if you're in the leadership space, and also inspiring content that, if you're in the leadership space, you'll get some good stuff to take and apply to your operation and or share with the people that you support. And so we're fixing to learn a whole lot more about Mr Joe.

Speaker 2: 1:54

But before we do that, I want to give a shout out to our L&M family member, who took the time to send a really awesome thought that really made my day.

Speaker 2: 2:04

And, if it's not apparent to you guys, the reason I do this is to tease you, so that you could give me good school stuff too, so that I can read it in future podcast episodes. And so this shout out goes to Ms Gloria. Our sister, gloria says I finally picked up your book while sitting on a train from Connecticut back to New York, and you got me all teared up. Yeah, you know, gloria, even when I read the damn book, then last few chapters give me tears in my eyes because of the memories and also tears of triumph. And so that book is becoming the promise you're intended to be. And, just like I said, folks out there leave me a comment, drop the stars, send me a DM, anything. All of the above because I want to celebrate you and say thank you on the inner webs so everybody knows how awesome you are. And now let's get to know my buddy, mr Joe, how you doing, joe.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Good. Jesse, how cool is it to have people read your book, and not only read your book, but actually give you that kind of feedback. It is priceless. I don't think that people that write books or that put out content regularly understand the effort and the time and stuff that goes into it. And really it's more than just time and effort, because we put that in the mowing the lawn right.

Speaker 1: 3:28

There's like a personal part of you that you're sharing that's emotional, that goes into all those things that you do and sometimes you don't understand if it's hitting or going over people's head or if you're totally off base. And just those little words of encouragement or those little acknowledgements that hey, what you said meant something to me or I'm hearing what you're, I'm picking up what you're laying down, go so far. So if you guys have people like Jesse that you follow on LinkedIn or other places, make sure that you say thanks. That goes a long way. I know I've had a lot of times in my life where I was putting out a lot of content and doing a lot of things. It's hard to keep doing it when you don't hear anything back because you're not sure if it's landing and you're not sure if it's you, or you're not sure if it's them, or you're not sure if it's some kind of algorithm that you're stuck in, that you're trapped in and you can't get out of.

Speaker 1: 4:24

It's hard to know if you're making some kind of impact and I think it's really important more important than most people know to give that feedback. Just let people know. Hey, I hear I check out your posts every day. I never like them and I'll never comment, but I know that I'm reading them.

Speaker 2: 4:42

Man, I love it because, yes, a hundred percent true, especially the ones that tell you in person right, cause I know me, I have to like bite my tongue, cause I'm like, well, why don't you like it? Why don't you say that I just don't want it? Like okay. So that's a little me whining, but it's awesome. Like really, oh, cause, like you said, it's easy for me to think that I'm like really, oh, because, like you said, it's easy for me to think that I'm wasting people's time. It's easy for me to think that whatever I put out there was garbage and all it takes is one person to say, hey, man, that thing helped me out in some kind of way and I got fuel for another 90 days to keep going into the silence. Oh, man, so you're speaking from experience. Now, I said it kind of at the intro. You've had a podcast, you've authored a book, you're active on social media. I know you just launched your company. What is the sequence of those things? What came first? The book, the podcast, the LinkedIn activity?

Speaker 1: 5:44

Really, the book came quite a bit earlier. That's several years ago that I wrote the book, the podcast, the LinkedIn activity. Really, the book came quite a bit earlier. That's several years ago that I wrote the book and that had been probably three or four years in the works.

Speaker 2: 5:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:56

I got to a point in my life, jesse, where I was getting tired of the daily rinse and repeat and just doing the same thing day after day. I was probably in my late 30s and I was like man, this is what I have to look forward to. Get up every single morning at four o'clock, go to work, come home Weekends. I get a little bit more to myself. You know little family, but it's like you kind of follow the script of what's expected of us as members of society and once you get to the end of that, either it's a dead end and then you just complain about the fact that you're going to just keep on doing the same thing over and over every day, or you have the freedom to reinvent yourself and decide you know what. I'm going to do something different here. I'm going to live something different. I'm going to do what I want to do now.

