Practical Leadership - with guest Preston Woolfolk - Old-Fashioned Values, Modern Success!

Old-Fashioned Values, Modern Success: Embracing Employee Well-Being and Balanced Leadership

Get ready for an inspiring ride as we dive into this episode of the Practical Leadership Podcast, featuring the charismatic Preston Wolf, co-president of the acclaimed company, Documentation. 

Join us as we explore the secrets behind their strong organic growth and recognition as one of the best places to work in Texas! 

Preston shares the power of old-fashioned values, employee well-being, and how they're defying third-generation business failure statistics.

But that's not all! We'll also unravel the dynamics of co-leadership, from equal pay to shared responsibilities, and how these strategies can make your business soar. Preston opens up about his journey as a young leader, the challenges he faced, and the lessons he learned along the way.

Are you ready to level up your leadership game? Tune in to this fun, engaging, and insightful episode to discover the power of relentless learning, the importance of surrounding yourself with smart people, and how to "fail fast forward" to success. 

Don't miss the chance to learn from one of the industry's rising stars!

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Practical Leadership Podcast, where leaders share their tools and practical advice to make you a better leader today. Today my guest is a co-president at Documentation, a fast-growing IT print and software solution company. He was recently awarded a 40 under 40 recognition for his talents by the business journal. He sits on the board of the Texas Research and Technology Foundation. There's a lot to talk about that. And within that they have the community house where they give owners an opportunity to exit their business, but keeping ownership local. One of the subjects that I know we are all going to be curious about, one of the things that is most dear to my heart is one thing that he's been able to accomplish, which is he has led his organization to be recognized as a best place to work. You will see it throughout our conversation today, the passion for people. He's creative, he's passionate, he's driven. Preston Wolf, great to have you here today. Thank you for joining me. Thank you, max. I appreciate it. So before we get started, what, what is something good, positive, fun that's been happening in your world over the last few months? Oh, goodness, man. You know, probably the big one, you, you kind of highlighted in a, on we when you did your intro was documentation went in the best places to work in the state of Texas. So that was probably one of the biggest great things that's been going on for us. We won number three in the state. That was pretty exciting. Obviously our employees are the ones that vote on this. You know, we, we, we promised we didn't bribe'em, you know, I didn't give'em an ice cream party or anything on that end. We just sent them the link. And across the state of Texas, all of our locations, they voted us number three in the state of Texas. So that was that was probably the highlight reel of the year, right. Over the last few months. And, and, you know, on top of that with the business was the last closeout for 2022. We had some astronomical growth, 25% organic growth for our company. Non acquisition, just normal day-to-day down the streete business, working with our clients and, and working through our teams executing. So those would probably be, those would probably be the big highlight reels for. From the business side. What, what, I mean, it's, it's how amazing, right? Like I always like to talk about, we've gotta be a purpose-driven people caring organization that is also accountable and results oriented. And you're like giving me those two right Like our people are happy and thriving and we're, we're, we're, we're really killing it in terms of, in terms of outcomes. Let, let's start with with the people side of things. So where. Where do you think that, you know care for people comes from that attention to their experience, their growth their success comes from, right? Because that's the only way that you actually end up with the best place to Work Award. Tell, tell me a little bit about that. You know, I think it, it's gonna sound a little cheesy, but I think it's good old fashioned values, right? If you look at, you know, really the rise of the employer you know, what we call maybe corporate companies, you know, this is a, this is a industrial revolution. Thing onwards. You know, this is not, this idea of a business and being an employer is not something that really ever happened in the world for the first, you know, 4,000 years of humanity. It's in the last 150 maximum of 200 years that this really, this really popped up right. And I think what you really saw back then, you know, you had a lot of apprentice type work. People kind of did their own trade, and then you have these employers pop up with Industrial Revolution and it's fascinating what happened. You know, they housed people, right? People need good living conditions. These businesses like factories manufacturing or, you know, maybe even, you know, type of union work like with the railroad construction or the oil and gas industry. You know, they hired in doctors, they brought in benefits, right? Doctors, dentists to help take care of their people. Cuz what they realized was, That their workers were some of their keys to success, right? The number one key for that business was that employee and the trade in which they were bringing into that business. And you'd never seen anything like it before, right? Everybody was decentralized in pretty much an apprenticeship type program doing their own trade. And as these businesses built out, they realized if I can increase the quality of life for my employee, my business also thrives. And, you know, fast forward us to the late 19 hundreds and early 2000. You really look back at a business and, you know, we all believe that it's a standard for my provider to provide good healthcare benefits. Right. And I think it's, it's an interesting topic. If you look back and you consider yourself as an employee, why is that a thing? I would expect my provider to provide my healthcare right. Why is, why is that? You know, I don't, I don't expect him to feed me every day for all of my meals. I don't feed, expect him to house me, but I do expect him to provide for a healthcare. Well, from the employer mindset, it's because healthy employees help drive a great business, right? So if you take those concepts, I think that popped up to kind of these old time fashioned values when businesses got started. It's all about providing for the overall health of the employee. That can be their wellness, that can be their physical health, that can be their mental health, that can be in good standards of shelter, a K where they work all day. What does their business look like? That can be in terms of how you care for them. All around approach and and I'm only really bringing this up cuz I think it's kind of interesting on the national dialogue, it kind of seems like we're at an employee versus employer conversation nowadays where employers just hate their employees and they're just stripping'em from everything they can get and employees feel neglected and taken advantage of. But really the whole symbiotic relationship is, it's good for both, right? But to have really healthy employees that love where they work, to have the employer providing those sort of things, that culture and that environment that's not just profits. And so I say this kind of, you know, this is our family legacy over the last 65 years as being a 30 a third generation business where you really see that approach to old time values that says, Hey, I'm an employer. I'm gonna take care of people. I'm gonna make sure this is a great place for them to work. I'm hopefully hiring more members of their family as they've stayed with me longer and we're pro providing for the whole ecosystem of the employee. And so I think that's, that's really where it comes