As we sipped on Bullet Bourbon, chuckling over memories of tequila nights and DJing transitions from vinyl to digital, our conversation took a deeper turn. We tell you about personal growth and industry evolution, with a special focus on the unexpected connections fostered by our podcast journey. From a LinkedIn message leading to a Dallas meeting, to the upcoming 35th anniversary of BuildX in Vancouver, we're toasting the serendipitous paths that guide our professional and personal lives.
Colin Cox, the prodigy from Electronic Arts who now shapes leaders as an executive coach, is joining us. He narrates his incredible voyage from a government program for teens to guiding CEOs, sharing wisdom on the transformative influence of aligning one's passions with their career. We're exploring not just the soaring heights of success, but also the resilience required to navigate the tech industry's ebbs and flows, proving that sometimes, life's detours can lead to the most rewarding destinations.
We wrap up our chat with insights into the complex dynamics of business management, strategic planning, and the power of living true to company values. Delving into the significance of breaking free from siloed thinking, we discuss how shared experiences, like hiking, forge bonds that can drive a team to achieve common goals. Throughout the episode, we draw parallels between the art of mountaineering and the business world, illustrating the necessity of self-leadership and the courage to face unpredictable challenges head-on. Join us for a heartfelt dialogue that's equal parts nostalgia, strategy, and inspiration.
PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH
FOLLOW ALONG:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thesitevisit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesitevisit
As we sipped on Bullet Bourbon, chuckling over memories of tequila nights and DJing transitions from vinyl to digital, our conversation took a deeper turn. We tell you about personal growth and industry evolution, with a special focus on the unexpected connections fostered by our podcast journey. From a LinkedIn message leading to a Dallas meeting, to the upcoming 35th anniversary of BuildX in Vancouver, we're toasting the serendipitous paths that guide our professional and personal lives.
Colin Cox, the prodigy from Electronic Arts who now shapes leaders as an executive coach, is joining us. He narrates his incredible voyage from a government program for teens to guiding CEOs, sharing wisdom on the transformative influence of aligning one's passions with their career. We're exploring not just the soaring heights of success, but also the resilience required to navigate the tech industry's ebbs and flows, proving that sometimes, life's detours can lead to the most rewarding destinations.
We wrap up our chat with insights into the complex dynamics of business management, strategic planning, and the power of living true to company values. Delving into the significance of breaking free from siloed thinking, we discuss how shared experiences, like hiking, forge bonds that can drive a team to achieve common goals. Throughout the episode, we draw parallels between the art of mountaineering and the business world, illustrating the necessity of self-leadership and the courage to face unpredictable challenges head-on. Join us for a heartfelt dialogue that's equal parts nostalgia, strategy, and inspiration.
PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH
FOLLOW ALONG:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thesitevisit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesitevisit
Gentlemen, cheers, yes, cheers, cheers. Fun Friday, great to be here, cheers. Nice to meet you, colin, nice to meet you too. James, I don't have to be introduced to this geezer over here. He's good White teeth.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:I love the white teeth. Gotta keep him white man. It's pretty good.
Speaker 2:I gotta say yeah.
Speaker 1:Gotta do it. Oh yeah, we have the bullet bourbon. We don't usually drink on the, on the, on the podcast, but we're only having a little bit, you know what man I've been the day and I've been booze free for like ten years.
Speaker 2:I mean booze free. I mean I got have wine with Jan and stuff, like that Crap man. When I dig a sip of this I'm like that's booze. Yeah, oh yeah, that's. That's a real deal. It's just straight rocket fuel for you, yeah it's not simple.
Speaker 1:What do you think?
Speaker 4:of it I love. I love bullet. I love bourbon. I mean, I'm not a big drinker these days either, but if I do, you know, I might go from Manhattan or an old-fashioned. So, you know bourbon's just nice. That's a little sweet yeah.
Speaker 1:I was listening to you. Listen to Megan Kelly's podcast. No her new one on serious.
Speaker 2:No, I found you can get it. Is she a comedian or what? Sir no making Kelly.
Speaker 1:She used to be on Fox. Remember the blonde?
Speaker 2:Okay, no, I don't, I don't know, don't she?
Speaker 1:debated one of the presidential debates. Okay, gotcha. No, she's awesome. Yeah, but she was saying that her favorite thing is tequila, but you put an orange rind in it to take the to sort of the ugliness out of tequila.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay, so if you don't like the tequila note, but yeah, I don't like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah you're like rough right and a little orange peel interesting. Okay, which I'm gonna be doing tonight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 4:I'll have a headache tomorrow With your tequila choices to. I was just in Phoenix, lots of tequila, but you know a nice tequila versus Cuervo which you would drink as a teenager. It's a way different tequila experience, what's the N?
Speaker 1:Yeho. What I mean? What is it? What's the deal with that Like? There's mascals that taste like Band-Aid as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, have you ever tasted that?
Speaker 2:before. No, I haven't, it's not good.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's an acquired taste. I think it maybe it's like a there's a cilantro paradigm to it.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I've only drank like cheap tequila, like you know, in my 20s type thing. Yeah, exactly our Caprice. You remember Skybar?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I remember Skybar, I remember the summer man Remember they'd open up. Yeah, I was on Smythe or Nelson. Yeah, it was on the corner of Smythe and gravel Smythe and gravel, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, skybar man, that was my, that was the place, yeah. I remember I moved here in O3 and went to. Skybar was the first like club I went to in the big city and you made it upstairs.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, How'd you get there? Did you know somebody? Because usually you'd be stuck down there in the second floor.
Speaker 2:Well, they had an age limit there. Do you remember that too? You had to be used up to be 21 to go in there. Okay and okay. So, yeah, I would have been 21. So I don't know, I it wasn't. I used to go there all the time and go up to the top and they'd open the, and they'd open it up in the summer and stuff like that. So, yeah, yeah, it was awesome.
Speaker 1:I've you've. Did you grow up here, Colin? I grew up here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and in 2003, 2003 I started DJing. Oh, no way actually, oh yeah, I started. Djing.
Speaker 1:So you still do, you know.
Speaker 4:I do not, I do not.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna pick it up.
Speaker 4:It's amazing. It's wonderful, I mean, when I was DJing, we were using final records CD turntables like starting to come out Like yeah, it was old school. Yeah, and and yeah. Now everyone uses laptops. But, yeah, if you can get your hands on some old techniques. 1200 turntables, it's just that warm analog sound, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the site. Visit podcast. Leadership and perspective from construction. Your host, james Baldwin.
Speaker 4:Wow, actually we got a special.
Speaker 1:It's down at. Dallas and a guy just hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the favorite connects platform on your guys podcast.
Speaker 2:And we celebrate these values every single day. Let's get down to it.
Speaker 1:As you all know, we often do the podcast at build X in Vancouver. So this year we are there again. So that is going to be on the 14th and 15th of February. Now build X is celebrating your 35th year doing this in Vancouver, so that is quite a milestone for them. So they have completely overhauled their program. They got a whole bunch of new things going on In like last year. For instance, they had 7500 participants, 300 exhibitors, 42 sponsors, 100 sessions, 244 speakers. I mean it's pretty serious. So if you want to be informed about construction in Vancouver, you got to go to build X. So we're gonna be there. We have lots of cool guests lined up. We're gonna be near the VRCA connector lounge with our friends from the VRCA. Yeah, you know, we've had them on. We're going to be talking to them more. We're also doing CLF with them in.
Speaker 1:May. So there's also the shine awards, which is celebrating interior design excellence. Build X is going to be awesome, so we hope to see you there and we will be posting the episodes after we finish recording those exciting interviews. All right, we'll see you there, all right. So we're talking leadership motivation today, because you're the man. Yeah yeah, Colin Robbins.
Speaker 2:Have you guys seen Tony Robbins in person? Have you guys seen him in person? He's a huge guy right.
Speaker 4:He doesn't have like banana hands right, like he is, he's a large human being. I didn't know anything about him really. You know, you hear about him. He came to Vancouver. I want to say this was 2018 maybe, or 2017. Yeah, for a day. So I went down to that and yeah, just a, just a. It's like a rock star, like a rock concert.