Speaker 1: 6:49

And out of that, the idea of that book open was birthed kind of at that period, and at that point I was like, oh man, I can't write a book. There's no way that I can put this thing together into a book. I'm just going to do an episode for each chapter of this book and I'll do my seven episodes and I'll never podcast again, because you almost feel like sometimes and I'm sure you're the same way, jesse you have these ideas and you want to share them and you think that they will help other people. They're not just mine, they're for everybody. I want to share these thoughts, I want to share these ideas, and maybe on some of them I'm off base and maybe on some of them I'm on target, but I feel that these things should be shared. So, in making those efforts, you almost feel like or for me anyway I felt like if I do these couple episodes of this podcast, this burden will be off of me, I'll have shared what I felt like I needed to share with them and then I'm free.

Speaker 1: 7:45

Well, that didn't really happen, and so that led into podcasting for several years and then led into finally coming to a point in my life where I was like you know what? I am going to put this down on paper. It's important for me, if I believe this stuff, to really flush out these thoughts. They've been mellowing and sitting in the marinade for several years. So I was like you know what? This is time. So I put that book together and was really gearing up and starting to get into the idea of coaching and leadership and things like that.

Speaker 1: 8:19

Unfortunately, I took a job that came along that I thought would be the right fit at the right time, and all it ended up being was a time suck and an energy suck, and all the momentum that I had, all of the things that I had been trying to accomplish on the side for years, really got flushed down the toilet. So when I finally broke free from that, I decided that I was going to start posting on LinkedIn, because the company I was with really discouraged any sort of social media activity without having it, without the blessing of the company, on each and every post. So I wasn't going to jump through those hoops. So the moment I had my freedom. I'm like you know what. I'm going to start to share what I see as some issues in this industry.

Speaker 1: 9:06

I'm going to share some of the things that I see are positives and trends that are going in the right direction, but I'm not going to be afraid to call out some of the BS that's going on. So I started. For the last three months I've been posting pretty regularly on LinkedIn. I think it's important. It's been a great community of people on there. I think it's important, it's been a great community of people on there, and so that has been great to see that I'm not so far off base and so crazy. At least there's a good two to three percent of people that agree with me as well.

Speaker 2: 9:37

That's important, man. That's something I tell folks, because I would say I'm hyperactive on LinkedIn and it still bugs me, right. I took three days off of posting this week. It was like Monday, tuesday, wednesday I didn't post anything, and I think for the past year I've posted at least once a day, and sometimes twice a day, which for me is extremely uncomfortable for a lot of the reasons that you talked about earlier.

Speaker 2: 10:02

Right, like, am I just being annoying? Is it self-serving? Is it delusions of grandeur? But also, like you said, it's because I have a thought or an idea and I want to share it. I think it can help. Anyways, the business value of social media, I think, is it helps my people, find me, it helps like-minded people the same flavor of crazy. If they see my post, they say, oh, I like that flavor of crazy. Now we can connect. And so it's kind of like putting out the bat signal to all the folks out there that are like-minded, have the same perspective, have a similar problem or situation, so that they know they're not alone. And I think for me that's the power of it, or the real value of it. And also because you know I like posting selfies.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Well, it's good to see that when you have some kind of, there's some camaraderie there, there's some community there that you can build on and encourage one another and help each other in their projects and their bigger picture and what they feel like is their mission, and that's how I think we help things go forward in a positive direction for this industry. A hundred percent.

Speaker 2: 11:13

Now, just for clarity, I want to make sure nobody missed it. Right, Like we talked about the podcast, the book I want to talk more about the book and you're active on social media, but you had a job right Like you were working in construction. It wasn't like you're just sitting at home writing books and editing podcast episodes. Yeah, Correct.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Yes, no, that's all stuff that I just did. On the side is I guess you call it a passion project, right A deeper desire to help out people and help people see that there's something more going on here than just going through the motions every day, because I see a lot of people trapped in that.

Speaker 2: 11:54

Yes, okay, joe, I think you're a perfect case study for an observation or assumption that I have and it's based on my experience so you can help me validate it.

Speaker 2: 12:04

There's a period of my life when I was working had the job like real jobs, not like what I do now, and there was period like I was in a situation where I was getting the raises and the promotions and like that sort of thing, but the thoughts and ideas or maybe ambitions that I had, I couldn't do anything with them in my job because it didn't bring any value to the company Makes sense.