from. Is that that back. So third generation business the, the statistics are not really great on that. Right? How real? Yeah. Yeah. How they're not supposed, like they typically are the ones that bring the business down. They don't care about it, they sell it. They kinda, you know, sell it off into the sunset. But that was not your or your brother's approach when it came to the business. How come, what, what, what, what made you guys want to say, you know what? Let's, let's do business, right? Let's keep building it. Let's keep adding value to the. You know, I think we had a a 3% success ratio. I think that's it, right? That 3% of third generation businesses succeed after five years after it's been perpetuated. So we made it past the five years. So that's the good news. So I think I think we beat the 3%. You know, I think a few factors. One I'm partner with my brother who's drastically different than I am. We are complete opposites, which really. Right. We're really good balance for the business. Having different perspectives and different agendas and priorities where we are able to lean into each other's strengths. I think that helps big time for the health of our business that we're not overly dominated by maybe a visionary type or we're not overly dominated by more of a process type person. Right? We're able to balance those two. And I think second, you know I, I'll bring up our family legacy a lot, but we have a family that's always said. We care about our. You know, it's not about just us as business owners making money, selling it just to get our quick win, and then everybody else can go figure out what to do from there. For us it's really been a, a goal to bring others into the fold. And a fun fact about documentation is that 20% of our businesses owned by our shareholders that are not our. And so we bring our leaders in, we bring our top producers in, into the company as minority shareholders, so they have stake in the game. What's good for us is good for them, and it changes the ownership mindset of the business. That we're not 100% employee owned. Because we wanna maintain a certain track record that we have for our business and a certain set of values of where we're headed. But we have 20% of our business is owned by our employees to make sure that they feel that they're winning too. And that there's, that's a great relationship. Tha thank, thank you for that. There's a lot. And I'm actually gonna dig in on a couple of things that you've mentioned. So going back to the, the family values, right? It's third generat. The generation that spoils a business. You guys are doing great and it doesn't look like, like you're, that's gonna change. You're, you're, you're taking your kind of grandfathers and parents' values in, in perpetuating them and amplifying them. I'm curious to, to know, like for other third generation businesses that are out there right. For, for, for, for the grandchildren that are out there. What, what was it about the situation that you guys decided? Like what, what, what did you connect with? What, what did your grandfather do? Right? What did your Parents do. Right. That made you want to say, you know what, I wanna, I wanna stick with this and I want to keep going. Yeah. What, what, what do you think was like a key there of why you are who you are now? Well, what's the saying, you know, short sleeves to short sleeves and 30 generations? Right. So what you typically have is the entrepreneur that has nothing. They build a business, they make it successful through sheer grit, determination, and luck. Obviously they have a good business plan, but they're typical entrepreneurs that just drive it hard. Typically they don't have much in, they're growing everything. And then the second generation grows up watching their parents work hard, and as they're watching their parents work hard, they've instilled a work ethic. And then, and then that second generation takes over. But by the time the second generation's really running the business, they're usually in a better off socioeconomic standpoint. And so the third generation typically grows. Differently, right? They grow up with means they grow up with wealth. They might have a a cleaning person that shows up once a week instead of being the cleaning person. They might have a yard guy that shows up to take care of everything instead of being the yard workers. And I think what you usually see as the third generation loses a standard of work ethic. And then, and that's not bad, but it makes it hard, I think, to lead a business if you don't have the same work ethic that all of your other employees. And and for our family that was very different, right? My brother and I, you know, and my other two, we have two younger siblings. One our sister's 14 years younger, so she kind of grew up in a different family when you're that far apart, right? But my brothers and I, you know, we really, you know, after church on Sundays, we were the cleaning proof for the office, right? We were running a fledgling business that was grow. And the cleaning crew was just too expensive. So guess what? The family went to church after church on Sundays. We grabbed some lunch at Shalot skis and then we, we went over to the office and we cleaned the office, right? Everybody had a job. You know, one of us swept the warehouse. Cleaned the warehouse. The other one cleaned all the toilets and the desks and. Dusted and, and then we took out the trash and we carried it off to a dumpster. You know, we had our, our really ugly old minivan that we had trash in and we had all the windows rolled down cause it smelled horrible. You know, that, that was just the life we grew up in. Right. You know, holding trash out the window, trying to get it out to the dumpster cuz it smelled too bad. And that's just what you did on the weekends, right? We didn't really know any different. I didn't know any different that I worked in the warehouse during the summers where I worked as a delivery driver in Col High School and I was an intern in high school and college. You know, there's just kind of for lack of a better term, it was the family culture, right? We were entrepreneurs that ran a business and the whole family worked at the business to help with the overall success of the business and the family and and that, and that was just our experience as a third generation. Interesting cuz you had the second generation experience before you had the third generation experience. Correct. And, and it, it kind of instilled those, those values and that work ethic and that mindset. Correct. And I think that's where it's really important for my brother and I and our children being the fourth generation that we have to keep re pushing that work ethic down through them even though we are, you know, we are better off today at our age than our parents were. And so we have more means. But how do we. That, that's gonna be a major struggle for us, to be honest, because we've gotta make sure that we are still wanting to do all the hard things that we were taught, and we have to do those hard things to make sure our kids were modeling by example, and our kids are doing that with us. So they also instill that same work ethic through them and through their, through their children, right. Okay, so now I have to ask, how are you gonna do it? How are you gonna do it? You know, you model by example, right? You model by example, you know? You make sure your kids know how to do things with their own hands and they don't rely on somebody else. I don't think there's any good way other than just do it yourself, right? And and, and I think that value plays out into your business too, right? As a CEO of a company, you should never ask an employee to do something you're not willing to do yourself. And. You know, we had some issues about two years ago with some of our deliveries not going well. So I just called up our guys and said, cool, I'm running delivery tomorrow. Right. So I just, you know, threw on my polo and some shorts and, and drove with our delivery driver all day to see what some of the challenges were with them out in