Speaker 4:Oh, you know, just the hype and everything hey the hype and and you know, I know we're gonna talk about motivation today. Yeah, I think he's one of the biggest motivators out there, but I Think for a lot of people it doesn't last when you get motivated by someone outside, there's just not this lasting factor. I think motivation comes from within. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1:Well, he from what I knew. So I used to have this coach named Samantha Sargent. Awesome, awesome and actually she was Alex's. Yeah, anyway, we were talking earlier.
Speaker 2:Oh gotcha.
Speaker 1:You're one year late, yeah.
Speaker 4:Some of us showed up on time. Yeah, that's right, you know, but we didn't have to put a time clip on you.
Speaker 3:You're actually you were early, you're right on time yeah there we go.
Speaker 1:But I Got the the Tony Robbins CDs of the ones you would listen to like that yeah and she was telling me that he's king of NLP. So which is? Neurolinguistic program so when he, when he'll say something to the crowd, he'll be like so tell me, have you ever felt like just not getting up in the bed? Say aye, that thing. Yeah that's.
Speaker 1:NLP Okay because it's making you Say yes right. Yeah, he makes you say yes over and over and over again to the point. You say yes to his other stuff. Gotcha Okay he's conditioning you throughout the the seminar right to get used to agreeing with it. I interesting, pretty cool. Yeah, am I right?
Speaker 4:It's, yeah, it is that, and and it's very active. Right, you're up, your, your your high-fiving and hugging people and it's active and loud. Yeah, you know, I went to that and then another one, maybe a year later, but yeah, I just did, just didn't have that lasting factor for me.
Speaker 1:So was it personal power, or at least the giant within, or? I think that those were the two bucks.
Speaker 4:It was. It was none of those. I think he has like a five or six day event. Oh yeah power within. This was, this was the power of success. Okay and I think they had other speakers in the morning, tony Robbins in the for the whole afternoon, so we got a dose, maybe three, four hours of them. It was great. You leave their feeling different, energized, but does it last, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did like the CDs, because Actually, what else Do you know? A guy named Dennis Miller. Do you remember him?
Speaker 2:this guy's like comedian.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, yeah, okay. So he used to have this stand up. He's like. You know. I spent all last night listening to self-improvement cassettes. Now I feel a little inadequate that haven't done up the CDs. Yeah, yeah, there you go, right. So it's like this kind of you know. It always makes you feel like you're yearning for something else. But I have to say that I had those personal power discs and I still remember limiting beliefs, Things that are all about a lot of things are in your head.
Speaker 1:Yeah you put it up your own barriers and you create your own stories, and you have to knock those down in Order to sort of open yourself up to what could be. Yeah, totally so yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean, those were really good when I was in my 20s, I find a lot of limitations are in your head, right Like you make up these stories right of like what I can and can't do and yeah like I could have white teeth, but yeah like if you just yeah, if you just got your shit together and might in your teeth there you know you could be. You could be sitting here with a tie clip with me, man.
Speaker 1:I could you know, I think we're not gonna be able to see you in Whistler. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's right, that's right, yeah, just a couple eyes, yeah you know, I hear about imposter syndrome a lot like not just read like the last year, yeah, and there's a lot. I think that's one of the most common sublimiting beliefs today in people's head, totally.
Speaker 1:Can we just like break that down for a second imposter syndrome?
Speaker 4:for those who don't know what that is yeah, it's this inner voice that tells you you don't belong, You're not good enough to be doing what you're doing. Like who are you to be in this room? Or think you can achieve this? Yeah?
Speaker 2:okay, but it's not even. I find it's what I've seen. It's not even in your personal or your professional life. It's in your personal life, too. You can be like with a partner or a friend or something. I've had friends that have come to me and like, opened up about things. I'm like whoa, like I never, never even thought that I didn't think that of you or no one's judging you, and it's all what you're making up in your head, right of what.
Speaker 1:So so let's just chat about how you guys met, sure, and have you worked with Colin before or are you know?
Speaker 2:No. So, like Colin, I or our bromance started this or like I guess it would have been in the summer. So I actually met Colin through a mutual friend of ours and and someone in the industry, paul Diole, and so Paul had said, hey, you should reach out to Colin. When I joined Maven I wanted to take a look Strategically where the company's at, where we want to go, do some strategic planning and stuff like that, and just asking around in my network Like who's the who's somebody you'd recommend you've worked with and you've enjoyed working with, and Colin's name came up. Colin's name came up through Ram as well, like my, my friends there. So but I think it was ultimately Paul who introduced us.
Speaker 2:And then Colin and I had a, had an intro call over teams and I actually when the way I've gotten to know Colin bit is is through this hiking group that I've got going, and so I had mentioned a call and hey, I got this. This hiking group we meet on Sunday mornings. Colin had mentioned that he lives near Grouse Mountain. I said, hey, why don't you come out? And so Colin came out to that a couple times and we hiked together. You get to know each other and I think you know, that's something we can talk about today too. But like doing things like team building, events like hiking and Productive things where you're getting cardio in and stuff as well, but you're also setting a goal in achieving it, it's a good you kind of start to form bonds with people, right?
Speaker 1:That makes sense.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so that's. That's where I got to know Colin. And then yeah, that's here we are today.
Speaker 1:Here we are today, yeah, nice. So so what? What sort of things did you? Did you give advice to Jesse about, like, do you remember the conversations.
Speaker 4:We had a few talks going up. Michael, the girl's crying going up Sorry.
Speaker 1:Pull all the way in there. There you go. We need to get that big voice, that big.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we had. We had a couple chats, I don't know specifically, but just getting to know each other and then talking. You know, jesse was pretty new into the role at Maven as CEO, so we probably talked through a little bit of that kind of stuff. But in between huffing and puffing going up the BCMC trail or was the grass grind open when we started, or was it.
Speaker 1:I think it was. I think we should see. Yeah, it's actually a CMC, nice, yeah. So let's just talk about you a bit, colin. So give us the Back or give us, like the, the rap sheet. What have you been doing? Since your DNA until today.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so today I'll start there. Go back. Today I'm a solo printer, executive coach consultant. So what is what do I do? I coach people, primarily CEOs and executives. I chair two CEO peer groups in the city through McKay CEO forums, yeah, and I do leadership training strategy facilitation. So those are, that's like the bread and butter. Is those four?
Speaker 1:things Nancy McKay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, okay, nancy McKay founded McKay CEO forums, so yeah, and that competes with sort of Tech in Canada or Vistage. These peer group formats, I found them fantastic. I was a member of one for Probably six, seven years before I became a chair, yeah, so I got lots of value. My career before that was 26 years in tech and video games. So 1993 I started my career at EA Sports, electronic Arts, here in Welburnaby and a lot of people said, well, colin, you don't, you don't look like you've been working for 26 years in the tech industry. I started there at 15 years old, so bit of an orthodox path. I was a good student in school, loved hockey, tore my knee, couldn't play hockey anymore, got depressed, dropped out. So grade 11 stopped going to school, started working at A&W flipping burgers my first real job and what did the parents say?
Speaker 1:when you're like, I'm out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know my mom, a single mom, okay, so she wasn't super happy with that, but it just became really clear I wasn't guys very close.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we were very close, are very close. Okay, and you know, just became clear to her hey, he's not gonna go. So she worked at a nonprofit Burnaby Family Life and they had government sponsored programs to help trouble teens battered women, single moms and my mom said, look, okay, fine, if you're not gonna go to school, why don't you go in this trouble teens program? They'll teach you how to write a resume, they'll teach you some soft skills and and they'll help you find work placement. So you're gonna go get five weeks of work experience. The company will get some free labor and the government program pays you. It's a win-win-win.
Speaker 4:So I'm like, okay, I go in this program and I'm just a temporarily depressed kid who can't play hockey and I'm in there with 15 year old gang members and drug dealers. And I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is not my peer group. What the heck have I done? Yeah, but the the biggest stroke of luck in my life. I wrote on the application form for that program under hobbies I wrote video games. This is 1993, and one of the coordinators came to me and said oh, colin, video games, we had someone in this program before. Go do their work experience at Electronic Arts. Would you like to go do that? And everyone else in this program is going to big O tires and yeah and be sound in retail.