Speaker 2: 12:31

So I didn't have an outlet that gave me anything to look forward to, kind of like you said, right, it's rinse and repeat. And so life sucked Like it was heavy, it was difficult, it was difficult, it was boring, it was like trudging through three foot of mud. And once I started tinkering around with a crazy idea like podcasting or writing a book or whatever, all of a sudden that hard trudgery felt tolerable. And so here's the question trudgery felt tolerable. And so here's the question having a creative outlet or tinkering around with some kind of impractical idea, is that fuel enough to help people continue their own personal growth when a company is not equipped to make it happen.

Speaker 1: 13:21

It depends on the situation. Because, as you said, when I wrote the book and when I was initially doing the podcasting and I was working right around 40 hours, a little more, a little bit less and I had the freedom and had some time of my own to pursue that. Because I believe that we're all kind of looking for our purpose here. Right, if we don't have a purpose, we just spin around and around in circles and that's, I believe, a big part of why construction is just chewing up and spitting out people. When you realize that the majority of the men committing suicide in construction aren't in the early 20s or 30s, they're in their late 40s, it's kind of mind blowing. So I see that there's a lack of purpose. So, when I had time for myself to pursue and try to do what I could to help other people, because your purpose will always go down to serving other people- no matter what that will always be your purpose.

Speaker 1: 14:20

It might be feeding people at the homeless shelter, or it might be doing a podcast. It's different for everybody. Right, you're going to find your spot, but we'll always be serving others. But then in this last role I had, where I had very little time to myself, it took way more away from my life than it ever added. Yeah, and it just it was. There was no moving forward from where I had ended up being. There were days where I thought I think I can do this, but then all that energy gets sucked out of you and it's going to depend on the individual and it's going to depend on their situation. There are just some toxic situations where you just cannot rise above and at those times you have to have the guts in your life to take a step away and for your own good, for the good of your family, for the good of everybody else even though it's a hard decision to make in order for your betterment, moving forward. So it's a combo answer there, buddy.

Speaker 2: 15:22

No, that's perfect. Yeah, cause I did something that I didn't take into account because, you're right, I was in a situation I mean, you know, I had my job, I was traveling around the country and doing super cool stuff, but I still had that. I had space in my life in terms of time and I had bandwidth and energy because my job wasn't a miserable situation. I didn't have those toxic elements. And I want to be clear, the toxicity doesn't only come from our job. It can come from the people we have in our life. It can come from our behaviors, our habits, our practices, and so I didn't have that toxicity, that negative drain on my joy and energy. So I still had space to create, to be creative and try things and do different things. So I think maybe the formula is this do something about the things that are stealing joy from your life, because that's going to give you the space to see, experiment and grow or build on your purpose. What do you think?

Speaker 1: 16:28

Yeah, I like it, and I think the underlining part of it too is to constantly remember the value of time.

Speaker 2: 16:35

Oh God Right.

Speaker 1: 16:38

And I think that's something that we often overlook, because we are a society that says we don't have time to do things, but we often spend hours of wasted time doing things that are of very little value in reality. There are places, there are people in our lives that just don't have the time, whether it's being eaten up by family members, because either there's health issues right, it could be something like that where I've seen people in their life and they have no time to do anything else because they have a family member that's top of the charts. That person's sick and every ounce of extra energy that they have in their life and God bless them for it right Goes into that. That's their mission at that time. And then there's people where they create all that extra family right, family time spent because of activities and baseball and ballet and all these different things, right, so they create the fact that they have no time to do very much.

Speaker 1: 17:37

But there are people that are just at different spots in their life where they don't have the time, and I think there's and again this goes back to a lot of what you talk about, jesse is just that empathy and trying to understand, in your limited capabilities, where other people are at that time, because you in a certain situation may be completely different than somebody else in that situation. But we're all growing and you have to see that everybody's different and reacts differently to situations because of their experiences and because of their maturity level or whatever it might be. And I think that becomes that much more important when dealing with people is just some sort of understanding of who they are and where they're at, and then we can go from there.

Speaker 2: 19:17

Yeah, man, you know two things. I can't remember where I heard it, but I know I heard it on a podcast and the guy said something to the effect of we have to be careful about labeling other people's potential, because what we actually see is the resources the individual has and what we would do if we had those resources. And we're confusing that for their potential. And I'm like holy moly, like that's yes, do you know how many times I've done that? And like unintentionally abused people because I'm like you have so much potential. Then they're like what the hell are you talking about? I'm drowning over here.