the field in front of our customers. And I, and I think that's really where. You know, values come into play for a business. Every business has values, right? It everyone has'em. And it just depends. Are you all aligned on the same page that our company, everybody's willing to do something, they would, any manager in our company should be willing to do something. They're gonna ask of their own employee. They're not better than them. They're just in a different role in the company, you know? That I'll, I'll double down on that one. I'll probably make a clip out of that last statement, right. Okay. So there's, there's, there's another conversation there that I think is a powerful one. I work with a lot of husband and wife teams. And the conversation's always who's in charge, right? Mm-hmm. And very rarely does it work out to have you know, co c o Co-President framework. You've mentioned that you guys are very different. You guys both know your strengths and weaknesses. You, you've done a lot of learning and research about it, so it's not just we think we're different, we know how we're different. And I'll let you explain a little bit about some of the work that you've done to be able to define that well. And then what are some of the, the, the, the, the principles that enable you guys to work as co CEOs, co-president? Yeah, that's a great question. Right. And I think on the national stage, I see about three or four publicly traded companies that have the co CEOs. I'm gonna blank on their names, but I read a interesting article on that. It's, it's some, it's hard to be successful, but I think if you can execute it on it, actually the returns in the business run better. Than having one singular c e o because of now you're adopting the strengths of two people, not just one. But it requires really, really strict rules in our opinion. Right. One, we're brothers and we're 14 months apart, so we're almost Irish twins. So God bless our mother, dunno how she dealt with us. But being that close in age, right? You've gotta make sure that there's some clear boundaries. So the first and foremost, the first one that we started day one was we have the same title as co-presidents Co, c e o, to make sure nobody ever gets confused that they can run to him or to run to me and get a different answer, right? Or that one or the other is gonna override the other. That was the first one. The second one is we make the exact same amount of money no matter. Inside this business, outside the business, if you invest in other things or have, you know, side gig or whatever, that's your thing. But inside the business we, we get paid identically. We never wanted a situation in which one of us thought we were working harder than the other and receiving a difference for that. And so we've maintained that identical approach just to make sure that that never gets off balance. And so pretty much whatever you were gonna pay us, we just split it in half and say, okay, we're just, we're just splitting constantly. 50 50. Number three, we brief believe strongly. And we deal with this with our leadership team as well. We believe in direct one-on-one accountability with somebody that reports to us, and I will never go around anybody else other than my direct reports and direct them. So I believe inspecting, but I ne I don't believe in directing. So if Hunter has direct reports, I'll never direct his, his direct reports. If I have mine, hunter won't direct them. We will inspect, we will have conversations, but I'll never tell'em, here's what you need to go do in your job and how to do it, because they're hunter's direct reports and I don't want to be sending them mixed messages as to those two differences, if that makes. And then the, you know, the other big one really is we, we follow the e o s model to some extent on if you're familiar with e o s, there's always a visionary that leads to strategic vision of the company, and then there's an integrator that helps bring that together. Hunter runs off the visionary role primarily. We're kind of split on that actually on both of us. He's a stronger visionary than I am. Much more of an ideas. And I'm much more of an integrator than he is, but we both have some skills in each other's area as well. And so Hunter runs off visionary. I run off integrator, which actually kind of means, and he said this in the past, so I'll quote him on this. He said that if push comes to shove on something that needs to get done to run the business, he actually defers to me because I know how to integrate it better than he does. Cause I understand all the moving pieces and. But typically if push comes to shove on something that has to do with the strategic vision of the company, I will defer to Hunter because I think he has a better knack for where we need the feeling of where we need to be headed versus than I do. And so we will defer to one another in certain situations depending on if we think it matches the strategy of the company or the tactical approach for the company. Wow, that's, that's a very solid framework. Yeah. So what would be your advice for like, let's say a husband and wife team? where, you know, they, they, they, the, and the difference that I see in a husband and wife team is that they might share some values, but they might also have different ones, right? Mm-hmm. you guys were kind of brought up in the same household, saw the same things, have some of the same beliefs the same values the same philosophy. And, and you can always kind of use that to center yourselves right around decision making or taking action. What do you think someone that, you know, again, it's, it's a husbandman and wife team, so they come from slightly different backgrounds, even though they might still share some values. What do you think, what do you think they can do to, to be able to, as, as you said, it, have these strict rules, clear boundaries. No override. I think that's a harder one than brothers to be honest. Husband and wife because it's it never, you know, at least I go home to my own bed in my own home at the end of each day. If we need a little bit of break from one another, you know, we're not perfect. You know, we're brothers. We get about a tiff about once a year. It's about once a year we get on each other's nerves and we try to hide it as much as possible from our leadership team and resolve it. Right. But, ah, you're gonna, that's not a good one. You're gonna do that anyways with your own brother, right? You know, husband and wife team. You know, I think, you know, with Hunter and I, a good marriage, there's no one person that's in charge, right? A good marriage has differing levels of power moving between the husband and wife at different points in time based on the strengths and their roles in the family, regardless of what those are, right? And everybody has an idea. Idea, I think a strong marriage says I don't have to be strong all the time. My wife can be strong today. And then I'm strong later today because I can provide better value to the family in that way. And that's, that's really how our brother and I work that. And I think that's how the, the business should follow as well for a husband and wife team. The husband doesn't always have to be strong. If the wife's a better visionary, I think she should be the visionary, or the man or the husband should be the visionary. I think they just need to stay in their lane. Right. And I think it'd be better. In those situations for one, to say, Hey, listen, I'm the strategy person. You're the tactical, but you've really gotta stay out of their lane. If you've agreed on those things, like if you stepped back and said, Hey, listen, you know how to run this, be business better than I do, your goal is to then just be the preacher, the evangelist, the strategy person, maybe you know, vendor relationships and be out there in the field all day telling people the story, right? You gotta get outta the other person's way. Who knows how to run the business, because I think that's, I think that's a failure of. Top level leaders as they think they can run the entire business. And they