Speaker 4:And I got to go spend five weeks at EA and I was supposed to leave, go back and finish grade 11. I thought, wait a minute. This is the perfect intersection of my passions technology, sports and video games. Why would I go back to grade 11 and learn how to type on a keyboard? Why don't I stay here? So I stayed there for seven years.
Speaker 1:That's cool. So at so 15 going 16 years old. They like what capacity do? What were you doing there?
Speaker 4:I started as a tester. Okay, which is not just playing video games all day.
Speaker 1:Sounds like we're going into one level and be like, yeah, wrong here. Yeah, very, very hate this level.
Speaker 4:Yeah, all day very systematic, you know, but it was fun. I just, I just love that and that was. You know, that was back in the 90s. There weren't, you know, when games were finished and shipped, there was no internet. Yeah there was no patching them.
Speaker 3:The game was you know it's it burned on a disc or?
Speaker 4:cartridge. And that was it, you were done. Yeah so we did some crazy overtime. A lot of the video game industry still does crazy overtime, but you know, I remember my longest shift back then and I loved it. I Went in Thursday morning and left Tuesday afternoon, wow, oh no sleep.
Speaker 2:Four hours on the reception, coach Wow and I loved it and they have a. But they have a whole campus there, don't they have, like they do, new and or was they out maybe back then they didn't back then that was we were at 4400 Dominion.
Speaker 4:Okay, willing it in Canada way. This is before moving to the campus. Yeah, but I remember that was Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. It was the first time we were shipping FIFA soccer on PlayStation, the first ever PlayStation. Oh nice, and it's that Thursday morning. The game has to ship on Tuesday and we've never got saving working on memory cards. Oh geez, like that first PlayStation you had to have this separate memory card to save it. We it was never working in the game had a ship in four days. So you know it wasn't just me. A lot of us stayed and just put in the work to get that thing over the line and it was amazing. I wouldn't trade that experience for the world.
Speaker 1:So that must have taught you the value of hard work and what it means to deliver someone with some pride.
Speaker 4:It taught me that. More importantly, the lesson I remember the most was what a privilege it was to work somewhere you loved and do work. You love Because I observed my my peers at 15 years old and even adults. How many people did I see that just hated their job and they just treat it like a job. And for me I've never had a job like that, where it was just a job. It was always something I'm passionate about, I care about, I'm highly motivated To work at. So that was one of the best gifts there is. Just realizing how privileged that was and to not settle for less after, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I mean you You've gone through this over the last number of years of having that burning thing, of having that satisfaction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally, totally. I think. When I when I first met Colin and he told me that story, I thought I was, I thought that was super cool, just the journey that he's taken to where he is today, right, and so when you and I were thinking what, hey, you know who's some people in your network you think we could chat with on the show, I was like Colin would be at the top my list, right, so I know and I think that you know that this is.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're in construction on the engineering side, yeah, I'm in construction and software side and I think that Collins, you know advice and sage sort of perspective can really add to you know, our listeners, I mean just in terms of Motivation, leadership, you know what they can take away from this because it's universal, doesn't matter what business right so yeah, all right, so continue on. So 15 till and then seven years. So what's that? 22 or 23?
Speaker 4:Yep, yep 22,. You know a lot of 80-hour weeks through there so I missed my young kind of adult that was working.
Speaker 1:We're thinking my math. Yeah On the fly that's really shitty, you can do elementary math.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I wouldn't trade that for the world. So then I left EA in late 2000, right around the dot-com bubble peak, to go to a startup and that didn't work out great. So within I think four months after leaving all the safety and security of EA, the startup Ran out of money. You stop paying us.
Speaker 4:Okay and so now you're your post comm bubble and there's not a lot of tech jobs, there's a lot of tech people looking for work. So I took almost a year off and just focused on myself and absolutely loved it. But I also struggled to get back into a job. You know just wasn't finding a lot of good opportunity there. I tried to go back to EA, didn't work out and eventually Actually, to be totally honest, one of my good friends owned a carpet cleaning business and he said hey, colin, I know this isn't your jam, but if you want something, you want to help me clean carpets for a while. So that you know that hit your ego a little bit. You were this sort of 15 year old at EA and now you're like cleaning carpets at the after the dot-com bubble. So that was short-lived, you know. That was a couple months. And then someone I knew for me was working at a software company. They said, colin, come on in. And I went there and and the story goes on cool and then okay.
Speaker 1:So and then to, to where you are today. There's the middle part of, yeah, reeducation and all that kind of stuff that you did.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. So that company where I started working out, they were a software company headquartered in Oxford, england. They didn't make printer software. Wait, and printer software they're called software imaging. Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, we had this little they did. They did Work with, like the printer manufacturers Rico and Epson, etc. But we also built this tool called ink saver. It's just little Windows system tray app that would intercept your print job and you could save ink, basically. But that company was headquartered in Oxford, had an office in Japan, so I stayed there for In Vancouver maybe four or five years.
Speaker 4:They moved me to Oxford with my now wife, julie. So we moved over to Oxford 2006 and I'm reporting to a CFO. I have no education and I'm thinking I just want to invest in myself and Julie and I are thinking about having kids. And this CFO I'm reporting to says well, colin, we've got this open university, why don't you go do a year-long certificate in management with them? So I did that. And Well, why don't you do a year-long deployment management? After I did that and the open university said hey, colin, you've got all this leadership experience.
Speaker 4:I would became a team lead at EA at 17 years old, so most of my career has been managing people right. So they took all that experience and said come into our MBA program. So I did. That took another two years. So, yeah, high school dropout with an MBA really on or on orthodox path wouldn't change it for the world. And I met someone doing the MBA, met someone at Rackspace, a hosting company you might have heard of Mm-hmm, and this was 2008. So the golden era of managed hosting before cloud and AWS came in and I I left this small software company in Oxford, moved to London to work for Rackspace and just Just an incredible experience learning about leadership, culture, values. It was just an absolute rocket ship when I joined there and my career and my skills just took off like a rocket as well.
Speaker 1:Nice rocket space.
Speaker 4:Rocket space was a good name for it.
Speaker 1:That's cool. So. So now, what was the? What is the most common things that you are Helping leaders with now today? Like, what is the? I mean, do you have a, if you're to look at a diet Venn diagram of, like, where's, where's the opacity? As dark as possible in the stuff that you teach people?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know I have. I have a annual leadership advantage program that's divided in three parts. So I think this is the Venn diagram. It's lead self, lead others, lead the business. Okay and different people need different things. You know I'll coach some CEOs when actually the predominant thing they need is help leading self right. It's the imposter syndrome or it's just organizing themselves. Others, it's leading the business right. They're like hey, I don't actually have a good structure or process for creating strategy and executing it and checking KPIs. Like, can you help with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah and for and what do you? What pro like, what systems you find is good for that, because I've been introduced to EOS and it seems pretty slick. Is that something that you would use for that, or there is there different models on, depending on the industry you're the person's in or like? What does that look like?
Speaker 4:Yeah, the two I know are scaling up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, EOS Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 4:EOS is the entrepreneurial operating system. Yeah, the book for that is called traction on demand right. The book for scaling up is called scaling up. Yeah, and they're, they're both great. They're basically operating systems for how to run a business right, yeah. Yeah, so you know what metrics do you look at. How do you create a strategy, what's your meeting rhythm to make sure you're actually working on things that are important, not just firefighting?
Speaker 4:Yeah and they're both great, though I have a lot more experience with scaling up. We put that in at a demonware, so yeah kind of fast-forward my career. I leave rack space in London, I go to demonware in Dublin Ireland. Demonware is the online studio for Activision.
Speaker 4:Yeah so we're running all of the back-end services for games like Call of Duty, skylanders etc. So we put in scaling up at demonware. But what I've heard other people who use EOS is it's a little bit like scaling up light. It's a little bit easier, more approachable. You could run it with maybe a smaller team.
Speaker 1:Gotcha.
Speaker 4:So if anyone's listening here and thinks, oh, I'd like a blueprint for how to run a business, right, if it's smaller, I'd invite you to maybe check out EOS, first Gotcha, but larger, maybe scaling up.