Speaker 2: 20:00

And it was me confusing what I would do with their resources for their potential, because I failed to understand where to meet them, where they're at, to understand where they were in terms of what they were experiencing, what are the conditions, what's the effect they're having? Do they even give a damn? Have any interest in doing the things that I think that they should do? Like you know, I have some guilt over that and after I heard that, like oh my God, it's even worse. It's even worse. I was hurting people, not on purpose and not in a real bad way, but I didn't serve them to the degree that I could have had. I had that understanding back then.

Speaker 1: 20:38

Yeah, but this is a big problem in the trades, especially now more than ever, because there is a real lack of training and a real lack of understanding and a real lack of education in the trades. But yet we have all these people that show up every day, that are expected to somehow know how to do something that they've never been trained or taught how to do it, and then they get called names and fingers pointed at them and yelled at and this and that when nobody's ever taken the time to show them how to do these things correctly or efficiently or safely. And there's just, there is a lot of that.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Oh man, you know what I think? I think it's comical, I think it's negligent is that so many people in our industry blame the men and women that are doing the work for their problems. Yes, and the men and women, the trade professionals out there are the ones with the least amount of influence and authority to change it. Right, it's like what? You're blaming them and they have. We blame the, the current, whatever damn generation we want to blame right now. Right, they're not even in the damn industry and we're blaming them for our shortage. We blame the trades for poor quality, for poor production, for workplace incidents. They're just the people that are closest to the break in the system. The folks that have the resources, the influence, the relationships and the damn responsibility to fix it are spending all their time blaming the ones with the least amount of resources to fix it.

Speaker 1: 22:24

Am I seeing it wrong, or no, I don't think I could put it better myself, jesse, that's exactly what's happening and it's, like I said, it's ridiculous because the efforts to resolve these issues or solve the problems that continue day after day are simply point fingers or send emails or yell at people. One of the things that always got to me that really bothered me and this is just a small example is yelling at people for not having safety glasses and sending them home. The safety glasses cost less than two freaking dollars. So you're going to lose production because somebody lost their safety glasses at lunchtime or break time, or their kid took them out of their truck that night when he was taking them to baseball practice, or whatever it is right. But yet you're going to, for $2.50, kick that guy off of the job and lose the production and have him lose his pay for the day. And now we create resentment.

Speaker 1: 23:24

We call people names, we send nasty emails to the office. We do all these things rather than simply solve the problem for $2.

Speaker 2: 23:36

Man, I laugh out of shame because I have sent people home for not having their stuff because I was in an emotional state. Right, there's a better way to handle that. There are better ways to solve that problem than sending people home, and I'm with you. The folks out there are the ones that are getting the least support. The folks that reap the benefit, and the profit of those people are doing little to nothing. I say that with the caveat that there are some leaders out there and I suspect this is why you started your company is to provide a different experience, to provide a better quality of life for our craft workers. The majority of folks out there are just screaming, yelling, threatening people to try to get these buildings built. So on your LinkedIn profile it says chief carpenter. Can you explain that? So obviously I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, okay, you came up through the trades as a carpenter or on the carpentry side of the business, what's the Carpenture E-U-R. Can you give us some background on that, Because I think it's ultra cool.

Speaker 1: 24:41

No, that's really just because I shifted into a role, from being a carpenter to being an entrepreneur. So that was my slight of hand there of saying I'm a carpenter. Not just a carpenter anymore, but an entrepreneur on top of that. But first a carpenter.

Speaker 2: 25:00

Yeah, oh, dude, that is that slick I like. Well done, man, well done, okay. So let's think about the carpenter out there that has aspirations of doing a little more than what they're currently doing right now, and we'll just use you as the target or an example of what can be like, what is possible. What do you recommend that young lady that's out there swinging a hammer or holding the dumb end of the tape right now, early in their career? Swinging a hammer or holding the dumb end of the tape right now, early in their career? And if you don't know what the dumb end of the tape is, send us a link, send us a question and we'll answer that for you, maybe do a video for you. But what do you suggest that somebody in that current situation focus on so that they can create their own damn path?

Speaker 1: 25:47

You know, what I often tell young apprentices or young people in the trades is you need to make a game plan of where you want to be and where you want to go, because in this business there is an endless amount of options.