need to realize they just need better team members to run it for them. Right. And that's usually the visionaries, right? The visionaries usually struggle with letting go on running the business versus the integrators tend to want to run the business, but they don't want to preach the business. Right. And they tend to be easier to just let go of that portion. So there's, there's a lot there. You, you need the right partners. You need the right team members, right? You need to have complimentary people to you, that, that causes some pains, right? Because you're gonna see things differently and have different tendencies, but, but there's value because it brings balance as well. But I'll, but I'll, but I'll stick to this one, right? Like, stay in your lane. Stay know your lane. Stay in your lane. So you, you, we were talking about strength finders. And that is definitely one way that you can identify your own strengths and what your lane should be. Have you used any other tools? Strength Finder, being a, you know, really solid one, but I'm curious if you've used other tools. Yeah, we've you know, as a company we've never done Strength Finders. That's not a bad one to utilize. I really like that one cuz it just gives you some simple words. The only problem with that one, there's almost too many words to know everybody's strengths. You can put'em on their. But then you're making sure everybody knows all 56 words, what they mean and, you know, what, what does room mean? Right? And some of those. So I think that's a good one. Obviously a DISC assessment is perfect cuz it's simple. Mm-hmm. you know, you've got four behavioral types. We as an employer, Every employee before they're hired as part of our interview process, has to run through a behavioral analysis that we use. So it's not personality, it's not a test, it's just a behavioral assessment that has portions of the disc analysis in it. So you've got your, your, your, your disc, the D I S C. We also look at cognitive traits and achievement traits, like whether or not you're more analytical or creative or cognitive when you're solving problems. What's your levels of energy and optimism, kind of your behavioral energy side of the business? Every one of us has a profile. And we actually teach and train our managers how to review people's profile when you're looking at interviewing'em to make sure they're the right person on the right seat on the bus, right? So we utilize that as well. We've looked at Five Voices. I don't know if you've looked through the Five Voices out of the uk. I've looked at that one cause it's a very simple approach as well. Ultimately we didn't adopt it just wasn't for us. But we, I really like more maybe of the longer term tried and true methods like the. That have stood the test of time in our, you know, the last five, 10 years kind of fad that have popped up with good marketing. So I'm not sure if you're using one of these, but for our audience shadow Match does what what Preston's talking about. You've got Culture Index, predictive Index, predictive Index, and, and these are all really good tools to, to get exactly what what we're we're talking about here right now. One, one of the ones, one of the tools that I'm, that. I really like is Pat's six types of working genius. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you've had a chance to look at that one, but it really helps consolidate, kind of like behavioral well with, with, with profile personality. In, in, in a simple six, six step. I think we've talked about this in, in in other podcast as well. So know yourself, know your team, understand what your lane should be, stay within it and make sure you have. Clear boundaries of what you've gotta, you've got, you've gotta stay in and then know when and what you have to be deferring on. Right, right. Yeah. So let, let's kind of address leadership like straight on, right? Yeah. Where, when, how did you learn about, like, the concept of leadership or that, you know, you were gonna have to be a leader? Was it something natural and organic or was it something, you know, like that was explicitly discussed Yeah. You know, the, the big question is the nature versus ne nurture, right? You know, are are leaders born or are they made you know, this one's been debated for a few thousand years now, right? This is just natural to humanity. I think, you know, I'm gonna land on somewhere in the middle that says, most leaders that I've seen in the past are always just naturally curious humans that like to ask a lot of questions, and it usually starts with why. Why is it this way? Why? You know, they're, they're just embarking on a path. I think for me I was a very curious kid and as somewhat a middle child of four much to my parents chagrin, I was way too curious in kind of bucking them on the y question on everything. You know, I wanted you to understand the reasoning behind everything. I do remember probably the first leadership thing I went through was here in San Antonio in high school the Rotary Youth Leader. Program they still run it actually through Rotary out at t Barm camps every Martin Luther King weekend. It's called RI r y l A. That was probably the first real leadership program I've been through that I was nominated as two members of my high school class to go to, and really just loved all of the concepts and thoughts they were teaching. You know, even just small, small drills like, Hey, come, you as a group, need to build this. And just kind of watching how you utilize the strengths of others in the team rather than you having to realize that you're not the smartest one in the group, right? And that even though you are competent, you've gotta rely on others to help get it done. I think it started there. And then I think after that for me, you know, I joined other groups. Like in college. I, I joined one that we met weekly to talk about leadership development and leadership skills and bringing in speakers. And ultimately, I think the same trend falls in everything that none of us did this on our own. Every single one of us had mentors or speakers or somebody older than us reinvesting in us teaching, training, coaching, helping mentor. And, and I think ultimately for a good leader, they were more willing to listen to that help and that coaching than others were. And I think that's really one of those keys. They wanted to listen. They were like a sponge. And I think now that I'm getting older, when I look back at some younger people I'm talking to, I can tell those that are really, really just like a sponge. They just wanna absorb everything. They can learn from somebody either higher up in their role or just older than them with more wisdom and. And then there's a lot of I, I'd say the larger group doesn't really care. And I think that's really, if you get back to nature versus nurture, were they made or were they born? I think it's right there in between, right? It's someone saying, I'm naturally curious. I'm really want to absorb all this information. I really want to improve myself. But they have to be, there's a lot of people like that, but they have to be willing to go out, actively hunt it down and tell people, I'm interested. I'm interested, I'm interested, I want to learn, and, and then. You know, for our kids that aren't in situations, we've gotta make sure we as a society are putting'em in really good environments that helps them naturally foster and grow that too, right? Because we don't want our kids being a victim of their own circumstances, and, and we've gotta find a way to help mentor them through that and grow them up in leadership. Excellent. I I love what you're saying. So, you know, leaders are curious. They wanna learn, they want to grow. They ultimately recognize that you're gonna need to work with other people to, to accomplish great things. Mm-hmm. and, and are not afraid of that. And, and there's this, this thing you're talking about where you can feel confident of your capabilities, but recognize that you don't have to do it all by. Right. To me, to me one of the, the big awakenings of leadership is when someone