Speaker 2:But they're both great and and for clients you have in the construction world. Is there one of those, is there one that's preferred over the other? Is it more, like you said, based on organizational size, that?
Speaker 4:yeah, size seems to be the bigger. Okay, the bigger thing. Right, so any like BC. 90% of the businesses here are 10 employees or less. So if you're a listener here in BC you know maybe in around that size probably EOS it might be easier to implement than something like scaling up Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Have you heard of the RACI? Yes, we have that for all of the Essentially. Have you heard of this? No you basically take all of your job functions, yeah and then you, you, you classify them of who is responsible, who's accountable, who needs to be informed and who needs to be consulted. Right, yeah, that's the acronym for it. Yeah, so it's basically you know, I've got, I've got a whole bunch of informed. There's some stuff I'm accountable for, right, you know, revenue, or investors or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah and then Actually it's cool because it breaks down every function of the company interesting because I'm used to using that on a project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like on from a project perspective. But I yeah it's interesting to use it on from a business perspective, like for an organization.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, and what's nice about is it? It's, it's really. I Think the informed and consulted is a bit Too nuanced, almost because I'm like what's the difference? But you know the difference.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me, tell me there's a there's a big difference and and there's big value in understanding it, because, look, a lot, of a lot of the issues people face are people issues.
Speaker 4:Yeah mostly right and and you think about stakeholders who aren't considered. It's a big thing, yeah right, like hey you, you, you came up with this decision but you never thought about how it affected me. Now we got problems and trust is breaking down. So in the race C model, the eye in the sea is I Is who should be informed. It's one-way communication you get no voice, you get no vote, but we need to inform you of what's happening, whereas the C is who's consulted. It's two-way communication, with being consulted, you still don't get a decision-making vote in our in what we're doing, but your voice gets heard, right. And so a lot of the times, people that should be consulted are treated like they're just need to be informed or not Consulted at all, and it creates all kinds of problems. So just being able to think through big decisions or plans, how does it affect people?
Speaker 2:and let's make sure we consider who should be informed and consulted totally well I think that's important, important from the relationship side, to that that people feel that they're heard or they understand right, because you go forward with something and somebody doesn't. Even if they have an idea that you're not going to necessarily consider, they still want to be, they want that to be heard, right. So yeah, very much.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, and look, I think some people want to die on every hill. Yeah, right, like it doesn't go my way Like I'm just gonna throw my toys out of the pram. I you can't. That's like lighting the tail, wag the dog, yeah. So with consulting, it's great to hear those voices. What I found is look, if you got to Explain about a change or a decision, one of the best questions answer is why. Why is this happening? Yeah, that's really what most people want. Answered is why and how does it affect me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, how does it affect me, as I find is the big one?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, those, those two, and they get overlooked a lot and you can't just say it once. You got to say it multiple times. So people get it, and some people Really struggle to get on board. They have to get their own way, but others they get it right there, like okay, you had my, my voice is heard.
Speaker 1:This is the why I can disagree and commit a lot easier now, because I know why you made that decision Right so in order to make that work well, you obviously need a set of values and how we do things around here like a playbook. Yeah and because otherwise that could just be a rat's nest or a hornet's nest.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I think yeah, two things we could talk about here. One is company values, yeah, and the other is is like a team charter. So you know, sometimes I've helped some executive teams come up with that and it's it's different from your values. It's just a set of behaviors this team creates that says this is how we're gonna succeed together, right, and it would be things like hey, we're gonna consult each other when we should be, we're gonna have the courage to face conflict when we need it, so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:I think something that that, that that we have in the construction industry, especially On site, would be something like the builders code. Yeah, right, the builders code pledges really, like that. It's like a team charter of like how are we gonna treat each other on a job site, how do we approach conflict, how do we approach bullying, all that kind of stuff, right. So I think that's something that would be very applicable to our listeners in construction, right?
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, totally so. When it comes to there's a company having like a credo, ethos, you know tagline, that maybe even is even public-facing, something they have to live up to, how does that dovetail with values? And then you know, sort of like how putting values in action I mean a lot of these things are the same words and you see them on this it's the same stuff. I mean, I used to do this when I was doing branding, because part of your, your brand values are part of an extension, or your corporate values. So you know, for how does that have you come up against? This sort of that doesn't make sense if this isn't there and that like, how does that sort of block and tackling work?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, vision and values together. The best way I can answer that is is give the example of rack space back in the days of managed hosting the golden days, golden era of managed hosting back around 2008, 2012. We had it so right. The vision was to be recognized as one of the world's greatest service organizations. I Was touring a friend from Canada around the office and it was all open floor. Even the GM Sat at a pot of desks.
Speaker 4:No offices, everybody had their full country flag hanging above their desk and in London, you can imagine how diverse and colorful and vibrant that is oh yeah.
Speaker 4:I'm touring around, she says, wow, this place looks amazing. What's the vision here? I stopped the next random employee in the hall and I asked them and I knew they would say it to be recognized as one of the World's greatest service organizations. Nice, the reason that worked? It was tied to the strategy of rack space. Right, rack space was white glove service. If you want the lowest cost hosting provider, we invite you to go to our competition, but if you need white glove service and you're gonna pay a premium, come to us. So the the vision was all about supporting how we win in the market and when you have something simple like that that you can measure. You know, every town hall, every monthly town hall, which were called open book, very transparent culture. The first number the GM talked about was net promoter score. How do we know we're winning and succeeding on this mission of being recognized as one of the world's greatest service organizations? Yeah, we compared ourselves to Ritz Carlton, not the hosting industry, because Look you ever. You know I call the telecoms company.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I tried to get. Service is not a high bar. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So that was the vision side and and worked really well. Everybody loved it. The values were done so well also at rack space and we had values. I still. I posted about this on LinkedIn Last month got lots of engagement from people who haven't worked there in a decade saying I still believe in, resonate with those values.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice, yeah, was that the one that the posting you did with their flag, right? Is that a different one, different one? Yeah, both about rack space, that's right, I did the flag.
Speaker 4:Everyone signed my flag when I left and I still have it in my backyard office in North.
Speaker 4:Van yeah, but the values just to talk about what brings values to life, because they're all words on a wall. Right when I onboarded at rack space, we were growing super fast. I think there were 20 or 30 people in my onboarding week and we had an hour session on the values, where someone came and described the values, talked, and it was right before lunch and they said they said this, they, they put us in little groups and they said okay, you three, you have the value, fanatical support and everything we do. We want you to go out and find a random employee You've never met or talked to before and get them to tell you a story about that value being lived and then come back and tell all the rest of the new hires and the stories that came back blew your mind.
Speaker 4:Oh nice and you're like, wow, these are not words on a wall, right, right, they're lived, right. Yeah they're lived and also tied to strategy. Right, fanatical support and everything we do. We went on strategy. We have to compete that way, right, right.
Speaker 1:So for Jesse in your new role, yeah, like you, I mean, you've been having to listen to other people for a while, yeah, now you're the guy that's right.
Speaker 1:So Question for you, colin, and maybe this can give some shed some light to what I'm sure that you're going through, probably Is that how much of the Corporate values are an extension of the leaders values as a person, because the person is a total douchebag and you're like well, that's how people treat each other around here, because that's how that person treats everybody, right, the values you know could be words on a wall, as you said, not lived, etc. So for Jesse and myself Obviously our values being good people, we think we know, we're considerate to people, all those kinds of things how much do those flow down? Flow down, you know, via gravity, to the corporate values for us to even be able to live them?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think there. I think there's two camps here. One is what are the actual values that are being lived, if you just observe and are honest about it, and the second one is what are your aspirational values? So a lot of leaders might talk more about aspirational values. No, we should be transparent. We should do this and look with, with leadership, it's not what you preach is what you tolerate. So you can have a value that says we have a culture of excellence here. But then if you, if you don't hold people accountable, if you tolerate missed goals and you don't say anything, then actually your culture is not one of excellence, it's. It's not what you say, it's what you tolerate, right? So you have these. What are the real ones that exist? And then, what are your aspirational ones? Sometimes they're not aligned. I find founders will often have a really good grasp on what the the values of the organization are. You know for Jesse, for you, I mean, you came in six months ago, so I don't know how that works out with with you and your experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know it's interesting because part of what, when we had originally met and we did do some strategic planning we I took a look at our values, not not I, we as a management team, and Maven took a look at our values and Really redefined what they are and part of the metric we use for each other and people that we bring on board, as do they live and model those values. So I would say that at this point, they're not aspirational like they're what's happening right now, but I think that's probably part two of when we do. Our strategic planning for 2025 Is talk about where do we want to be in terms of? Well, I'd like to check in and are we, have we modeled and live these values that we Assigned a year ago or that we that we put together a year ago? And what is? Where do we want to be?