Speaker 1: 26:04

No matter what trade you're in, there's different niches in that trade and different branches off into the office trade and different branches off into the office If that's the direction you want to go running work, or running work in a different state, or working for companies that you want to work for that might not be in your state but they do it. If you're an iron worker getting into ornamental work, or if you're a glazier, you want to work on certain types of high rises, or you want to work on stadiums or things like that. There's all these different types of niches and areas in this business where, if that's where you want to go, start to make those plans early, because if you don't figure out where you want to go and what you want to make of this business, it'll make something out of you. It'll probably make a miserable SOB of you.

Speaker 2: 26:58

It'll probably make a miserable SOB. You know a hundred percent. So literally like real life example I worked for a company yeah, it was the second plumbing company I worked for man. This was back in the nineties and I was in apprenticeship and so I leveraged that to say, wait a minute, I can't stay on this crew because I got to learn all these other things you need to let me do some of this other type of work. But I landed on the one crew and we were the chipping crew and so which is already an indicator like we got problems right Our job we went to project to chip up the concrete. For whenever we missed the wall, whenever the underground rough-in didn't hit the wall, we went rough. The underground rough in didn't hit the wall, we went and chipped.

Speaker 1: 27:34

So you weren't very busy. So you weren't very busy.

Speaker 2: 27:37

Oh God, man, that was the upside. So I'm like a first year apprentice. Everybody's like you're on the chipping crew, like how'd you do that? I'm like they just put me why, bro, they get all the overtime they want? I'm like, oh, this, that's a good thing. So we were always chipping, which, again, is not a good thing. And I remember hector was like the lead of the chipping crew, like, hector, how long you've been doing this? Oh, six years. And I was like six years, like I'm dreading doing this because it's the same. You just chip concrete, right, you chip in, you fix the pipe and go chip more. Like I can't do this. For six years Now, because of my apprenticeship, I was able to look at my stuff like the OJT that I say, look, I need to get a thousand hours on domestic water systems, I need to get 600 hours on boilers, water heaters, softener, I need to get 600 hours on boilers, water heaters, softener.

Speaker 2: 28:30

So I use that to go to my office and say, hey, I did enough chipping, I'm ready for the next thing. I know there's other companies, specifically in the plumbing area, that they have a roughing crew, a top out crew and a fixture crew, which there's efficiencies for the organization, but that doesn't really help the installer expand their experience. And the way it slapped me in the face was when I finally got into a role where I was like acquiring personnel, hiring people, whatever you know. They had eight years, 10 years of experience, and then we'd put them on a system that they didn't have. They didn't even have the tools to do it and I'm like, why don't?

Speaker 2: 29:07

Like you've been in the trade for 10 years and you don't have a spud wrench to install fixtures, and they're like well, I've never installed fixtures Like huh. And so this kind of started happening. What happens to a lot of our craft professionals? That they stay with the company and they sure they have 10 years of experience, but it's 10 years of one year. It's the same year over and over and over, and that's not good for an individual's career. So all that to say what you said, joe, is excellent. Lay out your path, let people know what the hell it is and then go do that thing.

Speaker 1: 29:43

From the moment I decided I wanted to be a carpenter. I wanted to do millwork. I wanted to work for the big dogs there in downtown Chicago. That was what I wanted to do and out of apprenticeship school I got assigned to go build houses. Oh okay, I could not have been further away from what I had wanted to do. When I got sent out to go work my first Chicago winter, carrying around sheets of plywood and taping off tie back and trying to lift that extension ladder out of the mud was sunk up to the second or third rung in the mud and you'd spend all day doing that stuff. It was like I could not have been further away from what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1: 30:25

But step by step my dad was working for a commercial company at the time. He got me into that commercial company, got my foot in the door as an apprentice so I knew I wanted to go commercial, started doing that framing walls, doing drywall, worked my way up to where I was doing a lot of grid ceilings and doing all sorts of fancy grid ceilings. But my goal never shifted of wanting to get into high-end millwork. So when they offered me a job in the office to come in as the young estimators. No, I'm going to finish up my apprenticeship, stuck with my apprenticeship. And then the big superintendent of the drywall company he had and again this goes back to in Chicago, it's family everywhere and long-term relationships everywhere. So I talked to him. I was like, hey, I know, your brother runs this small millwork company over here.

Speaker 1: 31:21

I think my dad, in fact I think my dad might've been over there as well and say when you guys get slow or when you guys get to a point, I would really like to go work for him.