realizes that they don't have to be the smartest person in the room. Right. Where in fact, if you aren't the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Correct. So you kind of realize that early on through these, through these different programs. And I'd say, and if you don't mind me adding there, max I'd, that's the hardest thing of somebody being young. You know, I'm, I'm only 34 years. I was extremely young for our industry as well as for also being an owner and a leader of a business. I think the hardest thing is being young. You're trying to learn what to do and how to do it right? So you're asking the questions why, and it's a lot of trial and error, but you're really just learning what and how. And the problem is how do you reinvest in a leadership team when you can't point them in the right direction? Cuz you really have no. Because you don't have the experience, right? Your age is working against you because you haven't had enough time. And I think that's one of the joys of getting older and having more years and experience and wisdom behind you. It's easier to sit back and say, I understand how to guide somebody in this situation. So now I can have, spend more time pouring into them to develop them and trust them because I know at least You know, we talk about our business being a highway, right? Like I want to throw up barriers on this highway, and as long as my leaders stay within these barriers, they can bounce around all day long. Just don't get out outta the highway, right? I don't need you exiting off. Into a different direction. But if you're too young and you don't have that experience, how do you even know what the barriers are? Right? How do you even know how to set those up with your team? So how you're, you're spending all of your time trying to figure it out so then you know how to mentor and lead people in the right, you know? Well that, that, that's, that's a great conversation. That's a great conversation. Cause there's even some duality here, right? Because you're saying you know, you, you wanna model leader. And you want to have the experience so you can help guide people and teach them and keep them, keep them within the boundaries. But at the same time, you, you've been in this position being younger than a lot of the people that I'm sure that work for the, for the organization. And maybe they've been along this path longer than you, but then again, you had to be the leader for them. And part of your mind saying, well, I have to travel the road before I can teach the road. But then on the other hand, you, you, you're in a situation where you haven't traveled the road. How did you do it? You know, the only answer there is fail fast forward, right? So how fast can I fail at this and can I lean forward when I fail? Right? And I think a really good example would be one of our our CFOs that have been with us for a good 16 years with. First and second J show's family. You know, I'm not an accountant by trade. I've never been a C F O, right? I don't know what we're talking about when we get into subledgers on a balance sheet and general ledger entries, right? I am not have any background in that. And so how do I sit down and discuss these conversations and understand the nuts and bolts of your job so we can even be on the same playing field? And but then also, how do I make sure that. Works with the sales leaders or the operational leaders or the service leaders to make sure that what we're doing in good governments with financial control is also impacting them in the right way. Right. And I would say I didn't do a good job. You know, that's probably one of'em that I, I, I failed fast. By just absorbing as much as I can and just getting into as many details as I can to understand that role and that person's objectives and their experience, which they brought a ton of experience to our company and our team, and had done a wonderful job. But ultimately, you know, we couldn't truly be on the same page because I didn't have the experience to guide this individual and help them where they wanted to go in their future. Obviously, I'm way too. Right. I'm the same age as their child. Right? And so it's, those are hard relationships. There's no right answer, right? There's no right answer for me. And there's no right answer for the CFO F that we had. And and so I ultimately land on, at this point in time, it's fail fast and fail forward, right? So learn from those mistakes, learn from the ability what you don't know, right? And the older we get, the more that I know, the more I realize what I don't know. And how do you then take. And then use that to help develop your current team and empower them, but also make sure that I have clear boundaries around where they're allowed to stray. And if, if you want to stray, then why don't we sit down and talk about why you're gonna go shift our vision in a different direction for your division, your department, or your branch. You know, I, I think this is fascinating because, you know, I believe that every value has a good thing and has some, some, some watch out. So when you're saying, you know, the, again, going back to the leading by example in modeling I think you're the type of person that really likes to know what's going on right. And, and really understand it. And, and you've probably had to learn how to trust people, trust that you've got the right person with the right knowledge and the right skill. Because you can't be everywhere all the time. And, and I think that, if I understand correctly, part of that failing is to say, look, I, I might not know what needs to be known, but if I have the right person, they will, and if I trust them, we're gonna be able to get the outcomes that we want. And it's kind of the same belief that makes you so strong in some places, might be a blind spot in another. And kind of working the process and recognizing that and saying this is how I have to change my behavior to, to, to, to do a better job as, as a leader and ultimately get the outcomes for the organization. And, and that's one of my top weaknesses. That's one of the hardest things to do is to continue to delegate, right? Delegate, but inspect, right? And that is one of the hardest things to do, right? Because ultimately it's hard to. Point somebody in the right direction if you don't know what they do all day. So you need that experience and the understanding of their job and their teams to understand those nuances and reigning yourself back to jump in and help fix it because you know, I don't know who, who says this quote, but you know, ultimately, you know, you as a leader can typically fix something and solve a problem faster. Than someone else, but it requires you about five times as much time to go and invest and develop your people to solve it perpetually for the future. Hmm. So I can do it so much faster. So I wanna shift to that faster approach, but ultimately I'm short-changing the entire company and my team's development by not doing that. And there's one of me, and you know, we view our company like a highway. If I'm a single lane highway. Every issue is now bottlenecking down to me. I would much rather have a 13 member leadership team, and we're a 13 lane highway and every issue is running up and down those lanes. So they can get resolved faster because I think that's the, the death of the company. I think you said earlier when we were chatting offline, that most companies, you know, starve from indigestion, right? Not digestion. And man companies just drown out and starved to death. When single individuals at the top start grabbing all those issues and, and funneling them through them because the whole company's now waiting on them. All of your growth, all of your performance, all of your improvement, all of your profits are flowing through these few individuals. And we you asked about some things that I look at. One article we reread every single year was published by the Harvard Business Review back in the sixties called, who's Got the Monkey? I dunno if you've ever read that article about getting the monkey off your back. And I'll