Speaker 2:Because we, like our vision is to is to have 50 million dollars in revenue by 2033 and also deliver at continue delivering excellence, be known as a leader in owner's rep with utility and municipal infrastructure Within western canada and western us. I mean, the next step for us is to go south. So I think that the values that we have put together are. I agree with what you're saying. It's what do I think the value should be, but also collaborative Strategic planning with my management team and that what do we feel we can actually model and live like what?
Speaker 1:let's be real here, because I you don't want to be phony, that's yeah, yeah, like listening to you guys and and and.
Speaker 2:Keep talking about having up on a wall. I totally agree. I've worked at organizations where you have values up on a wall and you know it's all phony baloney.
Speaker 2:Yeah and no one believes in them. And I like what Colin was saying, how you could grab somebody in that organization and say, give me an Example of this and they would be enthusiastic and tell you a great story, I think. I think a lot of us in a lot of organizations would struggle if we just randomly grabbed one of our team members and said, hey, tell me about this value or what's our vision like. So I think that that that is a real, a real example of as a successful organization living their values and people buying into it and believing it and being enthusiastic about it.
Speaker 4:Right yeah yeah, stories bring values to life. Totally, totally. That's the biggest thing I could share there so with the, the sort of tenure of.
Speaker 1:You know, the average time somebody spends at a company by the time that they've completely adopted and are living and breathing is often when they're also In the time they're looking maybe somewhere else or like. So Having those values be very sticky and very like the stories are really good because it gets people that kind of you know, pull, pull themselves out of their Thoughts of all, I could go to another job and actually refocus them what they're doing now and have some more meaning. So what is the? Is there some kind of a strata of connection between income levels and people being engaged in values?
Speaker 4:I don't know from my experience, I think you know, I think people like we all want to be part of tribes, right, like that's pretty well documented. And when you find, when you find yourself in a culture with people with shared values, it's, it's phenomenal. I think when you find yourself in a place with disparate values, it ends up being really difficult to have longevity. So I haven't seen any studies on this, but I would. I would imagine there's a correlation with more longevity, staying somewhere and being in a place where you have shared values with the organization that people you work with. I totally agree, I think, from a retention standpoint.
Speaker 2:I mean something that everyone deals with. I mean especially what I see in engineering construction is Recruiting is a whole challenge. Recruiting is a whole challenge, but then actually, when you get the retention is the other part?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you get the right people in, how do you keep them around? Yeah, and I, and you know, coming up in my career, I know there is nothing more repulsive to me than A leader saying out there saying something when you know that that's not reality. And I think that when you can get people to buy into values and and that you model them as leader in your leadership team models them, but even the most junior person in the organization models them as well you really get a sense of belonging and, like that you fit in.
Speaker 2:Yeah because if you don't feel like, if you feel like you're a square peg going into a A round hole and it eventually you're just going to get tired and move on, right. And so I think this day in age, especially with more junior folks, they really want to see you model. What is your edi policy and what is your work from home policy and do you really support work, life balance and and people with families at home and all that kind of stuff? Right? Because if it's lip service, people are going to jump ship, right.
Speaker 1:Right. I got a question on when you say we're all like, you know, we're all In these tribes, and then If you add ism to the end of it, it's suddenly an icky term, like if you could say we're all tribes and some yeah, that's tribalism. People's like, well, I don't want to be tribalism, that's terrible, but isn't that the same thing?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's really strange. I remember you know what comes to mind when you say that is we. I was at a place where we moved offices and we were moving from sort of two different buildings into one and we're trying to map out what's the optimal floor plan and layout to to encourage teams to work well together, and not just within teams but teams and other teams. And I remember thinking in the time like the best thing is just a giant football field where everybody's on the same floor. Yeah, uh, because we, we hear and we talk about siloed thinking all the time. Right, and siloed thinking, you know, part of that is is it's kind of that tribalism gone too far where it's like I'm here to protect my phyphdom and all I care about is marketing or operations or engineering or finance. I don't care about all the rest of your problems. Yeah, and that's not good, because these groups have to work together to achieve common goals. Right, and it's one of those things you know, for anyone here on a leadership journey thinking about Progressing through your leadership career, the more senior you get typically, the more you need to bust out of siloed thinking, because you know you're sitting on the executive team of a company. You can't just be there representing marketing or engineering, you need to represent the whole organization and think about how these pieces work together.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so you know, one thing we talk about is I think this is from Pat Lynch Oni's a great book called five dysfunctions of a team. Yeah, really great read on on on team performance and I think there's something in there about who's your first team and who's your second team. And I'll ask that of executive team. Sometimes I'll say, look, you're all here, you all have a function you run, but is that your first team or is this executive team? You're on your first team and it's not a universal answer from people. Now Lynch Oni, I think, really believes look, your first team has to be your executive team, because if you're putting the needs of your fife, dem or function or silo first, then we're not getting that cross-functional leadership, we're getting this sort of blue on blue fighting in the executive boardroom.
Speaker 1:So does this come from? Like human nature, Like typical, like human dynamics, of where Even everyone says hunter-gatherer, like going back to those times when everyone had to Um, bifurcate every kind of function that went on in a tribe. You had X-men going out to hunt, the other people coming and making sure the place was orderly and the other people getting milling rice or milling grain or there's all these different functions that go on, and then you have people who manage those groups of people and that's kind of like a company at that point right. So it's like a. So is this ingrained in us to live that way, behave that way?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think you're onto something there. You know we think about conflict, right, there's something I heard recently I'm struggling to remember it exactly but you know you think about all the conflict in the world today. There's conflict between countries or conflict within countries, and you know, if there wasn't any conflict anywhere, where are you going to find the conflict? You're going to go to your family, yeah, so there's like there's always something about. There's definitely a tribe somewhere. But where does that demarcation line end, right? So? But there's a reliance on different.
Speaker 1:you could call them, there'd be celebrity jobs within the let's just go back to. You know there would be the I guess, the celebration of they're going out to hunt. And what did they come back with? Is there a curiosity and excitement about because there's an element of surprise what happens at the camp or the, whatever you call it, the town or whatever you would call?
Speaker 1:it or where they're residing is, is that you kind of see it's all open. You kind of see it's all open anyway. There's no surprises, the same stuff going on. But yet if they went out and killed, but there was no fuel to have the fire going, they didn't have any preservatives. The kill would die if they weren't able to cook it in time. Right, so the lower, less celebrity job was just as important, because the celebrity kill wouldn't be able to be eaten without that. The celebrity kill wouldn't be able to be eaten without that lower echelon of you know a function within the tribe, right? So is there parallels between that? Now?
Speaker 4:I see them, I see them. The classic one I see is people in support functions. You know, in my career I worked in, I worked in IT at some point right where you're basically supporting people internally like a help desk. Yeah. And you're just a. It's a thankless job. A lot of the time, right when I have something wrong, I need you and I'm complaining at you all the time. When I left and when I went to Rackspace, I was leading a frontline support organization there, but we were the product. It's the same work.
Speaker 4:We're like managing servers, fixing things for people, but we were the product and we were treated differently, right. And I've seen and heard that in other organizations, where support staff feel like second-class citizens, yeah Right, and that they provide such an important role and it's something that you know. I see like, if you're, if you're someone who's not in a support function, if you're in, you know the product or you're in that celebrity type of role, yeah, I encourage you, treat the people in support functions with a lot of respect.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Because they do a great job for you.