Speaker 1: 31:31

And that was just mostly casework that he was doing. But I was able to get my foot in the door and started doing casework and then that slowed down and I went to work for my dad for another company and we were working in the merchandise mart and working directly with a lot of designers and stuff right there in their showroom. So a lot of learning how to communicate and talk the talk, what designers are looking for. You're sketching things on napkins and getting approval and going back and forth and deciding how we're going to make things work in that old building and slowly but surely work my way up to where I had wanted to go and that took, you know, seven, seven plus years to get to that point. But I knew where I wanted to go, and if I hadn't, I don't think I would have ended up where I wanted to be.

Speaker 2: 32:18

Oh, so have an idea. It was that picture in your head. I want to be doing high-end millwork and that helped guide your decision. I mean seven years work and that helped guide your decision. I mean seven years. I know now seven years is like a blink of an eye, but when I was 20, freaking seven years was eternity, right, like it's never going to happen. So having that true north helped you make the decisions and stay on the path to where you are today.

Speaker 1: 32:46

Yeah, yeah, oh, definitely, definitely. And that's why I try to always encourage those younger people, because this business really is what you make of it and we used to always say, on the job set, we would say you make your own conditions. Right, you bring in a chair, you bring in a picnic table, you bring in the microwave, you bring in a radio right, you make your own conditions. If you want to live in a dusty, messy dump and that's where you want to work and where you want to spend your days, then go ahead. If you don't want to, if you want to keep things cleaned up and you want to have a chair to sit in, you bring a folding chair. You get to make your own conditions. So you constantly need to have that mindset of I'm going to make my own conditions here. We're going to make things work for us. I'm going to make this leverage my knowledge, leverage my relationship, leverage my experience to get where and do what I want to do.

Speaker 2: 33:42

Yeah, man. Okay, big question this idea of leverage, like making your own conditions, having a long-term target, staying focused on the prize how much of that is in your book?

Speaker 1: 33:56

That I mean in so many words. Yes, that's kind of what my book is about. There's six different parts. It's open your mind, open your eyes, open your mouth, open your ears. So, open your mind, open your eyes, open your mouth, open your ears.

Speaker 2: 34:24

That's the gist of it is understanding, having a better idea of who you are and how to use these six different areas that, if you open them up, will strengthen you, will strengthen your relationships, will strengthen your ideas and where you're going. I love it. For me, I know that opening my mind was the hardest and also the most impactful. Yeah Right, I had to close my mouth, though that's what made it hard. That's what made it hard. Oh man. Ok, now you have your own company doing the high end millwork thing. Yeah, but do you ever get in those moments where you're like, holy hell, I'm here. How the hell did this happen?

Speaker 1: 35:02

All the time. All the time, jesse. Right now, life is just an adrenaline rush, right. All the time, jesse. Right now, life is just an adrenaline rush, right? You don't know what, the next email or the next phone call or the next opportunity or what's going to happen, so it's a constant adrenaline rush, just trying to get things done and learning so many new things and meeting so many new people and trying to build systems on different things that are new to me, right? So it's an exciting time. It's not the easiest time, it's stressful, but at the same time, there's a purpose behind the stress. There's a purpose behind the frustrations or the momentary obstacles or the things that you're trying to figure out. There's a purpose behind them, and when you have a purpose in what you're trying to do, or that mindset of that direction of, in that vision of what you believe that you can create if you can just get everything into position, it changes things a lot.

Speaker 2: 36:01

I can't remember who it was. I don't know if it was Nietzsche, maybe I can't. Anyways, it was one of those philosophers back then. It was like we can endure almost any pain as long as we have a stronger purpose. He used different language, but it's like kind of like you're saying, it might suck, but the purpose over is, supersedes the momentary pain and frustration and all of that stuff. The purpose, the goal, helps us work through all of that.

Speaker 1: 36:34

Yeah, and I think that leveraging where you've been, both the positive and the negative in your mind, has a big impact. So you make a decision and you're going to start this company right and probably, if most people that I would have ever talked to, there's some people would have said this is the right time. Might just be incorporated now, but this is almost 30 years in the making. This is relationships, this is knowledge, this is all these things have accumulated to the point of creating this. This is just creating something different, and then there's probably a lot of people that would have been like what the heck are you doing? Stay where you're at. It's stable.

Speaker 1: 37:11

You got a good paycheck coming in and I don't know who's right. Well, but I do, because I can look at that and say where would I rather be right now with all of?