send it to you after this Max, cuz it's my favorite article that I resend to our management team every year, and I probably reread it every six months and I've probably printed it off every three months in a meeting with a manager dealing with this issue. And the concept is, That you know, if you read the article that a manager has been working their butt off all week and they have no time possible and it's Friday afternoon, and as they're running out the door, they have their five direct reports standing out there saying, I need an answer on X, Y, Z, a, B, C. And he says, don't worry about it. I'll come in tomorrow and I'll go ahead and send you all the answers I have so you can keep moving forward. And on Saturday he leaves the family. He's driving into the office and iWay in the office. He sees his four direct reports all out on the golf course, having the best time of their life, laughing, smiling, hanging out. He's headed in the office to go work on what he calls monkeys. Right? And the goal here is that all of the direct reports have tossed up all the issues in monkeys onto his back to resolve for. And he realizes on his way in, I'm doing everything wrong. As a manager, I am making everybody's problem my own, and I'm ultimately slowing them all down from accomplishing their job because they're all waiting on me and I'm aggregating everybody's issues. So how do I turn around and take those monkeys, toss'em back to those employees so they can be empowered, which is really what we're talking about here. It's delegation empowerment. How can I empower them to go take that with their knowledge with. Understanding of the issue cuz there's so much closer to it than I am. I'm not dealing with it all day and how can I just be more of a. To help them understand how to solve that issue better rather than waiting on me so I can free up the whole company to go run, not wait on me to make all those answers. And so kind of a little diatribe there on that, but that's one of my favorite articles I've ever read. Thank you. Thank you. So quick reminder for our audience. Head over to practical leadership.com, practical leadership.com, where you can download the summary keynotes and the monkeys. Get the monkeys off my back or I'll send it to you. Yes. So we'll, we'll have it there for you guys so you can download it and read it and know exactly what Preston is, is, is talking about. So interesting, right? Because I see this, I see this all the time. Kind of like the stage where the business leader built the business on their back with their hard work, with their grid, with their determination, and they can do just about anything better and faster than anyone else, and they've gotta get comfortable with somebody else doing the job slower and not as well as they can. At first, but if they don't, then the organization doesn't grow. Right. And, and, and you gave us a quote. There's one similar that I, that I remember, which is, you know, if, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Yeah. And they kind of go, go, go hand in hand with those. So learn how to make sure that your team is tackling the challenges and being able to coach them and teach them so you could, you could develop them, which takes us to another convers. which is, you've gotta have the right people for that, right? Because if you have people that are waiting for your answers and can't solve the challenges or issues in front of them, you're not gonna go very far. You're gonna get frustrated and you're gonna revert back to your old habits. So how do you, twofold. How do you make sure you have the right people and how do you coach them and train them and, and teach them how? You know, manage these the, the, the, the monkeys, right? Manage the monkeys. You're so right. And this is probably one of my favorite topics to talk about is how do you recruit and hire the right people once you've hired them? How do you train them? Cuz we gotta train them. And then once you've trained them, how do I continuously manage, motivate, delegate, and empower, right? That's the basics of management, right? Those are the keys of your. Ultimately when you get to the high level management role I think for what you're looking at, how do you get the right people in the right job with the right relationship? That's what we say consistently in our business. I'm after the right people. I wanna put'em in the right job, and I wanna have the right relationship with them. And if I don't have all three, it fails. We know constantly you hire the right person and I get'em into the right position. We call it, you know, the right seat on the bus. Right? We've heard that before. But if I don't have the right relationship, everything crumbles, right? If they don't respect my experience, if they don't respect my authority, if I just don't have the right rapport, or we don't communicate on the right ways, or they don't think I care about them, right? There's all different ways we as managers and leaders fail. And the employee fails if they're not open to any of that, right? Where you still don't have the right relationship, it'll never work out. We also see ways in which you have a wonderful relationship with one of your direct reports, and they're the right person, but they're absolutely in the right job in the wrong. What do we do? I gotta get you on a different seat on the bus, right? Because I need to utilize your behaviors, your skills and experience, and a better position for you in the company. And then ultimately, sometimes we'll land on the worst of it all, which is I just have the wrong person. I know one person's the wrong person in the world. They're just not the right person for your business, you don't have the same values, you don't have the same objectives, you don't have the same. Let's go work with that person to have a sit down conversation about how do you get to another company that's a better fit for you, and we're gonna help support you in that. And it's no hard feelings you know, get off to that other company where you're gonna thrive. And so we actually run a very strategic management development program at documentation that we, my brother and I actually developed over five years ago. We follow some really old, old timey methods. So you're gonna hear us say this old fashioned stuff, right? But we're pulling from the IBM training modules back from, you know, the sixties. As they trained their employees. If I can look at some of the greatest companies that ever existed they're not these companies that boom and bust nowadays over a 10 year period. They're companies that survive for hundreds of years, right? And they usually have some tried and true methodologies. And one of those is from b m, and it's this training method. How do I recruit and hire people once I've got'em? How do I train'em? And then how do I manage and develop? And we teach my brother and I teach a whole day seminar to our management group. Anybody at the manager level and above. They all go through it three every third year and we teach one a quarter. So yesterday actually, we spoke on and taught how to recruit and hire to our management team. In Q2 we'll teach how to train somebody once you've hired them for an entire day. And then in Q3 we will teach how to manage and. And then in Q4 we actually teach a seminar on our service standards. We are a service driven business, and so we actually make all of our employees every three years go through this seminar on our exceptional standards for quality service. And my brother and I believe that there's some key roles that we have to fulfill. And one of those is we have to teach our people, and that's specifically our deck direct reports and our manager. We don't use outsiders, we don't use consultants. We teach them because they need to do it the documentation way, and we have some very specific standards below that. They need to go teach their people and train their people. So we actually run the whole curriculum. You know, we teach for about eight hours. It's very conversational, it's very group work. And we walk through these methodologies. They walk away