Speaker 2:So many things dangerous is that if you let, if you let your role dictate kind of how you approach people, your ego and everything else that can get you in a lot of hot water, right, and I've seen that and I think that that's where people that I look up to and that I see that are successful, they're humble, right, and they they have realized what we're talking about, that everyone does play a role. And maybe you're over here doing this and I'm over here doing this, but just like your example, well, if I bring home this big buffalo for us to eat and there's no one to cook it or preserve it or anything, then it's just going to rot out or do the job.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah exactly or do the work Exactly?
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah. It's, um when I'm we can sort of chat about this a little bit, but I find that there's we're in a strange time right now where there's this magnification of the haves and have nots you know, because it's sort of the middle class is kind of shrinking and you know the, the wealth gap, or I've already, I've already you know how are we going to label that.
Speaker 1:But what we're seeing now is that, in order, those in power are seeing have you heard of this? The rise of the men in Jirio class. No, okay, so this is this, is this concept of um, in order for you could just call it a king or a queen, for instance, owner of a company, ceo, whatever it is in order for them to, to, to continue to collect their million, two million, whatever dollars that they make, um and obviously way more than that and other companies, bezos, all those guys, they need everyone to do their thing in order for them to collect their check. And the rise of the managerial class is essentially this when they all get together and the mob says, no, we're not doing this, because you know, maybe the values are are not aligned or, uh, the company hasn't kept up with inflation or pressures of um. A perfect example is you know, if, uh, city of Vancouver, you want you get your property tax done and you use you, you feel like saying to the city, can you fix like a bunch of stuff, and they don't. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's what that would feel like, Right, it would feel like I don't want to pay my taxes. But we get, you know, find if we don't. Right yeah. People just leave companies, yeah, or they come together and they say, no, you clean that up, other than we're not doing our thing. So what do you think? This rise of, uh, the, that managerial class kind of pushing upward, saying we're not going to, you don't get to have your life anymore unless we're happy?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's super interesting that another trend I'd relate to that is is a population right? Yeah, so you know we're in an we're in an extended labor shortage for the next decade. Uh, there's boomers retiring. There aren't enough younger people to replace them. So how are we going to fill that need? Immigration is part of it, yeah, I think. I think innovation is another part of it, especially for Canadian organizations. Uh, a lot of Canadian organizations are lagging behind U S organizations and others in in innovation. So, going to a factory and seeing just humans doing things, I think, I think we're behind there. Automation innovation yeah.
Speaker 4:So that's a big part, but there there just aren't enough people. So I think that creates a power shift. Where I mean most of my life and career it's been an employee employers market. They have the power, yeah. Yeah. We saw through COVID it really shifted like 2022. Oh yeah, 2022 was hey. Look, if you're not happy in your job, leave and go get at least a 10% bump wherever you want. Yeah, everybody needed people. Right.
Speaker 4:And we saw that reverse. You know 2023 and even early 2024, there's been a lot of layoffs in the tech industry, so I think the power is sort of shifting back and you see it with things like work from home. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Where I think a lot of leaders were very reluctant to be directive with their work from home policies, yeah, and I saw a lot of it shift last year where it was a lot more directive like come in three days a week or come in five days a week and if you don't like it, go work somewhere else.
Speaker 2:That's right yeah.
Speaker 1:But doesn't like work from home, only really work for like A and B players.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think so yeah.
Speaker 1:Otherwise it's just not working.
Speaker 4:No, I mean, if you have a C player, they're probably not doing a lot of work in the office. They're definitely not doing a lot of work at home. That's right. That's right.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the room for development for a C player is limited at home too, because when I look at even myself in my career and what I learned being in the office around the water cooler, running into people in the hallway and just kind of learning through being there, I think when you have somebody that's at home, that's maybe not performing, and then if they're at home as well and there's distractions, they're not interacting with people. It's just a recipe for disaster, right?
Speaker 1:So the question is is work from home a corporate virtue? Is it an ad? Is it like a yeah, you can do this because we're a great company and we want to position ourselves as, or is it like? This is the part that I find this is really hard to map. Is that?
Speaker 1:Not everybody understands how the companies make money? Like we can slice it a billion ways, but if you don't understand the pure economics of how a company works, like there needs to be a multiple on time in order to convert into dollars, that's right. If people aren't producing, you're not getting that. And if they're doing it in their pajamas or barely doing it and doing their laundry half the time, like part, we can get into this part, because I find this quite interesting is that you know, jesse always is well put together, tie clip, immaculate, all the time, but it's his ritual. You can tell. He gets up in the morning, probably has a thing he does, and he gets ready for battle every day, and there's something to be said for that of getting ready for battle. That's what work is. It's called work for a reason, and I think we've become more and more of a company. I think we've become a bit soft. We've become a oh, what about me? Well, go and start a company then.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, I definitely think there's a bit of softness right. I did a Peloton ride a few days ago and the instructor Robin Arzon, it was a 90s hip hop ride. Oh nice.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 4:And she said this the song is from back in 1991, when no one cared about your excuses. You did a post about that today.
Speaker 2:I saw that. I saw that. Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 4:It resonated because back in the 90s you'd hear suck it up by a cup and I think the world has progressed a lot. It's a lot safer for men to talk about feelings. It's a lot safer to talk about mental health. It's a lot safer to say you're not okay. There's a lot of positive that's come from that and my point in that post today was who doesn't care about your excuses? Are the scarce resources you covet yeah.
Speaker 1:Ooh, that's good.
Speaker 4:If you want, we live in a Vancouver. This is an expensive real estate. It's not the only place. You talk to anyone in any major North American city they're not saying oh, it's cheap here, that's right. And so if you want to live somewhere that's attractive and central, you're competing for a very scarce resource. That's right. And if you're not hustling right hustle culture gets a bad name today Some places if you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming back in on Sunday, right, yeah yeah, right.
Speaker 4:No one's forcing anybody to work in places like that, but who are we to say that's bad If that's what you want to do, if you want to go work in an investment bank on Wall Street and have that experience, go nuts.
Speaker 1:if that's what you want to do, but this is what I'm getting at Are these actions as companies? We do it too, so I mean, it's not like a lot of our staff work at home, etc. But the question are we doing this because we feel we have to? Do we truly? When you say living the values, is that really or are we just placating?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think I see both. I talked to some CEOs who have hybrid or fully remote workplaces and they're not placating. They're like, hey, on top of my metrics, we're succeeding, we're fulfilling clients' needs and all this and I'm happy and it's working. And then I know others which are like I'm worried about losing people, so I feel like I have to offer flexibility or I won't have work here. So I see both.
Speaker 1:Like one thing that I always ask when someone's like hey, working remotely, I'm like, what's remote? Look like. Like, do you have a good monitor? Like, do you have a keyboard? Are you hunched over your coffee table trying to do what you would do with two screens in your face? Yeah, At the office, that's right, you know. Like you don't have. It's like if you want to win a cycling race, you can't do it on a tricycle. Yeah, you just can't. I know it's somewhere else, but you're on a tricycle. The pedal, the shafts on the cranks are only so long, yeah, right.
Speaker 4:So you can't get far, that's right.
Speaker 1:So it's like, if you can do it, well, but I just I don't know. I mean, I think, have you heard of this paradigm of the meaning vacuum? Have you heard of this? No. Recently there's this a lot of podcasters are talking about the meaning vacuum of the fact that religion is at an all-time low. I think it's been a 70% decrease over the past number of years, which is huge.
Speaker 1:It is huge, yeah, so when people don't have anything to believe in, we now have to fill it with something else. Yeah, right, so we have to fill it with meaning of our job, to fill it with meaning of who we are, our identity. Our job is a huge extension of our identity. I was talking about the barbecue session, which is you go to a backyard barbecue and or a patio at someone's house and you have the small talk yeah, yeah, you know, it sounds like you hear it. Hey, so what do you do? Extension of the identity, boom right there.