Speaker 1: 37:21

the uncertainty, all of the stress, all of the adrenaline rush that's going on right now. Is this a better spot? Am I happier? Is this have a better upside than where I was at? And there's no comparison.

Speaker 1: 37:36

So I think that there are just times in life where you have to be willing to take some risks, and that's why I'm very fond of saying without fear, there is no risk, and without risk there is no reward. And that came to me one day when I was on a run and I was listening to a podcast and it was these very wealthy guys talking about investing money in something and at the end of the story they didn't make any money or this or that. But what hit me on the whole thing is that, even though the number to me of what they had invested in it would have been big, to them it was minuscule. Because of that, there's no fear involved. It was not a risk.

Speaker 1: 38:18

But the reality is, in order for something to truly be a risk, there has to be a fear of something, and whether that's sometimes right, it's a fear of getting married, or your fear of having your first kid, or your fear of signing on the dotted line for that new car loan or that new house or whatever. It might be right, there's some fear involved and therefore there's some risk to you. But if you are not willing to take those risks you will never reap any rewards. Reward is always on the other side of that fear and taking that risk.

Speaker 2: 38:51

A hundred percent. That is solid brother. So I had a question. Since becoming the chief carpenter at Retro Craft Woodworks, what have you learned about yourself?

Speaker 1: 39:04

That I have to keep getting better each and every day and stretching myself outside of my comfort zone.

Speaker 1: 39:13

Without that mentality and without that mindset right now, when you have so little behind you and so little of a reputation and so little of anything to help propel things forward, you have to be willing to continue to grow and get outside of that comfort zone.

Speaker 1: 39:30

To do things like post on Instagram, to meet up with people that you don't know or haven't met before, to go on a podcast, to go have those lunches with the new people, to really get yourself out there and fully embrace what it is that you're trying to accomplish, and to be willing to do your best to share that vision of what is driving you, what is motivating you, with anybody that will listen, because you don't know where that next phone call is going to come from and you don't know where that next opportunity or where that one thing that just sets you up going forward for the next six months, so you can just catch your breath, be able to just take your foot off of the gas pedal just for a moment. So it's the constant learning and for me, I think that construction has helped me come to this point where I'm more comfortable with that, because construction is chaos.

Speaker 1: 40:26

I don't think that there's anything else that we deal with or any other industry that is as chaotic as construction is on a daily basis, and my thoughts on that have always been that the only way to fight that chaos is through repetition of your daily processes, of building processes, and repeating them every single day so that you know what you're going to be doing, you know how you're going to do them, and then continue to refine and get those processes better each and every day to become more efficient, to become stronger in those areas, to continue to build. And it might be only one thing, and then when you feel like you get that down, then you bring in that other thing.

Speaker 1: 41:12

But it's so important to be able to control as much of that chaos as possible, because you'll never control 100%, but if you can dance around that line of that 80 to 85% that you have wrapped up and you have control over that other 15 to 20% that comes up and tries to get you, does not have the same effect on you and you're able to shuck and jive and get yourself out of the way or buy yourself a little bit of time or whatever it takes in order to take on that chaos that's left. But you need to be is on top of that 80% to 85%, as you possibly can be. So that's just like clockwork every single day.

Speaker 2: 41:54

Yeah, because then you're prepared to absorb the variation, you're prepared to deal with the unplanned emergency situation, whatever, because you got your stuff in a pile here you can deal with that other one-off stuff.

Speaker 1: 42:08

Yeah, because it's going to come, there's just no-.

Speaker 2: 42:10

Inevitably 100%.

Speaker 1: 42:12

Exactly it's going to come. So if you can limit the impact by having some control over parts of it, you will make your life and the life of everybody else that's working with you a hundred times simpler.

Speaker 2: 42:26

Oh God, yeah. You have both worked with managers and leaders that let their dysfunction disrupt every single minute of every day. You don't want to be that person.

Speaker 1: 42:39

No, no, and they just end up chasing their tail and chasing their tail and chasing their tail. And it's one of those things, jesse, that you don't want to be around it. It's like the guy cutting the wrong way on a table saw right. It's like I'm telling you to stop cutting that or doing things like that as much because I don't want to be here. If you have an accident, as much as I'm worried about you, right, I don't want to be here. It's the same when you see people chasing their tails, I don't want to even be around this, because then I get sucked into it and then things become my fault or my responsibility or this or that.