with their management development program binder. And that's one of our favorite ones because we're teaching our people, how do we recruit people with the right core values that are, that documentation follows, and then how do you actually hire them to make sure they fit those core values? Cuz if we hire the right people with the right values, they're gonna go execute on everything else. I can teach'em, I can teach'em how to do the. What I can't teach them is their values, right? That's just who they are. So that's what we're really after when we're recruiting. I, I, I really appreciate that, that insight, because fundamentals rarely change, right? The, the, the fundamentals rarely change. What you put on top of it can evolve and can change. I, I see it in, in marketing. I see it in strategy, I see it in people where there's always a hype on the latest and greatest. But ultimately, if it doesn't have the right fundamentals in place, it, it ends up not working. And if it has the right fundamentals in place, and you can call it and color it whatever way you want mm-hmm. and you're, and you're recognizing that in your, and you're sticking to it. The, the other thing for everyone out there to recognize is, is the priority you're putting on, on working with your management team and developing your management team. And it's not just saying that it's the most important thing, it's demonstrating it by the amount of time and energy you invest. And not saying it would be a nice to have or it'd be good if I could do this. You're, you're spending your entire days doing, doing this at a time where you've got a bunch of different things pulling at you from every direction, and you're still making the right time. You're, you're still making the time to, to invest your energy on the right things and prioritizing that. Well, which is a great example of, you know, you wanna make your culture, your culture come to. Put the time behind it. Right. Put your energy behind it, and if, if you don't, then who will correct? And nope, you'll, yeah. And, and, and ultimately we know how important culture is to scale and you're sharing with us how, look, if, if we don't teach our managers directly right, that the documentation way, then it's, it's, it's going to be diluted as it moves through the. So you're trying to consistently keep it pure at the high level and not saying it's a one and done. Right. I, I see this a lot. Oh no, we had that meeting three years ago. It's like, well, when was the last time you, you know, you discussed your values and made them come to life. So you're saying we are consistently repeating this training and it's, and it's alive consistently in everything that we do. Right? In every quarter it's there. Do you know who learns the most from those. My brother and I, we do, every time we teach it, we remind ourselves how much we failed in the last 12 months on executing on what we're teaching, right? Because we're humans, we're not perfect. We have the best intent, but we have habits that work against us, right? And every time we teach it, we walk away. And while we're actively teaching it, we're saying, man, here's a situation which I could have done this better, right? Because I, I'm, I learned the most because, you know, if you really wanna learn a topic, go and teach it. and we absolutely love it because we teach it every 12 months, the same class now for years. And I forget things. And our people have to go through this like clockwork every three years because we're just, you know, whatever makes us successful, we tend to migrate away from that, right? And so if I was doing something really successful, recruiting, successful people migrate away from things that made them successful. So we gotta re steer ourselves back on track and make sure I get back to what I was. And it's probably one of my favorite days of the year, but my wife knows when I get home that is those four days of the year I'm drained. I don't wanna speak. I've been speaking for eight hours straight and I am done. Right. She always knows, I always warn her, Hey, I've got one of those. And she says, oh, okay. You know, I'll put the kids to bed tonight. Just gimme I, my brain's just gotta refresh. You know? It's, it's initially exhausting. I, I, I bet, I bet. So first thing, Awareness you, you're, you're acknowledging your awareness of what you're good at, what you're not so good at, what you need to do better. And, and that's, to me one of those traits of, of leadership, just being self-aware and I, I, I, I have, don't necessarily love the idea of where we're failing, but rather where we need to do better. Yeah, yeah. But, but recognizing that in being able to put the ego to the side and saying, Hey, we're not. We are not doing this great, we're teaching this, and yet sometimes we fall short. And I think a lot of leaders have a hard time looking at themselves in the mirror and recognizing that and, and sometimes It comes, it, it comes associated with a lot of fear, right? Like, if, if I'm failing and I'm the leader it, it hurts your ego and it kind of sends you in the wrong path. And, and you and your brother are, are approaching it with openness and saying it's, it's not a bad thing, it's the reality. How do we make it better? Mm-hmm. and, and not hiding it right? And, and having it and having it in front. Then revisiting it consistently. That, that really helps. To strengthen it. You know, one, one quick thing that, that I will add. I really believe in a, in a, in a one page strategic plan, right? There's different variations of it that have, it has evolved over the years, but ultimately, Having a printed copy that you, that you have with you at all times, recognizing you of your, you know, of your strategy, your direction, your values, what you're trying to accomplish is a, is a really solid habit. Which helps us just continue to program our brain, right? Cuz we're looking at that every day, every day, every day. And, and it reminds us, so it actually helps us stay the course a a little bit better. So thank, thank you for saying we've gotta teach that and we've gotta recognize it and we've gotta continue to, to evolve on this. There's so many more questions that I have. We're starting to get a little bit short on time, so I, I, I, I kind of want to ask you this. What, what are, what are some things that I haven't asked you about? What has made you a great leader regarding your mindset or some of the tools that you use that you think our. Needs to know about or needs to use. Do you have like a go-to system tool approach? You've already given us a great read. Anything else? You know, I, I, I'll be honest, I don't think I have any, you know, there's no silver bullet there. I think for anybody that I know that's a much better leader than I am every single one of'em has a same similar trait of a relentless. They just love to learn, right? They like to listen. They like to absorb, they like to gather information from different sources. They love to listen to speakers, they love to take notes, right? For me it's just, you know, News articles you know, I, I received five to seven different type of different types of news reports each day, right? And it's, it's, it's highlights. We don't have time to go through everything, but I'm just keeping abreast with what's going on in my city at the state level, at the federal level, maybe at the national level. And, you know, what's going on around the world, right? What's happening today in Turkey, right? And that's one part of it. Just being aware of the world our people are living in, right? What's affecting them and how we're going. I think the others in your industry. I receive about three different outlets on our industry, either weekly or monthly, telling me what's going on in my industry, what's new, what's changing, who are the thought leaders, what are some of their blogs, videos, podcasts and then, then you have the slew of what I would call professional self-help or professional development. And there's just endless. I mean I love Barnes and Noble. It's one of my favorite stores to go to. I get all