Speaker 1:Right, it's the barbecue talk. So if you say, well, I work at Tesla. If you're like, oh really, or I work at Amazon, oh, what do you do? Or if I work at, like you know, smuzzle Widget Company, they're like oh, there's no cashier, yeah so. I mean, this extension of the identity is really becoming rampant in terms of what someone's work-life, work-life balance, who they are, how they can virtue themselves to other people with their social credibility, is all wrapped up in us trying to run companies. Yeah, yeah, and it's a shit show, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, totally Because we got to do it all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's so dangerous to let that define you too. I find, right Like, I've got friends that have been in roles. They're hey, look at me and everything else doesn't work out. Well, they're crushed right. Or now, who are they? What do they do? Like it's. I think you need to really have that line in the sand of who you are personally, who you are professionally. If you can mesh those two together, that's great, but don't let that define you.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That's where I've seen failures, right so.
Speaker 1:But I mean, when I look at a guy like you, I go OK, well, you got your shit together.
Speaker 4:I try.
Speaker 1:So not everyone's like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, true.
Speaker 1:So I mean, you have the good gray matter between the ears to be like, yeah, you can't mix these things. I got to be this guy here and this guy here and that's because you're intentional about your life, right? A lot of people are like on ice, slipping everywhere. Yeah, without skates, right I mean it's like so maybe, colin, like, how do you have these, some of these conversations at some of your clients these days?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah definitely.
Speaker 4:I mean, some of the conversations will be sort of post-exit, right, Like someone sells a business. That's like that was a massive part of my identity. What do I do now? Right Now, the headspace is a lot more about meaning and purpose beyond my identity in that organization, right? Yeah, you know one thing I did I was young, I'd left EA right that hide of the dot com bubble.
Speaker 4:I went to Tefino, I went to Pacific Sands on my own for a retreat of one, and I had a book with me. I had Stephen Covey's Seven Habits book.
Speaker 4:OK, and there's a chapter in there about begin with the end in mind, and it's all about vision Right, and I went there not really knowing what I was doing, but I came out with three things that, 24 years later, still are my North Star. It's I want to build a strong future for my family, I want to help other people grow and I want to have fun along the way, and that's been my North Star for choices, personally and professionally. In fact, like I spent 26 years in tech and video games, why did I leave there? It wasn't exactly tied to my North Star. Gotcha.
Speaker 4:And I noticed about myself look, I'm more drawn to people in leadership. What would it be like to design a life where actually all I did was help people grow Right? And so I played the long game with that and intentionally left corporate life and the gaming industry to be a coach, consultant, sure, and I love it. So I feel like I have that intentionality and I feel like my work and my life are integrated. Being a solo, you have a lot of discretionary time on how to do it. But what I've learned, like I talked to a friend who said, colin, you're the most intentional person I know, and I've realized actually a lot of people are not intentional about things like that.
Speaker 2:They've got to fall into it. Is that what you mean? Yeah, it's OK, you have your shit together too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm curious about you guys Like how you're intentional Like.
Speaker 4:I'd just love to hear you guys comment about intentionality as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's it. I'll tell you what For me. I think I had my idea of what let's call, like your term, like North Star, what that was, before I met my wife and then, once I was with my wife, then I having a baby, and that changes. So I think that, for me at least, that North Star has changed. But I think it's OK.
Speaker 2:Your meaning of success can change, but I think your core value is still like for me. I share the value with you of family. That's always been something that's core to me, and before I had my own family, it was like my parents and that side of my family. And now that I have my own family, it's like when I make decisions, how is this going to impact my family? How is this going to impact my ability to spend quality time and be present?
Speaker 2:And I think that for me, that's something that I've struggled with taking on this role I'm in now, too, is that there's so many things I want to do, but you need to be intentional about where you spend your time, where you're going to get the biggest bang or return on your one minute in, what do you get out of that? But also, are you going to go home at night and be totally burnt out and just fall down on the floor. That's no good either, so I'm definitely not the person to give advice. I've struggled without myself, but I think I've got a formula that works for me. Now I don't know, james, what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:I struggle with it because every time I think about being intentional, I think I am default that way.
Speaker 1:But I'm 52 now and there's a bit of nihilism that comes in. What is this all for? And it starts to happen when you get a little bit older. You go, ok, what's after this? And then if there's no evidence and obviously if you guys are religious, take this for the grain of salt. But for those who are like, if there's no trophy ceremony, I get to look back and be like, well, james, good for you, you did this and this and this it's just black and I don't even know.
Speaker 1:I'm there because it's so black, because I can't even tell, and what does all this mean anyway? And so that part makes me sort of temper. All of my decisions with things matter, but don't get too caught up in it, because if you do, I think that's what the epiphany people get when they go to space they're out in the blackness and you see this little blue and green ball there. And they're like oh my god, why do we care about we're having bourboned? Is this cut crystal? I don't know if it is.
Speaker 1:This minutiae that we focus on as humans is this are we missing something? So when we talk about that meaning vacuum or religion going to like there's a lot of nihilism going on, so a lot of people are very uncomfortable.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know another angle I think about on that. I was coaching someone in the marine industry many years ago and they were telling me a story where they're on their client's $20 million yacht and their client turned to them and said I feel dead inside. Oh jeez, and yeah. That was my reaction. Wow, and I've gotten really curious and I asked my client. They're like well, yeah, this person basically sacrificed their marriage and their health and their family all for career and wealth. Right?
Speaker 1:And that's how they feel.
Speaker 4:And now they have this prize, this yacht and they're standing on it and feeling dead inside, totally so since then I've always asked high net worth individuals what is going on here? Do you know what I hear? I don't hear. Oh wow, I hear. Yep, that's kind of the standard.
Speaker 2:Oh really, yep, Jeez.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So what I think about there? I think about two things. I think about success and fulfillment and success. One of the problems I think prevalent in the world today is we're chasing other people's definitions of success.
Speaker 2:Totally Instagram and everything else that's going on, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:So I think chasing your own definition of success is the better play. But even success, it's ephemeral, it's fleeting, it's temporary, that's right, you get a new house, get a new car. How long does that feeling of success last before it's your new normal?
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, days, yeah, right. So it's just this never-ending hamster wheel. It's the hedonic treadmill that you're on, and so for me, I look at it and it's like sure, set goals, get promoted, like, get bigger jobs, bigger houses, all that kind of stuff, get boats if you want it. But be mindful that that feeling of success is temporary. So for me, the better game is fulfillment, which is doing loving what you do every day, yeah. And if you can design a life where you love what you do every day, I think that's yeah. I think that's a better thing to chase than these other people's definitions of success, or even your own, because they're just temporary. You need to replace them, that's right.
Speaker 1:So what would you say about? And I talked to my wife about this this morning. We were talking about struggle, yeah, and putting when you try and go into achieve things, you're putting yourself into self-inflicted struggle. But are we designed as humans to need struggle and without it we're kind of like the guy on the inside?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, the way I think about it is there's an optimal level of stress?
Speaker 1:Well, there's you stress, and there's the other stress, right. There's the stress where I'm being chased by a line I'm going to get eaten, and there's stress where I want to win the game.
Speaker 4:Yeah, two different types of things, yeah, exactly, and even in the latter one, where you're trying to win the game, I mean too much, too prolonged amount of that, I think, can burn you out and be unhealthy. Not enough of it leads to complacency, right. So I think there's that optimal zone of stress. And look for a lot of people, the way you grow as an organization, as an individual, you've got to get out of your comfort zone. Yeah. And that's stressful Totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's. You know, at SiteMax this was last year we would do a. The metaphor for growth was mountaineering, so going on an expedition, and I would explain that someone would say to me so you know, where are we going here, what's this going to be like? I said, ok, here's what we need to understand. So these different milestones we have of success or things we want to achieve are like different base camps on the asset.
Speaker 1:Now, I actually cannot tell you with certainty because it is life-threatening what the weather is going to be like around that north side. I don't know Other people have been there but I can't tell you with 100% certainty that it's going to be great, or whether it's going to be a total hassle to get there, or whether or not we're going to be almost out of oxygen by the time we get there. What I need to know, though, is that you have enough faith to go on this expedition, because if you go with us and you, three quarters of the way, are like I don't want to do this, you're going to kill all of us. That's why mountaineering, I think, is a really good metaphor for business, because we don't know what the environment is going to throw at us. Everyone's expecting us to be able to say well, tell me what the top of the essence like.
Speaker 2:I don't know, but everyone's experience is different too, how they perceive it too. True, true, yeah, that's the other part.