Speaker 2: 43:15

It's like, figure out how to manage things or go away. I like that feeding the song from the wrong end. Yeah, yeah, like. What are you? Oh my God, get me out of here? Oh, man and Joe, we could probably. What are you? Oh my God, get me out of here. Oh man and Joe, we could probably talk for another six hours, kind of like we did when we met in lunch. I had barbecue a few months ago, but I've got to wrap it up, and which gives us a good excuse to maybe do it again. And I have the million dollar question. Here it is what is the promise that you are intended to be?

Speaker 1: 43:47

Boy? That's a heavy question, jesse. I think these things evolve through our lives and change with where we are at the different stages of what's really important to us. And I'll be really honest with you, jesse For most of my career, especially, I would say, probably the last seven to eight years I have done everything I could to distance myself from this industry, because there are some things in this industry that really drive me nuts and some things that I see are foretellings of things to go and continue to get worse.

Speaker 1: 44:20

And it's been a real frustration of mine. So here I find myself now at this time, fully invested back into this industry in many different ways, and I've always had that internal argument of why are you trying to distance yourself from something that you have so many feelings about, that you have so much experience in and so much knowledge about? But it's not always easy to communicate those things and sometimes it's easier just to back away. But at this point, right now, I am embracing this industry and its problems and its potential and have committed myself to doing what I can to fight for those people that are in the field that I don't feel like are being treated and being not just treated but what's the right word but afforded what's necessary in order for them to excel. They're not being invested into the way that is needed for them to enjoy their life, for their families to enjoy their life and for them to be fulfilled in what they are doing, because what they are doing is very important. So there's a big part of me that's fighting for them.

Speaker 1: 45:33

I am super excited to see Gen Z come into this business. I am so excited to see them coming into this business. I'm so excited to see the reasons why they're embracing this industry. I am excited to see the direction it's going to go. I'm excited to see the attitude and the flavor of their angst. It reminds me a little bit of us Gen Xers. They're kind of angsty and I appreciate that angst and I think that they're going to come in here and they are going to expect and demand some respect for what they're doing, and I think that's a step in the right direction. So I'm excited about this and what I think my promise is.

Speaker 1: 46:18

I want to exemplify this idea and show people that this is how you can operate and you can have a successful company by putting the people in the field first, by making them your priority, by training them, by teaching them, by treating them with the respect that they deserve and by allowing them to speak through their craft and what they know how to do, to give them a voice to be able to speak out and share without contempt, without with respect for what they are and what they're doing and what they're accomplishing. So for me, there's a bigger picture here. There's a bigger idea than just having a millwork company. I love the team aspect. I love leading teams and building teams and getting that idea across and now I'm in more control over that than I've ever been able to be. There's more to it than just the company and we'll be building on that.

Speaker 1: 47:20

I got a podcast that'll be starting up here maybe within the next month or two with a buddy of mine from another carpenter. 15 years ago we talked about doing a podcast and we were working together, we were partners, so we'd be bantering back and forth ideas and the name of the podcast is going to be Now that's Money, because that's what we would always say to one another when we put a piece in or things would go. We'd be like that's money and we would laugh and joke about when we have our podcast. That's going to be like our slogan. We're going to say now that's money.

Speaker 1: 47:53

So I want to be able to bring that perspective of some veteran field people to have a voice, to speak out, to call out the trends that are going in a positive direction, call out the trends that are going in the wrong direction for our industry, to encourage and challenge these young people as they're coming up in this business, to find their voice, find out the power that they have and find out what they can accomplish if they put their heads down, do the dirty work and build off of that and start out with the foundation that I know they're capable of building.

Speaker 2: 48:32

Dude powerful, and so folks out there listening trust. Just go down to the show notes. There's going to be a link to connect with Joe on his LinkedIn profile. I'll put the link to your website. Whatever I can do to contribute to your path, because what I heard you say was you have a company, but the purpose is to help people have a different experience in our industry, an experience that values and appreciates what it is to be human, and if I can help support that in any way, that's what the hell? I'm here for my brother.

Speaker 1: 49:01

I appreciate that, jesse, and I think it's a fight worth fighting.

Speaker 2: 49:05

Yeah, man, 100% Did you have a good time?

Speaker 1: 49:08

Oh, heck, yeah. Well, like you said, I think we're going for another couple hours.