excited just looking at. And walking in, it's just, you know, I could read all day long every single day and never have time to get through all the material that's been published. But I do know that leaders are relentless learners. Some of my favorite leaders here in town that I've spent a lot of time with is like Judge Nelson Wolfe who not only writes, he also reads constantly, right? I, I bet Judge Wolf works through about eight to 12 books a. Cheryl Scully, our former city manager, is one of the most impressive leaders I've ever seen before. Cheryl was always known for reading. I think it's like 12 to 16 books a month. Right. Just a relentless leader learner. And so for me, you know, one of my things is I read about an hour every night before I go to bed. That's just kind of my most enjoyable time to read. And it just kind of depends. Sometimes it's non-fiction, sometimes it's fiction. Sometimes my mind needs a break, so I'm gonna read that. Sometimes it's professional development. I think just that, that focus on, I'm absorbing information. I'm, if there's a seminar and my industry's hosting or somebody, I'm gonna go join in on that and to just hear and absorb what I can. But, but I'm not gonna take it. All right. I'm gonna take tidbits. That's the most important for me, my business, my family, and my personal. And, and hopefully go execute and form a new habit off of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. So leaders are readers. We, we leaders, we always, we always say that, right? You've gotta be putting new ideas in your mind letting them combine into, into great new Better ideas as, as well. Thank you for sharing that. I, I promised the audience we're gonna talk for, for a second about community, community house. I think it's one of the best kept secrets in town. Can you tell us just a little bit about, about that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I'm, I'm currently the chair of the Texas Research and Technology Foundation. There's a lot going on there. I'll call it T R T F, just to save us some words. T RTF is. Is the acronym. There's a lot going on there. We, we run Velocity Texas, which is our economic incubator. We have Alamo Angels underneath us, which is our Angel Vest program. We have Texas Research Park out west of San Antonio. We have the Merchants ICE and the Innovation District on the near east side of San Antonio. As we're developing out all those areas, As well for research and biosciences. And then we also have community house. And this one's really exciting, something cool to talk about. Community House was formed three years ago by T R T F, and the goal of Community House is we have seen too many businesses. Exit here in San Antonio to outside money and whatever that means. It's, you know, it, it's selling off to Walmart and have all their profits to go back to Arkansas, right? It's selling off to private equity and it's being traded around out there in New Jersey. It's going to a larger regional conglomerate. Ultimately there's a lot of business owners that want to exit their. But want to keep their employees the same. They want to keep their legacy the same, but they don't have a family member to perpetuate down to. Now they might have family in the business, but they're not the right people to take over and are gonna ruin the business, and that's okay. Right. The best thing you can do for your people is put competent leaders in place and make sure that they're gonna keep running your business, hopefully with the same values and direction you've had. And so Community House is an offering now in which you have the ability to sell to Community House, which is own. As a nonprofit. So all of its tax free income for any of the profits owned by community house. So we're not paying taxes on that. And they will own your business and keep it here local. Keep the team in place. There's literally no transition except for the owner, the ability to exit. But as an owner, you're probably gonna want to exit over six months, a year, two years. You know, this isn't in one and done. How PEs gonna run it, where you're gonna come on in, they're gonna strip the whole company. Typically readjust everybody, some everything for somebody else's earnings and kind of rework your company, right? This is a, a good long-term strategy plan. And so if you're listening today and you're interested in something like that, we've got a great offering. Currently today we own Alan and Alan Lumber Company long-term company here in San Antonio, providing lumber to our custom home builders and semi custom home builder. As well as hardware, windows, you know, the full gamut. They own Allen and Allen Lumber Company is our first commuting house company, and right now, I can't announce the name yet, but we are finishing off another acquisition right now for another local great provider in the manufacturing space. And so it's a, it's just a really unique idea. I applaud Randy Herig, the C of T R T for coming up with this idea. I also applaud Larry. Who has been the right hand of Holt Kat and the Spurs for many, many years with the Holt family who generated this idea together and made it happen as a really, really wonderful, sustainable vehicle. I mean, think about this. You're taking for-profit businesses owned by nonprofit to create sustainable money forever, to funnel the mission, the vision, the values, and the sustainability of this nonprofit to help the betterment of San. What a great idea, right? It, it, it gives me goosebumps, right? To know that, that our community now has that option available to them. Where, where can they go to find out more about this? If you go to Texas Research Technology Foundation website, you'll see a big old pop-up for community house. We've got some great actually about a month ago. Great new marketing materials, some videos kinda some vision videos showing how it's, how it started, where it's come some videos about Alan and Alan so you can hear from an owner how he exited and how it's worked since then. And Alan and Alan has grown, I think by a good 35% over that three year period as. In seeing them grow and increase their employee headcount for the betterment of the city. I mean, it's, it's really just a really, really neat and fantastic approach. So the, the proof is in the pudding and the pudding takes straight. Right? Right. So we're, we're seeing, we're seeing the outcomes here. I know you've gotta run to another meeting here soon. So just to kind wrap, wrap up for today. What, what is something fun, exciting cool that you're looking forward to that's gonna be happening here in the next few weeks? Or? Next few weeks or months. Oh goodness. You know, a fun one. I'm not a big golf watcher or golfer. I I don't do well with hitting those little small balls on the golf course, which most people don't. I, I'd much rather enjoy tennis or pickleball where I can get some energy out and go smack it. Right. But one of our major partners with our business invited my brother and I to the masters. Wow. And I'm not a golf guy. I am beyond excited to go see the masters. That is gonna be a blast. They're flying us there. They got a house for the four of us to all stay in, and I get to do the full blown masters experience because that is one of the hardest things to get into. And so I'm excited. I'll be watching golf like everybody else. My mother-in-law asked me, she does not watch golf at all. She asked me if I get to wear a green jacket while there, and I said, I said I know enough to know those are for the players that actually win the masters. You don't wear a green jacket. So she started laughing. My father-in-law laughed at her cuz she didn't know. Preston, thank you so much for, for joining us today. I wish we had another hour. There's so much to learn from you. So, so much value for our audience to get but you, we know you gotta go on to the, to your next meeting, but hopefully we'll, we can do this again. Get get some more of this insight. Well, thank you Max. I appreciate the invite. This was really a joy in enjoy talking today. Thank you so much. It's been fantastic.