Speaker 1:Somebody might be freaking out that there's a drop here and they don't want to cross a crevasse when somewhere be like oh, I'm going to give her shit.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think there's people with different risk appetites too, right, but the world's uncertain, it's really hard to be able, as a leader, to step out and say, look, there's an exactly clear path here and we all know what's going to happen. I think adaptability is one of the more important and valuable characteristics today in leaders and in everybody in an organization. Can you adapt to the unexpected? Because COVID is a great example of that right, obviously, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, huge. Yeah, the C word Right, that's right. Yeah, jesus. It's been such an interesting when we were talking about the rise of the man in G-Rail class.
Speaker 1:One thing that I've said this on another a number of podcasts is that where I saw things change was when, pre-covid, when Kellyanne Conway said live, oh, that's alternative facts. I'm like what the hell is an alternative fact? It's either objectively true or it isn't. That's right. And people were like I guess it's my subjective truth. So that mixed with then we had COVID come and people can now say, well, this is my truth about how I feel.
Speaker 1:It's like, oh, my God, we're in fantasy land for most people, because most people aren't. We're all struggling in some way and that just gave us the right to struggle on a whole new level and virtue ourselves for saying that I now have the power to say what I want when I want, like you've seen it where somebody's like well, I don't feel safe at the office, it's because they actually don't want to be the opposite at all, but now they can say I don't have the guts to quit, but I'm going to say I'm not safe. It says that whole thing going. I mean, good Lord, it was just and now. What we're doing is do you think that there is an element of recapturing that power again back to reality a bit.
Speaker 4:I think it's still invoked to be a victim in the world today.
Speaker 1:Why is that?
Speaker 4:It's what we see, right. I mean, you look at it makes us special. You look at something to talk about.
Speaker 4:Well, why? Why would we take a victim mentality? Because we can blame others, we can avoid failing right. And when you, when you look, when you turn on mainstream media, go to a lot of places on the internet, what do you see? I mean, just talking about mainstream media, it's all like if it bleeds, it leads, and it's not media's fault. They're just giving us what we want. We don't want the good news, we want the blood and gore and carnage. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And so to make ourselves feel like better, it's not as bad for us.
Speaker 4:I don't know I don't watch mainstream news, but it's like I don't think it's news, I think it's entertainment.
Speaker 4:You know, and if you want to go see everybody dying and like all the bad things in the world, go turn on the news and then. And then you know they're always looking for victim stories. So what you see when you're engaging in media is is victim stories, and so I think that maybe that gives people permission to feel, okay, I'm going to be a victim now and I'm going to like blame others and not take accountability and responsibility. But that's one of those things about leading yourself right. If you're, if you're taking a victim mentality, you're just disempowering yourself. It's just I can't. It's just there's no reason to do that. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1:What time is it? Half 30, half five, half five, jesse's like it's all good, it's all good, so maybe why don't we? This has been pretty, pretty awesome, but I think there's a couple of like nuggets you could leave people. So, obviously, jesse, on the construction, you know engineering space. What kind of do you have? Any like, I don't know? Tip of your tongue, tips, yeah.
Speaker 4:For you know, for someone who wants to just be successful, right yeah, then you know just some general things, because everybody's going to be at a different place. I think when you, when I think about leading yourself, it's about adopt, adopting the right mindset, and you know what's a good mindset. Here's an example you win or you learn right. Learn this from doing Jiu-Jitsu. Not everything's going to go your way in your life and your career and your work and your job, but if you can adopt this mindset of you, either win or it's an experience to learn from you just you show up, you do your best, you learn from that, you get better, you keep going, and that's a great way to lead yourself.
Speaker 4:because if you don't do that, if you're someone that complains and you blame others for trying to make your life better, guess what? The people that hold power that are going to help you succeed in your career are going to see you as someone who's short of responsibility. When I think about lead self, I think take that ownership, adopt a supportive mindset would be one of the first things I'd say. Okay.
Speaker 1:That's pretty awesome. Second, nice Should I keep going.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, lead others. So this, this one look at like a lot of success in your career is interpersonal skills, right, like you got to be good technically at your craft, but where I think a lot of people fall down is it's that interpersonal being able to work well and communicate well with others. So I would say, invest in that, especially if you're interested in leadership. I mean, it's all about people right. Like you know, in a lot of the leadership development courses we do and a lot of even our CEO peer group sessions, like a lot of the things we're talking about is issues with people Right. So being able to collaborate, communicate well, having empathy for thinking through other people's perspectives and what they care about, is a superpower.
Speaker 2:And it's universal too, like not just to our industry and journey and construction to stay anything.
Speaker 4:I'm sure a lot of your clients from varied backgrounds have the same issues, right, so yeah, you know Joseph Campbell wrote a book in 1949, the Hero with a Thousand Faces, and a lot of people talk today about Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. You guys familiar with this.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 4:I'll just broad strokes it. In that book he sort of laid out a template that is now used in a lot of popular stories. So Star Wars George Lucas credited Joseph Campbell with how he built the story for Star Wars and it kind of goes like this You've got a character, they've got a problem, they meet a guide. The guide calls them to action, gives them a plan, and the character then succeeds All right. So you think about Star Wars. Luke Skywalker is your character. He has a problem. What's the problem? The empire murdered his aunt and uncle. He meets a guide. Obi-wan Kenobi calls them to action, gives them a plan, go learn the force, take on the Death Star and lead them to success.
Speaker 4:And so for most of us, we're the hero in our own stories. So the way we engage with other people at work in life is I'm the hero in my own story and all the rest of you are there to support me on my hero journey Interesting. But what if you flip the script? What if you see yourself as the guide in your interactions with other people, and not a guide like, oh, I'm speaking down to you, but just a guide who actually has empathy for what other people's dreams, opportunities, hopes are, and positioning yourself as someone who authentically, genuinely wants to help them get what they want. And when you can come at relationships from that angle versus I'm a hero and you're there to serve me, watch everything change.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:I like the empathy thing.
Speaker 2:I like the empathy thing too.
Speaker 1:What I think is what add the diamond sparkle to empathy is selfless empathy, and one that I'm not virtueing. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Because a lot of people are seemingly empathetic, because they want to tell people they are. It's kind of like, you know, like a CrossFit people's like you did CrossFit yeah, I know you do, cause you just told me, yeah, it's like those, those kind of people, right? So it's like to be selfless and empathetic about people. I think is is is kind of the, the magic combo.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I think people confuse, that, confuse empathy and sympathy too Right. Sympathy, as I feel bad for you. Empathy, as I understand your perspective. It takes work and effort to do that right, because if, if I'm going to take the time to understand you, james, or you, jesse, and how you, really, I have to be able to listen. Right. I got to shut up. Yeah, I got to get out of that gravitational pull to being the hero in my own story and actually put myself in yours and be patient. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I think for some people that might seem like the long way, like, oh, we don't have time for that. Look, if we're getting shot out on a battlefield, sure, Like yeah, tell me what to do, Right. But in the workplace we often have the time and actually that's the fast way is when, when people feel understood, they can move on together with you, Right? So that whole thing about empathy is is a big part of leading others Nice.
Speaker 1:All right, anything else, what do you think? I think it's great. I mean, that was awesome.
Speaker 2:I get excited when Colin, when Colin speaks, when I you know, as I've gotten to know Colin, I think you know he's a. He's a great person to bounce ideas off and give you perspective on things. Also, you know the the kind of folks you work with and the different industries you work with. I think you can bring a good perspective because I think, with James and I like for me, my head's in the sand with engineering and consulting and that's my world. You're, you know you're on the construction side with software. That's your world. And so it's good to sometimes pull your head up and listen to what other people have to say, their experiences and what's going on. Right.
Speaker 1:So this is really good. I mean, Colin, you've got. You're a good orator too, Like I'm, like I can tell Thank you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's good, appreciate that. I think that's the best voice for radio or face for radio. Yeah, that's the best one yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, jesse, this is. I think we'll probably do some Whistler stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right. Well, thank you very much for introducing me to Colin.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and this has been a pleasure, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sage advice.
Speaker 4:My pleasure guys. It's really really enjoyed it, Love it. Awesome Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, that does it for another episode of the site visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for a monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and site max, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.